We moved on. We worked markets and fairs throughout Anjou and down into Gascony, sometimes helping with harvests as we had done in the early days, staying in one place over winter. The second winter, Demiselle died of a fever, leaving us with only two dancers-at thirty, Hermine was getting too old for the high rope, and it was painful to watch her. Ghislaine tried her best but never mastered the jumps. Once more, l’Ailée flew alone.
Undaunted, LeMerle returned to playwriting. His farces had always been popular, but his plays became gradually more satirical as we journeyed across France. His favorite subject was the Church, and several times we were forced to pack up in haste as some zealous official took offense. The public, for the most part, enjoyed them. Evil bishops, lecherous friars, and religious hypocrites had always attracted appreciative audiences, and when there were also dwarves and a Winged Woman, the show never failed to bring in money.
LeMerle played the clerical roles himself-he had somehow acquired a variety of religious garments and a heavy silver cross, which must have been valuable, but which he never tried to sell, even when times were poor. It was a gift, he said when I questioned him, from an old friend in Paris. But his eyes were hard as he said it, and his smile was all teeth. I did not pursue the matter, however; LeMerle could be sentimental about the strangest things, and if he wanted a thing kept secret, then no amount of questioning would loosen his tongue. All the same, I wondered a little-especially when I was hungry and food was scarce. Then, after a while, I put it out of mind.
Now began our drifting time. We traveled south in winter, north in summer, always following markets and fairs. We changed our colors in the more hostile regions, but for the most part we were still the Théâtre des Cieux, and l’Ailée danced the high rope, and people cheered and threw flowers. Even so I sensed that my heyday was coming to an end-one year a torn tendon kept me in agony for a whole summer-but we knew we could always fall back on LeMerle’s plays. They were more hazardous than the rope act, certainly; but they earned us good coin, especially in Huguenot country.
Five more times we made the journey south; I learned to recognize the roads, the good places, the dangerous places. I took lovers where and when I chose, without hindrance from LeMerle. He still shared my bed when I wanted him to; but I had grown up a little, and my slavish adoration of him had turned to a more comfortable affection. I knew him now. I knew his rages, his triumphs, his joys. I knew him, and I accepted what he was.
I knew, too, that there was much in him to hate, much to mistrust. Twice to my knowledge, he had murdered-once a drunkard who struggled too violently to retrieve a stolen purse, once a farmer who stoned us near Rouen-both deeds committed in stealth and darkness, only to be discovered long after we had gone.
I asked him once how he reconciled such things with his conscience.
“Conscience?” He raised an eyebrow. “You mean God, Judgment Day, and that kind of thing?”
I shrugged. He knew that wasn’t quite what I meant but rarely passed over an opportunity to tease me over my heretical beliefs.
LeMerle smiled. “Dear Juliette,” he said. “If God is really up there-and if we are to believe your Copernicus, that must be a very, very long way up-then I don’t trust his perspectives. To him, I’m a speck. Down here, from where I’m standing, things are different.”
I didn’t understand, and I said so.
“I mean that I’d rather be something more than a gambling chip in a game of unlimited stakes.”
“Even so, to kill a man-”
“People kill each other all the time. At least I’m honest about it. I don’t do it in God’s name.”
Knowing him for good or ill-or so I thought-I could still love him, believing as I did that in spite of his sins, the essential heart of the man was good, was faithful to itself, a thieving blackbird singing a mocking song…But that was the man’s talent. He could make people see what they wanted to see, reflections of themselves as vain as shadows in a pond. I saw my foolish self in him, that was all. I was twenty-two, and I had not grown up half as much as I believed.
Until Épinal.
9
It is a pleasant little town on the Moselle, in Lorraine. It was the first time we had come that way, concentrating as we did mostly on the coastal regions, and we arrived in a small village called Bruyère a few miles outside the town. A quiet place; half a dozen farms, a church, orchards of apple and pear trees half-eaten by mistletoe. If I felt anything unusual I cannot recall it now; maybe a sharp glance from a woman by the roadside, a sly forking of the fingers from a child at the crossroads. I read the cards, as I did at any new spot; but I drew only a harmless Fool, a Six of Staves, and a Deuce of Cups. If there was a warning there, I did not see it.
It was August; parched summer dragging into a premature autumn turning dank and sweet with rot. Hailstorms a month earlier had crushed the ripe barley, and the fields lay spoiling in an alehouse stench. The sudden heat in the wake of the storms was overwhelming, and the people seemed dazed by the sun, blinking foolishly at our caravans as they passed. Nevertheless, we managed to negotiate a field for our camp, and that night we performed a short burlesque around our campfire, to the accompaniment of crickets and frogs.
Our audience was sparse, however. Even the dwarves barely brought a smile to the mirthless faces made bloody in the firelight, and few seemed inclined to stay afterward. The only regular entertainments in that region were hangings and burnings, according to alehouse gossip: a sow had been hanged a few days earlier for eating her young, a pair of nuns in a nearby convent had set themselves on fire in imitation of Saint Christina Mirabilis, and there was always at least one person in the pillory, so the villagers of Bruyère, inured to strong entertainments, were unlikely to be much moved by the arrival of a troupe of players.
At this LeMerle shrugged philosophically. There were good days and bad, he said, and these small villages were unused to culture. Épinal would be better.
We arrived there on the morning of the Festival of the Virgin to find the town in carnival mood. We had expected as much; after the procession and the mass the populace would retire to the alehouses and the streets, where already the celebrations were under way. This was no time for one of LeMerle’s satires-Épinal had a reputation for piety-but there might be good takings for a rope-dancer and a troupe of jongleurs. I could already see a tabor player and a flautist beneath the portals of the church, plus a masked Fool with his wand and bells and, strangely out of place, the Plague Doctor, black long-nosed mask over whitened face, his dark cloak flapping. Other than that slight note of discord, things seemed much as normal. Perhaps there was another troupe in town, I told myself, with which we might have to share the takings. I know I thought no more about them. And yet I should have recognized the signs. The black Doctor in his crow’s garb. The sounds of excitement-almost of fear-as we passed. The look in a woman’s eye as I smiled at her from my caravan, the sly fork of the hand repeated over and over…
LeMerle scented trouble from the first. I should have known-there was a reckless gleam in his eyes as he scanned the crowd, a broadness to his smile that should have checked me. It was our custom at times like this to send out the dwarves among the revelers, giving out sweetmeats and invitations to the performance, but this day he signaled for the dwarves to keep close, Le Borgne occasionally spitting fire from the tail of my caravan like a comet, Cateau calling out in his piping voice: “Players! See the players today! See the Winged Woman!”