Heretic Dawn (69 page)

Alas, the cousin was not so tolerant. As soon as he opened the door and saw Florine, he slammed it in her face, despite her pleas not to leave her out in the street alone and abandoned. In response to her cries, this zealous papist opened an upstairs window and showered her with insults and threats. It wasn’t long before other windows were thrown open and housewives began screaming “Kill! Kill!” and I realized that we couldn’t linger here for long without having the entire parish after us.

We left, urging our horses into a trot, winding our way through a series of unfamiliar streets until we reached the rue Hautefeuille, which was completely quiet, so we stopped there. Florine was pressed into Miroul’s back, crying hot tears, her arms clasped tightly around his chest.

“Florine,” I asked, coming up beside them, “have you no other relative you can stay with?”

“Alas, no, Monsieur!” she sobbed. “The Lord called my parents and my aunt. Oh, Monsieur, what will I do now? Where will I go? Monsieur and Madame de La Place were the only family I had.”

“Monsieur,” said Miroul, “we can’t leave the poor wench alone in the streets of this hateful city to be killed—or worse—by these fanatics! I beg you to let her come with us, and cast her lot with ours.”

“Oh, Miroul,” sighed Florine, her tears ceasing immediately, and she held him so tightly you couldn’t have slipped a pin between them.

“Miroul,” I cautioned, “this is no casual thing, to try to save a wench when we’re trying to escape ourselves!”

But Miroul had such an urgent and beseeching look in his eyes—he who was ordinarily so light-hearted—that I understood that this was indeed not a casual request at all, but a wholehearted and honest one. Glancing at Giacomi, I could see from his smile that he’d sensed between these two a tender attachment and not just a passing attraction. “And yet,” I thought, “can we really take along a wench when we’re on the run? In the midst of such dangers?” And what a risk she was for us, since she was the weak link in our chain, knowing neither how to ride, how to run nor how to fight—a tender burden for Miroul, but a burden nonetheless, one who would certainly slow us down. On the other hand, how could I refuse Miroul, who’d so many times saved my life? And, what’s more, hadn’t I promised Monsieur de La Place that I’d make sure his chambermaid was safe? Where else could she possibly go if we refused to take her?

Unable to make up my mind in the urgency of the moment, I decided not to decide immediately, and so I said, smiling at my gentle valet:

“Let’s get through the city gates first. Then we’ll see.”

Miroul returned my smile with such immense gratitude and joy that I couldn’t help feeling very moved.

“Let’s be off!” I cried. “Let’s see if we can get through the walls of this cruel city and out of this trap!”

But this time, Miroul failed to guide us in the right direction, and we ended up back in the rue Hautefeuille, heading towards the Cordeliers convent, where we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a great procession of women, who were yelling and shouting and leading a group of Huguenot women to the church so that they could convert them on the spot. Since our horses couldn’t take a step in this melee, we were forced to watch this strange scene. The great doors of the Cordeliers were wide open, and on the high altar, illuminated by hundreds of candles, was the idol that papists call the Holy Sacrament, before which these Furies wanted the unhappy women to throw themselves on the ground and abjure their faith. Some of these, in particular those who were holding small children in their arms, consented to renounce their faith, no doubt, I believe, to protect their offspring from pain and death. Others, however, stubbornly refused, and were thrown onto carts, stripped and dragged to the statue of the former king St Louis (which stands at the entrance to the convent gates), where they were beaten, scratched and trampled underfoot by bunches of the parish witches, who made such hideous cries, whistles and ululations as to curdle your blood, and, from what I could tell, abandoned their victims to their heresy only after they thought they were dead.

I don’t need to describe the terror with which poor Florine watched this scene, imagining herself in the place of these poor martyrs and
dismembered by these hags, and pressed her face into Miroul’s back as a chick might seek comfort under a hen’s feathers. My gentle valet was grinding his teeth, and for once his brown eye was more angry than his blue one.

“Easy does it, Miroul,” I cautioned. “Get hold of yourself! Let’s get out of this buzzing swarm!”

So the four of us began to move backwards on our horses, their large hindquarters opening the way through the crowd, until we succeeded in emerging from these screaming harpies and reached the rue du Paon. From there we made our way to the rue de l’Éperon, where we found calm again, and then to the rue des Arcs,
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which wasn’t so peaceful: just as we reached it we heard the noise of carriage wheels on the pavement, and a travelling coach passed by, whose curtains were closed tightly, and which was escorted by thirty horsemen in battle dress, all of them with swords or pistols in their hands. And though all of these horsemen displayed the Lorraine cross on their caps and the coat of arms of the Guise family on their caparisons, they were having a hard time maintaining the respect of the mob, who suspected that this was some prominent Huguenot who was disguised as a member of the Guise household, and were swarming around the coach shouting “To arms! To arms! To Madame la Cause!” Some of them ran right in front of the horses and seemed not to be discouraged by the blows bestowed on their backs by the horsemen.

I immediately realized that this was our chance to escape! Having no doubt that this procession would be passing under the drawbridge at the Buccy gate, I galloped up to its rear, crying “Long live Guise!” I was even able to come to the aid of the valet who was driving a cartful of travel cases at the tail of the procession, arriving just in time to fend off a couple of rogues who would otherwise have knocked him
from his saddle. Finding himself safely surrounded by four fellows, the driver, who was an older man with a pleasant and open face, thanked me, but couldn’t say more, because we were now assailed by the mob, who began throwing stones, and by the housewives in their windows, who were launching all manner of missiles in our direction: garbage, tiles and even flowerpots—projectiles we had great trouble dodging, the old valet being so badly hit by a frying pan that it was all I could do to maintain him in his saddle.

Thank God, the carriage was now passing onto the drawbridge, though still fiercely beset by the mob, and the bridge guard, luckily seeming less suspicious of the Guise coat of arms than the crowd had been, allowed the coach to pass; but when it was our turn, an archer lowered his pike and demanded:

“Whose trunks are these?”

“They’re the Dame de Belesbat’s,” affirmed the old valet. “We’re going as far as Étampes.”

“Well, by God, these fellows aren’t! They’re not in livery!”

“Oh, yes they are!” yelled the valet. “They’re our men, and we hired them yesterday, since they’re strong and good swordsmen!”

“Of that I have no doubt!” said the archer, seeing how fierce we looked, and raised the bar to let us pass, being more concerned with controlling the mob, who wished to “escort” us all the way to the Faubourg Saint-Germain. ’Sblood! We managed to leave these bloodthirsty villains behind as they argued with the gatekeepers, and galloped off, rejoining the procession quickly, and were very glad to be included in their party when we passed the customs house at the Croix Rouge, whose officers were more interested in interrogating the villagers and merchants who were accustomed to bringing their provender into Paris.

I thanked our ancient valet profusely, who was glad to have been of service given the help we’d provided him, and he refused my
pourboire, saying that, without me, he would have been lying on the pavement in the rue des Arcs, his throat slit by the mob, and stripped of his earthly possessions. He added that he suspected we had our own reasons for leaving Paris, but he believed we were too honest for any enquiry about them to be necessary.

“My friend,” I said, “may I ask who this Dame de Belesbat is that you’re following to Étampes?”

“You mean you don’t know?” he said. “She’s the only daughter of Michel de L’Hospital, and though he’s Catholic, the people hate him as much as if he were a heretic because he supported the heretics when he was chancellor. And you, Monsieur,” he asked as delicately as he could, “will you follow us as far as Étampes?”

“I’m afraid not. We are stopping at Saint-Cloud, where we have some friends.”

Our valet looked very much relieved that we would be leaving him so soon; he must have been worried, I supposed, that some of the horsemen, who had turned around in their saddles to give us suspicious looks, might have asked us to identify ourselves if they’d had the leisure to stop and did not have to provide escort for the coach.

Finally, the first windmills of Saint-Cloud came into view, turning their blue blades in the evening breeze, and, crossing the Seine again, which I couldn’t look at without shuddering, the coach slowed down to a walk to climb the steep hill that led up to the village, where, extending a warm right hand to my old valet and smiling broadly—a smile he returned without a word but with great feeling—I dismounted in front of the church. Looking around, I saw one of those little good-for-nothings whom in Paris they call “go tell ’ems” since their masters send them back and forth bearing messages, and said:

“A sol for you, young man, if you can lead us to the house of Monsieur de Quéribus.”

The boy reflected a moment, looking at each of us in turn with great curiosity. After which, finding, no doubt, that our clothes were too dirty and dusty and our cheeks too unshaven, he leapt up onto the porch of the church and, with a foot on the railing to put him out of reach, he said:

“Monsieur, I’m not sure. I wouldn’t want to get beaten for my imprudence. Why are you looking for Monsieur de Quéribus?”

“I am Pierre de Siorac.”

“Pierre de Siorac!” cried the boy, his freckled face breaking into a smile. “Rue de la Ferronnerie! Lodged with Maître Recroche? Well, Monsieur! I brought you a message! Good gentleman, give me a hand and the use of your stirrup: we’ll go faster with me behind you on your horse than running in front of you!”

The lad had only to show himself: his livery was the shibboleth that opened the heavily barricaded portal of the lodgings—a sort of small chateau with unusually thick walls, the thick door doubled by a portcullis, which I heard with enormous relief close behind us with a crash of iron. Normally one might feel imprisoned by such bars, but for me in my predicament this was a sure and safe haven, one that already had the promise of Mespech, my beautiful crenellated nest, Barberine’s capacious lap! So perilous was our flight through Paris, harassed from one street to the next by the cruel mob, that I would have taken refuge in a lion’s cage! I’m not saying that the wild beast would have welcomed me, but the bars of his cage would have at least protected me from the world of men.

“Good gentleman,” said the little freckled valet, wrinkling his nose, “please wait here. I will let my master know you’re here.”

And this said, he flew up the stairs more airily than a bird and disappeared. I looked at my companions, but they just stood there staring at me, unable and unwilling to say a word, so drained were we by hunger, thirst and fatigue, our present understanding blunted by
the horrors we’d seen our fill of. Nor could we quite believe that we were really safe, fearful that the hunting cries might be heard again at any moment, putting us to flight.

Suddenly the door burst open behind us and Quéribus bounded up the steps towards us, perfumed, rings on his fingers, a pearl dangling from his right ear, shimmering in his yellow satin doublet, his smooth face beaming with friendship—though, when he saw how awful I looked, he wouldn’t embrace me for all the world.

“Well, Pierre,” he exclaimed, “my brother, myself! What have you done to yourself, all dirtied, disgusting and bloody! But you’re alive, thank God, you’re alive!” But when he went to embrace me, the stench of my clothes so repulsed him that he stopped in his tracks. “
Maestro
Giacomi,” he said, stepping imperceptibly backwards, “I am your servant. Miroul, good day to you, gentle servant. But Pierre, are these two in your company?”

“Yes indeed, they are!”

“Welcome, then, to the giant and the blonde wench!” he said with a gracious gesture of his bejewelled hand. “Well, Pierre,” he laughed as he backed away “by my faith, you stink! I could die! Would you like to bathe?”

“And eat, if you please! Eat and drink!”

“’Sblood! You’ll have all that and more!” cried Quéribus, his voice ascending to the highest notes. “Call the chambermaids! Let’s get water on to boil! Let’s pamper our guests! And prepare the blue room for Monsieur de Siorac!”

“Ah, Monsieur!” I said. “A thousand thanks! But we can’t stay. As soon as I’ve caught my breath I must gallop to Montfort! I’ve been so worried about Samson!”

“Well, you can stop worrying! Gertrude has already seen to that!”

“What! She’s not here?”

“Ah, my friend, you misjudge her!” laughed Quéribus. “As smelly as you are, she would already have embraced you with arms as large as her heart if she’d been here! As soon as she heard about the massacre in Paris, she rushed off to Montfort to prevent your pretty Samson from heading to the capital to save you!”

“Which he certainly would have done!” I cried. “And how did she dissuade him from this?”

“By assuring him that you were safe here with me!”

“Well, good for Gertrude! There’s one white lie that’ll be worth more in heaven that the indulgences from ten trips to Rome!”

“As long as the Lord belongs to the reformed religion!” said Quéribus merrily, which confirmed that for him the Churches were of as little consequence as the pearl that dangled from his pretty ear. And, all in all, though I found his scepticism a wee bit scandalous according to the strictest Huguenot standards, it was, after all, a minor sin compared with the fanaticism I’d seen and experienced in Paris.