A Column of Fire (71 page)

‘How reliable is your sister?’

‘Totally, with anything that doesn’t involve bloodshed. There she draws a line, I’m afraid. She has never understood that violence is sometimes necessary in the service of the Church.’

‘She’s a woman.’ Pierre was pleased that Rollo evidently
did
understand the need for violence.

‘And in Paris?’ Rollo said. ‘We in Douai have been worried by the news from here.’

‘The Peace of St Germain was a major defeat for us, there’s no denying that. The policy of Pope Pius V is quite clearly to exterminate all Protestants, but King Charles IX has rejected this in favour of peaceful coexistence.’

Rollo nodded. ‘To some extent the king was forced into that by military defeat.’

‘Yes. It’s most unfortunate that Gaspard de Coligny has proved to be such a disciplined and talented general of the Huguenot armies. And the queen mother, Caterina, is another force for tolerance of vile heresy.’ Sometimes Pierre felt as if every hand was against him. ‘But we have seen edicts of tolerance before, and they have never lasted,’ he added optimistically.

‘Will Princess Margot marry Henri of Bourbon?’

Rollo asked all the right questions. Henri was the son of the late Antoine of Bourbon, and as king of Navarre he was the highest-ranking member of the pro-tolerance Bourbon–Montmorency alliance. If he married into the royal Valois family he might be able to preserve the Peace of St Germain. And the combined families of Bourbon, Montmorency and Valois would be enough to crush the Guises. ‘We’ve done everything we can to delay the marriage,’ Pierre said. ‘But Coligny lurks in the background, a constant threat.’

‘It’s a pity someone doesn’t stick a knife in his heart.’

‘Many people would like to, believe me,’ said Pierre. That included Pierre himself. ‘But Coligny’s not stupid, and doesn’t give them much chance. He rarely comes to Paris.’ He heard the bell of St Étienne’s church strike ten. ‘I have to attend court,’ he said. ‘Where are you staying?’

Rollo looked around. Clearly he had been expecting to lodge at Pierre’s house, but now realized the place was too small. ‘I don’t know.’

‘The count of Beaulieu always welcomes English Catholics. You may meet people who could be useful to you at his house. But watch out for English Protestants, too.’

‘Are there many in Paris?’

‘Some, mainly at the embassy. Sir Francis Walsingham is the ambassador. He’s a curmudgeon, but as sharp as a nail.’

‘And a blaspheming Puritan.’

‘I’m keeping an eye on him. But his deputy is more dangerous, because he has charm as well as brains. He’s called Sir Ned Willard.’

Rollo reacted. ‘Really? Ned Willard is deputy ambassador?’

‘You obviously know the man.’

‘He comes from Kingsbridge. I didn’t realize he had become so important.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Pierre recalled the young man who had pretended to be a Scottish Protestant at St Dizier. Later Pierre had read, in a smuggled letter from Alison McKay, how Willard had gone to Carlisle Castle to tell Mary Stuart that she was a prisoner. And now the man had shown up in Paris. ‘Ned Willard is not to be underestimated.’

‘I used to flog him at school.’

‘Did you?’

‘I wish I’d beaten him to death.’

Pierre stood up. ‘The count of Beaulieu lives in the rue St Denis. I’ll point you in the right direction.’ He led Rollo downstairs and out into the street. ‘Come and see me again before you leave Paris. I may have letters for William Allen.’ He gave Rollo directions to the Beaulieu palace, and the two men shook hands.

As Rollo walked away, Pierre noticed the back of a woman going in the same direction. She seemed familiar, but she turned the corner and was out of sight before he could place her.

However, she had not been richly dressed, so could not have been anyone important, and he went back inside and forgot about her.

He found Alain in the kitchen. Using a kinder tone of voice than usual, he said: ‘Alain, I have something sad to tell you. There has been an accident. Your mother has been kicked by a horse. I’m afraid she is dead.’

Alain stared at him, wide-eyed, for a long moment, then his face crumpled in anguish and he began to wail. ‘Mammy!’ he cried. ‘Mammy, Mammy!’

‘There’s no point in calling her,’ Pierre said, reverting to the irritated tone he normally used with the boy. ‘She can’t hear you. She’s dead. She’s gone, and we’ll never see her again.’

Alain screamed in grief. Pierre’s deception was so effective that he almost regretted it.

A minute later Odette came rushing in with her fish basket. ‘What is it, what is it, Alain?’ she cried.

The boy opened his eyes, saw his mother and threw his arms around her. ‘He said you were dead!’ he wailed.

‘You cruel swine,’ Odette said to Pierre. ‘Why did you do that?’

‘To teach the boy a lesson,’ Pierre said, pleased with himself. ‘He lied to me, so I lied to him. He won’t do it again in a hurry.’

*

T
HE
L
OUVRE WAS
a square medieval fort with round cone-roofed corner towers. Walsingham and Ned crossed a drawbridge over a moat to enter the courtyard. Ned was alert, excited, eager. The power was here. In this building were the men who commanded armies and started wars, men who could raise their friends to high rank and destroy their enemies, men who decided who should live and who should die. And Ned was going to talk to them.

The late King Henri II had demolished the west wall of the square and replaced it with a modern palace in the Italian style, with fluted pilasters, immensely tall windows, and a riot of sculpture. There was nothing like it in London, Ned reflected. More recently Henri’s son, Charles IX, had extended the new building, making an L-shape.

As always, the court gathered in a series of interconnecting spaces that delineated a hierarchy. Grooms, maids and bodyguards remained outside in the courtyard, whatever the weather. Ned and Walsingham entered the central door into the ballroom, which occupied the entire ground floor of the west wing. In this room were superior attendants such as ladies-in-waiting. Passing through, on his way to the next level, Ned was surprised to notice a stunning woman staring at him, her expression an odd mixture of shock, hope and puzzlement.

He looked hard at her. About his age, she was a classic Mediterranean beauty, with a mass of dark hair, heavily marked eyebrows, and sensual lips. Wearing bright red and black, she was easily the most flamboyantly dressed woman in the room, though her clothes were not the most expensive on display. There was something about her that made Ned think she was not merely a lady-in-waiting.

She spoke with an accent that was neither French nor English. ‘No, you’re definitely not Barney,’ she said.

It was a confused statement, but Ned understood. ‘My brother’s name is Barney, but he’s taller than I am, and handsomer.’

‘You must be Ned!’

He placed her accent as Spanish. ‘I am, Señorita,’ he said, and bowed.

‘Barney mentioned you often. He was very fond of his little brother.’

Walsingham interrupted impatiently to say: ‘I’ll go on. Don’t be long.’

The woman said to Ned: ‘I am Jerónima Ruiz.’

The name rang a bell. ‘Did you know Barney in Seville?’

‘Know him? I wanted to marry him. But it was not in the stars.’

‘And now you’re in Paris.’

‘I am the niece of Cardinal Romero, who is here on a diplomatic mission for King Felipe of Spain.’

Ned would have heard about such a mission if it was official, so this must be something informal. Fishing for information, he said: ‘I assume King Felipe doesn’t want Princess Margot to marry a Huguenot.’ In the chess game of international diplomacy, the king of Spain supported the Catholics in France just as the queen of England helped the Protestants.

‘As a mere woman, I take no interest in such matters.’

Ned smiled. ‘Answered like a skilled diplomat.’

She kept up the pretence. ‘My role is to act as hostess at my uncle’s table. The cardinal has no wife, obviously.’ She gave him a provocative look. ‘Unlike your English priests, who are allowed to do anything.’

She was alluring, Ned found. ‘Why didn’t you marry my brother?’

A hard look came over her face. ‘My father died while being “interviewed” by the Inquisition. My family lost everything. Archdeacon Romero, as he then was, invited me to join his household. He saved me – but of course I could not think of marrying.’

Ned understood. She was not Romero’s niece, she was his mistress. The priest had taken advantage of her at a moment when her world seemed to have collapsed. He looked into her eyes and saw pain there. ‘You’ve been treated cruelly,’ he said.

‘I made my own decisions.’

Ned wondered whether her experiences had turned her against the Catholic Church – and, if that were the case, whether she might take her revenge by helping the Protestant cause. But he hesitated to ask her outright. ‘I’d like to talk to you again,’ he said.

She gave him an appraising look, and he had the unnerving feeling that she knew what was in his mind. ‘All right,’ she said.

Ned bowed and left her. He passed under the musicians’ gallery, held up by four caryatids, and went up the stairs. What a beautiful woman, he thought, though she was more Barney’s type than his. What is my type? he asked himself. Someone like Margery, of course.

He walked through the guardroom of the Swiss mercenaries who formed the king’s personal protection squad, then entered a large, light room called the wardrobe. Here waited people who might or might not be admitted to the royal presence, minor nobility and petitioners.

Walsingham said grumpily: ‘You took your time with that Spanish tart.’

‘It was worth it, though,’ Ned replied.

‘Really?’ Walsingham was sceptical.

‘She’s the mistress of Cardinal Romero. I think I may be able to recruit her as an informant.’

Walsingham changed his tone. ‘Good! I’d like to know what that slimy Spanish priest is up to.’ His eye lighted on the marquess of Lagny, an amiable fat man who covered his bald head with a jewelled cap. Lagny was a Protestant and close to Gaspard de Coligny. Aristocratic Huguenots had to be tolerated at court, at least until they did something overtly defiant of the king. ‘Come with me,’ Walsingham said to Ned, and they crossed the room.

Walsingham greeted the marquess in fluent, precise French: he had lived in exile for most of the reign of Elizabeth’s Catholic elder sister, Queen Mary Tudor – ‘Bloody’ Mary – and he spoke several languages.

He asked Lagny about the topic on everyone’s mind, the Spanish Netherlands. King Felipe’s ruthlessly effective general, the duke of Alba, was mercilessly crushing the Dutch Protestant rebels. A French Protestant army led by Jean of Hangest, lord of Genlis, was on its way to help the rebels. Lagny said: ‘Coligny has ordered Hangest to join forces with William of Orange.’ The prince of Orange was the leader of the Dutch. ‘Orange has asked Queen Elizabeth for a loan of thirty thousand pounds,’ Lagny went on. ‘Will she oblige him, Sir Francis?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Walsingham. Ned thought the likelihood was small. Elizabeth probably did not have thirty thousand pounds to spare and, if she did, she could think of better uses for it.

Ned was drawn away from the conversation by a richly dressed woman of middle age who spoke to him in English. ‘Sir Ned!’ she said. ‘What a fine doublet.’

Ned bowed to Marianne, countess of Beaulieu, an English Catholic married to a French nobleman. She was with her daughter, a plump eighteen-year-old with a vivacious manner. Her name was Aphrodite: her father was a scholar of Greek. The countess had a soft spot for Ned, and encouraged him to talk to Aphrodite. The countess would never let her daughter marry a Protestant, of course, but no doubt she thought Ned might convert. Ned liked Aphrodite well enough but had no romantic interest in her: she was a jolly, carefree girl with no serious interests, and she quickly bored him. Nevertheless, Ned flirted with both mother and daughter, because he longed to get inside the Beaulieu mansion in the rue St Denis, which was a refuge for exiled English Catholics, and might well be where the next plot against Queen Elizabeth was being hatched. But so far he had not been invited.

Now he talked to the Beaulieus about the worst-kept secret in Paris, the affair between Princess Margot and Duke Henri of Guise. The countess said darkly: ‘Duke Henri is not the first man to have “paid court” to the princess.’

Young Aphrodite was shocked and excited by the suggestion that a princess might be promiscuous. ‘Mother!’ she said. ‘You ought not to repeat such slanders. Margot is engaged to marry Henri of Bourbon!’

Ned murmured: ‘Perhaps she just got the two Henris mixed up.’

The countess giggled. ‘They have too many Henris in this country.’

Ned did not even mention the more shocking rumour that Margot was simultaneously having an incestuous relationship with her seventeen-year-old brother Hercule-Francis.

The two women were distracted by the approach of Bernard Housse, a bright young courtier who knew how to make himself useful to the king. Aphrodite greeted him with a pleased smile, and Ned thought he might suit her very well.

Ned turned away and caught the eye of the marchioness of Nîmes, a Protestant aristocrat. About Ned’s age, and voluptuous, Louise de Nîmes was the second wife of the much older marquess. Her father, like Ned’s, had been a wealthy merchant. She immediately gave Ned the latest gossip: ‘The king found out about Margot and Henri de Guise!’

‘Really? What did he do?’

‘He dragged her out of her bed and had her flogged!’

‘My goodness. She’s eighteen, isn’t she? It’s a bit old for flogging.’

‘A king can do what he likes.’ Louise looked over Ned’s shoulder and her face changed. Her smile vanished and she looked as if she had seen a dead rat.

The alteration was so striking that Ned turned to find out what had caused it, and saw Pierre Aumande. ‘I guess you don’t like Monsieur Aumande de Guise,’ he said.

‘He’s a snake. And he’s not a Guise. I’m from the same part of the world, and I know his background.’

‘Oh? Do tell me.’

‘His father is the illegitimate son of one of the Guise men. The family sent the bastard to school and made him the parish priest of Thonnance-lès-Joinville.’