Heretic Dawn (61 page)

“It’s Cossain, who demands that we open the door,” answered La Bonne calmly.

“Don’t open the door, La Bonne!” said Merlin, rising from his chair, his eyes wide with terror.

“What is it?” came the voice of the admiral from behind his bed curtains, which Yolet immediately opened so that his master could hear the others.

At this moment, from downstairs came the sound of the door knocker banging loudly and the voice of Cossain shouting:

“Open up, it’s Cossain!”

“Don’t open the door, La Bonne!” yelled Merlin, putting his trembling hands over his ears.

“La Bonne,” said the admiral, in a calm and composed voice, “open the door. It’s Cossain. Maybe the king has been attacked in his Louvre. Open up, La Bonne, and bring me the news.”

La Bonne took the candelabrum to light his way, and went downstairs.

I was right behind him with Miroul, Yolet, Cornaton and Muss, all five of us unsheathing our swords on the way, and we were met downstairs by Fröhlich, Cadieu and the other Swiss guards, who had their short swords at the ready. La Bonne pulled the two large bolts, and took some time finding the right key on his chain, since he was so nearsighted, and had to manage the candelabrum in his left hand. At length, however, he found the key he needed, put it in the lock, turned it and, pulling the door open, found himself face to face with Cossain, who, without saying a word, immediately stabbed him.

“
Ach!
Traitor!” cried Fröhlich, delivering a powerful thrust of his sword into the chest of the assassin without penetrating his breastplate, but knocking him backwards. Seeing this, Cadieu pushed the door closed against the rush of the king’s soldiers, and, buttressing the door with his large shoulders, held it closed long enough for Fröhlich and another Swiss to push a heavy iron chest against it. This done, Cadieu fell heavily to the ground beside La Bonne, having been shot between the shoulder blades by an arquebus that had been fired at point-blank range through the peephole while he was blocking the door.

“
Ach!
Poor Cadieu!” cried Fröhlich, while Cossain’s guards began hacking at the door with their axes, splintering the oak planks. Cornaton and Muss fired two shots at them, but didn’t have time to reload before the guards were inside. There followed a ferocious sword fight on the stairs in which no one could be sure who was who in the semi-darkness, lit only by our assailants’ torch, La Bonne’s candelabrum having gone out when he fell. In the midst of this confusion, as I aimed my blows at our assailants’ faces rather than their breastplates—a manoeuvre aided by their position below us on the stairs—I saw poor Yolet run through in the stomach. He pitched forward, groaning, but was immediately avenged by Muss, who drove his short sword into the face of Yolet’s assassin.

As we flailed blindly at each other, I heard a shout from above to quit our positions and come up to reinforce the door on the landing. The Swiss guards, except for Fröhlich, did not understand, but he followed as we scampered up the remaining stairs like cats and closed the door behind us, bolstering it with a couple of heavy chests.

Breathing hard, we looked at each other in silence, death now being close upon us, and, hearing a noise behind me, I turned and saw the admiral, standing, a candelabrum in his hand, wearing his dressing gown, which (as incredible as it may be that I noticed this in the furious confusion) was of red velvet with an ermine collar. He’d risen, I thought, in order to die standing up, and was leaning against the wall, doubtless in pain from his wound, but looking serene despite the furious blows of the guards’ axes on the door.

“My sons,” he said at last, “you’ve fought enough. You must try to escape if it’s still possible.”

“No, I won’t leave, Monsieur!” said Cornaton. “Begging your pardon!”

“Nor I,” said Muss.

“Nor I,” I said.

“
Herrgott!
” said Fröhlich in his gibberish. “
Schelme
on anyone who flees! And I’ve broken my sword and any Swiss who’s lost his weapon must die!”

The door, broken by so many axe blows, collapsed, and a king’s guard stuck his head through and tried to step over the two oak chests, but Fröhlich rushed to the mantelpiece, screaming like a devil in a font, grabbed a heavy andiron and threw it at the man’s head, knocking off his helmet. The guard fell in a heap.

“Flee, my sons, I order you to flee!” shouted the admiral, pointing to the door that led to the turret.

Cornaton was the first to obey, then Muss, then Miroul and I, and finally Fröhlich, who was still complaining about losing his sword, but whom I told to be quiet since the door to the turret was the only thing separating us from the guards who were streaming into the room through the splintered door. As I hesitated as to whether I should go up to the next storey or head downstairs, I stopped in front of a little window that opened onto the admiral’s bedroom and I saw Monsieur de Coligny standing, leaning against the wall, the candelabrum in his hand, which did not tremble in the slightest, facing his assassins, his face calm and composed. Cossain was among the five or six guards present, but, although he had his sword in his hand and had directed the assault ordered by the king, he didn’t seem to want to be the admiral’s assassin, for he allowed a soldier to go ahead of him (the man who always had such swagger). Pike in hand, the soldier shouted:

“Are you the admiral?”

“I am,” said Coligny, raising the candelabrum and holding it in front of his face.

“Ah, traitor!” said the man as he drove his pike into his stomach.

The candelabrum dropped from the right hand of the admiral, who, however, did not fall; and, looking his murderer in the eye, he said with infinite scorn:

“What a shame it wasn’t a man, but only a churl.”

At this, wrenching his pike from the admiral’s entrails, the churl delivered a ferocious blow to his head that knocked him to the ground. I didn’t want to see any more and ran headlong down the stairs, with Fröhlich behind me. Miroul had preceded me and it was lucky he did, for, having unlocked the little door that opened onto the rue de Béthisy, he closed it almost all the way so that he and I could see, a mere yard or so away, a large troop of soldiers, and behind them the Bâtard d’Angoulême and the Duc de Guise, who, looking up at the window on the first floor, called:

“Is it done, Besme?”

“It’s done,” said the voice of the churl whom I’d just seen at work in the room above.

“Monsieur d’Angoulême here,” replied Guise, “won’t believe it until he’s seen the corpse at his feet.”

So the corpse was immediately thrown from the window by the soldier he’d been talking to, who was, as we later learnt, a German from Bohemia (which is why they called him Besme) and a servant in Guise’s household. As Coligny’s head was already bloody from the blow of the pike administered by this fellow, the Bâtard d’Angoulême couldn’t immediately recognize him, and so he leant over and wiped some of the blood from his face with his handkerchief, saying, finally:

“It’s really him.”

He then stood up and, in keeping with his natural baseness, delivered a kick to the dead body. Seeing this, the Duc de Guise put his hand on the bâtard’s arm, as if to signify that the insult could no longer reach a man who could not feel it; then he looked around him with pride, as if this were the most glorious day of his life, and said to the king’s guards and the other gentlemen who were standing several yards away, all armed to the teeth, bearing torches, their eyes lit up in anticipation of the coming carnage:

“My friends, let’s go out and finish the work we’ve so handsomely begun here!”

Hearing this, Miroul quietly closed the little door and, having bolted it, said in my ear:

“Monsieur, the only way out of here leads right into the mouth of the wolf. Let’s go up and try the rooftops.”

Which we did, and you can bet we were on tiptoe going by the window to the admiral’s bedroom, but we needn’t have worried. When I peeked inside, I could see the guards so furiously occupied in pillaging the chests that a pack of horses could have stampeded down the staircase without distracting them from their pilfering.

At the top of the stairs, a small window opened out onto the roof, through which Miroul slipped like a ferret, I with some effort and Fröhlich only by dint of a struggle as protracted as if he’d been a camel trying to pass through the eye of the proverbial needle. At length, after much breathing, panting and gasping, he made it through, and, the three of us holding on to the top of the turret from which we’d emerged, we could see below us in the rue de Béthisy the torches and the sinister shadows they threw of the assembled swarm of cuirasses and halberds.

On our right the moon had come out from behind a cloud, and we could see the towers of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, and behind them the sombre mass of the Louvre, whence had come our death warrant. As the night began to wane, we realized that the dawn would greatly increase our peril, and that we would doubtless be spied up here and hunted down. But as we were debating how we might get out of this predicament, an explosion of sound hit us as if it were solid and shook the air all around us: the great bell of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois began to toll, and this terrible din was taken up by all the churches in this immense metropolis, and the doors of all the houses in the rue de Béthisy flew open and those of all the neighbouring
streets as well, vomiting by the hundreds hoards of Parisians, armed to the teeth, brandishing pikes and swords, torches held high so as to identify the doors that the
dizeniers
had marked that morning with a white cross. And above them the church bells continued to ring in every quarter of the capital as if to call the faithful to celebrate this strange nocturnal Mass, whose martyrs, too, worshipped Christ.

“
H
URRY, MY MASTER
,” Miroul urged, shaking me from the momentary paralysis the bells had cast on me, “we’ve got to get off this roof or they’ll start shooting at us like pigeons.”

’Sblood! He was right! We had to act quickly and wisely, though so often in perilous situations it turns out to be blind luck that turns stupidity into genius or wisdom into folly.

I saw, as I cast a glance behind me, that there was a building attached to this one that looked like a stable, and that overlooked a courtyard that contained a number of small gardens. Indeed, one of the surprises of Paris is that, in the street, you see only the urban facade, but behind it there is a little rural landscape, complete with wells, fruit trees and all the greenery a housekeeper would need.

Thinking we’d be better hidden in these gardens, away from the massacre, I began to climb down the roof on that side. Miroul quickly passed me, of course, and leapt, with his usual agility, onto the roof of the stable and from there onto the ground. But having landed on the ground, he made a sign to me not to follow, since the fall would be too hard for me, and, running to grab a rickety ladder that he’d spied in the garden, he brought it over and leant it up against the stable wall for us. As much of a help as it was to me, it was absolutely necessary for Fröhlich, who weighed so much that the last three rungs broke under his weight and he reached the ground much faster than
he would have wished, though without injury. Miroul couldn’t help laughing, though quietly, so irrepressible was his natural gaiety, even in the most desperate situations.

There wasn’t so much as a cat in these gardens, our beautiful papist angels being wholly caught up in the pillaging of the house behind us. In all of the windows, which were lit up by the torches that were passing to and fro within, we could see the guards moving about in their frantic search for money, clothes, weapons, boots and silverware—such being the worldly rewards God was providing for their murder of the heretics, not to mention the heavenly reward of bypassing Purgatory on their way to Paradise. So taken were they by this glorious quest that not one of them thought, thank God, to cast a glance out of the window, otherwise they surely would have seen us by the light of the full moon.

“My friends,” I whispered, “let’s head for the gardens! Better trees than men!”

So we leapt into the first garden we came to, and from that to the next, and to the one after that, Miroul leaping over the fences like a rabbit, I clearing them with some effort and Fröhlich simply trampling them before him like an elephant. Seeing this, I invited him to go before me, since his work greatly eased my way. ’Tis true that he made an infernal racket as he crushed or ripped up everything in his path, but none of this noise could be heard over the deafening tolling of the bells, the echoes of arquebus shots in the streets and the general noise of the crowds that came from all sides.

Eventually, moving from garden to garden, we came out onto a street, which, as we learnt from Miroul, who now knew Paris like the back of his hand, was the rue Tirechappe.

“Monsieur,” said my gentle valet as we hid in the shadows of a doorway to get our bearings, “we’re but fifty yards from Alizon’s lodgings. Let’s ask for her help!”

“Not on your life!” I growled through clenched teeth. “We can’t. She’s been blinded by the sermons she’s heard, and considers me her mortal enemy.”

“But, Monsieur, she’s a good wench, who’s enjoyed your generosity and your caresses! There must be some love yet from what you’ve shared!”

“There is none, I tell you! Let’s move on!”

“Where?”

“Wherever fate takes us.”

This fate seemed to fall out of the sky on us in the form of a poor fellow who landed in the mud a few yards from us, having been defenestrated after his assailants had ripped his stomach open. Above us several women were screaming, and I hesitated, wondering whether we should rush to their aid. But suddenly I saw a man rushing towards us, pursued by half a dozen bourgeois armed with pikes. As he reached us, he suddenly turned to face them, sword in hand, wrapped his left arm in his cloak, and stood with his back to a house, clearly resolved to die fighting since he had no chance against his attackers, being clothed only in his doublet while they were in helmets and breastplates. One of his assailants raised his torch in order better to see his victim, and I couldn’t help yelling as I recognized Monsieur de Guerchy. He looked our way at this, and seeing the red and yellow colours of Fröhlich, yelled:

“Help me, Navarre!”

You can easily imagine that, hearing this appeal, we all drew our swords and had at these cowards, taking the wind out of their sails and managing to inflict enough wounds that they fled, shouting, “To arms! To the cause! To Madame la Cause!”

One of them dropped his sword in his panic, and Fröhlich immediately seized it, saying “
Herrgott!
This is a good!” for he’d been without a sword since the melee at the admiral’s house and had been feeling very vulnerable.

Poor Guerchy was staggering, and Miroul and I held him up, but blood was flowing from all parts of his body, especially a nasty wound in his chest. When I told him I’d examine his wounds, he replied in a very weak voice:

“Don’t waste your time, Siorac, I’m done for! But if you succeed in getting away, I beg you to tell others that my death was worthy of my life.”

“I promise.”

“And watch out for these scoundrels! They’re all wearing a white cloth on their arms and a cross on their caps to recognize each other.”

Then, his heart full of gall, he opened his mouth wide in a last attempt to breathe but could not, and gave up the ghost, honourably, as he had wanted, his face full of resolve and his sword in hand.

“Monsieur! We can’t stay here!” hissed Miroul as we withdrew into the shadow of a doorway, realizing that even there the moon was so bright that we could easily be seen. “Those scoundrels may return! Let’s keep moving!”

“All right, but not before Fröhlich removes his red and yellow colours that will give us away.”

“
Ach! Mein Herr!
” said Fröhlich, his voice constricted with emotion. “Ask one of Navarre’s Swiss to hide his uniform!
Schelme! Schelme!
”

“You have to, Fröhlich,” I said stiffly. “You put all three of us at risk!”

“
Ach!
” he objected. “Taking off my uniform would break my oath as a Swiss guard!”

“Then break it, Fröhlich,” I said, “or by God you must leave us!”

“
Was?
” he cried, tears streaming down his large red face. “Leave you? Where would I go without you, Monsieur? What would I do? Who would command me?”

“I command you, for the present, Fröhlich, and my orders are to disrobe this second and leave your uniform here.”

Which, finally, he did, amid copious tears and great sighs, and not without carefully folding his tunic and placing it lovingly on a windowsill nearby, as if he thought he’d come back to collect it after the massacre. Then, he sheathed his sword in his belt, which seemed to comfort him a bit. As for me, all lathered from our encounter with these rascals, I felt so sweaty that I unbuttoned by doublet and my chemise, which, as it turned out, was a very good thing.

“Now!” I said. “Let’s head towards the Seine! Maybe we can get across despite the chains!”

But we hadn’t gone more than twenty yards before we met a large band of papists, who, seeing us, began shouting “To the cause!” and looked as though they’d surround us, a manoeuvre we frustrated by standing with our backs to a wall and drawing our swords, which seemed to slow their charge.

“Brothers!” I shouted, trying to affect as Parisian an accent as I could. “What’s going on? Did you take us for heretical dogs?”

“Assuredly so!” said a tall, fat man, whom the others called “captain”, and who must have been the
quartenier
or the
dizenier
. He looked, from his clothes, to be a master artisan, and was now, by choice, a master assassin and pillager, but one who I supposed was happier pillaging than fighting. “You’re heretical scum,” he yelled, brandishing a pistol, “and we’re going to crush you without further ado!”

“Blessed Virgin!” I cried, and, seizing the medallion of Mary I wore around my neck, I brought it to my lips, crying: “Blessed Virgin, protect me from this terrible mistake! I’m a good Catholic, my brother, and as zealous and assiduous in my obedience to the good priest Maillard’s teaching as any man, and I can recite the Ave Maria as well as any man, forwards
and
backwards, as I’ve heard His Holiness the Pope do!”

“Backwards!” said one of the scoundrels, visibly impressed.

“Torchbearer!” snarled the
quartenier
stiffly, without taking a step nearer. “Go and see what’s with this medallion!”

“It’s really the Blessed Virgin,” said the man without daring to get too close, seeing my sword and dagger at the ready. “The medallion’s made of gold, Captain!”

“Gold!” said the captain with a greedy air, raising his pistol, a movement that made Miroul, on my left, coil like a snake and slip his right hand down to the dagger that was hidden in his boot.

“It’s only bronze, my brother,” I corrected quickly. “I’m not well heeled enough to afford a gold one.”

“It’s my opinion,” said one of these knaves, putting on airs, “that this is one of those Genevans who wants to throw us off the scent with his lies! He’s a nobleman, he is! Look at his fancy doublet and all his pearls!”

“My good man!” I laughed (though somewhat hollowly, knowing how the people of Paris hold the nobility in low esteem). “You’ve just ennobled me! I’m just an honest man of the people, like you, an apothecary from Montfort-l’Amaury, and I just acquired this doublet from my pillaging, though it was hardly worth it. These stones are plaster copies from Lyons, that’s all.”

“Knave,” shouted the captain, “if you’re one of us, how come you’re not wearing a white armband?”

“My serving girl sewed it on so badly it came undone during the first brawl.”

“And who are these two?”

“They’re my assistants in the shop,” said I, taking this tack to amuse them. “This one” (pointing to Fröhlich, whom I wanted to silence because his German accent would have been a certain sign of his reformist views) “is as mute as a carp. The other one’s got mismatched eyes.”

“Why, so he does!” said the torchbearer in surprise.

And these Parisians, who think they know everything, were in fact so credulous that they immediately thought that Miroul’s eyes were
some sort of divine miracle from the Blessed Virgin, since they’d never heard of anything like this.

“What’s more,” I continued, “he can throw a knife better than any mother’s son in France! If you please, Captain, step back a few paces and he’ll sink his knife into the ring of that door knocker that you see over there.”

“Torchbearer,” cried Miroul, “shine some light on that door!”

And scarcely had the captain taken a step backwards before Miroul launched his knife and planted it quivering in the board of the door, exactly in the centre of the ring of the knocker. The
quartenier
appeared quite discomposed to feel the wind of the blade as it whistled by his fat nose, and seemed to have visibly lost his swagger, no longer assured that, even with their pistols, they held an advantage over us—and especially when he saw Miroul bend quickly and seize a second knife from his other boot.

“That’s enough, my brother,” said the
quartenier
, softening his tone considerably, “you’ve persuaded me. I’m now convinced of your zeal to perform pious works on this holy feast day of St Bartholomew! But take my advice! Get your brassard sewn back on quickly. Who can see a grey cat at night? My lads! Let’s be off, we have better things to do elsewhere!”

And off they went, quitting the field, perhaps convinced, perhaps not wishing to risk their tender skin for the slim profit of a few pearls and a medallion. Whether or not he believed it was bronze, I now valued it as worth much more than its weight in gold, not just because it had been given to me by my late mother, but because it had just saved my life—after having nearly cost me it during the Michelade in Nîmes five years previously. But isn’t it a terrible thing than men can play “heads or tails” for a man’s life using an image? Oh, Lord! What a strange power over men is wielded by the very idols they have fashioned with their own hands!

As we watched them run off towards other exploits, we were conscious that the church bells had stopped tolling, but all around us we could hear the repeated explosions of arquebuses, the thuds of battering rams splintering wooden doors, the panting of fleeing victims, the battle cries of the assassins and the screams of martyrs who had been surprised in their homes and had then fled in their nightclothes, but who were then caught, their throats slashed pitilessly, stripped, mutilated and dragged through the filth of the street.

“Monsieur,” said Miroul, “you did an amazing job of out-talking those rogues, but I don’t think your medallion is going to save you a second time. We have to find a way to have some white armbands sewn on our sleeves, and the only one who do that is Alizon. Outside of Alizon, no salvation!”

“
Ach
, good Monsieur,” said Fröhlich, “do I have to stay mute or may I say something?”

“Speak, Fröhlich.”

“It’s a great
Schelme
, in my opinion, to wear the white brassards of these killers!”

“Ah, no, Fröhlich, quite the contrary!” I said. “It’s a legitimate strategy to imitate your enemy when it’s a matter of life and death! Miroul, in the end, I think you’re right. Go and see if the priest’s sermons haven’t entirely corrupted Alizon’s good heart.”

But once we got to Alizon’s lodgings, the door was locked and barred from within, and even though I dared knock, no one came to the windows.

“But look, Monsieur,” observed Miroul, “the upstairs window is open and there’s candlelight within. If you please, Monsieur, let me climb up to her room and test the waters.”

“
Was?
My little friend,” said Fröhlich, “are you a fly that you can scale that facade?”