A Column of Fire

  Pierre had gathered around him a small squadron of ruffians, promising them that they could steal anything they liked from those they killed. They included Brocard and Rasteau; Biron, his chief spy; and a handful of the street villains Biron used for such tasks as tailing suspects.

  Pierre had given his black book to the provost, Le Charron, but he remembered many of the names and addresses. He had been spying on these people for fourteen years.

  They went first to the premises of Rene Duboeuf, the tailor in the rue St. Martin. "Don't kill him or his wife until I say so," Pierre ordered.

  They broke down the door and entered the shop. Some of the men went upstairs.

  Pierre pulled open a drawer and found the tailor's notebook containing the names and addresses of his customers. He had always wanted this. He would make use of it tonight.

  The men dragged the Duboeufs downstairs in their nightwear.

  Rene was a small man of about fifty. He had already been bald when Pierre first came across him thirteen years ago. The wife had been young and pretty then, and she was still attractive, even now, looking terrified. Pierre smiled at her. "Francoise, if I remember rightly," he said. He turned to Rasteau. "Cut off her finger."

  Rasteau gave his high-pitched giggle.

  While the woman sobbed and the tailor pleaded, a man-at-arms held her left hand flat on the table and Rasteau cut off her little finger and part of her ring finger. Blood spurted over the table, staining a bolt of pale gray wool. She screamed and fainted.

  "Where is your money?" Pierre asked the tailor.

  "In the commode, behind the chamber pot," he said. "Please don't hurt her anymore."

  Pierre nodded to Biron, who went upstairs.

  Pierre saw that Francoise now had her eyes open. "Make her stand up," he said.

  Biron came back with a leather bag that he emptied onto the table in a puddle of Francoise's blood. There was a pile of assorted coins.

  "He's got more money than that," Pierre said. "Rip off her nightdress."

  She was younger than her husband, and she had a good figure. The men went quiet.

  Pierre said to the tailor: "Where's the rest of the money?"

  Duboeuf hesitated.

  Rasteau said excitedly: "Shall I cut her tits off?"

  Duboeuf said: "In the fireplace, up the chimney. Please leave her alone."

  Biron put his hand up the chimney--cold, in August--and retrieved a locked wooden box. He broke the lock with the point of his sword and tipped the money on the table, a good heap of gold coins.

  "Cut their throats and share out the money," Pierre said, and he went back outside without waiting to watch.

  The people he most wanted as victims were the marquess and marchioness of Nimes. He would have loved to kill the man in front of his wife. What a revenge that would have been. But they lived outside the walls, in the suburb of St. Jacques, and the city gates were locked, so they were safe from Pierre's wrath, for the moment.

  Failing them, Pierre's mind went to the Palot family.

  Isabelle Palot had done worse than insult him, when he had called at the shop a few days ago; she had scared him. And perceptive Sylvie had seen it. Now it was time for them to be punished.

  The men were a long time dividing up the money. Pierre guessed they were raping the wife before killing her. He had observed, in the civil war, that when men started to kill they always raped as well. Lifting one prohibition seemed to lift them all.

  At last they came out of the shop. Pierre led them south, along the rue St. Martin and across the Ile de la Cite. He recalled the words Isabelle had used to him: filth, discharge of an infected prostitute, loathsome stinking corpse. He would remind her of them as she lay dying.

  Sylvie's stash of books was cleverly concealed, Ned saw. Anyone entering the warehouse would see only barrels stacked floor to ceiling. Most of the barrels were full of sand, but Sylvie had shown Ned that a few were empty and easily moved to reveal the space where the books were stored in boxes. No one had ever discovered her secret, she told him.

  They snuffed out the light of Ned's lamp, for fear that a faint glow might leak through cracks and be seen outside, and sat in the dark, holding hands. The bells rang madly. Sounds of combat came to their ears: screams, the hoarse shouts of men fighting, and occasional gunfire. Sylvie was worried about her mother, but Ned persuaded her that Isabelle was in less danger at her house than Sylvie and he would be on the streets.

  They sat for hours, listening and waiting. The street noises began to die away around the time that a faint light appeared around the edges of the door, like a picture frame, indicating dawn; and Sylvie said: "We can't stay here forever."

  Ned opened the door a few inches, put his head out cautiously, and looked up and down the rue du Mur in the morning light. "All clear," he said. He stepped out.

  Sylvie followed him and locked the door behind her. "Perhaps the killing has stopped," she said.

  "They might flinch from committing atrocities in broad daylight."

  Sylvie quoted a verse from John's Gospel: "'Men loved darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil.'"

  They set off along the street, side by side, walking quickly. Ned still had on his white armband, for what that might be worth. He placed more reliance on the sword at his side, and walked with a hand on the hilt for reassurance. They headed south, toward the river.

  Around the first corner two men lay dead outside a shop selling saddles. Ned was puzzled to see that they were half-naked. The corpses were partly obscured by the figure of a gray-haired old woman in a dirty coat bending over them. After a moment Ned realized she was taking the clothes off the bodies.

  Secondhand clothing was valuable: only the rich could buy new. Even worn and filthy underwear could be sold as rags to papermakers. This wretched old woman was stealing the garments of the dead to sell, he realized. She pulled the breeches off the legs of a body, then ran away with a bundle under her arm. The nakedness of the stabbed bodies made the sight even more obscene. Ned noticed that Sylvie averted her eyes as they walked past.

  They avoided the broad, straight main roads with their long sight lines, and zigzagged through the narrow, tortuous lanes of the neighborhood called Les Halles. Even in these back streets there were bodies. Most of them had been stripped, and in some places they were piled one on top of another, as if to make room in the road for people to pass. Ned saw the tanned faces of outdoor workers, the soft white hands of rich women, and the slender arms and legs of children. He lost count of how many. It was like a painting of hell in a Catholic church, but this was real and in front of his eyes in one of the great cities of the world. The sense of horror grew like nausea in him, and he would have vomited if his stomach had not been empty. Glancing at Sylvie he saw that her face was pale and set in an expression of grim determination.

  There was worse to come.

  At the edge of the river, the militia were getting rid of bodies. The dead, and some of the helpless wounded, were being thrown into the Seine with no more ceremony than would have been used for poisoned rats. Some floated off, but others hardly moved, and the shallow edge of the water was already clogged with corpses. A man with a long pole was trying to push the bodies out into midstream to make room for more, but they seemed sluggish, as if reluctant to leave.

  The men were too preoccupied to notice Ned and Sylvie, who hurried past and headed across the bridge.

  Pierre's excitement grew as he approached the little stationery shop in the rue de la Serpente.

  He wondered whether to encourage the men to rape Isabelle. That would be a suitable punishment. Then he had a better idea: let them rape Sylvie in front of her mother. People felt more pain when their children suffered: he had learned that from his wife, Odette. It crossed his mind to rape Sylvie himself, but that might diminish his authority in the eyes of his men. Let them do the dirty work.

  He did not knock at the door of the shop. No one in Paris was answering callers now. A kno
ck only gave people time to arm themselves. Pierre's men smashed open the door with sledgehammers, taking only a few seconds, then rushed in.

  As Pierre entered he heard a shot. That shocked him. His men did not have guns: they were expensive, and normally only the aristocracy had personal firearms. A moment later he saw Isabelle standing at the back of the shop. One of Pierre's men lay at her feet, apparently dead. As Pierre watched, she raised a second pistol and carefully aimed it at Pierre. Before he had time to move, another of his men ran her through with his sword. She fell without firing the second gun.

  Pierre cursed. He had planned a more elaborate revenge. But there was still Sylvie. "There's another woman," he shouted to the men. "Search the house."

  It did not take long. Biron ran upstairs and came down a minute later. "There's no one else here," he said.

  Pierre looked at Isabelle. In the gloom he could not see whether she was alive or dead. "Drag her outside," he ordered.

  In the light of day he saw that Isabelle was pumping blood from a deep wound in her shoulder. He knelt over her and yelled angrily: "Where is Sylvie? Tell me, bitch!"

  She must have been in agony, but she gave him a twisted smile. "You devil," she whispered. "Go to hell, where you belong."

  Pierre roared with anger. He stood up and kicked her wounded shoulder. But it was pointless: she had stopped breathing, and her eyes stared up at him sightlessly.

  She had escaped.

  He went back inside. His men were searching for the money. The shop was full of paper goods of all kinds. He went around pulling ledgers off shelves and emptying cupboards and drawers, piling paper up in the middle of the floor. Then he snatched a lantern from Brocard, opened it, and touched the flame to the paper. It caught immediately and flared up.

  Ned felt that he and Sylvie had been lucky to reach the Left Bank without getting accosted. By and large the militia were not attacking people at random: they seemed to be using the names and addresses they had undoubtedly got from Pierre. All the same Ned had been stopped and interrogated once, when he was with Aphrodite Beaulieu, and it could easily happen again, with unpredictable results. So it was with a sense of relief that he turned into the rue de la Serpente, with Sylvie at his side, and hurried toward the shop.

  He saw the body on the street, and had a dreadful feeling he knew who it was. Sylvie did too, and she let out a sob and broke into a run. A moment later they both bent over the still form on the bloody cobblestones. Ned knew right away that Isabelle was dead. He touched her face: she was still warm. She had not been dead long, which explained why her clothes had not yet been stolen.

  Sylvie, weeping, said: "Can you carry her?"

  "Yes," Ned said, "if you just help get her over my shoulder." She would be heavy, but the embassy was not far away. And it occurred to him that he would look like a militiaman disposing of a corpse, and consequently would be less likely to be questioned.

  He had his hands under Isabelle's lifeless arms when he smelled smoke and hesitated. He looked toward the shop and saw movement inside. Was there a fire in there? A flame flared up and lit the interior, and he saw men moving about with an air of purpose, as if looking for something; valuables, perhaps. "They're still here!" he said to Sylvie.

  At that moment, Ned saw two men step through the doorway. One had a mutilated face, his nose just two holes surrounded by puckered white scar tissue. The other man had thick blond hair and a pointed beard, and Ned recognized Pierre.

  Ned said: "We have to leave her--come on!"

  Sylvie hesitated for one grief-stricken moment, then broke into a run. Ned ran after her, but they had been recognized. He heard Pierre shout: "There she is! Go after her, Rasteau!"

  Ned and Sylvie ran side by side to the end of the rue de la Serpente. As they passed the huge windows of the church of St. Severin he glanced back over his shoulder and saw the man called Rasteau pounding after him, sword raised.

  Ned and Sylvie raced across the wide rue St. Jacques and into the graveyard of St. Julien le Pauvre. But Sylvie was tiring and Rasteau gained on them. Ned thought furiously. Rasteau was in his thirties, but big and strong, and his nose had obviously been chopped off in some fracas. He was probably a practiced swordsman with long experience of combat. He would be a formidable opponent. In any fight lasting more than a few seconds, his greater size and skill would tell. Ned's only hope was to surprise him somehow and finish him quickly.

  Ned knew his surroundings well. This was where he had trapped the man who had been tailing him. Turning around the east end of the church, he was out of Rasteau's sight for a moment. He stopped suddenly and pulled Sylvie into the deep shelter of a doorway.

  They were both panting. Ned could hear the heavy running steps of their pursuer. In a moment he had his sword in his right hand and his dagger in the left. He had to judge this perfectly: he could not let the man go past. But there was no time to think. When it seemed that Rasteau must be almost upon them, Ned stepped out from the doorway.

  His timing was not quite right. A moment earlier Rasteau had slowed his pace, perhaps suspecting a trap; and he was just out of Ned's reach. He could not stop, but he was able to swerve and avoid being impaled on Ned's blade.

  Ned moved fast and lunged, and his point penetrated Rasteau's side. Momentum carried the man past Ned. The blade came out. Rasteau half-turned, stumbled, and fell heavily. Without conscious thought, Ned stabbed wildly. Rasteau swung his weapon in a wide sweep and knocked Ned's sword out of his hand. It flew through the air and fell on a grave.

  Rasteau was up in a flash, moving fast for a big man. Ned glimpsed Sylvie coming out of the doorway and yelled: "Run, Sylvie, run!" Then Rasteau came at him stabbing and slicing. Ned retreated, using his dagger to parry a thrust, then a swing, then another thrust; but he knew he could not keep it up. Rasteau feinted a downward cut, then, with surprising agility, changed the stroke into a thrust that dipped under Ned's guard.

  And then Rasteau stopped still, and the point of a sword came out through the front of his belly. Ned leaped backward, avoiding Rasteau's sword, but it was not necessary, for the thrust lost all momentum as Rasteau screamed in agony and fell forward; and Ned saw, behind him, the small form of Sylvie, holding the sword Ned had dropped, pulling it out of Rasteau's back.

  They did not wait to watch Rasteau die. Ned took Sylvie's hand and they ran across the Place Maubert, past the gallows, to the embassy.

  Two armed guards stood outside the house. They were not embassy employees: Ned had never seen them before. One of them stepped in front of Ned and said: "You can't go in there."

  Ned said: "I am the deputy ambassador and this is my wife. Now get out of my way."

  From an upstairs window came the authoritative voice of Walsingham. "They are under the protection of the king--let them pass!"

  The guard stood aside. Ned and Sylvie went up the steps. The door opened before they reached it.

  They stepped inside to safety.

  I married Sylvie twice: first in the little Catholic church of St. Julien le Pauvre, outside which she had killed the man with no nose; and then again in a Protestant service at the chapel in the English embassy.

  Sylvie was a virgin at the age of thirty-one, and as if to recover lost time we made love every night and every morning for months. When I lay on top of her she clung to me as if I were saving her from drowning, and afterward she often cried herself to sleep in my arms.

  We never found Isabelle's body, and that made it harder for Sylvie to mourn. In the end we treated the burned-out shop as a grave, and stood in front of it for a few minutes every Sunday, holding hands and remembering a strong, brave woman.

  Amazingly, the Protestants recovered from St. Bartholomew's Day. Three thousand people had been killed in Paris, and thousands more in copycat massacres elsewhere; but the Huguenots fought back. Towns with Protestant majorities took in crowds of refugees and closed their gates against the representatives of the king. The Guise family, as powerful Catholics on the side of the
monarch, were welcomed back into the royal circle once more as civil war broke out again.

  Services were resumed in the loft over the stable and in other clandestine locations all over the country.

  Walsingham was recalled to London, and we went with him. Before we left Paris, Sylvie showed Nath the warehouse in the rue du Mur, and Nath took over the selling of illegal literature to Paris Protestants. However, my wife was not willing to abandon her mission. She announced that she would continue to order the books from Geneva. She would sail across the English Channel to Rouen, meet the shipments there, escort them to Paris, pay the necessary bribes, and deliver the cargo to the rue du Mur.

  I worried about her, but I had learned, from Queen Elizabeth, that some women could not be ruled by men. Anyway, I'm not sure I would have stopped her if I could. She had a sacred mission, and I could not take that away from her. If she carried on long enough, one day of course she would be caught. And then she would die, I knew.

  It was her destiny.

  21

  Rollo stood on the deck of the Petite Fleur as the freighter approached the coast of England. This was the moment of greatest danger.

  The ship, out of Cherbourg, was headed for Combe Harbour carrying barrels of apple brandy, huge rounds of cheese, and eight young priests from the English College at Douai.

  Rollo wore a priest's robe and a pectoral cross. His hair was thinning on top, but to compensate he had grown a full beard. Over his shoulders was a white cloak, not very priestly: it was a prearranged signal.

  He had made preparations with meticulous care, but too many things could go wrong in practice. He did not even know for sure whether the captain was trustworthy. The man was being paid handsomely for making this stop, but someone else--Ned Willard, or another of Queen Elizabeth's men--might have offered him a higher fee to betray Rollo.

  He wished he was not relying so heavily on his sister. She was smart and well organized and fearless, but in the end she was a woman. However, Rollo himself did not want to set foot on English soil, not yet, so he had to use her.

  At dusk the captain dropped anchor in a bay with no name three miles along the coast from his destination. The sea was mercifully calm. In the bay close to the beach a small, round-ended fishing boat with a mast and oars was anchored. Rollo had known the vessel when his father had been receiver of customs at Combe Harbour: it had once been the Saint Ava, but was now called simply the Ava. Beyond the beach, in the cleft of a chine, stood a sturdy cottage of pale stone with smoke coming from its chimney.