. long and hard ― violently, perfidiously and unscrupulously,’ Gilles added.

‘. . . my own fortune,’ Craon continued, unperturbed. ‘But as you are my sole heir, this fortune is also yours. You are very rich, my grandson. After my death you will be immensely rich. You will be master of Blaison, Chemillé, La Mothe-Achard, Ambrières, Saint-Aubin-de-Fosse-Louvain, seigneuries that come from your father. From your mother, you will have those of Briollay, Champtocé, Ingrandes, La Bénate, Le Loroux-Botereau, Sénéché, Bourgneuf and La Voulte. Then, thanks to the marriage that I made for you with the Thouars heiress, you have Tiffauges, Pouzauges, Chabanais, Gonfolenc, Savenay, Lambert, Gretz-sur-Maine and Châteaumorant. Truly, my grandson, you are one of the wealthiest lords of your time.’

Gilles had not been listening to this tedious enumeration.

‘You know very well these things mean nothing to me,’ he said.

‘You know how to spend better than anybody. But that’s how it is. The grandsons squander what the grandfathers have built up.’

‘You seem to forget,’ Gilles replied, ‘that I have had another master than you, another mistress, I don’t know quite how to put it.’

On the contrary, Craon knew perfectly well how to put it.

‘That boy-girl, known as the Maid, who was condemned by the church and burnt last year at Rouen? You always did keep deplorable company!’

Gilles preferred the litanies of the Janus-Jeanne to his grandfather’s enumerations of all his worldly goods.

‘Jeanne the holy, Jeanne the chaste, Jeanne the victorious under the standard of St Michael! Jeanne the monster in woman’s shape, condemned to the stake for sorcery, heresy, schismaticism, change of sex, blasphemy and apostasy,’ he recited.

‘So there you are, hanging strangely between heaven and hell. I confess I would rather have had for my heir an old, rough soldier who drank himself stupid, raped women, and was as intelligent as a donkey!’

‘I swore to follow her wherever she went, to heaven or to hell.’

‘And she ended up on the witches’ stake! You frighten me, my grandson. May God preserve you from excessive sanctity. At least all I can be reproached with is having built up my fortune without too much scruple and I have never killed any man unless self-interest absolutely required it. I fear those who kill for disinterested motives! Why should they ever stop? Greed kills a thousand times fewer men than fanaticism. So my greed will place an immense fortune at the service of your fanaticism. I tremble to think what will come of it all!’


The villeins of the seigneury of Machecoul-en-Rais were the first to know the answer to that question. There Gilles founded a community dedicated to the Holy Innocents. Nothing seemed to him too fine or too dear to honour those young boys killed on King Herod’s orders. Eighty men ― a dean, cantors, archdeacons, vicars, scholars, treasurers, coadjutors ― maintained in splendour, devoted themselves to their memory. The ornaments and treasury of the community rivalled those of a cathedral. The ceremonies and processions through the countryside displayed a pomp that dumbfounded those who saw them pass. The gold, the purple, the minever, the silk, the lace, the brocade formed a background worthy of the monstrances, ciboria, candlesticks and croziers held aloft. The canons wore capa magna, the cantors wore mitres, the very horses advanced with censers swinging from their necks and caparisoned like prelates.

But it was by the choir that the master set greatest store. Out of personal inclination and because nothing was fitter than a choir of angelic boys to honour the innocents slaughtered at Bethlehem, Gilles was tireless in recruiting and examining the young singers of his foundation from the point of view of their voices ― and the rest. Indeed it was not enough that they should have a divine voice, since, being divine, they should also look divine in face and body. As for the music that they were taught, Gilles expected only one thing: that it should break his heart.