by Kate Mosse
Cornelia straightened her cloak and hood, picked up the basket, and walked out of the alleyway into the humid, grey afternoon with what dignity she could muster.
Fury kept her going all the way back to the river, determined in some way to be avenged on the men who’d treated her so badly. Little by little, her anger abated. Though she had failed to deliver her message to Pieter Reydon, she had at least learnt something: that Madame Reydon had accompanied her husband to Paris, and that she was an honourable woman.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The landlord came back into the chamber, still holding his papers.
‘You sent them away?’
‘The gentlemen were sorry to have disturbed you.’
Minou raised her eyebrows. ‘Gentlemen, I think not! Did you know them, monsieur?’
He shook his head. ‘The girl was a foreigner.’
‘That makes no difference,’ she said sharply.
He shrugged. ‘One good turn deserves another, Madame Reydon. To return to our negotiations…’
‘I shall not yield, monsieur. Terms were agreed prior to our arrival. My brother, who is in the service of Admiral de Coligny, was acting on our account.’
‘If you are not able to pay this little more, Madame Joubert, there are many others who will,’ the landlord replied. ‘Paris is full. There are no beds to be found.’
‘It is not a matter of whether or not we can afford it, but a matter of you honouring our contract. Terms were accepted and confirmed. If you now consider the fee you set too low, I am sorry for it. But we agreed a fair price for the month.’
‘As I say,’ he repeated in his oily voice, ‘one good turn deserves another.’
Minou held his gaze, then she sighed. ‘I will pay an additional livre each week. Will that satisfy you?’
The landlord bowed. ‘It has been a pleasure doing business with you, Madame Reydon. By your leave.’
‘Good day.’
When he had gone, Minou looked back over the alleyway. She was appalled that the royal city contained such men. It was not just their manner, but their lack of shame. Then again, she supposed that, given the court was so decadent, it should be no surprise that such wild and licentious behaviour dripped down like poison into every corner of Paris. She hoped the girl had got away unmolested.
Minou picked up her summer gloves from the oak chest. She had been looking forward to today’s visit to the Sainte-Chapelle, an outing originally planned to please her aunt. She refused to allow the machinations of their landlord or brazen street behaviour to cast a shadow over the day.
She smiled. It was odd that her spirits should be lifted at the thought of standing in a place of worship dedicated to the faith against which she had turned her face. But elegance and grace of architecture or music knew no boundaries. Minou thought of her younger self – her Catholic self – hurriedly sewing the Shroud of Antioch into the lining of her old green cloak, marvelling at the history of the relic in her hands. Then her face clouded when she remembered Vidal. She assumed the Shroud was still in his possession.
‘Maman, what is a fille de l’escadron?’
She spun round. ‘Marta! I did not know you were here.’
Her daughter joined her at the window. ‘Does not the Queen Mother have a daughter of her own?’
‘She does,’ Minou replied carefully.
‘Then why did that man say she would have her for one of her own?’
Minou sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter. The men have gone now.’
‘What’s a courtesan?’
‘Marta, that’s enough,’ she said firmly. ‘It does not concern us.’
Marta pushed out her bottom lip, preparing to sulk, then thought better of it. ‘As you wish.’
Minou narrowed her eyes. ‘You are not to pursue this matter, do you heed me?’
The child was a picture of innocence. ‘Oui, Maman.’
‘Marta, I mean it. You must not bother Great-aunt Boussay with your questions – nor indeed anyone else – otherwise you will not accompany us to the Sainte-Chapelle.’
Marta gave a fleeting curtsey, then skipped from the chamber.
‘Marta, I am not in jest!’ Minou called after her without any hope of receiving an answer. She did not wish her daughter to be less curious, but sometimes she wished she was less sharp of hearing.
The wedding was tomorrow, followed by three days of feasting. After that, they were free to depart Paris. Though she had not seen Aimeric until today, and she had hopes that would change once the ceremony was over, Minou couldn’t deny it would be a relief to deliver Salvadora back to her house in Toulouse, then to be able to return home to Alis and her own bed. Minou had received a letter from her sister two days past, full of how she could now walk a few steps with the help of a stick. The postscript from Monsieur Gabignaud, the physician, had been more measured and cautious about his patient’s recovery. Minou was keen to see for herself.
She smiled, thinking of the beauty of Languedoc in the dog days of summer. The woods would be alive with colour: copper and burnished gold and the claret-red of the vines, the orchards plump with apples and pears. There, the air would be clear and the sunflowers would be singing their last yellow song on the plains.
Life would go on. Though her grief for her father would be sharper in Puivert, their lives would return to normal. Paris would be no more than a memory.
* * *
Salvadora Boussay sat on the high-backed wooden settle in the entrance hall, waiting patiently for her niece. Her hands fidgeted in her lap. She was as excited as a girl making her first holy communion.
In the dark days of her marriage, imagining herself in the streets of the holiest city in France had given her courage to withstand the beatings and her husband’s disdain. But now, today at last, she was to go to the Sainte-Chapelle, a place she had dreamed of seeing her entire life, a place of devotion where—
‘Great-aunt Salvadora, may I ask you a question?’
Salvadora looked up to see Marta racing down the last flight of stairs, launching herself over the last two steps to land in front of her on the floor on all fours like a cat.
Her hand flew to her chest. ‘Really! Where are your manners?’
Marta scrambled up and gave an insolent curtsey. ‘Sorry. I want to ask you a question. What is a fille de l’escadron?’
Salvadora’s cheeks flamed. ‘Where on earth did you hear such terrible – not in this house, I warrant.’
‘Spoken here but some few minutes past.’
‘I cannot believe that.’
Marta had the grace to blush. ‘Perhaps not in the house, I admit. I heard a gentleman. Below in the street. Maman reprimanded him and sent that weasel of a landlord to speak to him. Is a fille de l’escadron the same as a courtesan?’
‘Good lord,’ Salvadora said, scandalised that the seven-year-old girl knew such a word, ‘that is quite enough!’
‘But if no one will tell me, how shall I learn? It is important for girls to learn. Aunt Alis always says so.’ Marta tapped her head. ‘I won’t tell anyone you told me. I’ll keep the information here with my other secrets.’
‘You are a precocious child.’
Marta tilted her head. ‘And I am fair, too. Everyone says so.’
‘It was not a compliment,’ Salvadora said, flapping her fan. ‘You are too boastful.’
‘Maman always says we should not lie,’ Marta countered. ‘So will you tell me what a fille de l’escadron is?’
‘I most certainly will not. And I shall speak to your mother about your behaviour, make no mistake.’
Marta frowned, then quit the hall as quickly as she had taken possession of it.
The air settled once more.
Salvadora was shocked by the entire conversation. She continued to wave her fan so vigorously that three more feathers came loose. Such ill behaviour. She didn’t know what girls were coming to these days.
* * *
‘But what does it mean, nurse?’ Marta
pestered.
Having abandoned her great-aunt in the hall, Marta had run all the way up to the nursery at the top of the house. She was now precariously perched in the open window swinging her legs back and forth against the wall.
‘Stop that fussing, mademoiselle; you’ll leave marks on the wall.’ The harried nurse was bouncing Jean-Jacques up and down in her arms, trying to calm him. His belly was swollen with colic.
‘I won’t tell anyone you told me.’
‘I haven’t time for your questions, can’t you see your brother is upset?’
‘He’s always upset. If you just answer, I will go and leave you in peace. Cross my heart and hope to die.’
‘Don’t say such things.’
The little boy gave another wail of pain.
‘Pretty please,’ Marta coaxed in her sweetest voice.
The nurse huffed. ‘The Queen Mother is rumoured – I don’t know if this is true, mind – to have some … ladies who … in return for favours – trinkets, jewellery and what have you – persuade gentlemen to tell them secrets.’
‘So escadron means “friends”, does it?’
‘Hush, little man,’ the nurse cooed. ‘That’s better, mon brave.’
‘Nurse! What does escadron mean?’
‘A group.’
‘A group of girls?’ Marta frowned, trying to put the pieces together. ‘Is courtesan a saucy word?’
Finally, she had the nurse’s full attention. ‘Mademoiselle Marta!’
Realising she had gone too far, Marta kissed her little brother on his hot, flushed cheek.
‘Thank you, nurse!’ she said, and skipped from the room.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Minou and Salvadora stood arguing, in their outdoor clothes, face to face in the hall, the air hot with angry words.
‘I cannot believe you would be so unwise as to answer such a question,’ Minou said furiously. ‘Marta is far too young to understand.’
Salvadora snapped her fan shut. ‘If you give me leave to speak, Niece.’
‘I know she is persistent, but there are ways of deflecting—’
‘Do you truly think,’ Salvadora interrupted, ‘that I would tell Marta, who is a wilful child and liable always to speak out of turn, that filles de l’escadron are courtesans who seduce men for secrets?’
Behind them, the front door opened and Piet entered.
‘What on earth is happening? The whole street can hear you quarrelling.’
Salvadora puffed out her plump cheeks. ‘Your wife has so low an opinion of me as to think I would explain the workings of the Queen Mother’s cadre of painted mistresses to your seven-year-old daughter!’
‘What!’ Piet looked at them in astonishment. ‘I don’t understand. Where on earth did Marta even hear such a thing in the first place?’
Minou looked at him. ‘She overheard an altercation in the street. When I would not explain what the men meant, against my express orders Marta went to Salvadora. Who did.’
‘I most certainly did not!’
Minou threw her hands in the air. ‘If not you, Aunt, then who? I came upon Marta marching up and down the corridor pretending to be…’
Minou noticed Piet stifle a laugh and she glared at him.
Salvadora bridled. ‘If you will forgive me, Niece, if you kept a firmer hand over the child, then she would not have been in a position – running unsupervised around the house at all times – to hear such vulgar words spoken in the first place.’
‘Are you suggesting I do not know how to care for my own child?’
‘I don’t think that was what Salvadora meant,’ Piet intervened.
Minou now turned on him. ‘You take her part over mine?’
‘Salvadora, might you excuse us?’
The older woman hesitated and then, with a final disapproving glance at Minou, withdrew.
Minou folded her arms, her eyes sharp with grievance.
Piet loosened the ruff at his neck, then walked to the sideboard, poured two goblets of wine from the decanter, and handed one to Minou.
‘We cannot be at one another’s throats like that.’
‘The quarrel was not of my making. When I remonstrated with Marta, it was evident someone had told her. When I pressed her, she said she had come upon Aunt Boussay in the hall—’
‘Which you took to mean that Salvadora answered her question?’
‘Well, who else could it be? You were not at home – again – and Aimeric had left. There’s no one else.’
‘My love,’ Piet said mildly, ‘our resourceful daughter will have gone to the nursery and badgered the nurse. Or to the kitchen; she is a favourite there. Any one of the maids would have had great delight in enlightening her.’
Minou frowned. ‘Marta would not lie to my face.’
‘She would not tell a direct lie, no. But, by your own account, what she actually said was that she “came upon” Salvadora. She did not say your esteemed aunt had answered her question.’
Minou took the goblet. ‘Oh.’
Piet touched his goblet to hers. ‘Oh indeed. Our daughter, wonderful as she is, is a precocious child to whom spinning tales comes as naturally as breathing. You know that. It is not like you to be gulled so easily.’
Minou leant back against the sideboard. ‘I must apologise to Salvadora. Not only for what I said, but for the fact of it delaying our visit to the Sainte-Chapelle.’
‘You were intending to go today?’
‘It is what we’d planned.’ She gestured to her cloak, hat and gloves. ‘Hence this, despite the heat.’
‘I did wonder.’
‘The landlord came to put his case for increasing our rent.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I refused, then the altercation in the street happened. He was kind enough to go down and manage the matter, so after that I felt obliged to agree to another livre.’
‘That’s all right, I think.’
Piet opened the little latticed window. Hot August air slunk over the sill, bringing with it the stink of the river and the over-crowded streets.
‘When Marta told you what she’d learnt about the escadron, how did you respond?’
‘I told her that the young women of the court who behaved in such a manner to gather secrets were silly and unadmired. Dull creatures.’
Piet grinned. ‘And what did Marta reply to that?’
Minou felt the shadow of an answering smile on her lips too. ‘That she despised those who could not keep a secret and how she would never break her word nor exchange gossip for trinkets. Oh, and then she added that she presumed those who betrayed their secrets were boys because it was common knowledge that boys were unable to hold their tongues!’
Now Piet laughed out loud. ‘It reminds me of the back-and-forth quarrels Aimeric and Alis used to have when they were little. Alis also believed boys were beneath contempt.’
‘With one or two notable exceptions, I do not think her opinion has much changed.’ Minou took a sip of her wine. ‘I meant to tell you, I received a letter from her a few days ago saying all was well at Puivert and that she was walking almost unaided.’
‘This is wonderful news.’
‘Yes, though Monsieur Gabignaud was more circumspect. Alis would not want us to worry.’
‘We’ll be home soon and will see for ourselves. And as for Alis’s low opinion of men, she will feel differently when she falls in love.’
‘She still says she will never marry. She says there is nothing a husband could give her that she does not already have on her own account.’
‘Not even children?’
Minou smiled. ‘Her reply was that she had no need of a child of her own when she had the delights of Marta’s companionship.’
‘Delights!’
‘Also, that she feared that a child would undo her.’
‘Whatever does she mean?’
Minou thought for a moment. ‘From the instant you hold your first child in your arms, your heart is no
longer your own. One becomes weakened in resolve, fearful of the evil in the world.’
‘Do you feel that?’ Piet asked, surprised.
‘Sometimes.’
‘But surely the joys of a child outweigh by far the assault on one’s emotions?’
Minou curled her hand against his cheek. ‘It is easy for you to say. You are a man. But for a woman? My lack of judgement today – if I can call it that – was, in part, driven by concern for Marta. That need to protect her from the worst of the world. It will be the same for Jean-Jacques. Worrying over them governs my waking hours more than anything I might feel on my own account.’ Minou gestured in the direction of the new Tuileries Palace. ‘Even the Queen Mother, though she has borne ten children and buried six, is quite undone by the love she holds for her youngest son. This despite his mignons and their peculiarities.’
Piet took her hand. ‘Why are you really so out of sorts, Minou? At the thought of the wedding tomorrow? Or because we are here in Paris at all?’
‘No, not that. Against my expectations, I have found my heart stolen by Paris. It’s more … I don’t know. I would that tomorrow was over and done with, the celebrations concluded, and we were on our way home.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And you, my love, you are so rarely here. I lack your company.’
Piet’s face clouded. ‘I am enjoying the companionship of those from whom I have long been separated. You would not deny me that.’
‘Not in the slightest.’
Minou paused. The last time she had tried to persuade Piet to confide in her, it had led to a quarrel. But, after what Aimeric had said, she did not feel she could today keep her peace.
‘Aimeric came to visit.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ Piet said genuinely. ‘I know how much you miss him.’
‘He said he had seen you on one or two occasions. That you had asked him to make certain inquiries on your behalf. He assumed I knew.’
Piet’s expression darkened. ‘He had no business to tell you.’
‘You cannot blame Aimeric, he was in an impossible situation. He only confided in me when I told him how a woman came to the house earlier in search of you.’
