Twenty-Two: Of the Fishers of Men

At dusk on the Saône, Thomas and Père Matthieu gauge their pirate hosts: a walleyed captain, two oarsmen, and the powerful Guillaume. The crew flaunts Simon Peter’s Guild authority and mocks plague victims in the water, revealing cruelty and unstable command.

At dawn, the pirates board a granite barge and rob it without bloodshed, then continue toward Lyon. In the city the crew drinks and dances; Thomas bonds quietly with Guillaume over shared service at Crécy. Further downriver they raid a fishing boat and a fleeing sailboat. When the captain seizes caged finches, Delphine intervenes and frees them, and tension simmers.

Greed overtakes the captain after he peeks into Thomas’s satchel of coin. He orders the crew to murder their passengers at night, promising only to spare Delphine. Guillaume and the older oarsman object, but the captain asserts guild power. As the younger oarsman moves to cut Thomas’s throat and the captain goes for the priest, Guillaume abruptly shoots the knife-wielder’s partner in the back, and the captain smashes Guillaume’s skull with a falchion.

Thomas wakes, disarms and fells assailants, then engages the captain, while the younger oarsman seizes Delphine by the hair. Guillaume, half-blind with blood, pries the oarsman’s arms apart until Père Matthieu smashes him with a bowl; the oarsman is thrown overboard. The captain’s spear grazes Delphine, enraging Thomas, who severs the captain’s forearm and then deliberately cuts his throat despite Delphine’s plea for mercy.

With the captain dead, one oarsman slain and another in the river, the raft drifts into darkness on the Rhône. At first light, Thomas stitches Guillaume’s shattered scalp with the captain’s needle and twine. Guillaume survives the night—for now—leaving the battered group afloat and unresolved, but alive.