Have Mercy On Us All Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Fred Vargas

  Maps

  Title Page

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  Chapter XXXII

  Chapter XXXIII

  Chapter XXXIV

  Chapter XXXV

  Chapter XXXVI

  Chapter XXXVII

  Chapter XXXVIII

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Three times a day in a Parisian square, a curious modern-day crier announces the news items that are left in his box. Over the course of a few days he receives a number of disturbing and portentous messages of malicious intent, all of them referring to the Black Death. Strange marks have also appeared on the doors of several buildings: symbols once used to ward off the plague. Detective Commissaire Adamsberg begins to sense a connection, even a grotesque menace. Then charred and flea-bitten corpses are found. The press seizes on their plague-like symptoms, and the panic sets in...

  About the Author

  Fred Vargas was born in Paris in 1957. A historian and archaeologist by profession, she is now a bestselling novelist. Her books have been translated into thirty-two languages.

  David Bellos is professor of French and comparative literature at Princeton University. He is the author of Georges Perec: A Life in Words (1993) and Jacques Tati: His Life and Art (1999), and the prize-winning translator of Perec’s Life a User’s Manual.

  Also by Fred Vargas

  Seeking Whom He May Devour

  The Chalk Circle Man

  The Three Evangelists

  This Night’s Foul Work

  Wash This Blood Clean From my Hand

  Fred Vargas – an academic archaeologist by another name – wrote this novel in the course of the year 2000, when French francs were still legal tender and no-one had dreamed that a deadly disease might be mailed to its victims through the US post. Have Mercy on Us All was first published in French in mid-October 2001.

  I

  WHEN MANIE WOORMES breede of putrefaction of the earth: toade stooles and rotten herbes abound: The fruites and beastes of the earth are unsavoury: The wine becomes muddie: manie birds and beastes flye from that place

  II

  JOSS’S SETTLED VIEW was that folk walk faster in Paris than they do in Le Guilvenec, the fishing village where he’d grown up. They would steam down Avenue du Maine every day at three knots. This Monday morning, though, Joss himself was doing almost three and a half, trying to make up the twenty minutes he’d lost because of that blasted coffee.

  It hadn’t surprised him one bit. Joss had always known that objects large and small have secret, vicious lives of their own. He could perhaps make an exception for pieces of fishing tackle that had never taken him on in the living memory of the Brittany fleet; but otherwise the world of things was manifestly focused on making man’s life sheer misery. The merest slip of a hand can give a supposedly inanimate object enough freedom of movement to set off a chain of catastrophes which may peak at any point on the Murphy Scale, from “Damn Nuisance” to “Bloody Tragedy”. Corks provide a simple illustration of the basic pattern, viz. a wine cork dropped from the table never rolls back to nestle at the boot of whoever let it slip. Oh no, its evil mind always elects to reside behind the stove, like a spider looking for inaccessible sanctuary. The errant cork thus plunges its hereditary hunter, Humankind, into a trial of strength. He has to move the stove and the gas connection out of the wall; he bends down to seize the miscreant bung and a pot falls off the hob and scalds his head. But this morning’s case arose from a more complex concatenation. It had begun with the tiniest error in Joss’s calculation of the trajectory required to shift a used coffee filter paper to the bin. It landed just off target; the flip-top lurched sideways then swung back and scattered wet ground coffee all around the kitchen floor. Thus do Things transform justified resentment of their human slavemasters into outright revolt; thus do they force men, women and children, in brief but acutely significant bursts, to squirm and scamper like dogs. Joss didn’t trust inanimates, not one bit; but he didn’t trust men either, nor did he trust the sea. The first could drive you crazy; the second could steal your soul; and the last could take your life.

  Joss was an old and seasoned hand who knew when to yield, so he got down on all fours and cleaned up the coffee mess, grain by tiny grain. Since he did his penance without complaint, the thing-force receded behind its usual sandbank. The breakfast incident was quite negligible in itself, just a nuisance, but Joss wasn’t fooled. It was a clear reminder that the war between men and things was far from over, and that men were not always the victors, far from it. A reminder of tragedies past, of ships unmasted, of trawlers smashed, and of his boat, the Nor’easter, that had started taking water at 0300 on August 23, in the Irish Sea, with eight crew on board. Yet Joss had always indulged his old trawler’s most hysterical demands; man and boat had always treated each other with kindness and consideration far beyond the call of duty. Until that infernal storm when Joss had suddenly got angry and pounded the gunwale with his fist. The Nor’easter, which was already listing heavily to starboard, started shipping water at the stern. The engine flooded, and the boat drifted all night long, with the crew baling non-stop, until it came to a grinding halt on a reef at dawn, with two men lost overboard. Fourteen years had gone by since that sad day. Fourteen years since Joss had beaten a lesson into the shipowner’s thick skull. Fourteen years since he’d left Le Guilvenec after doing nine months for GBH and attempted manslaughter. Fourteen years since almost his entire life had gone down that unplugged hole in the hull.

  Joss gritted his teeth as he made good speed along Rue de la Gaîté, choking back the anger that surged up inside him every time the Nor’easter, Lost at Sea, breasted a wave of his thoughts. But it wasn’t really the Nor’easter he was angry with. That good old ship had only reacted to the punch he had given it by shifting its aged and rotting timbers. He was sure the ship hadn’t realised what the consequences of her brief rebellion would be, because she had had no idea just how old and run-down she really was, nor had she grasped how heavy the sea was that night. The trawler certainly hadn’t meant to kill the two sailors; she was surely full of remorse as she lay like an idiot at the bottom of the Irish Sea. Joss often talked to her, mumbling words of comfort and forgiveness. He reckoned the old girl must have found peace by now and made a new life for herself at full fathom five, just as he had up here, in Paris.

  Making peace with the owner, on the other hand, was out of the question.

  “Come off it, Cap’n Le Guern,” he used to say with a hearty clap on Joss’s shoulder, “you can keep the old girl going for another ten years, no doubt about it. She’s a sturdy ship and you’re her master.”

  “The Nor’easter’s no longer safe,” Joss kept on telling him. “The hull’s out of true and the boards are warpi
ng. The flooring of the hold has worked loose. I’ll not answer for what she might do in a gale. And the lifeboats wouldn’t pass inspection.”

  “I know my ships, Cap’n,” rasped the owner. “If you’re afraid of the Nor’easter, that’s fine by me. I’ve got ten others who’d take your cap at a moment’s notice. Men made of sterner stuff who don’t grouse about safety regulations like those wimps at the inspectorate.”

  “I’ve got seven lads on board.”

  The owner brought his fleshy, glowering face right close up to Joss’s.

  “If you so much as whisper what’s on your mind to the harbour master, Joss Le Guern, you’ll be out on your ear as fast as you can say sea shells. Right round the coast, from Brest to Saint-Nazaire, it’ll be ‘Sorry, nothing doing’. So if you want my advice – think again.”

  Yes, Joss was really sorry he hadn’t done him in right and proper the day after the shipwreck, instead of only breaking one of his legs and fracturing his sternum. But his crewmen – it took four of them – pulled Joss off his prey. Don’t ruin your own life, Joss, they said. They blocked him and then held him down. Later, they stopped him slaughtering the owner and all his henchmen, who’d blacklisted him when he came out of prison. Joss bawled the fact that the port authority fat cats were on the owners’ payrolls in so many bars that he made being taken back into the merchant navy simply impossible. Blackballed in one port after another, Joss jumped on the Paris express one Tuesday morning and landed – like so many Bretons before him – on the forecourt of Gare Montparnasse, leaving behind a wife who’d already taken her leave, and nine men to slay.

  As the Edgar-Quinet crossing hove into view, Joss stuffed his ancient hard feelings into a mental back pocket, and clapped on full steam. He was running late, as the business with the coffee slops and the wars of the things had wasted at least fifteen minutes. Punctuality was a key part of his work, and it mattered very much that the first edition of his newscast should take place every day at 0830 sharp, with the second edition on the dot of 1235 and the late final at 1810. That’s when the street was at its busiest, and in this town people were in too much of a hurry to put up with the slightest delay.

  Joss took the urn down from the tree where he strung it up overnight with a double bowline and two bike locks to secure it. This morning there wasn’t a lot inside, so it wouldn’t take too long to sort. He smiled to himself as he took the urn into the back room that Damascus let him use in his shop. There were still a few decent fellows left, he thought, people like Damascus who would let you have a key and a bit of table space, without worrying about you running off with the till. Talk about a stupid name, though! Damascus was the manager of Rolaride, the skate shop on the square, and he let Joss use the place to prepare his newscasts out of the rain. Rolaride – that’s another ludicrous moniker, if you ask me.

  Joss took the padlocks off the urn. It was a big wooden lap-jointed box that he’d made with his own fair hand, and dubbed Nor’easter II in memory of his dearly departed. A great fishing vessel of the deep-sea fleet might not have thought it an honour to have her name perpetuated by a modest letter box, but Nor’easter II was no ordinary mail drop. It was a very clever seven-year-old indeed, born of a brilliant idea that had allowed Joss to pull himself up the ladder again after two years’ unemployment, six months spinning cables and three years in a cannery. It was on a gloomy December night in a Paris café that Joss had been struck by sheer genius. The place was full of nostalgic Breton exiles droning on about their families and home ports, about when the fishing was good and the onions too. Some boozed-up old sailor mentioned the village of Pont l’Abbé, and all of a sudden Joss’s great-great-grandfather, born at Locmaria in 1832, sprang out of his head, propped himself up at the bar, and said good evening.

  “Good evening to you,” said Joss, tightening his grip on his glass.

  “You do remember me, don’t you?”

  “Sort of …” Joss mumbled. “You died before I was born. I didn’t shed no tears.”

  “C’mon, Joss Le Guern, I don’t drop in very often, so cut out the insults for once. How far have you got?”

  “Fifty.”

  “You’ve taken it hard. You look older.”

  “You can keep your views to yourself, thanks very much. I didn’t ask you to drop in. Anyway, you were no oil painting yourself.”

  “Watch your tongue, young man. You know what happens when I get excited.”

  “Sure I do, like everyone else. Specially your wife, who got thrashed all her life long.”

  “Sure, sure,” the forefather scowled. “But you have to put that in context. In its appropriate cultural-historical circs.”

  “Circs my arse. You liked bashing her up, that’s all there is to it. And you blinded her in one eye.”

  “Belt up, will you? Or are we going to go on about that eye for another two hundred years?”

  “Sure we are. It’s symbolic.”

  “Joss Le Guern wants to teach his great-great-grandfather a lesson, does he? The same Joss who nearly kicked the guts out of a man on the dock at Le Guilvenec? Or have I got the wrong address?”

  “He wasn’t a woman, in the first place, and in the second place he was hardly a man. He was a bloodsucking money-grubber who didn’t give a fart if men died as long as he made a pile.”

  “Yeah, I know. I can’t really fault you on that one. But that’s not all of it, lad. Why did you call me down?”

  “I told you, I didn’t.”

  “You’re an obstinate bastard. You’re lucky you’ve got my eyes otherwise I would have given you a black’un. Can you get it into your head that if I’m here it’s because you rang, and that’s that. Anyway I’m not a regular in this bar, I don’t like piped music.”

  “OK,” Joss conceded. “Can I get you a drink?”

  “If you can still raise your arm. Because I’ll be so bold as to tell you you’ve had one too many already.”

  “That’s none of your business, old man.”

  The forebear shrugged. He’d seen a lot in his time and he wasn’t going to rise to this tiddler’s bait. This young Joss was a fine specimen of the tribe, no question about it.

  “So,” the oldster said after he’d downed his pint, “no woman and no dough?”

  “You’ve put your finger on it first go,” Joss answered. “You weren’t so canny in your own time, I’ve heard tell.”

  “Comes from being a ghost. When you’re dead you know things you never knew before.”

  “Are you kidding?” said Joss as he made a feeble gesture towards the barman.

  “As far as women are concerned, there was no point calling me down, it’s not my strong suit.”

  “Could have guessed that.”

  “But work isn’t a hard nut to crack. Just follow in your family footsteps. You weren’t right in cable-spinning, that was a big mistake. And you know, things aren’t to be trusted. Ropes are OK, at a pinch, but as for cables, wires, let alone corks, well, it’s best to give them a wide berth.”

  “I know,” said Joss.

  “You have to make do with your inheritance. Copy your family.”

  “But I can’t be a sailor no more.” Joss was getting ratty. “I’m persona non grata in the whole bloody fleet.”

  “Who said sailor? If fish were the only thing, God knows where we’d be. Was I a sailor, then?”

  Joss drained his glass and pondered the point.

  “No,” he said after a pause for thought. “You were a crier. From Concarneau to Quimper, you were the itinerant town crier.”

  “That’s right, my boy, and I’m proud of it. Ar Bannour was what I was, the ‘Crier’. And the best on the whole south coast of Breizh. Every day that God gave, Ar Bannour strode into another village and on the stroke of half past noon he shouted out the news. And I can tell you, there was folk there who’d been waiting since dawn. I had thirty-seven villages on my round – that was quite something, eh? That made a whole lot of folk, didn’t it? Folk living in the world,
thanks to what? Thanks to news! And thanks to whom? To me, my lad, to Ar Bannour, the best barker in Finisterre. My voice carried from the church steps to the wash house, and I knew all my words. Everyone raised their heads to listen. My voice brought the whole world to them, and believe you me, it was worth a lot more than fish.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Joss as he took a swig straight out of the bottle on the bar.

  “Ever heard of the Crimean War? I covered that one. I went to Nantes to get the news and brought it straight back in the saddle, fresh as the new tide. The Third Republic, heard of that? That was me again. I shouted it on all the foreshores, you should have seen the commotion. Not to mention all the local stuff – marriages, deaths, quarrels, lost and found, stray children, horses needing re-shoeing, I lugged it all around. From one village to the next people gave me news to cry. The love of a girl in Penmarch for a boy in Sainte-Marine, that’s one I still remember. A hell of a scandal, that was. It ended in murder.”

  “You could have been more discreet.”

  “Hang on, lad. I was paid to read out the news. I was only doing my job. Not to read it out would have been robbing the customer. You know, Le Guerns may be rough customers but we never stole a penny. Fisherfolk’s affairs and squabbles were none of my business – I had enough of that in my own family. I dropped in on the village once a month to see the kids, go to Mass, and bed the wife.”

  Joss sighed into his mug.

  “And to leave her some money,” the ancestor added, with emphasis. “A wife and eight kids needs a lot of bread. But believe you me, Ar Bannour never left them short.”

  “Of a thrashing?”

  “Of money, you nitwit.”

  “You earned as much as that?”

  “Loads of money. News is the one line of goods that never runs short on this planet, it’s the one tipple people never get too much of. When you’re a crier, it’s like you’re giving the breast to the whole of humanity. You never run out of milk or of suckling babes. – Hey, lad, if you go on lifting your elbow like that, you’ll never make a crier. It’s a job that calls for a clear head.”