The traitor's way

by S. Levett Yeats

For the moment we might have been riding through a city of the dead. Here in the Rue Royale there was not a soul to be seen. All the shops were shut, every door was barred, and the stones of the pavement echoed dismally to the hoofs of our horses. On either side of the narrow street the gutters, full of melted snow and mud, bubbled angrily past, and here and there, where the mouth of some blind alley, or cut-throat lane, opened out and yawned at us, the wind came bustling through, blowing damp and chill as the cavernous deeps from which it came. On each hand, the houses, old as the days of La Pucelle, raised their walls, leprous with mottlings of purple, gray, brown, and white, in story after story above us, so that but a thin slit of sky was alone visible between the pentice roofs, that seemed to totter toward each other; while from out of the dappled surface of the walls, round projecting windows and crenellated balconies thrust themselves, forming a shelter over the uneven footways that clung to the edges of the road.

Now and again we caught a glimpse of the stray figure of a woman or a child, standing at a window or leaning out of a balcony, and looking at us with an eager curiosity, and once one called down to us:

“Is it over? Did he suffer much? Did he speak?”

To all these questions, which were asked in a breath, Badehorn replied for us with an expressive shake of his head, and as he did so we reached the Rue Jeanne d’Arc, which broke in here upon the Rue Royale, and, making a half turn to the right, as we reined in to observe the view for a moment, we found ourselves facing Ste. Croix. A little to our left, above the confused mass of red and gray roofs, rose the wings of the royal palace, now dark with the shadow of a passing cloud, while beyond, above the battlements of the main tower, and half in shadow and half in light, fluttered the royal standard of France, and now and again through the bays of the windows, or past the embrasures, we caught the gleam of a pike or the flash of a lance. To our right, frowning over the Capuchin Convent, we could see the grim mass of the Hôtel de Ville, and before us, as I have said, at the end of a broad, straight road, stood the huge façade of Ste. Croix, all glistening in the sunlight, as if the very clouds would not shadow that great temple of the Lord.

Even as we stood there the chime of the vesper bells began, but above their mellow note the freshening breeze blowing from the west bore us a faint cadence from afar; the mob was singing yet around the dying victim of bigotry and superstition.

“Mon dieu!” I burst out, “that devil’s hymn will follow us forever”; and we waited no more, but turned again and trotted over the few yards that separated us from the Place du Martroi.

Here there were still a few people gathered around a scaffold that had been erected in the centre of the square. Around this scaffold was a palisade, and beyond the palisade men were busily at work giving the finishing touches to the wooden galleries that would overlook the coming scene. As we came into the square the block was being placed on the platform, and a short, broadly built man, dressed in black, with a black mask on his face, was superintending the operation.

Marcilly and I exchanged glances, but Badehorn for once began to speak:

“Ah, messieurs! It is Monsieur of Paris himself. I saw him last when the Comte de Ste. Marie died at Amboise.”

“It appears, then, that Monsieur of Paris has an assistant as well,” said a voice which appeared to spring from the ground, as it broke in upon Badehorn’s speech. Looking to my side with a start, I saw a small man dressed in a suit of orange and green satin. A short cloak of the same gay colours hung from his shoulders, while his sceptre, crowned with the head of an ass in gold, and his cap and bells showed his calling.