Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

The following day, Scarface developed a high fever, and the doctors told him to prepare to meet his maker. His brother, Cardinal Louis, gave him the last rites, then he said goodbye to Anna and young Henri.

When the duchess and the next duke came out of the sick room in tears, Pierre said: ‘Coligny killed Duke Scarface,’ and he showed them the confession.

The result exceeded his hopes.

The duchess became vituperative, sputtering: ‘Coligny must die! He must die!’

Pierre told her that Queen Caterina was already making overtures of peace to the Protestants, and Coligny would probably escape punishment as part of any treaty.

At that Henri became nearly hysterical, crying in his boyish treble: ‘I will kill him! I will kill him myself!’

‘I believe you will, one day, Prince Henri,’ Pierre said to him. ‘And when you do, I will be by your side.’

Duke Scarface died the next day.

Cardinal Louis was responsible for the funeral arrangements, but was rarely sober long enough to get much done, and Pierre took charge without difficulty. With Anna’s support he devised a magnificent send-off. The duke’s body would be conveyed first to Paris, where his heart would be interred in the cathedral of Notre Dame. Then the coffin would travel in state across the country to Champagne, where the body would be buried at Joinville. Such grand obsequies were normally only for kings. No doubt Queen Caterina would have preferred less ostentation, but Pierre did not consult her. For her part, Caterina always avoided a quarrel when she could, and she probably figured that Scarface could do no more harm now, even if he did have a royal funeral.

However, Pierre’s scheme to make Coligny a hate figure did not go so smoothly. Once again Caterina showed that she could be as cunning as Pierre. She sent a copy of Poltrot’s confession to Coligny, who had retreated to the Protestant hinterland of Normandy, and asked him to respond to it. She was already planning his rehabilitation.

But the Guises would never forget.

Pierre went to Paris ahead of the duke’s body to finalize arrangements. He had already sent Poltrot there, and imprisoned him in the Conciergerie, at the western tip of the Île de la Cité. Pierre insisted on a heavy guard. The ultra-Catholic people of Paris had worshipped Scarface, and if the mob got hold of Poltrot, they would tear him to pieces.

While the duke’s corpse was on its way to Paris, Coligny made a deposition denying his involvement in the assassination, and sent copies to Queen Caterina and others. It was a vigorous defence, and Pierre had to admit — only to himself, of course — that it carried conviction. Gaspard was a heretic, not a fool, and if he had planned to assassinate Scarface, he would probably have chosen as killer someone better than the unstable Poltrot.

The last part of Gaspard’s deposition was particularly dangerous. He pointed out that in natural justice he had the right to confront his accuser in court, and he begged Queen Caterina to ensure the safety of Poltrot, and make sure he survived to give evidence to a formal investigation.

An unbiased inquiry was the last thing Pierre wanted.

To make matters worse, in the Conciergerie Poltrot retracted his confession.

Pierre had to stop the rot quickly. He went to the supreme court called the Parlement of Paris and proposed that Poltrot should be tried immediately. He pointed out that if the murderer remained unpunished, riots would break out when the hero’s body came to Paris. The judges agreed.

In the early hours of 18 March, the duke’s coffin arrived in the southern suburbs of Paris and was lodged at a monastery.

Next morning, Poltrot was found guilty and sentenced to be dismembered.

The sentence was carried out in the place de Grève in front of a wildly cheering mob. Pierre was there to make sure he died. Poltrot’s arms and legs were tied to four horses facing the four points of the compass, and the horses were whipped into motion. Theoretically, his limbs should have been torn from his torso, leaving the stump of his body to bleed to death. But the executioner botched the knots, and the ropes slipped. Pierre sent for a sword, and the executioner then began to hack off Poltrot’s arms and legs with the blade. The crowd egged him on, but it was an awkward procedure. At some point during the half-hour that it took, Poltrot stopped screaming and lost consciousness. Finally, his head with its distinctive tuft at the front was chopped off and fixed to a post.

Next day the body of Duke Scarface was brought into the city.

Sylvie Palot watched the procession, feeling optimistic.

It entered Paris from the south, by the St Michel Gate, and passed through the University district, where Sylvie had her shop. The cortege began with twenty-two town criers dressed in mourning white, ringing solemn handbells and calling upon the grieving citizens to pray for the departed soul of their great hero. Then came priests from every parish in the city, all holding crosses. Two hundred elite citizens were next, carrying blazing torches that sent up a black funeral pall of smoke and darkened the sky. The armies that had followed Scarface to so many victories were represented by six thousand soldiers with lowered banners, playing muffled drums that sounded like faraway gunfire. Then came the city militia with a host of black flags fluttering in the March wind that came off the cold river.

The streets were lined with crowds of mourning Parisians, but Sylvie knew that some of them were like her, secretly elated that Scarface was dead. The assassination had brought peace, at least for now. Within days Queen Caterina had met with Gaspard de Coligny to discuss a new edict of tolerance.

Persecution had increased during the civil war, although Protestants in Sylvie’s circle now had some protection. Sylvie had sat at Pierre’s writing desk one day, when he was away with Scarface and Odette was dining with her girlfriends, and copied out every word of his little black book while Nath played with two-year-old Alain, who could not yet talk well enough to betray the secret of Sylvie’s visit.

Most of the names were not known to her. Many would be false, for the Protestants knew they might be spied upon and often gave made-up names and other misleading information: Sylvie and her mother called themselves Thérèse and Jacqueline, and told no one about their shop. Sylvie had no way of knowing which of the unfamiliar names were real.

However, many in the book were her friends and fellow-worshippers. Those people had been discreetly warned. A few had left the congregation in fear and had become Catholic again; others had moved house and changed their names; several had left Paris and gone to more tolerant cities.

More important in the long term, Nath had become a regular member of the congregation in the attic over the stable, singing the psalms loudly and tunelessly. With her ten gold ecus in her hand she had talked about leaving Pierre’s employment, but Sylvie had persuaded her to stay and continue to spy on him for the Protestants.

The safer atmosphere was good for book sales, and Sylvie was glad to have new stock brought from Geneva by Guillaume. Poor boy, he was still in love with Sylvie. She liked him, and was grateful to have him as an ally, but could not find it in her heart to love him back. Her mother was frustrated by her rejection of an apparently ideal match. He was an intelligent, prosperous, handsome young man who shared her religion and her ideals: what more did she want? Sylvie was as mystified as Isabelle by this question.

At last the coffin came by, draped with a banner displaying the heraldic arms of the Guises, resting on a gun-carriage drawn by six white horses. Sylvie did not pray for the soul of Scarface. Instead she thanked God for ending his life. Now she dared to hope that there would be peace and tolerance.