Thomas rubbed at his leg. Her bandages still bound his knee, although he had re-tied them in the complex system he’d discovered on waking in the Tower five mornings before. It helped, enabled him to move. But they were not the only legacy of his encounter with Anne Rombaud; that much was clear from the feelings he’d had on reading the absurd poetry of the love story.
He crossed himself, lowered his head, and behind the shadow of his hand he began to pray:
‘Holy Mary, Mother of our Saviour, guide this, thy humble servant, in his temptations. Heavenly Father, help to make him strong in thy will alone.’
Thy will! If only he knew what that truly was. If only he had Gianni’s certainty that it was all about the hand, getting it back to London before it was too late, furthering the cause of the furious Imperial Ambassador. Except he knew – and he suspected his young companion knew the same – that cause was dead. If they were indeed in Paris for the hand, it was for more complex reasons now.
Moving his lips in prayer, he tried to seek what his were.
Gianni leaned out of the doorway, spat onto the smeared cobbles. He had read the signs of his family’s flight, had tracked them successfully to Paris. The absurd love story was a fortunate occurrence but he’d have found them eventually anyway. Looking at the palace gates now, he knew his quarry cowered somewhere behind them.
He watched their men moving back and forth, seeking information. Something, at least, the Jesuit had been able to muster on arrival – Imperial agents, roused by Renard’s decrees. A dozen of them circled the walls, though most were here among the crowds at the main gates. All other entrances had been closed, the patrols trebled – the King had been concerned that a woman had so easily penetrated his defences. It certainly made it easier to wait and watch. The quarry may have gone to ground but they would have to break cover soon.
He had no thoughts as to why his sister had got caught up in this ridiculous romantic saga. He didn’t care. All that mattered to him was that he was again within reach of the hand. This time, when he held his family’s curse, no one would take it from him. No one.
Jean stood just inside the doorway of the bedroom, watching his daughter and the man who held her hand.
They did not move. They did not talk. They were simply there – Anne on the bed, Tagay on a chair before it – and Jean could only observe his daughter joined to someone as she had never been before. And there was something in his daughter’s look he recognized immediately. For almost the same dark eyes had once looked at him that way, reflecting the beams of a Tuscan moon. In their daughter he saw Beck, the mother, and the love that had once been his.
Anne suddenly started and the man before her leapt up, hand on sword.
‘No, Tagay! It is my father.’
Jean came forward then, taking his daughter’s unbroken arm, noting the other, her pale face.
‘I thought I had lost you.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘I have always marvelled at your powers, girl. But when did you decide that you could fly?’
‘I had no choice.’ She gestured to the man who stood behind her father.
Jean turned. Tagay stood motionless, arms tense at his side. ‘Jean Rombaud.’ The Frenchman extended his arm as he spoke and the dark young man took it, gripping along to the elbow. They held that and looked each at the other for a long moment. Then Jean nodded and turned back to the bed.
‘Anne, the news of your attempted flight has spread through the city. It will not be long before they come for us and … what we possess.’
‘Tagay knows everything, Father. He saved this for us.’ She moved her head toward the table and Jean saw the package of cloth, the familiar outline within the layers.
‘Then he will know of our great need.’ Turning, he said, ‘Can you help us get away from this place? I fear the gates may already be watched. And I think my daughter will not be climbing for a while.’
‘I can help you away from here. But where will you go?’
‘I do not know. Somewhere else. I cannot think beyond that.’
‘I can.’ Anne had raised herself up in the bed and Tagay moved to place pillows behind her back. ‘I know where we must take the hand now.’
‘Another dream, child?’
‘Not a dream. A certainty. Anne Boleyn’s hand will never be safe here.’
‘In France? Should we return to Italy then, keep it with us? I don’t think your mother would like that.’ He tried to force a smile, failed.
‘I mean, it will not be safe anywhere in this world.’
‘Then we are doomed, child. We cannot run for ever. This hand has a way of wandering. Believe me, I know.’
She looked first to Tagay, then back to her father. ‘Tagay has spoken of another world. His. It is called Canada. It is a world barely touched by our … Christian savagery. They have sacred places there too. A full moon by which to bury it. Perhaps, finally, the Queen can rest there.’
Jean was too stunned to speak. But Tagay’s heart moved faster as he heard her words. For in that moment he knew she was right – and that she had fallen from heaven to bring him his great desire.
Excitedly, he said, ‘We can take ship from Brittany. We can follow the sunbeams to my land.’
Jean found his voice. ‘I have heard of this place. But it is not like the Spanish colonies in the Americas where there are ports, cities growing, people. The French gave up trying to settle in Canada. There’s no one there!’
‘Forgive me but you are wrong. My people are there.’
Jean studied that certainty, now in both the faces before him. It was hard to oppose it but he had to try. ‘Even if you found a captain who had been, who could take us – and I think the last ship probably sailed when this young man was a child – do you know how much gold it would take to buy a passage?’ He saw Anne’s face drop. ‘We have nothing left, Anne, and no way of getting what we’d need. It’s impossible. Impossible!’
There was a silence. Until Tagay spoke again. ‘I know where there is gold. Lots of gold. Gold that is mine by right.’
Jean looked back and forth between the two of them, saw the certainty returning.
‘Father, you have always trusted me before. Trust me now.’
‘And the men – my son, that Jesuit, all the Imperial agents – who probably even now wait at the gates? This may be a palace but it still stinks of a trap to me.’
‘There are ways out of any trap,’ Tagay said.
Jean looked between them, along the palpable link that joined them, and saw again what he had recognized from the door. Recalled other dark eyes lock with his across the decades. Beck was looking at him from beneath a gibbet, at a crossroads in the Loire. And between them, they had just accomplished the impossible.
Each carriage that left the gates was scrupulously studied. If its curtains were drawn, Gianni would find an excuse to look behind them, usually joining the beggars and pretending to seek alms, sometimes receiving a slash from the coachman’s whip as reward. But each survey yielded the same result – startled ladies and blustering lords, but no guardians of the hand.
Then, at six bells, a chair came through the gates. There were two men at each of the four poles, but it was the man at its window that had Gianni grabbing at Thomas’s arm.
‘My father!’ he whispered. Jean Rombaud’s face peered between the brim of a servant’s cap and the high collar of his cloak, searching the street while struggling to pull down the blind. He was still at this task when the chair swung left directly before their vantage point. His father was passing within feet of him but both Gianni and Thomas now looked beyond him to the other side of the compartment, saw long black hair spilling from beneath a white lace coif, flowing down over the shoulder of a green gown.
The blind dropped. ‘And Anne!’ said Thomas. He held onto Gianni’s arm as the young man strained forward. ‘Not here!’ He gestured to the main gates, where the palace guards were massed. ‘Let us follow and take them in some alley.’
‘Did you see any
one?’
‘Yes. And I’m sure they’ve seen us.’
‘Good.’ Tagay began stripping the lace from his hair, unhooking the stays of the dress. A sober green doublet appeared from beneath, matching breeches, with riding boots up to his knee. He donned a black cloak and wide-brimmed hat.
‘How far?’ said Jean.
‘Not very.’
‘Does that mean I can get up now?’
The plaintive voice came from the floor of the carriage. Jean looked down at Cahusac, the man who had read out the pamphlet, his fat frame wedged uncomfortably into the chair’s base. The footman had volunteered to help out ‘the lovers’ for sentiment and the promise of a gold florin. He looked less than happy about the bargain now.
‘Not yet.’ Jean was stripping off his cap and cloak as he spoke. ‘And put these on.’
In the wider roadways nearest the palace they made good speed, the eight chairmen taking it almost at a run, Thomas struggling to keep up. Soon, however, the rat’s nest of byways narrowed and the men were forced into a halting progress. Their pursuers eased up, Gianni sending three of his men fifty paces ahead of the chair, he and the others keeping an equal distance behind.
Thomas limped up beside Gianni. ‘We must not rush this, Rombaud.’
‘Have you ever ambushed anyone on a street before, Englishman?’
‘Well, no, I—’
‘Then hold your tongue, sir.’
Gianni smiled to himself, moved slightly ahead, his eyes never leaving his quarry. He was a Grey Wolf once more on the hunt. And for a greater prize than any old Jew.
The chair had halted again, angry words drifting back to them. Tagay peered from beneath a partly raised blind.
‘Rue de la Ferronerie. There’s always a blockage here. Look, there is a corner ahead, a cooper’s awning straddles the street beyond it. Are you ready?’
‘Yes.’ Jean opened the door but held it against the frame. As the chair lurched forward again he said, ‘Till the rendezvous. Go with God.’
‘Perhaps.’ Tagay gave him a brief smile. ‘And you go with the Earth Mother.’ He looked out, tensed. ‘Now!’
As the chair turned the corner, Jean slipped out of it. He was already beneath an awning and his knee struck a barrel, part of the stock of the cooperage. He moved swiftly into the darkened interior. From its shadows he watched as the chair moved on. The blind had been allowed to ride up and Cahusac now sprawled across the window space but half-turned away, wearing Jean’s cap and cloak.
It will not deceive him for long, he thought, watching his son walk past. Long enough, let us hope.
He waited till Gianni had cleared his vision, counted ten. As the shopowner approached him, asking for his custom, he ducked under the awning and moved swiftly back in the direction from which he had come.
There was something wrong with the chair! Gianni closed to about twenty paces, till he could look down its right side. The blind had risen and he could still see his father’s peaked cap, an edge of cloak. It took him another fifty paces before he realized.
‘The chairmen!’ he hissed to Thomas. ‘They are walking lighter.’
‘What?’
Gianni doubled his pace, grabbing his men along the way. The chair was halted up ahead, its bearers arguing with a waggoner over right of way.
Gianni closed the distance, a wolf descending on prey. His dagger was already out as he reached for his sister’s door.
He jerked it open. One startled face looked at him from beneath his father’s cap, above his father’s cloak. But it was not his father’s face.
‘Help, help, he—!’ cried Cahusac.
The third word was choked off by Gianni’s hand and the dagger’s point that almost touched the eyeball.
‘Where are they, scum?’
The eye showed white in terror. There was the sudden, sharp smell of urine.
‘Sir, sir, sir, I … I … I … do not know. Please …’ the steward squeaked as the blade moved a hair closer. ‘They … they … they say they will rendezvous later, they did not tell me where.’
As Gianni threw the terrified man to the floor, Thomas arrived. ‘What has happened?’
‘We have been duped!’
Gianni picked up the dress from the floor, slashing at it with his blade. Then he dropped it, pushed past Thomas, and swept his vision up and down the street.
Horses, wagons, black cloaks, brown cloaks, beggars, merchants, refuse, rats. Tiles, awnings, whips, sword hilts, black hair, fair hair, plumes, sashes. Fury, watching, shouting, laughter, shoving, limping, begging, turning.
Black cloak, black hair. Watching. Turning. He saw it all again, realized which way the man had walked.
‘Go back to the palace,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Try to catch them there. I am going after this other.’
Thomas watched Gianni disappear into the throng. He took a step, called, ‘Rombaud!’ but the youth was gone. Hurriedly he gathered the others and began to retrace their route.
It did not matter that it was not his city. There are ways of tracking game, in any forest. That one glimpse of black hair, black cloak had given him his scent even though it was a city short of neither.
This must be her pagan lover, he thought as he hurried to the corner. Well, a brother must protect his sister’s virtue, must he not?
He changed his grip on his knife. The edge of the first building gave him a view of the next, of the figure moving swiftly around it. At the next he nearly lost him in a street of stalls, the crowd thick. Narrowing his senses down, he shut out all that was unnecessary, moved his head back and forth from the slabs of fish to the dripping carcasses of hare. It took a while but he got him again, paused at a stall up ahead, pretending to examine some item there. Gianni turned and immediately began haggling for a flagon of wine. When he’d paid and looked up the black cloak was moving round a corner.
Beyond it, the street widened, the houses growing a little larger, shops selling linens and books instead of fruit and offal. Steps led down toward the road that paralleled the Seine, the river scent ripe from the day’s sun. On its banks the mansions of the rich massed. Carefully he descended the stair and looked around its buttress, saw his prey disappear through the main gate of a comparatively run-down, but still large, house.
Is this the lovers’ rendezvous? he thought.
He approached the rusted gates. An old man, toothless and runny-eyed, sat just inside them. Though it was a stalker’s necessity to be patient, Gianni was alone and needed information.
‘Share a drink with a stranger, friend?’
The old man, startled from his daydream, blinked up at him. Gianni uncorked the bottle he’d bought at the market, thrust it nearer, saw the old man recognize and reach. He let him take a deep draft before he spoke again.
‘Tell me, friend, whose magnificent palace do you guard here?’
The man muttered something, raised the bottle to drink again. Gianni took the bottle away when liquid began to spill down the soiled shirt front.
‘Who lives here, friend?’ His voice was harder now and the man understood that, even as his eyes followed the withdrawing bottle.
‘I said! The bitch Marquise de Saint Andre, pox rot her! Doesn’t pay me enough to buy such lovely wine.’
Gnarled hands reached again and Gianni let him take just another little sip.
‘I thought I saw a comrade of mine enter here just now. A halbardier from the Duc de Fournay’s company.’
‘Eh?’ The eyes were glazed in incomprehension, then cleared. A laugh like a rattle came from his throat. ‘A soldier? You jest, sir. No one but Whore Boy passed me this whole day, and him only a moment ago!’
‘Whore Boy?’
‘Aye, sir.’ A tongue ran around reddened gums. ‘The Marquise’s pet monkey. Brown bastard. Sticks it where she tells him to, know what I mean?’
He made an obscene gesture with thumb and circled finger. Just as he did, shouts came from the house.
Gianni leant
in. ‘Is there another way out of this house?’
The man, who’d been staring at the bottle, now looked up angrily. ‘Who wants to know? Friend of Whore Boy’s, did you say?’
‘No,’ said Gianni, producing a coin from his pocket, ‘friend of yours.’
There was more yelling from within, then a shattering of glass, a woman’s long and desperate wail. A window was flung open, an old woman’s head thrust out.
‘Help! Help. Stop him! Call the watch!’ she screamed. ‘I am robbed, ruined, oh help!’
The old man appeared not to hear. He reached for coin and wine.
‘River gate, sir. Down on the path to the right there.’
Gianni ran around the crumbling wall of the house. The muddy path ran wallside to the water, making a ‘T’ with an even muddier pathway there. To his right, a wooden gate swung on its hinges. He looked swiftly back and forth along the river bank. Nothing! Then he looked down and saw a bootprint slowly filling with brown water.
He began to run in the direction the toe pointed, mud sucking at his feet. Soon, a bridge loomed, its stair on his left. He paused – nothing to hear beneath the vaulted wood ahead. It was almost dark now so he ran his fingers along the steps. The wet mud was on the third step up, and again on the third above that. Someone had taken these stairs at a leap not a moment before.
He reached the top in three bounds. A wagon clattered past him, spraying mud and ordure. When it had passed, on the opposite side of the bridge he saw the black-cloaked figure walking swiftly across to the Left Bank.
‘I have you,’ Gianni thought exultantly. He would leave no more than fifty paces between them. The pagan had stolen, was on the run and would be panicked, frightened, careless. He would not be looking for a Grey Wolf.
Fixing his eyes on the black hair swinging ahead, Gianni melded with the crowds.
Tagay had known he would be followed. He wanted it, hoped that more would seek him, less to chase Jean as he returned to the Royal Palace to collect and flee with Anne. He was disappointed when he saw just the one in pursuit, until he realized who that one was, recognizing the profile at the wine vendor’s back in the street market. Almost the same profile he had so stared at as it lay on the pillow. The hair that shaded it, the structure of cheek, nose, the shape of eye, showed the kindred bond.