Page 53 of Don’t Let Me Go

her wrinkled face twisted in fear. Every muscle in my body tenses in apprehension.

“What is the meaning of this?” I demand.

Madame Montague glances nervously out the door and wrings her hands. “Oh, messieurs, you have to go! You’re in danger!”

Her panic is palpable. Without hesitation, I leap out of bed and start to dress. “What’s the matter?” I ask, pulling on my

breeches.

“You must leave the city. Now! There’s no time to delay.”

“But why? What’s happened?” Thierry asks, rummaging on the floor for his own clothes.

“The king—God forgive him—the king has declared war on the Huguenots. His soldiers are searching the city. They have orders

to kill any they find!”

My blood runs cold. I look to Thierry, who stands in stunned silence, the color draining from his face.

“There must be some mistake,” he protests. “The king—he wouldn’t do that. He wants peace. That’s why he married his sister

to a Huguenot!”

“The princess and her husband have been arrested.”

“No. No, that doesn’t make any sense,” Thierry exclaims, shaking his head in disbelief. “The king’s the one who arranged the

marriage. He’s the one who invited all the Huguenots to come to Paris and celebrate the wedding!”

“It was a trap,” I say, the cruel truth dawning on me with terrible certainty.

Thierry turns to me, horror-stricken. “What?”

“It was a trap,” I repeat, spitting the words in disgust. “To lure us to the city. To trap us within the walls like rats so

they can pick us off one by one.”

Thierry’s knees go weak. He grips the bed to steady himself as Madame Montague crosses herself. “I must warn my other guests.”

Before she can take a step, though, a loud and violent pounding erupts from downstairs. Someone is beating against the door

of the inn.

“Open up!” a voice shouts.

“It’s the king’s soldiers,” Madame Montague hisses. “You must hide!”

I want to laugh at the absurdity of her suggestion. There’s nothing in our room to give us shelter except a spindly table

and a wooden bed. But I grab Thierry and pull him and our rapiers under the bed with me. Madame Montague hurries downstairs,

and for a moment there is no sound but Thierry’s panicked breathing beside me. I put my hand over his mouth to muffle the

noise, and when I do, I feel his entire body trembling.

Why did we come to Paris? Why didn’t I listen to my father? He tried to talk us out of it. He said there would be danger.

But I laughed and called him a paranoid old fool. I wasn’t about to miss the wedding of the century. I wasn’t going to be

the one Huguenot who sat at home while the rest of his countrymen celebrated such a momentous event.

And poor Thierry followed me. Because how could he not? He’d follow me to hell if I asked him to. And that’s where I’ve led

him.

“There are no Huguenots here,” Madame Montague shouts in the stairwell. I wonder if she’s lying to save our necks or her own.

More to the point, I wonder what she’ll do if she’s forced to choose between the two.

“I don’t rent rooms to Huguenots. I never rent rooms to Huguenots. I’m a good Catholic.”

I hear her approaching footsteps followed by the heavy clomp of several pairs of boots.

The door to our room swings open, and Thierry goes stiff in my arms.

“Whose room is this?” I hear a soldier bark. I can’t see his face, only his feet, but his voice alone is sinister enough to

conjure the specter of death.

“No one’s,” Madame Montague answers, stepping between the soldier and the bed to obscure his view. “There were some country

boys staying here for the wedding, but they left last night.”

The soldier scoffs. Whether it’s because he doesn’t believe her story or because he’s disappointed at not finding two Huguenots

to slaughter, I can’t say. But he storms out of the room. Madame Montague hesitates, then follows, shutting the door behind

her.

I hear the soldiers moving through the inn, banging on doors, demanding papers. Someone pleads. Someone screams.

Thierry covers his ears and buries his face in my shoulder. I want to comfort him, but I don’t dare move. One creak of the

floorboard might bring an army of soldiers crashing through our door. And as romantic as it might be to die in Thierry’s arms,

I want to live.

I want to live.

The scream continues—then ends in an abrupt and fatal silence. Minutes pass. Or perhaps hours. Who can tell? When you’re waiting

to die, every second is an eternity.

Finally, the door of our room scrapes open again. I hold my breath until I hear the soft tread of Madame Montague shuffling

across the floorboards. She stops and stands without speaking for a long, terrible moment. Then quietly, simply, she says,

“The soldiers are gone.”

A sob of relief escapes my throat, and Thierry heaves a sigh beside me.

“You must go,” Madame Montague says sharply, turning on her heel.

Her words renew my dread. Up until ten seconds ago, my only thought was to survive the soldiers’ search. But now that we’ve

done that, I realize our dangers are far from over.

“What are we supposed to do?” I ask, scurrying out from under the bed.

“Get out of Paris,” she answers, refusing to look at me.

“How?” I demand. “Surely they’ll have locked the gates to the city. We’re trapped .”

“Even so.”

“But, Madame—”

“I said go !” She spits the words, and for the first time I notice how exhausted she looks, as if a great weight were pressing down upon

not just her body but also her soul.

Is it possible for a person to be so transformed in so short a time? I think it must be. This tired, broken woman is a far

cry from the laughing, irreverent hostess who rented us her very last room because, as she put it, “Huguenot or Catholic,

the money’s all the same.” Madame Montague has seen things tonight. Things that have changed her. Things, I suspect, that

will change everyone in Paris.

Or at least those of us with the good fortune to survive.

“Thank you,” I say, taking her hand in gratitude.

She pulls it away as if my touch were fire. “Go,” she whispers. Then, looking up at me with tears in her eyes, she says it

again. “ Go .”

The sun has just started to paint the dawn red when we slip into the alley behind Madame Montague’s inn.

Thierry hasn’t said a word since I pried him out from under the bed.

His eyes are wide and wild with panic, but his body is like a marionette whose strings have been cut.

I have to keep my arm around his waist to stop him from collapsing with every step.

The alley we’re in is dark and cramped and reeks of a hundred emptied chamber pots, but it’s safer than the open streets.

Alarm bells still clamor in the distance, calling the city to battle, and the morning air is thick with screams.

If Thierry and I can but get across the Seine and then out of Paris, we’ll have a fighting chance. The Catholics may outnumber

us here in the city, but in the countryside, we’ll find safety. We just need to get back to our families in Thouron.

It’s a desperate hope, but right now hope is all I have.

“What’s that?” Thierry gasps, stopping abruptly and staring at a large mass lying on the ground a few paces in front of us.

It’s a body. A man’s body. His eyes are open but lifeless, as if surprised by his own death. His gray beard and nightshirt

are covered in blood, a fresh pool of which congeals around his body. I look up at the neighboring building, at the window

ajar on the third floor, and I can’t help but wonder if he died before or after he was thrown from it.

Thierry buries his face in my shoulder and weeps, his body trembling as if it contained a great earthquake that longed to

shatter his entire being.

“We’re going to die,” he says through his sobs. “We’re going to die !”

I’m no less horrified by the slaughter in front of us, but panic and sorrow are not luxuries we can afford. We have to keep

moving.

“Listen to me,” I tell him, taking his face in my hands and forcing him to meet my eyes. “We’re not going to die. We’re going to get out of Paris and get back to our fathers, and we’re going to live. Do you understand? We’re not going to die.

“Besides, even if we did,” I add with a miserable laugh, “do you think death could keep us apart? I would tear down the gates

of heaven and wade through the fires of hell to find you.”

I don’t know where I find the confidence to believe these words, let alone speak them to Thierry, but my certainty calms his

terror.

“Do you swear it?” he asks.

I put my lips to his and, in the kiss that follows, he has his answer.

Our courage revived, we set off into the city, winding our way through its haphazard streets like Theseus in the labyrinth.

We turn down an excrement-stained alley, then another, only to find ourselves at a dead end. We backtrack and try a different

alley and a different direction, but a minute later another dead end blocks our path. Despite my earlier words of assurance

to Thierry, I can feel my panic quicken. I don’t know Paris well enough to navigate it by these furtive little backstreets.

We need a main thoroughfare. It may expose us to danger, but it’s the only way we’ll be able to find our way out of this infernal

maze.

I pull Thierry in the direction of what I believe is the nearest boulevard in order to get my bearings. He doesn’t resist,

but when we finally turn onto a wide, open street and see what awaits us, I almost wish he had.

Corpses litter the cobblestones like a graveyard vomiting up its dead. Men, women, children: No one has been spared. Their

bodies lie mutilated, as if savaged by marauding beasts, their gaping wounds staining the ground in a thick river of blood.

Hell has truly come to Paris.

“No, please, let me go!” a terrified voice cries.

I turn and see a group of men dragging a young woman in her nightgown from an inn.

The men aren’t soldiers. Their clothes are simple and plain, like that of ordinary citizens, but each is wearing a white cloth tied in a makeshift band around his right arm and a white cross pinned to his hat.

A few carry knives, but the rest have fashioned weapons out of rakes and shovels.

“Huguenot whore!” the thick-bearded ringleader shouts, throwing the woman to the ground.

“Please!” she pleads, her face smeared with blood, her eyes searching wildly for pity in a pitiless crowd. “Spare me! I’m

with child!”

Thierry grips my hand, but there’s nothing we can do. The men snigger in disgust as the ringleader grabs the woman by the

back of her head and pulls her up to her knees.

“With child, are you? Then we’ll be doing the world a favor by ridding it of another heathen bastard!” Before the woman can

respond or I can look away, the ringleader unsheathes a dagger from his hip and plunges it into the woman’s belly. She collapses

to the street with a wail, and the men howl with laughter, circling her body like wolves moving in for the kill.

“Let’s go,” I whisper, pulling Thierry in the opposite direction and breaking into a run. Stealth is no longer an option.

Speed is the only thing that will deliver us from this nightmare.

We turn east and follow the sun, passing more corpses. Then we turn south onto an avenue that should take us across the Seine

and out of the city. The streets are surprisingly deserted, and I’m about to offer a quick prayer of thanks for this unexpected

mercy when up ahead I spot half a dozen men pouring into the intersection. They’re wearing white armbands and crosses, and

one of the men, a giddy youth with orange hair, is dragging the mutilated corpse of a naked man behind him like it’s a speared

boar he’s carting home for dinner.

I grab Thierry, stopping us in our tracks, but it’s too late. The men see us, and it takes only one look at our frightened faces for them to realize what we are.

I start to pull Thierry back in the direction from which we’ve come, but another group of men marches onto the avenue from

a side street and blocks our retreat.

Thierry gasps. “We’re trapped!”

Both groups begin to advance, their bloodstained faces breaking into eager smiles at the sight of fresh prey. I draw my rapier,

but Thierry clings to my side, too terrified to reach for his blade.

“Stay behind me,” I say, backing us up against a wall.

The two mobs close in around us and become one. I count twelve men, some old enough to be my father, others too young to grow

beards. I wonder who taught them to hate at such an early age.

“Heathen devils,” one of the men spits at us. He grabs a large stone off the street and hurls it at my head. It misses, but

the next one doesn’t. It slices open my cheek, and in blinding pain, I drop my rapier. It’s only a second of weakness, but

it’s all the men need to press their advantage. In an instant, they’re upon us, pulling Thierry from my arms.

“Gaspard!” he shouts, but a rain of fists and sticks falls hard and fast upon my body, pummeling me to the ground. A knife

pierces my back. The blade is like ice, but the pain is fire. I taste blood in my mouth. And in an instant, the raging animal

instinct to fight for my life is replaced with the cold, grim certainty that I am going to die.

I raise my battered and bloody face off the cobblestones to look for Thierry. A group of men have him on his knees, just like

the pregnant woman whom I was equally helpless to rescue. The orange-haired boy twists Thierry’s arms behind his back with

one hand, and with the other he forces his head up, exposing his neck. That neck that I have covered in kisses. That neck

that I will never kiss again.

My Thierry. My other half. My world.

Unable to move, unable to speak, unable to do anything as my life drains out of me, I watch in horror as the bearded ringleader stands before my love and unsheathes his dagger.

He holds it over Thierry’s head as he offers up a short prayer to his bloody, merciless god.

The blade glistens in his hand under the cruel August sun.

Then he brings it down and ends my world.