The Burning Chambers

by Kate Mosse

  Minou had been born and bred in Carcassonne. She had grown tall here, among the grey and sandstone colours of the Midi, amongst the vines and orchards of La Cité. A girl who had learnt her letters at the kitchen table in rue du Trésau. The footprints of her nineteen years upon the earth were here.

  That girl stood now, like a shadow beside her.

  Minou felt her old self take a pace back and another self take a pace forward. Carcassonne and Toulouse. Her past and her future.

  PART TWO

  TOULOUSE

  Spring 1562

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  TOULOUSE PLAINS

  Sunday, 8th March

  ‘Sirrah, if you please!’ Minou shouted at the driver as the carriage bounced over the brow of another hill. Its wheels were clattering over the rough ground, setting her teeth rattling in her head. She rapped sharply on the roof.

  ‘Sirrah, stop!’

  The driver pulled up the horses with such force that Minou was thrown back in her seat. Enraged, for she knew the driver had done it on purpose, she dragged the curtain back and stuck her head out.

  ‘My brother is unwell.’

  Aimeric stumbled out of the cab and, moments later, the sound of retching betrayed the weakness of his stomach.

  ‘The motion of the carriage does not agree with him,’ Minou said, though she knew full well the sweetbreads and ale he had acquired at the tavern last evening, when they had stopped to rest the horses and break the journey, were the cause of his sickness.

  The pleasure at being in a closed carriage, a novelty when they left Carcassonne at first light yesterday morning, had quickly worn off. The heavy window cloth trapped the stale air inside. The short night, in a roadside tavern stinking of men and mouldy straw, had left her covered in a mass of flea bites. Minou decided she needed some air.

  ‘How much longer? Were we not due to reach Toulouse by the ninth hour?’

  ‘And would have done so,’ the driver replied sourly, ‘but for the constitution of the young gentleman.’

  ‘I am sure the horses are grateful for a rest.’

  Minou walked away from the carriage. The air was clear, a haze of mist hanging over the wet grass. Ahead was a small copse, the silver bark of the trees glistening in the early morning light. She glanced back over her shoulder. The driver was sitting on his bench, resting his whip across his knees. Of Aimeric, there was no sign.

  Minou took another few steps away from the road, then slipped into the green shadow of the wood. Larch and ash trees, the last berries of the winter holly, the world coming back to life. She breathed in the sweet smell of damp soil and new leaf and, all around her, there was a carpet of tiny purple woodland violets as far as her eye could see. She kept walking, feeling the rise and fall of the uneven ground beneath her feet, heading towards the horizon beyond the tree line.

  Suddenly, Minou was out of the woods and found herself standing on the top of a hill, bounded in the far distance by the white-capped peaks of the Pyrenees.

  On the plains below lay Toulouse. Glorious, magnificent, glinting like a jewel in the dawn haze. She saw a wide, wide river, in front of the southern section of the city walls, like a gown of spun silver. Behind it, a myriad steeples and domes and spires, each touched by the rising sun so it seemed as if the whole city was aflame. La ville rose, Piet had called it.

  Minou had read of how Toulouse was both a marvel of the modern age and a pearl of the Roman Empire, with its viaducts and the amphitheatre, marble columns and huge carved, sculpted heads of the pagan gods of the past. But neither her imagination, nor the most exquisite words on a page, had prepared Minou for the majesty of the city now spread out at her feet.

  Then, through the trees, she heard the sound of Aimeric shouting her name.

  ‘I’m coming,’ she called back, though she did not move. Her joy at the scene before her was tempered suddenly by the thought of Alis and her father left behind. What if Alis could not manage without her or sickened? What if their departure hastened their father further into decline? What if even the best ministrations of Madame Noubel could not help him regain some measure of contentment?

  What if . . .

  ‘Minou, where are you?’

  Hearing the concern in Aimeric’s voice, she turned and walked back through the woods. She would not allow memories of Carcassonne to overwhelm her. Instead, she would think of the new life waiting for them in Toulouse.

  The sun was rising over the plains outside the Porte Villeneuve. Piet heaved another plank onto his shoulder, bracing his legs for balance, then passed it to another, who hauled the plank up out of the sawpit and marked it with a Roman numeral to identify where it went in the frame. Others were lashing the woven wattle hurdles to the wooden scaffolding poles, ready to pulley the completed frame into place.

  Piet rolled his shoulders, satisfied by the hard, physical work. He was proud to be part of an impromptu band of brothers, linked by their Protestant faith and a common purpose, who were expanding the Temple of the Reformed Church to accommodate Toulouse’s growing Huguenot congregation. Whenever Piet could be spared from the almshouse in rue du Périgord, he came here to join students, sons of wealthy merchants, clerks and yeoman farmers, standing side by side with the guildsmen and sawyers, joiners, carpenters, masons and turners. Little by little, Piet was learning the language of wood: dovetail joints and sill beams and purlins, mortise and tenon, the secret patois of skilled craftsmen.

  The gold from the sale of the counterfeit shroud in Carcassonne had financed much of the work, though his role in the matter he kept secret. In idle moments, Piet worried that Oliver Crompton would discover that the Shroud was a forgery. But why would the Carcassonnais men question its authenticity? And besides, surely there was no one there who would be able to tell it from the original.

  Still, doubt gnawed away at him. He could hardly explain why he had paid for a copy to be made. Except that, for all his Huguenot soul should despise the cult of relics, Piet had not been able to bring himself to hand over a piece of such antiquity and beauty. He felt guilty for deceiving his allies and for his inability to admit the truth to Vidal. Piet was still haunted by the look of disappointment on his former friend’s face when he confessed he had known of the theft, albeit after the event.

  ‘Here,’ a carpenter said, heaving a beam of rough-hewn wood into his arms. ‘Steady?’

  Piet braced his legs and took the weight. ‘I have it.’

  The air was filled with wood smoke and clouds of sawdust. Flat gables were pulled up into position by mules and rope as, little by little, the building was taking shape. Simple and plain, in the style of the covered markets of the towns of the upper Languedoc – the temple was to be a wide, single space inside large enough to accommodate hundreds of worshippers. The hope was that the work would be completed by Palm Sunday some two weeks hence.

  Piet had cut his hair unfashionably short and dampened down its distinctive red hues with charcoal, leaving it a strange dull grey. He’d done the same to his beard and left it untended, disguising the shape of his jaw. His pale skin had been darkened in the few weeks he’d spent outdoors in the spring sun, though he was still paler than most of the men around him. His clothes, too, were different. He had put away his ruff and doublet and wore instead the open shirt, jerkin and plain hose of a yeoman’s son. From a distance, he would defy even his closest friends to recognise him.

  Even Vidal.

  Since returning to Toulouse, Piet’s concern for his old friend had driven him to seek him out. At the maison de charité during the day and in the taverns of the cathedral quarter at night, he’d listened to tittle-tattle and bought gage after gage of ale, but learnt little. He’d pressed the palms of servants and sweet-talked the giggling maids in the bourgeois houses. Last week, a student from their old college admitted he’d heard gossip of the young canon with the white stripe in his black hair – already a monsignor, so they said – but had no idea where he was to be found. Since Piet did not know
what name Vidal had taken at his ordination, it was all but hopeless.

  Piet told himself Vidal was alive and safe, though he knew these were just words, like a catechism repeated. He would not allow himself to think Vidal might have been involved in any deception. In daylight hours, Piet dwelt on his culpability. If he had not come looking for him in Carcassonne, would his friend now be sleeping safe in his bed? He was sure, too, that the Fournier house had not been where Vidal was lodging, but Piet could only assume that it was impossible for them to have met anywhere else. He had sought out Vidal, after all, not the other way around.

  In the unforgiving hours between midnight and dawn, wakeful in the dark, Piet tormented himself with the fear that Vidal had been murdered in Carcassonne – and that he himself had been accused of the killing.

  Then, as news of the massacre at Vassy spread, there was much more to worry about. The facts came third hand, fifth hand, diluted and distorted in each retelling. A hundred Huguenots dead, slaughtered as they gathered in worship. Some said more. Unarmed men, women and children slaughtered by the Duke of Guise’s men. What would it mean for France? For Toulouse? No one knew, only that these were lawless times. The almshouse where he worked was overwhelmed with Protestant women and children put from their homes, in desperate need of food and shelter.

  ‘Stand clear now!’

  The shouts of workers brought Piet back to the present. He clamped his fingers around the beam and strode forward, his footsteps leaving imprints in the dewed ground.

  Suddenly, he felt a prickling on the back of his neck, as if someone was watching him. It was not the first time he had felt himself under observation. He looked round: a boy was idling by the midden with an insolent stare; a dark-skinned man with a Spanish beard whose eyes slid away from Piet whenever their paths crossed. Piet shook his head, surprised to be so anxious. But he was tired. The concerns that kept him awake at night were now making him see troubles where none existed.

  He went back to work.

  ‘Merci,’ his boss said in his clumsy accent, as Piet lowered the beam to the ground ready to be hoisted up. The man in charge of constructing the section at the back of the temple was an Englishman, said to have studied in Geneva under Calvin himself. He kept his own company, but he was fair and the work ran to time.

  ‘My pleasure,’ Piet replied in English.

  The man looked up in surprise. ‘You speak my language.’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Jasper McCone,’ he said, offering his hand.

  ‘Piet . . . Joubert.’ He gave the first name that came to mind, just in case his Carcassonne troubles had followed him here.

  ‘Most of your countrymen are not so minded to learn other tongues.’

  Piet smiled. ‘I spent some time in London, in the first days of your new Queen’s reign. Also, Amsterdam, where many sailors know a little English.’

  ‘But you live here now?’

  ‘I live here.’

  McCone wiped the top of a small ale flagon with his kerchief, and offered it to Piet.

  ‘Thank you.’ Piet drank, then handed it back with a nod towards the building. ‘She’s going up quickly.’

  ‘We’re using some of the foundations of the old building, but it’s in the quality of the wood. French oak is better than English oak. Straighter and longer. Less likely to split or buckle under the load.’

  ‘Will the work be completed on time?’

  ‘If this weather holds,’ McCone said.

  For a moment, Piet was content: the taste of the hops on his tongue and the rising sun on his back, with the ache of honest labour in his arms and legs. He forgot to feel anxious. But as the ale wore off the clouds descended again; he thought of Michel, wondering if he was still in Carcassonne, and of Vidal. Then he remembered the soldiers shouting how they were hunting a murderer matching his description, and the metal band tightened around his chest again.

  ‘I needed that,’ he said, returning the flagon to McCone. ‘Back to work. No time to waste if we are to be ready for Holy Week.’

  Piet returned to the sawpit.

  Minou stood with her arm around her brother’s shoulder.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Aimeric said again.

  ‘Do you feel better?’

  He nodded. ‘I truly am sorry, Minou.’

  ‘No matter,’ she said, straightening his doublet. ‘There, that’s not so bad. Are you well enough to continue the journey?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Good. It’s no more than five leagues now.’

  ‘It looks closer.’

  ‘We are high up. A few hours and we’ll be there.’ She smiled, and linked her arm through his. ‘To pass the time, you can tell me about the day you came face to face with a murderer.’

  ‘Not again,’ Aimeric groaned as Minou helped him back into the carriage. ‘I have told you everything that happened a dozen times, everything he said. In any case, you say he is wrongly accused and so not a murderer at all.’

  ‘Then one more telling will not hurt,’ she insisted, ‘and it will keep your mind off the state of your stomach.’ She rapped on the roof. ‘Driver!’

  The carriage lurched forward and soon they were hurtling down the hill towards the covered bridge that would take them over the river Garonne and into the city.

  As Aimeric talked, Minou let his words wash over her. In the days since helping him to escape La Cité, Piet was often on her mind. She never doubted he had returned safely to Toulouse, though she did not know it for a fact. From Bérenger, she had learnt that the stranger they had been seeking for Michel’s murder had never been apprehended.

  She imagined a myriad of invented duets between her and Piet. Sometimes they were sweet in nature, affectionate and flattering. At other times, she reprimanded him for having put Aimeric so carelessly in danger.

  Now, she was in touching distance. Somewhere, within the dazzling metropolis spread out below her, she would find him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE BASTIDE

  Sunday, 15th March

  ‘Let go of my arm, Alis,’ Bernard cried, trying to prise his daughter’s fingers from his sleeve. ‘You have to stay with Madame Noubel.’

  ‘Take me with you, Papa,’ Alis cried. ‘I don’t want you to go.’

  Cécile stepped in. ‘Come, petite, you will wear yourself out with weeping. Here’s a piece of liquorice. It will soothe your throat.’

  Alis ignored her. ‘Why can’t I go with you? I’ll be as quiet as a mouse. I’ll be good.’

  ‘It is too far. It’s no place for a child.’

  ‘Then let me go to Toulouse instead. I can stay with Minou and Aimeric. It is not fair that I should be left in Carcassonne on my own.’

  ‘Fie, Alis, you’ll not be alone, you will be with me.’ Madame Noubel pressed the liquorice root into her hand. ‘Your father has no choice. He has business to attend to.’

  ‘But it’s not fair –’

  ‘Ca suffit!’ Bernard snapped, guilt making him sharp. ‘I won’t be away for long.’

  Madame Noubel hugged the little girl. ‘We will rub along together well enough, you and I,’ she said. ‘Bernard, you should make ready. Alis will be fine as soon as you have gone.’

  Distraught to be the cause of such unhappiness, Bernard was desperate to reassure her.

  ‘I will not be away for long.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To the mountains.’

  ‘Where in the mountains?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ he said, feeling Cécile Noubel’s eyes on him.

  ‘If you go to the mountains, will you stop being sad?’

  Her words pulled him up short. She was a sweet child, yet he felt he barely knew her. She had been only two years old when his beloved wife died. In his grief, he had left Alis to Minou’s care. Now her innocent question was proof of what Cécile had warned – that his melancholy was affecting the whole family.

  Blinking his failure from his eyes, Bernard st
udied her solemn little face. She looked so like her mother, with her black eyes and tumbling curls.

  ‘Will you come back happy?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, with more confidence than he felt. ‘In the mountains, the air is clear and it will make me well again.’

  ‘I see,’ Alis said, and her sympathy touched him more deeply than her sorrow had done.

  ‘Be a good girl while I’m gone,’ he said. ‘Work hard at your letters.’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’

  Madame Noubel stroked her hair. ‘Alis, I warrant the kitten is awake now. You may give her a saucer of milk.’

  The little girl’s face lit up. She went up on her toes, placed a kiss on her father’s cheek, then skipped up the steps into the boarding house.

  ‘Thank you, Cécile,’ he said.

  ‘You are going to Puivert, aren’t you.’ It was more a statement than a question.

  Bernard hesitated, then nodded. Why bother to deny it?

  ‘Are you sure that it is wise?’

  He let his hands drop. ‘I have to be certain there is nothing there that could harm Minou.’

  ‘When we talked of this two weeks ago, you were adamant that there was no danger. What has changed your mind?’

  He could hardly explain it to himself, yet since Michel’s murder his fears had grown and grown, like ivy on a wall.

  ‘I told you about the inquisitional prison in Toulouse.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘You cannot understand the horror of such a place, Cécile, unless you have been there. It is . . . hell. The screaming and the inhumanity, men whose bodies are broken left to die in agony in the company of those waiting for their interrogation to begin.’ He exhaled deeply, as if he could rid himself of the memories. ‘What I didn’t tell you, was that I was held like that in the same cell as the man who was murdered, Michel Cazès.’