Paul Doherty - The White Rose murders

I thought I was safe. I was weak with hunger but I had a knife and I could still move round the city. Naturally, I heard the stories and one morning saw a bloody trail of gore where the wolves had attacked and dragged away an old beggar woman who used to squat on the corner of the Rue St Jacques. One night I was in an alleyway, nothing more than a narrow, darkened trackway. The night sky was brilliant and the stars seemed to wink like precious stones against the velvet darkness; the streets, carpeted by ice and hard snow, shimmered and glowed under the pale moonlight. I had fallen asleep, squatting behind a buttress of the church of St Nicholas long after curfew, my lips blue, my teeth chattering with the cold.

I cried out with the pain which seemed to turn my body from head to toe into one raw, open wound. For the hundredth time I cursed Benjamin and wondered desperately what had happened to him. I walked in a daze trying to keep warm as strange fantasies plagued my mind: Selkirk chanting in a field of white roses all stained by blood; my mother crouching on a step as she used to when I would play and run to her – but, when I drew closer, she was an old cripple, eyes open, face frozen blue. She just toppled over as I touched her.

I walked on, trying to keep warm. The streets were black, the cobbles rough beneath their carpet of ice and a bitter, cruel wind whipped the snow into sudden flurries. I saw a group walking towards me through the ashen darkness. They were leper women, unfortunates from the hospital of St Lazaire, a dozen withered, hideous creatures, embodying foulness and decay. They gathered their filthy, scant rags about them and screamed at me to go away, their putrid breath freezing on their blue lips. I wandered down the Rue de la Carbiere then I heard the first soul-searing howl: the wolves were back in Paris, hunting for whatever they could find.

The hairs on the nape of my neck tingled and my tired heart lurched with fear. I hurried on, slipping on the black ice, cursing and praying, hammering at the doors I passed but I was so cold I could hardly cry out. Again the howl, nearer, more drawn out, chilling the heart as well as the blood. I turned, like you do in a nightmare, and down the years the vision of terror I glimpsed still springs fresh in my mind. The long track wound behind me, past dark, high-gabled houses, the hard-packed snow winking in the ivory moonlight. At the far entrance of the street emerged one huge, horrible shape, dog-like, massive and sinister. It just stood there, then others came, massing in the darkness, ears pointed, high-tailed, the fur on their backs raised in awesome ruffs.

Lord, I screamed and ran, heart thudding, my throat so dry it constricted. I wanted to vomit and would have if my belly had not been so empty. I screamed: 'Aidez-moi! Aidez-moi!’

I prayed, promising to give up wine, warm tits and marble white buttocks. (You can see how desperate I was!) Behind me the wolves howled as if sure of their prey and calling others to join them for their banquet of good English beef. I flew past barred doors and shuttered windows. Nothing but silence greeted my cries. As I hurried I heard the scrabbling patter of the wolves closing in. Another chilling howl and I could have sworn I smelt their hot, sour breath. [Oh, by the way, I have been chased by wolves on two occasions. A few years later in the ice-packed snow outside Moscovy, but nothing was as chilling as that short, desperate run in Paris.] I glimpsed the creaking sign of a tavern with two red apples. I screamed again.

Suddenly the door beneath the sign opened, a hand stretched out and pulled me in. I heard the crash of a body against the door, and angry snarling. Gasping for breath I looked round, noticing the low black beams, tawdry tables and thick, fat tallow candles, their rancid smell cloying my frozen nose and face. A stocky, red-faced fellow with hairy warts round his mouth grinned a gap-toothed smile, pulled open a shutter and let fly with a huge arbalest. I heard curses, the screaming yelps of the animals, then I fainted.

When I revived, Wart-Face (who introduced himself as Jean Capote) and his companion Claude Broussac, rat-faced with a pointed nose, greasy hair and the cheekiest eyes I have seen this side of Hell, were bending over me, forcing a cup of scalding posset between my lips. They introduced themselves as self-confessed leaders of the Maillotins, the French word for 'clubs', a secret society of the Parisian poor who attacked the rich and earned their name from the huge cudgels they carried. Brother Joachim, like many of the Franciscans, must have been one of these.

'You're not going to die,' Broussac said, his eyes dancing with mischief. 'We thought we'd denied the wolves a good meal. If we hadn't, we'd have tossed you back and perhaps saved some other unfortunate!'

I struggled up to show I wasn't wolf meat. Capote brought me a deep-bowled cup of heavy claret, heated it with a burning poker, and a dish of scalding meat, heavily spiced. I later learnt it was cat. They asked me a few questions and withdrew to grunt amongst themselves, then came back and welcomed me as one of them. God knows why they saved me. When I asked, they just laughed.

'We don't like wolves,' Broussac sneered, 'whether they be fouror two-legged. You're not French, are you?' he added.

'I'm English,' I replied. 'But I starve like any Frenchman!'

They laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. If I had lied, I'm sure they would have cut my throat. I swear this now [never mind the chaplain who is sitting there sneering at me], I saw more of Christ's love amongst the Maillotins than anywhere else on this earth. Their organisation was loose knit but they accepted anyone who swore the oath of secrecy and agreed to share things in common, which I promptly did. What we owned we stole and filched, not from the poor but the merchants, the lawyers, the fat and the rich. What we didn't eat ourselves, we shared; the most needy receiving the most, then a descending scale for everybody else.

I also began to plot my departure from Paris. Benjamin, I reasoned, must either have died of an illness or been killed. Now I would need silver to reach the coast and get across the Narrow Seas. Broussac once asked what I was doing in Paris, so I told him. He was fascinated by Selkirk's murder.

'There is a secret society,' he murmured, 'Englishmen who fled after your Richard III was killed at Bosworth. They have an emblem.' He screwed up his face so it seemed to hide behind his huge nose. Their emblem is an animal, a leopard? No, no, a white boar. Les Blancs Sangliers!'

At the time I didn't give a damn. In the winter of 1518 all I cared about was surviving and life was hard in Paris. Yuletide and Twelfth Night passed with only the occasional carols in church, for no one dared to go out at night. Mind you, every cloud had a silver lining. The brothels were free, the ladies of the night well rested and more than prepared to accept sustenance, a loaf or a jug of wine, instead of silver. I suppose I was happy enough. I never planned. (I always follow the Scriptures: 'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.') I just wish I had practised what I preached! I was full to the gills of roasted cat, which is one of the reasons I can't stand the animals now. Whenever I see one I remember the "rancid smell of Broussac's stew pot and the gall rises in my throat.

[The silly chaplain is shaking his noddle.

'I would not eat cat,' he murmurs.

Yes, the little sod would. Believe me, when you are hungry, really hungry, so that your stomach clings to your backbone, nothing is more tasty than a succulent rat or a well-roasted leg of cat!]

I stayed with the Maillotins until spring came. The river thawed and barges of food began to reach the capital. The city provost and his marshals became more organised, clamping down more ruthlessly on the legion of thieves which flourished in the slums around the Rue Saint Antoine. Broussac and Capote refused to read the signs and so made their most dreadful mistake. One night, early in February 1518, the three of us were in a tavern called the Chariot, a cosy little ale house which stands on the corner of the Rue des Mineurs near the church of Saint Sulpice. We had eaten and drunk well, our gallows faces flushed with wine, our stupid mouths bawling out some raucous song and planning our next escapade.