Heretic Dawn

by Robert Merle

  But she backed away from the knife, step by step, speechless, her black eyes practically popping out of their sockets, so great was her terror, so I resheathed my weapon, turned on my heels and, without a word of adieu or a look behind me, left her, so drunk with rage and grief that I could scarcely see the stairs as I stumbled down them like a madman. Emerging onto the rue de Tirechappe, I walked so quickly in my despair—the surrounding world having become black as ink to my grief-stricken eyes—that Miroul had almost to run to keep up with me. “Well,” I thought to myself, “if Alizon, who is fundamentally a good wench, can have such bloodthirsty ideas, and believe they’re legitimate, what about all the knaves and rascals in this immense population?”

  “Monsieur, what’s the matter?” panted Miroul behind me, seeing me so undone with grief and tears flowing down my cheeks. “Did you quarrel with Alizon?”

  For a long while, I couldn’t manage to answer him, since the passers-by looked at me suspiciously because of my distress, but finally we reached the rue de Béthisy, where, because of the numbers of Huguenots who were milling about, entering and leaving the admiral’s lodgings, you would have thought you were in a little Geneva, and, feeling myself to be among my people and more safe than before, I explained to Miroul what had happened.

  “Ah, Monsieur!” moaned Miroul. “You’re too quick to anger! You made a terrible mistake revealing your identity to this sweet wench! If the uprising starts and Maître Recroche, knowing what he knows, bars us from his house, where can we seek refuge until the end of the storm? Dame du Luc and Monsieur de Quéribus are in Saint-Cloud and Fogacer is off chasing his little acrobat. You’ve now eliminated our last refuge: Alizon is lost to us.”

  There was nothing I could say in my defence, so I contented myself with frowning, giving Miroul a proud and disdainful look that expressed righteous anger in direct proportion to his reasonable assessment of our situation. Such is our human folly: even in the extremity of our situation, I needed to appear superior to my valet.

  I found the admiral’s lodgings exactly as Delay had so aptly described them: as buzzing, furious and agitated as a beehive that some good-for-nothing had tossed a stone at. But it was all agitation, commotion, furious debate without any decision, absent of any will or action, our leader still stuck on the idea of remaining in Paris, confident in the good faith of the king.

  Monsieur de Mazille told me the admiral had rested well and that his fever had abated somewhat. He said he was waiting for Ambroise Paré to arrive to change his dressing, and that, with three of us, the task would be much easier. It was an enormous relief for me to look at Monsieur de Mazille’s grave and benign face as he talked; it reminded me a great deal of that of Pierre de L’Étoile, a papist with no zeal whatever, for whom, as Montaigne had said, his fellow man was his fellow man, whether or not he was of the same religion.

  Bowing to the assembled group, I went to kiss the hand of Madame de Téligny, a pretty young blonde, who had her father’s light-blue eyes, though hers were softer, leaning a bit more to green than to blue. I told her how happy I was that her father’s wound was well on its way to healing: words that caused her to tilt her head to one side and thank me with her smooth, somewhat plaintive, flute-like voice.

  Besides Madame de Téligny, those present included Yolet, the admiral’s valet, Nicolas Muss, his German interpreter, the orderly Cornaton, the minister Merlin and Monsieur de Ferrières. To the last of these, having pulled him into a corner, I recounted everything I’d learnt that morning from my conversations with Recroche and Alizon: about the way the papist priests had stirred up the Parisians with stories of how we were going to attack the house of Guise; and about how, in consequence, the entire city had begun arming itself behind closed shutters, and the quarteniers and dizeniers had been marking the doors of the houses of Huguenots.

  “Well, Monsieur de Siorac!” boomed Monsieur de Ferrières with his grave bass voice, which was always a surprise, given his frail little body. “It’s very obvious now that this evil city is going to attack us. But what can we do? There are 3,000 of us and 300,000 of them! Signs of the approaching storm are multiplying by the hour. Did you know that Montmorency, who, in his position as governor of Paris should be keeping order, has just left the city to pay a very opportune visit to his mother?”

  “But I thought he was Coligny’s cousin and good friend.”

  “He is, but he’s also a papist, very concerned about maintaining the king’s favour, and not wholly uninterested in his own advancement. Seeing the wind turning, he’s fled before the tempest, washing his hands, like Pilate, of the admiral.”

  “And us,” I said, through clenched teeth.

  “Well,” said Jean de Ferrières, “God willing, I’ll get out before it starts! It’s madness to stay here, placing all our hope in the king’s goodwill, which doesn’t exist. Charles has never flipped an egg in the Louvre without his mother knowing about it. And he never puts meat on the fire without her taking it and cooking it in her own sauce.”

  Ambroise Paré came up at these words, and as the admiral opened his eyes, Paré asked him whether he’d like to get up and sit in a chair, which would greatly facilitate dressing his wounds. Coligny agreed in a much firmer voice than we’d heard before, and, without any help, rose and sat down on a nearby stool. His face was pale from the loss of all that blood, but his expression was full of resolve. His wounds were beautifully clean and free of any pus or odour, so there was nothing to do except to extract a few splinters of bone from the elbow so that they wouldn’t infect the flesh around them, procedures that Paré executed with admirable dexterity. After which, having washed the wound with spirits, they rebandaged it, and Paré announced that he was very happy with the state of his patient, whose complexion was regaining its colour, signalling good progress against the injury, the pain and the lost blood.

  The admiral got back into bed, and the curtains were drawn, so the king’s surgeon invited me to go and get some refreshment, and said that he’d wait by the bedside for my return before going to his own lodgings.

  “Well, Monsieur,” said Miroul, once we were in the rue de Béthisy, “I heard what Ferrières told you about Montmorency’s departure. That stinks to high heaven of the blood of our people. The only one here who can pick up a scent, can smell the hounds and hunters coming, and he’s going to head into his burrow while there’s still time. For pity’s sake, Monsieur! I beg you in the name of your father, do what he’s doing and don’t delay any longer!”

  “I’ll think about it Miroul,” I replied, now very shaken, but unable, still, to leave the admiral, for the reasons I’ve stated.

  We headed towards the rue de la Truanderie, where we were supposed to meet up with Giacomi to join him for dinner at Gautier’s tavern. He was already there, waiting for us, but the door was closed and the windows were shuttered. We rang the bell, but the only response was from a window on the first floor, where one of Gautier’s chambermaids told us that her master would not be serving dinner today, having, as she laughingly put it, other fish to fry—and what fish those were, she thought we must know! We could but laugh along with her at this wickedness, since our lives were in the balance and all we could do was to pretend to enjoy the game.

  Our stomachs growling with hunger, our morale at a low ebb, there was no other solution than to find an itinerant pastry-seller, and we finally met one in the grand-rue Saint-Denis, who sold his pork pies for twice the price I’d paid my first morning in Paris. I tried bargaining with him, but he refused to bring the price down, knowing full well that all the taverns in Paris were boarded up tight. I didn’t dare insist for fear of putting ideas in his head, since Huguenots are reputed to be able bargainers in Paris. I was also careful to speak with something as close to a Parisian accent as I could manage and for the same reason.

  We each ate three pies and they were so thick-crusted and succulent that we enjoyed the memory of the taste after swallowing them. It struck me as passing strange that one coul
d find such solace in food when under the threat of imminent death. I even thought of purchasing some as provisions, but my Huguenot austerity got the better of me, something I was to regret bitterly over the next twenty-four hours.

  “Well, Giacomi, my brother,” I said quietly when we’d finished eating, “we’re going to have to separate eventually. Miroul and I are going to try to get out of Paris, and we would never drag you into our uncertain fortunes, since you’re a papist. We’ll have time to be reunited, if we escape, back in Mespech.”

  “My brother,” he said gravely, but with that twinkle in his eye that never left him, “surely you cannot think me so low as to abandon you in your hour of peril! Oh, no! My sword would never be unfaithful to a friend in distress. Moreover, I swore to your father to protect you on the right, with Miroul doing the same on your left. I’m going off to the Louvre for my fencing practice. But if the bell signals the beginning of this conflagration that now seems inevitable, let’s agree to meet at the place de Grève, since Recroche’s door is now barred to us.”

  And so it was decided, and, our faces streaming with tears, we embraced each other with the urgency of brothers who may never see each other again in this cruel world. Giacomi set off then, and I watched him walk away with a heavy heart, yet consoled by the thought that our hearts were attached in this hour of torment by bonds of steel.

  We headed once again for the rue de Béthisy, and, to distract me from my worries, Miroul named all of the streets we passed, displaying his extensive knowledge of the city, which he’d explored every day while I was off enjoying the Louvre with Quéribus. But when we drew near the admiral’s lodgings he again pressed me urgently to take my leave as soon as possible. But I said nothing in reply, since I hadn’t yet decided what I would do.

  Scarcely had I arrived before the orderly Cornaton told me that I was awaited in the admiral’s chambers, where the principal Protestant leaders were gathered. As I approached the room, I heard a loud argument going on between Monsieur de Téligny and Jean de Ferrières, the latter arguing, with a degree of vehemence I’d never witnessed from him before, that at any hour now the populace was going to rise up against us and that we could not count on the king. As he saw me come in, he interrupted his speech to ask me to reveal what I’d learnt in the rue de la Ferronnerie from Maître Recroche and in the rue Tirechappe from Alizon. And so I reported what I’d heard.

  “And yet,” said the gentle Téligny, “it’s just been announced that the attempt on the life of the admiral was not planned at court. The judges that have been gathered to study the matter arrested the man who was holding the assassin’s horse after the dastardly attack, and this man has confessed he was working for Guise.”

  “Despite that evidence,” said my cousin Geoffroy de Caumont, “it’s still possible that there was more than one hand responsible for this murderous attempt. Did you know, Téligny, that the smoking arquebus that was found next to the lattice window belonged to one of the Duc d’Anjou’s guards? Would this guard have loaned it to another without his master’s consent?”

  A long silence followed.

  “The Duc d’Anjou is not the king,” said Téligny finally, “and you know very well in what disdain the sovereign holds his brother. In truth, I can’t understand what could possibly make us doubt Charles’s good disposition towards us. I have it from a reliable source that the Duc de Guise and his uncle, the Duc d’Aumale, complaining that they’d been wrongly accused of the attack, went to the king and asked him for permission to leave Paris, which he granted very stiffly and icily.”

  “Ha!” said Jean de Ferrières. “The ducs just pretended to be leaving! They left by the Porte Saint-Antoine, and sneaked back in by the Porte Saint-Denis. Would they have behaved this way if they weren’t assured of the connivance of people at the court who are close to the king? And why would they remain here, if not in the hope that they could preside over the massacre of our people as soon as the court drops the leashes of its hunting dogs? I ask you: is the court really beyond suspicion? At noon today a number of porters were seen carrying cases of weapons from the arsenal to the Louvre, which is now surrounded by several regiments of the king’s guards. What’s the meaning of such a deployment?”

  “No doubt,” replied Téligny, “the king fears that the bourgeois of Paris will attack the Louvre.”

  “Are they arming themselves against him or against us?” cried Jean de Ferrières, raising his hands heavenward in exasperation at Téligny’s insistence on reassuring everyone of the king’s moderation.

  To this, Téligny, deaf to all views that contradicted his own, said, not without some severity, though still as outwardly courteous and benign as was his wont:

  “In truth, we’re making a mistake by multiplying our reasons for distrusting the king in the unfortunate circumstances in which we’re meeting. I beg you to speak no further of this to the admiral.”

  “Do you think you can make the danger vanish by refusing to announce its coming?” cried Jean de Ferrières angrily. “Do we see more clearly by blindfolding ourselves?”

  He then fell silent, but seeing that Téligny’s resistance to his views was too obdurate to permit a change of position, and that he would continue to fall back on the admiral’s refusal to quit Paris—an enterprise that would now be infinitely more difficult given how few hours separated us from nightfall—he rose and said in a stentorian voice:

  “I see that I’m wasting my time and I’m infinitely disappointed, for I am entirely persuaded the populace will attack us tonight.” Whereupon, taking a deep breath, and looking at each one of us in turn, he cried: “Messieurs, I’m leaving right now! Anyone who wants to perish at the hands of these Parisian butchers may do so! As for me, I will try to preserve my life to continue the fight elsewhere, for in my view, it’s madness to sit here and wait to be attacked when we know it’s coming!”

  At this, Jean de Ferrières left, with my cousin Caumont and two or three others whose names I’ve forgotten. I saw that young La Rochefoucauld was considering joining them, deeply shaken by their reasons, but in the end, he decided not to, believing ultimately in the friendship the king had shown him since his arrival at the court. But he was grievously mistaken, for when he awoke the next day he discovered this same king had ordered him to be killed in his bed by the gentlemen of his house.

  After Jean de Ferrières departed, I went to check on the admiral and discovered him resting easily in his bed, his eyes closed and feeling no pain. I left his lodgings and set out down the rue de Béthisy, Miroul at my heels, who didn’t dare ask me where I was headed, but instead quietly followed me to the rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain, and thence to the Louvre. I didn’t go in, but instead entered the Five Virgins tennis courts. I was very disappointed not to find Delay there, and was about to leave when I caught sight of the bald-headed and very scarred scorekeeper who’d admitted Samson and me, at our first visit to the Five Virgins, to his little grandstand on the day that my brother had almost been killed during a religious procession.

  “Monsieur,” I greeted him, “do you remember me? I’m a friend of Sergeant Rabastens.”

  “I do, Monsieur,” he replied, doffing his plumed hat, revealing his scarred pate, and bowed deeply.

  “Monsieur,” I continued, “knowing that you’re a veteran of the king’s guards, I thought perhaps you might know where in the capital I might rent a horse.”

  I noticed that Miroul was now smiling broadly at me, but didn’t make a sound.

  “I know all the stables,” said the scorekeeper very self-importantly. “There are exactly four of them and not one more. And I’m guessing that, as you’re about to depart, you’ll need to know where they’re located. But Monsieur, you’ll have very little chance of finding a horse today, since there are so many bourgeois—Catholics and otherwise—who, since yesterday, have been leaving Paris to avoid being caught up in the popular uprising.”

  I felt very caught off guard, but I asked for the addresses of the stable
s anyway, which the fellow happily provided, seeming to have guessed why I was impatient—Catholic or otherwise—to leave. Indeed, he displayed no malice or churlishness, which I appreciated. I was so comforted to have discovered a papist who didn’t hate us or want to spill our blood that I thanked him with especial warmth for his help and wanted to add a few coins to my thanks, but he refused them, wishing me, with an air of profound understanding, a good ride and a safe return to my home in the provinces. And, in gratitude, I told him that if I ever returned to Paris, I would not fail to pay him a visit, never suspecting that I would see him again twenty-four hours later in such an incredible predicament that I wouldn’t have believed it if the Holy Spirit had announced it from on high!

  Sadly, the scorekeeper was right, and I was unable to find even the most broken-down nag at any of the first three addresses he’d provided… But Fortune appeared to smile on me a little more with the fourth, a stable in the rue des Lavandières, not far from the rue de la Ferronnerie. And when the fellow showed me three very passable mares in his stable, my heart leapt for joy and I could already see us safe and sound outside the terrible net in which we been snared.

  “Monsieur,” said the scowling stable master, a tall, portly fellow with black hair that crept halfway down his forehead, two bushy eyebrows that met above his large nose, an enormous weeping-willow moustache that virtually hid his lips and a copious beard that climbed up to his cheekbones, producing the impression that his nose was the only hairless part of his face—if one excepted the tuft that decorated the end of it and the hairs that emerged from his nostrils, “I can let you have these three mares as far as Montfort-l’Amaury for only thirty écus.”

  “Thirty écus!” I cried. “’Sblood! That’s a pretty fat price!”