It is still dark when Bertran goes out. He is full of a taut joy like the bells for Matins. All winter and spring he is busy with written things that cause real things to occur between God and himself. Then he has finished. He brings the bishop a poem of two thousand lines in octosyllables and rhyming couplets written in the vulgar tongue: the Life of Saint Énimie.
It’s summer. The bishop is sitting after dinner under the vine arbor at the bishop’s palace, perhaps with a concubine. He is smiling and cheerful in the lovely light and the lovely shade. Bertran is very serious, intimidated, and proud, without a shadow of melancholy. He looks at his manuscript in the prelate’s hands, between the strawberries and a carafe of ruby-red wine. “Did you put in the dish of lentils?” asks Guillaume maliciously. “Yes, Monseigneur,” says Bertran. He becomes a little flustered and blushes: “And the strawberries too.”
In the evening, when he is alone, the bishop reads. Yes, Bertran wasn’t lying, the things he said are really there: the absolute and the visible, the absolute is hidden but clear at the heart of the visible. There is the Causse Méjan, sin, and salvation. There are the names of the places; each bend in the Tarn is named; each stone along the Tarn appears as it is itself, and not the one next to it; and behind the stones, the Drac monster and the saint — which is to say Good and Evil — appear, disappear, and confront each other: Good and Evil hurl themselves at stones that can be named. There are the many forms taken by the created world, which is to say the visible stakes over which Good and Evil do battle. There are miracles, ramrod stiff corpses that supplely rise up and walk, rocks that climb the gash of the Tarn of their own accord, trees that speak unaided of God’s power, which is to say absolute Good applied without contradiction to visible form. There is the doubt that grips you when you cross the causse and it’s raining, which is to say Evil. There is a woman who disrobes three times and whom we see three times naked in the spring at Burle — but this lovely body in which Satan with all his might has laid his trap is a body that is true and pure like the hand of God: the inconceivable and nonetheless visible body of a saint. Good is the utterly naked body of a young girl.
The bishop looks black on white at the naked body of the saint. He has an appetite for the forbidden flesh of a saint. God is in this flesh. He rejoices and weeps as will the villeins in the fairs, when the jongleurs recount the Life of Saint Énimie.
SEGUIN
Seguin de Badefol has just taken Mende.
He no longer knows where he was born. Ever since he was able to speak he has sold his body, his horse, his glove, and his sword: he’s a captain. He has fought under King John with the Fleur de Lys. He has fought under the Black Prince; last September at Poitiers with the Black Prince they captured King John beneath an oak tree in the gully of Maupertuis. The Black Prince has returned to Brittany, King John is under lock and key in the Tower of London — there are no more princes to pay for employment in war. No matter, others can become princes; after you’ve had truck with them and been under their heel you learn what a prince is: a man with fur-lined cloaks worn over iron who grinds villeins in his mill and makes excellent flour out of them. So it is that the somber barons of the Great Companies, whom the English call warlords, have flourished and wield power.
For ten years — or five — Seguin has excelled in the iniquitous business of being a prince. He keeps a tight grip on the bandit princes who rule thanks to the vacancy of King John. He has called them by name. He has shouted their names in combat. He has traded a horse or a parish with them, insulted them, loved and hated them, betrayed them, ridden with them, iron boot against iron boot, at the hour in winter when, as evening comes, they have nothing to say to each other; he has dismounted and drunk with them. They have been drunk together on air, on wine, and on blood. He has ridden and dismounted with Bertugat d’Albret, Petit-Meschin, Perrin Boïas, the Bastard of Armagnac, Guyot du Pin; with Arnaud, known as the Arch-priest; and at other times, with complete indifference, he has fought them when they took it into their heads to grind villeins that Seguin himself was planning to grind. He has fought the entire world. The armor is heavier in the evening. The ermine looks gray when night falls. Seguin is growing old; he abandons the fat lands of Burgundy and Berry to the Archpriest and the Bastard of Armagnac; he settles on poorer, less coveted lands where the villeins endlessly bow beneath the rain, the famine, and the warlords. He has his fief in the Limousin, and from there he has the Limousin, the Gévaudan, the Rouergue, and the Auvergne revolve at his behest, the way you make a top spin with a whip. He wearies of this occupation. He has white hairs in his beard, which he is apparently the only one to see: no one has mentioned them to him.
He has just taken Mende with Perrin Boïas and Petit-Meschin under his command, and they have seen the white hairs in his beard quite distinctly. They find it hard to put up with the suzerainty of the old man. All day long they have killed, seized plate, girls, and fur-lined cloaks. All night they have drunk, among the huge, swift flames made by the peasants’ huts, and the slower, richer flames made by the wooden structures of the burghers’ houses; and suddenly it is daylight: the flames grow pale and the sky appears. It’s a gray sky. They are full of gab and wine. They feel like ghosts, airy flames, gods or devils, the way you feel in the sleeplessness of early morning. One of them — a young fellow — suggests setting off straight away to see if there is a monastery willing to open up or to burn, if the peasants’ women are in the right mood, if the devil is around. They’re up like ghosts. They kick the valets awake, and they are laced into their battle dress. Their fur-lined cloaks over the top. In the saddle. Iron boot against iron boot, five or six captains and men-at-arms. And now they are on the Causse de Sauveterre, galloping along, full of dismal wine with the dismal sky above their heads. The sun has not once appeared. The open expanse is arid, like a captain’s life. There are trees growing here whose names are known only in Purgatory. It is the open palm of the earth offering up five or six captains to God or the devil. Seguin de Badefol pulls on his reins and halts. His face is ashen, like his beard. “I’ll not go any farther,” he says. Perrin Boïas and Petit-Meschin exchange a glance. The horses have stopped on the causse. The dull mist of the clouds blows against their armor. Strangely, Seguin, in an ashen voice, starts to speak — of God, of what it is permitted to do on earth and what it is permitted not to do — and he might well speak of remorse if he had the habit, the use, or even the memory of the word. Perrin Boïas and Petit-Meschin smile. The first man touches the hilt of his sword. He says, “Old men go no farther than this.” Seguin is silent: he looks for a moment at the open expanse, the stunted trees, the interminable horizon. Perrin Boïas does not have time to draw his sword fully from its scabbard before Seguin slits his throat. Seguin sighs. He wipes his blade on the mane of his horse. The horses’ breath creates soft little clouds at regular intervals. He heads full tilt toward Sauveterre. “Let’s keep going,” he says.