The Virgin's Daughter (19 page)

“What are you talking about?”

Julien sobered, and put his hands on her shoulders. She nearly trembled under the weight of them, the width and warmth of his palms, the steadiness that promised here was a man who could keep you grounded.

But his words pulled the ground right out from beneath her. “I have been Walsingham’s man for eight years, Lucie. I work for the English.”

INTERLUDE

August 1572

P
aris in August was a mess of muggy skies and tempers that flared in direct proportion to the temperatures. But the weather notwithstanding, everyone who mattered in French society and government was in Paris this August for the wedding of the king’s sister, Margaret, to Henry of Navarre. The Huguenots had come to support their champion, Henry, and the Catholics had come to register their dissent to the Catholic princess lowering herself to this marriage.

The LeClerc family had come because Renaud was still a member of the royal military, though much less used since the death of the previous king, and had distant ties to the throne. Their home was Catholic, but not doctrinaire, and Nicole LeClerc in particular had become something of a well-known friend to the Huguenots.

At twenty-one, Julien LeClerc cared nothing for religious divides, except for the fact that he’d fallen in love with a very pretty Parisian Huguenot, Léonore Martin, who served as a companion in Francis Walsingham’s house. As the English queen’s ambassador
to France, Walsingham was naturally a lightning rod for both Huguenot and Catholic—the former in approval, the latter in hostility.

The sense of real trouble began the day Renaud was dispatched out of Paris by the king to settle a report of unrest near the Italian border. Coming just a few hours after the attempted assassination of the well-known Huguenot, Admiral de Coligny, the order made Renaud jumpy.

“I’d tell you to leave for Blanclair,” he told his sons, “but I’m not sure that the roads will be the safest place just now for your mother and sister. Probably better to stay in Paris for a few weeks until things quiet down. Use your best judgment,” he instructed Nicolas, “and Julien, don’t do anything rash. Nothing comes before the safety of your mother and Charlotte.”

Two days later all hell broke loose. Julien had felt it coming for hours, the heat of the day containing violence in its oppression. He’d insisted his mother and Charlotte remain in the house, but Nicolas had left hours earlier for who knew what tavern or woman. Julien kept pacing the house, from top to bottom, until his mother said sharply that he was frightening the servants.

Shortly after the bells rang for Matins, the first sounds of open fighting began to filter through the streets, seeping in through the upper windows opened for a breath of air. That was it; he couldn’t just sit here. If there were clashes between Catholic and Huguenot, then the English ambassador would be a target, and so might those French Protestants who worked in his home.

He explained himself tersely to his mother. Nicole LeClerc might not approve, but she was a naturally kind woman and she loved her children. She must have read his aching need to do something, for she reluctantly agreed that he should try to make his way to Léonore’s home and see if he could get her and her family back to greater safety in the well-defended, royally connected LeClerc house.

Leaving the house and its armed guards under his mother’s command,
Julien slipped through back streets in the dark, plain clothing he’d borrowed from one of the men-at-arms.

Léonore’s family lived just a mile away, but it took him nearly an hour to detour around shops being pillaged and burned, homes invaded and destroyed. He heard screams and smelled blood, so thick in the air one could almost taste it. Julien carried both sword and dagger, but he had no wish to add to tonight’s bloodshed if he could help it. Sickened by what he’d already seen, he knew they should have gotten out of Paris when they still could. He would never be able to forget the things he’d seen tonight. Or forgive the fact that it was Frenchman against Frenchman.

Which again led him to wonder uneasily where the hell Nicolas was. His brother should have stayed at Blanclair with his wife, heavily pregnant with their first child, but Nicolas spent as little time as possible with Célie. He preferred the readily available women of Paris.

Julien knew the moment he saw the front of Léonore’s house that he was too late. The door hung off its hinges, splinters around the frame where it had been battered down. There didn’t appear to be any great mob still inside, but there were several men stationed near the front door. Catholics—wearing white crosses on their hats for quick identification.

One of them knew Julien by sight. “LeClerc, isn’t it? Renaud’s son?”

He nodded warily. “What happened here?”

“All dead.” The man jerked his head inside. “Except your brother. You’ll find him in the chamber up the stairs, first on the right. We found a surgeon for him.”

Julien moved without thinking. What the hell was Nicolas doing here? And were they really all dead? Sweet-faced and sweet-tempered Léonore, her grandmother, her two brothers?

There was certainly enough blood for death. And when Julien reached the top of the stairs, there was Léonore, wearing only a torn
shift, throat cut and body sprawled like an abandoned doll. Clutched in her right hand was the string of silverwork beads Julien had given her a week ago. He crouched and, swallowing against nausea and sorrow, took back the gift. Something to always remember her by. When he straightened, he caught sight of her two brothers farther down the corridor, so covered in blood that he could not distinguish individual wounds.

In the chamber on the right, Nicolas lay on a bed, white-faced and covered in sweat, eyes wild. A surgeon stood over him.

“Nic?” Julien shoved the surgeon aside. “What the hell is going on?”

It took Nicolas a minute to focus. “Julien,” he gasped. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think this would happen—”

“What happened?”

“I was a block away when I heard the mobs. I remembered the street, because of the girl. Because you were so besotted with her. I tried to warn them, to get them to come away, but the mob was here too fast. I wanted to help her, for your sake—” Nicolas groaned.

Julien grasped his brother’s hand. “Are you all right?” he demanded.

Nicholas closed his eyes. “I hope to God I’m dying,” he said bitterly.

Julien looked at the surgeon, who, rather than answer, removed the linen that was soaking up blood by the moment. When Julien saw his brother’s injury, he knew that, until the day he died, he would never be able to repay Nicolas for what he’d lost in trying to help Julien.

He would simply have to find a way to pay back all that the Catholic fanatics had taken from them today.

ELEVEN

J
ulien watched Lucette’s expression, judging the moment she went from open disbelief to suspicion to cautious understanding. She opened her mouth and he anticipated the question. “Why?” he asked. “Which I suppose covers all possible avenues. Why do I work for Walsingham? Why am I telling you? And why didn’t Walsingham let you know?”

She coloured, which she always did so appealingly at any emotional moment. What emotion was she feeling just now? Her tone, at least, was caustic. “I imagine he did not let me know because either he does not trust me…or he does not trust you.”

“He has no reason not to trust me,” Julien said.

“Which is precisely what you would say if he had reason. If, for example, you were only pretending to work for Walsingham and instead were using your knowledge to undermine England and help the Catholics.”

Julien couldn’t help himself; he laughed out loud. “That is the problem with conspiracy. It so easily twists back on itself. No, I don’t suppose I can make you believe me. But it is nonetheless the
truth. Since September ’seventy-two I have been in the employ of Francis Walsingham. Well, employ is not quite accurate—I will not take English money.”

“Is it any less treachery if it’s done for free?” she shot back. “So why, then, merely as a game? To spite your father and brother?”

He’d have expected her to be happier to hear that he was, in some sense, on England’s side. Instead she seemed truly upset at the thought of him betraying his country.

Fine, she wanted the truth, he’d give it to her. At least to a point. “Tell me, Lucette, what happened in August 1572?”

Whatever her temper or mixed emotions, Lucette could always be counted on to use her mind. He saw the beginning of understanding as she answered him grudgingly. “St. Bartholomew’s Day.”

“And what happened on the eve of St. Bartholomew’s Day?”

“Admiral de Coligny was assassinated.”

“Correct. Two days after the first attempt on his life, de Coligny was pulled from his bed and slaughtered. And he was not the only victim. When the bells for Matins were rung at St. Germain l’Auxerrois, the Swiss Guard spread throughout Paris. They murdered the Protestant leaders that were in the city for the marriage of Princess Margaret and the Prince of Navarre.”

“I know all this!”

“You may
know
it, but you didn’t
live
it. What were you…fourteen at the time? I was twenty-one and in Paris myself. Have you ever seen streets actually running with blood, Lucette? I have.”

“What has this to do with Walsingham?”

“Walsingham was resident in Paris at the time as Elizabeth’s ambassador. It was something of a miracle that he and his family escaped death. But not everyone in their household was so lucky. They had a handful of French attendants, one of them a young woman of good family. Only sixteen. Her name was Léonore.”

“And you were in love with her?”

Julien didn’t bother to confirm the obvious. Or was it so obvious? He had certainly thought himself in love with the girl, and perhaps
that was all that mattered. “Léonore was a Huguenot, which is why she served in that household. She was not actually at Walsingham’s house itself at the time, though, which might have saved her life. It was the middle of the night, remember? She was at home. Her house, known to be Huguenot, was attacked and Léonore had her throat cut after being raped by the Catholic mob.”

“Where were you?”

How the devil did she know precisely the most painful question to ask? “I was not in her bed, if that’s what you mean. More’s the pity for her. Losing her virtue would certainly have been preferable to losing her life. But she was blamelessly sleeping alone, with only women in the household. Her brothers had been summoned to the fighting. They returned in time to be slaughtered as well.”

He expected another piercing question, another flaying of the sensibilities he kept carefully guarded, used only as motivation. Instead she said simply, “I am sorry for you both.”

That naked compassion shook him; it had been so long since he had traded in any relationship other than those based on mutual lies.

Roughly, he said, “You know, of course, that the massacres did not stop that night, and were not confined to Paris. For weeks whole Huguenot communities were wiped out—men, women, children. All in the name of a vengeful God I found I could not satisfy my conscience with. It was then I offered my aid to Walsingham.”

“What sort of aid?”

“Exactly the sort you would imagine. For eight years I have been embedded in a Catholic network in France that wants to see Queen Elizabeth assassinated and Mary Stuart on England’s throne. Them, I do allow to pay me. I give them just enough fact not to make them suspicious, but most of what I learn goes to Walsingham.”

Lucette was studying him intensely. After what looked like an internal struggle of some kind, she asked abruptly, “Have you heard of Nightingale?”

“The bird or the inn?” he joked. “No. Some sort of plot, I imagine. What is it?”

Another, much longer pause. “I think that if Walsingham wanted you to know, he’d have told you. Or instructed me to tell you. As he did not, I can only assume that he is perhaps suspicious of you. Or of those you are in contact with. I think I shall keep the details to myself.”