Page 232 of A Column of Fire

The people he most wanted as victims were the marquess and marchioness of Nîmes. He would have loved to kill the man in front of his wife. What a revenge that would have been. But they lived outside the walls, in the suburb of St Jacques, and the city gates were locked, so they were safe from Pierre’s wrath, for the moment.

Failing them, Pierre’s mind went to the Palot family.

Isabelle Palot had done worse than insult him, when he had called at the shop a few days ago; she had scared him. And perceptive Sylvie had seen it. Now it was time for them to be punished.

The men were a long time dividing up the money. Pierre guessed they were raping the wife before killing her. He had observed, in the civil war, that when men started to kill they always raped as well. Lifting one prohibition seemed to lift them all.

At last they came out of the shop. Pierre led them south, along the rue St Martin and across the Île de la Cité. He recalled the words Isabelle had used to him:filth, discharge of an infected prostitute, loathsome stinking corpse. He would remind her of them as she lay dying.

*

SYLVIE’S STASH OFbooks was cleverly concealed, Ned saw. Anyone entering the warehouse would see only barrels stacked floor to ceiling. Most of the barrels were full of sand, but Sylvie had shown Ned that a few were empty and easily moved to reveal the space where the books were stored in boxes. No one had ever discovered her secret, she told him.

They snuffed out the light of Ned’s lamp, for fear that a faint glow might leak through cracks and be seen outside, and sat in the dark, holding hands. The bells rang madly. Sounds of combat came to their ears: screams, the hoarse shouts of men fighting, and occasional gunfire. Sylvie was worried about her mother, but Ned persuaded her that Isabelle was in less danger at her house than Sylvie and he would be on the streets.

They sat for hours, listening and waiting. The street noises began to die away around the time that a faint light appeared around the edges of the door, like a picture frame, indicating dawn; and Sylvie said: ‘We can’t stay here for ever.’

Ned opened the door a few inches, put his head out cautiously, and looked up and down the rue du Mur in the morning light. ‘All clear,’ he said. He stepped out.

Sylvie followed him and locked the door behind her. ‘Perhaps the killing has stopped,’ she said.

‘They might flinch from committing atrocities in broad daylight.’

Sylvie quoted a verse from John’s Gospel: ‘Men loved darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil.’

They set off along the street, side by side, walking quickly. Ned still had on his white armband, for what that might be worth. He placed more reliance on the sword at his side, and walked with a hand on the hilt for reassurance. They headed south, towards the river.

Around the first corner two men lay dead outside a shop selling saddles. Ned was puzzled to see that they were half-naked. The corpses were partly obscured by the figure of a grey-haired old woman in a dirty coat bending over them. After a moment Ned realized she was taking the clothes off the bodies.

Second-hand clothing was valuable: only the rich could buy new. Even worn and filthy underwear could be sold as rags to paper makers. This wretched old woman was stealing the garments of the dead to sell, he realized. She pulled the breeches off the legs of a body then ran away with a bundle under her arm. The nakedness of the stabbed bodies made the sight even more obscene. Ned noticed that Sylvie averted her eyes as they walked past.

They avoided the broad, straight main roads with their long sightlines, and zigzagged through the narrow, tortuous lanes of the neighbourhood called Les Halles. Even in these back streets there were bodies. Most of them had been stripped, and in some places they were piled one on top of another, as if to make room in the road for people to pass. Ned saw the tanned faces of outdoor workers, the soft white hands of rich women, and the slender arms and legs of children. He lost count of how many. It was like a painting of hell in a Catholic church, but this was real and in front of his eyes in one of the great cities of the world. The sense of horror grew like nausea in him, and he would have vomited if his stomach had not been empty. Glancing at Sylvie he saw that her face was pale and set in an expression of grim determination.

There was worse to come.

At the edge of the river, the militia were getting rid of bodies. The dead, and some of the helpless wounded, were being thrown into the Seine with no more ceremony than would have been used for poisoned rats. Some floated off, but others hardly moved, and the shallow edge of the water was already clogged with corpses. A man with a long pole was trying to push the bodies out into midstream to make room for more, but they seemed sluggish, as if reluctant to leave.

The men were too preoccupied to notice Ned and Sylvie, who hurried past and headed across the bridge.

*

PIERRE’S EXCITEMENTgrew as he approached the little stationery shop in the rue de la Serpente.

He wondered whether to encourage the men to rape Isabelle. That would be a suitable punishment. Then he had a better idea: let them rape Sylvie in front of her mother. People felt more pain when their children suffered: he had learned that from his wife, Odette. It crossed his mind to rape Sylvie himself, but that might diminish his authority in the eyes of his men. Let them do the dirty work.

He did not knock at the door of the shop. No one in Paris was answering callers now. A knock only gave people time to arm themselves. Pierre’s men smashed open the door with sledgehammers, taking only a few seconds, then rushed in.

As Pierre entered he heard a shot. That shocked him. His men did not have guns: they were expensive, and normally only the aristocracy had personal firearms. A moment later he saw Isabelle standing at the back of the shop. One of Pierre’s men lay at her feet, apparently dead. As Pierre watched, she raised a second pistol and carefully aimed it at Pierre. Before he had time to move, another of his men ran her through with his sword. She fell without firing the second gun.

Pierre cursed. He had planned a more elaborate revenge. But there was still Sylvie. ‘There’s another woman,’ he shouted to the men. ‘Search the house.’

It did not take long. Biron ran upstairs and came down a minute later. ‘There’s no one else here,’ he said.

Pierre looked at Isabelle. In the gloom he could not see whether she was alive or dead. ‘Drag her outside,’ he ordered.

In the light of day he saw that Isabelle was pumping blood from a deep wound in her shoulder. He knelt over her and yelled angrily: ‘Where is Sylvie? Tell me, bitch!’

She must have been in agony, but she gave him a twisted smile. ‘You devil,’ she whispered. ‘Go to hell, where you belong.’