Page 116 of A Column of Fire

Charles said: ‘You’d better bring him here alive.’

Pierre realized that if the baby should die of natural causes now – as they often did in the first few hours – he would be blamed, and probably executed for murder.

He turned and went to the door.

‘Wait,’ said Charles. ‘Listen to me. You are going to live with Odette, and take care of her and her child for the rest of your life. That is my will.’

Pierre was silent. No one could defy Charles’s will, not even the king.

‘And the child’s name is Alain,’ said Charles.

Pierre nodded assent, and left the house.

*

SYLVIE’S LIFE WENT WELLfor half a year.

With the proceeds of book sales she and her mother rented a pleasant small house with two bedrooms in the rue de la Serpente, a street in the University district south of the river, and opened a shop in the front parlour. They sold paper, ink and other writing necessities to teachers, students and the literate general public. Sylvie bought the paper in Saint-Marcel, a suburb outside the city wall to the south, where the manufacturers had the unlimited water they needed from the Bièvre river. She made the ink herself using oak galls, the wart-like growths she picked from the bark of trees in the woods. Her father had taught her the recipe. Printing ink was different, made with oil to be more viscous, but she also knew how to prepare a more dilute ink for ordinary writing. The shop did not really make enough money for the two of them to live on, but it served as a plausible cover for their more important business.

Isabelle recovered from her depression, but she had aged. The horror the two women had experienced seemed to have weakened the mother and strengthened the daughter. Sylvie now took the initiative.

Sylvie led a dangerous life as a criminal and a heretic but, paradoxically, she was happy. Reflecting on why this was, she suspected that for the first time in her life she did not have a man telling her what to do. She had decided to open the shop, she had chosen to rejoin the Protestant congregation, she had continued selling banned books. She talked to her mother about everything, but she made the decisions. She was happy because she was free.

She longed for a man to hold at night, but not at the price of her liberty. Most men treated their wives like children, the only difference being that women could work harder. Perhaps there were men somewhere who did not regard wives as property, but she had never met one.

Sylvie had invented new names for them both, so that the authorities would not connect them with the executed heretic Giles Palot. They now called themselves Thérèse and Jacqueline St Quentin. The Protestants understood why and went along with the pretence. The two women had no friends who were not Protestants.

Their aliases had fooled a man from the city government who had visited the shop soon after it opened. He had looked all over the premises and asked a lot of questions. He might even have been one of Pierre Aumande’s informants, Sylvie thought; although any paper shop might have been checked for illegal literature. There were no books in the building, other than notebooks and ledgers, and he had gone away satisfied.

The contraband books were at the warehouse in the rue du Mur, and Sylvie withdrew one only when she had a buyer lined up, so that the incriminating objects were never at the house for more than a few hours. Then, one Sunday morning in the summer of 1560, she went to the warehouse for a French-language Geneva Bible and found that there was only one left in the box.

Checking the other boxes, she discovered that most contained obscure texts, such as the works of Erasmus, which she was able to sell only occasionally, to broad-minded priests or curious university students. She might have guessed: the books were still in the warehouse because they did not sell well. Other than the Bible, the only moderately popular book was John Calvin’s manifestoInstitutes of the Christian Religion. That was why her father had been printing more Bibles last September, when the Guises had pounced. But those Bibles, found in the shop and fatally incriminating for Giles, had been burned.

She realized that she had failed to plan ahead. What was she going to do now? She thought with horror of the profession she had almost taken up back in the winter, when she and her mother had been close to starving. Never again, she vowed.

On her way home she passed through Les Halles, the district where Pierre lived. Despite her loathing of Pierre, she tried to keep an eye on him. His master, Cardinal Charles, was responsible for the royal crackdown on Paris Protestants, and Sylvie felt sure Pierre must still be involved in finding them. He could no longer be a spy himself, because so many people knew who he was, but he was probably a spymaster.

Sylvie had discreetly watched Pierre’s house, and talked to people in the nearby tavern of St Étienne. Members of the Guise household guard often drank there, and she sometimes picked up useful chatter about what the family was up to. She had also learned that Pierre had remarried quickly after the annulment. He now had a wife called Odette, a baby boy called Alain, and a maid called Nath: the tavern gossip was that both Odette and Nath hated Pierre. Sylvie had not yet spoken to Odette or Nath, but she was on nodding terms, and she hoped they might one day be persuaded to betray his secrets. Meanwhile, Pierre was watched at court by the young marchioness of Nîmes, who kept a note of the people she saw him talking to. So far her only moderately interesting identification had been Gaston Le Pin, the captain of the Guise family guard, who was too well known to have a clandestine role.

When she got home and told her mother they were out of Bibles, Isabelle said: ‘We could forget about the books, and just sell stationery.’

‘The stationery doesn’t make enough money,’ Sylvie said. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to spend my life selling paper and ink. We have a mission to enable our fellow men and women to read God’s word for themselves, and to find their way to the true gospel. I want to go on doing that.’

Her mother smiled. ‘Good girl.’

‘But how will I get the books? We can’t print them. Father’s machinery belongs to someone else now.’

‘There must be other Protestant printers in Paris.’

‘There are – I’ve seen their books in customers’ homes. And we’ve got plenty of money from past sales to buy new stock. But I can’t find out where the printers are – it’s a secret, obviously. Anyway, they can sell the books themselves, so why would they need me?’

‘There’s only one place where it’s possible to buy large quantities of Protestant books, and that’s Geneva.’ Isabelle said it as if Geneva were as remote as the moon.

But Sylvie was not easily discouraged. ‘How far is it?’

‘You can’t go! It’s a long way, and a dangerous journey. And you’ve never travelled farther than the outskirts of Paris.’

Sylvie pretended to be less daunted than she felt. ‘Other people do it. Remember Guillaume?’