Thierry kissed the other man and went out again into the bright bitterness. He was expected at the provost’s.

He walked quickly through midday streets, oblivious, as we almost always are, as he approached a defining moment of his life.

Looking back we can sometimes see this, but can rarely look ahead with any clarity at all. As to the future, we have guesses, hopes, plans, apprehensions. Or perhaps, for some, there is no time for any of these, caught up as they are in the hard, endlessly demanding task of living, of staying alive.

—

Yes. I truly didn’t know. We so seldom know.

Chapter IV

It was a little past midday, in fact, but the provost noted that the poet arrived at a time that could fairly be called prompt in all the circumstances. He hadn’t been specific about the hour, and Villar had been—he assumed—traversing the city.

That turned out to be correct. He had the man escorted to the ground-floor workroom in his home and had the two serjeants awaiting orders in there go out, leaving them alone. He didn’t know what Villar would tell him, and the fewer people who knew what they were hunting the better. Even among his own men.

For one thing, he had already decided this was not an assassination ordered by the jealous husband of one of the Duke de Montereau’s lovers.

He dearly wished it had been. Easier in every possible way, if so.

Villar removed the scarf he’d wrapped around his face. He’d kept it on until they were alone. De Vaux understood. The poet could be marked for life, and not usefully in his own circles, if known to be assisting the provost. He was doing it under duress. Extreme duress, really.

De Vaux felt no distress about this. You couldn’t let yourself be affected by an unexpected liking for a tavern poet. He’d have been acting properly had he sent Thierry Villar to the Châtelet for questioning last night, and Villar knew it. Questioning in the Châtelet could kill a man, even before he made it to the gallows.

“What do you have?” he asked.

He gestured to the flask of wine and the glasses on his desk. The poet shook his head, surprisingly. He did take the chair he was offered.

He spoke well, and precisely. Not a surprise, really. He had two degrees from the university and made his living (such as it was) with words.

He had been to several taverns. He reported about a barbershop, suggested talking to the barber, who had seen mounted men race by in the dark. They had claimed to be the night watch. He had heard about a tall, hooded man in a red cloak. So had de Vaux, by then.