by Kate Mosse
‘It is the lady’s great good fortune that you were on hand, Sénher Cordier.’
Pleased, Cordier nodded. ‘In truth, she was more vexed by her situation than fearful. Most mothers-to-be would worry for their child, for their own health after such a scare, but she never asked a thing. Shows a lack of maternal feeling to my mind but then, what do I know?’
‘Hearts of stone, the late Seigneur and her both,’ Guilhem said.
The apothecary wondered if the boy was thinking of his aunt, driven to take her own life by the violence visited upon her by the Lord of Puivert. He himself had pulled the Lizier girl from the river Blau. Cordier hoped never to see such a sight again.
‘Though truth is,’ he slurred, ‘whatever the Lady Blanche might say of the matter, if the girl hadn’t fetched help when she did, the outcome might have been very different.’
‘I thought the child was confined to the logis,’ Guilhem said.
‘Confined? Why so?’
‘The mistress brought her back with her from Toulouse in April. No one knows who she is or what she’s doing here.’
‘The nurse was rough with her, so I took her for a servant. Then again, the nurse is a sot.’ He took another gulp of ale. ‘If what you say is right, Guilhem, and the girl was roaming around the castle unchecked, it might explain why the Lady Blanche was in such a rage.’ Cordier drained his cup. ‘The little one begged me to take her with me, said she didn’t belong here. I dismissed it all as fancy at the time.’
‘How old is she, think you?’
‘Six years of age, perhaps seven? She told me her name.’ His brows furrowed deeper into his forehead. ‘Alis Joubert, that was it. And I tell you something else for nothing. She said she came from Carcassonne, not Toulouse.’
‘Carcassonne?’ Guilhem said, refilling their cups in the hope of loosening the apothecary’s tongue further.
Cordier was Puivert born and bred. His uncle Achille did not like him, and he was not popular in the village, but he had done their family a good turn in the past and Guilhem was hungry for information. The apothecary was known to trade in other people’s secrets. He never missed a thing.
He couldn’t wait to lay all this before Bernard. When he finished his lessons, and if there was no one else about to see them, Guilhem had fallen into the habit of staying to talk. He and the prisoner were now on first-name terms, though he still knew little more about his friend or where he had come from. When he last was sent out of the castle on patrol, and had stolen a few hours courting in Chalabre, he had told Jeannette all about his mysterious prisoner.
‘I am learning to read and write French,’ he now confided to Cordier. ‘I want to prove myself worthy of Jeannette’s hand.’
The apothecary nodded. ‘I heard she had accepted you. Congratulations.’
‘We have set the date for August. By then, I hope to be as good at letters as any in Puivert.’
‘Who is teaching you?’
Guilhem hesitated, but then why would it matter? Dropping his voice, he told him about the educated man being held in the Tour Bossue, taken for a poacher, and who – like the child – seemed to have been forgotten by everyone.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
TOULOUSE
The killing started at dawn on Wednesday, the thirteenth day of May.
As the sun rose over Toulouse, Catholic soldiers opened fire and killed Huguenot students as they attempted to cut down the rotting corpses of their friends from the gibbets.
At first, the fighting was concentrated in Place Saint-Georges, but it quickly spread to the cathedral quarter and the medieval heart of the city.
The spark was lit.
Huguenot strongholds were established around the Hôtel de Ville and the districts of Villeneuve, Daurade, Couteliers and the university quarter. The Protestants were well armed, but included many artisans and students in their ranks. The Catholic forces were stronger and better trained. They were supported by the Town Guard and several dozen private militias retained by rich Catholic households, outnumbering the Huguenots some ten to one.
A twelve-year-old was lynched for failing to recite his Ave Maria. When the boy was proved to be Catholic after all, the mob turned on Protestant shop keepers in Daurade and accused them of provoking the killing. Two Jewish servants in the medieval heart of the city were attacked and their beards ripped out with blacksmiths’ tongs. A Catholic maid was raped and left for dead in rue du Périgord.
Blood and bone and dust, order falling into ruins.
By the time night fell, the prisons were already full. Men stripped and beaten, chained to the wall, dragged before the inquisitors in Place du Salin to face invented charges of heresy or treason. In the Hôtel de Ville, Catholic prisoners were bound together and locked inside the council chambers.
In an attempt to deter looters, Catholic families painted white crosses on their doors in the wealthy quarters of the city. They glowed in the moonlight like polished bone.
By dawn on the second day, the numbers of dead ran into many hundreds.
Huguenot civilians who had taken shelter in the mighty Roman sewers that ran into the Garonne were discovered and betrayed to Parliament by their neighbours. Hours later and without warning, huge quantities of water were flushed into the system. Many drowned, swept out into the river and dragged under by the weight of their cloaks and heavy skirts. Old men, and children in their mothers’ arms.
Soldiers lined up along the bank and shot at the survivors. The number of dead rose into the thousands.
In the afternoon of Friday the fifteenth of May, all the bookshops around the Palais de Justice were raided and their owners, regardless of allegiance or professed faith, arrested. If they did not agree with the heretics, then why stock material sympathetic to their views?
As the sun began to set, Catholic siege engines were positioned to defend the cathedral quarter. Defences were constructed in rue des Changes, paid for by Pierre Delpech himself, to protect the financial heart of the city. Whichever side won, he was in profit. His weapons killed without discrimination.
On the barricades in rue du Taur, Piet watched with despair as the bombardment of the Basilica of Saint-Sernin began.
Minou remained within the Boussay house. Like a spirit in an old story, she moved unseen from room to empty room. The street remained blocked three quarters of the way along. She watched the palisade being reinforced with wooden chests, tables and chairs.
Occasional shots were fired.
She ate a little and, from time to time, drifted into a light sleep. The cupboards were bare and the fine linen stripped from the family chambers on the first floor, making it clear the departure of the household had been long planned. Had their uncle intended to abandon them to whatever horrors lay ahead? Was that why he had not immediately sent men after them when he recovered consciousness and found them gone?
All that night and the early hours of the next day, Minou heard sounds of battle getting closer. Silence, followed by bursts of shouting and cannon shot. As the temperature rose, the sickly smell of rotting bodies filled the air.
At dusk, fires lit the night from the direction of Place Saint-Georges and a relentless thud of battering rams against the northern walls could be heard.
There was nowhere to flee.
From her lookout, Minou soon noticed that there were in fact others in her neighbourhood, hiding like her, in their houses until the fighting drove them into the streets.
The first to come seeking refuge was the old bookseller from rue des Pénitents Gris. From her lookout on the first floor, she saw him stagger bewildered onto the steps of the church. Had his shop been ransacked? Was he fleeing Catholic soldiers or Protestant looters?
Minou opened the gates and let him inside.
Piet helped the messenger climb over the barricade, then sent Prouvaire to fetch their commander.
Piet had returned to the barricade at dusk, having gone to inspect the districts north and west of the Basilica. He had come
back via the maison de charité. The almshouse buildings bore evidence of recent looting. Wandering through the empty rooms, he wondered who had taken in the refugees when they left here. From his childhood, he knew how quickly men hardened their hearts. When first his mother became sick, people had helped. But as the weeks passed and their money ran out, they were forced to move on, and on again. In her last days, it was only the English nuns in the Protestant convent in Amsterdam, refugees themselves, who had found a bed for a destitute woman and her young son. Every other door had been closed to them.
Piet pressed a cup into the messenger’s hand. ‘What can you tell us?’
‘I’ve come from Place du Salin. Raymond de Pavia, leader of the Catholic troops from Narbonne, intends to launch an attack on rue du Taur at first light tomorrow.’
‘Cavalry or foot soldiers?’ asked Prouvaire.
‘I don’t know. He has both under his command.’
There had been no concerted attempt yet to breach their barricade, though it was only a matter of time. Piet had hoped they could hold out until Hunault arrived with his troops. Too many in the Huguenot ranks were, like Prouvaire, students not soldiers. Without the men promised from the Lauragais and Montauban, there was no hope of them holding the university quarter, let alone advancing into Catholic-controlled areas.
Their commander appeared at their side. ‘What news?’
‘Nothing good.’
The commander heard the messenger’s report, then turned to Piet. ‘And what more can you tell me, Reydon? What’s the situation to the north?’
‘I found out what I could. The streets are unsafe and many of our safe havens no longer accessible. Our tavern is behind the Catholic cordon. Saux’s men still have the Matabiau and Villeneuve gates, but the Porte du Bazacle has fallen. Most of the gates to the east of the city are also in Catholic hands.’
‘So even if Hunault’s army does arrive soon, access to the city is compromised.’
‘I would say access now – without being sighted – is nigh on impossible.’
Piet saw his commander’s shoulders sag.
‘And what of the rumour that Saux tried to negotiate a ceasefire last evening,’ he asked. ‘Is that true?’
Piet nodded. ‘It seems to be. The story is he was given safe passage to parley with Delpech. They failed to agree terms and Saux withdrew to the Hôtel de Ville.’
‘The advantage is all on their side.’ Prouvaire shrugged. ‘What need do they have to agree to a truce?’
‘Saux is said to believe there are more than a thousand dead already,’ Piet replied, steel in his voice. ‘Not only soldiers, but women and children. In my opinion, he underestimates the numbers slaughtered. There has been widespread looting and atrocities unconnected with any fighting. A settling of old scores.’
The commander shook his head. ‘And they intend to attack us tomorrow.’
‘I believe so.’
‘Then we are on our own,’ Prouvaire said.
‘What are your orders, sir?’ Piet asked.
‘Reinforce the barricades,’ the commander said grimly. ‘We shall be ready for them.’
In the grey hour just before dawn, Minou was jolted awake by the sounds of wooden wheels on cobbled stones.
Still half asleep, she ran to the window. At first glance, nothing had changed. The barricade three quarters of the way up the street was quiet and there was not a soul about. Minou thought of Piet. Was he at the maison de charité or fighting to defend the city he loved, manning some barricade? And what of her family? Were Aimeric and their aunt safely on their way to Puivert? How fared her little sister?
As always, when she thought of Alis, Minou shut the doors on her imagination. The pictures her mind painted were too painful to bear.
Then, from the chapel below, Minou heard a child crying. She took a grim pleasure in the fact that her uncle’s house had become a place of refuge for so many: Protestants as well as Catholics. Women, children, old men of tolerance and learning. When – if – Boussay returned, she hoped the spirits of all those who had passed through the house would haunt him.
Minou set her shoulders, then prepared herself to face the challenge of the day ahead. Though there was wine and a little ale, they were now very low on food. Was it possible that there was still bread in Toulouse? Meat? Fruits? In other parts of the city, might the bakers and butchers and cheese makers still be working? Did she dare venture outside the house? She sighed. Even if there was still food within the city, everything would be requisitioned for the armies. Thousands of soldiers needed to be fed.
Minou suddenly remembered her mother telling her the story of Raymond-Roger Trencavel and the siege of Carcassonne in the Cathar times. The blistering heat, the wells running dry, not enough food for those packed cheek by jowl into the narrow streets. Below the city walls, on the banks of the Aude, Simon de Montfort and his Catholic soldiers bathing in the cool river water, eating and drinking their fill while La Cité was starved into surrender.
How was it that, in more than three hundred and fifty years, so little had changed? So much suffering, such waste and cruelty. And for what?
Minou shook her head, then headed downstairs to the kitchens to see what could be done.
As the sun came up and the mighty dome of the Basilica shone against the pale blue sky, the bombardment began once more.
Rocks and stones rained down on the streets surrounding the pilgrims’ shrine, sending tiles hurtling from the roofs in rue du Périgord, a splintering and shattering of glass, blasting holes in windows and the red-brick walls. A stray spark, caught by the wind, set light to a pile of dried leaves. The flames licked up one side of the almshouse, charring the sun-baked timber beams.
Soon, the whole building was burning.
Piet saw the flames, and realised that all he had worked for as a way to honour his mother’s memory was being destroyed. The money he had tricked out of Crompton and Devereux in Carcassonne for the counterfeit Shroud was all wasted now. But he kept his position, eyes trained on the street ahead. Waiting. He could sense it on his skin, the short hairs on the back of his neck, the taste and smell of battle approaching. Prouvaire stood beside him, tense and ready, as once Michel Cazès had been his comrade-in-arms. All along the barricade, he heard the sound of muskets being prepared, hands testing the strength of swords, the tightening of belts and gloves, adjusting helmets.
Waiting.
As the sun came around, and the first rays touched the façade of the Eglise Saint-Taur, Piet heard the sound of hooves on the cobbles, the snort and whinny of horses. A unit of cavalry, in full battle armour, appeared at the far end of the street. Light glinting on silver helmets, feathers dancing in the air, the livery of Narbonne on the cloth beneath their saddles. They stood six abreast, the heavy animals jittering and plunging, their solid haunches blocking the light from the street.
The battle cry went up and the charge began.
‘France! France!’
The cavalry came thundering along rue du Taur towards them.
Piet took aim and fired. His first shot hit a lancer in the shoulder, finding the gap between armour and breastplate. The lancer’s pike flew out of his hand and his horse reared, sending him down to the ground to be pounded by hooves and iron. Piet reloaded, and fired again. And again.
‘To your left!’ Prouvaire shouted.
Piet swung round. Two soldiers were attempting to push into place a flaming siege engine to set the barricade alight. Prouvaire fired and one went down, but the heavy oak machine kept trundling forward.
Desperate to prevent it reaching the barricade, Piet fired again, but the flames were already licking the timber frames of the houses and catching at the wooden layers of the palisade. A gush and shattering, as the heat found glass and an oil lamp, and the far end burst into wild fire. Women and children ran screaming out into the street to escape the inferno. Someone was shouting for sand or earth, anything to dampen the flames, but it was too late.
I
n their panic, the civilians ran towards the soldiers. Piet saw an old man punched through with a sword, front to back, dead before he reached the ground. Piet reloaded and fired again, but could no longer get a clear shot. He felt powerless to prevent the bloodshed, watching sickened as a woman clutching a child in her arms was slashed across the throat. Crimson blood pumped bright red from her neck, soaking the white bonnet of her screaming baby.
Minou was watching the carnage from her lookout as the horror unfolded. Saw the houses at the end of the street begin to burn. Saw the civilians being driven out by the fire into the roaring street, and couldn’t stay still a moment longer.
She had to help. She had to do something. Taking the stairs two by two, she rushed downstairs and out across the courtyard to the gates. She didn’t know if the civilians were Catholic or Protestant, only that they were now trapped between the barricade, the fire and the lances and swords of the cavalry. Aware she might be about to risk the lives of everyone inside for the sake of those trapped in the street, she dragged the wooden bar from its fixings and opened the pedestrian door.
‘Here,’ she cried. ‘In here.’
In the mêlée, only a few heard her voice over the screaming and shouting. Gathering their children, they ran towards her. One soldier saw what was happening and pulled his horse round to come after them. Another shot rang out from the barricade, and he spun in his saddle, blood coursing from his thigh.
‘Hurry!’ Minou shouted, dragging in as many as she could through the gate. ‘Get inside. Vite.’
Finally, there seemed to be no more. With shaking arms, Minou levered the wooden bar back into place, then took her latest refugees into the safety of the Boussay house.
The attack continued, but Raymond de Pavia’s men were being pushed back. Their heavy armour inhibited the cavalry’s movement. As the sunlight crossed rue du Taur, the order was given to withdraw.
Piet slumped against the barricade, exhausted. On the ground below him, two of his own comrades – friends now – lay dead, and three others wounded. Prouvaire was unscathed, save for a burnt hand where he had struggled to put out the fire.
