Hunger, and the desire to delay the gloomy prospect of returning to my rooms alone, drove me to the Swan and Cross at the end of the street, a noisy, amiable tavern where groups of students gathered after the day’s lectures to argue philosophy and politics over a jug of cheap wine and exchange flirtatious insults with the working girls they could not afford. The air inside was thick with a fug of wet wool, roasting meat, tobacco and male sweat, but I was glad of the warmth. I turned at the sound of a whistle, to see a round-faced, cheerful whore I vaguely recognised by sight, perched sideways on a boy’s lap and winking at me while he chatted to his friends as if he had not noticed her.
‘Is it my lucky night tonight, Doctor? You look wet through. Let me warm you up.’
I offered a mock bow. ‘Forgive me, mademoiselle, but I’m afraid I’m not stopping.’
She pouted her rouged lips and squeezed her arms together to push up her breasts so that they threatened to spill over her tight bodice. ‘You always say that.’
‘Because I am always busy. Besides, you have company.’
‘Pfft.’ She waved a hand over the boy’s head. ‘Can’t be good for you. A man needs pleasure in his life, Doctor. Too much of this—’ she tapped the side of her head – ‘and not enough of this—’ she grabbed at her crotch, an exaggerated, masculine gesture. ‘Makes you ill. That’s why you’re getting thin.’
‘You could be right,’ I said, almost smiling as I edged by. ‘Maybe next time.’
She slapped me on the backside as I passed. ‘Well, I won’t wait around for ever. Carpe diem, Doctor.’
I raised an eyebrow and she grinned.
‘I see you’ve got some Latin out of these students.’
‘That’s about all I get out of them and their moth-eaten purses, stingy little ballsacks.’ She leaned over the shoulder of the boy she was sitting on and drank deep from his beaker of wine; I took advantage of the outcry to slip through the crowd. I could not afford the girls either, though they did not know this; they looked at me and saw well-cut clothes – good leather boots, black wool breeches and a short doublet of black leather with puffed shoulders, tailored in London in the days when I had a little money to spare, and carefully mended since – assumed an income to match and badgered me accordingly. Not that I was tempted by this one or any of her colleagues; still, I found her diagnosis depressingly accurate.
Gaston, the square-shouldered proprietor, appeared out of the fray as he always did, with the lock-jawed expression of a pikeman facing down a foe. When he caught sight of me, he elbowed his way through his customers without ceremony, wiping his hands on his apron and holding them out as if I were a nephew returned from a distant war. I submitted to his embrace as he wrapped me in his familiar smell of garlic and cooking fat.
‘Gaston,’ I said, finally disentangling myself, ‘do you remember a young theologian called Paul Lefèvre, used to come in here three years back when he was at the Sorbonne? Skinny fellow, reedy voice.’
Gaston squeezed his eyes shut and cocked his head to one side, as if listening for the answer. ‘That was the lad who went to be priest at Saint-Séverin, no? Adam’s apple like a snake swallowing a rat?’ He tugged the flesh of his neck out to illustrate the point.
‘That’s him. He used to take rooms on the rue Macon – do you know if he still had them?’
‘Had?’ His eyebrow shot up; no sharper eyes or ears on the Left Bank than Gaston’s, so they said. ‘Why, what’s happened to him?’
‘I mean – since I’ve been away,’ I corrected, quickly. I needed to act before Paul’s murder became common knowledge. ‘Was he still living there?’
He shrugged. ‘Far as I know. We haven’t seen him here for a long time – too holy for the likes of us now.’ He gave a throaty chuckle. ‘I remember him all right – used to sit there on the edge of the group as if he wanted the courage to throw himself into the conversation. Everyone always talked over him. You know he joined the League? Maybe he got more respect from them.’ He sucked in his fleshy cheeks to show what he thought of that. ‘He stopped coming in here after he was ordained priest – this would be after you’d gone to England, Signor Bruno. Turned into quite the hellfire preacher, you know, inflaming his congregation against the King and his appointed heir. Me and the wife changed church because of it, must have been a year back. I don’t go to Mass for a bellyful of politics. Mind you—’ he paused to draw breath, raising a forefinger like a schoolmaster – ‘I’m not saying I’d be happy to see some whoreson Protestant wearing the crown of France, but you have to respect—’
‘Thanks, Gaston. I have to go now,’ I said, patting him on the chest as I turned for the door.
‘Got any money for me?’ He made it sound good-humoured, but I was stung by guilt; he had given me too many suppers on credit lately, and the bill was mounting.
‘I will have it for you very soon, I swear. I just need to – get my affairs in order. Any day now.’ By which I meant, whenever the King deigns to send for me.
‘Ah, I’m only messing, lad – go on, what’ll you have? Put some meat on your bones. You look hungry.’
‘Thank you – perhaps later.’
‘You say that to all the girls,’ he called after me as
