A Column of Fire

by Ken Follett

  The bang seemed to come from the river bank they had just left. Pierre and Le Pin turned together. Although it was evening, Pierre saw the figure at the water’s edge quite clearly. It was that of a small man in his middle twenties with a dark complexion and a tuft of peaked hair in the middle of his forehead. A moment later he ran off, and Pierre saw that he clutched a pistol in his hand.

  Duke Scarface collapsed.

  Le Pin cursed and bent over him.

  Pierre could see that the duke had taken a bullet in the back. It had been an easy shot from a short range, helped by the duke’s light-coloured clothing.

  ‘He’s alive,’ said Le Pin. He looked again at the bank, and Pierre guessed he was calculating whether he could wade or swim the few yards back and catch the shooter before he got away. Then they heard hoof beats, and realized that the man must have tethered a horse not far off. All their mounts were already on the opposite bank. Le Pin could not catch him now. The shooting had been planned well.

  Le Pin shouted at the ferryman: ‘Forward, go forward!’ The man began to pole his raft more energetically, no doubt fearful that he might be accused of being in on the plot.

  The wound was just below the duke’s right shoulder. The ball had probably missed the heart. Blood was oozing onto the buff-coloured doublet – a good sign, Pierre knew, for dead men did not bleed.

  All the same, the duke might not recover. Even superficial wounds could become infected, causing fever and often death. Pierre could have wept. How could they lose their heroic leader when they were on the point of winning the war?

  As the ferry approached the far bank, the men waiting there shouted a storm of questions. Pierre ignored them. He had questions of his own. What would happen if Scarface died?

  Young Henri would become duke at the age of twelve, the same age as King Charles IX, and too young to take any part in the civil war. Cardinal Charles was too far away; Cardinal Louis was too drunk. The Guise family would lose all their influence in a moment. Power was terrifyingly fragile.

  Pierre fought down despair and made himself continue to think ahead logically. With the Guise family helpless, Queen Caterina would make peace with Gaspard de Coligny and revive the edict of toleration, curse her. The Bourbons and the Montmorencys would be back in favour and the Protestants would be allowed to sing their psalms as loudly as they liked. Everything Pierre had striven for over the past five years would be wiped out.

  Again he suppressed the feeling of hopeless despair. What could he do?

  The first necessity was to preserve his position as key advisor to the family.

  As soon as the raft touched the far bank, Pierre started giving orders. In a crisis, frightened people would obey anyone who sounded as if they knew what they were doing. ‘The duke must be carried to the château as quickly as possible without jolting him,’ he said. ‘Any bumping may cause him to bleed to death. We need a flat board.’ He looked around. If necessary, they could break up the timbers of the little ferry. Then he spotted a cottage nearby and pointed to its entrance. ‘Knock that front door off its hinges and put him on that. Then six men can carry him.’

  They hurried to obey, glad to be told what to do.

  Gaston Le Pin was not as easily bossed around, so to him Pierre gave suggestions rather than orders. ‘I think you should take one or two men and horses, go back across the river, and chase the assassin. Did you get a good look at him?’

  ‘Small, dark, about twenty-five, with a small tuft of hair at the front.’

  ‘That’s what I saw, too.’

  ‘I’ll get after him.’ Le Pin turned to his henchmen. ‘Rasteau, Brocard, put three horses back on the ferry.’

  Pierre said: ‘I need the best horse. Which of these is fastest?’

  ‘The duke’s charger, Cannon, but why do you need him? I’m the one who has to chase the shooter.’

  ‘The duke’s recovery is our priority. I’m going to ride ahead to the château to send for surgeons.’

  Le Pin saw the sense of that. ‘Very well.’

  Pierre mounted the stallion and urged it on. He was not an expert horseman, and Cannon was high-spirited, but, fortunately, the beast was tired after a long day, and submitted wearily to Pierre’s will. It trotted off, and Pierre cautiously urged it into a canter.

  He reached the château in a few minutes. He leaped off Cannon and ran into the hall. ‘The duke has been wounded!’ he shouted. ‘He will be here shortly. Send at once for the royal surgeons! Then prepare a bed downstairs for the duke.’ He had to repeat the orders several times to the stunned servants.

  The duchess, Anna d’Este, came hurrying down the stairs, having heard the commotion. The wife of Scarface was a plain-looking Italian woman of thirty-one. The marriage had been arranged, and the duke was no more faithful than other men of wealth and power; but, all the same, he was fond of Anna and she of him.

  Young Henri was right behind her, a handsome boy with fair curly hair.

  Duchess Anna had never spoken to Pierre or even acknowledged his existence, so it was important to present himself to her as an authoritative figure who could be relied upon in this crisis. He bowed and said: ‘Madame, young Monsieur, I’m sorry to tell you that the duke is hurt.’

  Henri looked frightened. Pierre remembered him at the age of eight, complaining that he was considered too young to take part in the jousting. He had spirit, and might become a worthy successor to his warrior father, but that day was far off. Now the boy said in a voice of panic: ‘How? Where? Who did it?’

  Pierre ignored him and spoke to his mother. ‘I have sent for the royal surgeons, and I have ordered your servants to prepare a bed here on the ground floor so that the duke will not have to be carried upstairs.’

  She said: ‘How bad is the injury?’

  ‘He has been shot in the back, and when I left him he was unconscious.’

  The duchess gave a sob, then controlled herself. ‘Where is he? I must go to him.’

  ‘He will be here in minutes. I ordered the men to improvise a stretcher. He should not be jolted.’

  ‘How did this happen? Was there a battle?’

  Henri said: ‘My father would never be shot in the back during a battle!’

  ‘Hush,’ said his mother.

  Pierre said: ‘You are quite right, Prince Henri. Your father never fails to face the enemy in battle. I have to tell you there was treachery.’ He recounted how the assassin had hidden himself, then fired as soon as the ferry left the shore. ‘I sent a party of men-at-arms to chase after the villain.’

  Henri said tearfully: ‘When we catch him he must be flayed alive!’

  In a flash, Pierre saw that if Scarface died, the catastrophe could yet be turned to advantage. Slyly he said: ‘Flayed, yes – but not before he tells us whose orders he is following. I predict that the man who pulled the trigger will turn out to be a nobody. The real criminal is whoever sent him.’

  Before he could say whom he had in mind, the duchess said it for him, spitting the name in hatred: ‘Gaspard de Coligny.’

  Coligny was certainly the prime suspect, with Antoine de Bourbon dead and his brother Louis a captive. But the truth hardly mattered. Coligny would make a useful hate figure for the Guise family – and especially for the impressionable boy whose father had just been shot. Pierre’s plan was firming up in his mind when shouts from outside told him the duke had arrived.

  Pierre stayed close to the duchess as the duke was brought in and settled in a bed. Every time Anna expressed a wish, Pierre repeated it loudly as an order, giving the impression that he had become her right-hand man. She was too distraught to care what he might be scheming, and in fact appeared glad to have someone beside her who seemed to know what needed to be done.

  Scarface had recovered consciousness, and was able to speak to his wife and son. The surgeons arrived. They said that the wound did not appear fatal, but everyone knew how easily such wounds turned lethally putrescent, and no one rejoiced yet.

  Gaston L
e Pin and his two henchmen returned at midnight empty-handed. Pierre got Le Pin in a corner of the hall and said: ‘Resume the search in the morning. There’ll be no battle tomorrow: the duke will not recover overnight. That means you’ll have plenty of soldiers to help you. Start early and spread your net wide. We must find the little man with the tuft.’

  Le Pin nodded agreement.

  Pierre stayed at the duke’s bedside all night.

  When dawn broke, he met Le Pin in the hall again. ‘If you catch the villain, I will be in charge of the interrogation,’ he said. ‘The duchess has decreed it.’ This was not true, but Le Pin believed it. ‘Lock him up somewhere nearby then come to me.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Pierre saw him off with Rasteau and Brocard. They would recruit all the helpers they needed along the way.

  Pierre went to bed soon afterwards. He would need to be quick-witted and sure-footed over the next few days.

  Le Pin woke him at midday. ‘I’ve got him,’ he said with satisfaction.

  Pierre got up immediately. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Says his name is Jean de Poltrot, sieur de Méré.’

  ‘I trust you didn’t bring him here to the château.’

  ‘No – young Henri might try to kill him. He’s in chains at the priest’s house.’

  Pierre dressed quickly and followed Le Pin to the nearby village. As soon as he was alone with Poltrot, he said: ‘It was Gaspard de Coligny, wasn’t it, who ordered you to kill Duke Scarface?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Poltrot.

  It soon became evident that Poltrot would say anything. He was a type Pierre had come across before, a fantasist.

  Poltrot probably had worked as some kind of spy for the Protestants, but it was anyone’s guess who had told him to kill Scarface. It might have been Coligny, as Poltrot sometimes said; it might have been another Protestant leader; or Poltrot might have had the idea himself.

  That afternoon and over the next few days he talked volubly. Most likely half of what he said was invented to please his interrogator, and the other half to make himself look better. The story he told one day was contradicted by what he said the next. He was completely unreliable.

  Which was not a problem.

  Pierre wrote out Poltrot’s confession, saying that Gaspard de Coligny had paid him to assassinate the duke of Guise, and Poltrot signed it.

  The following day, Scarface developed a high fever, and the doctors told him to prepare to meet his maker. His brother, Cardinal Louis, gave him the last rites, then he said goodbye to Anna and young Henri.

  When the duchess and the next duke came out of the sick room in tears, Pierre said: ‘Coligny killed Duke Scarface,’ and he showed them the confession.

  The result exceeded his hopes.

  The duchess became vituperative, sputtering: ‘Coligny must die! He must die!’

  Pierre told her that Queen Caterina was already making overtures of peace to the Protestants, and Coligny would probably escape punishment as part of any treaty.

  At that Henri became nearly hysterical, crying in his boyish treble: ‘I will kill him! I will kill him myself!’

  ‘I believe you will, one day, Prince Henri,’ Pierre said to him. ‘And when you do, I will be by your side.’

  Duke Scarface died the next day.

  Cardinal Louis was responsible for the funeral arrangements, but was rarely sober long enough to get much done, and Pierre took charge without difficulty. With Anna’s support he devised a magnificent send-off. The duke’s body would be conveyed first to Paris, where his heart would be interred in the cathedral of Notre Dame. Then the coffin would travel in state across the country to Champagne, where the body would be buried at Joinville. Such grand obsequies were normally only for kings. No doubt Queen Caterina would have preferred less ostentation, but Pierre did not consult her. For her part, Caterina always avoided a quarrel when she could, and she probably figured that Scarface could do no more harm now, even if he did have a royal funeral.

  However, Pierre’s scheme to make Coligny a hate figure did not go so smoothly. Once again Caterina showed that she could be as cunning as Pierre. She sent a copy of Poltrot’s confession to Coligny, who had retreated to the Protestant hinterland of Normandy, and asked him to respond to it. She was already planning his rehabilitation.

  But the Guises would never forget.

  Pierre went to Paris ahead of the duke’s body to finalize arrangements. He had already sent Poltrot there, and imprisoned him in the Conciergerie, at the western tip of the Île de la Cité. Pierre insisted on a heavy guard. The ultra-Catholic people of Paris had worshipped Scarface, and if the mob got hold of Poltrot, they would tear him to pieces.

  While the duke’s corpse was on its way to Paris, Coligny made a deposition denying his involvement in the assassination, and sent copies to Queen Caterina and others. It was a vigorous defence, and Pierre had to admit – only to himself, of course – that it carried conviction. Gaspard was a heretic, not a fool, and if he had planned to assassinate Scarface, he would probably have chosen as killer someone better than the unstable Poltrot.

  The last part of Gaspard’s deposition was particularly dangerous. He pointed out that in natural justice he had the right to confront his accuser in court, and he begged Queen Caterina to ensure the safety of Poltrot, and make sure he survived to give evidence to a formal investigation.

  An unbiased inquiry was the last thing Pierre wanted.

  To make matters worse, in the Conciergerie Poltrot retracted his confession.

  Pierre had to stop the rot quickly. He went to the supreme court called the Parlement of Paris and proposed that Poltrot should be tried immediately. He pointed out that if the murderer remained unpunished, riots would break out when the hero’s body came to Paris. The judges agreed.

  In the early hours of 18 March, the duke’s coffin arrived in the southern suburbs of Paris and was lodged at a monastery.

  Next morning, Poltrot was found guilty and sentenced to be dismembered.

  The sentence was carried out in the place de Grève in front of a wildly cheering mob. Pierre was there to make sure he died. Poltrot’s arms and legs were tied to four horses facing the four points of the compass, and the horses were whipped into motion. Theoretically, his limbs should have been torn from his torso, leaving the stump of his body to bleed to death. But the executioner botched the knots, and the ropes slipped. Pierre sent for a sword, and the executioner then began to hack off Poltrot’s arms and legs with the blade. The crowd egged him on, but it was an awkward procedure. At some point during the half-hour that it took, Poltrot stopped screaming and lost consciousness. Finally, his head with its distinctive tuft at the front was chopped off and fixed to a post.

  Next day the body of Duke Scarface was brought into the city.

  *

  SYLVIE PALOT WATCHED the procession, feeling optimistic.

  It entered Paris from the south, by the St Michel Gate, and passed through the University district, where Sylvie had her shop. The cortege began with twenty-two town criers dressed in mourning white, ringing solemn handbells and calling upon the grieving citizens to pray for the departed soul of their great hero. Then came priests from every parish in the city, all holding crosses. Two hundred elite citizens were next, carrying blazing torches that sent up a black funeral pall of smoke and darkened the sky. The armies that had followed Scarface to so many victories were represented by six thousand soldiers with lowered banners, playing muffled drums that sounded like faraway gunfire. Then came the city militia with a host of black flags fluttering in the March wind that came off the cold river.

  The streets were lined with crowds of mourning Parisians, but Sylvie knew that some of them were like her, secretly elated that Scarface was dead. The assassination had brought peace, at least for now. Within days Queen Caterina had met with Gaspard de Coligny to discuss a new edict of tolerance.

  Persecution had increased during the civil war, although Protestants in Sylvie’s circl
e now had some protection. Sylvie had sat at Pierre’s writing desk one day, when he was away with Scarface and Odette was dining with her girlfriends, and copied out every word of his little black book while Nath played with two-year-old Alain, who could not yet talk well enough to betray the secret of Sylvie’s visit.

  Most of the names were not known to her. Many would be false, for the Protestants knew they might be spied upon and often gave made-up names and other misleading information: Sylvie and her mother called themselves Thérèse and Jacqueline, and told no one about their shop. Sylvie had no way of knowing which of the unfamiliar names were real.

  However, many in the book were her friends and fellow-worshippers. Those people had been discreetly warned. A few had left the congregation in fear and had become Catholic again; others had moved house and changed their names; several had left Paris and gone to more tolerant cities.

  More important in the long term, Nath had become a regular member of the congregation in the attic over the stable, singing the psalms loudly and tunelessly. With her ten gold ecus in her hand she had talked about leaving Pierre’s employment, but Sylvie had persuaded her to stay and continue to spy on him for the Protestants.

  The safer atmosphere was good for book sales, and Sylvie was glad to have new stock brought from Geneva by Guillaume. Poor boy, he was still in love with Sylvie. She liked him, and was grateful to have him as an ally, but could not find it in her heart to love him back. Her mother was frustrated by her rejection of an apparently ideal match. He was an intelligent, prosperous, handsome young man who shared her religion and her ideals: what more did she want? Sylvie was as mystified as Isabelle by this question.

  At last the coffin came by, draped with a banner displaying the heraldic arms of the Guises, resting on a gun-carriage drawn by six white horses. Sylvie did not pray for the soul of Scarface. Instead she thanked God for ending his life. Now she dared to hope that there would be peace and tolerance.

  Behind the coffin rode the widow, Anna, all in white, with ladies-in-waiting either side of her. Finally, there was a pretty-faced boy with fair hair who had to be Scarface’s heir, Henri. Beside him, wearing a white doublet with a pale fur collar, was a handsome man of twenty-five with thick blond hair.