Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

Pierre returned his attention to Coligny. He was upright, but perhaps his men were supporting him. Though only wounded he might yet die. However, after a minute he seemed to shake them off and demand some room, and they stopped crowding him. This enabled Pierre to get a better look, and he saw that Coligny was standing unaided. He had both arms clutched to his body, and blood on his sleeves and doublet, but to Pierre’s dismay the wounds seemed superficial. Indeed, as soon as his men gave him space he began to walk, clearly intending to get home under his own power before submitting to the attentions of a doctor.

The men who had gone into the Nemours house now re-emerged, one of them carrying the double-barrelled arquebus. Pierre could not hear what they were saying, but he could read their gestures: head-shaking negation, shrugs of helplessness, arms waving in signs indicating rapid flight. Louviers had escaped.

The group came nearer to Pierre’s hiding place. He turned around, hurried out of the graveyard by the far gate, and walked away, bitterly disappointed.

Ned and Walsingham knew, as soon as they heard the news, that this could be the end of all they and Queen Elizabeth hoped for.

They immediately rushed to the rue de Béthisy. They found Coligny lying on a bed, surrounded by some of the leading Huguenots, including the marquess of Lagny. Several doctors were in attendance, notably Ambroise Paré, the royal surgeon, a man in his sixties with a receding hairline and a long dark beard that gave him a thoughtful look.

The usual technique for disinfecting wounds, Ned knew, was to cauterize them with either boiling oil or a red-hot iron. This was so painful that the patient sometimes died of shock. Paré preferred to apply an ointment containing turpentine to prevent infection. He had written a book, The Method of Curing Wounds Caused by Arquebus and Arrows . Despite his success, his methods had not caught on: the medical profession was conservative.

Coligny was pale, and evidently in pain, but he seemed to have all his faculties. One bullet had taken off the top of his right index finger, Paré explained. The other had lodged in his left elbow. Paré had got it out — an agonizing procedure that probably accounted for how pale Coligny looked — and he showed it to them, a lead sphere half an inch across.

However, Paré said that Coligny was going to live, which was a huge relief. Nevertheless, the Huguenots would be outraged by the attempt on the life of their hero, and it would be a challenge to prevent them running riot.

There were several around the bed itching for a fight. Coligny’s friends were thirsty for revenge. They were all sure that the duke of Guise was behind the assassination attempt. They wanted to go to the Louvre right away and confront the king. They were going to demand the immediate arrest of Henri de Guise, and threaten a national Huguenot uprising otherwise. There was even foolish talk of taking the king prisoner.

Coligny himself urged restraint, but it was the weak voice of a man wounded and supine.

Walsingham made an effort to hold them back. ‘I have some information which may be important,’ he said. He was the representative of the only major country in the world that was Protestant, and the Huguenot nobility listened to him attentively. ‘The ultra-Catholics are prepared for your rebellion. The duke of Guise has a plan to put down any show of force by Protestants following the wedding. Each person in this room...’ He looked around significantly. ‘Each person in this room has been assigned his own personal assassin from among the more fanatical Catholic aristocracy.’

This was shocking news, and there was a buzz of horror and indignation.

The marquess of Lagny removed his jewelled cap and scratched his bald head. ‘Forgive me, ambassador Walsingham,’ he said sceptically, ‘but how could you know a thing like that?’

Ned tensed. He was almost completely sure that Walsingham would not reveal the name of Jerónima Ruiz. She might come up with further information.

Fortunately, Walsingham did not give away Ned’s source. ‘I have a spy in the Guise house, of course,’ he lied.

Lagny was normally a peacemaker, but now he said defiantly: ‘Then we must all be prepared to defend ourselves.’

Someone else said: ‘The best defence is attack!’

They all agreed with that.

Ned was a junior here, but he had something worth saying, so he spoke up. ‘The duke of Guise is hoping for a Protestant insurrection to force the king to breach the Peace of St Germain. You would be playing into his hands.’

Nothing worked. Their blood was up.

Then King Charles arrived.

It was a shock. No one was expecting him. He came without advance notice. His mother, Queen Caterina, was with him, and Ned guessed that this visit was her idea. They were followed in by a crowd of leading courtiers, including most of the Catholic noblemen who hated Coligny. But the duke of Guise was not with them, Ned noticed.

Charles had been king for eleven years, but he was still only twenty-one, and Ned thought he looked particularly young and vulnerable today. There was genuine distress and anxiety on his pale face with its wispy moustache and barely visible beard.

Ned’s hopes rose a little. For the king to come like this was an extraordinary act of sympathy, and could hardly be ignored by the Huguenots.

Charles’s words reinforced Ned’s optimism. Addressing Coligny, the king said: ‘The pain is yours, but the outrage is mine.’

It was obviously a rehearsed remark, intended to be repeated all over Paris; but it was none the worse for that.

A chair was hastily brought, and the king sat down facing the bed. ‘I swear to you that I will find out who was responsible—’

Someone muttered: ‘Henri de Guise.’

‘—whoever he may be,’ the king went on. ‘I have already appointed a commission of inquiry, and even now investigators are questioning the servants in the house where the assassin lay in wait.’

This was cosmetic, Ned judged. A formal inquiry was never a genuine attempt to learn the truth. No sensible king would allow independent men to control an investigation whose result could be so inflammatory. The commission was a delaying tactic, intended not to discover the facts but to lower the temperature — which was good.

‘I beg you,’ the king went on, ‘to come to the Louvre palace, and be close to our royal presence, where you will be completely safe from any further harm.’

That was not such a good idea, Ned thought. Coligny was not safe anywhere, but he was better off here, among friends, than he would be under the dubious protection of King Charles.

Coligny’s face betrayed similar misgivings, but he could not say so for fear of offending the king.

Ambroise Paré saved Coligny’s face by saying: ‘He must stay here, your majesty. Any movement could reopen the wounds, and he cannot afford to lose any more blood.’

The king accepted the doctor’s ruling with a nod, then said: ‘In that case, I will send you the lord of Cosseins with a company of fifty pikemen and arquebusiers to reinforce your own small bodyguard.’

Ned frowned. Cosseins was the king’s man. Guards who owed loyalty to someone else were of highly doubtful value. Was Charles simply being naively generous, desperate to make a gesture of reconciliation? He was young and innocent enough not to realize that his offer was unwelcome.

However, one conciliatory gesture by the king had already been rejected, and etiquette forced Coligny to say: ‘That is most kind of your majesty.’

Charles stood up to go. ‘I shall revenge this affront,’ he said forcefully.

Ned looked around the assembled Huguenot leaders and saw, by stance and by facial expressions, that many of them were inclined to believe in the king’s sincerity, and at least give him a chance to prevent bloodshed.