‘I did not attend often. I found Paul’s sermons increasingly hard to swallow.’
‘You were not alone there.’
Little by little, I thought, I could coax some truth out of him. ‘He was a difficult man to get along with,’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘He was sincere in his beliefs, at least.’
‘Not in itself a virtue. The Pharisees were sincere. Luther and Calvin were nothing if not sincere.’
‘True.’ He liked this; a faint smile chased across his lips. He glanced past me again, down the aisle towards the door, and dropped his voice another notch. ‘I say nothing against the League, you understand. They may be right on some points. Many points, even. But I believe a priest’s role is to preach the word of God, and to bring harmony where there is discord, not to fuel more discord. Our duty is the cure of souls, and there is a high price to pay for disregarding that.’
‘And you think Paul paid that price?’ I said.
The twitch in his eye intensified and his face closed up. ‘You have heard the crowd out there. They have already delivered their verdict. I’m afraid I must ask you to leave now, monsieur, so that I can lock the doors.’ He paused as another animal roar rose up from the churchyard. ‘When they are inflamed, they tend to break things.’
He turned and began to walk away through the ambulatory. I hurried after him as he slipped between the rows of carved columns, and caught at his sleeve.
‘But you had noticed that he seemed troubled lately, Father?’
He walked on a few more paces then stopped and turned to face me, anxiety knotting his features. ‘I don’t know who you are, but for the sake of Saint-Séverin, leave this alone. Let us mourn him quietly. His death is tragedy enough without it becoming more ammunition for one side or the other.’
‘It is already too late to escape that, I fear.’ I gestured in the direction of the noise outside. ‘Please – if you know anything about his death, it may help to prevent more violence.’
He regarded me a moment longer, then drew me by the elbow into an unlit side chapel, out of sight.
‘You are right that he was not himself lately,’ he said, in a voice that barely reached a whisper. ‘It began no more than a month ago. He seemed all of a sudden – uncertain.’
‘About what?’
‘Everything.’ He circled a hand to encompass the chapel, the altar, the crucifix above it. ‘He grew more and more withdrawn – I might almost say fearful. He was often absent – he turned up to celebrate Mass, but between times none of us knew where he was. Once he stopped me and demanded out of nowhere to know why I had desired to be ordained, and if I still felt the same.’ He shook his head. ‘I had witnessed something similar with a fellow ordinand when I was in the seminary. If it had been anyone else, I would have said…’ He let the sentence trail off.
‘That he was losing his faith,’ I offered. I had seen it too, when I was taking holy orders; no one who has entered the religious life could fail to recognise a crisis of belief in a brother. ‘But it did not show in his sermons.’
The young curate’s eyes narrowed. ‘I thought you said you did not attend service here?’
‘I came on Sunday. He invited me in person.’
He weighed this up and nodded. ‘You are right. It was quite the opposite, in fact – the more he seemed to be unravelling in private, the more of a demagogue he became in the pulpit. As if he could drown out his doubts by shouting his convictions in public.’
‘And you have no idea what prompted this – unravelling? Was there a confrontation, perhaps?’
A guilty flicker across his face; the eye tic quickened. I waited.
‘Four weeks ago,’ he said, so quietly the words barely escaped his lips, ‘the first day of November, we had celebrated the Mass of All Souls. I stayed late after the service to clear up and lock away the silverware. I thought everyone had left, but when I came back to the ambulatory, I heard raised voices from inside this chapel. Père Lefèvre was arguing with someone.’
‘Did you hear what they said?’
‘Père Lefèvre called him Judas. The other man laughed, and said Lefèvre should be more careful with his words. I wanted to get home but I didn’t want them to think I’d been listening, so I made an obvious noise outside and they fell silent immediately. They must have thought they were alone. The other fellow slipped away down one of the side aisles and Lefèvre walked out and tried to greet me as if nothing had happened. But I could tell he was upset.’
‘Did you see the man he was arguing with?’
‘I did not catch sight of his face, but I saw what he wore.’ He hesitated, biting his lip again. ‘The black habit of the Augustinians.’
‘A friar from Saint-Victor, then?’
He seemed about to reply when I thought I caught a slight movement outside the chapel; I whipped around, but when I poked my head out, there was no one in sight in either direction. The curate had heard it too; his eyes darted around the walls like a cornered animal.
‘You must leave now. I have to lock the church.’
He chivvied me out into the damp air. When I turned the corner by the apse, I saw that the crowd had grown; people stood on tombs and jostled for position along the wall as the man with the stubble, his voice now hoarse, whipped them on to cries of bloody vengeance against the King. The mood had darkened; they brandished makeshift weapons and turned black stares on those who did not join in with the chorus of slogans.
‘Death to the House of Valois,’ I muttered, to placate a murderous-looking blacksmith who was eyeing me while pounding a hammer into his fist. The
