Heretic Dawn (56 page)

“If today we tolerate this, tomorrow, they’ll be bold enough to strike inside the Louvre itself.” To which she added with great conviction: “Although I’m only a woman, I believe we should put an end to this!”

The admiral thanked her for these sentiments, but, deeply honest man that he was, and wholly unaccustomed to pretence, his expression of gratitude had a very icy feel to it. Of course it’s true that the queen mother had laid it on a bit thick, and that it was very difficult to be taken in by such honeyed words that so reeked of hypocrisy.

The king and royal family had scarcely departed the admiral’s lodgings, preceded and followed by their cadre of guards and trumpets, before the Prince de Condé and Henri, king of Navarre arrived. However, Coligny, overcome with fatigue from the previous visit, had drifted off to sleep, and Mazille refused to let them see him, especially since he was now trembling somewhat with fever from his wound, and they had just administered some theriacal water to calm the effects of the poison.

As a consequence, the princes came back downstairs to the large hall and sequestered themselves in Cornaton’s room, where they held
ex abrupto
a council of war among the principal Protestant leaders. I recognized among this group Geoffroy de Caumont, La Force and his two sons, the Comte de La Rochefoucauld, Montgomery, Briquemaut, Guerchy and Ferrières, whose clear and incisive mind greatly impressed me as soon as he began to speak.

“I believe,” he began in a loud and grave voice, which astonished me since he seemed so small and frail, “that the attempt on the admiral’s
life is the first act in a tragedy, which, from all appearances, will end with the mass murder of all his followers. Ever since the wedding of Navarre, we’ve been getting information from all sides that is so clear and so manifest that all you have to do is open your eyes and ears to see it. ‘This marriage,’ said one of the most important people in the country scarcely a week ago, ‘will cause much more blood to flow than wine.’ And I have it on good authority that a president of the parliament advised a Protestant gentleman to quit Paris with his family and withdraw for the present to his house in the country. Moreover, Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld can tell you the warning he received from Monsieur de Monluc before his departure for Poland.”

“What did he tell you, Foucauld?” asked Navarre, who’d been listening with great interest to Monsieur de Ferrières.

“Well,” said La Rochefoucauld, “I remember only too well what Monluc whispered to me: ‘No matter what caresses the court lavishes on you, be careful not to fall for them. Too much confidence will cast you into great peril. Flee while it’s still possible.’”

“All we have to do is look around us,” continued Jean de Ferrières, “and what do we see? Paris is armed to the teeth, and if the populace falls on us, we’ll be outnumbered a hundred to one, with chains blocking all the bridges, the city gates locked tight and the public squares occupied by the bourgeois militias.”

“So what do you conclude, Ferrières?” asked Condé.

“That we must escape from this trap!” replied Monsieur de Ferrières with great vehemence. “Without another moment’s delay! We must put Coligny on a litter, get on our horses, swords in hand, and get out of Paris!”

“Move the admiral?” cried Téligny. “It’s unthinkable! Monsieur de Mazille, who can’t join us in here because he’s a papist, believes that it’s very dangerous to move the patient and expose him to the contagion of the air!”

“The admiral has seen worse than this,” argued Monsieur de Guerchy. “After Moncontour, he ordered the entire retreat from his litter, since he’d been wounded in the cheek by a pistol shot.”

“The wound wasn’t so serious,” countered Téligny.

“Well!” I broke in. “I’ve never seen a face wound that wasn’t serious!”

My intervention reminded the lords present that I was a doctor, and one of them said, “And what do you think, Monsieur de Siorac, of this idea of transporting the admiral?”

“That it’s dangerous and uncomfortable, to be sure, but that it’s a risk worth taking if there’s greater danger in staying here.”

“But wait!” cried Téligny with some heat. “Who can believe the admiral is in danger when you see what great favour he enjoys with the king, who condescended to come and visit him in his lodgings?”

“I’m not a very suspicious man by nature,” said my cousin, Caumont, “but I found something very sinister in this display of courtesy. The entire scene had a false ring to it. And I remember all too well what a pleasant face François de Guise put on with my older brother only two hours before he had him killed.”

“Come now, Caumont,” countered Téligny, “the king is not Guise. I know his heart far too well.”

Téligny’s naivety made everyone in the room uneasy, not just because of his manifest simplicity, but because no one dared to contradict him, at least in public, except by silence. And what a long and uncomfortable silence followed, in which the only thing that mattered was precisely what was not said.

“I nevertheless believe that we should all flee without delay,” said Jean de Ferrières finally in a low but firm voice.

I could see that all of those present were inclined to agree with this, with the exception, alas, of the most important among them: the admiral’s son-in-law and the two royal princes, Condé and
Navarre—especially Navarre, who, as the king’s brother-in-law would need to be very careful, which he didn’t fail to demonstrate.

“Leaving Paris,” he said with his Béarnaise accent, which lent such a mellifluous sound to his every word that they sounded like waves lapping at pebbles on a beach, “would not be easy for the admiral. If he asked the king’s leave to do so, he wouldn’t obtain it. But if he didn’t ask, he would insult the king, and we’d have to fear the consequences both for the admiral and for the possibility of peace.”

“And, of course, for Navarre himself,” I thought to myself. If the Huguenots disobeyed the king, his position at court, where he was practically a hostage, would be very uncomfortable at best.

Both because of Navarre’s position in the kingdom and because of his own reputation, his opinion had a considerable effect on those present, though it failed to persuade them entirely, given the way the rock that was threatening our lives seemed to shake and sway uncertainly right over our heads.

“Well then,” proposed Téligny, “why don’t we go and ask for the admiral’s opinion rather than continue to argue? Isn’t he still our leader?”

At this, Jean de Ferrières threw his arms up in frustration, given how convinced he was that the admiral, in his inflexible and heroic firmness, would decide against leaving, since he lacked in political acumen the enviable flexibility he’d always displayed in war, where he was never so great as when, after an apparent defeat, he would slip away from the enemy only to return to sting him quickly and flee again.

“But the admiral is asleep,” observed Guerchy, “and Mazille did not even allow the royal princes to disturb him.”

“Let’s send Monsieur de Siorac to talk to him,” suggested Téligny. “Since he’s a doctor, he’ll know whether he can ask him the question we’ve been debating without tiring him too much.”

I agreed immediately, left the room and went up to the first floor to ask Monsieur de Mazille if I could speak to the patient.

“He’s not as poorly as we’d believed,” said Mazille. “He is by nature so robust and so firm in his resolve that it’s a marvel to watch him struggle against his infirmity.”

“Is he sleeping?”

“No. He’s lying there with his eyes open, doubtless planning great things.”

This moved me more than I can say. Monsieur de Mazille, papist that he was, was honest enough to understand that Coligny was not a man who thought only about himself, but one who, quite the contrary, considered only the interests of the people.

Stepping over to his bedside, I gently lifted the curtain and the admiral looked at me with eyes that, even in the shadows of the bed, seemed to me as clear and luminous as ever. I told him what we’d been debating in Cornaton’s chambers downstairs.

He responded immediately in a muffled voice as though musing to himself, “Ah! What about my war in Flanders? Can I abandon it?” Certainly, he could claim it as
his
war! For no one else at court had any appetite for it, except, fitfully, the king, who at one moment was persuaded to it by Coligny, and the next moment was convinced by the queen mother to abandon it.

Assuredly, it was a serious and grand project to redirect all the rebellious feeling of the Huguenots towards an external conflict—lining them up side by side with the papists—instead of allowing them to continue cutting each other’s throats. But on the other hand, wasn’t it an empty dream to attempt to persuade the court to take up arms against Felipe II of Spain (the most solid rampart of the papacy) to protect the Protestant farmers of Flanders? And wasn’t it even more unrealistic to believe that one could separate this weak and flighty king from his mother, to whose skirts he’d been attached since childhood, both by her and by the counsellors with whom she’d surrounded him?

Coligny continued to lie their silently, and I understood completely that, for him, leaving Paris meant confronting the king, thereby losing his favour and forever forgoing his greatest plan: to reconcile the subjects of the kingdom in a war that would bring down Felipe II. But I nevertheless impressed on him the dangers that were accumulating over our heads, the trap that was now set for us in this great city whose jaws were already closing on us, and the possibility that we could lose everything—not just our cause, but our very lives—if we remained here. What a temptation for our enemies! All of our leaders found themselves conveniently imprisoned within the walls of the capital and could be taken by surprise without any serious resistance, and slaughtered.

“I’m well aware of all that you say,” Coligny replied. “Let everyone leave who wishes to ensure his safety. As for me, I’m ready to leave this life. I’ve lived long enough.”

Looking at him, I realized that a man should never consent in advance to his own death, whether because of setbacks or sickness. At length, he added, to emphasize his repugnance at the solution that Monsieur de Ferrières was proposing:

“My friend, I cannot leave Paris without reigniting the civil war, and I’d rather die than do that. But I am certain of one thing: I will not be betrayed. I have confidence in my king.”

Noble words, assuredly, but ones in which I found—God forgive me!—a grain of absurdity, since it was obvious to anyone with a head for politics that the murder of the admiral and his cohort would not extinguish the civil war but, on the contrary, provide a new match with which to ignite it and cause the kingdom to burn like a bonfire in its flames. And as for Charles, how could a man of Admiral de Coligny’s honesty and character possibly understand the complexion of this wriggling earthworm?

I understood, as I returned to deliver his message to the council being held downstairs, that this man of religion sought comfort in a
quasi-religious faith in the word of the king. The crown concealed the man, who was so childish, inconstant and unstable that you could no more place your trust in him than you could in quicksand. He was a top, as Delay had said, a mere form of a man without content or will; he was an empty goblet that could equally well be filled with any wine—the best or the worst, or a weathercock spinning this way and that, according to the direction the wind was blowing.

Monsieur de Ferrières and the others who shared his views, even if they dared not say so out loud, were extremely disappointed by Coligny’s decision, even though they expected it, knowing him as well as they did. And yet, even though the admiral had given them leave to quit Paris, I could see that they were ashamed to choose this option, so strong were their scruples about abandoning their leader in the middle of these perils to assure their own safety. As for Monsieur de Téligny, whose advice had been accepted, he had little cause for joy, since, no matter what we’d chosen, things looked exceedingly dark and stormy. I also noticed that Navarre, who now took his leave, agreed with the decision, though he had little to fear, being the brother-in-law of the king and under the protection of Margot, despite her little regard for him. In short, we dispersed without having resolved anything, except to remain in the capital.

The next morning, which was Saturday, 23rd August, I was very surprised, as I came downstairs from my tiny room, to see that the atelier was empty and that the heavy oak shutters hadn’t been taken down from the windows. There was no trace of Alizon, Baragran or Coquillon. In attempting to leave the house, I found the door bolted and barred. With Miroul at my heels, we headed over to Maître Recroche’s wing of the house and found him in his kitchen, sitting down, not to enjoy a meal, but instead with several weapons, which he was polishing with an old rag.

“Good day, Maître Recroche,” I greeted him. “What’s this? Are the helmet and halberd yours? Are you leaving for war?”

“No,” he growled. He refused to rise to greet us or look us in the eye, but stared straight ahead, although he kept us in the corner of his right eye, like a vulture. “No,” he repeated, “but you have to polish things up when they get dirty.”

“And how does it happen,” I asked, doubting as I did the veracity of his explanation, “that you’re not working today?”

“Don’t you know?” he snarled coldly. “Tomorrow is St Bartholomew’s day, and when a saint’s day falls on a Sunday, we get the day before off.”

“Yes, you have the afternoon off,” I agreed, “but not the morning, if I’m to believe what Alizon told me.”

“Alizon is a silly idiot,” shot back Recroche, “who talks too much about what she doesn’t know. She’s the most unpleasant wench in creation.”

“Ah, but she must be a good worker, Maître Recroche,” I parried, “otherwise you wouldn’t employ her. Are these weapons yours?”

“Most assuredly so!” said Recroche proudly. “I’m a Parisian bourgeois,” he said with as much vanity as if he were announcing that he was a duc, “and every bourgeois in Paris must be armed and ready to defend his city and his king against his enemies.”