‘I –’ Michel gasped. Piet waited until his friend caught his breath. ‘We do not have the benefit of numbers,’ he finally managed to say. ‘We should not o’er press our cause beyond our ability to deliver it.’
‘And then what?’ Crompton demanded. ‘Fall to our knees like nuns and pray all will be well? That is your counsel? Reydon, what say you to this?’
‘My counsel is that we should all wait, and hope that the Edict will be fully implemented and that the situation will calm.’
Crompton’s eyes sharpened. ‘But if it does not?’
Piet glanced again at Michel, but answered honestly. ‘If it does not, then we will be forced to act. If the truce does not hold, if our limited freedoms and liberties are denied us, we will fight for them.’
Devereux smiled, the tip of his tongue just visible.
‘So in fact, Monsieur Reydon, we are in accord.’
‘It is the ghost of a dream,’ Michel whispered, ‘to think we can take up arms against the Catholic Church and hope to win. Against Guise. Our only chance of survival lies in accepting what we have been offered. If it comes to war, we will be defeated. We will lose everything.’
‘It will not come to war,’ Piet said, placing his hand upon Michel’s arm. ‘War is in neither side’s interest.’
‘I need some air,’ Michel said abruptly. ‘Crompton, Devereux, if you will excuse me. Piet, it has been a pleasure to see you again.’
He picked up his hat and unsteadily walked from the room.
Piet followed after him. ‘My friend, wait!’
Michel stopped, his hand on the wooden banister.
‘You have business to conduct. Go back inside.’
‘The transaction will take but minutes, then you and I can talk. Tell me where might I find you.’
Michel hesitated, then shook his head. ‘It’s too late,’ he said softly, then continued his heavy descent down the staircase.
Piet wanted to go after him, find out what ailed him, but he stopped himself. He was in Carcassonne for a reason, one reason only. Afterwards, he would seek Michel out. There would be time enough later.
CHAPTER TEN
Michel walked away from rue de l’Aigle d’Or as fast as his failing body would allow. A whisper of despair slipped from between his dry lips. He could not remember when he last had drunk or eaten anything. He had no appetite these days.
All the tell-tale arguments – about Place Saint-Georges, Amboise, Condé, Jean Roset – were swirling around in his head, stinking of treachery. But only a traitor would know the significance of so minor an event, so far away. The final slip, when it had come, had been so small, that none but Michel would have heard it for what it was or recognised the perfidy beneath. In truth, it was only confirmation of what he had long suspected. The inconsistencies, the contradictions. Today, there could be no more doubt. Today, the villain had condemned himself out of his own mouth. It had been all Michel could do not to draw his knife and finish him then, but he knew he hadn’t the strength to do it cleanly.
What of the others? Traitors too?
And Piet? Had he also sold his sword twice over? Claiming to fight for one cause, whilst promoting another? Michel pressed his hand to his chest to steady his stuttering heart. No, not that. He would swear on his dead mother’s life that Piet was an honourable man.
Or despite his convictions, could he be wrong about him too? Once Michel would have been sure in his judgements. What had happened in the oubliettes had stripped every shred of confidence from him.
Michel looked around at the people in the Grande Place, now shrouded in the beginnings of an afternoon mist. He wondered if their lives were as simple and honest as they appeared? A solitary troubadour was singing, despite the chill. The mournful melody touched him. It was a relief to know that there were at least still things of beauty in this broken world.
The damp mist caught in his throat. Michel raised his kerchief to his mouth and it came away spotted in blood. Each time, a little more than before. The apothecary said he was unlikely to see another summer.
He wrapped his arms around his emaciated frame until the palsy had passed. Michel was afraid. He had learnt the true meaning of fear, not on the battlefields of France, but in the dungeons of the Inquisition in Toulouse. Such terrible cruelty carried out in the name of God.
Michel still did not know who had denounced him, or why, only that, shortly after the feast of Epiphany, he had been arrested and charged with treason. In those dark January days, Michel learnt how any man would throw truth to the dogs when confronted with rope or pincer. He learnt how pain would make any man swear black was white and white was black. It had taken the severing of but two of his fingers before he admitted to his part in a conspiracy that existed only in the minds of the inquisitors.
A bookseller, Bernard Joubert, had been imprisoned with him. Accused of selling seditious and heretical materials, when interrogated by the inquisitors, he had argued how it was possible to be both a good Catholic and stock works of literature and theology that reflected alternative points of view. His defence: that without understanding what the Reformers preached it was impossible to reason with them and, so, defeat their position. In knowledge lay power.
Joubert had not been stretched, but he had felt the vicious claws of the chatte de griffe on his skin. A whip as vicious as any on the slave ships, sharp nails set into the leather thongs, an instrument that stripped a man’s skin from his back.
Unlike Michel, Joubert had withstood.
As they sat chained side by side in their stinking cell, the two men had spoken their innermost secrets to one another to keep the terror at bay. Surrounded by the stench of blood and death, by the pitiful cries of those whose bones were broken beyond repair, Bernard had spoken of his beloved wife Florence, five years dead, and of his three children; of his bookshop in rue du Marché and their house in La Cité, with wild roses trailing across the lintel. Of a secret Bernard had kept these many years.
And in return? Michel buried his head in his hands in shame.
When he and Joubert were released, without expectation and without charge, they had parted at the prison gates. At the time, it had seemed a miracle. Now Michel understood it was because of the amnesty of prisoners set down in the Edict.
Not all had been so fortunate. The scaffold had earnt its keep.
But though Michel had his liberty, the true horror had begun after he had left the gaol. The strange kindness he had received at the hands of the unknown noblewoman, being nursed at her expense in a house in the shadow of the cathedral in Toulouse. The wine, a warm bed and ointments for his wounds. This was the source of Michel’s shame, that he had traded Joubert’s secret for his own comfort.
Michel had not sought out Joubert since the afternoon of their release. Neither wished to be reminded of what they had endured. Now, he could think of nothing more than that he must find him. He had betrayed Joubert and he would never forgive himself for it. This was the corrosive guilt that had driven him at dawn to rue du Marché, but he had found the shop closed and shuttered. Now, after what he had just heard in the airless room above the tavern, he had to try harder. The sands were running through the hour glass. There was little time left to make amends.
CHAPTER ELEVEN