Paris: The Novel (61 page)

As Guy Renard drew near the house, he silently cursed. He did so for two reasons. The first was that he always felt irritated when he went to see his cousin Pierre.

Why did Pierre have to be such a fool? He shrugged. Because Pierre’s father, Charles, had been a fool too, he supposed.

A century ago, when Cécile Renard had married young de Cygne, the family had been at the height of its wealth. The next generation produced several Renard sons, who’d shared that wealth. But it was in the time of their children, in the glorious reign of King François I, that the parting of the family ways began.

What a time that had been. The age—as history would call it—when the Renaissance came to France. Italian architecture had been transformed by the warm and delightful sensuality of the French into the glorious royal châteaus of the Loire. Humanist writers had been nurtured in that soil, like Ronsard the poet, and earthy Rabelais.

And François was everything a Renaissance prince should be: tall, handsome, a patron of the arts. The scandalous but brilliant goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini had worked in Paris. New improvements were undertaken on the growing royal palace of the Louvre. And Leonardo da Vinci himself, bringing the
Mona Lisa
with him, had come to spend his last days in the valley of the Loire, and died in the French king’s arms.

The king was a man of vision too: Verrazano’s voyage to America was financed thanks to him; colonies in Canada were founded; explorers sent to India and beyond. He’d opened trade across the Mediterranean with Morocco. To balance the power of the Hapsburg Holy Roman emperor, he’d even formed an alliance with the Moslem Suleiman the Magnificent, of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Though he’d also married his son to Catherine de Médicis, of Florence, with a rich dowry promised by her kinsman, the pope.

But Guy’s favorite tale was what happened when King François had met that great bully, Henry VIII of England.

“Imagine it,” he gleefully told his little cousin Simon, “they met at a magnificent congress called the Field of the Cloth of Gold. And Henry of England, who was big and powerful and very pleased with himself, challenged King François to a wrestling match. The two men wrestle. The crowds are watching. They are both strong. But maybe François is stronger, or more skillful, and no doubt more intelligent … and suddenly—oopla—Henry’s in the mud. He’s flattened. King François beats him.”

“Was King Henry angry?”

“He was furious. But there was nothing he could do. He was beaten.”

“Was it King Henry who had six wives?”

“Yes. But it didn’t do him much good. He was a terrible man. Whereas King François was a great man. And of course,” Guy added proudly, “he had many beautiful mistresses.” Like most Frenchmen, and certainly Frenchwomen, Guy liked his rulers to have mistresses. It showed they were virile, and powerful. Either that, or they could be saints.

“Why do kings have mistresses, Uncle Guy?” Simon asked.

“For the honor of France.”

But what Guy was really thinking—though he did not say it to the boy—was that the reign of François I had been the time when his own father and his uncle Robert had both made large fortunes. The king might have spent too much, but the Renard brothers had done very well out of supplying his court.

Whereas Simon’s grandfather had not. Uncle Robert had even offered to bring him into his own business, but Charles had refused. In that glorious age of adventure, he’d managed to lose most of his money.

And to make matters worse, his son Pierre had no interest in getting the money back. He worked just hard enough to get by, and hardly that. He seemed to have no ambition of any kind. He didn’t want any help. He was completely placid. As the years passed, this younger branch of the Renards had been written off by the rest of the family as poor relations. But Pierre didn’t seem to mind. He was always cheerful.

And this situation irked Guy. He couldn’t help it. He was proud of his family’s success. He was ashamed if any of them went down in the world. And so he’d gone on a personal mission to see if he couldn’t do something about it.

“It’s good of you to try,” his father had told him, “but I’m afraid you’re wasting your time.”

“Pierre’s hopeless,” Guy agreed, “but the boy’s a dear little fellow, and he seems quite intelligent.”

Once when he was visiting the family, Guy had casually mentioned the marriage of Cécile Renard to de Cygne. Young Simon had turned to his father in astonishment. “Our family married nobility?” he’d cried.

“Oh, that was just one rich lady, centuries ago,” Pierre told him. “Nothing to do with us.” And afterward he’d taken Guy aside and gently requested: “Don’t put ideas into the boy’s head. We live in quite a different world these days.”

“What are your plans for Simon?” Guy had asked him once.

“One of our friends is a baker, and he’s suggested he might take Simon as an apprentice in a few years. Simon quite likes the idea.”

Guy was careful after that. If he was going to have any hope of doing something for Simon, he knew he had to keep on good terms with the parents. He never let his irritation with Pierre show. But he was constantly on the lookout for ways to engender some spark of ambition and adventure in the boy. If young Simon showed that, then the rest of the family might be prepared to do something for him when he was older.

He’d tell Simon stories of the great merchant heroes of the city, like Étienne Marcel, who’d built the city fortifications; he’d talk about the adventurers sailing to the New World; he’d tell the boy about how this small merchant or that had made his fortune through hard work or ingenuity. So far, he had no idea whether he was succeeding or not, but he wasn’t going to stop trying. He was a Renard, after all.

It wasn’t surprising, then, that each time he saw his cousin’s house, he secretly cursed Pierre for putting him to all this trouble.

The second reason he’d cursed, however, belonged to the day. In fact, he wasn’t sure they should be taking little Simon out into the streets at all. Because Guy Renard trusted his instincts—and he scented danger.

There was something very suspicious about this royal wedding.

Guy was watchful as they came down past the Convent of the Celestines to the riverside. A defensive wall ran along the bank of the Seine for a little way. After that, they could look across the water to the Île Saint-Louis, the small, bare island covered with woods and rough grazing that lay just upstream from the Île de la Cité, where the gray mass of Notre Dame loomed ahead. They passed the old Grève embankment, where a couple of watermills on a quay jutted out into the water. The roadway was full of brightly dressed people, moving in the same direction. Along the waterside, the tall, steep-gabled wooden houses with their open galleries and balconies hung with festive garlands and ribbons stared over the river, which was full of boats and barges.

Young Simon was walking happily beside him, his father on the other side. So far, no sign of danger.

The ceremony was being held under a magnificent awning on the parvis of Notre Dame, just in front of the cathedral’s great west doors. There
the king’s little sister was going to marry her kinsman, Henry of Bourbon, King of Navarre.

In a way, it was a dynastic marriage—perhaps a necessary one—for her family and for France. For although her two brothers were living, they had no male children as yet. In another generation, the Valois line of the ancient Capet royal family would die out. And who was next in line? Quite a distant cousin, as it happened. The Bourbon line descended directly from a younger son of that saintly King Louis who’d built the Sainte-Chapelle two centuries ago. The bridegroom’s father had married the queen of the little mountain kingdom of Navarre that lay between France and Spain in the Pyrenees, of which his son Henry was now king. So if Henry of Navarre did inherit the throne of France, the Bourbon and Valois lines would be conveniently joined again.

But despite the dynastic convenience, this marriage provoked one, very big question.

“Cousin Guy,” Simon now demanded, “why is the Princess of France marrying a Protestant?”

It was amazing really, Guy considered. Fifty years ago an obscure monk named Luther had challenged the Catholic Church, and because of it the whole of Western Christendom was now divided into two armed camps. To the north and east, the Netherlands, many of the German principalities and much of Scandinavia was in the Protestant camp. England was too. The pope had just excommunicated the heretic Queen Elizabeth, and invited good Catholic rulers to depose her. Spain, meanwhile, and the Holy Roman Empire of central Europe were in the hands of the most Catholic Hapsburg dynasty.

And France? The humanist King François had tolerated Protestants in his realm for a while. By the time he’d decided they were dangerous, it was too late. The north of France was solidly Catholic. So mostly was Paris. The modest numbers of Protestants in the city worshipped quietly, in their own houses mostly, and took care not to draw attention to themselves. But in the southern mountains and Atlantic ports like La Rochelle, huge numbers of people had taken the new faith. They went by many names—Protestants, Reformers, Calvinists, Huguenots. Many were humble craftsmen, but others were merchants and knights. Admiral Coligny, the finest military commander in France, had gone over to the
new faith. And the mother of Henry of Navarre had also converted, and taken her family with her.

The Protestants had demanded freedom of worship. The royal government had clamped down. There had been a succession of regional conflicts and truces.

“You know,” Guy said to young Simon, “that there has been fighting with the Protestants in recent years? Not here in Paris, thank God, but in other places.”

“Yes. But we are in the right, aren’t we? The Protestants are heretics.”

“Yes, you are a good Catholic and so am I, little Simon. But it is sad that Frenchmen should kill each other, don’t you think?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it is hoped that this marriage will help to stop any more fighting.”

“And after this marriage,” Simon asked, “will the Catholics and Protestants be able to agree?”

“That may be difficult. We just hope they won’t fight anymore.”

That was the official explanation. It satisfied many people. The boy seemed to believe it, anyway.

They were approaching the great bridge that led across to the Île de la Cité. This had been magnificently rebuilt in stone around the start of the reign of the great King François. As well as the roadway, its high arches also supported a line of tall, gabled houses that acted like a curtain, blocking off the view downstream. This was the way to Notre Dame.

But when they reached it, they found that the press of people was so great that it was impossible to cross. Simon was disappointed. He wanted to see the wedding. Guy was secretly glad. If there was going to be trouble, he’d sooner be here on the open Right Bank than trapped in the narrow confines of the city’s central island.

“We’ll try the next bridge,” he suggested.

But the Pont au Change, also covered with houses, was blocked too. And further downstream, the untidy old bridge of watermills—most of which had been converted into private houses now—had been sealed off to all traffic.

“I’m afraid we can’t get across,” Guy said. “And if we want to watch the nobles riding back afterward, we’d do better to find some open space. Let’s walk a bit farther.

Downstream from the bridges the view opened out a bit. Ahead, the
towers of the old Louvre fort rose over an unfinished collection of royal buildings that seemed still to be struggling against each other to form a cohesive royal palace.

Simon wanted to run ahead a little way. The two men did not stop him.

They were coming level with the downstream tip of the island when Pierre turned to Guy and asked him quietly: “You seem uneasy. Why is that?”

“This wedding frightens me.”

“You don’t think it may bring peace to France?”

“No.” Guy glanced bleakly at Pierre. “I don’t think it’s intended to.”

“Explain to me. You know I am not worldly.”