Paris

  “You don’t respect Monsieur d’Artagnan?”

  “No. Not anymore. It makes things … difficult.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Perhaps you could lend me your husband now and then.”

  Her sister laughed.

  “What would Monsieur d’Artagnan say to that?”

  Geneviève shrugged.

  “At least it keeps it in the family.”

  “Well, I’m afraid you can’t borrow my husband, and please don’t try.”

  “I won’t.” Geneviève sighed. “Mon Dieu, Catherine, I’m bored.”

  Hercule Le Sourd stared. It was a handsome, fair-haired woman inside the carriage. An aristocrat by the look of it. She motioned for him to sit opposite her. He hesitated. Then, out of curiosity really, he complied.

  “Close the door,” she said.

  He did so, and immediately the carriage started to move.

  “I have been listening to you, several times,” she said.

  “I noticed. But I assumed it was a man. A government spy, perhaps.”

  She laughed.

  “I suppose I could be a government spy. No doubt some of them are women. How exciting.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You are quite clever, monsieur. If you weren’t clever, the things you shout would merely be rude, and vulgar. But your speeches are very witty. Do you rehearse them?”

  “There are parts I have composed. But I invent things as I go along. As the spirit moves me.”

  “Can you read and write?”

  “A little.”

  “You sound quite learned. All that philosophy.”

  “I used to go into the Latin Quarter and listen to the students talking in the taverns. I picked it up. I suppose it interested me.”

  “What else do you do?”

  “I make shoes.”

  “And what is your name?”

  “Hercule Le Sourd.”

  She laughed.

  “It’s a funny combination. Half hero, half robber, perhaps.”

  “I’ve never had to steal. What is your name?”

  “I shall not tell you, monsieur.”

  “As you like.”

  Le Sourd looked at her thoughtfully. He already knew what she wanted.

  He’d been married when he was younger. His wife had died three years ago, leaving him with a five-year-old son. He and his sister’s family lived in the same street, just south of the university quarter, near the Gobelins factory where the tapestries were made. With his son and his sister’s children almost forming an extended family, Le Sourd had felt no immediate pressure to provide himself with another wife. The personal magnetism he displayed on the Pont Neuf made him attractive to women, and for the last couple of years he’d enjoyed a series of romances while retaining his independence. His conquests had included the wives of several well-to-do merchants. But this aristocratic lady was something entirely new.

  He decided to wait and see what she did next.

  “You must be hungry after all your efforts,” she said. “Would you like to dine with me?”

  “If the food is good,” he answered.

  The coachman seemed to know where to go. They had crossed onto the Right Bank now, east of the Louvre. Soon the carriage turned left, toward the Marais. The thought crossed his mind that this woman could be a lunatic of some kind. He was big and strong enough to overpower her and the coachman too. But what if she decided to poison him?

  She seemed to read his thoughts.

  “Life is full of risks.”

  “Are we going to your house?” he asked.

  “No.” She was watching him carefully. “I dare not. Tell me about yourself.”

  He shrugged. He had nothing in particular to hide. He told her about his family, poor craftsmen mostly. “They say we descend from quite an important criminal, who was hanged, a long time ago.”

  “You think it’s true?”

  “I expect so. We’ve tried not to get caught since.”

  He told her about the loss of his wife and that he had a son.

  “But you haven’t married again.”

  “Not yet.”

  “You prefer to be independent.”

  “What makes you think so, madame?”

  She smiled.

  “Have you heard yourself ranting on the Pont Neuf?”

  Through the thin curtains, he could see where they were now. They had come into Henry IV’s Place Royale, in the heart of the Marais. There they stopped. He heard the coachman descend. The door opened.

  “We shall dine,” she said to the coachman. And turning to Le Sourd: “If you step out for a moment, he will set up the table.”

  The coachman went to the back of the carriage. From a compartment he removed a narrow table with legs that swung down, like a trestle. To his surprise, Le Sourd realized that this was going to be inserted inside the carriage. While the coachman busied himself with this task, he looked around him.

  There was no doubt that the square was the most delightful place in Paris. With its four equal sides of perfectly matched brick and stone, the terraced mansions gazed softly down upon the rows of clipped green trees inside which lay the four lawns. At the street level, the arcades with their rounded arches turned the ensemble into a huge cloister.

  Unsurprisingly, everyone soon forgot that King Henry had meant these houses to be tenanted by honest working families. The rich, seeing the quality of the place, had taken it over for themselves. But ordinary folk could still enter its quiet arcades and enjoy the intimate peace of the great square.

  Having inserted the table inside the carriage, the coachman drew out a wicker basket from the same compartment and proceeded to lay the table. When he had done that, he took a wooden pail, went to a nearby pump and filled it so that the horse could drink. It was clear that he was now supposed to go off to a tavern and leave his mistress and her guest to their meal.

  “Come,” she called to him quietly. “Let’s dine.”

  It was really a most convenient arrangement. The table took up the space where he had been sitting. But by sitting beside his hostess, there was plenty of room to eat very comfortably.

  “My husband invented the table and had a carpenter make it,” she informed him. “This is my husband’s one contribution to civilization.”

  “And it works,” Le Sourd pointed out, in fairness to the absent gentleman.

  Haricots, pressed duck, an excellent wine, several cheeses, fruit. It was a perfect little meal. Without giving away her name, or where she lived, she talked in general terms about her family and the château where her husband now was to make it quite clear that she was exactly the aristocrat he had taken her to be.

  Did she do this regularly? he wondered. The coachman, whose discretion she clearly trusted, seemed to know exactly what to do.

  “I feel I am taking part in a ritual,” he remarked.

  “A ritual, monsieur, that takes place very rarely. Only when the heavens are aligned in a particular way.”

  “Then I am honored indeed.”

  “If you aren’t happy, you are always free to leave.”

  “I prefer to stay.”

  When they had finished, she asked him if he had observed how the table and the basket fit into the compartment behind. He said he had. “Then perhaps you would be so kind as to return them to their place.” He easily repacked the basket. It took him a moment or two to master the catch that released the table, but soon he had that outside. It took him only a couple of minutes to stow everything safely in the back.

  He glanced around. It was a quiet, sleepy evening. Hardly anyone was moving about in the square.

  He stepped back into the carriage and closed the door.

  She had removed her gown. He could see that she had a splendid body. She reached out her hand to pull him toward her.

  The coachman did not return for over an hour.

  It was October when Geneviève told her sister.

  “Does your hu
sband know?” Catherine asked.

  “I told him.”

  “Does he think the baby could be his?”

  “No. It’s impossible.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Geneviève told her everything.

  “You’re insane!” cried Catherine.

  “I know.” Geneviève shook her head. “I can’t believe I did it.”

  “Why? Was it the risk? The danger?”

  “Yes. That made it exciting. I was so bored. I wanted something … exciting to happen.”

  “Does Perceval know what you did? I mean, going out into the streets like that and …?”

  “No. I lied to him about that. He thinks it was something that suddenly happened … A moment’s madness … You know.”

  “What’s he going to do?”

  “Preserve the honor of the family name, of course. What else?”

  • 1685 •

  Perceval d’Artagnan gazed at his daughter Amélie. He was a medium-sized man with a potbelly, and the long wig that was the fashion of the day disguised the fact that he was entirely bald. Whoever Amélie’s real father was, d’Artagnan thought, he seemed to have bequeathed her a fine head of dark brown hair. In other respects, she looked very like her mother.

  Amélie herself, of course, had no idea. She thought he was her father. She loved him as a father. So he found himself torn.

  How could he not love the pretty little child who would come running up to him in total innocence and put her hand in his? The child whom he carried on his shoulder and taught to ride? She was sweet-natured, truthful, everything he could have desired in a daughter. He loved her for herself.

  And only sometimes, when he was quite alone, did he secretly allow himself to feel the black rage, the hatred that was in his heart—not for the child herself, but for his wife.

  Geneviève had not been unfaithful to him again. She had sworn an oath and he’d been sure she would keep it. For the last twenty years they had gotten along together as well as most married couples. Some affection had grown up between them, especially because of his kindness to little Amélie. But during those years he had learned another sad truth: Small wounds are healed by time; but time can only bandage great wounds, which continue to bleed in secret.

  And now Amélie was in love. She was not yet twenty. Her mother had discovered the state of her feelings the day before, and had asked him to talk to her.

  “My child,” he said, firmly, but as kindly as possible, “You can’t marry this man, you know.”

  She stared at him miserably.

  “Is he intending to ask for your hand?”

  “He loves me. I am sure he loves me.”

  He smiled at her fondly and shook his head. The whole business was absurd, but he knew that didn’t make it any easier for Amélie.

  If only Geneviève’s sister hadn’t married a tradesman, none of this would have happened. In all likelihood, Amélie would never have met Pierre Renard. But of course, when she went to see her cousins, she met all sorts of townspeople like him, whom she would not have been familiar with in her own home.

  Pierre Renard was a pleasant, handsome man in his late twenties. He was a younger son, but his family were modestly wealthy. Any young girl might have fallen in love with him.

  But he couldn’t marry Amélie.

  In the first place, he was a Protestant. Until late in the reign of Henry IV, his forebears had been good Catholics. But then his grandfather had married a second wife who was Protestant and converted himself. Pierre’s father had built up a considerable fortune, but never returned to the Catholic faith. Whether nineteen-year-old Amélie, seriously in love for the first time, imagined that she could convert her husband back to the true faith, or whether she planned to become a heretic herself, d’Artagnan did not know. He didn’t even need to find out.

  For a second objection overrode even the religious one. Pierre Renard was not noble.

  “I couldn’t let you lose everything that your nobility gives you, my child,” he told her. “When you are older you will thank me for saving you and your children from such a terrible and permanent blow.”

  It was true that he was saving her from herself. But there was another thought, equally important, in his mind. Whatever the circumstances of her birth, she bore his name. His family honor was at stake. No one bearing the name of d’Artagnan was going to marry out of the nobility.

  “You must put this young man out of your thoughts, Amélie, and you must not see him again.”

  As she left the room, he could see that she was about to weep, but there was nothing else to be done.

  His eldest son and daughter were both married, quite happily, into noble families like his own. He’d known that it was time to find a husband for Amélie too. This little incident was a reminder that he’d better make a start.

  The letter he had received that morning came at an opportune moment, therefore. He decided to reply to it at once.

  The following days were hard for Amélie. When she had confessed to her mother that she was in love, she hadn’t told her everything.

  The crisis had begun after she confided her feelings for Pierre Renard to her cousin Isabelle. Isabelle had told her brother Yves, who’d discovered from Pierre that he was in love with Amélie, but that since she was both noble and Catholic, and he couldn’t abandon his Protestant faith, he thought there was no hope. Isabelle had passed this information back to Amélie.

  “If he asked me, I’d probably elope with him,” said Amélie.

  “But what about his religion?” Isabelle had objected.

  It was certainly true that in the last few years, life had become much more difficult for the Huguenot community. Louis XIV believed the old adage: “The people follow the faith of their king.” He liked order. Protestants in a Catholic country meant disorder. And he could point to the earlier troubles in France and in many other countries to prove his assertion.

  King Henry IV’s Edict of Nantes had protected the Huguenots for more than eighty years. But nowadays, the Sun King was putting more and more pressure on them to convert. He’d even started quartering cavalry troops in Protestant households, making the owners’ lives a misery. And there was every sign that the persecutions were likely to get worse.

  “You’d have to be mad to become a Protestant now,” Isabelle told her.

  But Amélie was too much in love to care.

  She didn’t care that he wasn’t noble either. When she looked at the lives of her cousins, they seemed quite happy, living without the social burdens and prohibitions that were the price to be paid for a noble’s pride and tax reliefs.

  Wisely, she didn’t say any of this to her parents.

  But she thought of Pierre. She thought of him constantly. She yearned just to be in his presence. If only she could talk to him.

  What a fool she’d been to confess her secret to her mother. She had little doubt that her cousins would have let Pierre know her feelings for him by now. If she’d just kept her mouth shut with her mother, she and Pierre might have met at her cousins’ house, just as they had before. She could have given him an opening. They might have reached an understanding. Even if he’d told her that love between them was impossible, that would have been something. He could have told her that he loved her all the same.

  Instead of which, she was left in doubt. Her parents were keeping her away from her cousins, so there was no news from them. She kept hoping, foolishly, that he would appear, that he’d come to the house to see her father and ask for her hand. He might be refused, but the fact that he’d come would have meant the world to her. She knew it made no sense. Her father’s house lay a short way west of the Cardinal’s Palace—the Palais Royal as it was called now—and she’d stare out her window moodily into the rue Saint-Honoré, in case he should go by. If he’d come to the window with a ladder, she’d have scrambled onto it. An even more absurd idea. But she couldn’t help it. These were her sad daydreams.

  It was on a Fr
iday in mid-October that her mother came into her bedroom and gave her a strange look.

  “There is news that you should know, Amélie. Yesterday the king took a great decision. He is revoking the Edict of Nantes. It will become law on Monday.”

  “What will that mean for the Protestants?” Amélie asked.

  “They will all be forced to become Catholic. The king is sending troops to all the main routes out of the kingdom to stop the Huguenots from escaping.”

  “Then Pierre Renard will be a Catholic.”

  “No doubt.” She looked at her daughter sadly. “It won’t help you, Amélie. He still won’t be a noble.”

  On Monday, the Revocation became law.

  On Wednesday, her aunt Catherine came to the house, accompanied by Isabelle. Amélie anxiously took Isabelle to one side to ask if there was any news of Pierre Renard.

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “I’ve heard nothing.”

  “Pierre Renard has vanished.” Isabelle took her by the arm. “You’d better forget him, Amélie. The whole family’s gone. Nobody knows where they are. But I don’t think he’ll be coming back.”

  All over France, a similar pattern could be found. Some families acted at once, others waited for months. But the Edict of Fontainebleau, as the king’s order was called, had just made their lives impossible.

  All Protestant churches were to be destroyed and any Protestant religious meeting, even a small group in a private house, was illegal. The participants would have all their property seized. Any child born to a Protestant parent was to be baptized Catholic and sent to Catholic schools. Failure would mean a huge fine of five hundred livres. Protestant ministers had two weeks to renounce their faith or leave France. If caught after that, they’d be sent to the galleys. Ordinary members of the Protestant congregation trying to leave France would be arrested. Men to the galleys, women stripped of all their possessions.

  It was totalitarian. It was comprehensive. A century before, the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day had been a horror. But the machinery of Louis XIV’s centralizing state was far more thorough. The Protestants were smashed. Large numbers, having no other option, converted to Catholicism. Perhaps a million converted in this way.