Paris

  From somewhere, a glass ball rose high into the air. Easily, hardly glancing at it, she raised her rifle and shot it so that it burst into a thousand fragments. A cool shot certainly. Another ball, and a second. Two shots, so close together it seemed hardly possible. Both glass balls burst. Very good, it had to be said. She went to the table and picked up another gun. As she did so, three balls went up, in different directions. Three bangs, three hits.

  And now it began. Glass balls, clay pigeons, a playing card, a cigar, objects on stands, things tossed in the air, in front of her, behind her, faster and faster, high and low. She was grabbing guns from the table and throwing them down with bewildering speed. Generals boggled, sporting aristocrats leaned forward in their seats, ladies dropped their fans. Annie Oakley did not miss. They had never seen anything like it. The cries of astonishment rose, people were standing in their seats. And when she had exhausted every gun and the haze of smoke was hanging over the center of the arena, and she took her bow, the audience roared, and threw handkerchiefs at her feet.

  She ran off gaily, and the audience sank into their seats.

  And then she was back again, but riding a horse. Around the arena she rode, and the balls started rising into the air, and she shot them as she went. And then silver French coins went up, sparkling in the sun, and she shot them too. But now the audience was beyond ecstasy. As well they might be. For what they were seeing was close to a miracle, and Annie Oakley was, quite likely, the finest shot the world has ever known.

  After that, the audience was won. They cheered the Mexicans, and the buffalo, and the Indian battles and the taming of the West. They might not be sure exactly what it all signified, but they didn’t care.

  Buffalo Bill was a big success.

  And it was understandable. The Americans might speak abominable French, but weren’t the two countries historic soul mates? France, for whatever reasons, had helped the American colonies break free of England in the American Revolution, which in turn inspired the French to follow with an even greater revolution of their own. And if the French Revolution had been for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, were these not, in a different manifestation, the watchwords of the American Wild West as well?

  Indeed, many in that audience may have reflected, after France’s humiliation by Germany not twenty years ago, perhaps she needed heroes with the brave spirit of Buffalo Bill to restore her honor still.

  He was the toast of the town all summer.

  So it was a flushed and excited Thomas who conducted Édith away from the Wild West show late that afternoon. Then, when they got to the bottom of the avenue de la Grande-Armée, instead of walking up it, they turned into the leafy Bois de Boulogne, and walked along a pleasant alley a little way.

  Then Thomas kissed Édith, and she kissed him back. And he hadn’t planned it at all, but there was no one else in the alley just then, and so he suddenly went down on one knee and said: “Will you marry me?”

  Chapter Eight

  • 1462 •

  In the tavern they called the Rising Sun, Jean Le Sourd was holding court. Le Sourd. It meant “the Deaf One.”

  Not that Jean Le Sourd was deaf. Not at all. He could have heard a pin drop in the street outside. It was said he could hear men’s thoughts. Certainly, if a man even thought of reaching for a knife, Le Sourd’s own knife would be at that man’s throat before he had a chance and, like as not, have slit that throat from ear to ear, not out of malice, but just as a precaution.

  Rouge Gorge, they also called him. Red Throat.

  But mostly they called him Le Sourd because, if a man crossed him, he was deaf to all entreaty. There was no second chance. There was no use pleading. There was no mercy. And within the territory comprising a network of a dozen streets on one side of the old market of Les Halles, Jean Le Sourd was king. The Rising Sun tavern was where he liked to hold his court.

  Despite its name, there was nothing sunny about the place. The small street in which it was to be found was dark and narrow. The alley that ran down beside it, and where Le Sourd lived, was scarcely wide enough for two cats to walk side by side, and the overhanging stories above drew so close together that a mouse could leap across, and the stench of urine clung to the walls.

  And the streets had names befitting their condition: Pute-y-Muse, Lazy Whore; Merdeuse, Shit Street; Tire-Boudin, Cock Puller; and other names worse, far worse. And the people who lived there were whores, and thieves, and pickpockets, and did other things worse, far worse.

  Jean Le Sourd was a large, strong man with a great mane of shaggy black hair. He sat at a wooden table in the middle of the tavern. At his table were several men, some who looked like murderers, but one of them, who had an aquiline face and a sallow complexion, looked as if he might be a defrocked priest or scholar. Standing behind Le Sourd was his son Richard, a ten-year-old boy, his face not yet hardened, but with a mop of black hair like his own.

  A stooped man came through the door. He was tonsured, suggesting that he might be a cleric of some kind, and he moved with a curious motion, like a bobbing bird. He went straight to the central table and, taking something out from under his shirt, laid it in front of Le Sourd.

  Le Sourd picked it up and examined it carefully. It was a pendant on a golden chain.

  “Unusual,” said Le Sourd. He passed it across to the man who looked like a scholar. The scholar inspected it, remarked that it wasn’t from Paris and gave it back. Le Sourd turned to the stooping man: “We’ll have to find out what it’s worth. You’ll get your share.”

  Those were the rules of Le Sourd’s kingdom. Whatever was stolen was brought to him. He found the market and gave the thief a share. Once or twice men had tried to bypass the system. One was found with his throat slit. Another disappeared.

  The stooping man moved to the back of the room to join some of his fellows. Jean Le Sourd resumed his conversation with the scholar. And several minutes passed before the door of the tavern opened again.

  This time however, as the newcomer entered, the buzz of conversation died down to a hush.

  He was a young man. Twenty years old, perhaps. He had fair hair and blue eyes. He was wearing a short cloak and a sword that immediately proclaimed he was a noble. And the fact that he had entered such a place alone told everyone that he did not know Paris.

  It might be dangerous to kill a noble, but the inhabitants of that quarter were no respecters of persons. One of the men nearest the door quietly rose, with a knife in his hand, and stood behind the visitor, awaiting a signal from Le Sourd.

  At the same time, the stooping man at the back of the room shifted position slightly, so that he was in the shadows. But he spoke a word to his neighbor, who walked over to Le Sourd and whispered something in his ear.

  Le Sourd looked at the intruder thoughtfully, while everyone waited. They all knew what the young man did not: that his chances of leaving the Rising Sun alive were not good. Not good at all.

  Guy de Cygne was in Paris for only a week, and this was his second day. His parents had made him come and, from the moment he came through the Porte Saint-Jacques, he couldn’t wait to leave.

  For Paris was rotten. It had been rotten a century ago when the Black Death came and killed nearly half its people. It was even more rotten now.

  Worse, despite plague, famine and war, like a pestiferous plant, Paris had grown. On the Right Bank, they had built a new fortification line, hundreds of yards beyond the old wall of Philip Augustus, so that the Louvre was now well inside the city gates, and the former Temple too. Country lanes had turned into narrow streets, orchards into tenements, streams into open sewers. And two hundred thousand souls now dwelt in this dark, godforsaken city.

  Had God truly forsaken Paris? Certainly. For over a century, God had forsaken France itself. And why? Few Frenchmen had any doubt.

  Because of the Templar’s curse.

  Young Guy de Cygne’s father had explained it to him when Guy was still a boy.

  “After King Philip th
e Fair arrested the Templars, he tortured some of them for years. He got his puppet pope to disband the order all over Christendom. Finally, he took Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master—a man of unimpeachable character—and burned him at the stake. And as he burned, de Molay cursed the king and all who had destroyed the Templars.”

  “And did it work?” Guy had asked.

  “Certainly.”

  Within the year, both the king and his pope were dead. But that was only the beginning. Within a few years, all King Philip’s sons were dead as well, and another branch of the family, the Valois, took over.

  Even that was not enough. King Philip’s daughter had married the Plantagenet king of England, and soon the pushy Plantagenets were after the throne of France as well.

  For more than a hundred years, an on-and-off war had continued. Before and after the Black Death, England’s longbowmen had smashed the chivalry of France at the battles of Crécy and Poitiers. The Plantagenets had taken Aquitaine and half of Brittany. Scotland, France’s ancient ally, had deflected the English for a while. But at the end of the dismal fourteenth century, the king of France had gone mad; and in the chaos that ensued, the greedy Plantagenets came back once more, to see what else they could grab.

  By the time Guy’s father was a boy, Henry V of England had smashed the French at Agincourt, and married the French king’s daughter. It seemed the Plantagenets would be kings of France as well.

  And then, at last, God showed his mercy. Just as He had a thousand years before, when He inspired Saint Geneviève to save Paris from Attila the Hun, He sent the peasant girl Joan of Arc to inspire the men of France. Her career had been brief. But her legacy had lived on. Gradually the English had been pushed back. By now they were almost out.

  So had the Templar’s curse been lifted from forsaken France? Had Christendom returned to its normal state?

  Perhaps. At least there was now a single pope, in Rome. After seventy years of French popes at Avignon, then another half century of rival popes and antipopes, the Catholic schism was over.

  But what was Paris? A sink of iniquity. A place of darkness. And judging by what he saw before him now, in the tavern of the Rising Sun, it did not seem to Guy de Cygne that there was any good day dawning.

  Le Sourd gave a single rap upon the table, and the tavern fell silent. He gazed at the young noble.

  “You are a stranger here, monsieur. Can we help you?” The tone was quiet, but it was clear that he was in charge.

  “I am searching for something,” Guy replied calmly. He was not sure how much danger he was in, but ever since he was a little boy, his father had told him: “In front of animals, or a mob, never show fear.”

  “What is it you seek?”

  “A gold pendant. It was on a chain. It is not of great value, but it was given to me by my grandmother just before she died, and for that reason I would not lose it for all the world.”

  “But why do you come here, monsieur, to the tavern of the Rising Sun, where there are only honest men and poets?”

  If there was some ironic humor in this, the young man ignored it.

  “I saw the man who robbed me. I followed him. And I am sure he came in here.”

  “No one has come through the door in the last hour, except yourself,” Le Sourd answered blandly. “Isn’t that right?” he asked the room, and forty throats echoed his sentiments, until Le Sourd raised his hand and they instantly fell silent.

  Young Guy de Cygne let his gaze travel around the tavern. It was hard to see into the shadows.

  “You will not mind, then, if I satisfy myself that the man I seek has not slipped in by some other entrance,” he replied coolly.

  Le Sourd gazed at him. This young aristocrat might be a stranger, but he could not fail to realize that he was at their mercy. The cool effrontery, the reckless courage of the fellow appealed to the ruler of thieves.

  “Please do so,” he said.

  Guy de Cygne moved swiftly around the big room. He knew he might be about to die, but he could not go back now. In the shadows, he found the stooping man.

  “This is him,” he said. “He’s tonsured like a priest, but this is him.” He’d heard there were cutpurses and other rogues in Paris who tonsured themselves in the hope of being tried by the protective Church courts instead of the harsher provost. He assumed this fellow must be one of them.

  “Connard!” Le Sourd called out to the stooping man. “Let this gentleman search you.”

  The stooping man submitted. Guy de Cygne found nothing.

  “This man of God has been here all day,” declared Le Sourd. “But I can think of others in the quarter who resemble him. It must have been one of them.” He paused. And now his voice became soft and dangerous. “I hope you will not call me a liar, monsieur.”

  Guy de Cygne had been made a fool of. He knew it and they knew it. But there could be no mistaking Le Sourd’s meaning: call him a liar in this den of iniquity, and he’d be dead.

  Yet he must retain some honor.

  “I have no reason to call you a liar,” he answered calmly. He moved carefully to a place where he could draw his sword and use it. If they attacked him, he could probably kill two or three before they brought him down. The men in the room noticed, but nobody moved.

  And now Le Sourd had an idea. He glanced at his son, who was watching carefully. Richard knew that his father’s word was law. He knew that his father could kill this young noble if he chose. This was his father’s power.

  Should he show the boy something even better? Should he humiliate this noble, make him apologize to the stooped man before he left? The young noble might refuse, in which case he’d have to kill him. Or he might accept and leave with his tail between his legs. But either way, it was a petty gesture, unworthy of a father who, in his own way, still wanted to be a hero to his son.

  No. He would show the boy his father’s magnificence. For wasn’t he a monarch in his own small kingdom? And weren’t the great nobles men like himself, but on a larger scale?

  “Perhaps I may be able to help you, monsieur. I invite you to sit at my table.”

  Guy de Cygne stared at him. This was obviously a trap. He’d be unable to see behind him, or to draw his sword. The quickest way to get his throat cut. Le Sourd read his thoughts.

  “You are my guest, monsieur, and under my protection. It would be an insult to refuse me.”

  Still de Cygne hesitated. But then the scholarly-looking man sitting on Le Sourd’s right came to his aid.

  “You may safely sit, sir,” he said in a voice that was clearly educated. “And I advise you to do so.”

  Thinking that this might be the last thing he did, Guy de Cygne sat down in the place offered, opposite Le Sourd, with half the tavern behind him.

  Le Sourd ordered his son, like a young squire, to pour their guest a goblet of wine.

  “I am Jean, called Le Sourd,” he introduced himself. “This gentleman”—he indicated the scholar—“is my friend Master François Villon. He is a notable poet, his uncle is a professor at the university”—he grinned—“and he has twice been banished for murder.”

  “Which I did not commit,” said the poet.

  “Which he did not commit,” Le Sourd continued. “So you see, monsieur, that you are in the company of distinguished and honest men.” He glanced at young Richard. “And this young fellow who poured your wine is my son.”

  The name of Villon meant nothing to Guy de Cygne. He noticed that the poet had just peeled an apple with a long, sharp dagger which rested on the table. He suspected that the dagger had been used for less domestic purposes. He gave a faint nod to them all.

  “I am Guy de Cygne, from the valley of the Loire.”

  Le Sourd glanced at Villon.

  “I’ve heard the name,” the poet remarked. “Noble family.”

  Le Sourd was satisfied. It was the first time a noble had sat at his table. Now he’d let Richard see that his father knew how to conduct himself with an aristocrat.

&nb
sp; “There are many fine estates in the valley of the Loire,” Le Sourd remarked as he handed the young man a dish of sweetmeats.

  “And many, like ours, that have been ruined,” de Cygne replied frankly.

  “That is unfortunate. May we ask how that came about?”

  It was none of this evil man’s business, Guy de Cygne thought. But situated as he was, he may as well play along, so he answered honestly.

  “It has taken time. The plague did not help.”

  This was an understatement. In 1348, when the Black Death reached France, it had struck their small village especially hard. Only one of the de Cygne family, a boy of ten, had lived, with only the family motto—“According to God’s will”—to guide him. Clearly God wished the family to survive. And this was enough to keep him going. But life had been hard.

  “My own family had an important position at that time,” Le Sourd remarked with a wicked smile. “My great-grandfather was the finest cat-killer in Paris.”

  It was true that the Paris authorities, convinced that it was cats rather than rats which carried the plague, had caused huge numbers of them to be killed. Though whether his host was serious or joking, de Cygne wasn’t sure.

  “But it was the English who ruined us,” he continued. “My ancestor fell at the battle of Crécy. Ten years later, his son was taken at Poitiers and we had to ransom him. That cost us half our land.”

  “He was in good company,” Le Sourd remarked. “The king of France himself was taken at Poitiers, by the Black Prince of England. They put him in the Tower of London.”

  “And all France had to pay his ransom,” Villon added sourly. It seemed to Guy de Cygne that the poet didn’t think the king was worth the price.

  “Then the English mercenaries came and looted us,” he said.

  “They looted half France,” Le Sourd agreed. “A plague of locusts.”

  “And we had only a generation to recover from these misfortunes,” Guy went on, “before the English returned again. My grandfather died at Agincourt.” He paused and looked at them with the pride of a noble whose fortunes might be low, but whose ancestors fought with honor.