Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > The Burning Chambers > Status Update

‘A twelve-year-old was lynched for failing to recite his Ave Maria. When the boy was proved to be Catholic after all, the mob turned on Protestant shop keepers in Daurade and accused them of provoking the killing. Two Jewish servants in the medieval heart of the city were attacked and their beards ripped out with blacksmiths’ tongs.’

‘Piet had little faith the truce would hold. Both the Catholic and the Protestant leaders were aggrieved, believing too much had been conceded to the other side, with two few assurances given to them in return. The city was swamped with weapons and aggression. He did not think either faction would disarm, whatever the terms of the truce. Toulouse was on borrowed time.’

‘On the plains below lay Toulouse. Glorious, magnificent, glinting like a jewel in the dawn haze. She saw a wide, wide river, in front of the southern section of the city walls, like a gown of spun silver. Behind it, a myriad steeples and domes and spires, each touched by the rising sun so it seemed as if the whole city was aflame. La ville rose, Piet had called it.’

“This Edict,” Crompton countered, “like all those that have been issued before, is a thing of smoke and mirrors. It is intended to give the illusion of compromise between the demands of the Catholics - by which I mean the Duke of Guise and his allies - and the moderate Catholics within the court. The Guise faction has no intention of honouring it, none whatsoever.”