Heretic Dawn (63 page)

Meanwhile, we weren’t making much progress, since, behind the chains at the bridge, we spied a detachment of the king’s guards bristling with pikes and arquebuses.

“My brother,” said Giacomi in hushed tones, taking me by the arm, “I think it would be madness to try to cross the bridge now. The guards will surely ask us for passes, which we’d be unable to present.”

“Not to mention,” added Miroul, “the fact that our Swiss, who’s no needle in a haystack, will be recognized as one of Navarre’s men by anyone who’s seen him at the Louvre. And on this particular morning, the name Navarre spells death, for all four of us.”

“As for me,” announced Fröhlich, “I don’t mind passing from life to death, but I wouldn’t like to pass those guards without my uniform!”

Giacomi had to turn away to hide his smile and Miroul as well, which proved how irrepressible these worthies’ gaiety was, even in the worst of times.

“My brothers,” I said (and observed despite my terrible fatigue how Miroul blushed with happiness at being treated this way), “I believe you’re both right. And daybreak is only going to multiply our perils. The best thing would be to find some hiding place where we can lie low until nightfall.”

“But where?” shrugged Miroul.

“
Mein Herr
,” suggested Fröhlich, “I twice carried messages from my king” (he meant Navarre, of course) “to Monsieur de Taverny, who is a lieutenant in the provost’s guards.”

“I’m not sure it would be safe, since Taverny is a Huguenot.”

“If he weren’t he wouldn’t let us in,” observed Miroul, “and if his house hasn’t been attacked, at least he could provide us with some nourishment. My stomach is down in my heels and I have such an appetite I could eat the shells off the oysters. Those three pastries we ate yesterday are only a memory.”

“Ah, my friend,” sighed Fröhlich, “don’t make my mouth water talking about pastries!”

Isn’t it amazing that, in the midst of such incredible dangers, we were all four as famished as a pack of wolves in a blizzard, so much so that, ironically, in order to find nourishment, we were prepared to leap from the frying pan into the fire?

“Fröhlich, can you lead us to Monsieur de Taverny’s lodgings?”

“Of course I can! They’re just past the rue Leuffroy, in a house called the Black Head.”

So, leaving the Pont au Change and any hope of immediate escape, we retraced our steps and headed back towards the city, very unhappy with all these detours we’d had to make in our dizzying flight.

Once past the rue Leuffroy, Fröhlich diverted us through a very filthy and muddy alleyway, which at least had the merit of being sparsely travelled, for we saw only one fellow coming towards us—but he immediately got our attention since he was carrying a baby
without cloth or blanket of any kind, who was happily laughing and playing, his chubby little fingers enmeshed in the man’s abundant, curly black beard.

“Friend,” I said, stopping, moved by this sweet sight, “this child seems to like you!”

“Maybe, but I don’t like him,” he growled rudely, glaring at me out of small black eyes. “He’s the pup of a heretic. I’m heading down to the Seine to stab him and drown him.”

“What?” I gasped. “Kill him? Even though he’s so young he can’t speak or understand anything? What does he know of religion?”

“He’s the seed of a heretic,” frowned the man. “Monsieur,” he said, looking towards the rue Leuffroy, where we could see bands of murderers running wildly, “will you let me pass or do I have to call ‘to arms and to the cause’?”

“You’re mistaken, friend,” I said. “We’re good Catholics. I’m only interested in this infant since I could take him to my sister in the country, who could raise him in the true religion.”

“Impossible,” replied the man, refusing to bend, even while the baby continued to coo and laugh, caressing his beard with his little fingers. “Like I said,” he continued, his eyes shining, “I’m going to stab him and throw him in the river. And I’m so eager to do it, my hands are itching!”

“Friend,” I said, “I’ll pay you whatever you ask for him.”

“Well, then,” said the knave, looking at the child and then at my purse, as if he were torn between two equal pleasures.

“Ten écus,” I said.

“It’s a deal,” agreed the bearded man, though with some reluctance, I thought.

I counted out the coins for him and he put them one by one into his pocket. But then, strangely, as he went to hand me the baby, he suddenly turned away from me; and as he turned to face
me again, he thrust the child into my arms and took off running as fast as he could.

“Monsieur,” cried Miroul, “he stabbed him! That’s why he turned around! Look at the blood gushing from his little heart!”

“Your knife, Miroul!” I cried, drunk with rage.

But Miroul had already seized his dagger and had taken off like a hare in pursuit of the rogue, and hurled it at him. The knife hit him between the shoulder blades, dropping him flat in the alley’s filth and ordure, which, as it was, was worth more than him.

A group of men now entered the alleyway and headed towards us, and, seeing Miroul still bent over the body, I shouted:

“Hurry, Miroul! What are you waiting for?”

“Taking back your money, Monsieur!”

“Just grab the purse! It’ll be faster!”

This Miroul did, and got back to us before the band of papists reached us, who, when they saw the bloody child, assumed I had killed this offspring of a heretic and made merry with us, some congratulating us on our exploit and others joking that it was a shame we hadn’t been able to get any money from it.

“My brother, what will you do with him?” said Giacomi, seeing me in tears.

“We’ll bury him in this garden, so that the dogs won’t devour him, the very thought of which makes me shudder. Fröhlich, break down this fence!”

He did so in a trice, and quickly dug a small grave with his short sword to bury the little corpse, covering it with earth and a large stone so that it couldn’t be dug up.

All this while, the house behind which we carried out this sad labour remained dark, its inhabitants no doubt running through the streets, committing more of the mayhem we’d already witnessed—or else asleep, dead tired from all that killing.

We arrived too late at Taverny’s lodgings. They had already been turned inside out and half burnt, the furniture outside in the street; on the staircase inside was the body of Taverny, his sword fallen from his hand, and three or four rogues lying dead around him, proof that the lieutenant had valiantly defended himself.

On the ground floor, we discovered a dozen pillagers at work, who were, from what I could tell, porters and butchers from the nearby Écorcherie quarter. These good-for-nothings, seeing that there were only four of us, and thinking we wanted to take their booty, hurled themselves at us, but, without helmets or any armour, they had no time to repent of their folly. Giacomi laid three of them out on the tiles with his sword; Fröhlich wreaked such carnage with his short sword that he broke the hilt; and Miroul and I dispatched the others, all except one who had the presence of mind to flee.

“Well, Fröhlich,” I laughed, “now you’ve got no sword!”

“My friend, this will suffice,” countered the good Swiss, grabbing a huge mace that one of the butchers had dropped, the kind that is normally used for slaughtering cattle. And balancing this heavy weapon on his outstretched hand as if it were a feather, he began flourishing it with amazing agility.

We found some bread and cheese in the kitchen that the pillagers had disdained in their search for more durable goods, and after I’d divided this meagre booty into four shares, we gobbled it up like hungry dogs without taking a breath or uttering a word. After which, Miroul went scrabbling about like a weasel in a henhouse, and found a flagon of wine that had miraculously escaped the pillagers’ notice.

We made quick work of that miracle, being so dry after our long nocturnal wanderings. Meanwhile, Giacomi suddenly noticed that the fellow who’d escaped was coming back with about forty of his fellows, all carrying picks and spikes, and all looking very determined to exact justice from us for the murder of their friends. We escaped
up a small spiral staircase, Fröhlich going first, which was lucky for us because the tower was dark and, in his haste, he banged his head on the trapdoor at the top, which burst open without hurting him in the least, so hard-headed are these Swiss from Berne. Using his mace, he broke through the door and we all burst onto the roof, while, beneath us, the rascals were screaming “To the cause!” loud enough to wake the dead. Meanwhile we traversed the half-burnt roof at great risk of breaking our necks or being fired at from below, and eventually reached a dormer window, which Fröhlich smashed with his mace and, risking life and limb, leapt through… landing in a loft piled high with sweet-smelling hay! We decided to hide out there for the rest of the day and busily hollowed out a nest for ourselves in the thickest part of the hay, where we stretched out our tired legs on this soft (but prickly) bed, and were almost asleep when suddenly we felt our bed giving way beneath us. Fröhlich gave a shout of surprise and disappeared. We hardly had time to gather our wits before we, too, slipped through the funnel he’d created, landing on top of him and the hay he’d dragged with him in the manger of a mule that was stabled there. She was so surprised to see us that she lost both her bray and her appetite, and backed to the rear of her stall—her soft eyes a thousand times more benevolent than those of any man we’d seen since the bells of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois had begun tolling those many hours ago.

Would you believe it? We began laughing! It would seem that joy is so deeply rooted in us and is so connected to our will to live that it cannot help but burst out of us at the slightest provocation, no matter how horrible the situation we believe we’re in.

“Well,” I suggested, “let’s use this old ladder to climb back up into the loft.”

“My brother,” said Giacomi, who was delicately removing hay from his hair, “I think we’d be better off here in the stable, hidden
behind these barrels, which, being empty, won’t attract those flies, any more than a flagon of vinegar would.”

“But why here rather than up there?”

“Well, Pierre, if you were those rascals from the Écorcherie, where would you look for fugitives? In the hay, surely? This hiding place is better simply because it’s less obvious.”

“’Sblood, you’re right,” I conceded, and, gathering up the hay that had fallen, we stuffed it behind the barrels to make a bed that would cushion us against the stone floor. Fröhlich was no help to us now, since he was whispering sweet words in the mule’s ears in his patois, while caressing them with his huge hands, no doubt because she reminded him of the mountains in Switzerland. We called him over when we’d finished his bed and he stretched out to his full length—which was considerable, not to mention his girth—with his mace by his side, and, looking very much like Hercules, he fell asleep in the blink of an eye, as peaceful as if he’d lain down on some grassy hillside in Berne.

Meanwhile, we undertook to place some barrels in front of a little door that opened into this part of the stable, so as not to be taken by surprise from the rear, the larger door to the stable being off to our right, beyond the manger where the mule had gone back to feeding. We agreed that each one of us would keep watch in turn, me first, then Miroul, Giacomi and finally the Swiss, our weapons unsheathed and tucked in the crooks of our arms like tender wenches.

Although I was comfortably stretched out and exhausted, I had no inclination to fall asleep, my mind rattled by all the horror I’d witnessed since Cossain had knocked on Coligny’s door and killed the poor La Bonne. I tried not to think about it so as not to suffer, and, fleeing the present, went back to thinking about all that had happened since I’d arrived in Paris, wondering about the rhyme or reason of all the joys and sorrows I’d experienced and if it would soon be my
turn to be thrown into the Seine, naked and drowning—a thought that brought me back to my present predicament, from which I so desperately wanted to escape.

At least I could take some comfort from the idea that my beloved Samson was safe and sound in Montfort. But even this idea wasn’t without its thorns, for I then began to fear that he might jeopardize his own safety if he learnt of the massacre in Paris, knowing that I was here. This fear made me angry at Dame Gertrude, since she’d gone off to Saint-Cloud to flirt with Quéribus, rather than returning to Montfort to be with my brother, where she could prevent him from any excesses to which his zeal exposed him.

I don’t know how long I was afflicted with these worries about Samson, which simply wouldn’t leave me but kept coming back to haunt me. In any case, such fears kept me feverishly awake, as did the image of the little child whom the bearded rogue had thrown into my arms after stabbing. But as these sad thoughts turned round and round like a top, the sun having now risen, as I could see through a crack in the stable walls, I heard some footsteps and some voices in the courtyard, and then someone rattled the little door that we’d barricaded. I woke my companions up, one by one, Fröhlich being the hardest to stir since he was so sound asleep, and, swords in hand, and all ready to spring, we gathered behind the barrels, our hearts beating madly.

Peeking out between two of the barrels, I saw the door on the side of the mangers open and admit forty knaves armed with pikes, spears and firearms, who found the presence of the mule very comical. Two of them untied her and led her away to sell her, they said, and then stand a round of drinks for all to celebrate this bargain at the Golden Horse tavern. However, the rascal who appeared to be the leader of these thugs—a tall braggart who wore a butcher’s knife in his belt—told them that before heading to the tavern he
wanted to search through the hay barn for the “Huguenot dogs” who’d killed his brothers; and, climbing up the ladder, the gang proceeded to thrust their swords into various parts of the hay loft, swearing by God and Mary that they’d have their “justice” with the heretics, severely disappointed that none of these thrusts emerged bloody from the hay.