Paris: The Novel

no respecters of persons. One of the men nearest the door quietly rose, with a knife in his hand, and stood behind the visitor, awaiting a signal from Le Sourd.
    At the same time, the stooping man at the back of the room shifted position slightly, so that he was in the shadows. But he spoke a word to his neighbor, who walked over to Le Sourd and whispered something in his ear.
    Le Sourd looked at the intruder thoughtfully, while everyone waited. They all knew what the young man did not: that his chances of leaving the Rising Sun alive were not good. Not good at all.

    Guy de Cygne was in Paris for only a week, and this was his second day. His parents had made him come and, from the moment he came through the Porte Saint-Jacques, he couldn’t wait to leave.
    For Paris was rotten. It had been rotten a century ago when the Black Death came and killed nearly half its people. It was even more rotten now.
    Worse, despite plague, famine and war, like a pestiferous plant, Paris had grown. On the Right Bank, they had built a new fortification line, hundreds of yards beyond the old wall of Philip Augustus, so that the Louvre was now well inside the city gates, and the former Temple too. Country lanes had turned into narrow streets, orchards into tenements, streams into open sewers. And two hundred thousand souls now dwelt in this dark, godforsaken city.
    Had God truly forsaken Paris? Certainly. For over a century, God had forsaken France itself. And why? Few Frenchmen had any doubt.
    Because of the Templar’s curse.
    Young Guy de Cygne’s father had explained it to him when Guy was still a boy.
    “After King Philip the Fair arrested the Templars, he tortured some of them for years. He got his puppet pope to disband the order all over Christendom. Finally, he took Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master—a man of unimpeachable character—and burned him at the stake. And as he burned, de Molay cursed the king and all who had destroyed the Templars.”
    “And did it work?” Guy had asked.
    “Certainly.”
    Within the year, both the king and his pope were dead. But that was only the beginning. Within a few years, all King Philip’s sons were dead as well, and another branch of the family, the Valois, took over.
    Even that was not enough. King Philip’s daughter had married the Plantagenet king of England, and soon the pushy Plantagenets were after the throne of France as well.
    For more than a hundred years, an on-and-off war had continued. Before and after the Black Death, England’s longbowmen had smashedthe chivalry of France at the battles of Crécy and Poitiers. The Plantagenets had taken Aquitaine and half of Brittany. Scotland, France’s ancient ally, had deflected the English for a while. But at the end of the dismal fourteenth century, the king of France had gone mad; and in the chaos that ensued, the greedy Plantagenets came back once more, to see what else they could grab.
    By the time Guy’s father was a boy, Henry V of England had smashed the French at Agincourt, and married the French king’s daughter. It seemed the Plantagenets would be kings of France as well.
    And then, at last, God showed his mercy. Just as He had a thousand years before, when He inspired Saint Geneviève to save Paris from Attila the Hun, He sent the peasant girl Joan of Arc to inspire the men of France. Her career had been brief. But her legacy had lived on. Gradually the English had been pushed back. By now they were almost out.
    So had the Templar’s curse been lifted from forsaken France? Had Christendom returned to its normal state?
    Perhaps. At least there was now a single pope, in Rome. After seventy years of French popes at Avignon, then another half century of rival popes and antipopes, the Catholic schism was over.
    But what was Paris? A sink of iniquity. A place of darkness. And judging by what he saw before him now, in the tavern of the Rising Sun, it did not seem to Guy de Cygne that there was any good day dawning.

    Le Sourd gave a single rap upon the table, and the tavern fell silent. He gazed at the young noble.
    “You are a stranger here, monsieur. Can we help you?” The tone was quiet, but it was clear that he was in charge.
    “I am searching for something,” Guy replied calmly. He was not sure how much danger he was in, but ever since he was a little boy, his father had told him: “In front of animals, or a mob, never show fear.”
    “What is it you seek?”
    “A gold pendant. It was on a chain. It is not of