Heretic Dawn (55 page)

“And yet,” I observed, “however little you sympathize with my side, you’ve nevertheless rendered me an enormous favour.”

He looked at me in silence for a moment, which surprised me in someone who was as loquacious as a roaring river, and then said gravely:

“I love your humanity, Monsieur de Siorac. I love the way that, despite your noble status, you don’t treat a commoner like me with disdain. And I am impressed that you studied to become a doctor, nobleman that you are.”

“Well,” I laughed, “I inherited from my father the belief that it’s study that makes a man, not birth.”

“Well said! Well said!” smiled Delay, whom my aphorism had pleased enormously. “It’s by study and hard work that I was able to manufacture the best tennis balls in Christendom, and to create the finest tennis courts in Paris, which our princes love to frequent.”

Delay’s pride in the Five Virgins made him swell up like a chickpea that’s been stewing for a week. And yet, as vainglorious as he was, I liked him well enough, preferring him and his kind, and the zeal that they devoted to their business, to the gallant lords who strutted around the Louvre, wasting on vain superfluities the money that their people sweated to produce back in their provinces.

Furthermore, I couldn’t help noticing that having made me beholden to him for the favour he’d done increased his affection for me, and so, since he believed I was less calculating than he, I decided to take his pulse to see how high this fever had risen that I could feel mounting around me.

“So, Delay,” I whispered, looking about me nervously, “help me understand something. Did the king of Paris do this thing all by himself?”

“He never would have dared do it alone,” replied Delay, casting in his turn a look about us. “More important men than he, including Charles, had a hand in it. And you can’t expect them to let it go at this. If necessary, they’ll go much further.” “But when the king learnt of the attempt during our game, he seemed genuinely angry.”

“He’s angry today,” replied Delay, who, after having hesitated a little, took my arm and, whispering into my ear, added, “A child can wind up his top and spin it from left to right, but it can also be set spinning in the other direction by a different hand. Monsieur de Siorac, are you leaving today for the provinces?”

“Alas! I cannot. Ambroise Paré committed me to help him take care of the patient.”

“This is most unfortunate,” said Delay, giving me a brief but meaningful look. “I predict this story is going to turn out badly, after having read the preface.”

And at this, having said enough, or perhaps more than he’d wanted to or judged prudent, he took his leave of me, though not before I
thanked him profusely for having obtained my pardon. But this compliment caused him to change his expression completely, and he listened to my thanks with a frigid expression, as if to let me know that, since things were taking the turn he’d intimated, he wouldn’t be able to offer me his good offices again, should I need them.

Miroul and I went off to dinner in the rue de la Truanderie at Guillaume Gautier’s tavern, and there we met Giacomi, who’d been waiting for us for a full hour, unable to take a bite he was so frightfully worried about our safety. When he caught sight of me, he reddened with pleasure and embraced me tightly, posing a hundred questions, which I answered in whispers by recounting the events we’d just experienced, including my discussions with Miroul and Maître Delay.

Giacomi agreed that I couldn’t honourably abandon the patient who’d been placed in my care, but that this was a most grievous turn of events, given how much the danger was increasing hourly. He told us that, as he’d walked through the streets, he’d seen groups of men confronting Huguenots or anyone they took to be of the religion, and that some were shouting, “To the cause! To Madame la Cause!”—injurious words by which the people designated our Church; he added that, because he was dressed in black, he himself had been stopped by a dozen ruffians, who would have torn him to pieces had it not been for his Italian accent, Italy being known to the Parisians for having crushed the embryo of heretical reformism while it was still in its shell. In short, everywhere he went he saw nasty looks, hushed conversations, comings and goings, the bourgeoisie armed to the teeth, bloodthirsty threats—all of which were signs of a growing wave of violent feelings we were sure to be prey to. For a moment, all we could do was look at each other in silence, thinking about what awaited us.

Despite the delicious fare our dinner was an exceedingly sad affair and none of us had much appetite. Giacomi insisted on accompanying
me back to the rue de Béthisy, where the admiral lived, and during our lengthy walk there, we could see the increasing agitation and aggression of the Parisians. Their growing rumble of angry voices brought to mind an anthill that a hunter has just accidentally decapitated.

When I reached Coligny’s bedside, I was told that he was sleeping, so I went downstairs to the great hall, where an ever-increasing number of Huguenots had gathered to express their outrage. Needing some time to reflect on the dark cloud that was rapidly forming over our heads, I stepped outside onto the little square in front of the house. Pacing up and down, I consulted my watch and discovered it was just two o’clock, and, remembered that Ambroise Paré had promised to return during the afternoon to relieve me, and so I watched anxiously for any sign of him. In the midst of my reflections, I heard a loud noise coming from the rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain and saw a detachment of the king’s guards emerge from that street into the rue de Béthisy, wearing white ceremonial jerseys, known as gambesons, decorated with silver frills. They were preceded by trumpeters, walking in closed ranks and sounding their instruments at full blast to announce the king. On all sides, windows were thrown open, despite the August heat, and the occupants leant out to watch, but no one came out into the street because of their fear of the guards. In the middle of the procession, flanked by two guards who never left his side, marched the king—tall, thin and bent, his face so drawn by worry that he seemed twice as old as his years. Following him came the queen mother, all in black but resplendent in her pearls and glittering jewellery, looking younger than her son. On her right marched the Duc d’Anjou, his handsome, pale face looking especially inscrutable, and on her left came the Duc d’Alençon, her third son, who looked like the runt of the litter, and whose face wore a false, mean and fearful look that did him no honour.

The guards lined up in double rows in front of the admiral’s house, and the king walked up, graciously greeting the gentlemen gathered
there. They answered his greeting, bowing respectfully enough in response, but took no more notice of the queen mother and her two other sons than a fish would an apple. It was clear that, if they suspected that the king had had no hand in this murderous attack, as his visit to the wounded man was meant to prove, they could not be assured of the same degree of innocence for Catherine and the Duc d’Anjou. These last were known to mightily detest the Huguenot leader, the queen mother because he wanted to steal the authority she held over her son and Anjou because Coligny, fearing his power, had attempted to have him effectively banished by making him king of Poland.

Once upstairs, the king asked if there were a doctor present, so I stepped forward, explaining that I was filling in for Mazille and Paré and that the wounded man was resting, but could receive him if he wished, but only for a moment. The king stepped up to the bed curtains, which one of his guards raised so he could see the admiral, and Coligny, hearing their approach, opened his eyes.

“Ah, my father!” said the king (for this is indeed what he called him). “I’m very sorry to see you wounded and brought so low.”

“’Tis true, sire,” replied the admiral, who appeared to be quite comforted by the honour bestowed on him by this royal visit, “but the only affliction I feel is that I am prevented by my wound from showing my king how much I desire to do him service.”

“You will recover, my father,” the king assured him. “And by God, I tell you, I’ll bring your enemies to justice. In the house from which they fired on you, we found an old woman and a lackey, who’ve been thrown in jail and will be tortured. Do you approve of the judges I’ve named to investigate this case?”

“Of course, sire,” said the admiral, “if you believe in them. Only, I beg you to add one of your masters, Cavagnes, to the list.”

“It will be done,” said the king.

“Sire,” whispered the admiral, signalling to me to withdraw, “I would like you to remember…”

But I didn’t hear the rest, and as I turned away, I caught Anjou’s eye and decided to greet him, along with the queen mother and his brother. This was not easy, since they were surrounded—almost imprisoned—by a wall of Huguenot gentlemen, who, grumbling and complaining audibly, walked back and forth around them, clearly refusing to pay them the respect they were owed. Albert de Gondi, Catherine’s confidant, who normally looked so sly and disdainful, was visibly shaken by this demonstration. I could see the Duc d’Alençon’s lips trembling and that he was rolling his eyes wildly like a rabbit. Catherine and the Duc d’Anjou put on better faces, but I could see that they, too, were looking very pale and that Catherine was pouting furiously. It was easy to see that they would have preferred to be a thousand leagues from there.

Just as I was bowing to the queen mother and to Anjou and Alençon, I was joined by Monsieur de Mazille and the orderly Cornaton. The queen mother appeared very relieved to have finally encountered in this den of Huguenots people who would treat her with respect, and asked Mazille if Paré had extracted the bullet, to which Mazille replied that he had, and she was shown the ball, which was made of copper.

Turning it over and over in her fingers, which were adorned with rings set with the finest jewels in the world, the queen said, with visibly false concern:

“It’s very large! Did the admiral suffer much when it was extracted?”

“Very much,” answered Mazille, “but he neither groaned nor fainted.”

“Yes, I can well imagine!” replied Catherine. “I know of no man in the world more magnanimous than Monsieur de Coligny.”

Such praise brought Mazille and me up short, so surprised were we to hear such hypocritical flattery directed at this man from those fleshy lips.

“I’m very glad,” Catherine continued, looking at us with those protuberant eyes that didn’t really see us, “that the bullet didn’t remain lodged in the wound, since it may have been poisoned.”

I was dumbfounded by these sinister words, since pubic opinion had so frequently associated Catherine with the word poison, especially after the deaths of Coligny’s two brothers, Odet de Châtillon and d’Andelot, not to mention Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre, who’d died so suddenly and mysteriously at the Louvre after having signed the marriage contract between Henri and Margot. Coligny himself had nearly been assassinated two years previously by means of a white powder the would-be assassin had almost succeeded in administering to him. Monsieur de Mazille, though a papist, was an honest man and was as shocked and ashamed by Catherine’s impudent words as I, and, lowering his eyes, said nothing. And those words would have been left hanging awkwardly in the air had not Cornaton, obsequious as ever, cried in his dove-like simplicity:

“Ah, Madame! But we were on the lookout for that! We treated the wound with an elixir to combat the poison, in case the bullet had been coated with it!”

The queen mother visibly bit her lip at this news, and her heavy eyelids closed over her eyes for a moment. I wanted to kill poor Cornaton for his stupid indiscretion, certain as I was that it was not in the admiral’s interest for his enemies to believe he was out of danger—in which case, God only knew, there’d be a second attempt on his life by the very people who had inflicted the first.

At this, Albert de Gondi (a Florentine himself, who’d been assigned to Charles IX in his youth and had wholly corrupted him), looked knowingly at the queen mother and, understanding better than anyone
else what she was plotting (having so long been her confidant), said in very suave tones, his sly eyes shining:

“It’s my opinion, Madame, that it would be better to transport the admiral to the Louvre where the king can at least protect him from popular sentiment, given how inflamed the Parisians have become against him.”

“Nay, Madame,” Monsieur de Mazille interjected immediately, perhaps because he understood what Gondi was up to, or perhaps because he was simply speaking his conscience as a good doctor, “we mustn’t consider it! It would be extremely dangerous to move the admiral now, and expose him to the contagion of the air.”

The queen mother, who had, for several minutes already, been growing increasingly anxious at the private conversation that was taking place between the king and the admiral behind his bed curtains, said that she wished to ask Coligny herself, and approached the bed, making a sign to the guards to raise the curtains; but, truth to tell, I got there first, and was happily surprised to see the admiral looking much better than I feared, given his age, the blow he’d received, the terrible pain he’d endured from the amputation of his finger and the operation on his elbow. Such was the enormous influence his powerful soul exercised over his body.

As I reached Coligny’s bedside, preceding the queen mother, ostensibly to open a path for her through the press of gentlemen in the room, I heard the admiral warn the king about “the deadly designs of certain people” (he meant the Guise family) “against his person and his crown”—a sentence he interrupted as soon as he saw the queen mother, suspecting, no doubt, that she would not soon be warning her son about this threat.

It seemed to me that the admiral spoke to the queen mother with some stiffness, as if he suspected her of not being as afflicted as she wished to appear. In any case, he declined absolutely to be transported
to the Louvre—though the king begged him to reconsider—arguing that here he was very well looked after by the king’s doctors and surgeons, for which he thanked His Majesty most profusely. When the king answered that he would punish the perpetrators of this cowardly attack, the queen mother went further, proclaiming that the attack did not merely affect the admiral but was “a great outrage against the king”, and: