Nine: Of the City of Paris

Approaching Paris by the Seine, Thomas sees arsonists circling a surviving calf and recalls his own brutal winter raids with Godefroy, deepening his shame. The trio enters the city through Port du Louvre amid apathetic guards and passes scenes of squalor, archers mock-shooting a corpse, and the overwhelmed Hôtel-Dieu.

Seeking lodging, they are rebuffed across the Right Bank and Île de la Cité. On the Left Bank, a moustached woman and her young accomplice swindle them with a false key to a filth-ridden room of corpses. Thomas’s angry pursuit only terrorizes an unrelated family; he retreats, guilty and defeated.

The girl keeps the useless key as a trinket. At dusk she sees an angel, is bid to sing a Norman song, and a Norman woodcarver, Jehan de Rouen, hears and invites them in. Jehan and his wife, Annette, feed them and warn of nocturnal visitors that knock—stone figures rumored to bludgeon and bite families to death. Nothing comes that night.

Moved by shared grief, Annette embraces the girl, who gives her name as Delphine; the men realize they never asked it. By morning, Thomas grows flinty and quarrels with Père Matthieu about their path. He declares he will likely leave, reveals he is excommunicate on charges of heresy, sodomy, and blasphemy—claims he says were leveled to steal his land—and dismisses hope, while Jehan sleeps on.