by Kate Mosse
‘He died protecting his Huguenot friends and neighbours.’ Alis frowned. ‘Gabignaud was by nature melancholic. He feared that I would find it hard to accept I would be lame in my left leg. I, on the other hand, was concerned only with what I might be able to do. I was determined to recover. Fresh air, walking for an hour each day in the basse cour, regaining my strength, I drove the poor doctor to distraction.’
Minou laughed. ‘I’m sorry he’s gone.’
‘He was a good man. After Puivert fell, I fled taking only what I could carry. When I had nothing left to sell, I worked my way from village to village, reading and writing letters in exchange for a bed for the night.’ She looked down at her skirts. ‘I made a good boy. You always said I would!’
Minou laughed. ‘You were so jealous of Aimeric and his freedom. You always copied him, even when your health was poor, trying to climb the trees in Place Marcou, racing after him through the alleyways of La Cité or the road outside father’s bookshop in the Bastide. I was forever having to stitch yet another tear in your skirts, or send you back to the river to find a lost shoe or bonnet!’
At the mention of Aimeric’s name, the shadow fell again.
‘Do you think he truly is dead?’ Alis asked quietly. ‘Not just missing? So many people are missing.’
‘He would have found a way to get word to us, Alis.’
‘But your little girl … our Marta. Is there no hope for her being found?’
For a moment, Minou did not answer. ‘On the day of Admiral de Coligny’s assassination, Piet found her cap, stained with blood, in the street. She had been missing for two days by then. He took it to mean the worst.’
‘But what about you?’
Minou hesitated; having held her thoughts to herself for so long, it felt dangerous to bring them out into the light. But this was Alis. Alis would understand.
‘If Piet had not been so sure Marta was dead, he would not have left Paris that night, nor forced me to go with him. I didn’t want to. Even now, all these years later, I wake up in the night cold with guilt for the fact that I abandoned her. Several times, I thought to pray for her soul. Or to make a tombstone with her name on it, to persuade myself she was gone. Every time, I stepped back. I can’t give up on finding her, Alis. I will never accept she is dead until I hold her body in my arms.’
Alis’s eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t believe she is dead?’
Minou shook her head. ‘In my heart, I feel Marta is alive, that she’s still somewhere out there in the world. And although I know it goes against every possibility or reason, I pray for her each night, pray that she is flourishing and is cared for and happy and – that she hasn’t forgotten us.’
‘My dear sister…’
Now a different silence filled the air.
‘Do you realise Marta would be thirteen now,’ Minou said quietly. ‘A young lady.’
Alis laughed. ‘Marta considered herself a lady at the age of seven! Do you remember how she loved her birth-date celebration, the fuss, the gifts?’
‘She relished being the centre of attention.’
‘And didn’t that vex Salvadora! She was always reprimanding Marta for “making an exhibition” of herself.’
Minou smiled. ‘Salvadora is of the generation that believed girls should be seen and not heard.’
‘She used to say the same things to me, don’t you remember? Instructing me to behave more like a lady, to be quieter and less uncouth. For all the good it did!’
Minou nodded. ‘It was Aimeric she held closest to her heart. The loss of him was more than she could bear.’
Alis sighed. ‘I understand why Piet feels the way he does, but you have a mother’s intuition. If you believe Marta is alive, then perhaps she is.’ She raised her hands. ‘Is there to be a limit on miracles? Look at me, am I not proof that miracles can happen?’
Minou felt a wave of gratitude and love for her sister. ‘Yes. Despite everything, against all odds and the dangers, you found your way back to us.’
‘A mother’s intuition,’ Alis repeated firmly.
And, for the first time for as long as she could remember, Minou felt her heart ease a little.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
WARMOESSTRAAT
Cornelia looked down at the package on her lap.
Burgher Pauw had stayed late into the evening. A man who had been ruined, and risen again, he was, all the same, someone who had paid too high a price for the restoration of his fortunes. No wife, no children, just the fading of the light as the cankers took hold. All he had now was fear of the judgement to come when God finally took his soul.
For her father’s sake – and out of pity for the dying man – Cornelia had stayed with them until the lamps were lit and, finally, Jacob Pauw had taken his leave. Only then had Cornelia been able to repair to her own chamber with the package Mariken had left with Sister Agatha so many years ago.
Her curious fingers hovered over the scrap of grey cloth, faded around the edges. A knotted piece of string was wrapped several times around it like a belt. It didn’t look as if it had been touched in the many years since Piet’s mother had died. All the same, there was no seal. Cornelia was desperate to know what was inside.
‘Except Piet is your friend,’ she told herself again. She had no right to pry into his private correspondence, nor to learn his secret before he did.
As the ten o’clock bells echoed into silence, she came to a decision. If she took the package to Piet now – tonight – at least she might learn what it contained. After all, this was the matter that had brought their friendship into being in the first place.
Cornelia took her plainest brown cloak from her wardrobe and, making sure the servants didn’t hear her, she crept down the stairs and into Warmoesstraat. Walking in her usual, steadfast way, Cornelia crossed the canal opposite the Sint Nicolaas onto Oudezijds Voorburgwal and over the next canal into the network of crowded alleyways leading to Zeedijk.
Luck was on her side. It was a quiet night, no schutterij with their muskets demanding to know where she was going, no sailors stumbling from taverns or bawdy houses to accost her, or starving beggars with their hands outstretched as she hurried through the streets towards her friends’ house on Zeedijk.
ZEEDIJK
When night had fallen, and the blizzard of tiny insects that hovered over Amsterdam’s waterways had come out in force, Minou and Alis had been driven inside and had settled in the family’s private living quarters, where Piet joined them at ten o’clock.
It was a plain but pleasing room. What gave the chamber its particular character was a printed copy of the celebrated map of Amsterdam by Cornelis Anthonisz which hung above the fireplace. Commissioned by the city fathers in 1538 for the visit of the Emperor Charles V, it had instead been placed on display in the Stadhuis, the town hall, on Plaats as a symbol of civic pride. The cartographer had started to produce print versions of his illustrious map, selling them from his studio behind the Nieuwe Kerk. Willem van Raay had bought Piet a copy as a generous house-warming gift.
In the streets outside, the lamps were lit, sending golden halos of light onto Zeedijk and the square in front of Sint Antoniespoort. As the three had talked, they heard the closing of the gates and the arrival of the night watch. They heard the bells of the churches calling to one another across the rings of water. Minou and Piet talked of their settled lives in Amsterdam, the life they had made for themselves. Alis told them about living under siege in La Rochelle, her long and circuitous journey north, making her way from port to port. Of the cruelties she’d witnessed. Nearly six years of moving from place to place, never sleeping in the same bed for more than a few days at a time, only the thought of finding her family again – and praying her instincts they might be in Amsterdam were right – giving her a reason to carry on.
‘I’m astonished you thought to take this with you when you fled Puivert,’ Minou said, running her fingers over the heavy threads of the tapestry. ‘And you never sold it. That�
�s another miracle!’
Alis grinned. ‘I was tempted to – it’s heavy and it’s bulky and it would have fetched a good price – but it gave me courage. It helped me believe that you all were safe somewhere and waiting for me.’ She grinned. ‘And I admit it served me well in other ways. As a cloak in the winter, as a saddle rug, as a bed or a cover. It became a talisman, I suppose, rather like that old dagger of yours, Piet. You gave it to Aimeric the day he left Puivert.’
He nodded sadly. ‘I did.’
‘My wooden casket was the same.’ Minou smiled. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to leave it behind in Paris. Some things from it have been mislaid – our mother’s rosary, chief among them – but I still have my papers, the chalk map of Carcassonne –’
‘I remember it!’ Alis cried.
‘And my journal, I still have that, too.’
‘Do you still write?’
‘Not really.’ Minou shrugged. ‘These days, just to live is enough.’
For a while, the three sat in companionable silence. There was both too much to say, and no need to talk. Then Alis put down her tankard and Minou noticed another way in which her sister’s years of living in disguise had changed her. She sat like a man, her knees apart and her hands set firm upon her legs.
‘There is something else, though I am not certain if you will wish to hear it, Piet.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘What is it?’
‘In the early months of this year, I found myself in the region of Champagne, travelling through lands owned by the Duke of Guise –’ She broke off. ‘Did you know, since Guise was injured in the Fifth War they call him le Balafré – Scarface – like his father?’
‘I’ve heard it said, yes,’ Piet nodded.
Alis continued. ‘I was heading for Flanders, and from there to Amsterdam.’
‘How did you know we might be here?’
Alis shook her head. ‘I didn’t, not for certain. When word reached Languedoc of the Paris massacre, I was desperate for news. No one knew anything. Then the slaughter spread to Toulouse and Puivert, so I realised you wouldn’t be able to come home. After the siege was lifted at La Rochelle, and the ships started to sail into the harbour again, the common talk was that Amsterdam had taken in many Huguenot refugees. Given Piet’s Dutch birthright, I thought it was possible you might have been among them.’
‘It was bold to make the journey on the basis of so little,’ Minou said.
Alis shrugged. ‘I had nowhere better to go. Anyhow, it was March and I was passing through the lands of Champagne. It was approaching Eastertide, so there was even more fervour than usual for Guise’s Catholic League. Then one night in a tavern in Reims, I overheard a conversation between two soldiers about Guise’s personal confessor.’
Piet swallowed. ‘Vidal?’
Alis nodded. ‘It seems he disappeared on the night of the Paris massacre. Did you know?’
Piet now turned white. ‘You mean he was killed? Vidal is dead?’
‘No one’s certain. The house where he’d been lodging was found deserted. He might have been caught up in the mob violence of St Bartholomew’s Day, or taken hostage, or murdered. What is known, however, is that Guise has spent a great deal of his fortune over the past five years trying to find out.’
Piet sat back in his chair. ‘Is it possible Vidal has been dead all this time, Minou, and I didn’t know it?’
‘If Guise is searching for him, it suggests he doesn’t think so.’
Piet was on the point of answering when a sharp knock at the front door silenced their conversation. He was instantly on his feet, his hand on the hilt of his knife.
‘Who would call at such an hour?’ Minou asked.
‘I’ll go down,’ Piet said. ‘More than likely it will be for me.’
Alis waited until the sound of his footsteps had died away. ‘Why is Piet so uneasy?’
Minou hadn’t wanted to alarm her sister by admitting that Amsterdam might turn out to be no safer than the ravaged French countryside through which she had travelled. So she had mentioned nothing to her of the political situation in Amsterdam.
‘Piet fears there may soon be some kind of coup in Amsterdam,’ she began carefully, seeing the look of horror on Alis’s face. ‘He is convinced it will be peaceful, but—’
Minou broke off as Piet walked back into the chamber accompanied by their visitor.
‘Cornelia?’ Minou said in astonishment. ‘How now?’
‘Forgive me for calling at so unreasonable an hour and when you have company—’ Then she saw Alis’s face and broke off.
Minou smiled. ‘This is my sister Alis, Cornelia. She reminds you of Aimeric, I’ll warrant. After six years, she’s found her way back to us. Alis, this is our dear friend, Cornelia van Raay.’
‘It is my pleasure to meet you, Mademoiselle van Raay,’ Alis said warmly. ‘Minou has told me how kind you and your father have been.’
Piet held out a small package tied round with string. ‘Minou, Cornelia has found it.’ His voice sang with anticipation. ‘After all this time, Cornelia has found what my mother entrusted to Mariken before she died.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Minou took the two candlesticks from the mantel and put them in the middle of the table.
‘Bring the package here,’ she said. ‘It will be easier to see.’
‘Would you like me to go?’ Cornelia asked. ‘I am curious to know what’s inside, but if it’s a private matter…’
‘Since you found it, Cornelia, I think you should stay. What say you, Piet?’
‘Of course.’
The three women gathered around the table, watching as Piet placed the package carefully on it. He took his dagger, then gently cut through the string and slipped it off the cloth.
‘What is this fabric?’ Alis asked.
‘I think it’s a piece cut from a falie,’ Cornelia replied.
‘What is a falie?’
‘It’s the head covering the sisters of Begijnhof wear,’ Minou answered. ‘Mariken Hassels was with Piet’s mother when she died.’
‘Mariken, of course.’
Piet unfolded the fabric gently, as if worried it would turn to dust in his hands.
‘What’s inside?’ Minou asked. ‘Can you see?’
‘A letter,’ Piet replied. ‘No, two letters. This one is sealed and written in a formal hand.’ He put it back on the table. ‘In the second, the ink is more faded and hastily transcribed.’ He put it next to the first, then stepped back. ‘I can’t bear to look.’
Minou put her hand on his arm. ‘There is nothing here that can hurt you now.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘These are old words. We are here, and together. Nothing matters more than that.’
His face softened. ‘All the same, will you read the letters for me? I swear I cannot.’
‘If that is what you wish, then of course I will.’
Piet pulled up his chair and sat down. Alis and Cornelia did the same. Minou was acutely aware of the scraping of the wooden chair legs on the tiles, the settling into position, the sense of held breath. All eyes were on her.
She picked up the letter. ‘It is in Dutch, Piet. I cannot read it. I’m sorry.’
‘I can translate, if you would like me to?’
Piet hesitated, then nodded. Minou handed Cornelia the letter and sat at her husband’s side.
‘It is from your mother, written to you on the eighth of March in the year 1542.’
‘That was the month she died.’
Minou held Piet’s hand tightly as Cornelia began to read.
‘Mijn lieveling,’ she began. ‘My little darling. I write in haste, and with the help of my dear friend Mariken, for I have little strength. The sickness has hold of me. I do not think I will live to see the month out. By the time you are old enough to read this, I will have been long in the ground.’
Cornelia paused, as if unwilling to intrude at so personal a moment.
‘Go on,’
Minou urged quietly.
‘There is little I will miss of this life, save you, my beautiful son. My life, these past seven years, has been a Calvary. Your father loved me. We went through the red door together on the twelfth day of May in the year 1534. Excepting the day of your birth, when you made a healthy and quick arrival into the world, it was the happiest day of my life.’
‘What does she mean by going through the red door?’ Alis asked.
‘The door of Sint Nicolaas church is red,’ Minou explained. ‘It means that they were married there.’
‘Married?’ Piet said sharply. ‘But I have always thought—’
Minou remembered how Piet had first told her, with a mixture of shame and pride, how his mother had been reduced to selling herself on the streets of Amsterdam to provide for him.
‘Mon coeur, let us listen. Cornelia, please.’
‘Philippe could not stay with me in Amsterdam beyond the summer, for his duty and responsibility to his father and his estates drew him home to France. We chose Reydon as the name to be spoken before the priest, in honour of his family estates. We knew that until Philippe had asked for – and received – his father’s blessing, so I could be acknowledged as his wife, we needed a name of our own to share.’
Alis shifted in her chair. ‘What does she mean?’
‘I assume that because Philippe entered into the union without permission,’ Minou answered, ‘he could not confer his family name upon his new wife until he had spoken to his father.’
‘But wishing to protect her, he chose a name that linked her to him?’
‘I think so.’ Minou glanced at Piet, but he was locked in his own thoughts.
Cornelia continued:
‘Philippe gave me his solemn word he would return for me, that he was desperate to meet his son and promised to send monies in the meantime. He left with me a testament – to prove the truth of our marriage and your legitimacy – which I herewith enclose.’
‘The poor, poor woman,’ Minou whispered.
‘Autumn arrived, then the winter. I waited, and I waited, but nothing came. He never returned and sent no word. So, with no means of support, I was obliged to return to Sint Nicolaas, no longer as a bride but…’
