Paris: The Novel (63 page)

“I’d better go down to my mother,” he said to the little girl. “You stay here. All right?”

She nodded.

His parents were sitting in the kitchen. They were looking solemn.

“I heard the bells,” he said.

“We must stay inside today,” said his mother.

“Are they killing people?” he asked.

“Why do you say that?” said his father.

“I don’t know.” He waited for a reply, but none came. “Can I have some bread and milk?” he said. His mother gave it to him. “I think I’ll take it to my room,” Simon said. “I feel sleepy.” And his parents seemed quite glad that he should go back up there.

When he got back to his room, he gave the bread and milk to the little girl. After she’d finished it, he put his arm around her. Then she fell asleep.

It was about an hour later that he heard a horse’s hooves outside his window. Then a rap at the door. He stole out of his room to the top of the stairs. He saw the top of his father’s head as he went to the door and called out, “Who is it?” Then he heard the door open.

“I can’t stop, Cousin.” Guy’s voice. “Don’t go out there. They’ve killed Coligny, and all the Protestants staying at the Louvre. Every one of them. They’ve been going around every lodging where Protestants are staying. The Protestants have realized what is happening and they’re trying to leave the city. But they can’t. All the gates have been locked to keep them in. You don’t hear it here, but they’re hunting them down in the streets. I saw twenty bodies floating in the river as I came this way. There’s a dead woman in the street at the end of your alley.”

“A woman?”

“They’re killing all the Protestants, Pierre. Men, women, children, all of them. It’s even worse than I imagined. I don’t know if it’s part of the plan, but there are mobs out in the street now. If they think someone might be a Protestant, they butcher them. One Catholic family were sheltering a Protestant, and so they killed them as well.”

“This is terrible. It must be stopped.”

“By whom, Pierre? Who’s going to stop it? This is all done by royal order. It’s the churchmen who are ringing the bells.”

“But it is evil.”

“Don’t say that, Cousin. They’ll say you’re a heretic and butcher you too. Keep your mouth shut, I beg you. And keep your door shut too. And wear those armbands. I have to go.”

Simon heard his father close the door and slip the bolts.

Then he went back into his room, and sat on the bed beside the little girl, who remained asleep, and wondered what he should do.

It was an hour later that he went downstairs into the kitchen, found his parents alone and told them what he had done.

“You did what?” His mother was past him in a flash and up the stairs. Moments later she came down again. She looked at her husband, then at Simon. It was a look of reproach, almost of hatred, that he would never forget. “She must go, Pierre,” said Suzanne. “We must put her out.” She made a gesture of desperation. “We have to.”

Simon shook his head.

“Maman, Papa hasn’t told you what Uncle Guy said when he came to the door. But I heard him from the top of the stairs. They are killing the Protestant children in the street. They will kill the little girl.” He looked from one parent to the other. “How can we put her out?”

Neither of his parents spoke.

Just then, they heard a small bump on the staircase. Then another. The child was coming down. She reached the foot of the stairs and walked back to the kitchen doorway. She looked a little sleepy. But when she saw Simon she went to his side and took his hand.

“I am Constance,” she said.

They kept her for two weeks. The difficulty was where they were to hide her.

“Nobody must know she is here,” Pierre insisted. Neither the apprentice
nor the serving girl must know. Nor even his cousin Guy. “One careless word, one slip and the secret’s out.” He did not want to say what that could lead to. And there was only one way to achieve that.

“She will have to stay in your room with you, Simon. All the time. And no one must ever go in there. You will have to pretend to be sick.” He did not say so, but the message to his son was clear: “You have brought the girl in, and now you will have to suffer the consequences.”

As for the little girl herself, Pierre was kindly, but blunt. The first thing he did was to put a white band around her arm.

“If anyone ever asks,” he told her, “you must say that you are Catholic. If you say you are Protestant, they will kill you, like your mother and father. Do you understand?” It was a terrible thing to say, but he knew it was necessary. “They will probably kill all of us too,” he added.

Little Constance nodded solemnly. She understood.

“If anyone ever sees her,” Pierre continued, “we shall have to say she is a cousin who is visiting us. But people will be suspicious. So let us keep her out of sight until we can find out what to do.”

By gentle questioning during that very day, her story became clear enough.

Her parents had come from the great western port of La Rochelle, with a party of other merchants and craftsmen who had thought this a safe opportunity to see the capital. Dragged from the tavern where they were staying, her father had been killed at once, but her mother had managed to escape. As she ran down the street, hearing a horse’s hooves coming around the corner behind her, she’d whispered to the child to hide, and shoved her into the shadows of the alley as she passed. A moment later, she’d been cut down.

“Did other family come with you to Paris?” Suzanne asked her. The child shook her head.

“Have you family in La Rochelle?”

“My aunt and uncle.”

“God willing,” Pierre said to his wife afterward, “we can return her to La Rochelle when it’s safe to do so.”

They were both silent for a moment. Neither of them spoke the thought that was in their minds: unless the Protestants of La Rochelle had all been killed as well.

During the first days, the Renard family were very frightened. For the terrible massacre on the Feast of Saint Bartholomew lasted well past the
day itself. Estimates varied, but thousands were slaughtered in Paris alone. Soon news came that the massacres were taking place in other towns and cities as well. What the royal family and the Guises had started in Paris, the mob continued all over France. Orléans, Lyon, Rouen, Bordeaux, in one after another, Catholic mobs massacred Protestants in the thousands. As yet, it seemed, the great stronghold of La Rochelle had not been touched. But who knew what might come next?

Outside France the news of the massacre traveled like wildfire. The pope sent the King of France a formal congratulation, had Vasari commemorate the event in a fine painting and ordered a Te Deum to be sung in celebration upon that day for years to come. It was said that when the King of Spain heard of the massacre, it was the only time he was ever heard to laugh. Only one great Catholic ruler seemed to have doubts about the merits of the murders. The Holy Roman Emperor, though he was the King of Spain’s cousin, thought that it was not a Christian thing to do.

In France itself, however, the massacre had one immediate effect. Guy Renard brought the news to his cousin’s house on the morning after the massacre.

“King Henry of Navarre has converted to Catholicism. So now our Médicis queen has a Catholic son-in-law.”

“Do you think it was a sincere conversion?” asked Pierre.

“Oh, very. He was told to do it on the spot or they’d cut his head off.”

It was a strange existence for Simon and little Constance. The door of his room was kept shut all the time. Now and again his mother would come in with a little broth or some other food that might nourish an invalid, and then she’d put some of it in a second bowl she’d concealed and feed them both. At these times she’d stay and talk in low tones to them both, though only Simon was permitted to reply. After she had gone, the two children would remain as quiet as a pair of mice.

The serving girl came past the door each day, but she never dared open it. Suzanne had told her firmly that she’d be whipped if she did.

“I don’t want you getting sick as well. You’ve work to do,” she said.

The apprentice once asked Pierre if he thought that the shock of the massacre had caused Simon to fall sick, but Pierre was dismissive of the idea.

“He started looking feverish the afternoon before,” he remarked. “And he certainly never saw anything.”

Each afternoon, however, he and his wife contrived that the house would be safe for the children to come out of the room. Either Pierre would take the apprentice out and Suzanne send the serving girl on an errand that would take her some time, or vice versa. Then, most days, with one or the other parent guarding the door, the two children would come down and go into the yard at the back, where no one could see them, and walk about and get some fresh air. They could even play ball, so long as they spoke only in whispers. In this manner, they usually got out of Simon’s little room for an hour or two each day.

For the rest of the time, however, they had to devise ways of keeping the children amused. Fortunately, the little girl liked to draw. And Simon could read. But within a day or two, her curiosity about what he was doing led to a new game. He taught her the letters of the alphabet.

Constance would make a drawing of a simple object—a cat, a dog, a house—and Simon would write the word in question and, in the lowest whisper, explain to her what sound the letters made, and show her how they were formed. Since they had nothing much else to do, it was not many days before the little girl knew the whole alphabet. Simon was impressed with how quickly she understood things.

After a few days, his mother brought them a checkerboard, and he showed Constance how to play checkers. It took only a couple of days before she could hold her own. Sometimes she beat him.

And so the two children lived their strange and secret life. And each night little Constance would curl up in Simon’s arms and fall asleep, and he would sleep contentedly too, knowing that he was her protector.

Once or twice Uncle Guy came to see Simon’s parents. He was sorry to learn that Simon was unwell, and wanted to come up and see him, but Pierre and Suzanne would tell him that it was better he not. “He’ll be up and about soon enough,” Pierre promised. And although Guy was slightly annoyed at not being allowed to see the boy, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

Even though Simon always heard Guy arrive, he could not hear what was said in the parlor. But once, after Constance had been there for ten days, he did overhear one scrap of conversation as Guy was leaving. He had mounted his horse just under Simon’s window, so his head was only a few feet away. He had turned down to his cousin, who was standing in the doorway.

“You know, Cousin,” he remarked, “this killing of Protestants is a
nasty business, no question. Yet when it’s all over, we may be glad of it. If destroying one community of heretics is the price of uniting France, maybe we should pay it.” Then he had ridden away.

The words had come through the window quite clearly. Simon looked down at little Constance. Had she heard? Had she understood? Yes. Her face was quite still, but her mouth was open in shock. He put his arm around her. After a few moments he felt her shaking, and saw the tears roll down her cheeks, but she cried silently, because she knew she must not make a sound.

And somehow, after that, he could never love his uncle Guy the way he had before.

Constance had been there for two weeks when Pierre told his son that it would be safe for him to take her to her family in La Rochelle. “There has been no assault on the town so far,” he explained, and the roads seemed to be clear. “I shall say that I am returning a niece to your mother’s family in Poitiers. That’s well on the way. I should be able to get Constance safely across from Poitiers to La Rochelle.”

He was going to leave the city the following afternoon. Simon’s mother would take both the apprentice and the serving girl out with her while they left.

“Just think,” Simon whispered to her before they went to sleep, “you’ll see your family soon.”

“I shall miss you,” she whispered back. “Will you come to see me?”