by Paul Doherty
'Do you need any more help?' Joachim asked.
'No,' I muttered.
'Then I'll be off!' the friar boomed. 'I have to visit the shrine of the Blessed Dionysius.'
Despite my injuries, I gaped up at him.
'Dionysius?' I queried. 'Who is he?'
'St Denis, of course!' the friar joked back. 'I use the Latin name. You know the monastery?'
He shook my hand and strode out of the tavern. I never saw him again, the man who saved my life. (Do you know, until fat Henry crushed the monasteries, I always had a soft spot for Franciscans. Not just because of Joachim's kindness but that chance encounter put me on the road to solving Selkirk's riddles and the horrible murders they caused.) Once Joachim had gone, the landlord showed renewed interest in me. He came and stood over me, a mock-tragic expression on his face.
'Monsieur, you were attacked?'
'Oh, no,' I sarcastically retorted, 'just some French bravos welcoming me to this Godforsaken city!' I got up. 'I must go to my chamber.'
'Monsieur!' The villain stepped in front of me, two of the thugs he always kept in the tavern to crack the heads of noisy revellers now standing behind him.
'Monsieur, your room has been ransacked. By whom I do not know. Your baggage and silver, they have gone!'
'Hell's teeth!' I snarled but the landlord, the two thugs close to his shoulder, screamed his innocence. He peered closer at me and asked what an Englishman was doing in Paris.
'This Selkirk,' he jibed, 'were you his bum boy?'
[At the time I didn't know what he was talking about. I always was, and have been ever, a devoted admirer of the fairer sex, but after you have made the acquaintance of men like Christopher Marlowe, you really can't trust anyone. Oh, yes, I knew Marlowe the playwright and helped him stage his play Edward II. Poor Kit! A good poet but a bad spy. I was with him, you know, when he died. Stabbed to death in a tavern brawl over a pretty boy.]
Ah, well, I had to leave Le Coq d'Or and found myself penniless, freezing in a Paris alleyway without baggage or silver. I thought of going to St Denis, but to what use? More pressing was the need to find shelter, food and extra clothing. I thought of following Joachim but I felt tired, exhausted after my beating. Somehow, my visit to the Sign of the Pestle had caused the attack on me so I dared not go back there. I crouched in that alleyway and prayed for Benjamin to come.
Poor old Shallot! Alone in Paris, in a foreign city on the brink of winter, penniless, hungry, with not an item I could call my own except the clothes I stood up in. At first, I lived on my wits. I became a story-teller: painting my face, filching a gaudily embroidered robe and, not being versed in the French tongue, pretending I was a traveller lately returned from seeing the fables of India and Persia. I took a position on the edge of one of the bridges across the Seine and told, in halting fashion, stories about forests so high they pierced the clouds.
'These,' I cried, 'are inhabited by horned pygmies who move in herds, and who are old by the time they are seven!'
I earned a few sous so I became more fantastical, maintaining I had met Brahmins who killed themselves on funeral pyres; men with monkeys' heads and leopards' bodies; giants with only one eye and one foot who could run so fast they could only be caught if they fell asleep in the lap of a virgin. As the days passed, my wits sharpened and my command of the tongue improved, as did my stories. I had met Amazons who cried tears of gold, panthers which could fly, trees whose leaves were made of wood, snakes three hundred feet long with eyes of blazing sapphire.
At last both the sous and the stories ran out so I sold the cloak and gathered a few objects: bones, shards of pottery and the occasional rag. I became a professional relic-seller. The proud possessor of a fragment of the Infant Jesus's vest, a toy he had once played with (Benjamin would have been proud of that), and a hair from St Peter's beard which could cure the ague or a sore throat. I had the arm of Aaron and, when someone burnt that as a joke, changed my tale and said the ashes were from a fire over which the martyr of St Lawrence died. I earned a few sous but not enough. Paris was full of rogues, card-sharps, brigands, footpads, dice-coggers, pimps, ponces, horse-stealers, bruisers, coin-clippers -the true children of wing-heeled Mercury, the lying patron of thieves and politicians. In a word, the competition became too intense and, in the reeking runnels and smelly alleyways of Paris, I began to starve.
Now Paris may well be the inspiration of poets and troubadours but I don't remember it as the fabled Athens of the West. All I recollect is a grey, sombre sky and the dark Seine rushing under the bridges; tall, sharp-gabled houses which sprang up from the cobbles and leaned crazily together, storey thrust out above storey; the narrow, winding streets of the Latin Quarter; the pell-mell of ascending gables and tinted roof tiles, the gables of their lower storeys sculpted into fantastic shapes of warriors or exotic animals. Oh, yes, I got to know these well as I slunk past like a hungry fox in a deserted kitchen yard. Above me, the gaily painted signs of the taverns and food shops creaked in the wind and mocked my hunger. At each crossroads the stone fountains with their precious supply of water were guarded by men-at-arms. On one occasion I stopped to pray before the statue of a saint at a street corner and noticed the lamp burning before it. I stole the candle from its socket and sold it for a crust of bread and a stoup of water from an ale wife.
The fourth Sunday in Advent came and went. Benjamin had told me he would return to Le Coq d'Or; every morning and each evening I went there but no Benjamin. I cursed him for a fool. I tried to speak with the landlord but was driven off for what I seemed – a ragged, evil-smelling beggar. My mind, once sound as a bell, became muddled and confused. I thought I saw Selkirk and his damned doggerel tripped through my brain:
Three less than twelve should it be, Or the King, no prince engendered he!
[The vicar wipes away a tear. The bastard had better not be laughing!]
I slept in graveyards or along the steps of the churches and woke hollow-eyed and sick with hunger to the oaths of the men-at-arms, the mocking jeers of cheapjacks and mountebanks, the clatter of hooves and the crazy jangle and flurry of hundreds of city bells. London reeks but Paris is much worse. The stench there is terrible; the alleys and streets caked with mud and shit, and made more pungent by other offal which smelt as if barrels of sulphur had been spilt along every alleyway.
I lived as a beggar, scrounging what I could, but then winter came, not only early but cruelly, one of the sharpest, coldest winters for decades. The roads became clogged and food in Paris began to run out. Even the fat ones, the lords of the soil, the truculent men-at-arms and the tight-waisted, square-bodied wives of the bourgeois, began to starve. The markets became empty and what food was left in Paris was prized more highly than gold. The old died first, the beggars and the maimed; they just froze as they leaned gasping against urine-stained walls. Then the babies, the young and the weak. Snow fell in constant sharp, white flurries. The Seine froze over and the nearby forests, usually a source of food, now gave birth to a new nightmare. Great, shaggy-haired, grey wolves banded together, left the frozen darkness of the trees and crossed the Seine in packs, to hunt in the suburbs. They attacked dogs and cats and savaged and maimed the crippled beggars. They even dug up graveyards, dragging out the freshly interred bodies. A curfew was imposed, archers armed with loaded arbalests patrolled the streets and thick webs of chains were dragged across the entrances to the main thoroughfares.
I thought I was safe. I was weak with hunger but I had a knife and I could still move round the city. Naturally, I heard the stories and one morning saw a bloody trail of gore where the wolves had attacked and dragged away an old beggar woman who used to squat on the corner of the Rue St Jacques. One night I was in an alleyway, nothing more than a narrow, darkened trackway. The night sky was brilliant and the stars seemed to wink like precious stones against the velvet darkness; the streets, carpeted by ice and hard snow, shimmered and glowed under the pale moonlight. I had fallen asleep, squatting behind a buttress of t
he church of St Nicholas long after curfew, my lips blue, my teeth chattering with the cold.
I cried out with the pain which seemed to turn my body from head to toe into one raw, open wound. For the hundredth time I cursed Benjamin and wondered desperately what had happened to him. I walked in a daze trying to keep warm as strange fantasies plagued my mind: Selkirk chanting in a field of white roses all stained by blood; my mother crouching on a step as she used to when I would play and run to her – but, when I drew closer, she was an old cripple, eyes open, face frozen blue. She just toppled over as I touched her.
I walked on, trying to keep warm. The streets were black, the cobbles rough beneath their carpet of ice and a bitter, cruel wind whipped the snow into sudden flurries. I saw a group walking towards me through the ashen darkness. They were leper women, unfortunates from the hospital of St Lazaire, a dozen withered, hideous creatures, embodying foulness and decay. They gathered their filthy, scant rags about them and screamed at me to go away, their putrid breath freezing on their blue lips. I wandered down the Rue de la Carbiere then I heard the first soul-searing howl: the wolves were back in Paris, hunting for whatever they could find.
The hairs on the nape of my neck tingled and my tired heart lurched with fear. I hurried on, slipping on the black ice, cursing and praying, hammering at the doors I passed but I was so cold I could hardly cry out. Again the howl, nearer, more drawn out, chilling the heart as well as the blood. I turned, like you do in a nightmare, and down the years the vision of terror I glimpsed still springs fresh in my mind. The long track wound behind me, past dark, high-gabled houses, the hard-packed snow winking in the ivory moonlight. At the far entrance of the street emerged one huge, horrible shape, dog-like, massive and sinister. It just stood there, then others came, massing in the darkness, ears pointed, high-tailed, the fur on their backs raised in awesome ruffs.
Lord, I screamed and ran, heart thudding, my throat so dry it constricted. I wanted to vomit and would have if my belly had not been so empty. I screamed: 'Aidez-moi! Aidez-moi!’
I prayed, promising to give up wine, warm tits and marble white buttocks. (You can see how desperate I was!) Behind me the wolves howled as if sure of their prey and calling others to join them for their banquet of good English beef. I flew past barred doors and shuttered windows. Nothing but silence greeted my cries. As I hurried I heard the scrabbling patter of the wolves closing in. Another chilling howl and I could have sworn I smelt their hot, sour breath. [Oh, by the way, I have been chased by wolves on two occasions. A few years later in the ice-packed snow outside Moscovy, but nothing was as chilling as that short, desperate run in Paris.] I glimpsed the creaking sign of a tavern with two red apples. I screamed again.
Suddenly the door beneath the sign opened, a hand stretched out and pulled me in. I heard the crash of a body against the door, and angry snarling. Gasping for breath I looked round, noticing the low black beams, tawdry tables and thick, fat tallow candles, their rancid smell cloying my frozen nose and face. A stocky, red-faced fellow with hairy warts round his mouth grinned a gap-toothed smile, pulled open a shutter and let fly with a huge arbalest. I heard curses, the screaming yelps of the animals, then I fainted.
When I revived, Wart-Face (who introduced himself as Jean Capote) and his companion Claude Broussac, rat-faced with a pointed nose, greasy hair and the cheekiest eyes I have seen this side of Hell, were bending over me, forcing a cup of scalding posset between my lips. They introduced themselves as self-confessed leaders of the Maillotins, the French word for 'clubs', a secret society of the Parisian poor who attacked the rich and earned their name from the huge cudgels they carried. Brother Joachim, like many of the Franciscans, must have been one of these.
'You're not going to die,' Broussac said, his eyes dancing with mischief. 'We thought we'd denied the wolves a good meal. If we hadn't, we'd have tossed you back and perhaps saved some other unfortunate!'
I struggled up to show I wasn't wolf meat. Capote brought me a deep-bowled cup of heavy claret, heated it with a burning poker, and a dish of scalding meat, heavily spiced. I later learnt it was cat. They asked me a few questions and withdrew to grunt amongst themselves, then came back and welcomed me as one of them. God knows why they saved me. When I asked, they just laughed.
'We don't like wolves,' Broussac sneered, 'whether they be fouror two-legged. You're not French, are you?' he added.
'I'm English,' I replied. 'But I starve like any Frenchman!'
They laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. If I had lied, I'm sure they would have cut my throat. I swear this now [never mind the chaplain who is sitting there sneering at me], I saw more of Christ's love amongst the Maillotins than anywhere else on this earth. Their organisation was loose knit but they accepted anyone who swore the oath of secrecy and agreed to share things in common, which I promptly did. What we owned we stole and filched, not from the poor but the merchants, the lawyers, the fat and the rich. What we didn't eat ourselves, we shared; the most needy receiving the most, then a descending scale for everybody else.
I also began to plot my departure from Paris. Benjamin, I reasoned, must either have died of an illness or been killed. Now I would need silver to reach the coast and get across the Narrow Seas. Broussac once asked what I was doing in Paris, so I told him. He was fascinated by Selkirk's murder.
'There is a secret society,' he murmured, 'Englishmen who fled after your Richard III was killed at Bosworth. They have an emblem.' He screwed up his face so it seemed to hide behind his huge nose. Their emblem is an animal, a leopard? No, no, a white boar. Les Blancs Sangliers!'
At the time I didn't give a damn. In the winter of 1518 all I cared about was surviving and life was hard in Paris. Yuletide and Twelfth Night passed with only the occasional carols in church, for no one dared to go out at night. Mind you, every cloud had a silver lining. The brothels were free, the ladies of the night well rested and more than prepared to accept sustenance, a loaf or a jug of wine, instead of silver. I suppose I was happy enough. I never planned. (I always follow the Scriptures: 'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.') I just wish I had practised what I preached! I was full to the gills of roasted cat, which is one of the reasons I can't stand the animals now. Whenever I see one I remember the "rancid smell of Broussac's stew pot and the gall rises in my throat.
[The silly chaplain is shaking his noddle.
'I would not eat cat,' he murmurs.
Yes, the little sod would. Believe me, when you are hungry, really hungry, so that your stomach clings to your backbone, nothing is more tasty than a succulent rat or a well-roasted leg of cat!]
I stayed with the Maillotins until spring came. The river thawed and barges of food began to reach the capital. The city provost and his marshals became more organised, clamping down more ruthlessly on the legion of thieves which flourished in the slums around the Rue Saint Antoine. Broussac and Capote refused to read the signs and so made their most dreadful mistake. One night, early in February 1518, the three of us were in a tavern called the Chariot, a cosy little ale house which stands on the corner of the Rue des Mineurs near the church of Saint Sulpice. We had eaten and drunk well, our gallows faces flushed with wine, our stupid mouths bawling out some raucous song and planning our next escapade.
Now Broussac had an enemy – a Master Francois Ferrebourg, a priest, bachelor of arts, and pontifical notary. He occupied a house at the Sign of the Keg, a little further down the street opposite the convent church of the Order of Saint Cecily. Broussac, on our way home, stopped to jeer in at the lighted windows of Master Ferrebourg's office. Oh, God, I remember the scene well: the black street with its overhanging eaves and gables, the broad splash of light pouring across the cobbles from Ferrebourg's open window. Inside, his clerks sat toiling into the night over some urgent piece of business and Broussac, half-tipsy, taunted them, making rude gestures and spitting through the window. Now, we should have left it at that, but we were too drunk to run, whilst the clerks were sober and quick-witt
ed. They left their writing desks and poured into the streets, led by Master Ferrebourg himself. The notary gave Broussac a vigorous shove which sent my companion sprawling into the open sewer. He picked himself up, roaring with rage, and, before I could stop him, whipped out his dagger and gave Master Ferrebourg a nasty gash across his chest whilst lifting the purse from his belt.
'Run, Shallot!' he screamed.
I was too drunk and, as Broussac disappeared into the darkness, Capote and myself were seized and held until the night watch arrived. Our thumbs were tied together and, in a clatter of arms and a tramp of archers, we were hustled into the dark archways of the Chatelet prison and thrown into a deep dungeon beneath the tower.
We were tried before the Provost of Paris the next morning. Capote, still drunk, farted and belched when the sentence was read out. I tried to reason with them but, in doing so, confessed I was English. My fate was sealed. We were condemned as two of the most troublesome blackguards within the liberties of Paris; rioters, burglars and assassins, hand in glove with some of the most desperate characters of the underworld. We were sentenced to hang the next morning at the gallows of Montfaucon. I tried to plead and argue but was only beaten for my pains and thrown down the steps back into my cell; the dungeon door, grating shut, was locked securely behind us.
Capote immediately fell asleep on the straw. I just sat staring into the darkness, hugging my knees. All I could see was Death, beckoning and grinning before me. In the thick, musty air of the dungeon I felt a creeping graveyard chill. Who would help me this time? The Parisians would scarcely spare a second thought for an Englishman and be only too pleased to see me twitch and shake at the end of a rope. I thought of Benjamin and Wolsey and cursed them. Couldn't they have done something? Made enquiries? Searched me out?
['Put not your trust in princes, Shallot!' my chaplain often quips. I rap the little hypocrite across the knuckles and tell him to keep writing.]
