Heretic Dawn (64 page)

I thought with a shudder, as they came down the ladder, that these rogues wouldn’t be content until they searched for us among the barrels and that, when they did, we’d be done for, since some of them had pistols and arquebuses. My eyes met Giacomi’s and we both understood that the next sixty seconds would decide whether or not we’d die and be thrown unceremoniously in the river. At that moment I discovered how ashamed I felt to be, at the hour of my demise, so sweaty, filthy and covered with blood, and so heartsick; I clenched my fingers in fury around the hilt of my sword, telling myself that if I had to die, I wouldn’t go without taking with me a goodly number of these rogues. They were now coming down the ladder, the fat butcher ahead of the rest, who I swore would be the first to die by my sword, so vile was his demeanour. My heart nearly burst from my chest as I watched one of the rascals, thin as a fish bone, approach our barrels.

“What the Devil are you doing?” growled the butcher.

“Just takin’ a look, Cap’n,” said the fellow.

“’Struth!” spat the butcher with a sneer. “Can’t you see? Those barrels are as empty as the head of an idiot!”

At which, of course, his entire band burst out laughing like a swarm of flies.

“Didn’t mean no disrespect, Cap’n,” he apologized, as he followed the butcher out of the stables, the butt of the others’ humour, who all jostled each other in their haste to get to the Golden Horse tavern to drink up the profits from the mule.

Thank Heaven! We all gave a sigh of relief that would knock a windmill’s wings off their axle! After which we just sat there in silence, looking at each other, astonished still to be alive.

The rest of the day we passed in fitful sleep (all except Fröhlich, who snored like a bellows in a forge), our eyes more open than closed, on the alert for any sound, like rabbits in a bush, our thirst so violent we thought our tongues were going to stick to the roofs of our mouths. Worst of all was the gnawing hunger, which was so tormenting that we would have accepted a crust of bread from a leper or a thief. All I remember is that, towards the end of the day, my head nodding off, I had a dream in which the child who had died in my arms suddenly became little Henriot, and Alizon was running after me with a huge knife, because she believed it was I who had killed him.

At nightfall on Sunday, luckily not as luminous as the preceding one, we resolved to leave our hiding place like owls and accept the risks of trying to cross the bridges.

We followed the rue de la Grande Joaillerie down to the Pont au Change, but, once there, decided not to cross all four together, so I sent Miroul to reconnoitre, to establish how well the bridge was guarded. Which he did, disappearing so completely into the shadows of the cantilevers of the bridge that I lost sight of him after a few yards and was completely surprised when he suddenly reappeared with the news that the bourgeois militiamen, who were supposed to be guarding the chains, had gone down to the riverbank to drag to shore any corpses they thought they could pillage.

So it was that we crossed the bridge without striking a blow or meeting a single soul, except for a foul-smelling, hideously thin and twisted fellow in rags, who was lurking in the shadows of the ravaged houses, a huge sack on his back, which he dropped when he saw us, falling on his knees and begging us to spare his life. He said that he was only pilfering the remains of what hadn’t already been pillaged,
and that there was really nothing left to take, since the workers of the Écorcherie had got there first, and, after them, the nightwatchmen.

“Friend,” I said to this poor fellow, who was so wretched that I couldn’t help feeling pity for him, “we want neither your sack nor your life. But, by my faith, tell us why there are so many sacked houses on the Pont au Change. I thought I’d heard that there weren’t many heretics here.”

“Well, now,” said the fellow, “of heretics there may be none, but
jewellers
, now, that’s another story! Lots of ’em, and well heeled too, reason enough to baptize ’em, kill ’em and toss ’em out the windows into the Seine! The pillaging was very lucrative!”

“What about the night watch?”

“Oh, them!” laughed the fellow. “They don’t have the heart to fight to maintain order since they enjoy pillaging as much as the next man!”

We continued on our way, since Miroul was pulling on my sleeve, worried to see me delaying, as was my wont, even in dangerous situations, to satisfy my curiosity.

At the end of the Pont au Change, the shortest route to reach the Pont Saint-Michel was along the rue de la Barillerie, but as we headed that way we saw, some distance ahead of us, a group of torches, and could hear the clicking and clashing of swordplay, a sure sign there was a large detachment of the king’s guards in our path. So we quickly turned left down the rue de la Vieille Pelleterie, which is the darkest, most foul-smelling sewer of any street in Paris, and from there into a labyrinth of streets and alleyways, and some dead ends that forced us to retrace our steps in this night that was so dark you wouldn’t have been able to see a white cat. We had a difficult time of it, wading through the offal and excrement, tripping over the occasional corpse that had been left there after the massacre by assassins too lazy to drag it to the river. We lost a lot of time wandering around this maze like rats in a cage, and when we finally
emerged we were so exhausted, hungry and thirsty that all we could do, despite the urgency of our situation, was fall onto a stone bench outside a very run-down dwelling and remain sitting there silent and haggard, trying to catch our breath.

The sound of firearms had greatly diminished since the night before, the papists having killed off so many of our side on the first night, and most of the rest having fled or gone into hiding, but this street where we’d stopped (which I learnt later was the rue de la Licorne) seemed dead, all of the houses locked and boarded up. But after a few minutes we were surprised to see an unusually bright torch coming towards us along this street, although we were not alarmed since we heard no more than a single pair of footsteps on the paving stones, which, here, were clear of filth. We were somewhat surprised, however, to hear the sound of three steps rather than two, and, as the person drew nearer, we saw that the fellow was limping along on a wooden leg and using a halberd as a cane. He appeared to be quite old, but was still vigorous, his face tanned and scarred, and he was sporting a hat with more feathers than a cock’s tail. Holding his torch out ahead of him, he stopped about a yard from us, looking at us with surprise but without a trace of fear, though we were all armed, and he was old and alone.

“On your feet, my children!” he cried in an abrupt and yet cordial voice. “You’d best be on your way! This is a bad place to be stopping!”

And, raising his torch even farther, he showed us, hanging from the door of the lodging behind us, a black crêpe ribbon and a small basket, both of which indicated that within, sequestered with his family and prohibited from leaving, was a victim of the plague, who was hoping for some charitable nourishment to be left in the basket. These signs struck my companions with terror and they leapt up as if the flames of hell had suddenly scorched their backsides.

I, however, rose slowly from the bench and said as calmly as I could:

“Don’t be afraid, my friends. The plague can only be spread by contact with those already infected, or their clothes. It isn’t carried through the air as some have claimed.”

At these words, which revealed my medical training, the fellow raised his torch again and looked at me, and when I returned his look, I realized that I knew him, but didn’t say a word, since his expression begged for my discretion.

“In any case,” he said, “this is a pretty shabby resting place for honest men who look like they’re exhausted.”

“
Ach!
” cried Fröhlich. “It’s not so much the fatigue—it’s the hunger that’s eating at us!”

“My good friends, if you’re all suffering from the same complaint as this fellow, who reminds me of myself when I was younger, I’d like to invite you to come to my humble lodgings to enjoy a meal with me. It won’t be a banquet since my wife’s not there and I’m not very competent in the kitchen when she’s not around.”

The four of us were all too happy to follow him with a lively step and our mouths watering, and were not ashamed, once we reached his poor but respectable lodgings, to sit down at his table and take a crust of bread, a few slices of ham and a goblet of claret, all trying hard not to wolf down our food, to make it last as long as possible. While we ate, our good host watched us with beneficence, leaning his halberd against the wall and removing his feathered hat, revealing a head as bald as a tennis ball and furrowed by a long white scar.

“My friends,” he announced, “the king has proclaimed with great pomp a ban that prohibits the inhabitants of his good city of Paris from hiding, feeding or giving any kind of assistance to the fleeing heretics, on pain of death. That’s why I was so happy to see your white armbands, which tell me you’re good Christians—like myself—without which I would have found it impossible to comfort you, not wishing to risk my neck in such a dangerous act of charity. As for me,
as a veteran of the king’s guards”—at which words Fröhlich suddenly pricked up his ears—“I have no desire to stick a white ribbon on my arm and go running around killing unarmed people in their beds, doubting there’s much glory in such sport, and, frankly, lacking sufficient religious zeal or appetite for others’ possessions, since the little that I have is quite enough for me.”

“Monsieur,” I replied (avoiding referring to him as “scorekeeper”, since I could see he didn’t wish to reveal that he knew who I was so that he could claim ignorance of my religion if he was accused of disobeying the royal ban), “you’re a good man and I admire your beneficence, which I find all too rare in these troubled times. As for me and my men, we’re not very happy wearing these brassards.”

“I suspected as much,” he said with a smile and looking me in the eye. “Didn’t I hear you say,” he continued in his clever and jocular way, “that you were hoping to return to your native Périgord?”

To this I nodded “yes”, matching his smile and looking him in the eye in return, never having said any such thing.

“So you know the Caumonts?” said the scorekeeper.

“They’re my cousins and allies.”

“Well, Monsieur,” he replied, now quite serious, “you’ll be very happy to hear from me, good Catholic that you are, that Jacques Nompar de La Force is safe.”

“What about his father and older brother?” I cried.

“Alas!” he said, and, sitting down on a stool, his eyes riveted to the ground in sorrow, he added, “Yesterday afternoon in the rue des Petits Champs, Monsieur de La Force and his two sons, all three on the run, were stabbed by good Christians. But it happened that the younger son wasn’t actually wounded, but had the marvellous presence of mind to scream ‘I’m killed!’ and to fall between his father and brother, who bathed him in their blood. After which, their assassins stripped them of all their possessions, and, with clear consciences,
departed. In the evening, one of my friends happened to be passing by, and, coveting the stockings that were still on the boy, took them off him. But while he was thus engaged, he took pity on this handsome youth and said quietly, ‘Alas! What a pity! So young! What could this child have done to merit such a death?’ Whereupon the lad raised his head and whispered, ‘Good man, I’m not dead yet! Can you help me?’ ‘Yes,’ said my friend. ‘Be patient. Don’t move. I’ll come back tonight.’ So he returned with a ragged old coat in which he wrapped the boy, and was taking him to the arsenal, to give him to Biron, the captain of the artillery, who is the boy’s relative, when he met some of the assassins, who, seeing the boy all wrapped like that, asked: ‘Who’s this? Why’s he all bloody?’ So my friend replied: ‘He’s my nephew. He got drunk. Look how he ended up. Isn’t it awful? I’m taking him home for a whipping!’ So they let him pass, and Biron welcomed his cousin and was able to guarantee his safety behind all his walls and cannon.”

“Well, Monsieur!” I cried. “I hope that Biron rewarded your friend handsomely!”

“My friend didn’t do it for that,” said the scorekeeper, blushing deeply, while the long scar on his pate whitened considerably. Then, observing that we’d finished our repast and that not a crumb of bread remained on the table, or a drop of wine in our goblets, he shook his head and said, “My wife’s not here because she had to take a medallion of Notre-Dame de Chartres to her friend Colarde, who’s lying in. This blessed medal, as you know”—and he smiled knowingly—“is renowned for easing labour; in fact it is so potent that all you have to do is place it on the mother’s stomach and the baby pops out, squealing and vigorous. But perhaps you should be happy she’s not here! She’d be very suspicious of your white armbands, given how zealous she is for the Church. By St Denis, she hates heretics and would gladly strangle them all herself with her bare hands, or—at
the very least—set all the hounds in our neighbourhood on them. As for me, as I said, I’m not so zealous: I treat as Catholic anyone who says he’s Catholic, since I keep my nose out of people’s business and don’t tend to see the harm in anything.”

Reading between the lines of his speech, I understood that we were welcome to stay as long as we wanted without discomfiting the good fellow. I stood up, after having slipped an écu under my goblet, and thanked our host profusely for his good offices.

“If you try to cross the Pont Saint-Michel,” he whispered, brushing aside my compliment, “be aware that they request a pass, so the best time to go is at dawn, when the guards are likely to have fallen asleep from the rigours of the night; and when you get to l’Université, the Buccy gate is the best place to get beyond the city walls. That’s the gate that they’ve opened for the villagers to bring provisions into the city, so there’s always a lot of crowds and confusion there.”

The scorekeeper wanted to show us our way, and, even after we’d left him, he stood there holding his torch as high as he could to light our way. Just before turning off to the right as he’d indicated, I took one last look back at his lantern, which, though it was but one little flame in the darkness of the shadows of the city, comforted me as much as the beneficence of the man who held it high. As we turned the corner, the light disappeared, but not the hope that it had provided me. “Well,” I thought, “that’s an example of real faith and there’s really no other kind! May all the inhabitants of this vale of tears someday come to understand, as my scorekeeper does, that zeal in the Church without love for one’s fellow man is the ruin of the soul!”