Page 127 of A Column of Fire

‘Not you,’ said Antoine quietly.

Scarface stepped towards him. Antoine handed the document to Caterina. Scarface turned towards her. Her bodyguards moved closer, clearly having been forewarned of this possibility. Scarface stood helpless. The scars on his face turned liver-coloured as he flushed with fury. He shouted: ‘This is outrageous!’

‘Be silent!’ Caterina snapped. ‘I have not called upon you to speak!’

Alison was flabbergasted. Caterina had fooled everyone and seized control. She had made herself effectively the monarch of France. The new power in France would not be Guise or Bourbon-Montmorency: it would be Caterina herself. She had slipped in between the two giants and disabled them both. How devious! There had been no hint of this plan. With skill and confidence she had carried out a manoeuvre that was nothing less than a coup d’état. Angry and disappointed though Alison was, in a part of her mind she could not help admiring Caterina’s strategy.

Still Caterina had not quite done.

‘And now,’ she said, ‘to seal the peace that has been won today, the Duke of Guise will embrace the King of Navarre.’

For Scarface, this was the ultimate humiliation.

Scarface and Antoine glared at one another.

‘Go ahead, please,’ said Caterina. ‘It is my command.’

Antoine moved first, stepping across the multicoloured tiled floor towards Scarface. The two men were almost the same age, but the resemblance ended there. Antoine had an apathetic air, and now underneath his moustache he wore what men sometimes called a shit-eating grin; Scarface was tanned, gaunt, disfigured and vicious. Antoine was not stupid, however. He stopped a yard from Scarface, spread his arms wide, and said: ‘I obey her majesty the queen mother.’

Scarface could not possibly sayI don’t.

He stepped towards Antoine and the two men exchanged the briefest possible hug, then separated as if they feared catching the plague.

Caterina smiled and clapped, and the rest of the court followed suit.

*

IN THE TEEMINGMediterranean port of Marseilles, Sylvie transferred her cargo from the river barge to an oceangoing merchant ship. It took her through the Strait of Gibraltar, across the Bay of Biscay where she was miserably seasick, along the English Channel and then up the river Seine as far as Rouen, the most important northern port in France.

The city was one-third Protestant, and Sylvie attended a Sunday service that hardly troubled to hide its nature and took place in a real church. She could have sold all her books here. But the need was greater in Catholic Paris. And prices were higher in Paris too.

It was January, 1561, and in France the news was all good. After King Francis II died his mother, Queen Caterina, had taken charge and dismissed the Guise brothers from some of their political offices. She had issued new regulations that made life easier for Protestants, though these were not yet formally laws. All religious prisoners were to be released, heresy trials were suspended, and the death penalty for heresy was abolished. The Protestants, whom Sylvie now heard referred to by their new nickname of Huguenots, were rejoicing.

However, selling banned books was aggravated heresy, and still a crime.

Sailing upstream on a river boat to Paris, with the hold full of her boxes, she felt hope and fear in equal measure. She arrived on a cold February morning at the quai de la Grève, where dozens of ships and boats were moored along the banks or anchored in midstream.

Sylvie sent a message to her mother that she had arrived, and a note to Luc Mauriac saying she hoped to see him soon to thank him personally for helping her plan her successful trip. Then she walked the short distance to the customs house in the place de Grève. If she was going to have trouble, it would begin here.

She brought with her false receipts, carefully forged with Guillaume’s help, showing that she had bought one hundred and ten boxes of paper from a fictional manufacturer in Fabriano. She also brought her purse, ready to pay the import tax.

She showed the receipts to a clerk. ‘Paper?’ he said. ‘Plain paper, with nothing written or printed on it?’

‘My mother and I sell paper and ink to students,’ she explained.

‘You’ve bought a lot.’

She tried a smile. ‘There are a lot of students in Paris – luckily for me.’

‘And you went a long way to get it. Don’t we have our own paper manufacturers, in Saint-Marcel?’

‘Italian paper is better – and cheaper.’

‘You’ll have to talk to the boss.’ He gave her back her receipts and pointed to a bench. ‘Wait there.’

Sylvie sat down with a sense of inevitable doom. All they had to do was open the boxes and look carefully! She felt as if she had already been found guilty and was awaiting sentence. The tension was hard to bear. She almost wished they would put her in jail and get it over with.

She tried to distract herself by watching the way business was done here, and realized that most of the men who came through the door were known to the clerks. Their papers were handled with casual efficiency and they paid their dues and left. Lucky them.