Heretic Dawn

by Robert Merle

  And whether or not it was the charm of this particular phrase, the three quarteniers looked at each other and burst out laughing uncontrollably, though their mirth seemed to embarrass Senneçay, who, though a devil through and through, was hypocritical enough to wish to hide his delight at this.

  “Monsieur,” cried Monsieur de La Place, “you heard him! Are you going to deliver me into such evil hands? Monsieur, I demand and beg you to deliver me personally to the Louvre under your responsibility.”

  “Monsieur,” soothed Senneçay, his voice dripping with sanctimoniousness, “you must excuse me. I regret that I have other business I must attend to. I cannot remain with you more than fifty paces. Pezou will do the rest.”

  “So you see, Monsieur, that you’re now married to me!” laughed Pezou. “And by God, you won’t regret it!”

  “Well then, Monsieur,” said Monsieur de La Place to Senneçay, his voice as ashen as his face, “this is treason! It’s a felony! I will not accompany this assassin. I refuse!”

  Senneçay frowned deeply at these words, and immediately, without a word, walked over to the door of the library, opened it and called for half a dozen of his guards.

  “Monsieur,” he hissed to Monsieur de La Place, coming back to him but, again, without looking him in the eye, “that’s enough rebelliousness and insurrection! When I speak in the name of the king I intend to be obeyed. If you do not willingly surrender to the king, I will have to have you bound hand and foot and carted to the Louvre.”

  After a few moments of reflection, Monsieur de La Place conceded, “I will spare you this ultimate infamy. It would clearly be too great a burden on your conscience.”

  This said, he took up his cape (without which no one of his nobility would have thought of going out into the street in Paris, even in this August heat), threw it over his shoulders and, his face ashen but calm and full of determination, stepped towards the door. However, at the moment of crossing the threshold, he turned, without deigning to look at either Senneçay or the three quarteniers, and gazed one last time at his armchair, his writing table and his books.

  His escort, as I learnt later, took him by way of the Petit Pont, which Senneçay did not cross, withdrawing as he said he would; Pezou took the lead of the troop, whom the mob accompanied, shouting “Kill! Kill!” but not daring to attack the guards. They continued through the Île de la Cité, but as they arrived at the corner of the rue de la Verrerie, Pezou ordered the guards to stop. A handful of assassins who had been posted there on purpose threw themselves on Monsieur de La Place and stabbed him to death without the guards preventing them in any wise.

  As for me, I believe that, while the king did nothing to protect La Place, he had not specifically ordered his death either. Otherwise, his name would have been included on a list and he would have been murdered in his lodgings like so many others on Sunday, 24th August at dawn. In my view it was Senneçay who plotted this murder with Pezou and Nully, who’d had to give up his role as president of the Court of Aids during the Peace of Saint-Germain, and had never forgiven his rival. Pezou’s help was purchased with a few coins and Senneçay’s for a few écus, and so Nully managed to keep his reputation stainless by absenting himself from the murder.

  And so it went in these sinister hours. It became acceptable for anyone who so desired to murder his heretic, one in order to usurp his place, another in order to inherit his money, another simply to exact his revenge and another still to win a lawsuit. Thus, for example, the famous Bussy d’Amboise, who’d sued the Huguenot Antoine de Clermont over the marquisate of Renel, went after him on the morning of the 24th and put an end to their legal proceedings by stabbing him to death.

  As soon as Monsieur de La Place had left with his executioners, I ran to close and lock the library door, convinced that the minute they saw the door of the house unguarded, the mob would swarm inside to pillage it. Florine emerged from the little cabinet in tears, and I had to prevent her from going to gather her affairs from her room since we could already hear the marauders downstairs, who were swarming through the house like rats through a block of cheese.

  So I pulled the wench into the secret staircase, drew the wooden panel closed and down we went into the darkness, Fröhlich leading the way while I brought up the rear. Our Swiss giant would have simply knocked down the door at the bottom if I hadn’t stopped him and asked Miroul to find the latch, which he did and immediately provided us access to the stables. Once there, Florine showed us, hidden behind the stacks of hay, the door that led out onto the rue Boutebrie, which appeared, when we peeked out, to be calm and deserted. You can imagine that we lost no time in saddling our horses for fear that the pillagers would decide that they wanted them as well, and, Florine mounting up behind Miroul, we burst out into the street and turned right, then right again and took the rue de la Harpe down to the Pont Saint-Michel, and from there the left quay along to the rue des Grands-Augustins, where one of Florine’s cousins was living at the home of her aunt, who was a very beneficent lady.

  Alas, the cousin was not so tolerant. As soon as he opened the door and saw Florine, he slammed it in her face, despite her pleas not to leave her out in the street alone and abandoned. In response to her cries, this zealous papist opened an upstairs window and showered her with insults and threats. It wasn’t long before other windows were thrown open and housewives began screaming “Kill! Kill!” and I realized that we couldn’t linger here for long without having the entire parish after us.

  We left, urging our horses into a trot, winding our way through a series of unfamiliar streets until we reached the rue Hautefeuille, which was completely quiet, so we stopped there. Florine was pressed into Miroul’s back, crying hot tears, her arms clasped tightly around his chest.

  “Florine,” I asked, coming up beside them, “have you no other relative you can stay with?”

  “Alas, no, Monsieur!” she sobbed. “The Lord called my parents and my aunt. Oh, Monsieur, what will I do now? Where will I go? Monsieur and Madame de La Place were the only family I had.”

  “Monsieur,” said Miroul, “we can’t leave the poor wench alone in the streets of this hateful city to be killed—or worse—by these fanatics! I beg you to let her come with us, and cast her lot with ours.”

  “Oh, Miroul,” sighed Florine, her tears ceasing immediately, and she held him so tightly you couldn’t have slipped a pin between them.

  “Miroul,” I cautioned, “this is no casual thing, to try to save a wench when we’re trying to escape ourselves!”

  But Miroul had such an urgent and beseeching look in his eyes—he who was ordinarily so light-hearted—that I understood that this was indeed not a casual request at all, but a wholehearted and honest one. Glancing at Giacomi, I could see from his smile that he’d sensed between these two a tender attachment and not just a passing attraction. “And yet,” I thought, “can we really take along a wench when we’re on the run? In the midst of such dangers?” And what a risk she was for us, since she was the weak link in our chain, knowing neither how to ride, how to run nor how to fight—a tender burden for Miroul, but a burden nonetheless, one who would certainly slow us down. On the other hand, how could I refuse Miroul, who’d so many times saved my life? And, what’s more, hadn’t I promised Monsieur de La Place that I’d make sure his chambermaid was safe? Where else could she possibly go if we refused to take her?

  Unable to make up my mind in the urgency of the moment, I decided not to decide immediately, and so I said, smiling at my gentle valet:

  “Let’s get through the city gates first. Then we’ll see.”

  Miroul returned my smile with such immense gratitude and joy that I couldn’t help feeling very moved.

  “Let’s be off!” I cried. “Let’s see if we can get through the walls of this cruel city and out of this trap!”

  But this time, Miroul failed to guide us in the right direction, and we ended up back in the rue Hautefeuille, heading towards the Cordeliers convent, where we suddenly fou
nd ourselves in the midst of a great procession of women, who were yelling and shouting and leading a group of Huguenot women to the church so that they could convert them on the spot. Since our horses couldn’t take a step in this melee, we were forced to watch this strange scene. The great doors of the Cordeliers were wide open, and on the high altar, illuminated by hundreds of candles, was the idol that papists call the Holy Sacrament, before which these Furies wanted the unhappy women to throw themselves on the ground and abjure their faith. Some of these, in particular those who were holding small children in their arms, consented to renounce their faith, no doubt, I believe, to protect their offspring from pain and death. Others, however, stubbornly refused, and were thrown onto carts, stripped and dragged to the statue of the former king St Louis (which stands at the entrance to the convent gates), where they were beaten, scratched and trampled underfoot by bunches of the parish witches, who made such hideous cries, whistles and ululations as to curdle your blood, and, from what I could tell, abandoned their victims to their heresy only after they thought they were dead.

  I don’t need to describe the terror with which poor Florine watched this scene, imagining herself in the place of these poor martyrs and dismembered by these hags, and pressed her face into Miroul’s back as a chick might seek comfort under a hen’s feathers. My gentle valet was grinding his teeth, and for once his brown eye was more angry than his blue one.

  “Easy does it, Miroul,” I cautioned. “Get hold of yourself! Let’s get out of this buzzing swarm!”

  So the four of us began to move backwards on our horses, their large hindquarters opening the way through the crowd, until we succeeded in emerging from these screaming harpies and reached the rue du Paon. From there we made our way to the rue de l’Éperon, where we found calm again, and then to the rue des Arcs,† which wasn’t so peaceful: just as we reached it we heard the noise of carriage wheels on the pavement, and a travelling coach passed by, whose curtains were closed tightly, and which was escorted by thirty horsemen in battle dress, all of them with swords or pistols in their hands. And though all of these horsemen displayed the Lorraine cross on their caps and the coat of arms of the Guise family on their caparisons, they were having a hard time maintaining the respect of the mob, who suspected that this was some prominent Huguenot who was disguised as a member of the Guise household, and were swarming around the coach shouting “To arms! To arms! To Madame la Cause!” Some of them ran right in front of the horses and seemed not to be discouraged by the blows bestowed on their backs by the horsemen.

  I immediately realized that this was our chance to escape! Having no doubt that this procession would be passing under the drawbridge at the Buccy gate, I galloped up to its rear, crying “Long live Guise!” I was even able to come to the aid of the valet who was driving a cartful of travel cases at the tail of the procession, arriving just in time to fend off a couple of rogues who would otherwise have knocked him from his saddle. Finding himself safely surrounded by four fellows, the driver, who was an older man with a pleasant and open face, thanked me, but couldn’t say more, because we were now assailed by the mob, who began throwing stones, and by the housewives in their windows, who were launching all manner of missiles in our direction: garbage, tiles and even flowerpots—projectiles we had great trouble dodging, the old valet being so badly hit by a frying pan that it was all I could do to maintain him in his saddle.

  Thank God, the carriage was now passing onto the drawbridge, though still fiercely beset by the mob, and the bridge guard, luckily seeming less suspicious of the Guise coat of arms than the crowd had been, allowed the coach to pass; but when it was our turn, an archer lowered his pike and demanded:

  “Whose trunks are these?”

  “They’re the Dame de Belesbat’s,” affirmed the old valet. “We’re going as far as Étampes.”

  “Well, by God, these fellows aren’t! They’re not in livery!”

  “Oh, yes they are!” yelled the valet. “They’re our men, and we hired them yesterday, since they’re strong and good swordsmen!”

  “Of that I have no doubt!” said the archer, seeing how fierce we looked, and raised the bar to let us pass, being more concerned with controlling the mob, who wished to “escort” us all the way to the Faubourg Saint-Germain. ’Sblood! We managed to leave these bloodthirsty villains behind as they argued with the gatekeepers, and galloped off, rejoining the procession quickly, and were very glad to be included in their party when we passed the customs house at the Croix Rouge, whose officers were more interested in interrogating the villagers and merchants who were accustomed to bringing their provender into Paris.

  I thanked our ancient valet profusely, who was glad to have been of service given the help we’d provided him, and he refused my pourboire, saying that, without me, he would have been lying on the pavement in the rue des Arcs, his throat slit by the mob, and stripped of his earthly possessions. He added that he suspected we had our own reasons for leaving Paris, but he believed we were too honest for any enquiry about them to be necessary.

  “My friend,” I said, “may I ask who this Dame de Belesbat is that you’re following to Étampes?”

  “You mean you don’t know?” he said. “She’s the only daughter of Michel de L’Hospital, and though he’s Catholic, the people hate him as much as if he were a heretic because he supported the heretics when he was chancellor. And you, Monsieur,” he asked as delicately as he could, “will you follow us as far as Étampes?”

  “I’m afraid not. We are stopping at Saint-Cloud, where we have some friends.”

  Our valet looked very much relieved that we would be leaving him so soon; he must have been worried, I supposed, that some of the horsemen, who had turned around in their saddles to give us suspicious looks, might have asked us to identify ourselves if they’d had the leisure to stop and did not have to provide escort for the coach.

  Finally, the first windmills of Saint-Cloud came into view, turning their blue blades in the evening breeze, and, crossing the Seine again, which I couldn’t look at without shuddering, the coach slowed down to a walk to climb the steep hill that led up to the village, where, extending a warm right hand to my old valet and smiling broadly—a smile he returned without a word but with great feeling—I dismounted in front of the church. Looking around, I saw one of those little good-for-nothings whom in Paris they call “go tell ’ems” since their masters send them back and forth bearing messages, and said:

  “A sol for you, young man, if you can lead us to the house of Monsieur de Quéribus.”

  The boy reflected a moment, looking at each of us in turn with great curiosity. After which, finding, no doubt, that our clothes were too dirty and dusty and our cheeks too unshaven, he leapt up onto the porch of the church and, with a foot on the railing to put him out of reach, he said:

  “Monsieur, I’m not sure. I wouldn’t want to get beaten for my imprudence. Why are you looking for Monsieur de Quéribus?”

  “I am Pierre de Siorac.”

  “Pierre de Siorac!” cried the boy, his freckled face breaking into a smile. “Rue de la Ferronnerie! Lodged with Maître Recroche? Well, Monsieur! I brought you a message! Good gentleman, give me a hand and the use of your stirrup: we’ll go faster with me behind you on your horse than running in front of you!”

  The lad had only to show himself: his livery was the shibboleth that opened the heavily barricaded portal of the lodgings—a sort of small chateau with unusually thick walls, the thick door doubled by a portcullis, which I heard with enormous relief close behind us with a crash of iron. Normally one might feel imprisoned by such bars, but for me in my predicament this was a sure and safe haven, one that already had the promise of Mespech, my beautiful crenellated nest, Barberine’s capacious lap! So perilous was our flight through Paris, harassed from one street to the next by the cruel mob, that I would have taken refuge in a lion’s cage! I’m not saying that the wild beast would have welcomed me, but the bars of his cage would have at least protected
me from the world of men.

  “Good gentleman,” said the little freckled valet, wrinkling his nose, “please wait here. I will let my master know you’re here.”

  And this said, he flew up the stairs more airily than a bird and disappeared. I looked at my companions, but they just stood there staring at me, unable and unwilling to say a word, so drained were we by hunger, thirst and fatigue, our present understanding blunted by the horrors we’d seen our fill of. Nor could we quite believe that we were really safe, fearful that the hunting cries might be heard again at any moment, putting us to flight.

  Suddenly the door burst open behind us and Quéribus bounded up the steps towards us, perfumed, rings on his fingers, a pearl dangling from his right ear, shimmering in his yellow satin doublet, his smooth face beaming with friendship—though, when he saw how awful I looked, he wouldn’t embrace me for all the world.

  “Well, Pierre,” he exclaimed, “my brother, myself! What have you done to yourself, all dirtied, disgusting and bloody! But you’re alive, thank God, you’re alive!” But when he went to embrace me, the stench of my clothes so repulsed him that he stopped in his tracks. “Maestro Giacomi,” he said, stepping imperceptibly backwards, “I am your servant. Miroul, good day to you, gentle servant. But Pierre, are these two in your company?”

  “Yes indeed, they are!”

  “Welcome, then, to the giant and the blonde wench!” he said with a gracious gesture of his bejewelled hand. “Well, Pierre,” he laughed as he backed away “by my faith, you stink! I could die! Would you like to bathe?”

  “And eat, if you please! Eat and drink!”

  “’Sblood! You’ll have all that and more!” cried Quéribus, his voice ascending to the highest notes. “Call the chambermaids! Let’s get water on to boil! Let’s pamper our guests! And prepare the blue room for Monsieur de Siorac!”