Indeed, many in that audience may have reflected, after France’s humiliation by Germany not twenty years ago, perhaps she needed heroes with the brave spirit of Buffalo Bill to restore her honor still.

He was the toast of the town all summer.

So it was a flushed and excited Thomas who conducted Édith away from the Wild West show late that afternoon. Then, when they got to the bottom of the avenue de la Grande-Armée, instead of walking up it, they turned into the leafy Bois de Boulogne, and walked along a pleasant alley a little way.

Then Thomas kissed Édith, and she kissed him back. And he hadn’t planned it at all, but there was no one else in the alley just then, and so he suddenly went down on one knee and said: “Will you marry me?”

Chapter Eight

•  1462  •

In the tavern they called the Rising Sun, Jean Le Sourd was holding court. Le Sourd. It meant “the Deaf One.”

Not that Jean Le Sourd was deaf. Not at all. He could have heard a pin drop in the street outside. It was said he could hear men’s thoughts. Certainly, if a man even thought of reaching for a knife, Le Sourd’s own knife would be at that man’s throat before he had a chance and, like as not, have slit that throat from ear to ear, not out of malice, but just as a precaution.

Rouge Gorge, they also called him. Red Throat.

But mostly they called him Le Sourd because, if a man crossed him, he was deaf to all entreaty. There was no second chance. There was no use pleading. There was no mercy. And within the territory comprising a network of a dozen streets on one side of the old market of Les Halles, Jean Le Sourd was king. The Rising Sun tavern was where he liked to hold his court.

Despite its name, there was nothing sunny about the place. The small street in which it was to be found was dark and narrow. The alley that ran down beside it, and where Le Sourd lived, was scarcely wide enough for two cats to walk side by side, and the overhanging stories above drew so close together that a mouse could leap across, and the stench of urine clung to the walls.

And the streets had names befitting their condition: Pute-y-Muse, Lazy Whore; Merdeuse, Shit Street; Tire-Boudin, Cock Puller; and other names worse, far worse. And the people who lived there were whores, and thieves, and pickpockets, and did other things worse, far worse.

Jean Le Sourd was a large, strong man with a great mane of shaggy black hair. He sat at a wooden table in the middle of the tavern. At his table were several men, some who looked like murderers, but one of them, who had an aquiline face and a sallow complexion, looked as if he might be a defrocked priest or scholar. Standing behind Le Sourd was his son Richard, a ten-year-old boy, his face not yet hardened, but with a mop of black hair like his own.