The Burning Chambers

by Kate Mosse

  The procession turned into rue Nazareth, then came to a standstill. It was a canyon of a street, the buildings on both sides towering high and narrow. The houses to their right were set into the city wall itself, creating deep shade and cool air.

  Quickly, impatience began to whisper through the crowd like a summer wind through a field of barley. People became restless. One of the mummers stepped out of line to see what was happening up ahead.

  ‘It is an outrage,’ Madame Montfort said. ‘It should not be allowed.’

  ‘Niece, you have the advantage of height, you are so much taller than I am. Can you see why we are stopped?’

  Minou stood on her tiptoes and peered over the heads of the crowd. ‘There appears to be a funeral cortège, but I cannot—’

  ‘It’s a Huguenot funeral,’ Madame Montfort interrupted, ‘blocking the street. It is a disgrace. They have been granted what they demanded, that is to say a temple of their own. Why do they not stay there? The building is far too close to the Porte Villeneuve in any case. If they had any sense of gratitude for the generosity Toulouse has shown, they would have built a more modest structure and out of sight. Why honest Christians should be obliged to look upon it in the course of attending to our everyday business, I cannot imagine.’

  ‘They don’t even dress the same as us for a funeral,’ Madame Boussay added. ‘Disgraceful, I call it. I own they wear black, but commonplace working clothes: not at all seemly.’

  In a rare instance of harmony, Madame Montfort nodded. ‘You are quite right, Salvadora. Huguenots do not even bury their dead with propriety. It is quite scandalous how they flaunt themselves within the city walls.’

  ‘Are they really doing anything wrong?’ Minou muttered.

  The older women ignored her.

  ‘I shall raise this with my brother. He should inform the Hôtel de Ville.’

  ‘As will I,’ her aunt echoed, emboldened that her sister-in-law and she were for once in accord.

  ‘There’s no need for us both to speak to him, Sister. I will explain clearly, in a way that enables Monsieur Boussay to put the matter before the capitouls. This flagrant behaviour should not be licensed.’

  Madame Boussay flushed. ‘Very well, if that is what you think is best, Adelaide. I will leave it in your hands. You understand these things much better than do I.’

  Minou stepped out from the back of the congregation to get a clearer look. The rue Nazareth seemed to be completely filled with people, perhaps some forty in all. The mourners were dressed plainly, and without ostentation, though Minou did not think they looked the worse for that. Another group were more finely dressed, in black velvet and feathers, accompanied by Catholic clergy.

  ‘What can you see now, Niece? Why are we not moving forward? Are they so numerous that our route is blocked?’

  Minou climbed up the front steps of a nearby house to get a better view.

  ‘The street is narrow at the corner,’ she said, trying to make sense of what she could see, ‘but that is not what stops us. There is some kind of dispute.’

  ‘Dispute?’ Madame Montfort demanded. ‘What manner of dispute?’

  ‘I cannot hear, but two priests – canons from the cathedral, I think – appear to be remonstrating with the Huguenot pastor. A Catholic gentleman is beside them. Now one of the priests is shouting. The chief mourner is attempting to calm him.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Marguerite,’ Madame Montfort interrupted again. ‘As if a man of God would be bawling in the street like a common vagrant.’

  ‘Well, the priest is waving his arms around. He looks angry,’ Minou said dryly. ‘And now – Oh . . .’

  She broke off. Four men, each holding a club and with kerchiefs covering their mouths, had moved to flank the Catholic gentlemen arguing with the funeral party.

  ‘Oh no . . .’ she said, her heart speeding up.

  ‘What is it?’ her aunt said anxiously. ‘What’s happening now?’

  Minou climbed from the steps up onto a low wall.

  ‘Marguerite, really!’ Madame Montfort snapped. ‘Come down!’

  ‘What can you see, Niece?’

  ‘They are trying to wrest the coffin from the pall-bearers. The pastor is attempting to intervene, but there are too many of them and —’

  ‘What of our own dear priest?’ her aunt cried, clutching Minou’s skirts. ‘Can you see? Do the Protestants menace him too?’

  ‘It is not the Huguenots who are the aggressors,’ Minou said. ‘They are unarmed. It is the others who have weapons.’

  ‘Weapons?’ her aunt wailed. ‘Huguenots are not permitted to carry weapons within the city limits, my husband told me most particularly.’

  ‘As I said, it is not the Huguenots who are armed, Aunt,’ Minou replied, fear making her impatient, ‘but those who are trying to seize the coffin from the mourners.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. No Catholic would behave in such a matter.’ Madame Montfort heaved herself up onto the low wall. ‘Let me see, Marguerite.’

  Suddenly, the street was full of men. Students, artisans and clerks, Catholics in velvet and wide ruffs, labourers with makeshift clubs coming into rue Nazareth from the far end. Unease murmured through the ranks of mourners and mummers, trapped now between this citizens’ army and the glimpse of daylight at the end of the street.

  ‘Like an ambush,’ Minou muttered.

  The feast-day banners were lowered. The priest handed his thurible to one of the acolytes, who hurried it away. Out of the corner of her eye, Minou saw two musicians put down their instruments and start to push forward.

  Minou jumped down from the wall and elbowed her way through the sea of cloaks, until she found the friar who had accompanied them from rue du Taur.

  ‘My aunt is alarmed by the crowd. I wonder if it might be better to take her back to Saint-Michel?’

  ‘Can you not see what is happening?’ he hissed, spittle pooling white in the corners of his mouth. ‘Are you blind? The well-being of one foolish woman is not my concern.’

  ‘When the “foolish woman” in question is your benefactress, I wonder at how you dismiss her so discourteously.’

  To Minou’s astonishment, he pushed her away.

  ‘I do not care what you do.’

  ‘My uncle shall hear of this insult to his wife,’ she said. ‘Do not doubt it.’

  Outraged, she turned back, resolved to take her aunt out of harm’s way. To her dismay, the space by the steps was now empty.

  ‘Aunt?’ she called, casting her eyes around anxiously. Then, in the distance, she spied Madame Montfort hurrying them both to safety.

  Minou was on the point of following, when there was a sudden surge of people and she found herself carried forward by the crowd. A foot trod on the hem of her cloak, tightening the ribbon at her neck. An elbow dug into her ribs. She was trapped in a fug of sweat and fear and the sour breath of strangers pressing too close. She tried to find a gap through which to slip free of the seething mass, but couldn’t extricate herself. She had been caught in a mob once before, when she was ten years old. She and her mother were leaving the bookshop, when they found themselves swept up in a crowd come to witness a multiple hanging. Minou could remember even now the tightness of her mother’s grip on her hand and the roaring of the pack, the hooded faces and the bodies twisting from the gibbet. Then, as now, it was people’s expressions that chilled her to the bone. The hatred and malice on the faces of ordinary men and women, transformed suddenly into monsters.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she tried to say. ‘Please let me through.’

  Her voice was swallowed up in the commotion. In the distance, she could hear the sound of horses and the rattle of a cart. Then the sound of metal clashing on metal, and a shrill scream.

  For a moment, everyone seemed to catch their breath. Silence, stillness. Then a single word that acted as a call to arms.

  ‘Heretics!’

  The street erupted into battle. With a roar, the two tribes pitched into the fr
ay, scattering pennants and flags in all directions. Shoved to one side, Minou saw people running in blind panic, some away from the mayhem and others towards it.

  The funeral cortège was now completely surrounded and, though the pall-bearers struggled to lift the coffin above the mob, they were being pushed and jostled.

  ‘Traitors!’

  Words, sharp as thorns, baiting, taunting, jeering. The chief mourner still appealed for calm, but his voice was drowned out. A gloved hand shot out and struck him in the face. He stumbled back, blood gushing from his nose.

  Minou saw a bearded man with charcoal-black hair leap to his defence, throwing himself between the injured man and the baying mob. He threw up his arm and blocked a second blow, long enough for the Huguenot to scramble to his feet and escape. With a roar, the Catholic launched himself forward, throwing wild punches. They were evenly matched, but then the attacker drew his sword and the atmosphere changed.

  Calmly, the Huguenot stepped back, drew his own short blade and stood ready. Minou felt another memory push to the surface of her mind. Another street, in Carcassonne, not in Toulouse, that same stance with a dagger in his hand.

  Piet?

  The Catholic attacked. His sword glanced away as Piet parried the thrust. The aggressor tried again, this time swinging his sword from the side. Piet jumped to the left, defending himself rather than trying to wound, Minou realised. Then, suddenly, the sword was flying out of the attacker’s hand and Piet kicked it away. The man froze, then turned tail.

  ‘Piet!’ Minou shouted, but he couldn’t hear her over the cacophony of screaming and battle. She dodged out of the way of two fleeing Huguenot women, and in that moment lost sight of him.

  Fists, rocks, stones on the one side; daggers, clubs and swords on the other. The Huguenots were outnumbered ten to one. Their pastor, still shouting, was wounded, blood dripping down his cheek. His cap had been ripped from his head. A kind of wildness was sweeping through the crowd on both sides, each violent act triggering another in its wake.

  Minou didn’t know which way to turn. Desperately, she tried to catch sight of Piet again in the crowd, but could hardly distinguish one man from another. A heavy stick crashed down onto the shoulders of one of the pall-bearers. He staggered, but did not let go. His attacker drew back his arm and delivered a second strike, crushing his fingers. The pall-bearer screamed, and Minou watched in horror as the coffin pitched forward. A student threw out his arms, trying to get hold of the end, but the angle was awkward and the coffin too heavy.

  The front corner struck the cobblestones. The lid shattered and splintered open. The claw-like hand of the dead woman fell out into the light. For an instant, in a gap between the men, Minou had a clear view of her waxy yellow face. Sallow skin stretched over shrunken bones. Black eyes deep in their sockets and the glint of a plain silver cross at her neck.

  Minou felt faint. Bile rose in her throat, but she swallowed hard, determined not to give way. Then someone tried to drag the corpse out of the coffin, and she had to turn her face to the wall.

  Another gang of men stormed into the street, armed with bill hooks and mattocks. It was becoming increasingly difficult to tell the factions apart. All she knew was that women and children, the infirm, all were trapped, and that she must try to help as many to safety as she could. She looked again for Piet, but he was lost in the crowd.

  To her left, an elderly woman staggered and almost fell. Minou threw out her arms and caught her. ‘Here,’ she said, helping her to the steps to sit, before running back into the fray. A boy was trying to protect his grandfather. With both hands, Minou launched herself at the attacker’s back, shoving him forward so that he fell onto the cobbles, striking his head. She gave the old man her arm and, with the support of a young Protestant woman, also took him to the safety of the steps. The boy was mute with shock. Silent tears ran down his cheeks, though he made no attempt to wipe them away.

  ‘Stay here, petit homme? Yes? Your grandfather needs you to look after him.’

  The boy stared blankly at her, then his whole body shuddered, like a dog shaking the water from its fur.

  ‘Why do they hate us so much?’ he whispered.

  Minou could not answer. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked quickly.

  ‘Louis.’

  She took a kerchief from her cloak. ‘Listen to me, Louis. Hold this here.’ Minou applied the scrap of linen to the wound on the old man’s head. ‘It will slow the bleeding. It looks awful, but I do not think he is badly hurt.’

  At her side, she felt the young woman tense. ‘We don’t need your help.’

  At first, Minou didn’t realise she was addressing her.

  ‘That’s perfect, keep the pressure here,’ she continued, cupping her hand over the boy’s small fingers, ‘that’s right.’

  ‘I said, get away.’ The young woman batted Minou’s arm away. ‘You’re one of them. Leave us alone.’

  ‘What?’ Minou said, still not understanding. ‘I am not part of any group. I only want to help.’

  ‘What’s that on your waist, then?’ she said, pointing at Minou’s rosary. ‘Catholics. You started this. It is your fault. I said, get away from us.’

  ‘I condemn this.’ Minou drew herself up. ‘I am as much a victim as are you.’

  The woman spat in her face. ‘I doubt that. Go!’

  Shocked by the young woman’s hatred, Minou wiped her cheek, and stepped away. A man’s voice rang out above the chaos.

  ‘They have blockaded the far end of the street!’

  Minou felt another surge of panic swelling through the crowd, sending men, women and children running in all directions. Towards danger or away from it, no one knew. Then came another voice, trying to impose order.

  ‘McCone, take the women and children, anyone who is injured, to the almshouse. There will be people to care for them there.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I will hold things here until our soldiers arrive. Lock the doors and let no one enter, save for those we know as our own.’

  In the chaos and the terror of the riot, Minou turned towards the sound of Piet’s voice.

  ‘Piet!’ she called.

  And although it seemed impossible that he should hear her over the cacophony and screaming, Minou saw his eyes dart around looking for her, trying to pick her out in the mass of people.

  ‘Piet!’ she shouted again, trying to get to him.

  Suddenly, right in front of her, was a child. A girl, no older than Alis, kneeling in the middle of the street, with her eyes closed and her hands pressed together in prayer. Plain clothes, a simple Huguenot bonnet, at the precise point the gangs would collide.

  ‘Pousse-toi,’ Minou called, trying to reach the child. ‘Get out of the way.’

  Minou used her hands, her elbows, her knees to force her way through. Closer, closer, nearly there. The rabble armies were almost upon one another, blocking the street in both directions. She hurled herself forward the last distance, and managed to sweep the child up in her arms before the first swords met.

  ‘I have you,’ she gasped.

  Finally, the girl opened her eyes. Blue, the colour of forget-me-nots. Her tiny hands clasped around Minou’s neck.

  ‘I am not afraid,’ she said, ‘for God will protect me. Trust in Him.’

  ‘We must get away—’ Minou began to say, then felt someone behind her.

  She spun round as a thick-set man with a black beard swung a club down upon them both. Minou twisted to shield the girl, but as she did so, pain exploded across her shoulder blade and she felt her skin split open, then the warmth of blood. She staggered, but held the child tighter as she started to fall.

  All around her, the smell of rage and blood and terror. Fire starting to lick through the shutters of the houses, red flames and blistered paint. Lying on her back, Minou could see a glimpse of the blue April sky over Toulouse above the buildings. All sound seemed to slip away, the shouting and the crying. In the last seconds before she l
ost consciousness, she was vaguely aware of a pair of strong arms around her.

  Then, nothing.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  PUIVERT

  It was sunset and the air was cool. Leaving Canigou in the care of Achille Lizier, Bernard walked away from the village and looked up at the castle.

  Occupying the highest point above the valley, overlooking the single road that ran from west to east, it was a grey, squat structure of fortified towers set in rough stone walls. Bernard shielded his eyes and located the beginning of the switchback track that led up from the village, winding steeply back and forth like a snake curled for winter. Bernard had climbed that path so many times, in every season, feeling the tightening in his legs on the sharpest corners, then the relief as the ground levelled out on the approach. He could picture the wooden drawbridge that led under the gatehouse and into the basse cour, the lower courtyard, and their modest lodgings in the Tour Gaillarde, where he and Florence had lived as husband and wife. He imagined walking through the archway into the inner courtyard and the oldest part of the castle, from which the medieval Lord of Puivert had held the armies of Simon de Montfort at bay during the Cathar Crusades.

  In that time, the business of the estate had been conducted from the keep, the magnificent stone tower built by the de Bruyère family. Their coat of arms was engraved above the main door, set high in the walls atop a steep flight of steps: a lion rampant with a forked and knotted tail, the capital letters of B and P – for Bruyère and Puivert – inscribed on either side.

  Despite the character of their master, a man of quick temper and cruel habits, he and Florence had been happy here, at first. He closed his eyes and she was at his side once more. He remembered her dark eyes and black curls, could almost feel the softness of her hand resting in his. Planning their future together and watching the seasons change. The sleet and snow of mountain winters; bursts of wildflowers that covered the ground with colour in the spring; the fierce summer heat; then autumn, Florence’s favourite time of the year, when the landscape turned to shades of copper and gold and crimson. Except that last autumn of fifteen forty-two. Then, the rains came and the river Blau burst its banks and it seemed as if the world was drowning.