Page 217 of A Column of Fire

‘At anything up to a hundred yards, yes.’

‘A Spanish musket would be better.’ Muskets were bigger and heavier, and a shot from one of them was more likely to be fatal.

Biron shook his head. ‘Too difficult to conceal. Everyone would know what the man was up to. And Louviers is not young. I’m not sure he can handle a musket.’ It took strength to lift one: that was why musketeers were famously big.

Pierre had brought Charles Louviers to Paris. Louviers had kept a cool head in Orléans: the assassination of Antoine de Bourbon had failed through the dithering of King Francis II, not by any fault of Louviers’s. Some years later, Louviers had assassinated a Huguenot leader called Captain Luzé and won a reward of two thousand écus. And Louviers was a nobleman, which – Pierre thought – meant that he would keep his word, whereas a common street thug would change sides for the price of a bottle of wine. Pierre hoped he had made the right decisions.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a look at the route.’

Biron put the gun back in the bag and they stepped out into the courtyard. Two sides of the square were medieval castle walls, the other two modern Italian-style palaces. Biron said: ‘When Gaspard de Coligny walks from his lodging to here, and from here back to his lodging, he is accompanied by a bodyguard of about twenty armed men.’

‘That’s going to be a problem.’

Pierre walked the way Coligny would have to go, out through the medieval gateway to the rue des Poulies. The Bourbon family had a palace immediately opposite the Louvre. Next to it was the mansion of the king’s brother Hercule-Francis. Pierre looked along the street. ‘Where does Coligny lodge?’

‘Around the corner, in the rue de Béthisy. It’s just a few steps.’

‘Let’s look.’

They walked north, away from the river.

The tension in the streets was still high. Even now Pierre could see Huguenots, in their sombre but costly outfits of black and grey, strolling along as if they owned the city. If they had any sense, they would not look so triumphant. But then, Pierre thought, if they had any sense, they would not be Protestants.

The ultra-Catholic people of Paris hated these visitors. Their tolerance was fragile, a bridge of straw holding up an iron-wheeled wagon.

Given a really good pretext, either side would run amok. Then, if enough people were killed, the civil war would start again, and the Peace of St Germain would be torn up, regardless of the marriage.

Pierre was going to provide that pretext.

He scanned the street for a vantage point from which a gunman might fire at someone walking along: a tower, a big tree, an attic window. The trouble was, the killer would need an escape route, for the bodyguards would surely go after him.

He stopped outside a house he recognized. It belonged to Henri de Guise’s mother, Anna d’Este. She had remarried, and was now duchess of Nemours, but she still hated Coligny, believing him to have been responsible for the death of her first husband. Indeed, she had done as much as Pierre to keep alive young Duke Henri’s yearning for revenge. She would undoubtedly co-operate.

He scrutinized the façade. The upstairs windows were overhung by wooden trellises bearing climbing plants, a pretty touch that surely came from the duchess. But today the trellises were draped with drying laundry, which suggested the duchess was not in residence. Even better, Pierre thought.

He banged on the door and a servant opened it. The man recognized Pierre and spoke in a tone of deference laced with fear. ‘Good day to you, Monsieur de Guise, I hope I may be of assistance to you.’ Pierre liked obsequiousness, but he always pretended not to notice it. Now he pushed past the man without replying.

He went up the stairs, and Biron followed, still carrying the long bag with the arquebus.

There was a large drawing room at the front on the upstairs floor. Pierre opened the window. Despite the laundry flapping in the breeze, he had a clear view of both sides of the street in the direction of the Louvre. ‘Hand me that gun,’ he said.

Biron took the weapon out of its bag. Pierre rested it on the windowsill and sighted along the barrel. He saw a well-dressed couple approaching arm-in-arm. He aimed the gun at the man. To his surprise he recognized the elderly marquess of Nîmes. Pierre moved the gunsight sideways and studied the woman, who was wearing a bright yellow dress. Yes, it was the Marchioness Louise, who had twice caused him to suffer humiliation: once long ago, when she had snubbed him at the Protestant service in the old hunting lodge; and again just a week ago, at the shop in the rue de la Serpente, when Sylvie had taunted him with secrets Louise had told her. He could get his revenge now, just by squeezing the trigger of the wheel-lock. He targeted her bust. She was in her middle thirties, but still voluptuous, and her breasts were, if anything, larger than before. Pierre yearned to stain that yellow dress with her bright blood. He could almost hear her screams.

One day, he thought; just not yet.

He shook his head and stood up. ‘This is good,’ he said to Biron, handing back the gun.

He stepped outside the room. The manservant was on the landing, waiting for orders. ‘There must be a back door,’ Pierre said to him.

‘Yes, sir. May I show you?’

They went downstairs and through the kitchen and the wash-house to a yard with a gate. Pierre opened the gate and found himself in the grounds of the church of St-Germain l’Auxerrois. ‘This is perfect,’ he said to Biron in a low voice. ‘You can have a horse waiting here, saddled ready, and Louviers can be gone a minute after firing the fatal shot.’

Biron nodded agreement. ‘That’ll work.’

They walked back through the house. Pierre gave the manservant a gold ecu. ‘I wasn’t here today,’ he said. ‘No one was. You saw nothing.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said the man.