by Kate Mosse
Aimeric tracked the progress of the soldiers across the gardens. He had lost his bearings several times in the dark and the chaos of his flight across the rooftops, but he thought he might be in the rue du Louvre. He had observed this building only from behind its high walls, another of the fine houses owned by the Guise family. It seemed oddly dark.
A movement in a downstairs window drew his gaze. Small hands against the pane. A child? Aimeric narrowed his gaze and tried to see more clearly, but there wasn’t enough light. Then, he heard the sound of breaking glass and he realised, with dismay, the soldiers were storming the house.
His conscience burdened by what he had already witnessed, Aimeric knew this time he had a choice. If there was a child, alone and abandoned inside, he had to act.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Numb with horror, Marta took her hands from the window and stepped back. She thought her heart might stop.
There was so much blood. She looked down at her hands, as if expecting to see it there, too.
Then she heard the noise of glass shattering and knew the soldiers were in the house. They had killed those people, two women as well as the men, and now they were coming to kill her, too.
Marta knew she should hide, but her legs wouldn’t work. She was pinned to the spot, rigid like the blackbird she had once found frozen to the icy ground one winter’s morning in Puivert. In any case, what good would that do? Those people had been hiding in the stables and the soldiers had killed them all the same.
Marta felt a warm trickle down her legs. She looked down and saw a golden puddle around her shoes. Great-aunt Salvadora would scold her for that, but now she wouldn’t mind, because that would mean she was safe at home with her family and everything was as it was supposed to be.
Then she heard the sound of boots in the corridor and, finally, Marta found the courage to run. She threw herself into the gap beneath the huge oak desk, pulled her knees up to her chin, and tried to make herself as small as possible. She was shaking with fear, but she had to be brave.
The door was flung back on its hinges, smashing into the wall, and the soldiers staggered into the room. Some of them were clutching flagons of ale, others torches, but they were all shouting and cheering one another as if they were at a celebration. Marta shrank further back into the shadows.
But the next moment, she felt a rough hand clamp around her ankle, and she was dragged out of her hiding place.
‘What do we have here, then?’ the drunk soldier leered, looming over her in his blood-splattered doublet. ‘You waiting for us, little girl?’
She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out.
‘Leave her be!’
At first, Marta thought she was imagining it. How could her Uncle Aimeric be here too? But then she saw her father’s dagger in his hand, and she knew he had come to rescue her.
‘She’s only a child,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t harm her.’
Aimeric turned. As she saw his eyes widen with astonishment, Marta realised that he hadn’t known it was her at all. Then her uncle held out his hand. She scrambled to her feet, and tried to run to him.
Everything seemed to happen at once.
The soldier who’d found her flung out his arm and served her a violent blow, sending her flying backwards. Marta’s head cracked into the hard corner point of the oak desk, and she fell dizzy to the floor.
Her uncle charged forward, but another soldier stuck out his foot and he fell. Marta screamed as paper seemed to explode from inside his chemise, sheets and sheets of it, scattering all over the floor in front of the altar, and the dagger went skittering from his hand. He tried to stretch for it, but a third attacker stamped on his hand. Within moments, Aimeric was surrounded on the ground, four swords pointed to his chest.
Marta’s head was spinning. She felt giddy and sick. She screwed up her eyes and looked down at her hands. This time, the blood was real.
‘I know him,’ one of the soldiers said, delivering a vicious kick at Aimeric’s side. ‘He’s one of de Coligny’s men.’
‘May God forgive you,’ Aimeric said, trying to get up, but a second kick sent him flying back.
‘I thought we’d got all the heretics, mon capitaine.’
‘Here’s an eighth for the Devil,’ Cabanel spat.
He bent over, grasped Aimeric’s hair in his fist, then, in one practised move, cut his throat from ear to ear. Blood pumped over the polished tiles, staining the hem of the white altar cloth red. All over her uncle’s papers.
Marta heard herself screaming.
‘Stop her mouth,’ Cabanel shouted.
The drunk pointed his sword at her. ‘Do you want to go the same way? Are you one of them too?’ He started to walk towards her. ‘Come here, you little whore.’
Marta managed to get to her feet. She started to run towards the open door, but her legs were shaking and she wasn’t quick enough.
‘Not so fast!’ The soldier grabbed her around the waist and spun her up in the air like a trophy. She could feel blood trickling down the back of her neck where she had cracked her head. ‘Now what are we going to do with you?’
Suddenly, Marta remembered Louis’s words in the rue de Béthisy. She thrust her shaking hand into her pocket and pulled out her mother’s rosary.
‘One of us,’ she whispered.
‘What did you say?’
Marta tried to speak again, but now her tongue would not obey her. Everyone paused, then Cabanel waved his hand.
‘Are you a Catholic?’ Cabanel asked. ‘A good Christian?’
Marta hesitated, then nodded.
‘Do you live here?’
Terrified, Marta nodded again.
‘Whose house is this?’ He pointed to her uncle dead on the ground. ‘His?’
She shook her head, which made the room spin even more.
‘Then whose?’
Marta tried to speak, but all her words had left her. She put her hands together, then made the sign of the cross like she’d seen Great-aunt Salvadora do.
‘A priest lives here?’ he asked, glancing at the altar. ‘Someone important?’
She nodded for a third time.
Cabanel looked around at the opulence, then put out his arms. ‘Give her to me. I’ll have her taken her to my wife until we find out who she belongs to. A wealthy household like this, there’s sure to be a reward. Someone will claim her.’
Marta’s head hurt. She didn’t want to go with this man. But her eyelids were fluttering shut and, though she fought not to, she couldn’t stop herself dropping forward onto his shoulders.
As she was carried from the chamber, Marta managed to open her eyes one last time. She saw Aimeric, with his untamed black hair, lying on a bed of scattered papers in a pool of his own blood. His eyes were wide open, but his hand had stopped twitching, so she knew he was dead.
Then, nothing.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
RUE DES BARRES
‘My love, I beg you,’ Piet pleaded.
‘I’m not leaving without my daughter!’
It was nigh on three o’clock, some half-hour after Piet had made it back to the rue des Barres, and the sounds of the battle were getting closer. The Reydon family was gathered in the kitchens at the rear of the house, their most precious possessions about them, ready to flee. Cornelia van Raay was tying the last white cloth armband for Salvadora.
‘No! I will not leave. I don’t know how you can suggest such a thing!’ Minou clutched Marta’s blood-stained cap in her hands. ‘This proves nothing. What if she comes back here and finds us gone? No.’
Piet grasped her hands between his.
‘Listen to me. I don’t want to leave either, but we must. Can’t you hear them? They’re getting closer. I’ve seen them. They’re massacring civilians – men, women, children even.’
Minou banged her hand against her chest. ‘If she was dead, I would know it. We have to keep looking.’
‘That is your heart talking, Minou, not your
head.’ He stepped closer. ‘We covered every inch of the city, you know that. So many people were looking for her, you know that, too. I did everything, I promise you. We have to accept that Marta is gone.’
She met his gaze. ‘I do not accept it. I am not abandoning my daughter,’ she said, in a voice that seemed to come from a long way away. ‘You can go if you wish to. I’m staying.’ She was gripping Marta’s cap so tightly that her knuckles were turning blue. ‘This proves nothing.’
‘Minou, listen to me!’ he begged again. ‘We are running out of time. We have to go. It’s not safe to stay here. The dead lie butchered in the street. This is as bad as anything I’ve ever seen. The Catholics have shut the gates and set cannons at the Hôtel de Ville. This is a thoroughly prepared and executed plan. They intend to kill us all, don’t you understand?’
Minou shook her head. ‘This house is owned by a Catholic. The landlord will vouch for us.’
‘Lie for us, do you mean?’ he countered. ‘Even if he did, it wouldn’t matter now! The mob has taken over. Whatever else was intended, it’s too late. Paris has gone mad.’
‘They have let us alone so far.’
Piet wasn’t listening. ‘Don’t you think our neighbours will denounce us as Huguenots to save themselves? The enemy within, that’s how they see us. Catholics – decent people for the most part, people like us – have been given licence to turn on us. Don’t you remember what it was like in Toulouse in the early days of the war?’
Minou shut her eyes against the images of Toulouse burning ten years ago. The blood and the barricades, the dying men and women laid out in the refuge, row after row after row.
‘I remember,’ she said finally in a quiet voice.
Piet clutched her arms. ‘Well, this is worse, even. Ordinary men – like our landlord – are blocking the streets with chains. Gangs of youths are targeting the quartiers where Huguenots congregate – Saint-Martin, Saint-Eustache, Saint-Honoré – I saw it with my own eyes.’ He pulled at the cloth on his arm. ‘A white scarf will not deceive them for long.’ He suddenly let his hands drop. ‘For the sake of Jean-Jacques, for Salvadora, we have to leave.’
Minou looked into the anguished face of her husband, then at her aunt’s face flushed with fear and Cornelia van Raay, pale and serious, listening to every word. Last, at her little son sleeping peacefully in his nurse’s arms, unaware of how his life lay in the balance. Finally, her resolve waivered.
‘If we leave Paris now,’ she said, her voice cracking, ‘we will never know what happened to Marta. We will spend the rest of our days wondering. Don’t you understand? It will destroy us.’
Piet cupped her chin with his hand. ‘My heart is breaking too; I can barely breathe or think. Like you, I want to believe she is alive and that she is safe. But the odds are against it. Marta has been missing for two whole days. The longer we delay, the less likely it is we will escape. Think of Jean-Jacques.’
Minou’s eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Now you are asking me to choose between my son and my daughter?’
‘No,’ Piet said quietly, ‘I am asking you to choose between the living and the dead. Marta is lost, Jean-Jacques is here. He needs you.’ Minou heard him catch his breath. ‘I need you.’
For a moment, his words seemed to hang in the air between them. Sharp, painful, terrible words, impossible to take back.
She raised her head. ‘You understand that if I come with you now, I may never be able to forgive you for forcing me to abandon our daughter? This moment will divide us for ever.’
Now Piet’s cheeks were glistening with tears too. ‘I understand we have no choice,’ he replied, his voice breaking, ‘if we are to save what remains of our family.’
Minou felt her heart crack. She knew Piet was right, but so was she. It might be unjust and unfair, but this choice would stand between them for the rest of their lives. She held his gaze a moment longer, then surrendered.
‘Very well.’
Piet sighed. ‘Thank God. And as soon as I have got you all to safety – and the worst of this terror is over – I will come back to Paris and keep looking for Marta. I give you my word, Minou. I won’t relent until I find her.’
But though Minou saw his lips were moving, she heard nothing and his relief at her surrender sickened her. She turned her back on him and took Jean-Jacques from his nurse’s arms.
‘My love, look at me,’ Piet said. ‘Please.’
Minou felt oddly calm now, detached from all that was happening, as if she was looking down at the scene from far away.
‘Nurse, will you fetch my casket from my chamber. I would not leave that behind. And Jean-Jacques’ spinning top.’
‘Minou, please,’ he begged, trying to take her hand.
She stepped out of reach. ‘Cornelia, will you tell my husband what you told me?’
The young Dutchwoman nodded. ‘During my time here, I have been staying on one of my father’s barges. If we can reach the river, we have a chance of getting out of the city.’
‘Where is the barge moored?’ Piet asked quickly.
‘Upstream of the Place de la Grève. Opposite the Île de Louviers.’
‘But on this side of the river?’
‘Yes.’
‘You think the guards might let us pass?’
Minou closed her ears to the hope in her husband’s voice. It was as if he had already forgotten Marta was to be abandoned.
‘My father is as well known in Paris as he is in Amsterdam, Monsieur Reydon. He is known for a devout Catholic, having made several endowments to the Église Saint-Merri. We have our own family pew there. So I am hopeful that, if the watchmen on the towers recognise our ensign, they will allow us to pass. If we can get through the checkpoints, and safely downstream without being searched, there’s a chance we can reach Rouen, where my father’s cargo fleet is anchored.’
‘My love?’ Piet pleaded. ‘What do you think?’
‘I agree,’ she heard herself answer. ‘This is our best hope.’
‘Good, I’m glad you agree.’ He exhaled. ‘We’ll be safe. If we stick together. And I will come back, Minou. I promise.’
Minou marvelled at her husband’s naivety. If they made it through the barricades, if they got to the water, if they were allowed safe passage on the river, even so she did not believe that any one of them would ever return to Paris again. In the space of these few hours, on the twenty-fourth day of August, the Feast Day of St Bartholomew, their world had irrevocably changed.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
RUE DU LOUVRE
‘Where is he?’
The Duke of Guise looked with a critical eye around the chamber: at the chaos, the drawers pulled open and the papers strewn about the desk and floor, at the blood splattered on the bottom of the altar cloth, then back to the captain standing nervously before him.
Guise’s elation at having avenged his father had faded. The triumph of the early hours – of sinking his blade into de Coligny’s chest, the approval of his men roaring in his ears, of the admiral’s body being thrown from the window and his severed head held up for all to see – had passed, replaced now by an unease as a mass of people, egged on by the musketeers and militia, had started to rampage through Paris. From a specified number of households as agreed by the Privy Council – to rid the world of the ‘war Huguenots’ – the attacks had descended into indiscriminate violence. Shops were being destroyed, places of worship, even Catholic homes. The mob was out of control and under no one’s command. The killings went on.
It was now a little after four o’clock in the morning, though no one could have heard the call to Matins over the continuing cacophony of the tocsin bell. Wishing to escape the fray, Guise had come to seek absolution from his spiritual advisor. Instead of Vidal, he had found a ramshackle, drunk battalion of soldiers in residence and a charnel house in the courtyard.
‘What is your name, Captain?’ he demanded.
‘Cabanel, my lord. Pierre Cabanel.’
‘I wi
ll ask you again, Cabanel, and you would be wise to answer truthfully. Where is my confessor?’
In the light of the torches, Guise saw fear flicker in the captain’s eyes.
‘My lord Guise, I don’t know who resides here.’ He put his hand to his chest. ‘Upon my honour, when we arrived we found the place deserted. It has been so for some days, if I were to make a guess.’
Guise held up his hand. ‘Explain.’
‘We went first to the stables, my lord. There was no fresh evidence of horses having been there.’ One of the soldiers stifled a laugh. Cabanel glared at him.
‘Why were you here at all, Cabanel?’
‘We were in pursuit of heretics, my lord. They’d fled from a house in rue de Béthisy, adjoining the lodgings of Admiral de Coligny. When their pastor led them in here, fearing for the safety of the inhabitants of this house, we followed, knowing, as I did, that many of the houses in the rue du Louvre are owned by your noble family.’ He swallowed hard. ‘When they resisted, in self-defence my men were obliged –’
Guise scowled. ‘I saw what your men did in self-defence, Cabanel. Get on with it.’
‘Having contained the threat, we searched the rest of the gardens and the outhouses, the servants’ quarters, then finally the house itself. There was no one here.’
Guise gestured to the bloodied corpse still lying in front of the altar.
‘Then who, pray, is this?’
‘One of de Coligny’s men, my lord. He must have followed us.’
‘Carrying this manuscript?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
Guise picked up a sheaf of paper, then another. A wry smile appeared on his lips. He clicked his fingers and one of his personal guard came running.
‘Gather these papers. Keep them safe. I fancy the Queen Mother might be interested.’ He prodded Aimeric’s cold body with his boot. ‘And get rid of this heretic.’
Cabanel summoned two of his men, who dragged the body from the chamber, leaving a smear of blood on the tiles.
