Catherine: One Love is Enough (Catherine Series Book 1) (4 page)

‘I’ll steal a boat tonight and bring it alongside your house. All he has to do is slide down a rope into the boat and then go on up river as far as Corbeil, where Comte Bernard d’Armagnac has his camp, dropping me off somewhere along the way. Of course, he would have to get past the chains they have stretched across the river between La Tournelle and the Île Louviaux, but that should not be too difficult at present, as there is no moon. Anyway, we should have done all we could then, and the rest would be up to him, or fate. It would be something of a triumph if we even got as far as that …’

The young girl silently squeezed his hand. A new hope was making her tremble with excitement. It was getting dark rapidly, but people were lighting torches all around them, and the light flickered over the nearby houses, with their overhanging eaves, gilded and painted signs and small leaded windows, before moving on and briefly lighting up the red faces of the crowd.

The uproar was deafening and seemed a strangely inappropriate accompaniment to the last moments of a man on his way to the gallows. Landry suddenly caught sight of the thing he had been hoping to find and gave a broad, satisfied grin.

‘There we are!’ he exclaimed. ‘I was hoping that there might be a few of them around with all this commotion.’

The thing he had spotted with such satisfaction turned out to be a fine, fat pig, which came round the corner of the Rue des Prêcheurs just then, in pursuit of a juicy cabbage leaf. Pairs of these respectable animals patrolled the streets of Paris all day long, in the charge of a friar, hunting edible refuse and rummaging among the slops. Like all of the convent pigs, this one wore a blue enamelled tau cross, emblem of St Anthony, round its neck. It paused to masticate its cabbage leaf at the foot of a large carved post representing the Tree of Jesse, which stood at the corner of a house. Landry let go of Catherine’s hand.

‘The other pig can’t be far. You go on without me. I’ll meet you farther up the street by the Filles-Dieu convent. Condemned men always stop there for a while so that the sisters can give them a little comfort. The nuns wait by the church porch and offer them a glass of wine, three pieces of bread and a crucifix to kiss. The guard always slackens off then, and that’s the moment I shall try to take advantage of. You must be ready to make a run for it anytime I give the signal.’

He kept one eye on the pig as he spoke. Having finished its meal, the beast was heading for the Rue des Prêcheurs, where its companion pig and the monk in charge of them would both presumably be found. Catherine watched Landry start off in pursuit. They were soon lost to sight in the darkness of the street. She set off again herself. For the first time that day, she suddenly realised the full extent of her weariness, perhaps because she had been temporarily deprived of Landry and his reassuring presence. Her feet hurt and every muscle in her legs seemed to ache. Then the torchlight flashed briefly over Michel’s golden head in the distance and she felt her spirits rise again. She even forced herself to walk faster, hurrying along at the back of the procession and then, in a sudden burst of energy, thrusting her way deeper into it.

Pushing through this crowd of excited, struggling, agitated people, not one of whom relinquished his or her place without a struggle, was difficult and often painful, but the emotion that propelled Catherine forward was stronger than the fear of pain or blows. Somehow she succeeded in forcing her way up close behind the guard of archers. She glimpsed the prisoner’s tall figure only a few feet away between a couple of men-at-arms. He walked erect, head held high, at a slow, composed pace, looking so proud that Catherine was lost in admiration. As she stumbled and pushed her way along, she murmured all the prayers she knew, lamenting that she was not as well versed in these things as her sister Loyse, who knew the right prayers for any contingency as well as one for each of the Saints in Heaven.

Presently they reached the Convent of the Filles-Dieu. The sisters had been forewarned of their arrival and were waiting to receive the condemned man. Gathered on the church steps, round the abbess who stood holding the crucifix, they looked like a group of black-and-white statues, all with modestly lowered eyes. One of them proffered the bread on a plate, another came forward with a goblet and a pitcher of wine. The escort halted, and Catherine’s heart missed a beat. This was the moment – but Landry was nowhere to be seen!

Capeluche grabbed the end of the rope that bound Michel’s hands and twisted it round his wrist to lead the prisoner to the church steps. Just as the escort drew back to let the pair pass, a wild and hideous screeching filled the air. Two pigs, screaming shrilly, rushed at whirlwind speed out of a nearby alley and charged at the soldiers with such force that four of them were knocked flying. Each of the unfortunate animals had a bundle of blazing hemp tied to its tail, which explained the screaming and frenzy. Several torches were sent flying, burning people in the crowd, while the pigs, in a paroxysm of pain, kept on rushing at the guard. There was such confusion for a few minutes that no-one noticed Landry insinuate himself in the wake of the pigs, deftly cut the rope that bound Michel to the executioner and push him down a dark, narrow alley opposite the convent. Everyone was far too busy inspecting their cuts and bruises and trying to collect their wits. A few of the braver souls were trying to catch the pigs. Catherine, who had been watching for it, was the only person who noticed the brilliant piece of strategy that did such credit to Landry’s coolness, courage and ingenuity. She raced after them down the narrow alley, stumbling in the dark on the slimy mud, which was strewn with stones and other less-readily-identifiable objects.

She heard Landry’s muffled voice.

‘Is that you, Catherine? Hurry up! There’s no time to lose!’

‘I’m coming!’

The darkness was so intense that she sensed rather than saw their two silhouettes, one tall, the other slightly shorter. The alley turned and twisted, as though trying to lose itself in the bowels of the Earth. The weird, derelict buildings on either side seemed to spring up at her out of the blackness like evil spirits. There was no light anywhere to be seen in this labyrinth of sinister, deserted alleys. All the dilapidated doors were shut and the windows blanks, their shutters torn away. Catherine was so tired that her heart felt as though it was bursting. But the three fugitives could still hear the mob roaring in the distance, and fear gave them wings.

In the dark, Catherine tripped over a paving-stone and fell flat with a cry of pain. Almost in tears, she was pulled up again by Landry, and they all set off again on their headlong flight.

Lanes and alleys branched off on all sides, punctuated here and there by dark stairways that seemed to plunge down into the depths of the Earth. They appeared to be in a labyrinth from which escape was impossible. Dragged along by Landry, breathless and frightened, Catherine climbed three flights of steps and turned sharply into an alley that suddenly opened out into a sort of square, surrounded on all four sides by tottering, shapeless buildings that seemed in imminent danger of collapsing on top of each other. There was an unpleasant stench. Gaps in the pointed rooftops showed here and there against the sky like missing teeth. The walls of rough stone, crudely cemented together with clay, bulged like abscesses under the weight of their roof-beams, now swollen with water. A few drops of rain fell.

‘Rain can only be a help to us at this stage,’ said Landry, coming to a stop and signalling to the others to follow suit. They leant against the wall of a house, trying to get their breath back. They had all run so far and so hard that their lungs seemed about to burst.

Suddenly the profound stillness that reigned in this eerie place impressed itself on them. Catherine whispered, awestruck, ‘I can’t hear anything now. Do you think they are still after us?’

‘Yes, but it’s a dark night and they won’t follow us here. We are safe for the moment.’

‘Why? Where are we, then?’

Catherine’s eyes had grown used to the darkness. She was now able to make out the outline of the decrepit, ramshackle buildings all round them. Across the square, a light glimmered feebly in an iron cage, half extinguished by the cutting wind. Overhead, the smoky clouds, drifting across an ink-black sky, were like a canopy stretched over the island of silence their surroundings formed amid the tumult of the town. Landry made a sweeping gesture.

‘This,’ he announced, ‘is the Grande Cour des Miracles – the place where miracles happen. There are several of them in Paris; one between the Porte Saint-Antoine and the Palais des Tournelles, for instance. This one is the most important though. It is the personal domain of the King of Thune.’

‘But there is no-one here,’ Catherine said nervously.

‘It’s too early. The beggars don’t return to their hovels till the rest of the world is abed … or later.’

Landry was busy, as he spoke, untying Michel’s bonds. The youth stood leaning against a wall, breathing in painful gasps. It is not easy to run for one’s life with one’s hands tied behind one’s back. He seemed to be exhausted. When Landry’s knife finally released his hands he sighed deeply and rubbed his aching wrists.

‘Why have you done this for me?’ he asked in tones of utter weariness. ‘Why try to save me? And why should you risk your lives on my account? Don’t you realise you could be hung for this?’

‘Oh, as for that, we rescued you because you seemed a little young for gibbet meat, messire. I am Landry Pigasse. This is Catherine Legoix. We live on the Pont-au-Change, where our fathers trade as goldsmiths.’

Michel reached out and gently touched the girl’s head.

‘The little golden-haired girl! I noticed you earlier on when they were tying me up. I have never seen hair like yours before, child,’ he murmured. His voice disturbed Catherine even more than the touch of his hand as it stroked her silky mane of hair. She cried fervently:

‘We want to rescue you! We will smuggle you out of Paris tonight. We live on the bridge, as Landry says, and you can hide in the little room under my father’s house that we use as a cellar. It has a skylight, and when Landry brings a boat beneath at midnight, all you have to do is to slide down a rope and then go up river as far as Corbeil, where Monseigneur d’Armagnac has his camp!’

In her eagerness to win the young man’s trust and confidence she delivered this speech without once pausing for breath. She was frightened by the despairing note in his voice and sensed obscurely that the black wing of the angel of death had brushed him so closely that its malevolent influence must linger with him still. On top of which, the manner of his rescue must have seemed incomprehensible to him at first sight.

The young nobleman’s teeth gleamed in the darkness, and she realised he was smiling.

‘A bold scheme and an ingenious one! But have you thought for a minute of the danger you and your families face if this plan is discovered?’

‘If you think too much you never do anything at all,’ Landry complained. ‘We have made up our minds and we are going to go through with it.’

‘Wise words!’ said a voice that seemed to come from the heavens. ‘But it is as well to make sure that circumstances and the fates are on your side first. Now, don’t be afraid – I won’t give you away!’

There was nothing very reassuring, however, about the face that appeared at a window above their heads, framed in festoons of cobwebs. The flickering light of a tallow candle revealed a swarthy countenance seamed with wrinkles, of which the chief ornaments were a huge nose with a wart growing on it and a pair of tiny sparkling eyes half hidden by arched brows. Long black locks escaping from beneath a grimy hood completed a picture that was irresistibly reminiscent of one of the gargoyles of Notre-Dame. It was prevented from appearing quite horrendous by an ear-splitting grin that displayed a set of dazzling white, ferocious-looking teeth. Landry exclaimed in surprise:

‘Is that you, Barnaby? Back already?’

‘As you see, my son. I’m not in good voice today – a slight touch of hoarseness – so I stayed at home. Just a minute now. I am on my way down.’

The candle he had been waving amiably about during this last sentence disappeared from view, and there was a squeak of rusty bolts being drawn.

‘Do you know him?’ Catherine asked in astonishment.

‘Of course. And so do you for that matter. It’s Barnaby of the Cockleshells. You know, the fellow who wears an old coat sewn all over with cockleshells and stands begging at the entrance to St Opportune? He says he’s a pilgrim back from Compostela, and sometimes manages to sell a relic or two.’

Catherine realised now whom he was talking about. She knew the man well by sight. He always smiled at her when she and Loyse went to complin or vespers at St Opportune, or when they took food to Agnes the Recluse, with whom the Cockleshell Man often passed the time of day.

Meanwhile, Barnaby had come out of his house, closing the door behind him as carefully as might any worthy burgess. Seen at close quarters, he proved to be so tall and thin that he had to stand somewhat stooped. His long legs and spidery arms were half hidden by a cloak that was much frayed but of stout woollen cloth, and on which some twenty or so cockleshells had been sewn. Having attended to the business of locking up his house, he bade Landry and Catherine good evening and then, holding the candle near to Michel’s face, gazed thoughtfully at it for a moment.

‘You won’t get far, young sir, if you continue your stroll tricked out like that!’ he observed dryly. ‘The devil on’t! Silver leaves and the Dauphin’s colours! One step outside the boundaries of the Beggars’ Kingdom and they’d nab you in a trice! It’s all very well to dodge the gallows and make your excuses to Capeluche, but you must look sharp or it’ll be so much time wasted! The plan these young things have thought up is sound enough as far as it goes, but as things are, ten to one the sergeants would lay hold of you somewhere between here and the Pont-au-Change.’