Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

Rasteau ran forward, bleeding from the wound to his face, rapier held in front of him, and thrust the blade into the belly of the young man with the black beard. The man screamed horribly in pain. The slim blade went through his body and the bloody point came out the other side. In a flash of memory, Pierre recalled hearing Rasteau and Brocard discuss sword fighting, on that fateful day four years ago. Forget about the heart , Rasteau had said. A blade in the guts doesn’t kill a man straight away, but it paralyses him. It hurts so much he can’t think of anything else. Then he had giggled.

Rasteau pulled his blade out of the man’s intestines with a sucking sound that made Pierre want to vomit. Then the Protestants were on Rasteau, six or seven of them, beating him with stones. Defending himself desperately, Rasteau retreated.

The duke’s men-at-arms were now running at top speed across the graveyard, leaping over tombstones, unsheathing their weapons as they came, yelling for revenge on their fallen comrades. Cardinal Louis’s gunmen were readying their arquebuses. More men came out of the barn and, suicidally fearless, picked up stones to throw at the advancing soldiers.

Pierre saw that Le Pin had recovered from the blow to his head and was getting to his feet. He dodged two flying stones in a way that told Pierre he was again in full possession of his faculties. Then he drew his rapier.

To Pierre’s dismay, Le Pin made another attempt to prevent further bloodshed. Lifting his sword high he yelled: ‘Stop! Lay down your arms! Sheath your swords!’

No one took any notice. A huge stone was thrown at Le Pin. He dodged it, then charged.

Pierre was almost horrified by the speed and violence of Le Pin’s attack. His blade flashed in the sunlight. He stabbed, sliced and hacked, and with each swing of his arm a man was maimed or killed.

Then the other men-at-arms arrived. Pierre yelled encouragement to the newcomers, shouting: ‘Kill the heretics! Kill the blasphemers!’

The slaughter became general. The duke’s troops forced their way into the barn and began to butcher men, women and children. Pierre saw Rasteau attack a young woman with ghastly savagery, slashing her face again and again with his dagger.

Pierre followed the press of men-at-arms, always careful to be several steps behind the front line: it was not his role to risk his life in battle. Inside, a few Protestants were fighting back with swords and daggers, but most were unarmed. Hundreds of people were screaming in terror or in agony. Within seconds the barn walls were splashed with blood.

Pierre saw that at the far end of the barn there were wooden steps up to a hayloft. The steps were crammed with people, some carrying babies. From the loft they were escaping through the holes in the roof. Just as he noticed that, he heard a volley of gunfire. Two people fell back through the roof and crashed down to the barn floor. The arquebusiers of Cardinal Bottles had deployed their weapons.

Pierre turned, pushed against the press of soldiers still coming in, and fought his way outside for a better look.

The Protestants were still escaping through the roof, some of them trying to make their way down to the ground and others jumping onto the castle ramparts. The cardinal’s gunmen were shooting the escapers. The light guns with their modern firing mechanism were easy to deploy and quick to reload, and the result was a constant hail of bullets that brought down just about everyone who ventured onto the roof.

Pierre looked across the cemetery to the market square. Townspeople were running into the square, alerted, no doubt, by the sound of gunfire. At the same time, more men-at-arms were coming out of the Swan, some still chewing their breakfasts. Clashes began as soldiers tried to prevent townspeople coming to the rescue of the Protestants. A cavalryman sounded a trumpet to muster his comrades.

Then it ended as fast as it had begun. Gaston Le Pin came out of the barn with the pastor, holding his prisoner’s arm in an iron grip. Other men-at-arms followed them out. The flight of people through holes in the roof came to an end, and the arquebusiers stopped shooting. Back in the market square, captains were marshalling their men into squads to keep them under control, and ordering townspeople back to their homes.

Looking into the barn, Pierre saw that the fighting was over. Those Protestants still able to move were bending over those on the ground, trying to help the wounded and weeping over the dead. The floor was puddled with blood. Groans of agony and sobs of grief replaced the screaming.

Pierre could not have hoped for anything better. He reckoned that about fifty Protestants had been killed and more than a hundred wounded. Most had been unarmed, and some had been women and children. The news would be all over France in a few days.

It struck Pierre that four years ago he would have been horrified by the slaughter he had seen, yet today he was pleased. How he had changed! Somehow it was difficult to see how God could approve of this aspect of the new Pierre. A dim and nameless fear trickled into the depths of his mind like the darkening blood on the barn floor. He suppressed the thought. This was God’s will; it had to be.

He could envisage the eight-page pamphlets that would soon pour from Protestant printing presses, each with a grisly front-page woodcut illustration of the slaughter in the barn. The obscure town of Wassy would be the subject of a thousand sermons all over Europe. Protestants would form armed militias, saying they could not be safe otherwise. Catholics would muster their forces in response.

There would be civil war.

Just as Pierre wanted.

Sitting in the tavern of St Étienne, with a plate of smoked fish and a cup of wine in front of her, Sylvie felt hopeless.

Would there ever be an end to the violence? Most French people just wanted to live in peace with their neighbours of both religions, but every effort at reconciliation was sabotaged by men such as the Guise brothers, for whom religion was a means to power and wealth.

What Sylvie and her friends needed most was to find out how much the authorities knew about them. Whenever she could, she came to places like this tavern and talked to people involved in trying to catch heretics: members of the city militia, Guise family hangers-on, and anyone associated with Pierre. She picked up a lot of information from their loose gossip. But what she really needed was a sympathizer on the inside.

She looked up from her lunch and saw Pierre’s maid, Nath, walking in with a black eye.

Sylvie had a nodding acquaintance with Nath, but had never said more than hello to her. Now she reacted fast. ‘That looks sore,’ she said. ‘Let me buy you a drink of wine to ease the pain.’

Nath burst into tears.

Sylvie put her arm around the girl. Her sympathy was not pretended: both Sylvie and her mother had suffered violence from the two-fisted Giles Palot. ‘There, there,’ Sylvie murmured.

The barmaid brought some wine and Nath took a large swallow. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘What happened to you?’ Sylvie asked.

‘Pierre hit me.’

‘Does he hit Odette too?’

Nath shook her head. ‘He’s too scared. She’d hit him back.’

Nath herself was about sixteen, small and thin, probably incapable of hitting a man — just as Sylvie had been unable to fight back against her father. The memory made Sylvie angry.

‘Drink some more wine,’ Sylvie said.

Nath took another gulp. ‘I hate him,’ she said.

Sylvie’s pulse raced. For more than a year she had been waiting for a moment such as this. She had known it would come, if she was patient, because everyone hated Pierre, and sooner or later someone was bound to betray him.