Page 123 of A Column of Fire

There were many things she had not anticipated. She had had no idea how fast shoes would wear out when she was walking all day, every day. She was shocked by the rapacity of tavern-keepers, especially in locations where there was only one such establishment: they charged exorbitant rates, even though she was a ‘nun’. She expected unwelcome advances from men, and dealt with them briskly, but was surprised one night to be mauled by a woman in the communal bedroom of a hostelry.

She felt profoundly relieved when the spires of Geneva’s Protestant churches appeared in the distance. She was also proud of herself. She had been told it could not be done, but she had done it, with God’s help.

The city stood at the southern tip of the lake of the same name, at the spot where the Rhône river flowed out of the lake on its way to the distant Mediterranean Sea. As she got closer, she saw that it was a small town in comparison to Paris. But every town she had seen was small in comparison to Paris.

The sight was pretty as well as welcome. The lake was clear, the surrounding mountains were blue-and-white, and the sky was a pearly grey.

Before presenting herself at the city gate, Sylvie took off her nun’s cap, hid her pectoral cross under her dress, and wound a yellow scarf around her head and neck, so that she no longer looked like a nun, just a badly dressed laywoman. She was admitted without trouble.

She found lodging at an inn where the landlord was a woman. The next day, she bought a red wool cap. It covered her nun-like cropped hair, and was warmer than the yellow scarf.

A hard, cold wind came from the Rhône valley, lashed the surface of the lake into foaming wavelets, and chilled the city. The people were as cold as the climate, Sylvie found. She wanted to tell them that one did not have to be grumpy to be a Protestant.

The town was full of printers and booksellers. They produced Bibles and other literature in English and German as well as French, and sent their books to be sold all over Europe. She went into a printer’s nearest to her lodging and found a man and his apprentice working at a press with books stacked all around them. She asked the price of a Bible in French.

The printer looked at her coarse dress and said: ‘Too expensive for you.’

The apprentice sniggered.

‘I’m serious,’ she said.

‘You don’t look it,’ the man said. ‘Two livres.’

‘And if I buy a hundred?’

He half turned away to show lack of interest. ‘I don’t have a hundred.’

‘Well, I’m not going to give my business to someone so apathetic,’ she said tartly, and she went out.

But the next printer was the same. It was maddening. She could not understand why they did not want to sell their books. She tried telling them she had come all the way from Paris, but they did not believe her. She said she had a holy mission to bring the Bible to misguided French Catholics, and they laughed.

After a fruitless day she went back to the inn, feeling frustrated and helpless. Had she come all this way for nothing? Tired out, she slept heavily, and woke determined to take a different approach.

She found the College of Pastors, figuring that their mission was to spread the true gospel, and they would surely want to help her. There, in the hall of the modest building, she saw someone she knew. It took her a few moments to figure out that it was the young missionary who had come into her father’s bookshop almost three years ago and said: ‘I am Guillaume of Geneva.’ She greeted him with relief.

For his part, he regarded her sudden appearance in Geneva as some kind of godsend. Having done two tours of missionary duty in France, he was now teaching younger men to follow in his footsteps. In this easier way of life he had lost his intensity, and he was no longer as thin as a sapling: in fact, he looked contentedly plump. And Sylvie’s arrival completed his happiness.

He was shocked to hear of Pierre’s treachery, but he failed to conceal a feeling of satisfaction that his more glamorous rival had turned out to be a fraud. Then tears came to his eyes when she told him of the martyrdom of Giles.

When she related her experiences with Geneva booksellers, he was unsurprised. ‘It’s because you treat them as equals,’ he said.

Sylvie had learned to appear unafraid and in command, as the only way to discourage men from trying to exploit her. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ she said.

‘They expect a woman to be humble.’

‘They like deferential women in Paris, too, but they don’t turn customers away on that account. If a woman has money, and they have goods to sell, they do business.’

‘Paris is different.’

Evidently, she thought.

Guillaume eagerly agreed to help her. He cancelled his lectures for the day and took her to a printer he knew. She stood back and let him do the talking.

She wanted two kinds of Bible: one cheap enough for almost anyone to buy, and a luxury edition, expensively printed and bound, for wealthier customers. Following her instructions, Guillaume bargained hard, and she got both at a price she could treble in Paris. She bought a hundred prestige editions and a thousand cheap ones.

She was excited to see, in the same workshop, copies of the Psalms in the translation by the French poet Clément Marot. This had been a big success for her father and she knew she could sell many more. She bought five hundred.

She felt a thrill as she watched the boxes being brought out from the storeroom at the back of the shop. Her journey was not over yet, but she had succeeded so far. She had refused to abandon her mission, and she had been right. Those books would take the true religion into the hearts of hundreds of people. They would also feed her and her mother for a year or more. It was a triumph.