by Robert Merle
“Well, Monsieur!” I cried. “I hope that Biron rewarded your friend handsomely!”
“My friend didn’t do it for that,” said the scorekeeper, blushing deeply, while the long scar on his pate whitened considerably. Then, observing that we’d finished our repast and that not a crumb of bread remained on the table, or a drop of wine in our goblets, he shook his head and said, “My wife’s not here because she had to take a medallion of Notre-Dame de Chartres to her friend Colarde, who’s lying in. This blessed medal, as you know”—and he smiled knowingly—“is renowned for easing labour; in fact it is so potent that all you have to do is place it on the mother’s stomach and the baby pops out, squealing and vigorous. But perhaps you should be happy she’s not here! She’d be very suspicious of your white armbands, given how zealous she is for the Church. By St Denis, she hates heretics and would gladly strangle them all herself with her bare hands, or—at the very least—set all the hounds in our neighbourhood on them. As for me, as I said, I’m not so zealous: I treat as Catholic anyone who says he’s Catholic, since I keep my nose out of people’s business and don’t tend to see the harm in anything.”
Reading between the lines of his speech, I understood that we were welcome to stay as long as we wanted without discomfiting the good fellow. I stood up, after having slipped an écu under my goblet, and thanked our host profusely for his good offices.
“If you try to cross the Pont Saint-Michel,” he whispered, brushing aside my compliment, “be aware that they request a pass, so the best time to go is at dawn, when the guards are likely to have fallen asleep from the rigours of the night; and when you get to l’Université, the Buccy gate is the best place to get beyond the city walls. That’s the gate that they’ve opened for the villagers to bring provisions into the city, so there’s always a lot of crowds and confusion there.”
The scorekeeper wanted to show us our way, and, even after we’d left him, he stood there holding his torch as high as he could to light our way. Just before turning off to the right as he’d indicated, I took one last look back at his lantern, which, though it was but one little flame in the darkness of the shadows of the city, comforted me as much as the beneficence of the man who held it high. As we turned the corner, the light disappeared, but not the hope that it had provided me. “Well,” I thought, “that’s an example of real faith and there’s really no other kind! May all the inhabitants of this vale of tears someday come to understand, as my scorekeeper does, that zeal in the Church without love for one’s fellow man is the ruin of the soul!”
We followed the rue de la Calandre as far as the rue de la Barillerie, and there I sent Miroul to investigate the situation at the Pont Saint-Michel, as he had done at the Pont au Change. This done, like a grass snake in a bush, my gentle valet slithered up to my side.
“Monsieur,” he said, “there’s half a dozen bourgeois militiamen down there who are soaking up their drink like pierced soles. If we rushed them it would be all too easy.”
“Not so fast,” said Giacomi. “Do they have firearms?”
“Two.”
“That’s two too many,” observed Giacomi. “We can’t put our lives in danger. Especially since the large troop we saw near the palace might be sweeping the city, as the night is so calm.”
“That’s true, Herrgott, it’s much too calm!” said Fröhlich.
“But, my good Swiss,” noted Miroul, “even executioners must sleep!”
“Your advice is golden, Giacomi,” I said. “Let’s wait until these heroes drown the little bit of sense they still have in their flagons.”
We four gathered under a corbel, sitting down on a stone bench and leaning against the wall of the house, without saying a word, and saw no one, except for an emaciated dog that was prowling around a cadaver that the assassins had left a few yards from us in the street. In truth, we didn’t see the corpse at first, the night was so dark, only the dog, which was white. But as our eyes grew accustomed to the shadows, we saw the poor martyr and Miroul, getting up, went to chase away the animal, which was getting ready to bite into the body since it was perishing from hunger.
We decided to rest farther on, but farther on there were more bodies and these smelt so putrid given the heat of the last twenty-four hours that we had to come back to the stone bench, with the dog at our heels, who went after its original feast, its tail between its legs and whimpering lugubriously. Miroul tried to chase it away twice, but failed and gave up. We would have killed it, but none of us had the appetite for that, finding that the dog was a good deal less cruel than those who’d slain the man in the first place and were hunting us.
Finally, as the day began to dawn, we decided to wait at the entrance to the bridge. So, with our weapons at the ready, we started out, single file, our eyes peeled and ears pricked up to catch the slightest sound.
Once we’d crossed the chains onto the bridge, we saw a lantern some distance away, and, continuing, we saw that it was lighting a game of cards, which some soldiers were playing on a drum. The men were excitedly gambling their part of the booty, each against the others, which created an enormous brouhaha of threats, insults and cheers from the group, who were staggering around drunk and bleary-eyed. One of their number, however, was less inebriated than the others and decided to bar our way, pistol in hand, and shouting, “Who goes there?”
“Good Catholics, my brother,” I replied, “and from the Écorcherie.”
“You rascal! I’m not your brother! Show me your pass! And make haste with it!”
“Here it is,” I answered, and, searching in my purse, I put an écu in his palm.
“What’s this?” he cried as if my coin had burnt him. “’Sblood! You trying to bribe me?”
This was not, I suspect, inspired by virtue so much as by the sight of my purse, for he immediately thrust his pistol in my ribs. But he couldn’t do more. Miroul raised his arm, let fly with his dagger and laid him out on the pavement. Unfortunately, as he fell, his pistol went off, thankfully wounding no one, but inciting this drunken hornet’s nest to have at us, shouting, “To arms! To arms! To the cause!” and firing two arquebus shots that went wildly astray.
We ran off at full speed, hurdling the chain at the far end of the Pont Saint-Michel, and veered left into a labyrinth of little streets, stopping after a while, breathless, to listen for any pursuit. But there was not a sound; our heroes had gone back to their cards and their flagons, which doubtless came from some wine cellar they’d pillaged.
We thus found ourselves in the rue de la Parcheminerie, which runs parallel between the rue Saint-Séverin and the rue de la Huchette. This would have been a pretty spectacle, with the sun just rising and illuminating all the little towers, bartizans, gables and finials of the quarter, if, in the shadows below, there hadn’t been so many despoiled shops and houses, their windows smashed and doors ripped from their hinges, and, amid the filth of the street, a pitiful pile of clothes, broken chests and tapestries, all covered with dirt—not to mention here and there a poor naked body of a man or a woman, sniffed by the starving dogs and by armies of bold rats. At six in the morning, however, the bells began ringing on high and shamelessly calling all the faithful to matins.
Miroul, who knew this quarter well, named each of the churches according to the sound of their bells: Saint-Étienne-des-Grès, Jacobins, Saint-Séverin, Carmes, Saint-Blaise, Saint-Jean-de-Beauvais and Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. Oh, what a joyful sound they would have made on this bright August morning if they had been calling the faithful to reconciliation, instead of repeating the call for murder, and this in the name of a “miracle” that God had done, as I will explain shortly.
We stayed where we were for a while, sweating, thirsty, out of breath, our indecent bodies whinnying for their provender, the scorekeeper’s modest repast being now but a memory. Already the housewives were busy, the younger ones heading out for their shopping, or, as they say in Paris, for their “mustard”, the older ones opening their windows to the first rays of the
sun, chatting with their neighbours from window to window, exchanging the latest news, which seemed as exhilarating to them as it did sad and calamitous to us.
A waffle-maker began opening up his shop a few yards away; he was lighting his fire and preparing his mix, and toasting his golden waffles. We stepped forward as if drawn by a magnet.
“All right, step right up!” said the waffle-maker, whose weaselly, dishonest face wasn’t very reassuring. “What will you have?”
“Your tastiest!”
“That’ll be two sols each!”
“Well, my friend,” I observed, “St Bartholomew’s day has fattened up your prices!”
“Well, flour’s gone up since the gates of Paris have been closed.”
“Really? That’s not true!” shouted one of the housewives, who was returning from her shopping, her basket under her arm. “The Buccy gate’s not closed, you rogue! They’re admitting all the villagers now, and at the market this morning I saw all the usual poultry-sellers, dairy farmers and greengrocers.”
“Well, look at that feisty hen, who wants to crow louder than the rooster!” said the waffle-maker, careful not to let her hear him, since doubtless he feared alienating the entire population of this henhouse.
“Here you are then! Four golden waffles done to perfection! Lay out your money and let these tasty beauties melt in your mouth!”
I paid him in small coins to prevent him from seeing that I had any écus.
“Monsieur waffle-seller,” said Miroul, his mouth full, “you forgot the salt!”
At this reproach, the merchant calmly reached into a pot and pretended to take a pinch of salt, which he threw into the air in the direction of our food.
“Commediante,” growled Giacomi. “You don’t consume roasted meat by breathing its smoke! That salt’s still in the sea!”
Just then a malmsey-seller passed by, wearing a yoke on his shoulders from which two vats of wine were suspended, and crying:
“Drink up, my friends, drink up
This heavenly wine as I pass by;
It’s Greek ambrosia in a cup
’Twill keep your throats from getting dry!”
“Friend,” said our waffle-maker, “ambrosia or not, pour me my morning cup of wine! All that blood last night made me thirsty!”
“Ah, good fellow! Were you out on a spree last night, like all good Christians?”
“I think I did my part,” said our cook, his eyes lowered in false modesty.
“As for me,” said the malmsey man, “with my own eyes I saw them burn Spire Niquet alive, who sells Bibles from Geneva. We piled his Bibles in the middle of the rue Judas, put Niquet on the top of the pile and kept him up there with our pikes so he could roast in the flames of the pyre. You could hear him screaming from Notre-Dame to the Louvre!”
“Ah, good work! So he died in the flames?”
“Oh, no! We threw water on him when he was half cooked, so he could enjoy the two torments together!”
Both men had a good laugh at this and we were all very glad our mouths were so full of food that we couldn’t open them to protest.
“Well,” said our waffle-maker, not to be outdone in epic tales by the wine merchant, “yesterday I was on the Pont Notre-Dame when we broke down the door of the Pearl, which is owned by Maître Mathieu, the jeweller from Geneva, as everyone knows. Well, my friend! What a celebration we had! The men, the wenches, the children and chambermaids, all were disembowelled and thrown out of the windows into the Seine! It’s so convenient to live on a bridge when you’re a heretic!”
At this the malmsey-seller nearly split his sides laughing; and then he proposed a round of wine for all, but we declined, despite our terrible thirst, for the fellow inspired such disgust we could never have swallowed his drink. The waffle-maker threw him a few coins, and off he went in search of other clients, carrying his yoke on his shoulders and crying his wares with his rasping voice.
Meanwhile, the younger housewives having gone off to do their marketing, the older women were chattering like magpies from one window to the next.
“Crestine!” cried one of them with yellowing jowls and a triple chin. “Have you heard about the miracle?”
“What miracle?” said Crestine eagerly, from the opposite side of the street. “What was it, my dear, and where?”
“What! You mean you haven’t heard, Crestine! All Paris is talking about it. The mayflower in the Cimetière des Innocents suddenly bloomed yesterday!”
“A mayflower bloomed in August! Blessed Virgin! It’s a miracle!”
“Jesus God!” said another hag from her window, anxious to add her two sols to the story, though she could hardly be understood since she’d lost all her front teeth, save one. “How could you not know it, Crestine? That’s all anyone is talking about! And so many people are rushing to see it that the priests have had to post guards there to keep people from getting too close and damaging the flower!”
“I was suffering from the vapours yesterday,” explained Crestine, who was feeling very ashamed to be so ignorant.
“My goodness!” said the toothless one. “A mayflower blooming in August! Our good priest at Saint-Séverin said that this is a clear sign from God that the Church will suddenly be renewed by the death of the heretics.”
“Well, my God, that’s the veritable truth!” cried the jowly one. “And it’s Jesus’s way of telling us we haven’t killed enough of ’em! Right, my boys?” she continued, recognizing our white brassards and assuming that we were heroes of the massacre.
“You going to the Saints-Innocents, Crestine?” said the toothless one.
“Well, I just don’t know,” said Crestine. “My left leg swells up when I walk too far.”
“But it will be so beautiful!” said the toothless one, hissing out such gobs of spittle that it was itself miraculous. “All the confraternities in the city are processing there this morning, beating drums and singing the Gloria, carrying crosses and banners!”
At my request, the waffle-maker had gone back to work, since a single waffle was hardly enough to fill the empty spaces in our stomachs, but we’d turned our backs on him because his face was so insufferable, and were listening to the chattering hags, while giving each other knowing looks, since our tiny rooms on the rue de la Ferronnerie looked out on the Cimetière des Innocents, and we knew all too well that no blooms had appeared on its branches the day before, so that, if they now saw one, without allowing anyone to inspect it too closely, it had to be that they’d tied it on there, though by what false and dishonest means God only knew—along with the sly clergy of the (badly named) Saints-Innocents parish, which would profit enormously from this miracle, not just in 1572, but for years to come, right up to the end of the century.
As we stood there listening to this cacophony of zealotry, a nun dressed in black passed us, who caught our attention because she had such a beautiful face and a more voluptuous body than such vestments usually cloaked. She was walking very quickly and looked quite terrified, but the most surprising thing was that she was wearing a pair of bright-crimson slippers.
Everyone in the street fell silent as she passed, but this silence was suddenly broken by the jowly housewife, who cried at the top of her lungs:
“Look, my lads! Look at those red slippers! She’s a false nun! She’s a Genevan snake on the run, sacrilegiously disguised!”
At this, the unfortunate woman began to run down the street, and the old hag redoubled her cries: “To arms! To the cause! To Madame la Cause!”
And leaning far out of her window, the hag shouted to burst her lungs: “Look, boys!”—meaning us—“Look at her red shoes! Kill! Kill!”
“Monsieur,” whispered Miroul in langue d’oc, “if I had a taste for killing right now I know who to kill!”
“Quiet!” I hissed, and, as Fröhlich was opening his large mouth, I tapped his hand, which was clenching his mace, and whispered, “Don’t forget, you’re as mute as a carp in a pond.”
“Well,
what are you waiting for, boys?” shouted the toothless one. “Are you going to let the viper get away? Kill her, for God’s sake, kill her!”
“My good woman,” I replied calmly “there’s a time for everything. A time to kill and a time to eat waffles. What’s more, dressed as she is, she won’t get far.*
“What a loss and what a lack of zeal!” shouted the hag nastily and with a very suspicious air. “How do I know your armbands aren’t counterfeit as well?”
“’Sblood!” I laughed. “Come down here in the street and put your twitching nose on our swords and you can tell us what they smell like!”
“Well now,” answered the toothless one, “that’s sensible talk! ’Tis true that a heretic’s blood, when it flows, stinks like the pus of a man with the plague, since his heresy rots him from within.”
I was quite surprised the this strange bit of medical lore came to my aid from that quarter, the jowly one not wishing to contradict her comrade, despite her nasty looks at us; and doubtless she didn’t want to press her luck since the four of us were robust and well armed.
So of course she directed her wrath at the nearest object: an honest-looking house that stood nearby and that they’d stoned the night before, smashing all the windows but not breaking down the door. I was amazed that the neighbours hadn’t stripped the house of its possessions once they’d started the attack. The mystery was explained once the chatter started up again among the parish witches, who, though they never drew blood themselves, we’re fanatically driven to see it spilt, and incited their neighbours to the worst atrocities.
So it was that I learnt that the house belonged to Monsieur Pierre de La Place, the president of the Court of Aids, a Huguenot and benefactor, to whom Coligny had entrusted the treasury of our cause. For this reason, Senneçay, the provost of the Grand Châtelet, had set up a guard in front of his house at the beginning of the massacre, on the pretext of saving him from assassination, but in fact to prevent him from fleeing before the king had decided his fate—some members of the court having an interest in inspecting the finances of the cause before he was dispatched.