‘Now these Huguenots will see what Paris thinks of them,’ said another.
He had hardly finished speaking when a group of dark-clothed men ran from the palace towards the walled gardens. Close behind and firing arrows upon them came a number of soldiers.
‘Aha!’ the first guard shouted. ‘The rats are running. Let’s have some fun with them.’ He collected his lance from where he’d propped it against the wall and, followed by his companions, chased after the fleeing men.
I took my chance and slid out of the door, making for the stable block. Pitch torches burned in brackets all over the yards, where grooms and stable lads were leading out mount after mount to waiting cavalry officers and militiamen. I went past the line of open doors. I had no knowledge of where my father might be. But I knew this was where Paladin and Melchior were quartered, and Melchior had promised me that he would discover all he could about my father. I went round to the side of the building to where I thought I saw the outline of the leopard’s cage. A figure I recognized was standing in the shadows.
‘Melchior,’ I whispered.
He pulled me towards him and before I could say anything he said, ‘I was coming to find you. There is a massacre planned. We must leave this place of corruption as soon as we are able.’
‘My father?’ I said.
‘I have found out where he sleeps in the palace.’ Melchior unfastened the cage door and brought out Paladin as he was speaking. He bent his head close to the animal’s ear and spoke to it before removing the muzzle from its head. I remembered what Melchior had told me in the palace of Cherboucy and I stood unmoving. The leopard came and sniffed me, then nudged its nose into my hand.
‘This way,’ said Melchior, and we crept out into the night.
With the leopard padding softly beside us, we swung away from the main wing of the palace, where lights were beginning to shine from windows as people looked out anxiously, wondering what the disturbance might be.
We went to the oldest part of the building and then via an outside staircase to a high level. Here an iron door led into a long low-ceilinged corridor with a row of skylight windows letting in milky moonlight. A series of small cramped rooms were situated under the eaves. It was obviously rarely used as most of the room doors were lying open and the rooms were dusty and empty. But we came finally to one which was shut and locked.
‘This is where your father is kept. He is watched closely but tonight his guards will be elsewhere.’
‘You are wrong,’ said a voice behind us.
We turned.
The Count de Ferignay stood in the doorway of the room opposite, sword in hand.
‘It came to me tonight, as I prepared for the sport of killing Huguenots, that the diversion it offered would be a perfect opportunity for someone to rescue the minstrel. So, after my lord, the Duke of Guise, had left to deal with Admiral Coligny I thought I’d come here and see if I was right.’ Ferignay stepped forward and snatched the cap from my head. ‘It is the wayward younger daughter,’ he said triumphantly. ‘The rumours that you were here in Paris and attempting to reach your father are indeed true.’
My spirits, so high and hopeful a moment before, now sank to the lowest level. I should not have paused to rest – to watch the moon – after crossing the bridge. Had we been here a little earlier we might have eluded Ferignay.
Melchior turned his head a fraction. Paladin growled deep in his chest.
‘Do not think to resist me,’ the count warned him, ‘for I have Jauffré to hand and we are both well-armed.’
At this Jauffré emerged from the next room, also with sword drawn.
And we have no weapons, I thought. When I had taken Giorgio’s ribbon and the papers, why had I not thought to also pick up his knife? We had nothing to protect us.
Except for the one that I had forgotten: Paladin that would give its life for its master.
As the Count de Ferignay stepped towards him, Melchior spoke one word.
Paladin leaped forward.
In a furious uncoiling burst of energy Paladin sprang, jaws wide open, at the throat of the Count de Ferignay. Ferignay slashed out. Man and beast crashed to the floor. The count screamed and tried once more to use his sword, but the creature now had its prey gripped at the collar. The leopard’s teeth fastened on, grinding through blood and bone. Ferignay howled in his death agony, rolling on the floor in a contortion of legs and arms as the leopard savaged his neck and face.
But Jauffré had his sword ready and before we could prevent him he had plunged it twice into Paladin’s writhing body. The leopard whirled, snarling, mortally wounded. Melchior jumped at Jauffré and wrested the sword from him, then he thrust it in turn through Jauffré’s chest. Jauffré toppled to the ground and both Melchior and I rushed to Paladin.
The leopard had been pierced in vital organs and was clearly dying. With tears on his cheeks Melchior knelt down and cradled Paladin’s head in his lap. Within minutes the leopard’s breathing stopped and Paladin’s tawny eyes closed in death.
More noble than any knight upon the field of battle. More loyal than any comrade. Bringer of justice for my sister. Swift and courageous avenger. My own heart bruised with pain as I beheld the death of Paladin.
Proud prince of royal blood art thou,
Paladin, so nobly named.
Prisoner of others, yet
Thy spirit, like the wind, untamed.
Swift son of a mighty hunting race,
Conquest falls to thee.
Silent shadow, fleet among the chase,
Chained now, yet thou shall be free.
Melchior sat, stunned.
Relief flooded my senses at the sight of the dead bodies of the two men who had committed murder and robbed me of my youth and happiness. But grief also swamped my senses at the fate of Paladin. I felt shock beginning to numb my body. I knew that we had to act now or we would die.
I knelt beside Melchior and put my hands over his.
‘Paladin is free now, though it be in death. Thy princely leopard has avenged my sister, and given its life to save yours. You must not squander this sacrifice.’
Below us I could hear running feet and hysterical yelling. I took the dagger from Jauffré’s belt and cut the bloodied white ribbons from his sleeve and from that of the Count de Ferignay.
‘It’s a special ribbon to be worn as a sign to the soldiers and the militia that those wearing it are to be spared,’ I explained to Melchior as I tied one around his arm.
Melchior stroked Paladin’s head one last time. Then he stood up and broke open the door of the room where my father was held prisoner.
The figure slumped on the floor got to his feet. He was as thin as a barley stalk with eyes that glittered bright with fever.
My heart buckled.
‘Mélisande?’ my father said in amazement. He swayed, about to fall.
I rushed to hug and support him. ‘We will talk later, Papa,’ I said, and I tied the other ribbon onto his sleeve.
Melchior took my father under his arms and easily hoisted him across his shoulders.
‘Now let us leave this accursed place.’
On the lower levels we could hear shrieks and the sound of furniture being hauled about.
‘They are trying to barricade themselves inside their apartments,’ I said.
‘It will serve only to delay their deaths,’ Melchior replied.
We hurried back along the corridor and opened the outside door at the end. Coming towards us on the staircase was a Huguenot woman. Behind her in close pursuit were five men. Her dress was ripped from bodice to skirt and her hair hung free. When she saw us she stretched out her arms and begged, ‘Help me! For the love of God! Help me!’
As we watched, two of the men caught her by her hair and began to drag her cruelly back down the stairs. The other three looked up at us and started to mount the stairs in menacing manner. I held up my arm to show the white ribbon. They hesitated and then turned and went down the way they had come. In the area at the
foot of the staircase a number of women had been penned by soldiers, who were pushing and slapping them. Melchior pulled my sleeve.
‘Come inside,’ he said. ‘There is nothing we can do for them.’
The women cry for succour, and you, Mélisande, can do nothing to help them.
We went to the other end of the corridor, found an inner stairway and began to descend by feeling our way in the darkness. It was an unused servants’ staircase but still we were able to hear the screams of the dying in the main passages as Huguenots were pulled from their beds and murdered. All around us in the dark labyrinth of the Louvre, men and women were being hunted down.
And among all of it I thought only of getting my father to safety. We reached the bottom of the stairs. One side led to a dimly lit passageway. At the other side, the exit door, of crumbling stone decorated with ancient symbols, was locked and bolted across with iron bars.
‘This door has been closed off for many years,’ said Melchior as he examined it. ‘That’s why we encountered no one on our way down this staircase.’ He eased my father from his shoulders and set him on the ground. ‘I will venture into the corridor and see if I can find out where we are in this maze.’
‘Have this,’ I said, and I gave him Jauffré’s dagger which I’d taken from his body.
When Melchior had gone my father reached out to touch me.
‘My headstrong daughter,’ he said.
I leaned my head against his chest. ‘Forgive me, Father, I have caused you so much grief.’
‘No, no,’ he shushed me. ‘It was the thought of you free that gave me strength over these long months. I’d sing your songs. Imagine you roaming on the Isle of Bressay. Did you ever reach our home?’
‘I did.’
‘Was it as beautiful as you remembered?’ he asked me.
‘Yes, it was,’ I replied truthfully.
‘I could hear your voice in the wind that blew outside the castle walls,’ my father said dreamily. ‘King Charles was not cruel to me. He loves music and he would send for me when his head ached and I would play for him. So my life was not so bad.’
Melchior returned.
‘Where are we?’ I asked him.
He sat down beside us on the steps and regarded me very seriously. ‘Mélisande,’ he said, ‘I do not know. But raving madness is unleashed in this place tonight. To go out into any of these corridors is to meet certain death.’
The person who does this takes Death by the hand.
Before we could speak further we heard the clash of swords and shouts of men duelling. We carried my father up some stairs as fighting men came into view below us. Henri of Navarre and Denis Durac had been set upon by four men of the house of Guise.
Henri was stocky but powerful, Denis less strong, but skilful with his rapier. They stood side by side within the arch of the stair entrance and fought like men possessed. Two men fell to their swords but it was clear that both Huguenots were weakened. Due to his bandaged ankle Henri was less agile. Denis Durac had a cut to his face and several slashes to his sword arm, and as he parried a further blow, he dropped his guard. Directly beneath us one of the Guise noblemen dashed forward to take advantage.
Melchior sprang down and landed on this man’s shoulders. He had Jauffré’s dagger in his hand and he stabbed it into the man’s neck.
‘Melchior!’ shouted Prince Henri in glad surprise.
Denis Durac recovered himself. The other Guise nobleman lunged at Henri of Navarre and would have delivered a fatal blow had not Denis Durac leaped between him. Henri’s opponent’s sword stuck Denis through his stomach. Denis sank dying to the ground. In rage Henri killed the soldier who had inflicted death upon his friend. Then he cast his sword aside and ran and knelt by Denis Durac.
‘I am no longer in debt to you, your majesty,’ said Denis Durac, groaning in his pain. ‘I have paid back the favour you did me when the bear caught me in the Pyrenees.’
‘It was not a favour I wished returned,’ said Henri. ‘I am not ready to lose such a good friend.’
To which Denis Durac replied, ‘I can think of no better way to die than to give my life to save the king, who must be saved.’
Chapter Seventy
THE KING WHO must be saved.
I sat upright on the staircase.
Denis Durac had just uttered the last line of the quatrain that Nostradamus had written to show me my destiny.
This is your destiny, Mélisande.
You are the one who,
In the way known to you, can save
The king who must be saved.
But why had Denis Durac called Prince Henri of Navarre ‘king’?
And then I knew why. The death of the Queen of Navarre, Queen Jeanne d’Albret, meant that her son was no longer Prince Henri. He became a king, the King of Navarre.
And Henri was king in more than name. In conduct and in kind he was indeed a king. A king to be kept safe.
My destiny.
As prophesied by Nostradamus.
Henri was the king who must be saved. The great King of France was not to be the son of a Medici. It was Henri of Navarre.
This is your destiny, Mélisande.
You are the one who,
In the way known to you, can save
The king who must be saved.
The prophecy and the presence of Nostradamus spoke to me.
“Know that you cannot alter the course of the awful deed but you may help the person who can lift France out of the mire in which she wallows and lead her to greatness and prosperity. For France to prosper Henri must live. He will bring end to chaos and many lives will be saved if you save his. Mélisande, in the way known to you, save the king who must be saved.”
In the way known to you.
Often, during my years of waiting, I had puzzled over the way it could be known to me that I might save a king. I had considered my inadequate medical skills and knew that I was lacking in that field.
In the way known to you . . .
I raised my eyes to the stonework above the bricked-up door, the arch inscribed with the ancient symbols.
The way was known to me.
The pattern fluctuated before my eyes, as had the one on the frame around the mirror in the palace of Cherboucy. The tomb of the Templar Knights. The walls inside the central cairn of the Standing Stones.
My destiny. I knew what I must say and do.
‘Mélisande, look there.’ Melchior pointed along the corridor to the far end, where some soldiers were marching towards us. ‘We have just helped kill noblemen of the house of Guise. Our white ribbons will not save us now. We must prepare ourselves to die. Know this’ – he cupped my face in his hands and looked into my eyes – ‘I do love thee.’
‘And I thee,’ I said. I took his hands from my face and held them for a moment. I addressed Henri of Navarre, who had picked up his sword and was preparing to fight. ‘Sire,’ I said. ‘Destiny has brought me to you this night, for I give you my word that I am the one who can lead you from this place.’
Henri indicated the men coming towards us. ‘We are grievously outnumbered. If you know a way to escape then show it to me quickly.’
I walked out into the corridor and turned immediately to the left.
Supporting my father, Melchior and Henri followed behind me.
‘I have explored this passage,’ Melchior called to me as I hurried on, ‘and it only turns in a circle to where we have come from.’
‘Which is why the soldiers have stopped pursuing us,’ said Henri of Navarre. ‘They know if they wait where they are that we will fall into their clutches.’
‘In here,’ I said with confidence. I opened the door of a small closet, went to the tiny window and pushed aside the panelling underneath.
‘This looks only like a hole in the ground,’ said Henri doubtfully.
‘It is not,’ I replied with confidence, for I knew every turn of this maze. I had known its pattern since I was a child. The design imprinted in
my mind, and re-imprinted again and again, until it was part of me. Each loop and curl, the tracks and lines, the coiling, snaking passages embedded on my soul.
We helped my father inside. Then we all crawled along between the wainscot and wall of that room and of the next and the next. I struck out a piece of the panelling in the third room and from there I led them to the doorway. Musket fire rattled close by.
‘It is necessary to cross to the rooms on the other side,’ I said.
‘You are certain of this?’ King Henri glanced from me to Melchior.
Melchior nodded. ‘I would follow this girl wherever she leads.’
‘Girl?’ Henri looked at me more closely. ‘Girl you are. But how are you here, and where is Paladin, the leopard, Melchior? I have never once seen you without him by your side.’
‘Paladin is dead, my lord.’ There was a catch in Melchior’s voice as he said this. ‘Defending my life.’
‘I am sorry to hear it though glad the leopard died well. Such is the nobility of animals,’ commented the king. ‘Would that they could teach men to have that quality then we would not be witnessing this slaughter tonight.’
I opened the door and beckoned to them.
We slid into the room opposite. I stood there a moment with my eyes closed until the lines of my destiny once more unravelled before me.
‘Here.’ I pointed.
Melchior knocked on the wood and found it hollow and once more we squeezed inside. We burrowed down under the floorboards and along our secret way.
And on every step of that hazardous journey we were accompanied by sounds that no human should hear. Sometimes we were in darkness, sometimes light shone through. At one stage Melchior stopped and applied his eye to a crack. He reeled back and then urged us to hurry. On and on we went under the corridors. Ignoring the howls of terror and clash of battle, we crawled in single file. I led and the king followed, until we came out via a loose floorboard into a small salon. Melchior went to the door and looked into the corridor.
‘There are soldiers not three feet away,’ he whispered. ‘They wear the livery of the personal guard of Catherine de’ Medici.’
The Nostradamus Prophecy Page 32