Catherine: One Love is Enough (Catherine Series Book 1) (11 page)

‘You shall have the rest tomorrow, if we leave Paris then. You won’t even have to steal it. I will make you a present of it, and of my house into the bargain. Now, tell me your news.’

His good humour restored by the prospect of acquiring the cask of wine, Mâchefer willingly went on with his account.

Catherine, feeling reassured, sat on the ground between the two men.

The day the mob had attacked the Hôtel de Guyenne and seized the Dauphin’s followers it had also laid siege to the Bastille, where Pierre des Essarts, former Provost of Paris, had taken refuge with a company of five hundred men-at-arms from his captaincy of Cherbourg. Stout and well-defended as it had been, the fortress had been attacked with such ferocity that the Duke of Burgundy had finally decided to open the gates and surrender des Essarts. Under a heavy guard, des Essarts had been taken to the Grand Châtelet, where he had been awaiting his sentence ever since. He was the last in a long line. Caboche had created a reign of terror in Paris. A visit to someone’s house would be followed by arrests, pillaging and violence of all sorts. He was harassed by fear of the Armagnac party, now entrenched around the walls of Paris, and this fear led to a new outbreak of senseless bloodshed. On 10 June, one of the men captured on 28 April had been killed in prison and then beheaded in the Halles marketplace before his body was strung up at Montfaucon. On the same day, young Simon du Mesnil, squire trenchant to Prince Louis, had been escorted to the Halles with de la Rivière and beheaded there, and his body hoisted up by the armpits. On 15 June it had been the turn of Thomeline de Brie, who had tried to defend the Charenton bridge. And now it was the turn of the great Provost himself. On the following day, 1 July, he would be taken to the Halles to have his head chopped off.

‘All Paris will be there,’ Mâchefer wound up, ‘apart from Mère Caboche, who is forced to stay indoors by her son to keep an eye on the girl. Her shop is still closed and she is drinking like a fish. The time to do the job is toward four o’clock in the afternoon. Everything is ready on my side. You keep a weather eye open here, and get your people organised. Our route will be via the Croix-du-Trahoir and the pig market and then along the riverbanks. The Rue Saint-Denis will be packed. Have you got a boat?’

‘I am going to see about one …’

Barnaby got up and carefully tidied away his wares, putting the fragments of bone in one bag and the little boxes in another. Mâchefer watched him with amusement.

‘Which of the great saints are you busy putting in boxes at the moment?’ he asked.

‘St James, may Heaven forgive me! You know that I am a pilgrim from Compostela …’

Mâchefer gave a great roar of laughter and slapped his thighs.

‘You have been selling pieces of St James for so long he must be as big as one of Charlemagne’s elephants! Why not choose a new saint?’

His companion’s mirth left Barnaby unmoved. He looked at him with the genuine distress of a good merchant who does not like to hear his wares criticised.

‘St James sells very well,’ he said solemnly. ‘I’ve got no reason to change.’

He put on his cloak, called to Sara, who was doing some mending with Jacquette in the next door room, and patted Catherine’s cheek. ‘Go and help the women, little one,’ he told her. ‘I shall not be long.’

Catherine was eager to be allowed to help him find a boat, but Barnaby would not hear of it.

The following day the excitement in the air was noticeable even in the silent and sinister alleys leading into the Cour des Miracles. Everyone was out in the street, crowding round the Grand Châtelet and waiting for the condemned man to be led out. The sound of thousands of voices raised in vilification reached their ears like the noise of distant thunder, blotting out the church bells that had been chiming the funeral obsequies since dawn. Barnaby’s house had been seething with activity since first light. Just before leaving the house, the Cockleshell Man packed his most precious possessions into several bundles, to which he added the personal effects of the women who were travelling with him. Landry was entrusted with the job of carrying these to the Quai Fort l’Évêque, where the powerful Guild of Watermen had some warehouses. Barnaby had booked places on a barge carrying a cargo of pottery up river to Montereau. A cargo of this type was safe from the attentions of the Armagnac soldiers in control of the river at Corbeil. All that was needed was a pass … Landry was to take Jacquette to the warehouse and wait there for the others to arrive. Very unwillingly she had consented to allow Catherine to join the foray against the tripe-seller’s house, because she was the only person Loyse would be able to recognise among her rescuers. If they tried to stop her, Catherine had said, she would run away! Jacquette’s own overwrought nerves made it impossible for her to be one of the party. She was too easily upset and might thus be a danger to the rest.

‘Nothing will happen to the child,’ Barnaby promised her. ‘But don’t on any account leave the warehouse. If all goes well we shall be there toward six, and the boat leaves at the vesper bell.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Landry. ‘I will look after her. She won’t move.’

The boy was feeling more than a little depressed. Catherine’s imminent departure might well be the beginning of a long separation, and his heart bled at the thought of leaving the little friend whom he loved more than he would ever admit to himself. As for telling Catherine herself, he would have preferred to have his tongue cut off. But it was a melancholy prospect, and Landry found that his eyes prickled in a funny way whenever he looked at Catherine.

She was looking very quaint. Barnaby had dressed her as a boy. She wore tight grey hose and shoes of stout leather, surmounted by a green fustian tunic and, despite the heat, a hood that closely framed her face and continued as a sort of little scalloped cape over her shoulders. This headdress completely hid her hair, which Sara had done up in tight little plaits so that it took up as little room as possible. The whole outfit suited her marvellously well. She looked like a will-o’-the-wisp.

Catherine was not the only one to have altered her appearance, however. Barnaby himself was unrecognisable. The cloak with the cockleshells had been rolled up in one of the bundles. Instead he wore a garment of brown stuff gathered around the waist with a stout leather belt from which hung a large purse. A St James’s medal hung on a chain round his neck. He wore a hood of the same material as his garment, so artfully and complicatedly draped about the shoulders that no-one would have guessed that it concealed the bulk of Barnaby’s savings, whereas the bulging purse contained only loose change. Altogether, with the long pointed toes of his shoes protruding some six inches under his robe, he suggested a comfortably-off if not wealthy merchant who had retired from active business. Catherine was to pass as his grandson. Sara alone remained dressed in her usual bizarre costume, because this had a purpose to serve.

They all left the Cour Saint-Sauveur together, but when they reached the boundary of the beggar kingdom they split up into two groups and went their separate ways: Catherine, Sara and Barnaby took the Rue-de-la-Monnaie Royale, while Jacquette and Landry headed for the Hôtel d’Alencon and the towers of the Louvre. Mâchefer and his men were already positioned about the city and along the fringes of the Notre-Dame market.

In spite of the danger that threatened herself and her companions, Catherine felt happier than she had since the death of Michel. It was lovely to walk about freely again and feel the hot sun. And then there was the excitement of an adventure, of a chase with human quarry. They would snatch Loyse away from that wild beast Caboche.

The belfry of St Germain l’Auxerrois pealed out three o’clock as Landry and Jacquette passed it. When they went down toward the river in the heat of the day they found the banks almost deserted. The townspeople were doubtless all assembled along the route to the scaffold. There would be clowns and jugglers among the crowd as well as animal trainers, minstrels and storytellers, for nothing drew such a throng as a fine execution. It was a holiday in which none of the ingredients of a real holiday were lacking. Death counted for so little.

Meanwhile Catherine and Barnaby, with Sara a few steps behind, also went down to the waterside, but a bit further upstream. Crossing the Pont-au-Change evoked painful memories for Catherine. Her old house still stood, but its crumbling walls were cracked and dilapidated, the windows gaped open to reveal the emptiness inside and the handsome sign had been torn down. It was now no more than an empty carcass from which the spirit had fled. Catherine felt a lump rise in her throat. She screwed up her eyes as tightly as she could and wished she were miles away. Barnaby hurried along, squeezing the girl’s hand a little more tightly in his own.

‘Be brave,’ he whispered. ‘There are times when you need all the courage you have got. You will soon have another house …’

‘Not another father,’ she whispered, on the verge of tears.

‘I was only seven when they took mine away. And when I think how he died, I often think I would have given everything I had for him to be merely hanged.’

‘What did they do to him?’

‘What they usually do to forgers: they boiled him alive at the Morimont in Dijon …’

Catherine gave an exclamation of horror, but she stopped crying and went on in silence. Bravely she banished the dreadful memories that tore at her heart just when she most needed to be strong. When they reached Notre-Dame market she was able to pick out Mâchefer’s men in all their different disguises. Some posed as soldiers, others as merchants, or even friars. They had all taken up positions round the market, as arranged. Mâchefer alone was in his usual beggar’s costume. Barnaby discreetly pointed out Caboche’s house, as tightly shuttered as ever.

‘Your turn, Sara!’

At a nod from Barnaby the gypsy woman walked slowly up the street, swaying her hips and humming softly. She had a tambourine in one hand and beat on it to keep time to her song.

She began almost casually, humming and beating time on her tambourine. But gradually her song increased in intensity, the melody speaking clearly through the incomprehensible gypsy words. The tune itself was bizarre, punctuated by silences and sharp wailing notes. Sara’s slightly hoarse voice lent it mysterious depths of feeling and something of the power of a spell or incantation. Catherine listened, quite carried away. One or two faces appeared at windows, while a few passers-by stopped to listen: all told, there could not have been more than ten people involved. Mâchefer went up to Barnaby on the pretext of begging for alms.

‘If the old crone does not open up we will have to batter the door down,’ he muttered. ‘What do you say?’

Barnaby rummaged in his purse and took out a sou, which he dropped into the beggar’s grimy hands.

‘Certainly, but I would prefer to avoid that if possible. Battering down doors makes a lot of noise, even if there is no-one around.’

No faces appeared at the tripe-seller’s windows. The house would have seemed quite deserted had they not been able to make out faint sounds from within. Catherine suddenly went white and leant against Barnaby.

‘My God! There is Marion!’ she exclaimed, cautiously pointing out a stout woman who had just come into sight at the end of the road. Barnaby raised his eyebrows.

‘Who? The maid who –’

‘Yes, the maid who drew the people to our house and caused the deaths of Michel and Papa. Oh, I can’t look at her!’

Overcome by revulsion, Catherine tried to break away. But Barnaby held her tightly by the hand.

‘Now then! A good soldier doesn’t desert in the face of the enemy, my little flower! I quite understand your not wishing to see the woman again … I’ll wager she’s not a pretty sight at the best of times. But you must stay where you are.’

‘What if she recognises me?’

‘Disguised like that? I would be surprised if she did. Anyway, I suspect that she is in no condition to recognise anyone.’

The fat woman was in fact staggering from one house to the next, unable to keep a straight course. Catherine wondered what her mother would have said if she could see her milk-sister now. Marion had changed a good deal in the past two months. She was fatter than ever and indescribably filthy. Her apron, once so white and stiffly starched, was rumpled and splashed with an assortment of meals and drinks. It barely covered a dress that was splitting at the seams and fraying round the hem. Greasy locks of hair escaped from beneath a battered cap. She was stumbling along, oblivious to everything, her open mouth soundlessly forming words, her eyes glazed and her arms dangling at her sides. She didn’t stop to listen to Sara. Indeed, she seemed not to see her at all, and passed on.

Sara’s singing and dancing had reached a wild crescendo, filling the narrow lane between the houses that seemed to lean so dangerously toward each other overhead. Mère Caboche’s door opened a crack and her red face peered out curiously

‘Sara,’ Barnaby whispered urgently. ‘Now’s your chance …’

Breaking off her singing and dancing, the gypsy leapt across to the threshold, wedged her foot in the door and cried: ‘I can read the future in your palm, in clear water and in ashes. Two sous only! Give me your hand, beautiful lady!’

Taken by surprise, Mère Caboche tried to close the door. When she found she couldn’t, she began swearing like a trooper. But the more she screamed and shouted, the more Sara insisted, promising her a golden future garlanded with roses; pleasant predictions to which Mère Caboche replied with a variety of unflattering observations on Sara’s parentage and Sara herself. This brief verbal joust, however, had given Mâchefer’s men time to assemble.