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Though it was summer, the dragons were in need of fire. They burnt all the furniture except that which they needed for their own use. Then they began to burn the finest wood of Pierre Chaigne, carpenter, widower. Lengths of weathered oak from trees cut by his father twenty years ago, prime sections of elm and ash, all were consumed by fire. To increase Pierre Chaigne’s indignity and misery, he was himself made to saw the timber into combustible lengths. When the dragons observed that this fine wood burnt more slowly than they had hoped, they ordered Pierre Chaigne and his sons to build
a great bonfire beside the workshed, and instructed them to keep the fire alight until all Pierre Chaigne’s wood was consumed.

As Pierre Chaigne stood looking at the mound of ashes which was all that remained of his future as a carpenter, the officer said to him, ‘God’s help is nearer than the door.’ Pierre Chaigne did not understand these words.

Next the soldiers took all Pierre Chaigne’s tools, and those of his son Henri, and sold them to members of the King’s religion. At first Pierre Chaigne felt his misery lift, for having deprived him of his timber the soldiers did him no further harm depriving him of his tools; and besides, the sale of all his fine implements might even bring in money enough to pay the tallage and so make the soldiers depart. However, the dragons sold Pierre Chaigne’s tools not for their value, but for a price so low that no one could resist buying them, and then kept the money for themselves. François Danjon, miller, widower, member of the King’s religion, who had bought several of the instruments, returned them to Pierre Chaigne under cover of darkness. Pierre Chaigne wrapped them in oiled cloths and buried them in the woods against a better day.

It was at this time that a pedlar, aged nineteen, passing through the town on foot from the direction of the Cherveux, was seized by several dragons and interrogated. He had the suspicious accent of the south. After being beaten, he admitted to membership of the cult; after being beaten further, he admitted that he desired to abjure. He was taken before the priest, who gave him absolution and copied his name into the register of abjuration. The pedlar made a mark beside his name, and two of the dragons, proud of their zeal and trusting that it would be recompensed, signed as
witnesses. The pedlar was sent on his way without his goods. Henri Chaigne, aged fifteen, watched the beating, which was done in the public square; and as the victim was taken off to the church, a dragon whom he had not before seen said to him in the coarse language of the north, ‘What matter the road provided it lead to Paradise?’ Henri Chaigne did not understand what was being said, but recognised the word Paradise.

At first conversions came quickly among the old, the feeble, the solitary, and those infants who had been forcibly beguiled by gaudy display. But after a few weeks the number of abjurations diminished. This was often the pattern, and it was known that the dragons frequently gave way to excesses in order that the conversions continue.

When the tallage had first been announced, there were those who had sought to flee, who had heard that it was possible to reach St Nazaire and discover the promised land elsewhere. Two families had left the town in this manner, whereupon members of the cult had been instructed by the Intendant to pull down and destroy with fire the houses they had left behind, whereupon the unpaid tallage was not forgotten but transferred to those who remained. It was always the way. When a heretic Converted to the King’s religion, his tallage was divided among the community of heretics, and their tax thus became even larger as their means of payment diminished. This led some to despair; but others, having lost everything, were made the more determined not to lose that faith on whose account they had already lost everything. Thus the booted missionaries met with more resistance as their work continued. This too was known and expected.

It was not long after Pierre Chaigne’s instruments had
been sold that Anne Rouget, his mother’s sister, fell into sickness and became the first member of the family to abjure. When the dragons saw that she was weak and feverish, they yielded the bed to her and slept upon the floor. This chivalry was deliberate, for no sooner was she positioned in the bed than the soldiers declared her sickening unto death and summoned the priest of the King’s religion. It was established by royal ordinance that when a protestant heretic was dying, the priest had the right to visit the deathbed and offer the suffering one an opportunity to return in death to the Holy Mother Church. This visit, which the family were forbidden to prevent, was to take place in the presence of a magistrate; and the priest was not allowed to use any duress when attempting to obtain a conversion. However, such terms and conditions were not always strictly followed. The magistrate being occupied elsewhere, the priest was accompanied into the Chaigne household by the officer of the dragons. The family was expelled into the day’s heat, two dragons guarded the door, and at the end of six hours Anne Rouget had been received back into the Church where she had spent the first thirty years of her life. The priest departed with satisfaction, and that night the soldiers reclaimed the bed as their own and returned Anne Rouget to the floor.

‘Why?’ asked Pierre Chaigne.

‘Leave me in peace,’ replied Anne Rouget.

‘Why?’

‘One or the other is true.’

She did not speak beyond that, and died two days later, though whether from her fever, her despair or her apostasy Pierre Chaigne was unable to determine.

The child Daniel, aged nine, was the next to abjure. He was taken to the church of the King’s religion, where it was
explained to him that Anne Rouget, who had done the service of a mother for him, was awaiting him in Heaven, and that he would surely see her again one day unless he clung to heresy and chose to burn in Hell. Then he was shown fine vestments and the gilt reliquary containing the little finger of Saint Boniface; he smelt the incense and examined the monsters carved between the choir-stalls - monsters which he would doubtless meet in person if he freely chose to burn in Hell. And the following Sunday, during the Mass, Daniel Chaigne publicly abjured the cult of the temple. His conversion was received with great and impressive solemnity, and afterwards he was much petted by the women of the King’s religion. The following Sunday Pierre Chaigne and his elder son tried to prevent the dragons taking Daniel Chaigne to the Mass; they were beaten and the boy was taken none the less. He did not return, and Pierre Chaigne was informed by the priest that he had been placed beyond the reach of treason in the Jesuit College on the other side of the Montagne Noire, and that his education there would be at the expense of the family until such time as they chose to repudiate their heresy.

Only the obstinate ones now remained among the heretics. It was at this point that the Intendant named as Collector of the Tallage the leading Protestant landowner of the region, Pierre Allonneau, sieur de Beaulieu, fermier de Coutaud. It became his legal duty instantly to pay the accumulated tax owed by all members of the cult since the tallage was announced. This he was unable to do, but being reduced at once to ruin, was no longer able to help in secrecy the obstinate ones.

The three dragons had been within the Chaigne household for two months. All the chickens and both the pigs had
been eaten; all but a little of the furniture had been burnt; Pierre Chaigne’s timber had been consumed with the exception of a rough pile of worthless lumber at the back of his shed. Others in the town who might have supported the family were now equally destitute. Each day Pierre Chaigne and his son Henri were obliged to traverse the woods and fields to obtain food. Two of the soldiers came with them, leaving the officer to guard Marthe. It was difficult to find enough food to satisfy six mouths, and the two dragons offered no assistance in the chase of a rabbit or the search for mushrooms. When there was not enough food for the soldiers to eat until they belched, the Chaigne family went hungry.

It was on their return from one of these daily expeditions that Pierre Chaigne and Henri Chaigne discovered that the officer had taken Marthe Chaigne, aged thirteen, into the bed with him. This sight caused Pierre Chaigne much anger and despair; only his religion prevented him from seeking that very same night the death of the officer.

The following day the officer chose to accompany the two heretics on the search for food, and one of the ordinary soldiers stayed behind to guard Marthe. This soldier also took her into the bed with him. No explanation was offered, and none was required. Marthe Chaigne refused to talk to her father or her brother about what had been done.

After nine days of seeing his sister taken as a whore, Henri Chaigne abjured his faith. But this action did not prevent the dragons from continuing to take his sister as a whore. Consequently, at the celebration of Mass the following Sunday, Henri Chaigne spat out of his mouth the holy wafer and the holy wine he had received from the priest. For this blasphemy against the body and blood of Our Lord, Henri Chaigne was duly tried by the Bishop’s court, condemned to
death and handed over to the soldiers who burnt him with fire.

Afterwards, the three soldiers separated Pierre Chaigne and his daughter, not permitting them to talk to one another. Marthe kept the house and whored for the dragons; her father hunted for nourishment and cut wood in the forest, since the autumn air was now turning cold. Pierre Chaigne, who had suffered greatly, was resolved to resist apostasy even unto death. His daughter was equally certain in her faith, and underwent her daily ordeal with the fortitude of a martyr.

One morning, after the officer had taken her into the bed with him but treated her less roughly for once, she received a brutal surprise. The officer had been accustomed to talk to her in the rough language of the north while he used her as a whore, to shout words and afterwards to mutter quietly. She had become familiar with this, and at times it helped her bear the suffering more easily, for she was able to imagine that the man who spoke these words from the north was himself as distant as the north.

Now, as he still lay athwart her, he said, ‘You are brave, young girl.’

It took her a moment to realise that he had spoken her own language. He raised himself on an elbow and shunted off her. ‘I admire that,’ he went on, still in her language, ‘and so I want to spare you further suffering.’

‘You speak our tongue.’

‘Yes.’

‘So you have understood what we have said in the house since you came here?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the others too?’

‘We have been in your country many years.’

Marthe Chaigne was silent. She remembered what her brother Henri had openly said about the dragons, and about the priest of the King’s religion. Her father had revealed where the cult was to be celebrated, little suspecting the consequences. She herself had uttered words of hatred.

‘And because I wish to spare you suffering,’ the officer continued, ‘I shall explain what will happen.’

What could happen? More pain of this kind. Worse. Torture. Death. No doubt. But then Paradise, surely.

‘What will happen is that you will become with child. And then we shall testify that your father used you as a whore in our presence. And you will be taken before the court, your father and you, and there condemned. You will be burnt to death, you and your father, as also will be the child of this incestuous union within you.’

The soldier paused, and allowed the rigid girl fully to understand what he had said. ‘You will abjure. You will abjure, and thereby you will save your father’s life.’

‘My father would rather die.’

‘Your father does not have the choice. Only you have the choice whether your father dies or not. So you will abjure.’

Marthe Chaigne lay motionless in the bed. The soldier got up, adjusted his clothing, and sat at the table waiting for her to agree. He was wise enough in his profession not to add unnecessary words.

Eventually the girl said, ‘Where do you come from?’

The soldier laughed at the unexpectedness of the question. ‘From the north.’

‘Where?
Where?
’

‘A country called Ireland.’

‘Where is that?’

‘Beyond the water. Near to England.’

‘Where is that?’

‘Beyond the water too. In the north.’

The girl in the bed remained with her head turned away from the soldier. ‘And why do you come so far to persecute us?’

‘You are heretics. Your heresy endangers the Holy Mother Church. All, everywhere, have a duty to defend Her.’

‘Thirty pieces of silver.’

The officer appeared close to anger, but kept in mind the purpose of the day.

‘If you have not heard of England then you have not heard of Cromwell.’

‘Who is he?’

‘He is dead now.’

‘Is he your King? Did he recruit you? To come here and persecute us?’

‘No. On the contrary.’ The soldier began to remember things it did no good to remember, things which had fixed his life for ever, many years ago. Childhood, its sights, and its terrifying sounds. The harsh voices of England. ‘Yes, I suppose he did. He recruited me, you could say.’

‘Then I curse his name and all his family.’

The officer sighed. Where could he begin? There was so much to unravel, and he was an old man now, past forty. The child did not even know where England was. Where could he begin? ‘Yes,’ said the officer wearily. ‘You curse his name. I curse his name too. We both curse his name. And on Sunday you will abjure.’

That Sunday, while incense stung her nostrils and her eye was assailed by the whorish colours of the King’s religion, Marthe Chaigne, aged thirteen, her heart burdened by the
sorrow she was causing her father and by the knowledge that she would never be permitted to explain, abjured her faith. She made a mark on the register beside her name, and the officer of the dragons signed as witness. After he had signed, he looked up at the priest and said, in his own language, ‘What matter the road provided it lead to Paradise?’

Marthe Chaigne was taken that day to the Union Chrétienne on the other side of the Montagne Noire, where she would be educated by the good sisters. The cost of her education would be added to the tallage owed by Pierre Chaigne.