Cover image for Title

In the Name of the King

A. L. BERRIDGE

PENGUIN BOOKS

Contents

Acknowledgements

Editor’s Note

Maps

PART ONE: The Hero

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

PART TWO: The Fugitive

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

PART THREE: The Man

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Historical Note

By the same author

Honour and the Sword

Acknowledgements

In the Name of the King is a work of fiction, but many of the people and events depicted are real. André de Roland’s journey takes him through one of the most turbulent periods of French history, and would never have been possible without the map and compass provided by so many experts in the field.

I am particularly grateful for the inspiration of Robin Briggs of All Souls, Oxford, who first alerted me to the ambiguities surrounding the fate of the Comte de Soissons, and also to Dr Jonathan Spangler of Manchester Metropolitan University for his invaluable assistance in uncovering the mysteries of the Battle of La Marfée. I would also like to thank the many historians of the H-France community who have generously guided me in my research, especially Professor Melissa Wittmeier of Northwestern University in Illinois for her help deciphering some obscure passages in the Mercure François, and Professor Orest Ranum for advice on mid-seventeenth-century Paris. Theirs is the credit for any historical insights offered by this novel; any mistakes, I’m afraid, are my own.

I have also profited enormously from the advice of experts in the use of historical weaponry, in particular Kevin Lees and Ian Shields for practical help with the musket, and Cris de Veau of the Tattershall School of Defence for his advice on swords and swordsmanship.

I’d also like to thank my agent Victoria Hobbs and editor Alex Clarke for their faith and editorial help, Stephen Guise for his sensitive and meticulous editing of the manuscript, and my long-suffering husband Paul Crichton for his patience. Last but not least, I must express sincere gratitude for the encouragement and support of my colleagues in the Thirty Years War unit ‘Hortus Bellicus’. To them and the thousands of men and women just like them, who freely give their time to make history come alive for those who now rarely encounter it in schools, this novel is very respectfully dedicated.

Editor’s Note

It is with this present collection of the Abbé Fleuriot’s documents that the story of André de Roland really begins.

The papers published under the title Honour and the Sword related those circumstances that shaped him as a national hero: the murder of his parents during the Spanish Occupation of Picardy, his upbringing among his former subjects, and his final victory in restoring the villages of the Saillie to French rule. Yet the man who survived these events is also a hybrid. Educated from birth to uphold a strict code of honour, he has since imbued not only the gentle humanity of his illegitimate half-brother, former stable boy Jacques Gilbert, but also the libertarian creed of soldier and former tanner Stefan Ravel. These qualities proved admirable in the defence of his home village of Dax, but now he is to encounter a France rigidly divided by caste and convention and already torn by civil conflict within the greater context of the Thirty Years War. How he fared there, this history will tell.

But it is not I who will tell it. I present the reader only with my translations of the Abbé Fleuriot’s papers, comprising in this case a handful of letters, the diary of the girl André loved, and a series of remarkably frank interviews conducted by the Abbé himself. As before, the translation preserves the informality of the verbal accounts by substituting modern idioms for those of seventeenth-century Picardy, but I have taken fewer liberties with both the written sources and the remarkably controlled and occasionally stilted expression of the tavern girl Bernadette. Hers is one of the voices new to us, while others are familiar, but the reader must use his own judgement to determine which are the most reliable.

Edward Morton, MA, LittD, Cantab

Cambridge, March 2011

Maps

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PART ONE

The Hero

One

Jacques Gilbert

From his interviews with the Abbé Fleuriot, 1669

I know what you’re thinking. Sometimes I wake up sweaty from nightmares I can’t remember and think the same thing.

But it’s bollocks really, and I know that now. There’s nothing I could have done to stop it happening, not the boy the way he was. For André to be safe it was the whole world needed changing, but you’d have had to be God to do that, and I don’t think even God could have done much with France just then, back in the summer of 1640 and the middle of a war.

You can’t blame us for not seeing it. We’d left Dax that morning with the crowds cheering because the Saillie was liberated and we were finally out of danger. André and I were travelling in triumph to his grandmother in Paris, with nothing to do when we got there but be looked after and made to feel important. The sun was shining, we were free and riding through Picardie with harvest starting all round us, fields of hops and golden barley and women with their skirts tucked up singing bawdy songs as they slashed. André was singing too, that slushy ‘Enfin la Beauté’ de Chouy used to like, and I knew he was thinking about Anne. Everything felt exciting and full of hope, and it wasn’t till we got clear of Lucheux I realized anything was wrong at all.

The landmarks were gone. I nearly missed the turning by Luchuel because the windmill had disappeared, and couldn’t keep straight for Milly because I was looking for a spire that wasn’t there. Then we came to the hamlet of Petit-Grouche, and I understood. I remembered it as a cluster of farm buildings, a wooden church, and a yard with a water trough and stone well where children used to play. Now the trough was dry and clogged with leaves, the well’s rusty chain hung without a bucket, and the smell that drifted up was brackish and sour. There was nothing else but a circle of burnt stones where the church ought to have been and a field of sunken oblong patches with wooden crosses. The Spaniards had been through.

The war seemed to be everywhere after that. We kept passing soldiers on the roads, grim marching ranks stamping through lines of tall poplars, all heading for the border and the siege of Arras. When we reached Amiens there was a whole army camping in the fields and we couldn’t even get in the gate. The guards said the King was there and half the court with him, they were mustering a force to break the blockade round our starving troops. ‘Not a bed to be had anywhere,’ they said. ‘Everything’s for Arras.’

I thought that was a bit much actually. I mean André was the Chevalier de Roland, the man who’d held the Dax Gate and opened the way to Spanish Flanders, they ought to have been chucking flowers and stuff, not leaving him to kip in the fields. I started to argue, but the boy touched my arm, said ‘Stefan’s at Arras,’ and turned away.

I didn’t give a stuff about Stefan, the one good thing I could see about Arras was him being stuck in it, but I sort of understood all the same. That night I looked at the campfires and listened to the men playing ‘En passant par la Lorraine’ on little tin pipes and got my first glimmering of the truth. We were using what felt like every man in France to take a single town in Artois, but there were Spanish and Imperial armies all over Europe, and us like a little tiny island in the middle. It was only a matter of time before they came again.

We’d fight them. We’d always said we would, and André was old enough now, just weeks off seventeen. The firelight was catching the side of his face as he sat watching the soldiers, and I remember noticing the little dark shadow that meant he needed a shave. He was ready.

We’d got a little respite while the Comtesse saw to his education and chose a regiment, but André obviously wanted it right now. We were getting breakfast next morning when trumpets started blaring and people came pouring out of the gates to line the road, so he just grabbed the bag of andouillettes and rushed to join in. Drums were rumbling in the distance, and beneath them the clatter of hundreds of hooves.

‘The Noble Volunteers,’ said a grizzled musketeer next to us. ‘The Immortals. Fancy themselves, don’t they?’

They did. They came prancing out with standards waving, not just those cavalry guidons but great flags with gold fringes and men specially to hold them. Their clothes were silk and velvet with so much gold in the fabric the sun flashed off it and hurt my eyes.

‘The Grand Écuyer,’ breathed a woman with a bosom so big it nearly blocked the road. ‘Ah, how handsome he is, how young and beautiful.’

She was looking at the one in front, a fair-haired boy with a petulant mouth and dimpled chin who only looked about my age.

‘The Marquis de Cinq-Mars,’ said André, with a mouth full of sausage. ‘Monsieur le Grand. He’s the King’s favourite, isn’t he, Monsieur?’

‘Favourite?’ said the musketeer, and spat. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

André looked confused. I was shocked myself actually, I mean I knew that stuff went on, but you don’t expect it of the King when it’s against the Church. I wondered what the other nobles thought about Cinq-Mars, and noticed a young one right behind who looked like he wanted to kill him. He was beak-nosed and nothing like as handsome, but held himself like the most important man in the world.

‘D’Enghien!’ cried the crowd as he passed. ‘D’Enghien!’

André took another sausage, saw a pikeman watching him enviously and gave him half. ‘The Duc d’Enghien,’ he said, like I was deaf. ‘Everyone’s going to bloody be there, and all we can do is watch.’

I thought that was just as well. I don’t mean I knew what was coming, I never thought Cinq-Mars or d’Enghien would mean more to us than they did right then, but I already knew André wasn’t ready to take his place among them. He’d got the birth, he’d be Comte de Vallon when his uncle died, but you’d never have known it to look at him. His clothes were shabby, his manners rough, his voice had almost as much Picardie in it as my own. I’d done that myself, of course, I’d trained him to pass as a peasant in order to survive, but watching him mixing with the crowd, calling a musketeer ‘Monsieur’ and sharing our andouillettes with a broken-nosed pikeman, I wondered if I’d maybe overdone it. When the rest of the army came out and I saw him blowing kisses to a camp prostitute I was bloody certain of it.

I told myself the Comtesse would put him right, she’d undo what I’d done and teach him the way a gentleman ought to be. I didn’t think it would matter for the moment, it was just a bit embarrassing, that’s all.

It never occurred to me that it was dangerous. I never even thought of that till the third day, and by then it was already too late.

Bernadette Fournier

From her interviews with the Abbé Fleuriot, 1669

How trusting you are. You do not know me, yet appear sure you can believe everything I say. You seem as innocent as Jacques Gilbert.

Perhaps that is why I am willing to tell you my story. Perhaps in truth it will give me pleasure, for I like to remember the summer of 1640 when I was sixteen years old and as beautiful as your most forbidden dreams and as foolish as a mouse with no head. The war? No, Monsieur, I cared nothing for it. I was in Paris, and to us the war meant only higher taxes, that is all. I worked hard for my bread in those days, for I was the ‘girl’ at Le Pomme d’Or, and though there was also a ‘boy’ for the heavy work, it was I who cleaned the pots and pans and swept the hearth and made the beds, it was I who served the gentlemen who came.

It was not a bad life, for I had a kind master and a little bed all to myself beneath the rafters. It is true that sometimes gentlemen would find their way there, and sometimes I fought them off, and once or twice I could not, and once I did not choose to, for he was young and handsome and gave me a silver écu for myself when he went away. It is true also that the house was the property of Monsieur’s wife, an ugly woman with an enormous goitre who sometimes beat me so hard I dreamed of running to my aunt who kept a house in Compiègne. Yet my life had comfort enough and I had even a friend in the little cat that kept the rats from the horses’ feed. At nights I took her to my own bed, where she would knead me with her claws and make deep rumbling noises that would have been a wonder for twice as much cat as she was. No, she had no name, she was a cat, that is all. So small a thing to change the future of France.

That there was danger in the house I did not think. There were politics, yes, but this was Paris, there were always plots, and still the Cardinal Richelieu kept his head on his shoulders and life went on. I knew only that Madame had a patron, a great lord called Fontrailles, who had lately taken to using our back room for secret meetings with his friends. It is true they spoke in front of me, for I was only the girl and of no more account than the cat, but I learned nothing from them beyond such names as seemed to be in code. They spoke of a ‘Monsieur’ as anyone talks of their master, and sometimes of a nameless ‘M. le Comte’, and sometimes of a man so important he was only ‘le grand Monsieur’.

Some of these gentlemen came so often as to become familiar. No one could mistake M. Fontrailles for reasons you will understand, but sometimes there came also a shy young man of wispy beard and nervous manners, who wore many rings on his fingers and seemed constantly to count them lest one be stolen away. Sometimes there came a languid army officer with thin moustache and cold eyes, who yawned a great deal and wafted his handkerchief as if to disperse a smell. But the one I liked least was a thick-necked fair man with odd eyes who strutted like a cockerel and kept his hand on his rapier as proof of his very manliness. The others spoke of him as a great swordsman, and gave him the name Bouchard.

They were there this day, Monsieur, everything as usual, but M. Fontrailles himself did not arrive and the gentlemen were most put out at the delay. I thought their concern due to a guest among them, a little dark man with a sharp beard who spoke not a word in my presence but was treated by the others with deference and seemed much annoyed by the absence of M. Fontrailles. Monsieur made excuses, he emptied the public room for them and offered wine for no charge, but it was his evening at the Guild and he could not stay longer.

‘You must serve them, Bernadette,’ he said at last. ‘They seem well behaved and I am sure M. Fontrailles will not be long.’

So I remained alone and I served them, and so the damage was done, that day at the end of July when André de Roland came to Paris.

Jacques Gilbert

It was done anyway. We stopped at an inn outside Chantilly, and that’s where it really began, right there.

The grumpy stablehand was busy with a load of soldiers’ horses, so we rubbed down our own and gave them oats from our baggage. I didn’t want anyone else looking after Tonnerre anyway, and it was good for André to bond with his new horse. I knew he still missed Tempête, but he was doing his best with the colt, he’d called him Héros and was using the name every minute, murmuring to him and fondling his ears.

The stablehand watched them and started to look a bit less pissed off.

‘Wouldn’t leave them there, if I were you,’ he said. ‘The army are commandeering everything for Arras. Stick them behind those officers’ horses, no one’ll touch those.’

André looked appalled at the idea of soldiers stealing, but we did it anyway and slipped the man a couple of sous for the tip. He looked down at the money, then sideways at the elegant dress swords on our belts, then up at the rest of us.

‘You might want to tidy yourselves a touch before going in,’ he said. ‘Just saying.’

He was right. The rapiers marked us as gentlemen but nothing else matched. Our clothes were tatty from battles and things, we were covered in dirt from the roads and our hair was much too short for the fashion. We brushed each other off a bit, but we couldn’t brush our clothes newer or our hair longer, we’d just have to do as we were.

We went in. It wasn’t like the Quatre Corbeaux in Dax, with old men playing chess and drinking cider, this was the main road to Paris, the customers were all strangers and it felt as friendly as a foreign barracks. Soldiers lined the walls and sat on the boards, the air was full of gruff laughter, and the only woman I could see was a big-breasted girl barging men out of the way with her hip as she swept by with bowls of steaming lentils.

We wriggled through to a counter at the far end and waited to get served. Other men yelled and banged their fists on the wood and got given jugs of wine and beer, but we stood politely and no one noticed us at all. I whispered to André ‘I think we’ve got to shout,’ but he said ‘Isn’t that rude when they’re busy?’

I’d done this. I’d taken a young nobleman who used to shout and stamp with the best of them and turned him into someone as polite and humble as me. I said ‘We’ll starve otherwise.’

He shrugged and turned back to the counter, but someone else spoke first. A man’s voice behind us said loudly ‘Nice sword.’

Something flashed in André’s eyes, and there it was, everything I’d been trying to wake up in him and suddenly wished I hadn’t. He turned slowly, rested his elbows on the counter and said ‘Thank you.’

Someone sniggered. A flabby-faced soldier said ‘Whose is it?’

André let the laugh rise and die away. Then he let his hand drop casually to his belt and said ‘Who says it’s not mine?’

Everything went horribly quiet. The flabby-faced man looked him up and down, but André didn’t move. Everything about him seemed relaxed except for the unnatural stillness of his face. His legs were slightly apart, his left hip thrust to point the guard of his rapier to the hand on his belt. He was a swordsman and looked it.

‘No one,’ said the flabby man at last. ‘Just asking.’

André allowed a slight dip of his eyelids. ‘As long as there’s no misunderstanding.’ He turned again to the counter and gave the man his back.

The chatter broke out again behind us, but the nape of my neck was cold with sweat. I hissed ‘For God’s sake, André, don’t do stuff like that. What if he’d taken you up on it?’

He looked surprised. ‘I’d have fought him. He insulted me, didn’t he?’

I ought never to have brought him in here, not till he looked and sounded right and no one would dream of insulting him. He ought to have had like a bubble of nobility all round him, but I’d gone and broken it and this was the result.

I said ‘Sod this place, we’ll eat in Paris.’

His eyes widened. ‘But I’m hungry.’

I took his arm and bloody well pulled. ‘Your grandmother will feed us, it’ll look rude if we’ve already eaten.’

He was laughing in protest as I hauled him through the crowd. ‘Oh come on, Jacques, I’m not going to start anything.’

Someone already had. I heard yelling and jeering down towards the door, a man protesting his horse had been stolen and soldiers saying he ought to be grateful for the chance to contribute to the war effort in Flanders. I kept dragging André past, and hoped to God our own horses were safe.

‘Damn your Flanders,’ said the man, with the kind of authority that makes you shuffle your feet and say ‘Sieur’. ‘I need another horse, and if there’s a gentleman in this disgusting place he’ll help me find one.’

André’s head shot up at once. No one else responded, someone was telling the man to watch his language and others just laughed. It sounded bad, I was expecting to hear a sword rasp out any second, but then we were through the screen of bodies and I saw the man wasn’t noble at all, just a huddled figure in the brown robe and hood of a Capuchin monk, turning this way and that to confront his tormentors. His face was shadowed by the heavy cowl, but his head was stooped anyway by the deep curve of his back.

I tugged at the boy’s arm. ‘It’s just a hunchback, come on.’

‘Tell you what,’ said a soldier. ‘Give us a rub of the hump for luck and I’ll let you pat my horse, how’s that?’ The others howled with laughter.

André jerked his arm free and stepped forward. ‘May I be of assistance, Father?’

The soldiers murmured and I saw it again, that up-and-down look and then the hesitation. There were more of them here, so I moved quickly to the boy’s side to let them see I’d got a rapier too. The mumbling died away.

‘Not unless you have a horse,’ said the hunchback ungratefully. ‘I’ve lost hours searching for a replacement and must be in Paris before dusk.’

‘Bets, everyone!’ cried a young arquebusier. ‘Let’s see how fast a bossu can run!’

André’s eyes suddenly got thinner. He raised his voice over the cackling soldiers and said ‘I can’t lend you a horse, but you’re welcome to ride with me if you wish.’

The cowled head moved as the hunchback studied us. He must have seen how shabby we were, but just said ‘Thank you, Messieurs, I accept,’ and began to shuffle purposefully towards the door. I whispered to André ‘He’s hiding his face, he might be a bloody leper,’ but the boy said ‘He’s a monk, isn’t he? He wouldn’t put us in danger without saying so,’ and walked confidently after him, ignoring the mocking grins of the crowd.

I suppose there was nothing really wrong with it. Héros carried the two of them easily, and we didn’t even slow down. I didn’t have anything against hunchbacks either, I mean I’d never minded Nicolas Moreau at home, but there’s something sort of sinister about a man who won’t look you in the face, and this one really wouldn’t. He kept his hood right down all the time we were riding, and I felt more and more uneasy with every mile.

Bernadette Fournier

It was the wine, I expect, Monsieur, that and the heat of the evening. Some of the gentlemen remained both sober and civil, especially those beside the dark man with the little beard, but Bouchard and his friends drank without restraint and grew loud with merriment.

All this while my little cat lay curled contentedly in the hearth, for she liked the warmth of the stones and fancied she felt it even when there was no fire lit. She was no trouble to anyone until Bouchard chose to relieve himself in the fireplace, but then she sprang up and spat with protest, as who would not to be woken in such a way. Bouchard jumped back with an oath, while his friends laughed as at a farce by Jodelet himself.

Bouchard cried ‘The devil!’ and reached for my cat, but she backed into the corner, arching her back and bottle-brushing up her tail. He thrust his boot to prise her out of her corner, and I ran forward crying ‘She is only a cat, Monsieur, only a little cat!’ but he kicked her as if she had been a stone, he slammed his boot into her body so that she was crushed against the wall with a great crack and slid down into writhing contortions, crying most piteously. I struck out at his face and knelt beside my little one, but her back was broken, I could do for her now but the one thing. I put my hands to her neck and twisted the pain away until there was another crack then nothing but warm, limp fur and a dead cat and my heart that was too full even for tears.

There was silence about me, and I looked up and saw them staring down. Bouchard wiped his cheek with his handkerchief and stared in shock at the tiniest streak of blood on its folds. He said in disbelief ‘You scratched me, you bitch. You scratched me.’

And then, Monsieur, oh yes, very yes, I was afraid.

Jacques Gilbert

We weren’t much past Pierrefitte-sur-Seine when we first smelt it.

‘Paris,’ said the hunchback, snuffing contentedly. ‘We can’t be far now.’

You know what the city’s like, but it was new to me then and even André recoiled. It had a dead animal stink like M. Gauthier’s cottage, only a bit like someone had crapped in it too. The horses started sneezing and tossing their heads, and I felt like doing the same.

‘We’ll get used to it,’ said André encouragingly, slamming a handkerchief over his nose. ‘We must do, I don’t remember it being as bad as this.’

I wasn’t sure that meant much, it was five years since he’d last been there. I said ‘We can’t live in that.’

‘Of course we can,’ he said sort of heartily. ‘The King does, doesn’t he?’

I remembered the King was at Amiens and began to understand why.

The hunchback produced a little glass bottle from his robes. ‘Sprinkle it on your handkerchiefs,’ he said. ‘It will help.’

He was right, the sharpness went zinging into my head like it was dissolving the smell in acid. I’d never seen a vinaigrette before, but couldn’t help noticing how beautiful the bottle was or that the top was gold. I wondered more and more about that hunchback, and whether he was really a monk at all.

But it didn’t look like mattering much longer, and within an hour we were approaching the Faubourg Saint-Denis. It was all right at first, just little stone houses and fields with sheep, and two distant windmills on a hilltop, but gradually everything grew bigger and bigger. Gardens stretched into the distance like farms, walled places with spires loomed like towns but turned out to be only hospitals. We rode in with Saint-Lazare on our right, the Hôpital Saint-Louis on our left, the walls of the city towering in front of us thirty feet high, and I felt we’d come to a country of giants.

The Porte Saint-Denis was open, and wagons were trundling out empty over the moat as farm people went home after selling their goods inside. I was all ready to announce the Chevalier de Roland and enjoy the guards’ reaction, but a fat man in a short coat just said ‘Come on if you’re coming,’ jerked his thumb rudely over his shoulder, then went back to guiding the wagons out behind us. We passed six feet’s worth of double wall, emerged out of the tunnel of the gate, and that was it, we were in Paris.

The noise hit us at once, like being smacked with a sack of wet sand. Wagons were creaking and jolting all about us, wheels grinding and rumbling over loose cobbles, a man with two barrels on a hoop was clanking along yelling ‘Water!’ Women shrieked abuse, shutters banged overhead, dogs barked up a side street, a man bawled from a fish wagon, and someone shouted after a little boy who pounded up the road with a clatter of clogs and ducked under Tonnerre’s belly to vanish up an alley the other side. A carriage rolled towards the gate with a man in front calling ‘Make way for Mme la Duchesse!’ while people bared their forearms to thrust fists in the air, and one shouted back ‘Fuck off!’ Crowds were flocking to the gate, scampering children were tumbling in the streets and begging pennies from the onlookers, people yelling and laughing in one great mush of sound and behind it all a cacophony of thousands of bells.

Colours blurred in front of me, dazzling clothing that looked almost shocking after days of green fields and white skies. I felt dizzy and sick. Tonnerre walked steadily beneath me, but Héros had never been out of the country, poor beast, he was tossing his head and his eyes were rolling white. André leaned forward to murmur to him, the colt’s nose turned to his voice, and the boy rested his cheek against it like he used to with Tempête. The hubbub about us seemed to still for a moment, and I was aware of a gentler sound nearby, the tinkling of running water from the Ponceau.

André twisted his neck to speak to the hunchback behind him. ‘We’re for the Marais, Father, is that on your way?’

‘Perfect,’ said the hunchback. ‘I’ll direct you.’

I was glad of that, I wasn’t sure the boy would remember after so long, but the hunchback guided us east like he knew every stone on the way. We followed his directions to the Rue du Temple, then down a tiny backstreet and up to a door with a semicircle of bobbly glass over the top and a sign on a chain saying ‘Le Pomme d’Or’. It had a very narrow front, but went back a long way and had its own courtyard to one side. I heard men laughing in there and wondered if that was who the hunchback was meeting, but when the boy helped him dismount he just thanked us distractedly and disappeared through the door to the house in a flurry of brown robes.

We so nearly left then, André had his foot in the stirrup to remount, but the courtyard gate opened and a potboy came out, drawn by the sound of horses. His manner was furtive and he was trying to close the gate behind him, but I could still hear raucous laughter and sounds of splashing.

‘The public room’s closed, Messieurs,’ said the potboy, looking the colour of cheese rind. ‘I will enquire if …’

The laughter rose to a howl, and somewhere inside it came a girl’s scream.

André thrust his reins at the potboy and strode forward. I said ‘No, no, we can’t interfere,’ but he just smacked his palm on the gate and shoved it wide open. I slid off Tonnerre to grab at him, but he was already through the gate and gone.

I flung the servant money, said ‘Look after the horses,’ and bolted after him.

Bernadette Fournier

Oh, they found it so funny, Monsieur. They decided I was a dirty little beast and must be given a bath.

I would have run, but Bouchard scooped up my feet and his friends carried me between them to the courtyard door. The shy man did say ‘I don’t think you should,’ but when Bouchard told him to run home to bed he meekly donned his cloak to leave. The silent dark man merely averted his eyes as if there were nothing happening and the rest followed his lead. I cried out for Madame and know she heard me, I saw her enter the room as we left it, but she only closed the courtyard door and went away.

They carried me to the horse trough, swung me over and dropped me into it with a great splash. The shock of cold water was frightful. Its filth invaded my mouth and nose as I tried to scream. I breathed in only water so that my head and chest swelled with the fear of it, then the weight was released, my head came again into the air, I was lying in a dirty horse trough spluttering and coughing and retching, and around me the gentlemen laughed until almost they were sick.

‘Again,’ said Bouchard, and I had time for only one cry before my head was forced back under. My hands flailed at the rim, but my shoulders were held down, my legs kicked at air. There was gurgling nothingness in my ears, the sky above me was rippled with brown water and dark shapes looming beyond it, I was clawing at emptiness and the panic forced me to gasp. The pain in my chest swelled, my throat burned, and my mind screamed that this was no game, they would keep me there until I drowned.

The pressure relaxed from my shoulders as an arm slid beneath them and hauled me up out of the water. My legs flopped down to touch solid ground, and through stinging eyes I glimpsed a man in a white shirt stepping back as I fell on my knees on the cobbles. My ears were filled with water, and I heard nothing but the rattle of my own breath as I vomited helplessly over the stones.

And not only the stones, for as I opened my eyes I became aware of a pair of boots in front of me spattered with brown streaks. I allowed my gaze to travel upwards over the hem of a black cloak, full dark breeches, a belt and scabbard, the swept hilt of a grand rapier, a sleeveless blue doublet stained with wear, and a dirty white shirt unlaced at the neck. He was poor, perhaps, but certainly a gentleman – and I had been sick over his feet.

I cried out, but a hand came and rested on my head and a voice said ‘All right.’ I looked up fearfully, and saw the face of a young man perhaps seventeen or eighteen, with dishevelled black hair and green eyes that regarded me with the brightness of distress.

‘All right,’ he said again, and the touch of his hand was warm against the wetness of my scalp. I felt that he protected me, that as long as I stayed under his hand I would be safe.

Jacques Gilbert

I was terrified. There were four of them, all gentlemen, the kind of people I ought to be taking my hat off and grovelling to. Then the girl turned her face up to André and something inside me flipped over. Streaks of dirty water ran down her cheeks, her brown hair was plastered to her head, her eyes looked red and sore, but I was holding my breath all the same.

André kept his hand on her head, but he was looking at that blond bastard who was lounging against the trough with an expression of total boredom. There was something odd about his eyes, one seemed to be almost looking at his nose.

André’s voice had a little shake in it. ‘This to a woman?’

The blond practically yawned. ‘What business is it of yours?’

André didn’t hesitate. ‘That of a gentleman.’

They looked at us, weighing us up. We wore the sword, but I knew that next to themselves we looked like nobodies.

The blond smiled. ‘Oh come, fellow, a gentleman would know what happens to a commoner who strikes one.’

André looked down at the girl, but she shook her head and said ‘They killed my cat.’

‘Did they?’ said André lightly. ‘How brave of them.’

The blond suddenly stopped looking bored. André stepped back on one foot, hand going to his hip, ready for the challenge.

It didn’t come. The blond glanced at his companions and said ‘Here’s another wants cooling off. What do you say?’

André didn’t understand, he was standing waiting for the duel, but they were on him before I could move. The girl scrambled to her feet, trying to stand between them, but the blond smacked her out of the way, she reeled back dripping wet into my arms, and for a second her eyes were on my face.

‘In with him!’ the blond said. I tore my eyes off the girl and saw them dragging André towards the trough. His head went down, his elbows back, he wrenched an arm free and punched that blond whack on the chin. The man teetered backwards, his legs banged against the trough and for a glorious moment I thought he’d fall right in, but he just toppled sideways, bashing his head against the trough as he went down.

The others swung back to the boy and I heard a great shing of steel as they drew their swords. André shouted ‘This is an affair of honour!’ but he was in the wrong bloody world, they weren’t after a nice fair fight, they were all charging him at once.

I shoved the girl away and yanked out my rapier. I’d never drawn it except to clean it, but it slid out smoothly to my hand, three good feet of shining steel. I shouted ‘Come on, André!’ and clashed my blade hard against the first sword I could see.

It was an older man with a red face wielding it, but he struck at me with a roar of rage. I was in and stamping with the front foot, blade up backhanded to deflect his thrust, then back to lunge at the throat. Only I couldn’t, I couldn’t, this was a Frenchman, I just scratched down his neck and jumped back.

At least André was drawn now, but he’d got two against him and I couldn’t turn to help. Mine was at me again, trained as well as I was, he plunged in sharp at my face, and even as I sidestepped I knew he meant to kill. I slashed out desperately, using the edge, ripping his sleeve, but he twisted up to come at me overarm. I flinched away, feet tangling, and lost balance. His blade chopped down, then another flashed in to parry it, André of course, André, he’d pinked one man who’d dropped his sword and was clutching his shoulder, he’d got his other backing off to the inn and shouting for help, now he’d got mine, one, two and a stab in the thigh and the man was down and yelping.

‘Run, Messieurs!’ screamed the girl, as men came piling out of a door into the courtyard, drawing swords as they ran. A little dark man with a beard stopped and exclaimed ‘¡Madre de Dios!’ but I hardly took it in because there beside him stood our hunchback. His hood was down, his head exposed, and for a second he and André stared at each other, then again the girl screamed ‘Run!’

Bernadette Fournier

My gentleman turned to face them, so I appealed to the other, he with the blue eyes and the scar on his cheek, I cried ‘Your master, get him out!’ For one little second his eyes were on me, then he seized his master’s arm and said ‘Now, André, now!’

This was a servant, his voice more common even than my own, but the gentleman heeded him and ran for the gate. The servant said ‘Our horses!’ but I said ‘Come back for them,’ and pushed them both through. The gentleman protested ‘Yourself, Mademoiselle!’ I said ‘I shall be safer when you’re gone,’ and turned to slam the gate behind them, but a weight smashed into my back, the gate was wrenched from my hands, and I was swept aside as our guests pressed through after them, shouting with the excitement of the chase.

I looked back into the courtyard. The dark stranger remained and the two wounded gentlemen who sat groaning on the stones, but at that moment I had eyes only for M. Fontrailles. He had a great temper, Monsieur, I had often heard him scream with fury, but now he stood utterly still with something in his face that frightened me more.

‘It’s all right, Monseigneur,’ said one of the wounded, the older man with the florid face. ‘It’s only a bit of a game.’

M. Fontrailles said quietly ‘He saw my face.’

Now it was the others who were still, and even the groans of the pale plump one ceased.

M. Fontrailles nodded savagely. ‘That’s what you’ve done with your games, Dubosc. That boy saw my face.’

Two

Jacques Gilbert

We sped round the corner and into another street. There were people carrying furniture back inside their shops at the end of the day’s trading, so we slowed and sheathed our swords, but the footsteps behind never paused, and I turned to see six men charging right at us.

We put down our heads and kept running. No one was bothered, the traders kept moving, nothing to do with them at all. My sword was half in, half out, I was trying to wrestle it free and went crashing into a stack of wooden chairs crossing the road all by itself. A hideous old woman behind it gaped at me with outrage, but the boy gasped ‘Your pardon, Madame,’ and actually touched his hat. She stared, but we were through and past, and behind us came a great clatter as she pushed the stack over in front of our pursuers. She did it on purpose, she did it because of the boy.

Others felt the same. Two men were grappling a bedstead flat across the road, but one gave a jerk of his head and we leapt up and on it, springing down safely on the other side. The boy ran backwards a moment, panting ‘Thank you, Messieurs!’ and I did the same because I was beginning to understand a bit of what Paris was and how it worked.

But the men after us weren’t bothered by things like bedsteads, they just shoved it out of their way and kept coming like they weren’t going to stop till we were dead. Fear was drying my throat as we scudded round the corner and saw another long street in front of us, nowhere to hide and lots of people who didn’t care. Carriages rattled past in the dusk, and a driver slashed at me with his whip for getting too close.

‘Come on,’ said André, tugging me round behind it. ‘Cross into the Rue Vieille du Temple, my home’s off there somewhere.’

We dodged across the street ahead of our pursuers but the next road was even longer and straighter. We paused at a gated archway with liveried servants outside, but when the boy said ‘Your master, please tell him the Chevalier –’ they just levelled their halberds and told us to piss off. The pounding footsteps were getting louder and harder behind us and when they chased us past a gate with flaming sconces I saw the bastards’ shadows almost merging with our own. I imagined a sword in my back, I almost felt it between my shoulder blades, it was all I could do not to turn round.

‘Any of the hôtels,’ panted André. ‘If we can just explain …’

The portes-cochères were all shut, we couldn’t wait for admission. My feet hurt from the cobbles, I’d got a stitch in my side, we practically fell into the next turning and lurched blindly down it. It had great high walls that echoed the sound of chasing footsteps like a hundred men were after us, and roses on one side that tore at my cloak. Another opening loomed through a thick stone archway to our right, an alley half-blocked with piles of stacked crates. I shot through the gap, but André stopped in the archway, turned and levelled his sword.

I swivelled back, but the men were already hurtling round the corner and stopping dead at the sight of the boy. I was trapped behind him, and he was on his own.

The blond stepped forward, sword waggling loosely in his hand. He held his neck a bit stiffly, but otherwise seemed unhurt.

‘Now then,’ he said, and smiled.

André didn’t move. The wall of the arch was to one side of him, the crates to the other, they’d have to take him one at a time.

‘Would you care to make your apologies now?’ said the blond. He flexed his blade in his fingers, then pointed it languidly at the boy. ‘Perhaps I won’t even kill you.’

André rested his elbow against the corner of a crate and I realized how tired he was. ‘I’m sorry I treated you like a gentleman and not a cowardly bastard. Next time I’ll know better.’

The blond changed colour, and behind him the others went curiously still. One in the shadows gave a little, soft laugh.

The blond changed grip on his sword. ‘I’m afraid there won’t be a next –’

I shouted a warning as his blade shot forward, but my voice was lost in the clash as André’s flew up to meet it. The blond dropped quickly to reprise in the throat, but André twisted to let the thrust pass him, scything his own blade backwards to strike with the edge. The blond stepped back with a hiss of breath and I saw a fine scarlet line across his neck. His eyes looked hot with rage.

Then he was in again, hard and fast at the face, André whirling the blade to drive him back. The blond was older and stronger, the boy had to avoid close body and keep distance, but he couldn’t step back beyond the crates, if he opened the gap they’d cut him down from all sides. And he was good, that blond, really good. He was drunk, of course, he hadn’t got André’s accuracy, but he was fast as well as strong, and he wasn’t trying just to get a hit like the boy had done, he was looking to kill.