Chapter 8

Pernelle’s husband, David, had told her once that in Paris, there was a merchant who helped fugitives along the route. All she could remember about him was that his name was François, and that he sold grain at a market called Les Halles. But when she found Les Halles and saw its size, its long crowded halls and the thronged vendors’ booths and carts outside, her courage failed her. A flare of suspicion, a hard grip on her arm, and a yell for police, and she would be shut up again in the convent, or some far worse place.

Wanting a better disguise while she tried to think what to do, Pernelle plucked a broken-sided basket from a rubbish heap, tied her cloak around her waist like a rough apron, and mingled with the crowd, passing well enough as some slatternly household’s slatternly servant. She found the grain hall easily enough, a long building, well roofed but open-sided. She walked slowly along it, squinting through the dusty air and watching narrow-eyed merchants and wary buyers. Many of them argued across tables that held only empty scales. They were arguing over what didn’t yet exist, she realized. This year’s crops were still ripening in the fields. But they were banking on the good enough weather lasting long enough to produce a good enough harvest. She wondered whether that was audacity or faith, and whether there was a difference. Whichever it was, it somehow shored up her own hopes.

But how to find the man called François? Such a common name--there was no telling how many men in the grain hall were called that. She walked slowly along the hall, watching and listening, but learning nothing. Finally, she withdrew to the shade of a tree beside the market wall and sat down to eat a little of her bread and cheese and try to think. She could ask someone in the hall for François. But the way she looked, no one of quality was likely to listen to her. She looked covertly at a ragged man and boy dozing against the wall. They looked like beggars, but François sounded like a man who would give alms.

She turned toward the man. “Monsieur?” His eyes flew open and she saw that he was blind. “I beg your pardon,” she said, “But do you know a man called François who sells in the grain hall?”

The man’s whitened eyes seemed to stare at her. “Why?”

“My master sent me with a message, but I can’t—” Pernelle broke off as a familiar voice turned her throat dry with fear.

“No luck here, damn the bitch. We’ll go toward the river.”

The guard from New Converts was coming toward the tree. Pernelle slid close to the startled blind man and nestled against him. “Please,” she whispered, “help me, pretend to sleep. I beg you.” She felt his shrug and nestled her head on his bony shoulder.

Boots tramped past. She opened her eyes just enough to see the New Converts guard and his fellow going toward the market gate. When they had shoved their way through, she sat up and felt in her pocket.

“Here. It’s all I have. God keep you.” Ignoring the blind man’s questions, she thrust the remains of her bread and cheese into his hands, stood up, and hurried in the opposite direction from the way the guards had gone.

She walked along the grain hall again and again learned nothing. She asked a shopping maidservant about François and got only a shrug. By the time the bells were ringing noon, she was near panic—and tormented by the smell of meat pies from a vendor’s booth. Unable to help herself, she drifted toward the booth. Theft was a serious crime. But her body refused to consider what would happen if she was caught. When the woman in the booth bent to pick up coins she’d dropped, Pernelle snatched a pie, hid her hand in a fold of her skirt, and smiled at the vendor, rising red-faced from her search. Turning serenely toward the gate, like someone with no worries in the world, Pernelle went to find a place where she could sit and eat, and try again to think.

Outside the gate, she walked beside a high wall, toward the sound of splashing water. At the corner where the wall turned, she found herself in the midst of servants and housewives filling pottery jugs, brass ewers, and wooden buckets at spigots ranged along the walls of a fountain. The fountain had been built to look like two small but elaborate houses, with a walkway between them, and above the spigots, the stone was an elaborate fantasy of carving, wide arches, and gables. She stood in the shortest line, watching the women come and go, aching with envy of their aproned and coiffed domesticity, for the settled familiarity of their lives.

When she reached the brass spigot, she stooped and cupped her hand to drink directly from its stream. Then, looking for a place to sit away from the street, she went a little way along the paved walk between the fountain’s two “houses” and sat down against a wall. She bit into the fat meat pie, closing her eyes in thanks as its rich juices filled her mouth. When she opened her eyes to take another bite, a dirty, bony yellow dog was sitting in front of her. It looked even more gnawed by hunger than she was and tracked the pie with its soulful eyes like someone watching a slow game of tennis. She broke off a piece and held it out. The dog swallowed it at a gulp. They finished the pie together, the dog edging closer with every offering, quivering with hope and gratitude. It was only a dog, but Pernelle’s eyes pricked with tears. Dear God, she prayed, don’t let Lucie and Julie be hungry, don’t let them be lost.

A smell stronger than the dog’s assailed her, and she looked up. A tattered, barefoot young woman sat down beside her and began nursing a swaddled baby. Shoving a mass of greasy blond hair off her face, the girl looked scornfully from Pernelle to the dog, which was now lying with its head in Pernelle’s lap. Pernelle leaned forward to look at the greedily sucking baby.

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

The mother scowled suspiciously at Pernelle. “You some kind of foreigner, you?” Her voice rasped like an old gate.

The response to her unfamiliar accent woke Pernelle’s caution. The dog whined and she turned away to stroke its head.

“Give you fleas, that thing will,” the girl said. “It’s a boy.”

“The dog?”

The girl rolled her eyes. “What do I care about a dog? Can’t see its privates anyway, can I? Him.” She nodded down at the baby. “You asked.”

“What’s his name?”

“Doesn’t have one yet, he might not live.” The girl bent over the nameless infant, wetting her finger in her mouth and cleaning the little face. “The first one didn’t.”

No, Pernelle thought sadly, looking at the pair. Given what this girl’s life was probably like, and the tendency of babies to die, this one was unlikely to live long. Pernelle leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, remembering the two newborn sons she’d lost before Lucie was born. David and Charles, she’d named them. They’d been just that size in their swaddling, just that warm weight in her arms . . .

When she awoke, girl, baby, and dog were gone and the shadows had stretched eastward. Pernelle got up, washed her face and hands at the fountain, and brushed at her dirty skirts. She knew now what she was going to try next.

But first, she needed bait. Apologizing to God for more stealing, she searched for a pastry stall, but found only a stringy old woman with a tray of tarts hanging from a strap around her neck. Stealing from under the woman’s long nose was impossible, but Pernelle followed her anyway, hoping for a miracle—though not praying for one, since she could hardly pray for successful theft.

But as the tart seller reached the end of the market, a swarm of yelling, ragged children rushed from behind a huddle of loaded wagons and gave Pernelle the miracle she hadn’t asked for. The children nearly knocked the woman down. The woman shrieked and grabbed for the tarts raining from her tray, but the skinny children were faster. All except the youngest boy, and Pernelle was too fast for him. Grabbing up the last two tarts, which had fallen behind the woman, Pernelle thought that at last her luck was changing. This was going to be even easier than she’d imagined.

“Come here,” she mouthed at the outraged child, “and you can have them.”

She walked quickly toward the grain hall, not bothering to look back. No street child would abandon food, especially not something sweet. When she stopped and turned, the boy was at her skirts, scowling and holding out his hand.

“What is your name, mon petit?”

“Louis. And I am not little.”

“I beg your pardon.” He looked perhaps seven, but she knew he could be older, since he surely did not get enough to eat. “Are you big enough to remember what people say to you?”

“Like what?”

“Like a message.”

“Of course.”

“I want you to take a message into the grain hall and bring back the answer. Start with that one.”

The boy’s pinched face was eager. “I will fly like an eagle, madame, and come back in a little instant. Then I will have the tarts?”

“Yes. But before you fly, listen to the message. Ask for a man called François. Tell him a traveler wishes to see him. There.” She pointed to the shadowed alley she’d noticed between two of the halls.

“That’s all?”

“Yes. But be sure you say a traveler,” she cautioned. Traveler was a Huguenot highway code for a fugitive who needed help.

She watched him into the hall and then slipped into the alley at the hall’s end, noticing uneasily that the alley’s far end was blocked by a blank wall. After what seemed an interminable wait, a bulky figure darkened the alley’s entrance.

“Monsieur—” Pernelle stopped in confusion. The figure blocking her way was wearing skirts.

“Who are you?” the woman hissed.

She took a few steps into the alley, letting in light, and Pernelle saw that she was fifty or so, in an aproned black gown and short white veil over a close-fitting white coif.

“I want Monsieur François,” Pernelle said, thinking that she would be faster than this woman if she had to run.

“You are too late. So it’s you they’re looking for? The guards?”

Pernelle ignored that. “Too late? What do you mean?”

“They discovered him”—the woman’s voice broke—“they found out somehow that he helps—people like you. Our travelers. A mob beat him and tried to burn our house.”

“He is your husband?”

“My brother. He is like to die. So far, Lieutenant-Général La Reynie—the head of the police—has left many of us—many Huguenots—alone here in Paris. But only so far. God help you, madame, because I cannot. Forgive me.”

She was gone in a whirl of skirts, leaving the sour smell of fear behind her. Badly shaken, Pernelle crept to the alley’s mouth. Someone grabbed her skirt and she jerked away, stifling a shriek.

“It is not my fault the man wasn’t there, madame!” Her small indignant errand boy stood in front of her.

“No,” she whispered,” it isn’t.”

She held out the tarts with shaking hands. He grabbed them and stuffed one whole into his mouth as he turned and ran, nearly colliding with the pair of guards, back again and going into the grain hall.