He found the rope ladder and climbed up, stepping onto a ledge and sliding the bolt on another door. Silently, he stepped into the rear room of the Protestant bookshop in rue des Pénitents Gris and hoped there would not be another welcoming committee.
Minou watched Aimeric lead Madame Boussay, still dazed and stumbling, through the gate in the kitchen yard and out towards the street. Then she slipped back into the main house.
Despite everything, she felt strangely calm, as if all the events of the past few months had been leading to this moment. The stillness of the city outside the deserted house spoke of the anticipation of what was to come. As when a summer storm came down from the mountains, black clouds bearing down upon the walls of La Cité, Minou felt the approaching cataclysm in her bones.
Everyone waiting. Everyone holding their breath.
She ought to be afraid, she knew it. But Minou also felt free. No longer cooped up in the airless domesticity of the women’s quarters, but determining her own fate out in the world. So long as they could get away from Toulouse before the fighting started, all might still be well.
‘And may God protect and save Piet,’ she said out loud, though she was no longer sure to whom she prayed.
Piet wiped the blood from his hands, leaving a red smear on his breeches. Once more, he peered through the gap in the shutters of the bookshop window. The rue des Pénitents Gris was still empty. No sign of Vidal or his men.
‘All is well, Monsieur?’ asked the bookseller anxiously.
Once plump as a woodcock, the old man’s skin now hung loose on his bones. His long grey beard had grown unkempt.
‘When I go, bolt your doors. Admit no one,’ he said.
Hope died in the old man’s eyes. ‘It is true, then, that the Huguenot army is coming tonight? I have seen many leaving their homes, but had hoped it was another false alarm.’
‘Stay inside,’ Piet repeated.
‘Will it be over quickly, Monsieur?’ he said. ‘They say that Orléans fell in a matter of hours. The Catholics surrendered and the civilian population was little harmed.’
‘It is in the Lord’s hands now,’ Piet said, looking out towards the stables at the opposite end of the street. Praying, hoping, for a glimpse of Minou.
Instead, he saw a solitary figure, Jasper McCone, approaching his lodgings. He sighed with relief. Two swords would be better than one.
‘Monsieur, I will take my leave of you. I am in your debt. Lock your doors.’
‘May God go with you. And may God save Toulouse.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Aware of the weight and bump of the bible and the leather cylinder, both stitched within the hem of her cloak, Minou walked as quickly as she could through the silent house.
She had Piet’s satchel over her shoulder, containing the few items of sentimental value she had brought with her to Toulouse: her mother’s rosary, her hairbrush and glass, two books. She intended to leave Toulouse with nothing belonging to Monsieur Boussay.
The study door was still closed, but as she crept along the passageways, she heard voices. Aimeric said all the servants had gone. Had her uncle woken?
As she got closer to the front door, the voices got louder. She realised they were coming from the private chapel, where the door stood slightly ajar.
‘I won’t ask again, Adelaide,’ the steward said. ‘Give it to me or I will take it.’
‘I have as much a right to this as you,’ Madame Montfort replied.
He laughed. ‘It is I who have taken the lion’s share of the risk, and now it’s over.’
‘It was I who hazarded my reputation, not you. Altering the books, disguising the figures, ensuring no blame could be laid at your door.’
‘Sliding an object or two into your pockets,’ Martineau said with contempt. ‘You have grown rich sitting on your fat arse doing nothing. This is my last warning, Adelaide. If you do not hand it to me now, I will take it by force.’
Minou heard footsteps, then a shout and the sounds of a struggle. And though she hated how vilely Madame Montfort behaved to Aimeric, and to her sweet aunt, she could not bring herself to walk on by.
‘No!’ Madame Montfort screamed. ‘I will not let you have it.’
Minou pushed open the chapel door. Madame Montfort spun round, her expression a mixture of desperation and guilt. Martineau took his chance. He grabbed the wooden chest from her hands and turned.
Madame Montfort hurled herself at him. He threw a blow, sending her crashing back into the altar. The candlesticks clattered and fell to the ground. Martineau charged out of the chamber.
Minou ran to the fallen woman, but she pushed her away.
‘This is your fault,’ she hissed. ‘You and your peasant brother. Until you came, everything was fine. Under my control.’ She staggered to her feet. Minou stepped back out of her reach. ‘This is your fault. Do you hear me? You bitch. Coming here, sniffing for scraps. Parasites. You ruined everything and what am I left with? After all I’ve endured and put up with? Nothing.’
Shaken by the naked hatred in her eyes, Minou took another step back. Her face red with failure and loss, Madame Montfort raised her hand, as if to strike her, but instead turned and stumbled to the door, and out into the passageway.
‘Where are you going?’ Minou called after her. ‘Everyone has gone.’
The only answer was the sound of the front door opening, and crashing shut.
Stunned, Minou stood for a moment in the chaos of the chapel. The evidence of the altercation was all around: the cloth ripped, the two prie-dieux lying on their sides and the hassocks, with the embroidered Boussay crest, thrown into a corner like a pair of old boots. The gold cross that usually sat on the altar was gone and the panelled doors beneath were open.
Minou bent down, then noticed a sheaf of papers and letters on the shelf. With a jolt, she saw her own name. Her pulse racing, she reached in and pulled out three letters she had never seen, each addressed to her.
She knew she should take them and leave. Every second she remained in the house was a second lost. But Minou recognised her father’s handwriting, and she could not wait. She felt relief, followed by fury that Madame Montfort – she had no doubt it would be her – had kept these letters from her. It didn’t even appear she had opened them, but she was a woman for whom everything was a matter of power, of negotiation.
‘Hateful, hateful woman.’
Minou slid her finger under the flap of the first letter. It was from her father, dated a few days after she and Aimeric had left for Toulouse in March. She scanned its contents, full of local news of Madame Noubel, of the reluctance with which the Sanchez family were packing up to leave the Bastide and how Charles’s behaviour was more erratic by the day.
The second letter, dated the fifteenth day of March, acknowledged receipt of her letter to him, but it was more sombre in tone. In it he begged her forgiveness, explaining he intended to put matters right. Forgiveness for what?
To that end, he was intending to journey to a place called Puivert. He gave his word he would tell her everything when next they were together but, in the meantime, she should not worry. Alis was content to be left in the care of Madame Noubel.
There it was in black and white – Puivert.
Everything her aunt had told her rushed back into her mind. Minou pressed the letter to her chest, haunted by the fact that all the time she’d been imagining him in his usual chair by the fire in their little house, he hadn’t even been in Carcassonne at all.
She turned to the last letter, only now seeing the form of address was different: MADEMOISELLE MARGUERITE JOUBERT. She recognised the seal from the letter delivered to her in her father’s bookshop: the two initials, a B and a P, set either side of a mythical creature with talons and a forked tail.
The seal might be a match, but the handwriting was different. This was sophisticated writing. Elegant and cursive letters, written with a thin quill and expensive ink.
Minou cracked the seal. Her b
reath seemed to turn to ice in her lungs.
I shall expect your company, Mademoiselle Joubert. You must do me the honour of coming in person. Your sister will be released only into your care.
The letter was dated the third day of April and signed Blanche de Puivert.
She read it, and read it through again, then screwed the paper in her fist. If this communication was to be trusted, for five entire weeks, her little sister had been alone, far from home. Minou could not bear it. And hard on the heels of her anger, a burning hatred not only for the author of the letter, but for Madame Montfort too. By keeping the ransom letter from her, she had ensured her sister was left at terrible risk.
Was Alis dead? Minou shook her head. She wouldn’t entertain it. She’d know it, she’d feel it.
Then, like a glint of winter sun on a December day, she suddenly understood how everything fitted together. It was as if she had been looking at the reverse side of a piece of embroidery, seeing all the bright colours and loose threads and uneven stitches, but failing to see the picture. Now, turning the tapestry around the right way, the true image was revealed.
Minou left the chapel, hurried across the courtyard and stepped out into rue du Taur. She was resolved. Aimeric would take her aunt to Carcassonne, where Madame Noubel could care for her. She would go to Puivert, not only to find Alis, but perhaps also her father. He had lived in the shadow of the past for too long.
‘Si es atal es atal,’ she said, an old phrase of her father’s coming to her mind. ‘What will be will be.’
Was that where she had first heard it said? In Puivert?
Minou paused at the steps to the church. The flower seller was gone and the streets were silent.
‘Kleine schat,’ she murmured, the Dutch words clumsy in her mouth. His little treasure, that’s what Piet had called her. He spoke of Amsterdam with the same affection she felt for Carcassonne. She would like to see the streets made of water. She would like Piet to meet her father and talk of the city so dear to them both.
For a moment, Minou smiled, imagining them in one another’s company. Then the bells of Saint-Taur began to ring and the picture faded. Her father was not in Carcassonne, but in Puivert. And Piet? Minou caught her breath. Who knew what would happen once the sun had set and the Huguenot attack began?
Minou locked her dreams away and hurried to meet her brother at the stables in rue des Pénitents Gris.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
‘Where is my niece?’ Madame Boussay asked again. ‘She cares for me, my niece, and she would know I would be better indoors. The sun is not good for my complexion. My husband likes my skin to be white.’
‘The sun has gone down,’ Aimeric said, though he realised she was not listening.
Madame Boussay was sitting on a hay bale at the back of the stables, talking to herself. She held out her hand in front of her. Livid scratches, where she had tried to defend herself. Her shoulders were a mass of red and purple bruises and her left eye was swollen shut.
‘That’s the secret to keeping your husband, pure skin. A wife should have white skin if her husband is not to stray.’ She suddenly turned on Aimeric. ‘I want my niece. She will care for me.’
‘Minou will be here soon,’ he replied, embarrassed. He thought her wits had gone. She seemed unaware of her surroundings and her words were strange and made no sense.
Aimeric glanced at the groom, who pulled a face. He didn’t know him well, but they had drunk a gage or two together on nights where Aimeric had crept out of the house in search of companionship in the taverns of Saint-Taur.
‘She fell,’ he said.
‘If you say so,’ the boy replied.
Madame Boussay was trying to stand up again. ‘I must go,’ she said, slurring her words as if drunk. ‘Monsieur Boussay will be displeased to find me gone, and it will go the worse for it. Far better to go back now.’ She gave an eerie trilling laugh. ‘But then, if I am not there, then he cannot be angry with me, can he? He will be pleased. He will be pleased and everything will be quite all right again. Like it was, like it was . . .’
Aimeric wondered how they were possibly going to persuade her into the carriage. He looked out into the street again, as the seven o’clock bells echoed into silence, willing Minou to come.
Piet and Jasper McCone strode down rue des Lois, chased by the ringing of the bells.
‘But where the devil has Crompton been? I thought you said he’d gone north to join Condé’s army?’ Piet repeated, trying not to glance over his shoulder for a glimpse of Minou. He would meet the carriage at the covered bridge and see her safely away there. ‘I do not trust him.’
‘It seems he’s back,’ McCone said casually, putting out his hand and steering them towards the Hôtel de Ville. ‘This way. After he left the tavern that afternoon, he was caught up in some disturbance, was hit on the head, and lost his memory.’
‘Convenient for him,’ Piet muttered.
‘As he tells it, a widow in the quartier Daurade took him in and cared for him. Little by little, his senses have come back to him. Finally, but a few hours ago, he realised where he was, and sent word.’
Piet shook his head. ‘I still don’t understand why he wants to see me. God knows, there is little love lost between us.’
McCone shrugged. ‘He may also have sent word to Devereux, but don’t forget he does not know his cousin is dead. The message came to the tavern and I said I would deliver it and bring you to him. I was waiting in the street outside your lodgings for some hours.’
‘I see,’ Piet said, then he stopped.
Was it likely that tonight, of all nights, McCone would be sitting drinking ale in the tavern? And was it his own anxiety making him see danger in every single thing, but if McCone had been waiting outside his lodgings for hours, why had he not seen Vidal and his men?
‘How long?’ he asked, throwing a glance at his friend.
Were there beads of perspiration on McCone’s temple?
‘An hour, perhaps more.’
‘A little more than an hour,’ Piet countered, keeping his voice steady.
He was racking his brains, trying to remember what – if anything – he had told McCone of his friendship with Vidal, but he could not remember. So many conversations, so many lies.
Only two people knew where he was lodging in Toulouse, Minou and the man standing beside him. Even the good ladies who worked in the maison de charité knew no more than that he lived nearby. Yet Vidal had been waiting for him, not without the building but inside his very chamber.
‘Then surely you must have seen them?’ he said.
This time there was no mistaking McCone’s reaction. His shoulders tensed and his left hand balled into a fist as he decided what to say.
‘I saw nothing out of the ordinary,’ McCone said eventually. ‘Not even that girl, the one with the unusual eyes.’
Piet forced himself not to react. How could he possibly know about Minou? They had arrived at and left the Eglise Saint-Taur separately. He would swear no one had seen them together.
They were now in the heart of medieval Toulouse, with its labyrinth of tiny streets and overhanging buildings. The air smelt of the detritus of the day and the metallic tang of old blood in rue Tripière, where the butchers and their boys sluiced the ground outside their shops with water stained pink. They were certainly not heading towards the quartier Daurade, where McCone claimed Oliver Crompton was waiting.
‘Tell me what should I have seen?’ McCone asked.
‘An hour ago, maybe less, two men attacked me in my chamber. They are, I believe, in the service of a canon at the cathedral. If you were waiting outside, I am surprised you did not see them enter.’
Piet slipped his hand to the hilt of his dagger. Everything was falling into place: the theft of weapons from stores known only to a few, the sense of his always being watched, the leaking of Huguenot plans into Catholic hands.
The spy within their ranks was not Crompton, but McCone.
&nbs
p; Was he also working for Vidal?
‘This is a circuitous route you are taking, McCone,’ he said, as they passed another of the grand houses built by the capitouls. ‘We could have been in Daurade in half the time if we’d gone via the embankments.’
McCone gave a taut smile. ‘There are patrols on the river, protecting the bridge. Safer this way.’
They turned into a narrow alleyway, and Piet was suddenly pierced by a memory of them toiling side by side to repair the houses destroyed in the rioting. Could he really have misjudged the Englishman so badly? He had trusted him. Liked him. He had thought they had much in common.
‘Jasper . . .’ he began, but as he turned, he realised McCone had drawn his sword.
‘You have worked it out. Finally.’
Piet stared at him. ‘Why?’
‘Why do you think?’ he sneered. ‘You’re not so wet behind the ears as to not understand? Money, Piet.’ He rubbed his fingers together. ‘Power. That’s what drives the world, not faith. Same in England, same in France, all over the Christian world.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
McCone pressed the tip of his sword against Piet’s throat. ‘Then you are a bigger fool than I took you for. Turn around, Reydon. Put your hands where I can see them.’
‘Who told you about her?’ he said, unable to stop himself.
‘There are spies everywhere in Toulouse,’ McCone laughed. ‘You of all people should know that.’
‘Who?’ Piet demanded.
He laughed. ‘No one can live by selling violets. Everyone’s got their price.’
‘Thank God you’re here,’ Aimeric said, rushing to meet her. ‘I think her wits have gone.’
‘Minou,’ her aunt wailed. ‘Dear Niece. Has he sent you? Is he angry with me? I must go back. I cannot have the sun on my face. My skin should be white, always white.’
‘He paid me to take two,’ the groom complained. ‘A lady and a young man. And definitely not a lunatic.’
‘I will pay extra,’ Minou said quickly. ‘Is it you who is to drive us?’