Si Deus Nobiscum: A Polish-Lithuanian Scion Quest
- Thread starter Rolman
- Start date
- Mature Historic
- Location
- Somewhere in Randlandia
I believe the battle of Lepanto happened less than a year ago in quest. Perhaps Stanislaw is devoted to Our Lady of Victory, given the proximity and our martial inclinations.
What about our MC taking up the Our Lady of Good Counsel variety,a man like Stanislaw going through so many tribulations could see the benevolent figure of Mary as the light that brightens his path the true refuge to hold his own on the ideological storm that was Europe by then.
- Location
- Europe
I voted right after getting to the end of the update without first checking what had been posted, so it's my fault if anything.
Chaos Undivided
Self-Requested Ban
Considering she won by only one vote over Martin this would be very important act of religious tolerance *wink wink*
Prologue II. 2:18 A.M., August 24, 1572. Paris, Kingdom of France.
- Location
- United States
The bells were ringing. You could hear them quietly, through Pierre's walls. You both skipped first sleep. You stared at the goblet of wine on the table in front of you. Three of them downed since dusk and your nerves still weren't settled. A Calix. Oh, God help me. Sweat beaded on your forehead; it was a hot summer, a contrast to the bitter winter, and you were on the top floor.
It could escalate into siege at any moment. They said that, atop the city walls, the campfires of the Huguenot army silhouetted all the farmhouses for a quarter-mile. The streets remained oddly quiet. You and Pierre tried to talk about anything else. Classes, court gossip, the conduct of local eccentrics, the books in the house's little library, even the civil war in Scotland.
"Matins," you said in near-monotone, noting the bells. You didn't look up. "Should we go? I think we should go."
Pierre d'Arces was like a less-preening version of his younger brother; the seventeen-year-old Guy, with his earrings and massive ruff, a rising favorite of Prince Henri, the Duke of Anjou. You concentrated on the wine, but could see him in your periphery: feet on the table, fashionable clothes, arms crossed, and drunker than you, his haybale of dirty blonde hair unstyled and falling over his eyes. You liked that he had never seen battle. He carried that levity with him, a young man who never saw three-thousand throats slashed at Moncontour, begging for mercy. You knew him from classes at the Collège, where he was one of its most humanistic Catholics. He lodged at the compound of a relative of the Maugirons, a bit west of the Louvre – where you are now.
"What's that supposed to do?" he asked, slurring ever so slightly in his Provencal accent.
You waved your hand in the air weakly, as if swatting at an unseen fly. "I don't know… Anything. Feel God? I just – I don't know, something in my soul. All of a sudden I'm just… I don't know, just uneasy. I just want to pray."
"You sin or something? Or just everything?"
"Yes – no – just everything. We're always sinning anyway."
Pierre hummed in contemplation. "I get it. Feels wrong to show up a bit drunk, though."
"I think the Lord would mind more if we didn't show up at all."
Humming again from Pierre, this time with nodding. "I mean, s'pose we've got nothing better to do. Let's just not wake Master Maugiron if he isn't up already."
The two of you quietly cleared the table and laced up your shoes. Stepping out of the small courtyard out of the storehouse first floor and into the street, you didn't realize that you had been sweating in there. Your armpits turned into pockets of cold in the midnight chill, still humid with August's mugginess. The cicadas whirred. You appreciated Pierre's acquiescence; he's the type to skip Mass.
So dark out; scarcely any candles in the windows. The near-full moon did most of the work.
Nightwatchmen, cudgels and lanterns in hand, paused to appraise the two of you before moving on. They could tell the clothes were expensive. But still, you tensed ever so slightly. They were quicker to fine, "fine," beat, or arrest these days – those who were still showing up to work, that is. A pair of militiamen walked by, carrying between them a coil of heavy chains. You two made your way toward the Forum Les Halles, to the Church of the Holy Innocents. You looked up at the night sky, as if to Heaven, relieved that you'd find yourself on consecrated ground soon.
But are those people… Singing? It travels strangely over the rooftops, around corners and down the narrow alleys. You couldn't pinpoint exactly from where. It was harsh, rowdy singing – the singing of revelers – but you could've sworn most taverns were closed, especially by now. A silhouette leaned out their window overhead, looking up and down the street, swearing at the noise. You looked at Pierre, and Pierre looked at you. You made a quizzical gesture; he shrugged. "Drunks," he said.
But as you approached the Forum, it just got louder and louder. And the louder it got, the stranger it grew. You could've sworn that, intermixed with the recognizable melodies of drinking songs and secular ballads were the screams of women, cries that sounded like Latin or Greek. At a crossroads, a disheveled, barefoot man rounded the corner, his hair wild and beard untrimmed. He wore the robes of a monk, but was clearly anything but. "Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! The Lord works His wonders!" he repeated, over and over.
"Madmen, too," you quipped to Pierre.
From some window above, a harsh voice called out: "shut the fuck up 'fore I come down there and thrash you, Goddamn you, people are trying to –"
"Look down the street, my good man!"
A pause. "What's happening? What is that?"
"Nothing less than the righteousness of God and King made manifest! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!" And he went running back from whence he came.
You heard a flimsy hinged window snap shut, and you and Pierre continued your approach toward the intersection. After a few moments, a tough-looking man – his fleshy face like a bulldog's in the dim of his oil lamp – came thumping out a front door by the corner. He looked like a specter in his undyed, canvas tunic. He looked down the street, then at you two, then back at the street. "Sirs," that word didn't come easily for him – seigneurs – "any idea what he was on about?"
You walked over and joined him. Several blocks away, maybe a hundred meters or a bit more, like the fireflies in the Tuileries' gardens, flickers of torches and lanterns danced around. You could now hear the ruckus more clearly, and discerned just barely the scene: a mass of people dancing and singing around a mounted figure, himself gesticulating flamboyantly, silhouetted against the sliver of moonlit horizon. Some simply stood close to the thresholds of houses, staring. Windows swung open overhead. The procession seemed to be heading your way at a moderate pace.
The scruffy townsman snorted. "Where are Montmorency's boys when you need 'em, eh?" He bowed curtly but deeply in your direction and shuffled back toward his door muttering oaths against lords and crazies alike.
"A procession for Saint Bartholomew's Day?" asked Pierre. You could tell straightaway he was grasping for any rational explanation.
"Ain't no procession I've ever seen, sir," shouted the peasant over his shoulder, slamming his front door behind him.
Your feet took up a mind of their own. You were dragging yourself legs first toward the procession, to meet them. You couldn't explain why. You just know something was wrong. Your hand rested idly – or not so idly – on the hilt of your rapier. You felt as if you were going into battle. Yet you carried yourself forward.
"Radzivilius Princeps," calls out Pierre, sounding further and further away. "Stanislas, where are you going? This can't be anything good! Stanislas!"
Something is not right. Something is not right. Something is not right. Your stomach dropped though you could scarcely say why. Pierre's protests were drowned out as you wade into the throng, pushing through their passive resistance as a man does a wave. The commoners scarcely acknowledged you, as they hollered religious slogans and called for the final eradication of the treacherous Hugues. They were drunk, or in a trance, or both. You have seen this before, when they slashed throats and likewise let themselves be run through or shot by the guard over the Croix de Gastines. A few of the fanatics wore white ribbons in their hats, or tied around their arms.
"And did the Savior not say," shrieked the mounted man, their de facto leader, in the dress of a wealthy merchant or poor noble, "that His apostles ought to sell their cloaks to buy swords? My good men, today the sword is drawn, the blade of our Holy Father and God!" What a misreading of scripture, though you supposed not many of them could read.
And at last you saw it, like a cross between a slaughtered hog and a face with smallpox, lashed at the feet to a twenty-foot rope, itself attached to the saddle of the rider: the naked body of what was probably a middle-aged or even elderly man. It's hard to tell. Headless, handless, a crimson crater for a groin. Spine peeked out of the neck that remained. New blood leaked out over congealed clots. His death-pale skin was smeared in mud or horseshit and scrawled on with cheap, now-running ink. You couldn't make out the words, but it was the shaky hand of printers' journeymen and lesser burghers. His wrist-stumps were raised high over his head, as if in celebration, dragging along. Countless lacerations, punctures, and livid hematomas. The ants and flies knew of him already, and made their presence known. The smell of beer, wine, and cheap aqua vitae hung in the air. Body odor and blood, too. It poured out of their mouths and pores, the little knicks on their workmen's hands, sweating feverishly with maddened eyes. You remembered why your kind must control this kind. You forgot about Tatjana in your disgust.
You had seen worse, but this was up there. Flashes of the prisoners at Moncontour in your mind, stacked like cordwood. The faces of the mob – by God, you thought you recognized some of them – they had that expression. Men ready to kill usually look flat, or even scared, but men ready to murder…You made your way to the sidelines, soiling your shoes ankle-deep in sewage, standing in the drainage ditch by a house's threshold. You began shouting questions to passersby, as the mutilated corpse began to be obscured by endless pairs of legs. "Who is that? Who was he?" They didn't hear you, or didn't care to answer. The parade was longer than you anticipated; you realized now it stretched down the street for blocks. That explained the noise. Mainly men, but a few wild-eyed women, too. A motley mix of scum, burgher, and even a few in trunk hose and ruffs.
A huntsman's horn sounded somewhere to the front, and a commotion broke out. The procession ground to a halt, men behind bumping and shuffling into the men in front of them, cursing in confusion. You waded through the shit and piss and garbage, willing to bear it in order to bypass the dense mass on the cobbles. You reached the front to find a two-ranked line of militiamen, gripping matchlocks with lit wicks that illuminated wide-eyed faces, along with others bearing halberds, truncheons, and falchions. Their mustachioed leader brandished a wheellock pistol wildly, while the mounted ultra-Catholic managed to get those closest to him to shut up.
"Listen!" said the captain, "there's a curfew! You're all committing a crime, you all can be clapped in irons! What's the meaning of this? We have orders from the King himself to –"
"And we have orders from His Most Christian Majesty, too, sir captain, and orders from the King above even him!" The crowd cheered. The rider looked down to those around him. "Make way, make way, let the good man see the good work."
The human sea slowly began to part, the order spreading from mouth to mouth, ear to ear. "Don't be afraid, good captain," said the leader. "You're a good man." You began to shimmy back into the crowd in the meantime, trying to get closer to the body.
The captain's eyes darted across the scene, and squinted at the night-shrouded corpse within the sea of fanatics. He turned to his men. "Butcher the wretches if they so much as lay a finger on me."
A meek, in-unison "yessir" was the reply.
"I assure you we mean you and your men no harm," said the mounted man, seemingly with genuine warmth. A jarring tone to hear in a time and place like this. By now, over your head, many were leaning out their windows.
Like you, the captain waded into the choppy waters and, stopping upon sighting the body, scrunched his face up in disgust. "So you're confessing to murder now, too? God's wounds, what have you done to him?"
The procession leader shouted so that all could hear: "this is the body of Gaspard de Coligny!" The crowd roared with delight, their faces delirious with glee, and he stretched his voice to its limits. Your mouth dropped open and your breath stopped. "The devil of Chatillon! Architect of the Michelade! Heretic, traitor, enemy of Christ and the King! And was it a mere mob that killed him?"
"NO!" bellowed those in earshot.
"No indeed! There was no need to lynch the bastard! Rather, it was the Switzers themselves! The Crown is with us! The men of Lord Guise were there by orders of His Most Christian Majesty, and they say the palatials move through the city as we speak, bringing God's justice on the heads of the pagans, the monk-killers, the nun-defilers! Their streets are chained off and their doors broken down! Such is the will of the Lord!" The crowd was frenzied from God and drink. Your mind drifted to lessons on the Shepherds' Crusade during the Dark Ages.
Meanwhile, a little party of zealots had split off and congregated around the front door closest to you, while the militiamen tentatively advanced to within a few feet of the mob. Most of the rioters were clearly drunk, blabbering on and swaying in place. "Hey. Heeeey," said one of them. "I think that heathen cunt Feray lives here. That washerwoman with the fat arse. I think we ought to see if her and her little brood of pagans are home." He began to pound on the door, making filthy jokes and hurling death threats at anyone inside.
"Gilles, Gilles, Gilles," said one of his companions, drunkenly clapping a hand on his shoulder. "We can stab 'er but we ought not stick 'er," eliciting obnoxious laughter from those within earshot. "We can kill 'em alright, but God never said nothin' about that. I don't think –"
"Shut the hell up if you want a piece of her," snarled the brute.
A nearby militiaman chimed in. "You ought listen to your friend, dog. If you kill those Hugues, you kill them straightaway. No torture, no abuse. Take their things, slash their throats, I don't give a shit. But don't drag it out. Or else I'll kill you. I'll follow you in there and watch you do it if I must. Understand?" Some of his comrades grunted in concurrence, beating clubs and the flats of blades on their palms, adjusting their morions and leather skullcaps. One or two of the meeker devils peeled off, but the rest remained defiant.
You wished such a statement would surprise you. But most of the militia, themselves Parisians, were sympathetic to the Catholic camp at the very least. More than an open secret. This guardsman, comparatively speaking, was attempting to offer a mercy to the scapegoats cowering within. Your blood froze and your stomach flipped in horrid anticipation. Gilles continued to pound on the door, and a muffled male voice shouted from within: "we've got daggers, we've all got daggers! I'm warning you!"
The men at the door jeered in defiance, and Gilles started kicking, asking if anyone had a hatchet. Deeper in the house, you could hear the screams and sobs of women and little ones. You felt acutely in that moment that you were watching a city at last slip into madness, utter madness. Peasant ignorance, wrath, lust, greed – all of the capital sins and especially the mortal ones – were sure to run amok. It was a matter of minutes or seconds. You turned your attention back to the captain and the rider.
The mounted man was leaning down to speak more quietly into the ear of the captain, whose expression of anger had been replaced with shock. The throngs kicked Coligny and spit on him to pass the time. "I need to talk to my lieutenants about this," said the captain, now in earshot. "Stay where you are, sir." And the crowd made way to let him leave. His seconds strode out to meet him, and they huddled together in conference.
The beastly Gilles snapped through a section of door at about shin height, and the closest guardsmen again exhorted him to "make it quick." He squatted down and jammed his arm through the hole, reaching up and around to unlatch the bolt. Suddenly, his face contorted and he let out a roar, springing backwards onto his ass atop a pile of moldy turnips. Swearing up a storm, he cradled a slit wrist spurting blood. "God help me, this'll kill me, I'll die by Tuesday," he said pitifully, his voice cracking, cowardice at last shining through. He began to shriek at the door petulantly, alternating with whimpering and cursing. A disembodied arm swung a meat cleaver wildly, blindly, out the hole in the door. It would've been humorous on a normal day, to see a scoundrel receive such comeuppance. But not now.
The mob did not share the wounded man's fear. None tried to staunch his bleeding, but those who had been paying attention to the little scene entered into convulsions of rage. Hands reached for the cleaver, boots thudded on the door. A big bald peasant, well over six feet tall, shouldered and elbowed his way through the growing sideshow crowd, a mattock over his shoulder. "Outta my way!" he bellowed, and began to work through the door with horrifying speed.
"The back! Take the children out the back! Where's Jehan's sword?! Go and fetch your uncle's sword!" cried the voice on the other side of the door.
You were being jostled now as eager murderers-to-be made their way toward the house; they pushed you forward toward the militia line who parted before you at the sight of your garb. The guard captain stepped forward once more. You could only see the back of his head now, but he moved and projected with authority. "By order of His Most Christian Majesty the King, the time has come for holy purification. With the death of the heretic Admiral, our city at last may be cleansed. It is no longer a crime to harm a heathen Hugues. But if a finger is laid on any true Christian, his life or his property, the man who did it will surely hang." The crowd raised their fists or dropped to their knees in triumph. The captain turned around and returned to the ranks. "Lord have mercy on us," he said to himself, just barely audible over the chaos, and he crossed himself.
As if on cue, a great swing from the ogre's mattock ripped the door off its hinges at last, and the zealots poured in, followed by a few guardsmen shouting their warnings. You felt numb and on fire all at once, and you realized your armpits were ice cold with perspiration. The militia locked arms, and began to walk backwards together, slipping slightly on cowpies and slimy lettuce. Likewise, the ghoulish procession began to inch forward, breaking out into a popular hymn.
Mother of God – where's Pierre?! You had forgotten about him the haze of this insanity. You ran down the street the way you came, looking for him. Black dots and strange shadows danced across your vision, your heart pounded in your ears.
"Polonius!" called out a voice. It sounded underwater. "Back here!" You nearly slipped and fell as you skidded on your sewage-covered heels. You whipped around, hand death-gripping the hilt of your sword. You breathed at last at the sight of your friend. "What in God's name is happening? I could hear some of it, something about the Admiral?"
"They slaughtered him, man," you said, dimly aware of your near-hysterical tone. "They're animals. They're animals. Satan behind their eyes," you said, crossing yourself upon mentioning the Adversary. "I don't know what they did with his head. Or his hands, or his clothes, or anything. Christ, they said it's by royal decree."
"Savior's death! They really said that?"
"Yes! That the Switzers and Guises did it themselves. I watched them break into a house, do God knows what to the heretics inside."
Pierre paled a ghostly white. "Do you hear that?"
Blood rushed through your ears. "No. No, what is it?"
"Gunfire. I can't tell where from. By God – Princeps, I think we should head home."
All around you, people – especially young men – seemed to be leaving their houses. Some groggy and confused, others fearful and awake, all speculating. They dressed themselves as they walked, and adjusted the weapons on their hips.
What did you say to Pierre?
[] "You're right."
Return with Pierre to his compound and wait out whatever this is.
[] "I need to pray. I need to pray. God help us."
Continue on to the Church of the Holy Innocents. Pierre may peel off.
[] "I need to get to the Louvre, figure out what's going on."
Make your way to the King's palace. Better chances of Pierre coming with, but he seems awfully shaken up.
[*Guy is real, Pierre is fictional.]
It could escalate into siege at any moment. They said that, atop the city walls, the campfires of the Huguenot army silhouetted all the farmhouses for a quarter-mile. The streets remained oddly quiet. You and Pierre tried to talk about anything else. Classes, court gossip, the conduct of local eccentrics, the books in the house's little library, even the civil war in Scotland.
"Matins," you said in near-monotone, noting the bells. You didn't look up. "Should we go? I think we should go."
Pierre d'Arces was like a less-preening version of his younger brother; the seventeen-year-old Guy, with his earrings and massive ruff, a rising favorite of Prince Henri, the Duke of Anjou. You concentrated on the wine, but could see him in your periphery: feet on the table, fashionable clothes, arms crossed, and drunker than you, his haybale of dirty blonde hair unstyled and falling over his eyes. You liked that he had never seen battle. He carried that levity with him, a young man who never saw three-thousand throats slashed at Moncontour, begging for mercy. You knew him from classes at the Collège, where he was one of its most humanistic Catholics. He lodged at the compound of a relative of the Maugirons, a bit west of the Louvre – where you are now.
"What's that supposed to do?" he asked, slurring ever so slightly in his Provencal accent.
You waved your hand in the air weakly, as if swatting at an unseen fly. "I don't know… Anything. Feel God? I just – I don't know, something in my soul. All of a sudden I'm just… I don't know, just uneasy. I just want to pray."
"You sin or something? Or just everything?"
"Yes – no – just everything. We're always sinning anyway."
Pierre hummed in contemplation. "I get it. Feels wrong to show up a bit drunk, though."
"I think the Lord would mind more if we didn't show up at all."
Humming again from Pierre, this time with nodding. "I mean, s'pose we've got nothing better to do. Let's just not wake Master Maugiron if he isn't up already."
The two of you quietly cleared the table and laced up your shoes. Stepping out of the small courtyard out of the storehouse first floor and into the street, you didn't realize that you had been sweating in there. Your armpits turned into pockets of cold in the midnight chill, still humid with August's mugginess. The cicadas whirred. You appreciated Pierre's acquiescence; he's the type to skip Mass.
So dark out; scarcely any candles in the windows. The near-full moon did most of the work.
Nightwatchmen, cudgels and lanterns in hand, paused to appraise the two of you before moving on. They could tell the clothes were expensive. But still, you tensed ever so slightly. They were quicker to fine, "fine," beat, or arrest these days – those who were still showing up to work, that is. A pair of militiamen walked by, carrying between them a coil of heavy chains. You two made your way toward the Forum Les Halles, to the Church of the Holy Innocents. You looked up at the night sky, as if to Heaven, relieved that you'd find yourself on consecrated ground soon.
But are those people… Singing? It travels strangely over the rooftops, around corners and down the narrow alleys. You couldn't pinpoint exactly from where. It was harsh, rowdy singing – the singing of revelers – but you could've sworn most taverns were closed, especially by now. A silhouette leaned out their window overhead, looking up and down the street, swearing at the noise. You looked at Pierre, and Pierre looked at you. You made a quizzical gesture; he shrugged. "Drunks," he said.
But as you approached the Forum, it just got louder and louder. And the louder it got, the stranger it grew. You could've sworn that, intermixed with the recognizable melodies of drinking songs and secular ballads were the screams of women, cries that sounded like Latin or Greek. At a crossroads, a disheveled, barefoot man rounded the corner, his hair wild and beard untrimmed. He wore the robes of a monk, but was clearly anything but. "Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! The Lord works His wonders!" he repeated, over and over.
"Madmen, too," you quipped to Pierre.
From some window above, a harsh voice called out: "shut the fuck up 'fore I come down there and thrash you, Goddamn you, people are trying to –"
"Look down the street, my good man!"
A pause. "What's happening? What is that?"
"Nothing less than the righteousness of God and King made manifest! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!" And he went running back from whence he came.
You heard a flimsy hinged window snap shut, and you and Pierre continued your approach toward the intersection. After a few moments, a tough-looking man – his fleshy face like a bulldog's in the dim of his oil lamp – came thumping out a front door by the corner. He looked like a specter in his undyed, canvas tunic. He looked down the street, then at you two, then back at the street. "Sirs," that word didn't come easily for him – seigneurs – "any idea what he was on about?"
You walked over and joined him. Several blocks away, maybe a hundred meters or a bit more, like the fireflies in the Tuileries' gardens, flickers of torches and lanterns danced around. You could now hear the ruckus more clearly, and discerned just barely the scene: a mass of people dancing and singing around a mounted figure, himself gesticulating flamboyantly, silhouetted against the sliver of moonlit horizon. Some simply stood close to the thresholds of houses, staring. Windows swung open overhead. The procession seemed to be heading your way at a moderate pace.
The scruffy townsman snorted. "Where are Montmorency's boys when you need 'em, eh?" He bowed curtly but deeply in your direction and shuffled back toward his door muttering oaths against lords and crazies alike.
"A procession for Saint Bartholomew's Day?" asked Pierre. You could tell straightaway he was grasping for any rational explanation.
"Ain't no procession I've ever seen, sir," shouted the peasant over his shoulder, slamming his front door behind him.
Your feet took up a mind of their own. You were dragging yourself legs first toward the procession, to meet them. You couldn't explain why. You just know something was wrong. Your hand rested idly – or not so idly – on the hilt of your rapier. You felt as if you were going into battle. Yet you carried yourself forward.
"Radzivilius Princeps," calls out Pierre, sounding further and further away. "Stanislas, where are you going? This can't be anything good! Stanislas!"
Something is not right. Something is not right. Something is not right. Your stomach dropped though you could scarcely say why. Pierre's protests were drowned out as you wade into the throng, pushing through their passive resistance as a man does a wave. The commoners scarcely acknowledged you, as they hollered religious slogans and called for the final eradication of the treacherous Hugues. They were drunk, or in a trance, or both. You have seen this before, when they slashed throats and likewise let themselves be run through or shot by the guard over the Croix de Gastines. A few of the fanatics wore white ribbons in their hats, or tied around their arms.
"And did the Savior not say," shrieked the mounted man, their de facto leader, in the dress of a wealthy merchant or poor noble, "that His apostles ought to sell their cloaks to buy swords? My good men, today the sword is drawn, the blade of our Holy Father and God!" What a misreading of scripture, though you supposed not many of them could read.
And at last you saw it, like a cross between a slaughtered hog and a face with smallpox, lashed at the feet to a twenty-foot rope, itself attached to the saddle of the rider: the naked body of what was probably a middle-aged or even elderly man. It's hard to tell. Headless, handless, a crimson crater for a groin. Spine peeked out of the neck that remained. New blood leaked out over congealed clots. His death-pale skin was smeared in mud or horseshit and scrawled on with cheap, now-running ink. You couldn't make out the words, but it was the shaky hand of printers' journeymen and lesser burghers. His wrist-stumps were raised high over his head, as if in celebration, dragging along. Countless lacerations, punctures, and livid hematomas. The ants and flies knew of him already, and made their presence known. The smell of beer, wine, and cheap aqua vitae hung in the air. Body odor and blood, too. It poured out of their mouths and pores, the little knicks on their workmen's hands, sweating feverishly with maddened eyes. You remembered why your kind must control this kind. You forgot about Tatjana in your disgust.
You had seen worse, but this was up there. Flashes of the prisoners at Moncontour in your mind, stacked like cordwood. The faces of the mob – by God, you thought you recognized some of them – they had that expression. Men ready to kill usually look flat, or even scared, but men ready to murder…You made your way to the sidelines, soiling your shoes ankle-deep in sewage, standing in the drainage ditch by a house's threshold. You began shouting questions to passersby, as the mutilated corpse began to be obscured by endless pairs of legs. "Who is that? Who was he?" They didn't hear you, or didn't care to answer. The parade was longer than you anticipated; you realized now it stretched down the street for blocks. That explained the noise. Mainly men, but a few wild-eyed women, too. A motley mix of scum, burgher, and even a few in trunk hose and ruffs.
A huntsman's horn sounded somewhere to the front, and a commotion broke out. The procession ground to a halt, men behind bumping and shuffling into the men in front of them, cursing in confusion. You waded through the shit and piss and garbage, willing to bear it in order to bypass the dense mass on the cobbles. You reached the front to find a two-ranked line of militiamen, gripping matchlocks with lit wicks that illuminated wide-eyed faces, along with others bearing halberds, truncheons, and falchions. Their mustachioed leader brandished a wheellock pistol wildly, while the mounted ultra-Catholic managed to get those closest to him to shut up.
"Listen!" said the captain, "there's a curfew! You're all committing a crime, you all can be clapped in irons! What's the meaning of this? We have orders from the King himself to –"
"And we have orders from His Most Christian Majesty, too, sir captain, and orders from the King above even him!" The crowd cheered. The rider looked down to those around him. "Make way, make way, let the good man see the good work."
The human sea slowly began to part, the order spreading from mouth to mouth, ear to ear. "Don't be afraid, good captain," said the leader. "You're a good man." You began to shimmy back into the crowd in the meantime, trying to get closer to the body.
The captain's eyes darted across the scene, and squinted at the night-shrouded corpse within the sea of fanatics. He turned to his men. "Butcher the wretches if they so much as lay a finger on me."
A meek, in-unison "yessir" was the reply.
"I assure you we mean you and your men no harm," said the mounted man, seemingly with genuine warmth. A jarring tone to hear in a time and place like this. By now, over your head, many were leaning out their windows.
Like you, the captain waded into the choppy waters and, stopping upon sighting the body, scrunched his face up in disgust. "So you're confessing to murder now, too? God's wounds, what have you done to him?"
The procession leader shouted so that all could hear: "this is the body of Gaspard de Coligny!" The crowd roared with delight, their faces delirious with glee, and he stretched his voice to its limits. Your mouth dropped open and your breath stopped. "The devil of Chatillon! Architect of the Michelade! Heretic, traitor, enemy of Christ and the King! And was it a mere mob that killed him?"
"NO!" bellowed those in earshot.
"No indeed! There was no need to lynch the bastard! Rather, it was the Switzers themselves! The Crown is with us! The men of Lord Guise were there by orders of His Most Christian Majesty, and they say the palatials move through the city as we speak, bringing God's justice on the heads of the pagans, the monk-killers, the nun-defilers! Their streets are chained off and their doors broken down! Such is the will of the Lord!" The crowd was frenzied from God and drink. Your mind drifted to lessons on the Shepherds' Crusade during the Dark Ages.
Meanwhile, a little party of zealots had split off and congregated around the front door closest to you, while the militiamen tentatively advanced to within a few feet of the mob. Most of the rioters were clearly drunk, blabbering on and swaying in place. "Hey. Heeeey," said one of them. "I think that heathen cunt Feray lives here. That washerwoman with the fat arse. I think we ought to see if her and her little brood of pagans are home." He began to pound on the door, making filthy jokes and hurling death threats at anyone inside.
"Gilles, Gilles, Gilles," said one of his companions, drunkenly clapping a hand on his shoulder. "We can stab 'er but we ought not stick 'er," eliciting obnoxious laughter from those within earshot. "We can kill 'em alright, but God never said nothin' about that. I don't think –"
"Shut the hell up if you want a piece of her," snarled the brute.
A nearby militiaman chimed in. "You ought listen to your friend, dog. If you kill those Hugues, you kill them straightaway. No torture, no abuse. Take their things, slash their throats, I don't give a shit. But don't drag it out. Or else I'll kill you. I'll follow you in there and watch you do it if I must. Understand?" Some of his comrades grunted in concurrence, beating clubs and the flats of blades on their palms, adjusting their morions and leather skullcaps. One or two of the meeker devils peeled off, but the rest remained defiant.
You wished such a statement would surprise you. But most of the militia, themselves Parisians, were sympathetic to the Catholic camp at the very least. More than an open secret. This guardsman, comparatively speaking, was attempting to offer a mercy to the scapegoats cowering within. Your blood froze and your stomach flipped in horrid anticipation. Gilles continued to pound on the door, and a muffled male voice shouted from within: "we've got daggers, we've all got daggers! I'm warning you!"
The men at the door jeered in defiance, and Gilles started kicking, asking if anyone had a hatchet. Deeper in the house, you could hear the screams and sobs of women and little ones. You felt acutely in that moment that you were watching a city at last slip into madness, utter madness. Peasant ignorance, wrath, lust, greed – all of the capital sins and especially the mortal ones – were sure to run amok. It was a matter of minutes or seconds. You turned your attention back to the captain and the rider.
The mounted man was leaning down to speak more quietly into the ear of the captain, whose expression of anger had been replaced with shock. The throngs kicked Coligny and spit on him to pass the time. "I need to talk to my lieutenants about this," said the captain, now in earshot. "Stay where you are, sir." And the crowd made way to let him leave. His seconds strode out to meet him, and they huddled together in conference.
The beastly Gilles snapped through a section of door at about shin height, and the closest guardsmen again exhorted him to "make it quick." He squatted down and jammed his arm through the hole, reaching up and around to unlatch the bolt. Suddenly, his face contorted and he let out a roar, springing backwards onto his ass atop a pile of moldy turnips. Swearing up a storm, he cradled a slit wrist spurting blood. "God help me, this'll kill me, I'll die by Tuesday," he said pitifully, his voice cracking, cowardice at last shining through. He began to shriek at the door petulantly, alternating with whimpering and cursing. A disembodied arm swung a meat cleaver wildly, blindly, out the hole in the door. It would've been humorous on a normal day, to see a scoundrel receive such comeuppance. But not now.
The mob did not share the wounded man's fear. None tried to staunch his bleeding, but those who had been paying attention to the little scene entered into convulsions of rage. Hands reached for the cleaver, boots thudded on the door. A big bald peasant, well over six feet tall, shouldered and elbowed his way through the growing sideshow crowd, a mattock over his shoulder. "Outta my way!" he bellowed, and began to work through the door with horrifying speed.
"The back! Take the children out the back! Where's Jehan's sword?! Go and fetch your uncle's sword!" cried the voice on the other side of the door.
You were being jostled now as eager murderers-to-be made their way toward the house; they pushed you forward toward the militia line who parted before you at the sight of your garb. The guard captain stepped forward once more. You could only see the back of his head now, but he moved and projected with authority. "By order of His Most Christian Majesty the King, the time has come for holy purification. With the death of the heretic Admiral, our city at last may be cleansed. It is no longer a crime to harm a heathen Hugues. But if a finger is laid on any true Christian, his life or his property, the man who did it will surely hang." The crowd raised their fists or dropped to their knees in triumph. The captain turned around and returned to the ranks. "Lord have mercy on us," he said to himself, just barely audible over the chaos, and he crossed himself.
As if on cue, a great swing from the ogre's mattock ripped the door off its hinges at last, and the zealots poured in, followed by a few guardsmen shouting their warnings. You felt numb and on fire all at once, and you realized your armpits were ice cold with perspiration. The militia locked arms, and began to walk backwards together, slipping slightly on cowpies and slimy lettuce. Likewise, the ghoulish procession began to inch forward, breaking out into a popular hymn.
Mother of God – where's Pierre?! You had forgotten about him the haze of this insanity. You ran down the street the way you came, looking for him. Black dots and strange shadows danced across your vision, your heart pounded in your ears.
"Polonius!" called out a voice. It sounded underwater. "Back here!" You nearly slipped and fell as you skidded on your sewage-covered heels. You whipped around, hand death-gripping the hilt of your sword. You breathed at last at the sight of your friend. "What in God's name is happening? I could hear some of it, something about the Admiral?"
"They slaughtered him, man," you said, dimly aware of your near-hysterical tone. "They're animals. They're animals. Satan behind their eyes," you said, crossing yourself upon mentioning the Adversary. "I don't know what they did with his head. Or his hands, or his clothes, or anything. Christ, they said it's by royal decree."
"Savior's death! They really said that?"
"Yes! That the Switzers and Guises did it themselves. I watched them break into a house, do God knows what to the heretics inside."
Pierre paled a ghostly white. "Do you hear that?"
Blood rushed through your ears. "No. No, what is it?"
"Gunfire. I can't tell where from. By God – Princeps, I think we should head home."
All around you, people – especially young men – seemed to be leaving their houses. Some groggy and confused, others fearful and awake, all speculating. They dressed themselves as they walked, and adjusted the weapons on their hips.
What did you say to Pierre?
[] "You're right."
Return with Pierre to his compound and wait out whatever this is.
[] "I need to pray. I need to pray. God help us."
Continue on to the Church of the Holy Innocents. Pierre may peel off.
[] "I need to get to the Louvre, figure out what's going on."
Make your way to the King's palace. Better chances of Pierre coming with, but he seems awfully shaken up.
[*Guy is real, Pierre is fictional.]
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- Location
- United States
Also wanna give a big thanks to @Oxford and @Baltika9 for giving a good-taste check on this update before it came out! I'm actually pretty new to creative writing, and this is probably some of the heaviest stuff I've ever written. Even though it's been nearly half a millenium, this stuff needs to be treated with respect!
Duke William of
I really need to finish my quests. :V
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And this is why I voted for religious tolerance. 
[X] "I need to get to the Louvre, figure out what's going on."
[X] "I need to get to the Louvre, figure out what's going on."
- Location
- the Republic
- Pronouns
- He/They
[X] "I need to get to the Louvre, figure out what's going on."
- Location
- Somewhere in Randlandia
[X] "I need to pray. I need to pray. God help us."
Theaxofwar
Definitely not a Bunny Cat in disguise.
- Location
- Standing right behind you
[X] "You're right."
Well I know which one is gonna win, but I'll still vote for the safe option in this case.
Well I know which one is gonna win, but I'll still vote for the safe option in this case.
- Location
- NY
[X] "I need to get to the Louvre, figure out what's going on."