“Would you believe it?” Jacquette chortled. “Sent to his family, like a schoolboy. If he did what he was told, we should be able to pick him up tomorrow, in Laneuveville. I’ll have two men and a carriage ready by eight o’clock. Want to come along for the ride?”
“Yes!” Martin wanted to lay his hands on the priest as soon as possible, although he was still taken aback by the unexpected turn of events.
Jacquette grinned. “Isn’t it grand that the old Monsignor has seen fit to aid the ‘godless’ state by pinning our friend down in a place where we can just go and snatch him up?”
This time Martin returned the smile. It was good to end the long, chill day with a bit of republican humor.
Tuesday, December 4
T
HIS IS WHERE IT BEGAN
.
Martin wrapped his scarf more tightly around his neck as he stared out toward the canals and the Meurthe. Through the morning fog, the buildings blurred and loomed like mirages, but Martin knew them to be all too real: the mills, the tanneries, Ullmann’s majestic mansion across the river, and somewhere even further beyond, the hovel where little Marc-Antoine had choked to death. As the dampness seeped into Martin’s bones, he began to rue his decision to sit beside Jacquette in the high driver’s seat. The two armed men below them in the black police wagon did not have to endure the full lashing force of the wind. The sturdy Jacquette had protectively wound his knitted wool scarf over his mouth and mustache, but otherwise seemed undeterred by the elements. Clear-eyed and purposeful, he urged the horses down the road with a crack of his whip. Whether or not he agreed with the direction that Martin was taking, the inspector always found a way to move forward. Martin squeezed his eyes shut and took a long breath.
Let us hope we can track down the priest and that he’ll have something useful to say.
“How much farther?” Martin muttered, as he rubbed his gloved hands together to keep them warm.
Jacquette hooked one finger at the top of his scarf and pulled it down to answer. “Laneuveville devant Nancy is as its name says, the new town just in front of Nancy, if the southern boundary can be thought of as the front instead of the arse.” The town’s modest appellation seemed to amuse Jacquette, who let out a little guffaw. Then, much to Martin’s relief, he let the scarf spring back over his mouth. Martin was not in the mood for pleasantries. He much preferred the hypnotic clipclop of the horses’ hooves to words. Words too often expressed doubts and sorrows. Or said nothing at all.
Like the hollow civilities exchanged at breakfast between him and Clarie. The cool forehead offered for his kiss. The desultory pat on his arm as he left the table. Her thick, dark hair matted and braided. Their eyes never really meeting. The unspoken emptiness between them. Martin grimaced as he stared over the top of the horses’ heads at the road rushing toward him. How futile it was to think of these things now. Or anything. Singer, the Thomas baby, his baby, Ullmann, Erlanger, Clarie. In his dreams, in his thoughts, they had become intertwined, inseparable. Yet Martin knew this was not so, it should not be so.
After they passed through a woods they emerged into the outskirts of town. Martin held tight to the back of his seat as the wagon jolted to a stop in what appeared to be Laneuveville’s center. Or, better, appeared to be like any of a thousand towns in France with its inevitable stone church, attached shops fronting the main road, and narrow unpaved streets crisscrossing it. And just as in every main street, when trouble or spectacle marched by (and certainly a big black police wagon ranked high as both of these) heads popped up at the windows of butchers and bakers and sundry stores to see what was going on. Although he and Jacquette were prominently perched atop the wagon, Martin sensed that they were not the main attraction. With his respectable gray bowler and coat and well-trimmed beard, he could have been any boring bourgeois type from the city. No, the eyes behind the windows focused on the police and their rifles.
Jacquette turned to the bigger of the two policemen. “Vincent, climb out of your nice warm seat and get directions to the Hémonet house.”
Martin hoped the inhabitants would not resist the inquiries of the red-headed cop who put down his rifle, descended from the wagon and lumbered into the
boulangerie
. Squinting hard through the window, Martin saw the female proprietor and her customers shrug their shoulders and consult with each other, until finally one man escorted Vincent out of the bakery to point and gesture as he described the way. Once Vincent delivered the directions to Jacquette, they set out again. It seems that the Abbé François Hémonet was a country boy, living in one of the outlying districts.
Here, too, most of the one-and two-story stone houses were pushed up against each other or attached to wooden stables painted in a variety of colors. All of them stood several meters from the road. In the long front yards, carts rested for the season along with neatly stacked piles of farm tools, wood, and manure. A trusting, traditional community, Martin thought. No fear of thieves, everyone knows each other. Except for us. For in contrast to the town’s center, the wagon’s arrival seemed to have made the rural inhabitants disappear. “They’re afraid we’re here to collect their taxes,” Jacquette said, observing the resolutely opaque windows. “They have so little, who can blame them?” Martin responded. Although he wondered what the farmers had to hide. Many of their most precious possessions were already on display, stewarded with the utmost care. “Let’s make sure they know why we’re here.”
Jacquette ordered Vincent out of the wagon again, to start knocking on doors. They were lucky on the first stroke. Once the old man understood that the police had not come to take stock of his worldly goods, he was eager to talk. Without even putting on a coat, he hobbled straight to the carriage. “Third house from the end,” he said, pointing, as whiffs of chilled air curled and swelled in front of his reddened nose. “Can’t you tell? That’s the house that needs a real man, not someone in skirts,” he snorted, referring to the priest’s cassock. Jacquette gave Martin a wink. They had probably found the neighborhood’s reigning anti-cleric.
Or not, Martin thought. How many more in this tight-knit community held Hémonet, who had been defrocked and sent home to his family like a troublemaking schoolboy, in total contempt? The faithful would have as many reasons for mocking a disgraced priest as an atheist.
Jacquette thanked the old man and started the wagon again. They stopped in front of a wide two-story house, its yellow stucco façade stained and peeling. Attached to neither house nor barn, it seemed isolated from its neighbors in the misty cold that tinctured everything with gray moisture. “I think we can do this alone,” Martin said to Jacquette as they descended from the driver’s seat. He saw no reason to invade a house with rifles drawn unless absolutely necessary. His boots crunched down on ridges of frost-hardened mud as he walked around the wagon. In unspoken agreement, he and Jacquette stood for a moment, observing a scene that was deplorably chaotic by the standard of other neat, well-tended yards. A cart disabled by a missing back wheel; a few broken old tools set against the wall; manure, presumably used for fertilizer, strewn all around. What they did not know was whether this disarray had been caused by neglect or hostility. Martin took in a long breath to prepare himself, and was grateful that the cold had damped down the pungency of scattered cow and horse dung. Still he stepped carefully as he followed Jacquette, who, in his role as police inspector, took the lead, striding up to the thick green door and giving it a few authoritative raps with his bare knuckles.
At first there was no answer, although Martin signaled to Jacquette that he had seen a curtain move. The inspector began to accompany his knocks with shouts of “Police.” Finally the door creaked ajar. A bent-over old woman peered out, suspicion burning in the dark eyes of her wrinkled face. The hair sprouting from under her faded floral kerchief and on her chin was snow white.
“What do you want?” she demanded, holding on to the door with her gnarled hands.
“We are here to see François Hémonet. I am Police Inspector Jacquette and this is Monsieur le juge Martin from the court at Nancy.”
Her eyes widened, and she shrank back a little without letting go of the thick wooden door.
“Why do you want to see him?”
“We don’t have to tell you why. The judge is with me. That’s enough. Let us in!” Jacquette’s voice had risen to a shout. Gone was the bonhomie of Martin’s travel companion. This was the official Jacquette, and he was very good in the part.
The old woman stuck her head out to survey the street, to see if anyone behind the curtained windows was watching them. After glancing again at Jacquette, she focused on Martin, who returned her stare with a stern face. That’s all he had to do to assert his authority, for she immediately stepped back and held the door open. Even a farmer’s wife knew the powers of an examining magistrate.
Martin removed his bowler and bowed his head slightly, as if he were greeting any other mistress of a household. And, indeed, she deserved this sign of respect, for the polished neatness of the large rectangular room they entered belied the disorder into which the family’s lives had been thrown. At one end, a fire roared. Above the fireplace stood four shining silver candlesticks and a clock framed in gilded porcelain. On the other side of the room, a large mahogany cupboard, filled with dishes and cups, had been rubbed to an auburn sheen. The stairs leading to a second floor, not all that common for farming families, confirmed that this had once been a prosperous household. And a pious one. In front of Martin on the walls were three familiar pictures, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Virgin and Child, and Saint Joseph. There was a table set for three on the right near the cupboard and, to the left, four armchairs by the fire. A young woman, in a flowered flannel dress, got up, laid down her knitting and stood to face Martin and Jacquette. She was as plain as her mother, albeit taller and straighter. Her skin was rough, almost swarthy, and her hair, pulled back in a careless, loose bun, was mousy brown. It occurred to Martin that if she did not already have an ardent suitor, her brother’s scandal could condemn her to spinsterhood.
“Anne-Marie, go get your brother,” Mme Hémonet said as she leaned her hunched body against the wall.
The young woman tiptoed toward the stairs, never taking her eyes off the intruders. No one had taken his hat or offered him a seat, so Martin leaned against the door and observed the young woman mounting the stairs. Even though she had been glowering at him, he watched her with a twinge of pity.
As soon as her daughter disappeared, the old woman began clutching at her white apron as if in prayer, walking back and forth in front of Martin and Jacquette. “It’s good my husband’s too dead to see this,” she said to everyone and no one. “He never thought his boy should become a priest.”
“You are a widow, then?” Martin asked. She was in a dire situation. Neighbors who scorned her household, a son incapable of cleaning up the yard.
His mild comment roused her again, to defiance. “Yes, yes, I am. A poor widow who needs a son. So why do you want him? He’s a good boy. A priest. He’s never done nothing wrong.”
There was much Martin could have said in response: That her son might have committed a murder or incited someone else to kill. That he was, at the very least, a slanderer and hatemonger. That he certainly was no longer a boy. But Martin clamped his mouth shut. The mother was not responsible for the sins of the son. Nor was the sister, who was taking her time getting the brother downstairs.
Jacquette had already begun to pace, and stopped at the first sound coming from above. They heard murmured voices, then shouting, finally quick footsteps descending the wooden staircase.
It was the girl, in an agitated state. “He doesn’t want to come. He said that you have no authority over him. He is studying.” Her chest heaved up and down as she spoke.
“We’ll see about that!” said Jacquette as he tried to pass her. She grabbed him by the arm. “Don’t,” she cried.
He shook her off and went up the stairs.
“It’s about that book, isn’t it?” the mother asked Martin. “It’s a brave book. That’s what he told me. Brave and true. Anne-Marie has read it. Tell the judge about it.”
“Don’t you know that some people don’t agree with us? People who—” She stopped herself in time.
People who what? Are friends with the Israelites? Are somehow beholden to them?
She glared at Martin. Whatever sympathy he had felt for her dried up. Martin tightened his jaw and ignored her. Instead, he began to worry that he either should be upstairs helping Jacquette or calling in the police. Making a decision, he bounded past the women to the stairs, but before he could shake off the girl’s desperate grasp, he saw a hulking figure heading down toward him. Without taking his eyes off Hémonet, Martin stepped away to avoid a collision. Jacquette had twisted the man’s arm behind his back.
“Here’s your priest.” he said, as he gave his captive a shove.
“I’m not anyone’s priest any more,” Hémonet slurred. This was certainly true. He was a wreck. His half-buttoned cassock was stained with whatever he had been eating or drinking. Greasy clumps formed little peaks in his thick brown hair and beard. As he lurched forward, Martin caught a whiff of more than liquor, a rotten unwashed smell. Jacquette grabbed him by the arm again and held him back. Hémonet peered at Martin through bloodshot gray eyes, then gave out a laugh. “I suppose some Jew subprefect sent you after me. Or are you one of them yourself? They’re all after me. I know that.”
“Do you want to change?” Martin said coldly, facing him down. “Or should we take you back to Nancy in your cassock?” He meant to cut Hémonet short, and to the quick. Defrocked priests were not allowed to wear the vestments of their lost office.
“Oh, judge,” Hémonet gave a snort, “this isn’t a cassock. It’s a bathrobe. I’m a sick man. You want to take a sick man into one of your
youtre
jails. I could contaminate the Jews. Contaminate them! That’s a laugh.” And he continued to snort and chortle shifting his head this way and that.
Was the defrocked priest mad, or merely stinking drunk? Even in this unwashed state, Martin perceived that Hémonet did not take after the women in his family. He was strapping and handsome. Perhaps even a charmer. The brightest hope of a family that had launched him into his holy vocation. Now he was only contemptible. “Why don’t you get dressed. Show respect for your mother,” Martin said, as he walked away toward the door.
“Oh, Monsieur le juge, Maman likes me here,” Hémonet shouted after him. “She likes having her boy at home. That’s what she tells me every day.” He dropped to his knees, almost taking Jacquette with him. “I’m not going anywhere. I can’t preach, I can’t teach. I can’t do anything any more. You must know that. It’s against the law.” Then he started to giggle, as he swung his arms open in a wide arc. “But is it your Jew-Republican law or canon law? I don’t even know.” Then he stopped laughing. “What does it matter, after all. I’m stuck,” he spit out, barely missing Martin. Jacquette cuffed him on back of the head and sent the priest sprawling to the ground.