Paris: The Novel (44 page)

And the streets had names befitting their condition:
Pute-y-Muse
, Lazy Whore;
Merdeuse
, Shit Street;
Tire-Boudin
, Cock Puller; and other names worse, far worse. And the people who lived there were whores, and thieves, and pickpockets, and did other things worse, far worse.

Jean Le Sourd was a large, strong man with a great mane of shaggy black hair. He sat at a wooden table in the middle of the tavern. At his table were several men, some who looked like murderers, but one of them, who had an aquiline face and a sallow complexion, looked as if he might be a defrocked priest or scholar. Standing behind Le Sourd was his son Richard, a ten-year-old boy, his face not yet hardened, but with a mop of black hair like his own.

A stooped man came through the door. He was tonsured, suggesting that he might be a cleric of some kind, and he moved with a curious motion, like a bobbing bird. He went straight to the central table and, taking something out from under his shirt, laid it in front of Le Sourd.

Le Sourd picked it up and examined it carefully. It was a pendant on a golden chain.

“Unusual,” said Le Sourd. He passed it across to the man who looked like a scholar. The scholar inspected it, remarked that it wasn’t from Paris and gave it back. Le Sourd turned to the stooping man: “We’ll have to find out what it’s worth. You’ll get your share.”

Those were the rules of Le Sourd’s kingdom. Whatever was stolen was brought to him. He found the market and gave the thief a share. Once or twice men had tried to bypass the system. One was found with his throat slit. Another disappeared.

The stooping man moved to the back of the room to join some of his fellows. Jean Le Sourd resumed his conversation with the scholar. And several minutes passed before the door of the tavern opened again.

This time however, as the newcomer entered, the buzz of conversation died down to a hush.

He was a young man. Twenty years old, perhaps. He had fair hair and blue eyes. He was wearing a short cloak and a sword that immediately proclaimed he was a noble. And the fact that he had entered such a place alone told everyone that he did not know Paris.

It might be dangerous to kill a noble, but the inhabitants of that quarter were no respecters of persons. One of the men nearest the door quietly rose, with a knife in his hand, and stood behind the visitor, awaiting a signal from Le Sourd.

At the same time, the stooping man at the back of the room shifted position slightly, so that he was in the shadows. But he spoke a word to his neighbor, who walked over to Le Sourd and whispered something in his ear.

Le Sourd looked at the intruder thoughtfully, while everyone waited. They all knew what the young man did not: that his chances of leaving the Rising Sun alive were not good. Not good at all.

Guy de Cygne was in Paris for only a week, and this was his second day. His parents had made him come and, from the moment he came through the Porte Saint-Jacques, he couldn’t wait to leave.

For Paris was rotten. It had been rotten a century ago when the Black Death came and killed nearly half its people. It was even more rotten now.

Worse, despite plague, famine and war, like a pestiferous plant, Paris had grown. On the Right Bank, they had built a new fortification line, hundreds of yards beyond the old wall of Philip Augustus, so that the Louvre was now well inside the city gates, and the former Temple too. Country lanes had turned into narrow streets, orchards into tenements, streams into open sewers. And two hundred thousand souls now dwelt in this dark, godforsaken city.

Had God truly forsaken Paris? Certainly. For over a century, God had forsaken France itself. And why? Few Frenchmen had any doubt.

Because of the Templar’s curse.

Young Guy de Cygne’s father had explained it to him when Guy was still a boy.

“After King Philip the Fair arrested the Templars, he tortured some of them for years. He got his puppet pope to disband the order all over Christendom. Finally, he took Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master—a man of unimpeachable character—and burned him at the stake. And as he burned, de Molay cursed the king and all who had destroyed the Templars.”

“And did it work?” Guy had asked.

“Certainly.”

Within the year, both the king and his pope were dead. But that was only the beginning. Within a few years, all King Philip’s sons were dead as well, and another branch of the family, the Valois, took over.

Even that was not enough. King Philip’s daughter had married the Plantagenet king of England, and soon the pushy Plantagenets were after the throne of France as well.

For more than a hundred years, an on-and-off war had continued. Before and after the Black Death, England’s longbowmen had smashed
the chivalry of France at the battles of Crécy and Poitiers. The Plantagenets had taken Aquitaine and half of Brittany. Scotland, France’s ancient ally, had deflected the English for a while. But at the end of the dismal fourteenth century, the king of France had gone mad; and in the chaos that ensued, the greedy Plantagenets came back once more, to see what else they could grab.

By the time Guy’s father was a boy, Henry V of England had smashed the French at Agincourt, and married the French king’s daughter. It seemed the Plantagenets would be kings of France as well.

And then, at last, God showed his mercy. Just as He had a thousand years before, when He inspired Saint Geneviève to save Paris from Attila the Hun, He sent the peasant girl Joan of Arc to inspire the men of France. Her career had been brief. But her legacy had lived on. Gradually the English had been pushed back. By now they were almost out.

So had the Templar’s curse been lifted from forsaken France? Had Christendom returned to its normal state?

Perhaps. At least there was now a single pope, in Rome. After seventy years of French popes at Avignon, then another half century of rival popes and antipopes, the Catholic schism was over.

But what was Paris? A sink of iniquity. A place of darkness. And judging by what he saw before him now, in the tavern of the Rising Sun, it did not seem to Guy de Cygne that there was any good day dawning.

Le Sourd gave a single rap upon the table, and the tavern fell silent. He gazed at the young noble.

“You are a stranger here, monsieur. Can we help you?” The tone was quiet, but it was clear that he was in charge.

“I am searching for something,” Guy replied calmly. He was not sure how much danger he was in, but ever since he was a little boy, his father had told him: “In front of animals, or a mob, never show fear.”

“What is it you seek?”

“A gold pendant. It was on a chain. It is not of great value, but it was given to me by my grandmother just before she died, and for that reason I would not lose it for all the world.”

“But why do you come here, monsieur, to the tavern of the Rising Sun, where there are only honest men and poets?”

If there was some ironic humor in this, the young man ignored it.

“I saw the man who robbed me. I followed him. And I am sure he came in here.”

“No one has come through the door in the last hour, except yourself,” Le Sourd answered blandly. “Isn’t that right?” he asked the room, and forty throats echoed his sentiments, until Le Sourd raised his hand and they instantly fell silent.

Young Guy de Cygne let his gaze travel around the tavern. It was hard to see into the shadows.

“You will not mind, then, if I satisfy myself that the man I seek has not slipped in by some other entrance,” he replied coolly.

Le Sourd gazed at him. This young aristocrat might be a stranger, but he could not fail to realize that he was at their mercy. The cool effrontery, the reckless courage of the fellow appealed to the ruler of thieves.

“Please do so,” he said.

Guy de Cygne moved swiftly around the big room. He knew he might be about to die, but he could not go back now. In the shadows, he found the stooping man.

“This is him,” he said. “He’s tonsured like a priest, but this is him.” He’d heard there were cutpurses and other rogues in Paris who tonsured themselves in the hope of being tried by the protective Church courts instead of the harsher provost. He assumed this fellow must be one of them.

“Connard!”
Le Sourd called out to the stooping man. “Let this gentleman search you.”

The stooping man submitted. Guy de Cygne found nothing.

“This man of God has been here all day,” declared Le Sourd. “But I can think of others in the quarter who resemble him. It must have been one of them.” He paused. And now his voice became soft and dangerous. “I hope you will not call me a liar, monsieur.”

Guy de Cygne had been made a fool of. He knew it and they knew it. But there could be no mistaking Le Sourd’s meaning: call him a liar in this den of iniquity, and he’d be dead.

Yet he must retain some honor.

“I have no reason to call you a liar,” he answered calmly. He moved carefully to a place where he could draw his sword and use it. If they attacked him, he could probably kill two or three before they brought him down. The men in the room noticed, but nobody moved.

And now Le Sourd had an idea. He glanced at his son, who was watching carefully. Richard knew that his father’s word was law. He knew that
his father could kill this young noble if he chose. This was his father’s power.

Should he show the boy something even better? Should he humiliate this noble, make him apologize to the stooped man before he left? The young noble might refuse, in which case he’d have to kill him. Or he might accept and leave with his tail between his legs. But either way, it was a petty gesture, unworthy of a father who, in his own way, still wanted to be a hero to his son.

No. He would show the boy his father’s magnificence. For wasn’t he a monarch in his own small kingdom? And weren’t the great nobles men like himself, but on a larger scale?

“Perhaps I may be able to help you, monsieur. I invite you to sit at my table.”

Guy de Cygne stared at him. This was obviously a trap. He’d be unable to see behind him, or to draw his sword. The quickest way to get his throat cut. Le Sourd read his thoughts.

“You are my guest, monsieur, and under my protection. It would be an insult to refuse me.”

Still de Cygne hesitated. But then the scholarly-looking man sitting on Le Sourd’s right came to his aid.

“You may safely sit, sir,” he said in a voice that was clearly educated. “And I advise you to do so.”

Thinking that this might be the last thing he did, Guy de Cygne sat down in the place offered, opposite Le Sourd, with half the tavern behind him.

Le Sourd ordered his son, like a young squire, to pour their guest a goblet of wine.

“I am Jean, called Le Sourd,” he introduced himself. “This gentleman”—he indicated the scholar—“is my friend Master François Villon. He is a notable poet, his uncle is a professor at the university”—he grinned—“and he has twice been banished for murder.”

“Which I did not commit,” said the poet.

“Which he did not commit,” Le Sourd continued. “So you see, monsieur, that you are in the company of distinguished and honest men.” He glanced at young Richard. “And this young fellow who poured your wine is my son.”

The name of Villon meant nothing to Guy de Cygne. He noticed that the poet had just peeled an apple with a long, sharp dagger which rested
on the table. He suspected that the dagger had been used for less domestic purposes. He gave a faint nod to them all.

“I am Guy de Cygne, from the valley of the Loire.”

Le Sourd glanced at Villon.

“I’ve heard the name,” the poet remarked. “Noble family.”

Le Sourd was satisfied. It was the first time a noble had sat at his table. Now he’d let Richard see that his father knew how to conduct himself with an aristocrat.

“There are many fine estates in the valley of the Loire,” Le Sourd remarked as he handed the young man a dish of sweetmeats.

“And many, like ours, that have been ruined,” de Cygne replied frankly.

“That is unfortunate. May we ask how that came about?”

It was none of this evil man’s business, Guy de Cygne thought. But situated as he was, he may as well play along, so he answered honestly.