Heretic Dawn (51 page)

Little Henriot was laughing like an angel (which he strongly resembled) so that I didn’t have any trouble finding the right door; nor did I have to knock, since all the doors were open to allow a bit of fresh air to circulate through the rooms.

And what a pretty little fellow he was, so round and pink and, as I said, so jolly! As soon as I laid eyes on him I thought what a marvel it was that in Paris, despite the stench in the air, there could be children as beautiful as the ones at Mespech, since it’s milk and love that make them so—I mean the great love that surrounds them and is a form of nourishment every bit as necessary as the other, one that clearly wasn’t lacking here, from what I could tell, as much from the mother as from the neighbour, who was carrying the child in her arms and who was prattling and humming to him as if he were her own son. I was delighted with this pretty tableau—both the child and the comely and welcoming lass who was caring for him and who didn’t need any introduction, since she already knew who I was and was happy to entrust me with the child while she went off, at my request, to buy two candles, an errand for which I paid her a sol.

I returned to Alizon’s little room with the child in my arms, who neither whimpered nor cried, and was quite happy to let an unknown man carry him around, fascinated as he was by my doublet and the rows of pearls that he tried to grab with his tiny hands.

“Oh, Monsieur,” gasped Alizon, who breathed two deep sighs (but without dropping a stitch), the first an expression of pure joy, the second a mix of joy and sadness, “how happy I am to see little Henriot in your arms. It’s obvious you love children. Whether your Little Sissy bears you a son or a daughter, you’ll be a good father, and she’ll never have to worry about her child, as I do, fearing to fall sick with some disease that would keep me from working for Maître Recroche and at the baths at night. And if my health fails, exhausted as I already am both by the work and by the lack of sleep, what will become of my little Henriot?”

“Alizon,” I said, “I’ve already thought of that.”

Then, with little Henriot in my arms, I went to close the door of the tiny room, and, returning to her side, I whispered so softly that none of her neighbours might hear:

“My sweet, I will always honour you with my friendship, and your little man as well, and want you to stop selling your body at the baths, which I know brings you great shame, not to mention the Italian malady that you might contract there. And so I’m going to give you fifteen écus to pay your nursemaid for a year.”

“What?” she whispered, following my lead. “Fifteen écus!” But she couldn’t say another word because there was a knock at the door, and her neighbour came in carrying the two candles, which Henriot immediately reached for; and when he couldn’t grab them he began to howl to wake the deaf, which made me very glad to hand him back to her, who carried him back to her room with a saucy look at the two of us as I closed the door behind her.

I counted out the fifteen écus into Alizon’s lap, as she sat there open-mouthed and mute (having never seen so much money before in
her life), looking at me without breathing a word, almost forgetting the new petticoat she had begun, and which she cared so much about, as if this princely marriage had replaced the one little Henriot’s father had fallaciously promised her.

However, once her treasure was tied up in a sack, and the sack placed in a hole in the wall covered by a brick, I could see that she was torn between finishing her sewing project and the gratitude she would have liked to express to me; but, however much my male instincts were pressing me, I could see that her dressmaking was of so great a consequence to her that our love-making necessarily came second, and so I left her under the pretext that Giacomi was waiting for me outside in the street. As I left, I could see her black eyes fix mine with such a great love that, to this day, I have only to close my eyes to remember that look and to experience her love again with all the emotion I felt at that moment.

I was very surprised as I stepped out into the rue Tirechappe to see so many people out and about, given that it is the Parisians’ wont, as soon as evening falls, to lock themselves in their houses, abandoning the streets to the bad boys of the night. But tonight, they were all occupied in building, by the light of their torches, a wooden triumphal arch, which they were decorating with branches and garlands of flowers, as if the royal procession were going to go by—which surely was not the case, since the procession was to go from the Louvre to Notre-Dame.

“That’s beautiful work and well built!” I observed to a heavyset fellow in his shirtsleeves, all sweaty from nailing the various pieces of wood together. “But isn’t it a lot of work for an arch that will only be standing for a day?”

As I said this, I tried to imitate the lively, clipped speech of the Parisians, since they seem all too ready to suspect anyone from the
langue d’oc
of being Huguenots.

“Not a bit of it, Monsieur,” replied the fellow in a fairly civil tone. “We’re going to leave it up for a good week, until St Bartholomew’s day, to honour both Princesse Margot and the saint. As for the labour and the expense, they’re shared: the bourgeois of our street pay for the wood and iron and the labourers do the construction.”

As I walked from the rue Tirechappe to the rue de la Ferronnerie, I counted no fewer than three arches that were being built and decorated in the same manner, none of them on the route of the royal procession, but all of them interesting to see, given the numbers of people working on them, their enjoyment of the work, the torches and candles that were shining in all the windows (none of whose shutters had been closed, despite the lateness of the hour), and the way all the people were chatting and calling out to each other from one house to the next, while the wenches and chambermaids were out throwing pails of water into the street to wash away the refuse and mud, a daily cleansing prescribed by royal ordinance but respected only on great occasions like this one—Parisians being by nature the least law-abiding of any citizenry in the world.

When Quéribus arrived to pick me up in his carriage on the morning of 18th August, I was very surprised to see the streets decorated with a large number of large, beautiful tapestries, with brilliant designs and colours, which the nobles and bourgeois had removed from their walls and hung on their balconies—as was their custom, I learnt, when processions were scheduled to pass by their houses. What was curious, however, was that it wasn’t just the streets where the royal procession was to pass that were so decorated, but every street in the capital that housed noble and well-to-do families.

During the night, triumphal arches, like the three I’d seen the night before, had sprung up everywhere, and I couldn’t help admiring the marvellous work that had been done so rapidly on these structures, which were not only finely crafted, but also magnificently painted in
floral and bucolic designs, and in a style that I’ve never seen anywhere but in Paris, whose inhabitants, for all their ferocity, rebelliousness and insurgencies, seem nevertheless to possess a high degree of artistic sensitivity. Under the bright August sun, which was not yet too intemperate, all of these tapestries, as well as the flowerpots blooming with bright colours on the balconies, the paving stones, which were, for once, freshly washed, and the streets inundated with festive, well-dressed crowds, all contributed to a sense of amazement at the city’s splendour, its beauty and its wealth that I’d never experienced before. “Ah,” I thought, “so this is what makes Paris the envy of all the other nations! Here she is, clean and decked out in her glory the way she ought to be every day!”

We picked up Gertrude du Luc and Zara in the rue Brisemiche, and I don’t need to detail with what alacrity Quéribus was set upon by the beautiful Norman and her chambermaid, who was alluringly clad in one of her mistress’s dresses and looking more like a noblewoman than a servant, so much had she discovered a new sense of refinement from her close contact with her mistress. As for Quéribus, he responded in kind, and in the ensuing combat both sides launched enough darts and arrows from point-blank range to cause irreparable damage to any hearts and bodies who chanced to be in range of their bows. Nor did I escape entirely unscathed, particularly by Zara’s missiles, for, however much she professed to have no taste for men, she certainly enjoyed being the object of their attentions and affections.

The flood of people flowing into the streets and alleys carried us along from the Saint-Denis quarter to the Île de la Cité, so that, other than the comfort of being seated, there was no advantage to riding in a coach, since the crowds in front and behind us were so thick that, even had they been able to, they were not at all inclined to let us pass, their numbers redoubling their natural effrontery. As for the comfort I just alluded to, it too was confiscated at the Pont
aux Meuniers, which we weren’t allowed to cross, a sergeant of the French guards politely informing us that no carriages could be admitted onto the Île de la Cité given the great crush of vehicles and people that were already there. So we had to get out of the coach and submit to the curious stares and ribald humour of the Parisians, who were very happy to see us reduced to the same status as themselves. Of course, as we walked along, they gawked at the women with a degree of impertinence all too easy to imagine, and began loudly praising their various attributes, the ladies feigning not to hear a word of their coarse remarks. Quéribus and I walked on either side of them to keep the rabble from enacting their taunts, and Miroul and the coachman protected them from behind, without which they doubtless would have been in danger of being groped by the crowd, so great was the insolence and lubricity of this mob. Nor could we do anything to rein them in, since Quéribus and I were so pressed on either side that we would have had no room to draw our swords to answer and correct their manners.

Eventually, in the midst of all this heat and these sweating bodies, whose odour was nearly nauseating, we came up to the huge platform that had been erected in front of the porch of Notre-Dame, where Henri de Navarre and Princesse Margot would receive their nuptial benediction. This platform was raised to the usual height that would allow the populace to watch a public spectacle, be it a circus, a public execution or, in this case, a royal wedding, for which occasion it had been covered with thick tapestries that must have been brought from the Louvre at daybreak.

A thick cordon of Swiss guards and French guards, some belonging to the king and some belonging to the Duc d’Anjou, the latter recognizable by their red jackets, surrounded the platform. Heading towards them, we were delighted to come upon Captain de Montesquiou, who looked at us with but a hint of a smile.

“If you please, Captain,” said Quéribus, “get us out of this crush. The smell alone will kill us!”

“I know you well, Monsieur,” replied Montesquiou sternly, “and I know Monsieur de Siorac, but these ladies are unknown to me.”

“They’re both noblewomen from Normandy,” answered Quéribus without batting an eye, “and I answer for them as for myself.”

This lie led me to think that in his mind he’d already made his choice and that he’d selected Zara, since a chambermaid would never have been admitted onto the platform, where already a number of brilliant courtiers and ladies were taking their places on the benches. It was certainly a relief to be seated, but, under the terrible, leaden heat of the sun, a number of ladies had already begun to complain, fearing it would ruin their complexions, but also because they were suffocating under the tight bodices that they’d worn to appear more comely. I have to admit that even without such a constraint I was cooking like a loaf of bread in an oven. All buttoned up as I was, and sporting a high collar, I could feel the perspiration dripping from my face, and yet I felt fortunate to be there with these two women and to have the chance to see up close the characters in this great drama.

In a great flurry of pages and officers, and a loud fanfare of trumpets, church bells tolling wildly and an explosion of cannon shots, the king appeared, and on his arm the queen mother, followed by his queen. He was dressed in pale-yellow satin, on which a sun with its rays was figured by a series of golden threads and precious stones. Catherine de’ Medici, having for once abandoned the black mourning clothes she’d worn since the death of Henri II, appeared in a sumptuous blue silk gown, covered—and I mean
covered
—from head to toe with her celebrated Florentine jewels, the most beautiful in the world, radiating beams from their thousands of facets to such a degree that they seemed to rob the very sunlight from her son, just
as, in truth, she had, from the very day of his coronation, robbed him of the real power of the throne.

Behind the king came his brothers, the Duc d’Anjou and the Duc d’Alençon, clothed as he was in pale-yellow satin, as was also Henri de Navarre, who followed them. I doubted, however, that any of the three could be seen by the populace, since the queen mother’s many officers and her twelve ladies-in-waiting (of the twenty-four in her squadron) so crowded the front of the platform as to render the rest of the company invisible.

The king and queen mother were half-heartedly greeted by the people, who, like Alizon, seemed half scolding and half happy, and, on the whole, divided between the pleasure this royal ceremony afforded them and the bitter resentment they felt about this “infamous” marriage that had been forced down their throats.

These meagre acclamations were stifled when Margot made her appearance, splendidly adorned, arriving from the archbishop’s palace, where, according to the rumours that were flying about, she’d spent the night tortured by bad dreams (since she still loved Guise). She was presented by the Cardinal de Bourbon, who’d been fooled, or pretended to be, by the dispatch from Rome that Catherine de’ Medici had fabricated.

Margot, properly Marguerite de France, was clothed in a dress of deep-red velvet, decorated with fleurs-de-lis embroidered in gold, her shoulders weighed down beneath a magnificent velvet mantle, with a train that was four yards long, held by three princesses. On her head, an imperial crown, shining with pearls, diamonds and rubies, jewels that also decorated the ermine bodice that she wore over her dress and that must have added to the unbearable heat of the sun, as I imagined from the way perspiration was flowing down her cheeks. She stood there, immobile in her triumph, enthusiastically applauded by the populace, wearing a very unhappy expression to signify
urbi et orbi
that
this marriage gave her little pleasure. It got to the point that the poor Cardinal de Bourbon, to get her to move forward, had to take her by the hand and more or less drag her behind him like Iphiginia going to her death. Seeing this, the populace, believing that Margot refused to marry a heretic, and believing that it was zeal rather than physical repugnance, redoubled its cheers, both sympathizing with the sad fate of the princesse and at the same time admiring her magnificent finery.