Letters from my Windmill Part 5

Then came the feast day of St. Eli, patron saint of farmers.

There were great celebrations in the farm.... There was plenty of Chateau-Neuf for everybody and the sweet wine flowed in rivers. Then there were crackers, and fireworks, and coloured lanterns all over the nettle trees. Long live St. Eli! They all danced the farandole until they dropped. Cadet scorched his new smock.... Even Jan looked content, and actually asked his mother for a dance. She cried with joy.

At midnight they all went to bed; everybody was tired out. But Jan himself didn't sleep. Cadet said later that he had been sobbing the whole night. Oh, I tell you, he was well smitten that one....

The next morning the mother heard someone running across her sons'

bedroom. She felt a sort of presentiment:

--Jan, is that you?

Jan didn't reply, he was already on the stairs.

His mother got up at once:

--Jan, where are you going?

He went up into the loft, she followed him:

--In heavens name, son!

He shut and bolted the door:

--Jan, Jan, answer me. What are you doing?

Her old trembling hands felt for the latch.... A window opened; there was the sound of a body hitting the courtyard slabs. Then ... an awful silence.

The poor lad had told himself: "I love her too much.... I want to end it all...." Oh, what pitiful things we are! It's all too much; even scorn can't kill love....

That morning, the village people wondered who could be howling like that, down there by Esteve's farm.

It was the mother in the courtyard by the stone table which was covered with dew and with blood. She was wailing over her son's lifeless body, limp, in her arms.

THE POPE'S MULE

When Provencal people talked about an aggressive man with a grudge, they used to say, "Beware of that man!... he is like the Pope's mule, who saved up her kick for seven years."

I have long been trying to find out where the saying came from, and what this papal mule and the seven year kick was all about. n.o.body, not even Francet Mama, my fife player, who knows the Provencal legends like the back of his hand, has been able to tell me. Francet, like me, thinks that it is from an old tale from Avignon, but he has not heard of it elsewhere.

--You'll find it in the Cicada's open library, the old piper told me with a sn.i.g.g.e.r.

It seemed a good idea to me, and, the Cicada's library being right outside my door, I decided to shut myself in for a week.

It's a marvellous library, well stocked, and open twenty four hours a day to poets and it is served by those little cymbal-clas.h.i.+ng librarians who make music for you all the time. I stayed in there for several delightful days, and after a week's searching--lying on my back--I came up with just what I was looking for: my own version of the mule with the famous seven year grudge. The story is charming and simple, and I will tell it to you as I read it yesterday from a ma.n.u.script, which had the lovely smell of dried lavender, and long strands of maiden hair fern for bookmarks.

If you hadn't seen Avignon in papal times, you'd seen nothing. For gaiety, life, vitality, and a succession of feasts, no town was its peer. From morning till night there were processions, pilgrimages, flower strewn streets, high-hung tapestries, cardinals' arriving on the Rhone, buntings, galleries with flags flying, papal soldiers chanting Latin in the squares, and brothers' rattling their collecting boxes.

There were such noises coming from the tallest to the smallest dwelling, which crowded and buzzed all around the grand Papal Palace, like bees round a hive. There was the click-click of the lace-makers'

machines, the to and fro of the shuttles weaving gold thread for the chasubles, the little hammer taps of the cruet engravers, the tw.a.n.ging harmonic scales of the string instrument makers, the sing-songs of the weavers, and above all that, the peal of the bells, and the ever-throbbing tambourines, down by the bridge. You see, here in Provence, when people are happy, they must dance and dance. And then; they must dance again. When the town streets proved too narrow for the farandole, the fifers and tambourine players were placed in the cooling breeze of the Rhone, _Sur le pont d'Avignon_, where, round the clock, _l'on y dansait, l'on y dansait_. Oh, such happy times; such a happy town. The halberds which have never killed anyone, the state prisons used only to cool the wine. Never any famine. Never any war.... That's how the Comtat Popes governed their people, and that's why their people missed them so much....

There was one pope called Boniface who was a particularly good old stick. Oh, how the tears flowed in Avignon when he died. He was such a loveable, such a pleasant prince. He would laugh along with you as he sat on his mule. And when you got near to him--were you a humble madder plant gatherer or a great town magistrate--he blessed you just as thoughtfully. Truly, a Pope from Yvetot, but a Provencal Yvetot, with something joyful in his laugh, a hint of marjoram in his biretta, and no sign of a lady love.... The only romantic delight ever known to the good father, was his vineyard--a small one that he had planted himself amongst the myrtles of Chateau-Neuf, a few kilometres from Avignon.

Every Sunday, after vespers, this decent man went to pay court to the vineyard. As he sat in fine suns.h.i.+ne, his mule close by, his cardinals sprawled out under the vines, he opened a bottle of vintage wine--a fine wine, the colour of rubies, which has been known ever since as _Chateau-Neuf du Pape_--which he liked to sip while looking fondly at his vineyard. Then, the bottle empty and the daylight fading, he went merrily back to town, his whole chapter in tow. As he pa.s.sed over the _pont d'Avignon_, amongst the drums and farandoles, his mule, taking her cue from the music, began a jaunty little amble, while he himself beat the dance rhythm out with his biretta. This shocked his cardinals, but not so the people, who were delighted by it, and said, "What a good prince! What a great pope!"

After his Chateau-Neuf vineyard, the pope loved his mule more than anything else on earth. The old man was quite simply besotted with the creature. Every night before going to bed, he made sure that the stable was locked and that there was plenty for her to eat. Also, he never rose from the table without a large bowl of wine, _a la francaise_, made with sugar, herbs, and spices, and prepared under his own watchful eye. He then took it, personally, to the mule, ignoring the cardinals'

reproaches. Certainly, the beast was well worth the trouble, for she was a handsome, red-dappled, black mule, sure footed, glossy coated, with a large full rump and proudly carrying her small, slim head fully got up in pompoms, knots, silver bells and ribbons. She also showed an honest eye, as sweet as an angel's, and her ever-twitching long ears gave her a child-like, innocent appearance. Everybody in Avignon loved her, and when she was trotting through the streets, they all looked approvingly at her and made a great fuss of her; for everybody knew that this was the best way to gain the pope's favour. In all innocence, she had led many a one to good fortune, the proof of which lay in the person of Tistet Vedene and his wonderful venture.

This Tistet Vedene was, in truth, a mischief-maker, to the point where his father Guy Vedene, the renowned goldsmith, had to run him out of the house, because he refused to do anything and coaxed the apprentices away from their work. For six months, he was seen hanging around every low place in Avignon. He was mainly to be seen near the Papal house, though, because this ne'er-do-well had something in mind for the Pope's mule, and, as you will see, it was something malicious.... One day, as His Holiness was out with his mule under the ramparts, along came Tistet and accosted him, clasping his hands together in feigned admiration:

--Oh, my lord, most Holy Father, what a splendid mule you have there!... Let me feast my eyes on her.... Oh, my dear Pope, she's a real beauty. I'll warrant the German Emperor doesn't have one like her.

Then he stroked her, and spoke gently to her as if she were a young lady:

--Come here, my jewel, my treasure, my priceless pearl....

The kind Pope was truly moved and thought to himself:

--What a fine young boy!... And how kind he is to my mule.

And the result? The very next day, Tistet Vedene exchanged his old yellow coat for a beautiful lace ca.s.sock, a purple silk cape, and buckled shoes ready for his entry into the Pope's choir school. An establishment which, previously, had only taken in sons of the n.o.bility or cardinals' nephews. That's how intrigue was done. But Tistet didn't stop at that.

Once he was in the Pope's service, the monkey did exactly the same tricks he had mastered before. He was insolent to everybody, having neither time nor consideration for anyone but the mule, and was to be seen for ever in the palace courtyard with handfuls of oats or bundles of sainfoin, gently shaking the pink bunches, as he looked at the Holy Father's balcony, with a look as if to say,

"Who's this lovely food for, then?" So much so, indeed, that finally the good Pope, who was beginning to feel his age, decided to leave the care of looking after the stable and taking the mule her bowl of wine, _a la francaise_, to none other than Tistet Vedene. This did not amuse the cardinals.

As for the mule; it didn't amuse her at all.... From now on, at the time for her wine, she would witness five or six clerics from the choir school, with their lace and capes, get in amongst her straw. Then, shortly afterwards, a fine warm smell of caramel and aromatic herbs filled the stable, and Tistet Vedene appeared carefully carrying the bowl of wine _a la francaise_. But the mule's agony was only just beginning.

This scented wine, which she loved so much, and kept her warm, and made her walk on air, was bought to her, in her very own manger, where it was put right under her nose. And then, just as her flared nostrils were full of it--it was cruelly s.n.a.t.c.hed away--and the beautiful rosy red liqueur disappeared down the throats of those clerical brats.... If only they had been satisfied with just stealing the wine from her, but there was more to come. They were like demons, these clerical n.o.bodies; after they had drunk the wine, one pulled her ears, another her tail; and while Quiquet mounted her, Beluguet tried his biretta on her. But not one of these thugs realised that with one b.u.t.t or kick in the kidneys, the brave animal could have sent them all to kingdom come, or beyond. But, she wouldn't! She was not the Pope's mule for nothing, the mule a.s.sociated with benedictions and indulgences. They often did their worst; but she kept her temper under control. It was just Tistet Vedene that she really hated. When she felt him behind her, her hoof would itch to give him what for. The villainous Tistet played some terrible tricks on her. And after a drink or two, he came up with some very cruel inventions.

One day he decided to drive her up the bell tower of the choir school; to the very pinnacle of the palace. This really happened--two hundred thousand Provencal folk will tell you they've seen it! Imagine the terror of the luckless mule, when, after being shoved blindly up a spiral staircase and climbing who knows how many steps, she found herself suddenly dazzled on a brilliantly lit platform from where she could see the whole of a fantastic Avignon far below her, the market stalls no bigger than hazel nuts, the Pope's soldiers in front of their barracks looking like red ants, and there on a silvery thread, a tiny, microscopic bridge where _l'on y dansait, l'on y dansait_. Oh, the poor beast! She really panicked. She cried out loud enough to rattle the palace windows.

--What's the matter, what's happening to her? cried the Pope rus.h.i.+ng to his balcony.

Tistet Vedene, already back down in the courtyard, was pretending to cry and pull out his hair,

--Oh, most Holy Father, it's ... it's your mule.... My lord, how will it all end? Your mule has climbed up into the bell tower....

--All alone?