Now that the uproar around them had diminished somewhat, the men became aware of sounds outside the butcher hall. The bells of Notre Dame were pealing; now the bells of Sainte-Geneviève church picked up the message; then Saint-Jacques, Saint-Pol, Saint-Germain PAuxerrois, Saint-Jean. One by one the churches, the cloisters and chapels joined in; the air was filled with the sounds of all the bells of Paris, large and small.
“What can be going on there?” Thibert asked. “It’s still too early for vespers.”
Not even Legoix’s servants, who entered the murky slaughterhouse with burning torches, could explain these solemn sounds; many of the men hurried outside to join the curious crowds filling the streets in the hope that Paris was suddenly about to be delivered from its besiegers. The peals lessened and died away; shortly after that, word began to circulate from the direction of the Grand Pont that Orléans and Armagnac had been excommunicated and declared oudaw in the church of Notre Dame because they had committed rebellion, robbery and sacrilege. The solemn ceremony had been performed, amidst the ringing of bells and with smothered candles, in the name of Urban, the new pope in Rome. The Duke of Burgundy had been present, along with several high dignitaries of the Church.
“Did you know that, lads?” Caboche asked the men in the hall. He stood in the doorway, his hands under his apron. The students had lowered themselves from the crossbeams, ready at the first sign of trouble to dash away through streets and alleys to their own quarters. The tramps and beggars, who had been the first to vanish when the bells began to chime, had now unobtrusively turned up again. They liked to be near Caboche, whose bold comments gave them the opportunity to revile the authorities in public at the tops of their lungs, to shout complaints, curses and ridicule, to air emotions which must otherwise be prudently repressed.
“Berry — the old swine — has also been declared outlaw,” the skinner said. “Was I right when I said the old greasebag was busy selling us hide and hair to the Armagnacs? Come with me to the Hôtel de Nesle, comrades, and let’s give him a professional skinning in his own courtyard!”
The noisy crowd pressed around Caboche; a few students had already snatched torches from the rings on the wall. But Thomas Legoix, followed by his younger brothers, leapt forward from the group of guildmasters who stood in conference near the slaughter blocks.
“Have you gone crazy, Simon Caboche?”
Roughly, Legoix thrust aside the men who had already drawn their knives, bent upon blood and booty — it was said that the vaulted cellars of the Hotel de Nesle were full of wine and salted meat.
“Are you all stark mad? You couldn’t do anything more stupid! If you don’t know how to keep your hands to yourself and can’t obey our decisions, get out! Blockheads and rioters do our cause more harm than good!”
“I don’t give a damn about your blather.” Caboche cursed and put his hands on his hips. “Where’s the grub? That castle is full of it from top to bottom! Believe me, that pig Berry knows how to live; he takes good care of himself and his pages.”
For further news, Maitre de Troyes had gone with a few butchers to the great island in the Seine; now he pushed his way back inside past the men who blocked the entrance. He knew from those who shouted and stamped impatiently outside the door, what was going on in the slaughterhouse.
“Listen!” he shouted, hoarse from the effort of trying to make himself heard. “Legoix, Caboche, listen! Berry fled from Paris tonight and the Hotel de Nesle has been assigned to the Earl of Arundel and his English!”
The angry shouts of the comrades grew louder. They were too hungry and too poor to listen to the voice of reason.
“So the foreigners will fill their bellies with good French food bought and paid for with our centimes!” Caboche leered at the anxious face of Thomas Legoix, who exerted great self-control to keep from assaulting the skinner with his fists. Legoix himself had no love for the English bowmen, but neither had he any stomach for a fight inside the walls of Paris on the eve of a joint action against the Armagnacs.
“Send Caboche and all these fellows away,” Maitre de Troyes whispered sharply into Legoix’s ear. “It’s impossible to hold a meeting with the skinner here. He keeps interrupting and confusing the whole issue with his insolent mouth. Tell the men now that they must be at Saint-Jacques gate at midnight tomorrow and then let us go to your house to talk this over with the guildmasters. We don’t need all these people here. We have to get away from Caboche’s people, those loud mouths and the scarecrows too …”
Legoix objected; he was afraid that the skinner and his friends would not leave willingly. However, after a brief consultation with Thibert and Saint-Yon, he ordered Caboche out of the butcher hall. Strangely enough, no one protested. Caboche left at once, followed by nearly all the workers and servants, the students and vagrants. Legoix led those who remained — no more than thirty or forty men — through a hidden passage to his own house which lay beyond the slaughterhouse and its adjoining stables and barns. He was not happy with the silent withdrawal of Caboche and his men. He kept asking himself what the skinner was up to: it seemed obvious that he was up to something — Simon Caboche had never yet shown a willingness to obey a command or fulfil a request without an argument or a show of reluctance. Legoix decided that something must be done about Caboche, even if it meant strangling him with his bare hands, if the skinner persisted by his bestial behavior in endangering the business of the burghers. Legoix had no intention of letting himself or his colleagues lose their authority to a brute who was interested only in his own profit.
The common people, who until recently had looked up to the slaughterhouse owners as powerful protectors and trusted them as leaders, were tending more and more to support Caboche, because he appealed to their basest instincts. The dream of recovering prosperity, public order and moderate taxes under a fair administration would undoubtedly go up in smoke if Simon Caboche were allowed free rein to stir up the hungry mob.
Legoix was forced, more quickly than he had expected, to make a decision about the fate of the skinner. Just before daybreak Maitre de Troyes came pounding on his door. The surgeon pointed to the glowing eastern sky.
“That’s outside the city,” Legoix said. He threw a cloak over his shirt and went up the street with de Troyes. “The Armagnacs have set fire to another town.”
“No no, Legoix,” the surgeon said despondendy. He sighed. “That’s the work of our friend Caboche. He convinced five or six hundred men with his wild talk. My apprentice told me that after dusk armed men were seen on their way to an unguarded spot in the city walls. Now they’ve come back — the ignorant idiots — and they’re bragging about their bravery. Instead of the Hotel de Nesle, they have sacked Bicetre castle — and set it on fire.”
At dawn the streets of Saint-Jacques streamed with people who had taken part in the nocturnal expedition. Those who were not too drunk to talk — they had loaded vats of wine from Berry’s cellar onto carts and taken them along — were able to tell marvelous tales about the splendor of the ducal palace. They showed splinters of gold leaf which they had wrenched from the walls, and fragments of Berry’s precious stained glass windows. Gold and silver, however, were nowhere to be found — could it really be true that the Duke had stripped himself to the bone to aid Orléans in his struggle? The plunderers had found only the collections famed far and wide: books, stuffed animals, relics of saints in golden shrines. They had thrown the books and beasts into the fire, but they fell eagerly upon the relics. All day, laden with booty, singing and shouting, the butcher apprentices and their hangers-on marched through the streets of Paris, led by Simon Caboche, who had dressed himself in one of Berry’s scarlet ceremonial robes, heavy with golden ornaments.