“There is some justice, I suppose,” Liebfreund sighed. His breath had become labored from the exertion of recounting his tale. “Oecolampadius died two years later. A particularly painful cancer, I am told. I suspect that whether God is as the Lutherans describe Him or the Catholics, someone of those . . . sensibilities . . . will not be welcomed in Heaven. Or, at least, that is what I need to believe.”
“I’m certain you re correct,” Amaury offered.
Liebfreund looked for a moment into Amaury’s eyes, then returned to the subject at hand. “Tell me of your fellows at the rooming house.”
“They are all Lutherans, as I am certain you already know. Turvette seems to be the more suspicious, but Hoess, the wine merchant, attempted to follow me here.”
“Do you suspect them of complicity?”
“In the murder?”
“In anything.”
“Perhaps. I am still not convinced that a conspiracy exists.” “Skepticism is a healthy attitude . . . have you ever been to Nérac?” Liebfreund asked suddenly.
Amaury said he had not.
“You know why I ask?”
“I assume you are referring to Queen Marguerite,” Amaury replied. That King François’ elder sister, Queen Marguerite of Navarre, sheltered and encouraged Lutherans at her palace in the south was common knowledge.
“Yes.” Liebfreund’s tone was venomous. “Queen Marguerite. The vile heretic adulteress. King François, for all his fecklessness, in his heart fears God and respects orthodoxy. But, with deceit, that unclean harpy has swayed and twisted him. With misplaced affection, he is reluctant to displease her. She claims to have remained within the Church, but, unbeknownst to the king, she has set her sights on no less than claiming France for the Lutherans. Without the intercession of those of the True Faith, she might well succeed. It has come to us that Nérac is where the conspiracy is centered. There has been increasingly frequent travel between here and there. Quite well organized by Lutheran standards. They have even established way stations along the route, so that they pass their nights without fear of exposure or betrayal. Communications of great interest to us—and to you—pass regularly. We would all benefit greatly to be able to learn of the contents.”
“What is it you wish me to do?”
“Contrive a reason to travel to Nérac. To be asked to travel to Nérac. The conspirators are, at least for the moment, extremely small in number. They have lost an important courier. They will be anxious to recruit another. You will merely have to convince them that you are a likely convert. Can you do that?”
“I believe so,” Amaury replied.
“I suspect that in the process you might well find out who murdered your predecessor. That would please you?”
“Of course.”
“There is to be a meeting tomorrow night. Supposedly secret at a location outside the city walls. You will have little difficulty gaining an invitation from Broussard.”
“I am already invited.”
Liebfreund raised his eyes and stared across the table, a living death’s head. “Good,” he said, but Amaury was unsure if the compliment was genuine or if the Swiss was instead curious as to why Amaury hadn’t mentioned the invitation earlier. “Go just as you had planned. Don’t look about or give a sign that anything is amiss. As far as anyone is concerned, you are simply a man who has become disillusioned with orthodoxy and have become curious about reform. We will do the rest.”
“What is ‘the rest’?”
“We will simply observe,” Liebfreund assured him. “Gather information. That’s all.”
“They are not all like Oecolampadius,” Amaury said.
“Of course not,” Liebfreund replied easily. “I know that.”
IX
AFTER HE LEFT Liebfreund’s grotto, Amaury stopped at a tavern and downed three cups of wine, spilling some of the final portion on his sleeves. He waited until an appropriately late hour, then made his way back to rue de la Cerise. When he arrived, he pounded on the door until Sylvie came out from her room behind the kitchen to admit him. He barged in, apologizing for the hour in slurred speech. Brushing past her closely, he made sure Sylvie smelled the drink on his clothes. Amaury then walked noisily and unsteadily to the stairs and hauled himself up. When he entered his room, he slammed the door loudly behind him.
Amaury knew within moments that his room had been searched. He would have been surprised had it not been. Anticipating the likelihood, he had placed his sack precisely four finger widths from the wall under the window. When he checked, the space was slightly wider. Inside the sack, everything had been replaced in the order he had left it but, once more, just a bit shifted from its original position. He removed the book he had taken with him and checked the letter to his father he had placed inside. Yes, whoever had gone through his things had read the letter. The letter that foreswore Montaigu and the interpretation of canon law that the school represented, that announced his disgust with the state of the Church and his need to seek a new path for himself, away from the false piety into which Catholicism had sunk. He begged his father’s forgiveness but asserted he had no choice but to make this decision.
Amaury refolded the letter and replaced it in his sack. Perhaps one day he might actually post it.
The next morning at breakfast, Amaury stared at the bread, sausage, and cheese and mumbled a string of apologies for his behavior. Madame La Framboise wagged a finger at him and informed him that such conduct was unacceptable in her house. Amaury swore he would not do it again. He asked absolution for one indiscretion, caused only by nine years’ confinement in the prison that was Montaigu. Madame La Framboise considered the question briefly before deigning to forgive him. Through it all, Hoess sat at the table, effusive in his amusement at Amaury’s transgression, at one point chastising Madame La Framboise for her lack of understanding. It would have been more shocking if the poor lad had not needed to go out at least once, he said. Not for an instant did the wine merchant betray himself. When Amaury rose unsteadily from the table, claiming mal d’estomac, Hoess called after him. “Next time, take me with you.”
Grateful for the excuse of illness, Amaury passed the day in his room reading his book, Epytoma in almagesti Ptolemei, “The Epitome of Ptolemy’s Almagest,” by the German Regiomontanus, perhaps the most important astronomical text of the past hundred years. Regiomontanus was a great trigonometer as well, and was thus able to clarify the positions and movements of the sun, stars, and planets in the spheres that radiated out from the Earth.
To spend hours with a great astronomer without fear of discovery and punishment was a joy he had not experienced in almost a decade. Regiomontanus had employed new theorems of triangular behavior to bring clarity to Ptolemy’s circular orbits. Amaury marveled at how science was springing forward in almost every discipline. Some thought it blasphemous for Man to seek knowledge of the wonder of God’s creation, but how could it be blasphemy to use the tools that the Lord himself had provided? The greater blasphemy, Amaury was certain, lay in the perpetuation of ignorance.
He begged off dinner, claiming that his head still felt as if it had been used to batter down a door. He told Madame La Framboise that he was again going out, this time to spend the evening in penitence. When he left the rooming house, Amaury made directly for église Saint-Antoine. He did not think Hoess would be so obvious as to follow him again, but it would not do to take any risk that might be avoided.
After sundown, Amaury left the church by a side door. An English wind had blown a thick layer of clouds from the west. Amaury waited in a cul-de-sac, but no one had followed.
At rue des Bales, he knocked lightly on Fournière’s back door. Broussard opened it quickly and motioned him inside with two flicks of the wrist.
The shutters were closed tight across the single window. The back room was lit only by a single small candle that sent flickering shadows across the bookcases that lined the walls. The mood was reminiscent of Liebfreund s dungeonlike dwelling the night b
efore. Also like Liebfreund, Broussard was dressed in a long black hooded cloak that covered all but his face. Framed thus, his large head and distinctive features looked even more François-like. When he took note of Amaury’s ocher doublet, brown breeches, yellow nether hose, and tan cape, Broussard shook his head reproachfully, then ducked into another room and emerged with a second black cloak.
“Wear this,” he said. “You can’t just go strolling about, you know. The Inquisition has agents everywhere. Everyone is at risk. Chauvin will be burned if he is caught. By the way, are you armed?”
“A dagger.”
“You’re an optimist.” Broussard pulled back his cloak to reveal the hilt of a sword.
The two men stepped into the alley. Broussard closed the door behind him slowly so that it emitted only the most innocuous creak. He turned left, heading north.
Amaury was treading much the same path as had Giles the night he was murdered. Could Broussard be leading him into the same sort of trap? Broussard hadn’t wielded the knife. He was hardly the thin Franciscain Veuve Chinot had described. Another might lie in wait, however. Two days before, Amaury would never have considered such a possibility. But now he could hardly afford not to.
Amaury fingered the dagger in his waistband. He allowed Broussard to walk a bit ahead of him and on his right. They passed rue Pastourelle. Amaury glanced up, wondering if the old lady was sitting at her window, watching two cloaked figures slink past.
Broussard skirted the Temple fortress to the city wall, then followed it west to porte de Temple. The guards at the city gate issued no challenge but simply waved the two men in black cloaks through, thinking them, Amaury realized, to be Dominican friars. As they passed over the deep dry ditch that surrounded Paris, the wind suddenly blew away the clouds and they were bathed in moonlight. They walked north to an open field, then turned east when a line of windmills lay between them and the guard towers on the battlements. Broussard turned to Amaury and grinned.
“There. That wasn’t so hard. I confess I sort of enjoy skulking about. You?”
“Yes, Geoffrey. It’s thrilling being in your company. Might you now tell me where we’re going? Is this meeting to be with cows?”
Broussard patted him on the back. “Hardly. Well, perhaps one or two. We are headed to La Croix Faubin, my friend. The town is just north of porte Saint-Antoine, but that gate is next to the Bastille, so the guards think they have to challenge everyone. Porte de Temple is easier to pass.”
They followed the paths through the fields before eventually turning back south, Amaury continuing to trail Broussard just in case. Soon, however, they arrived at La Croix Faubin, a small, walled hamlet with gates at the north and south. The north gate, which Broussard chose, was unlocked and unmanned, and so the two black-cloaked figures walked through unchallenged. Amaury surmised, correctly, as he later learned, that the sentries had been paid to absent themselves.
The village consisted of one main road, rue Saint-Denis, which ran through the center, with smaller streets spurring off in either direction. About halfway, Broussard took a narrow street to the right and made for a large house at the end. Two younger men were just going in the door.
“We try not to all arrive at the same time,” Broussard told him. “It takes longer to convene and adjourn a meeting, but it’s worth the effort.”
When they reached the entrance, Amaury was astonished to be greeted by a large woman of about forty, wearing an incongruous wig of yellow ringlets and a plethora of face paint. Her huge bosom squeezed out of an orange crinoline dress that was many sizes too small. She favored them with a large smile filled with stained teeth. She gave off an overpowering smell of roses.
“Welcome,” she crooned in a voice somewhere between girlish and graveled.
Broussard returned the greeting, referring to the woman as Madame Chouchou.
After she took their cloaks, Madame Chouchou checked Amaury up and down. “I haven’t seen you before, mon beau fils. Maybe you can stay after the meeting.”
Amaury replied with a noncommittal grunt. In truth, he was sorely tempted. It had been eight months. No, nine. The broken-down old whore in rue Dupin. In principle, he was as contemptuous of prostitutes as every other God-fearing person. Women who pandered to human weakness with false flattery and the pretense of mutual pleasure, who provided only a moment of release followed by hours of regret, and who then charged for the privilege. From a practical standpoint, however, there was little alternative. And without the availability of such women, the murder rate among students would be even higher than it was.
Amaury and Broussard walked through the front hall, perused by Madame Chouchou’s charges, who were congregated near the staircase that led to the rooms on the second floor. They ranged drastically in age. Girls who seemed little more than thirteen intermixed with hags older than Madame Chouchou herself. The heavy scent of women was in the air. Broussard leaned close to Amaury and whispered.
“See? As I told you. One or two cows.”
Amaury nodded absently. His eyes had fixed on one of the younger women. She was not more than eighteen, small, with large mournful eyes, brown hair, and full lips. She wore neither wig nor face paint nor suggestive clothing. But her ease and obvious confidence bespoke her experience with men. She was quite beautiful, and Amaury felt himself stir. The girl smiled.
They passed through to a large common room at the back of the first floor. The furniture was arranged to face a lectern against the back wall. Wooden crates had been dragged in to supplement the chairs. The shutters were closed and heavy drapery covered the windows. As soon as they were through the door, Broussard laughed. “Surprised?”
“I wasn’t expecting to listen to scriptural analysis in a brothel.” Broussard turned his hands palms up. “What could be better? Madame Chouchou knows everything and everyone. She seeks God’s grace like the rest of us. There isn’t a better location to ensure privacy in all France. You should be more open-minded, my friend.”
About twenty men were in attendance, speaking in small groups. Like the women outside, their ages were disparate, some older, most young. Amaury looked from one to another, trying to discern if any of the attendees were thin with either a tonsure or closely cropped hair. But no.
Broussard gestured across the room toward a tall, painfully thin man with a wispy goatee. “That’s Jean Chauvin.” Chauvin was speaking to a group of five men who seemed to be taking in his words with reverence. “He’s Latinized his name to Johannes Calvinus. A bit pretentious, but I suppose we must allow him that. It’s Jean Calvin in the vernacular. Come. Let me introduce you.”
Calvin was in his twenties, younger likely than Amaury. Up close, however, he appeared older. Dark blotches rimmed his eyes. His skin resembled parchment. A pinched, even pained, expression seemed stamped on his face. But Calvin’s eyes, light blue, shone fierce and attentive. Amaury thought immediately of Beda.
“This is Amaury de Faverges,” Broussard told Calvin. “Amaury is a fine fellow, late of nine years at Montaigu. But instead of dogma, he acquired good judgment. He has finally decided to seek a new path in life.”
“Montaigu?” Calvin asked, his French heavy with a northern country accent. Picardy perhaps, or Brittany. His voice was high and nasal, like that of a much older man. “I studied there myself, although almost a decade ago. But my father was urging me to become a lawyer. After two years, I decided that if Montaigu epitomized theology, the law would certainly be preferable.”
Amaury agreed that he also found it difficult to reconcile Montaigu with the word of God.
“I understand Beda has been resurrected,” Calvin said, seemingly as an afterthought. “Is the Old Satan his usual self?”
Amaury began to reply that Noël Beda, although near the end, had lost none of his fire, but he seized back the words before they could pass his lips. Bedas return had not been announced publicly until after Amaury had left Montaigu, and thus Amaury should have no way of knowing the state of the old man
’s health. “I have heard of Magister Bedas return as well,” he responded instead. “I pity the students. Le Clerc, for all his faults, was not nearly so extreme.”
“Few could be,” Calvin agreed. Suddenly he grimaced and bent double, his hands clutching at his stomach. He remained in that position for several seconds. Finally he took some deep breaths and straightened up. His face was ashen but he no longer seemed in distress.
“A vestige of Montaigu,” he said. “The food and miasma caused agony in my bowels that no ameliorant seems able to lessen. They burn as if Satan himself were present within me. I suppose I should be grateful, however, since pain helps one to see God.”
“Quite true,” Amaury agreed, although he thought the notion ludicrous. They were interrupted by a man in his mid-thirties, bald, with a fringe of black hair surrounding his pate. The stubble of a thick black beard covered his cheeks and chin. He would have appeared Moorish, save for small, deep-set eyes and thin lips. By the ease with which he approached Calvin, he was clearly someone of influence. He told Calvin in Swiss-accented Latin that someone he referred to sneeringly as “the Italian” could not be located in Paris.
“Has he been apprehended?” Calvin asked in French.
The swarthy man said he had not. News of an arrest would have been reported. “He is rumored to have never even arrived in the city. Still in the south, I was told.”
“I should have known better than to risk my freedom on his account,” Calvin snapped. He turned to Amaury. “He is a scoundrel, this man. A scoundrel and a poseur, who would tear down the Church, not simply repair its flaws.”
“Surely no Christian wishes such a sinful act,” Amaury replied. Would irritation inhibit Calvin’s reserve?
“This man does. He dares postulate that God is so common as to exist in all men. Not simply that. God exists in rocks and trees, in the very floor beneath our feet. Thus, when we trod from one end of the room to the other, we are walking over God. Walking on God! What blasphemy! Now he avers that science is part of God’s glory as well, and must be incorporated into dogma. He claims to be privy to a revelation that will disprove the common interpretation of Genesis itself. Absurd!”
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