Given the way the drama was constructed, all three must make Marcel the hero, as did the author of the book, or at least the centerpiece of the affair. Everything focuses on his decision, and this is where the journalistic distortion creeps in. For Marcel never made a choice. He never considered alternatives. He never doubted for a moment that the actions he in fact took were correct. And, of course, the journalist did not suspect the existence or the importance of Julien Barneuve in the matter.
THE PROBLEM was simple: Manlius regarded the Burgundians as the best hope for the security of Provence. He could make a distinction between one group of barbarians and another, while his friend Felix saw all as a threat to the ideal of Rome. By the time Manlius left the king’s palace and began his trek back home, the starkness of the opposition was clear to him. Events had made them enemies. One or the other must give way. And time was short; the Burgundian king was willing to move his army to a line south of Vaison, but would not invade. He wanted no opposition, and if there was any either he would not come at all or he would feel free to pillage at will. Then everything Manlius had tried to achieve would be lost. Their savior would become their destroyer.
As he voyaged, the journey taking ten days when a generation ago it could have been done in two, Manlius was confident that he could carry the day in the town and the region; his position as bishop gave him an unrivaled, indeed a unique voice to the townspeople, and there was, of course, no doubt that his estates would obey. Nonetheless, he was aware that there would be opposition, and that with Felix at its head, it could be formidable.
He was reassured by the belief that Felix had headed south, to try once again to raise troops to send to Clermont; it was because of this confidence that the news Vaison had rebelled against him under the leadership of Caius Valerius came as such a shock. It was one development he had not foreseen, for like Felix himself, he had never taken seriously the devout but simplistic fool whose bishopric he had taken.
In fact, Caius had been preparing since the moment Manlius was elected some four months previously, and knew that the absence of both the bishop and Felix from the region gave him the one chance he was likely to get. Within hours of the delegation leaving for the court of the Burgundians, he began to move with those he had persuaded, bribed, and frightened into supporting him. The church was captured, and its treasury—newly filled with Manlius’s gold—opened. Work details were set onto the walls, building and strengthening. All of Manlius’s men in the town were disarmed and given the choice: abandon their master or have their hands chopped off so they could not fight for him. Most chose the former option. No move was made to deprive Manlius of his position, however; that would be done later; charges of peculation were prepared to lay against him when he returned. For Caius did not underestimate his bishop or his cousin, and knew that he had little time. Manlius was immensely powerful, and could raise a substantial number of troops from his estates. Moreover, the townspeople were uneasy; Manlius had been elected by acclamation. He had the support of Faustus; he was God’s representative.
Nor could the town be easily prepared for a siege, or defended. The walls were feeble and weak. The inhabitants had almost no idea how to fight. Caius sent urgent messages south, along with all of Manlius’s gold, to hire mercenaries, but nothing had happened. Until they arrived, or his cousin Felix returned with troops to face a fait accompli, a full and open declaration of war against the bishop was unthinkably stupid.
So Caius Valerius worked to prepare the walls, and to stiffen the resolve of the townsmen. Here something dramatic was needed; something to ram home just how unsuitable Manlius was. Who better than Sophia to make this point?
The rumors about her had already started in any case. It took little effort to fan them into a flame of outrage. Sophia was strange, haughty, and aloof. She spoke in a way—the purest Latin, in fact—that the Gallic ear could scarcely even understand anymore. She practiced medicine, so easily confused with necromancy. She was, undoubtedly, the bishop’s consort, he who was supposedly dedicated to celibacy and chastity now his wife had gone to a woman’s house. Above all, she was a pagan, who preferred the company of Jews to good Christians, who openly sneered at the truth and had corrupted the mind of youths throughout the land with her teaching. Sophia, when she heard this last, laughed out loud. She couldn’t corrupt them even if she wanted to.
She was in the habit of coming into the town every few weeks, not so much because she needed to—her slave was more than capable of seeing to her small needs—but because she needed to breathe the air of civilization, however diminished and provincial it might be. She stayed in the great house Manlius had given her, generally only for a day or so, and went walking through the streets, listening to the noise of human activity, constantly surprised by how much it reassured and soothed her. For she had absorbed little of pastoralism in her education; she lived in isolation on her hill to escape the omnipresent signs of decay, rather than to bask in the revitalizing aura of nature. Nature, indeed, she had little time for; she had always been a city dweller, and was more appalled by cruelty of the wild than she was awed by its beauty.
Besides, she had begun to give instruction to Syagrius. The young man had come to her one day and asked to speak. Then, in a rush, he had asked her for lessons, his eyes beseeching her not to turn him away or ridicule him in the way that his adoptive father did as a matter of course. Sophia would never have done that; but she did not, initially, want to instruct him either. She knew perfectly well that he did not ask out of any craving for philosophy; rather he wished through her teaching to come closer to Manlius and demonstrate his worth.
Ordinarily, she would have refused, but now she had no other pupils, and as he stood there, proud but so young and lost, his wish to win Manlius’s respect and affection so clear, she could not turn him away. Instead, with a sigh of misgiving she had smiled, and agreed. “Of course. It would be a pleasure.” His smile of relief and gratitude—a charming smile, with real beauty in it—reassured her.
“And the first thing you can do in my company is to stop standing to attention like that. I will not be your teacher but your guide. I will help you, not instruct you. This means you must speak freely, and I forbid you to believe anything I tell you. Do you understand?”
A look of puzzlement and distress crossed his face. Sophia’s heart sank. “Come in, young man. But if you call me ‘my lady’ once again I will throw you into the street. You will, I hope, think of me with respect. But I have not earned it from you yet. When I have, you may address me thus.”
And so she began with poor, simple discourses. His ignorance was total, the lad was scarcely capable of understanding the basics. Sooner or later, he would say:
“How can you say this? The Bible says . . .”
“What do you mean that life is a quest? What are we looking for? Surely faith should be enough.”
And she would try to explain in a way he could understand, but knew that she lost him, almost every time. “Now, how can we define the difference between understanding and believing?” she would say, continuing because he wanted her to continue, and she was determined not to stop as long as there was any hope that, one day, she might spot some flash of recognition in his eyes.
But she never saw it; his mind was long closed, barricaded by priests and Bibles. She was not strong enough, not a good enough teacher, perhaps, to burst through and let in the light of reason. She should have given up, but she saw also that, although Syagrius’s understanding was feeble, his soul was good. There was no malice or cruelty in him, nor did he ever give up, even though at times he came close to tears in his desperate wish to understand. “Let us take our premise that the individual soul likens himself to God through the refinement of understanding reached through contemplation, and that virtue is a reflection of this understanding . . .”
A cliché of philosophy, repeated endlessly for near eight hundred years; Sophia hardly even thought it controversial. Even in Marseille, she had never had
the proposition queried. However, it came to the ears of Caius and he saw it as the pyre on which Manlius might be consumed.
The bishop’s woman taught that men could become God. She challenged the Almighty, taught youth that no savior was necessary, that faith was absurd, that she was the equal of Christ. She contradicted Revelation, poured scorn on believers, and all the while was supported and defended by Manlius himself. What sort of bishop encourages men not to believe?
She was sufficiently unworldly, or perhaps arrogant might be the better term, not to notice that more people looked at her askance as she walked through the streets; that there was more muttering as she emerged from her house. She paid no attention; the opinions of such people had never been of the slightest importance to her; their talking no more registered with her than the noise of buzzing flies occupied her mind.
Southern Gaul was not like the East; monasticism had not taken so strong a hold that hundreds or even thousands of monks were gathered in almost every town. Yet there were many who had gathered informally in such associations, often moving in and taking over abandoned villas or town buildings, asserting—sometimes violently—their ownership and priding themselves on the purity of their faith. More than anyone, perhaps, they feared invasion, for an Arian, heretic king would have little sympathy for them and be open to the complaints of aggrieved property owners.
It took little to persuade them that True Religion must be defended, and that the corruption Sophia represented should be stopped. On the morning before Manlius held his first meeting with the Burgundian king, they gathered outside her house and waited for her.
There were only about a dozen; no more were needed, although the crowd grew larger as time went on. Several were drunk; such things were common, for most were young and were scarcely under any control. For all that, they had no idea what to do but were waiting for someone to give a lead.
When Sophia came out of the house, she paused as she saw them. It crossed her mind to go back inside, for even she sensed the menace in the atmosphere. Had she done so, history would have been subtly changed in innumerable ways. But she remained true to the philosophy she had practiced all her life; she was not afraid, and after a brief moment when the lower, more treacherous part of her mind sent a surge of alarm through her body, she conquered the fear and restored herself to tranquillity.
Then she began walking down the street, toward what had once been the forum but now scarcely merited the name of a market square. Ahead of her was Syagrius, waiting for her. She relaxed, felt the relief flowing through her, and was angry with herself. He would not hurt her, she knew.
“You are in danger,” he said. “You must come to a place of safety now. Come with me.”
And she went with him. He took her to the church, and barricaded her in.
WHEN ISABELLE ’ S BODY was found, news of the event raced around the town as fast as the plague. Her husband himself came for the body, and even though his sense of outrage was still uppermost in his mind, he also felt regret for the loss of this pretty, feckless, disobedient girl of whom he had been fond. At the same time he was aware, of course, that he had acted justly, and that moreover he was now free to marry again and produce the legitimate heir that she had denied him.
Nor did he want to delay quitting the town more than necessary. He was a thoroughly frightened man; the plague was one reason, but he also wanted to get to the safety of Aquitaine, safe on English territory when the French realized who had been responsible for opening the gates of Aigues-Mortes, due to take place in only a week’s time. But his wife’s foolishness the night before had thrown all these plans into disarray, and he would now have to stay for a few extra days. So he gave instructions that the packing should continue, and concerned himself with laying a complaint to the authorities about the murder. With luck he would still be able to set off before it was too late, and if he went alone, abandoning his household and telling them to follow in their own time, he might yet be able to outrun any pursuers.
It took only a few hours for the magistrate to discover that Isabelle de Fréjus had gone the previous night to the house near the Jewish quarter where Luca Pisano lived. This was clearly stated in two of the depositions contained in an individual folder under Reg. Av. 48 in the Vatican archives, whose existence Julien noted first in 1924 but which he did not pursue until much later. Despite the difficulties of the war, he wrote to Rome in early 1943 and requested that someone copy out this folder for him; it was done because he was known to the archivist, and because he was a man who, at that time, commanded respect as a supporter of Vichy.
He should have had his interest piqued much earlier, and he had a residual annoyance with Julia’s father when it finally arrived. For he remembered well that he had a choice that day, either keep on working in the insufferable heat, or abandon it, walk out the doors, and go for a long lunch with Claude Bronsen. He had also managed to get permission to see the Golden House of Nero, and wished the older man to see it as well. The temptation was too great. The file remained unread for another eighteen years.
When it did arrive, he understood what he had missed, and why he should have paid more attention. The murder should have been dealt with under common legal procedures, yet it had been quickly plucked out of the hands of the magistrates and dealt with by a papal appointee. The report clearly stated that Isabelle de Fréjus had gone to see the painter Luca Pisano. Combined with the fact that his poetry of love had been written for someone else, then the whole tale of Olivier’s end, of how he murdered his mistress and was mutilated in revenge, was demonstrably and totally wrong. Nonetheless, he had been attacked by one of Cardinal Ceccani’s own people. What had happened?
The count himself had a dilemma; Isabelle could not be tainted with the sin of adultery; he had his pride, and yet even a cursory investigation would uncover why she had been in that part of the city. And as he stood in the little alleyway staring at the body he had so grievously assaulted, waiting for his men to come and take her back to his house, he suddenly realized how to extricate himself from the potentially dangerous and embarrassing situation. A crowd had gathered behind him, restless and uneasy, staring at the figure on the ground and the pool of blood, still wet and shining in the morning light, as it ran off in a great stream of scarlet. There was an air of terror that he could feel among these people, who had grown so inured to death over the past few weeks that one more should not have even been noticed. But this was different, of course. As the plague was taking so many, for someone to die of violence seemed ten times worse than usual, an almost unbearable act of evil.
“It was the Jews.” The first time it was muttered, the count did not hear it. Only after it became almost a chant did he pay attention to what was developing all around him. He turned and saw a tall man with a thin beard, his face disfigured by the scabs of poor living, repeating the phrase, looking around him slyly to make sure the refrain was being picked up by others. He began beating time with his fist, so the sound rose and fell; soon it was accompanied by stamping, getting louder and louder.
More and more people joined in; the crowd overflowed into the street, and down the street, young and old men, men and women, women and children, all chanting and stamping their feet, moving restlessly. Then there was a pause and the collective noise petered out. A sudden silence of waiting. “Kill them,” the bearded man shouted. “Revenge.”
“Yes,” shouted the count. “I demand justice.”
The crowd responded with a roar of pleasure.
It took him eight hours on his bike, but it was now a trip he did almost without noticing, only the heat of midafternoon slowed him down; then he had to stop for an hour or so to seek shelter. He didn’t even feel tired when he arrived to see Marcel.
There was an air of abandonment about the Préfecture; he’d not noticed it before, or perhaps it had grown in his absence; the corridors that once resonated with purpose, with a mission, now seemed desolate and irrelevant. He was recognized at the door, walked in,
and went straight to Marcel’s office. It would not have mattered if he had been a total stranger, the lassitude had spread even here. Even the bureaucrats seemed like those who sit idly at night, feeling the thunder approaching, doing nothing except waiting for the first flash of lightning.
Only Marcel, it seemed, was still fighting, hoping that simple activity could fend off what even he now accepted as inevitable. His desk was piled high with papers, files were strewn across the floor; he sat there, head bowed, scribbling furiously in the purple ink he had affected when young and never given up. Julien often wondered what the appeal was. Bernard once remarked he thought he could smell a little touch of incense in his writing.
“Marcel, they’ve taken hostages in Vaison.”
“I know,” he said, not even looking up, still scribbling. “They told me. Good of them, don’t you think?”
Finally he abandoned his bits of paper. “The water gave out in Carpentras a week ago. Did you know that? I’ve been trying to find somebody to repair it. Simple enough, you’d think. I can’t even find anyone to go and look.” He shook his head, then threw his pen down and rubbed his eyes, covering his whole face with his hands before finally looking at Julien.
“If you’ve come to ask for help, there’s nothing I can do. It is entirely out of my hands and I’ve already done everything I can think of. Made representations, of course. Protested. Sent telegrams. Tried to get what is left of the government involved. Even been to see the German High Command. But . . .”