Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

As soon as the raft touched the far bank, Pierre started giving orders. In a crisis, frightened people would obey anyone who sounded as if they knew what they were doing. ‘The duke must be carried to the château as quickly as possible without jolting him,’ he said. ‘Any bumping may cause him to bleed to death. We need a flat board.’ He looked around. If necessary, they could break up the timbers of the little ferry. Then he spotted a cottage nearby and pointed to its entrance. ‘Knock that front door off its hinges and put him on that. Then six men can carry him.’

They hurried to obey, glad to be told what to do.

Gaston Le Pin was not as easily bossed around, so to him Pierre gave suggestions rather than orders. ‘I think you should take one or two men and horses, go back across the river, and chase the assassin. Did you get a good look at him?’

‘Small, dark, about twenty-five, with a small tuft of hair at the front.’

‘That’s what I saw, too.’

‘I’ll get after him.’ Le Pin turned to his henchmen. ‘Rasteau, Brocard, put three horses back on the ferry.’

Pierre said: ‘I need the best horse. Which of these is fastest?’

‘The duke’s charger, Cannon, but why do you need him? I’m the one who has to chase the shooter.’

‘The duke’s recovery is our priority. I’m going to ride ahead to the château to send for surgeons.’

Le Pin saw the sense of that. ‘Very well.’

Pierre mounted the stallion and urged it on. He was not an expert horseman, and Cannon was high-spirited, but, fortunately, the beast was tired after a long day, and submitted wearily to Pierre’s will. It trotted off, and Pierre cautiously urged it into a canter.

He reached the château in a few minutes. He leaped off Cannon and ran into the hall. ‘The duke has been wounded!’ he shouted. ‘He will be here shortly. Send at once for the royal surgeons! Then prepare a bed downstairs for the duke.’ He had to repeat the orders several times to the stunned servants.

The duchess, Anna d’Este, came hurrying down the stairs, having heard the commotion. The wife of Scarface was a plain-looking Italian woman of thirty-one. The marriage had been arranged, and the duke was no more faithful than other men of wealth and power; but, all the same, he was fond of Anna and she of him.

Young Henri was right behind her, a handsome boy with fair curly hair.

Duchess Anna had never spoken to Pierre or even acknowledged his existence, so it was important to present himself to her as an authoritative figure who could be relied upon in this crisis. He bowed and said: ‘Madame, young Monsieur, I’m sorry to tell you that the duke is hurt.’

Henri looked frightened. Pierre remembered him at the age of eight, complaining that he was considered too young to take part in the jousting. He had spirit, and might become a worthy successor to his warrior father, but that day was far off. Now the boy said in a voice of panic: ‘How? Where? Who did it?’

Pierre ignored him and spoke to his mother. ‘I have sent for the royal surgeons, and I have ordered your servants to prepare a bed here on the ground floor so that the duke will not have to be carried upstairs.’

She said: ‘How bad is the injury?’

‘He has been shot in the back, and when I left him he was unconscious.’

The duchess gave a sob, then controlled herself. ‘Where is he? I must go to him.’

‘He will be here in minutes. I ordered the men to improvise a stretcher. He should not be jolted.’

‘How did this happen? Was there a battle?’

Henri said: ‘My father would never be shot in the back during a battle!’

‘Hush,’ said his mother.

Pierre said: ‘You are quite right, Prince Henri. Your father never fails to face the enemy in battle. I have to tell you there was treachery.’ He recounted how the assassin had hidden himself, then fired as soon as the ferry left the shore. ‘I sent a party of men-at-arms to chase after the villain.’

Henri said tearfully: ‘When we catch him he must be flayed alive!’

In a flash, Pierre saw that if Scarface died, the catastrophe could yet be turned to advantage. Slyly he said: ‘Flayed, yes — but not before he tells us whose orders he is following. I predict that the man who pulled the trigger will turn out to be a nobody. The real criminal is whoever sent him.’

Before he could say whom he had in mind, the duchess said it for him, spitting the name in hatred: ‘Gaspard de Coligny.’

Coligny was certainly the prime suspect, with Antoine de Bourbon dead and his brother Louis a captive. But the truth hardly mattered. Coligny would make a useful hate figure for the Guise family — and especially for the impressionable boy whose father had just been shot. Pierre’s plan was firming up in his mind when shouts from outside told him the duke had arrived.

Pierre stayed close to the duchess as the duke was brought in and settled in a bed. Every time Anna expressed a wish, Pierre repeated it loudly as an order, giving the impression that he had become her right-hand man. She was too distraught to care what he might be scheming, and in fact appeared glad to have someone beside her who seemed to know what needed to be done.

Scarface had recovered consciousness, and was able to speak to his wife and son. The surgeons arrived. They said that the wound did not appear fatal, but everyone knew how easily such wounds turned lethally putrescent, and no one rejoiced yet.

Gaston Le Pin and his two henchmen returned at midnight empty-handed. Pierre got Le Pin in a corner of the hall and said: ‘Resume the search in the morning. There’ll be no battle tomorrow: the duke will not recover overnight. That means you’ll have plenty of soldiers to help you. Start early and spread your net wide. We must find the little man with the tuft.’

Le Pin nodded agreement.

Pierre stayed at the duke’s bedside all night.

When dawn broke, he met Le Pin in the hall again. ‘If you catch the villain, I will be in charge of the interrogation,’ he said. ‘The duchess has decreed it.’ This was not true, but Le Pin believed it. ‘Lock him up somewhere nearby then come to me.’

‘Very well.’

Pierre saw him off with Rasteau and Brocard. They would recruit all the helpers they needed along the way.

Pierre went to bed soon afterwards. He would need to be quick-witted and sure-footed over the next few days.

Le Pin woke him at midday. ‘I’ve got him,’ he said with satisfaction.

Pierre got up immediately. ‘Who is he?’

‘Says his name is Jean de Poltrot, sieur de Méré.’

‘I trust you didn’t bring him here to the château.’

‘No — young Henri might try to kill him. He’s in chains at the priest’s house.’

Pierre dressed quickly and followed Le Pin to the nearby village. As soon as he was alone with Poltrot, he said: ‘It was Gaspard de Coligny, wasn’t it, who ordered you to kill Duke Scarface?’

‘Yes,’ said Poltrot.

It soon became evident that Poltrot would say anything. He was a type Pierre had come across before, a fantasist.

Poltrot probably had worked as some kind of spy for the Protestants, but it was anyone’s guess who had told him to kill Scarface. It might have been Coligny, as Poltrot sometimes said; it might have been another Protestant leader; or Poltrot might have had the idea himself.

That afternoon and over the next few days he talked volubly. Most likely half of what he said was invented to please his interrogator, and the other half to make himself look better. The story he told one day was contradicted by what he said the next. He was completely unreliable.

Which was not a problem.

Pierre wrote out Poltrot’s confession, saying that Gaspard de Coligny had paid him to assassinate the duke of Guise, and Poltrot signed it.