The Brethren by Robert Merle Read Free Book Online Page B

interrupt you. My brother is laid up in his room, in some distress from an old leg wound. Would you be willing to continue this narrative in his tower chambers? He would be greatly chagrined to have missed your story.”
    The east tower to which Siorac referred is reached by a winding staircase set in a smaller adjoining tower. Our chapel occupies the ground floor of this tower, Sauveterre’s rooms the first. The room adjoining his bedroom is a small study, where our uncle spends much of his time; the chimney draws well and the window looks out onto the courtyard so that Sauveterre can keep an eye on the comings and goings of our servants. “’Tis nothing serious, Lieutenant,” grimaced Sauveterre to his guest, unable to rise to greet him, “my leg cramps up once or twice a month and all will be well tomorrow.”
    “So I will hope with all my heart,” answered La Boétie, settling himself with a groan. “My own posterior is sore enough from all the riding I have just done, which has brought me naught but vexation. I had scarcely arrived at court when the king decided to move. Despite his deplorable health, he seems unable to stay in one place. You’d think he felt death stealing about him, given his haste to flee from one chateau to the next: from Saint-Germain to la Muette, from la Muette to Villepreux-lès-Clayes, then on to Dampierre, to Limours, to Rochefort-en-Yvelines… All I could do was follow him about, unable to approach him, paying good money for my escort’s lodgings to all the rascally innkeepers of the royal territories who charge two sols a day just for hay for the horses! What’s more, they mock my guards’ speech, which is as good as any man of theirs.”
    “Ah, to be sure,” agreed Sauveterre. “Our speech is the purer!”
    “At Rochefort-en-Yvelines I had a more hopeful moment,” La Boétie continued. “The king was feeling better and mounted his horse to go hunting three days in a row. After which he ate and drank to excess as usual.”
    “He went riding with an abscess!” exclaimed Siorac. “What madness!”
    “Perhaps,” said La Boétie naively, “the king hoped the ride would drain the abscess. But after three days he was much the worse off and beset by a running fever. He ordered them to bring him to Rambouillet where, trying to deny the gravity of his illness, he said he wanted to ‘take his pleasure in hunting and birding’. On 21st March I was finally admitted to the Château de Rambouillet, only to learn that they were operating on the king. Afterwards, he sank into the slow pangs of death. On 30th March the dauphin asked for his benediction, and while the king was giving it, the dauphin fainted on his bed and the king held him as closely as though he would die if he let go of him.
    “Finally they led the dauphin Henri away into the dauphine’s room where he threw himself face down on the bed with his boots on, stricken with grief. Catherine de’ Medici, seeing her husband in this state, fell to the floor weeping and disconsolate. François de Guise, taking scarce more note of her than of his future king, paced stiffly back and forth in the room, a superb defiance on his face, his heels ringing on the floorboards. Diane de Poitiers, Henri’s mistress, sat stiffly nearby, triumphant and smiling. Guise stopped his pacing long enough to address her, and, with a gesture in the direction of the king’s room, sneered derisively, ‘He’s leaving us, the old fop!’”
    “Did you get this incredible story on good authority?” stammered Siorac. “So much insolence towards his dying master? Is it possible?”
    “I have it from an excellent source,” replied La Boétie, somewhat testily, “and I can also assure you that the king, who was entirely inpossession of his wits when he confessed, declared out loud—this has been confirmed by many different people—that he ‘had no remorse on his conscience, never having done any injustice to anyone in this