Page 3 of Sinful Promises

I couldn’t believe the scheduled meeting time for the tour was nine-thirty. Although it suited me perfectly, it was still so late. I presumed it was a clever ploy to keep the numbers down.

Within two minutes of my arrival, two couples congregated near the mounted soldier statue with me, and we quickly established that we had booked the same tour. In the space of five more minutes, our guide and six more people joined our group.

Clearly, I was wrong about the late start time deterring people.

Maybe it was only me who considered nine o’clock bedtime.

Some of the best tours were walking tours. The Ghosts, Mysteries, and Legends Night Walking Tour of Paris ticked a few boxes for me. Not only did the itinerary include fourteen significant sites, but it also promised a spine-tingling experience tour that would reveal the city’s sinister side.

I’d already seen one such sinister side of Paris in the form of Pierre – the cheating fucking bastard. It was time to replace him with another.

Our guide, Victoria, was a young Parisian local who was as passionate about history as me. Her stories were animated, and although I figured some of them were slightly embellished for our benefit, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment.

It was wonderful to be on the receiving end of a great tour for a change, and not have to worry about anyone else but me.

It was one of the major upsides of being single. I could do what I wanted when I wanted. Well, not exactly when I wanted. I still had a job to do after all.

Victoria took us off the beaten path I usually traveled in Paris, and as we scrambled down a set of narrow, steep stairs that were disfigured with rugged graffiti and crushed Pepsi cans, the hairs on my neck bristled. I would never have taken this route if I hadn’t been with a group of people.

At the bottom of the steps, she led us to a pillar on the Pont Neuf Bridge which had a square plaque that was written solely in French, and other than the name on the plaque and the date at the bottom being eighteenth of March 1314, I couldn’t read it.

“Does anyone know who Jacques de Molay was?”

I shot my hand up.

“Yes, Daisy?” She sniggered at me.

Shit. I’m such an idiot. I tugged my hand down and fighting the blaze of embarrassment curling up my neck, I cleared my throat. “Grand Master Jacques de Molay was the last of the Knights Templar.”

“Correct.” She turned her attention from me to the rest of the crowd.

“Molay and several other knights were charged with sodomy and blasphemy. But of course, these charges were just a ruse to have them arrested. You see, the Knights Templar had amassed a huge amount of wealth and both King Philip the Fourth and Pope Clement the Fifth, were not happy with the amount of influence the knights had. Anyone know what happened to Jacques de Molay?”

“He was burned at the stake,” I blurted.

“Correct again. Right over there, in fact.” She pointed across the river to a finger of land that jutted out into the water opposite us.

“They built a pyre over on Île aux Juifs, and at sunset, in front of a large crowd—people loved to see public executions—both Molay and Geoffroi de Charney, another Knights Templar, were burned to death.”

She turned to me. “Do you know what Molay did while he was burning, Daisy?”

“No,” I lied.

She grinned, seemingly happy that she could divulge Molay’s curse to me. “Even while the flames were burning his flesh, Molay continued to protest his innocence. He is said to have shouted a curse on the king and the pope, declaring that both men and all their descendants would die within one year and one day.”

“And did they?” One of the young women in the group asked, all wide-eyed.

“They sure did. Both died within a year of Molay’s execution. But it took a further fourteen years to kill off the king’s entire lineage.”

Ha! Victoria had taught me something—I hadn’t known that last bit about the curse.

In fact, as we walked from one historical hotspot to the next, I learned much more about this city’s dark and violent history than I’d expected to. Germany had owned up to its horrific past, and thanks to Hitler, they had such a burden in that regard.

But they made the material accessible with free museums, monuments, and detailed information of the atrocities.

The French, however, liked to pretend they were pure and that nothing like that had happened in their history.

We strolled the cobblestone streets between the Louvre and the church of Saint-Germain. And as I inhaled delicious scents of garlic and melted cheese from the nearby restaurants that were still full, Victoria told an engaging tale of the St. Bartholomew’s massacre in 1572.

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