Conspiracy

by Stephanie Merritt

  ‘And, what …?’

  ‘The guards sent him on his way at first. There are so many hawkers at the gates, as you may imagine. But this one was remarkably persistent. Came back day after day, saying you’d told him to bring me this volume. Claimed it was both valuable and inflammatory. Eventually Ruggieri heard about it. He has spies all over the palace.’ He rolled his eyes, to show that this was one more trial he was obliged to endure. My heart dropped. For more than a year I had been clinging to one last shred of hope that the book in question might have found its way to the court in Paris. To learn that it should have come so far, only to fall into the hands of Cosimo Ruggieri, that Florentine serpent, was galling. He would never give it up willingly to me.

  ‘Ruggieri brought the boy to you?’

  ‘Of course not. You think he’d get his hands on a book like that and offer it to me? I knew nothing of it until later. But it seems he was sufficiently convinced that he persuaded my mother to buy it. You know how easily she’s seduced by the prospect of anything esoteric.’

  ‘It was a book of magic, then?’

  ‘Ruggieri seemed to think so. He talked her into paying fifty écus for it. I suspect she was robbed. According to her, it’s written in cipher – meaningless, unless you know how to read it. Your young friend must be laughing himself sick now, to think he’s duped everyone twice over.’

  Twice over. ‘Did you meet him?’ I asked, trying to keep any trace of eagerness from my voice. Henri gave me a sly smile.

  ‘Alas, no, though I wish I’d had the pleasure. Ruggieri took him directly to the Tuileries to see Catherine. She only told me about it afterwards. Well, it turned out—’ here he widened his eyes, relishing the performance – ‘this boy wasn’t a boy at all – imagine! Ah, but you knew that. No – she was apparently a girl trying to disguise herself. But quite beautiful either way, I’m told. She swore you had insisted I would want the book. That was what piqued their interest.’ He watched me carefully. I said nothing. ‘Lover, was she?’

  ‘Acquaintance.’ I clenched my jaw.

  Henri laughed. ‘You’re a most adept liar, Bruno, like all Dominicans.’

  ‘I am no longer a Dominican.’

  ‘But you’ve learned their lessons well. Did you give her the book as a love-token?’

  ‘I did not give it to her at all.’

  ‘So she stole it from you? I did wonder.’ He laughed softly. ‘Bruno outwitted. Well, well. A most resourceful young woman, by the sound of it. Pity she disappeared. I asked my secretary to make enquiries but no luck so far. Perhaps I should ask him to try a little harder.’

  ‘If the Queen Mother would let me examine the book—’

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Bruno,’ he said, all brisk and amiable, ‘you can see the book when you bring me some information about this priest. And perhaps by then there’ll be news of your girl as well. How is that for a deal?’

  I took a deep breath and bowed. ‘I am yours to command, Majesty.’

  ‘I do hope so. I have faith in you, Bruno. Don’t let me down.’ He patted my shoulder, his attention already drifting now that he had what he wanted. ‘His name was Père Paul Lefèvre, by the way. The dead priest.’

  ‘I know. I knew him.’

  ‘Oh?’ He brushed raindrops from his cheek and looked at me, surprised. ‘Well, that should give you an advantage, then.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Know him? Did he …’ I hesitated, ‘ever correspond with you, perhaps?’

  Henri frowned, as if he didn’t understand the question. ‘Of course not. You think I have time to exchange letters with every malicious little shit-flinger?’

  ‘I only wondered if he might have written to you,’ I said, choosing my words carefully. ‘Urging you to repent, warning you, something of that sort.’

  He snorted. ‘I might have given him some credit if he’d had the courage to address me directly. But they’re cowards, these Guise lickspittles. Let’s get out of this rain.’

  One of the guards picked up the torch from the wall bracket and they followed us in to the staircase at a respectful distance. Our shadows flickered like giant carnival grotesques over the clammy walls as we spiralled down.

  ‘He was killed outside Saint-Victor, so I was told,’ Henri said, as we reached the first landing, taking out a key to unlock a small door set into the wall. A secret way back to his chambers, no doubt – this old part of the Louvre was full of hidden passages, as if it had been built expressly for spying and adultery. ‘I’d start there if I were you. I think we can safely say I don’t have many supporters among the religious orders. Those friars are all in Guise’s pocket.’

  I nodded, and made a non-committal noise. I still had no idea whether the King was lying to me; I hoped he did not intend to direct my steps throughout. I had accepted a poisoned chalice, however I chose to look at it, and my motives for doing so were precisely the two things that had undone me before – a book and a woman. That woman. I should have been wiser.

  Henri held out his hand so that I could bow and kiss his signet ring, a gentle reminder of his power to command. ‘One last thing,’ he said, pausing in the doorway. ‘My mother’s putting on one of her grand entertainments next Friday. Improve morale. If our popularity’s flagging, put on a show – you know what she’s like. Remind people of the old days. You must come.’

  ‘I thought I couldn’t be seen at court?’

  ‘Ah, but that’s the beauty of it – you won’t be. It’s a masked ball. Everyone will be in costume, faces hidden, no one will have the faintest idea who you are. Say you’ll come. Her women will perform too, if you need more persuading. I’d wager you don’t see anything like that at Elizabeth’s court.’ He poked the tip of his tongue between his teeth and wiggled it, an impish glitter in his eyes.

  I could think of few places I would feel more exposed than the Tuileries palace during a masked ball, but the door had closed behind him and the key turned before I could protest. His departure seemed to suck all the force from the air; I felt my body sag with the weight of my tiredness. If the guards had allowed me, I would have curled up in a corner of the stone staircase and slept right there.

  The ghost of Henri’s perfume followed me down the stairs. I left feeling deeply uneasy on several counts, hoping that I had not just made a pact to disguise a murder for my own advantage.

  FOUR

  I woke late the next morning, opening my eyes to a dusty grey light with a lingering sense of dread. Easing myself on to my elbows, I registered the bruises along my shoulder and hip from my plunge the day before, but it took a moment longer for my mind to struggle through the fog of sleep until I could be sure that I had not dreamed my nocturnal audience with the King and its unwelcome conclusion.

  So she had fled to Paris, as I had suspected. Sophia Underhill, the woman I had known in Oxford and Canterbury. The King was right; she had bested me, and the memory of it still burned. Like a fool, I had thought myself proof against the wiles of women; the self-discipline I had learned in thirteen years as a Dominican served me well enough to withstand the cynical and obvious seductresses of the French court, but nothing had prepared me for a woman like Sophia. Educated, spirited, hungry for life, knowledge, independence, she had found herself ceaselessly frustrated by the constraints placed on her by her sex. Life had not been kind to her, and those scars had lent her a lean and wary look, and an edge of ruthlessness in her determination not to be duped. She made it a matter of principle to strike first, before you could touch her; she trusted no one. That was a bitter lesson, and one I had learned too late. I had done my best to excise her from my heart and my memory, but the agitation I now felt at the possibility that she might still be in Paris suggested I had not succeeded. I tore a comb through my hair and examined my face in the glass to judge how much I had aged since she last saw me, all the while cursing her under my breath. Now I would walk every street searching the crowds for her face, despite myself.

&
nbsp; Outside, the rain had relented but a thick mist lay over the streets, rising in curlicues from the river; it would not burn off now, with the air so cold and dank. Resting one hand on my dagger beneath my cloak and darting frequent glances over my shoulder, I followed the rue Saint-Jacques north towards the river, picking my way through hoof-churned mud and waterlogged wheel-ruts as the damp seeped through the soles of my boots. A bell tolled sullenly nearby; students hurried between the faculties of the Sorbonne, urgent voices carrying out of the mist before they emerged like rooks, robes snapping around dirt-spattered ankles, deep in earnest debate. I kept my head down, but my senses alert. No one appeared to pay me any attention, for which I was grateful.

  The church of Saint-Séverin squatted on the corner of Saint-Jacques and rue des Prêtres, one street away from the river, a sprawling mongrel of styles and stones jumbled together over four centuries. Gargoyles leered down from its buttresses. I was surprised to find a crowd of at least a hundred gathered in the churchyard, clustered around a tombstone on which a man with grey stubble and fiery eyes stood shouting with his legs planted wide and a fist raised. I wondered first if he was mad, but as I drew closer I could hear his voice ringing out clear and purposeful, as if he were accustomed to oratory; some among his audience were clutching sticks and pokers and bellowing their agreement. The mood felt as edgy and dangerous as it had the previous Sunday, after Paul’s sermon.

  ‘The House of Valois believe they can defy all the laws of God and man without consequence,’ he cried, to an appreciative roar. ‘For years they have been stained with incest and murder, sorcery and heresy.’ (More roaring.) ‘Now our king allows heretics to flourish in France and we all know what is coming, don’t we, my brothers and sisters?’ (A frantic chorus of agreement.) ‘When the Huguenot Navarre is king, the Protestants will take their revenge for Saint Bartholemew’s night. They will rise up and cut us down in our homes. The streets of Paris will run red with Catholic blood, yours and mine, brothers and sisters!’ (A scream of ‘God have mercy’ from a woman in the throng.) ‘God has turned his face from France. Our harvests have failed, our armies are defeated, children and widows starve in the gutters. And what right have we to expect otherwise, when we allow ourselves to be governed by a king who is a blasphemer, a sodomite and a murderer, and his witch mother?’

  The crowd almost lost control, roaring and brandishing their weapons; I stepped back in alarm as a man near me swiped a butcher’s cleaver through the air. I began to wish I had stayed away; there would be blood spilled before this was over.

  ‘Our dear curé, Père Lefèvre, has been murdered in cold blood for daring to speak out against the decay and corruption of the royal line. Thus the Valois show their contempt for the Church, for the laws of God and for human life. There will be no justice for him unless we the people demand it. We must march on the Louvre! Justice for Père Lefèvre!’

  The crowd erupted in a cacophony of righteous fury; ‘Death to the King!’ and ‘Justice for Père Lefèvre!’ rang in the damp air. I took the opportunity to scurry away to the church. The main door was locked, but I followed a path around the back and found a side door that had been forgotten. It was a relief to step into the cool gloom of the empty nave. Despite the mist outside, a pearly light filtered through the high windows, painting faint jewel colours over the delicate arches of the vaults and the worn faces carved on the capitals. Here the air was cold and clear; the mineral smell of old stone cut through lingering traces of beeswax and stale incense. It seemed a lifetime ago that I had listened to the echo of my footsteps on these same stones on my way to corner Paul in his confessional. The dust swirling in ribs of light might have hung in the air for centuries. I stood before the altar, casting around as if I had lost something, until I attracted the attention of a young curate crossing one of the side aisles, a red-haired man in his mid-twenties with a preoccupied air and a tic in his left eye that gave the impression he was frantically winking at me.

  ‘The church is closed, monsieur. How did you get in?’ He sounded frightened.

  ‘I’m not one of them,’ I said, jerking my thumb towards the door. ‘I was a friend of Père Lefèvre.’

  ‘May God have mercy on his soul,’ he muttered, crossing himself. ‘A very sad business. But I can’t help you. The doors are supposed to be barred until they disperse.’ He chewed his lip and pulled at a thread on the cuff of his cassock.

  ‘I only wondered if anyone knew what had happened. I heard him preach on Sunday. It’s been a terrible shock.’

  The young curate bit his thumbnail. ‘I understand there was an accident.’ His gaze flicked past me to the pillars of the ambulatory and the recesses behind. ‘He was attacked outside the city walls, they said.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like an accident.’

  Another sideways glance. ‘I don’t know any more than that.’

  ‘He seemed anxious recently. Something was troubling him.’ I left this hanging, neither quite a question nor a statement. This young man, for all his twitching, appeared shrewd; if he worked with Paul every day, he would surely have noticed any unusual behaviour.

  Recognition sparked in his eyes for a moment, before it was replaced by the shadow of suspicion.

  ‘Who did you say you were?’

  I searched his eyes again. A man in a priest’s robes, the laundress had said. Not this one; the voice was wrong. But there would be other curates here, potentially his friends or confederates.

  ‘I’ve known Paul – Père Lefèvre – for a long time. Before he was ordained. We were at the Sorbonne together.’

  ‘Before he joined the League, then.’ His tone gave nothing away. I had the sense that he was testing me. I decided to take a further risk.

  ‘Yes. Back when he was still human.’

  The young curate’s face visibly relaxed. ‘I did not have that pleasure. I have only been here six months.’ He fixed me with a look that seemed intended to convey what he felt he could not voice. ‘I don’t think I have seen you here before?’

  ‘I did not attend often. I found Paul’s sermons increasingly hard to swallow.’

  ‘You were not alone there.’

  Little by little, I thought, I could coax some truth out of him. ‘He was a difficult man to get along with,’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘He was sincere in his beliefs, at least.’

  ‘Not in itself a virtue. The Pharisees were sincere. Luther and Calvin were nothing if not sincere.’

  ‘True.’ He liked this; a faint smile chased across his lips. He glanced past me again, down the aisle towards the door, and dropped his voice another notch. ‘I say nothing against the League, you understand. They may be right on some points. Many points, even. But I believe a priest’s role is to preach the word of God, and to bring harmony where there is discord, not to fuel more discord. Our duty is the cure of souls, and there is a high price to pay for disregarding that.’

  ‘And you think Paul paid that price?’ I said.

  The twitch in his eye intensified and his face closed up. ‘You have heard the crowd out there. They have already delivered their verdict. I’m afraid I must ask you to leave now, monsieur, so that I can lock the doors.’ He paused as another animal roar rose up from the churchyard. ‘When they are inflamed, they tend to break things.’

  He turned and began to walk away through the ambulatory. I hurried after him as he slipped between the rows of carved columns, and caught at his sleeve.

  ‘But you had noticed that he seemed troubled lately, Father?’

  He walked on a few more paces then stopped and turned to face me, anxiety knotting his features. ‘I don’t know who you are, but for the sake of Saint-Séverin, leave this alone. Let us mourn him quietly. His death is tragedy enough without it becoming more ammunition for one side or the other.’

  ‘It is already too late to escape that, I fear.’ I gestured in the direction of the noise outside. ‘Please – if you know anything about his death, it may help to prevent more vio
lence.’

  He regarded me a moment longer, then drew me by the elbow into an unlit side chapel, out of sight.

  ‘You are right that he was not himself lately,’ he said, in a voice that barely reached a whisper. ‘It began no more than a month ago. He seemed all of a sudden – uncertain.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Everything.’ He circled a hand to encompass the chapel, the altar, the crucifix above it. ‘He grew more and more withdrawn – I might almost say fearful. He was often absent – he turned up to celebrate Mass, but between times none of us knew where he was. Once he stopped me and demanded out of nowhere to know why I had desired to be ordained, and if I still felt the same.’ He shook his head. ‘I had witnessed something similar with a fellow ordinand when I was in the seminary. If it had been anyone else, I would have said …’ He let the sentence tail off.

  ‘That he was losing his faith,’ I offered. I had seen it too, when I was taking holy orders; no one who has entered the religious life could fail to recognise a crisis of belief in a brother. ‘But it did not show in his sermons.’

  The young curate’s eyes narrowed. ‘I thought you said you did not attend service here?’

  ‘I came on Sunday. He invited me in person.’

  He weighed this up and nodded. ‘You are right. It was quite the opposite, in fact – the more he seemed to be unravelling in private, the more of a demagogue he became in the pulpit. As if he could drown out his doubts by shouting his convictions in public.’

  ‘And you have no idea what prompted this – unravelling? Was there a confrontation, perhaps?’

  A guilty flicker across his face; the eye tic quickened. I waited.

  ‘Four weeks ago,’ he said, so quietly the words barely escaped his lips, ‘the first day of November, we had celebrated the Mass of All Souls. I stayed late after the service to clear up and lock away the silverware. I thought everyone had left, but when I came back to the ambulatory, I heard raised voices from inside this chapel. Père Lefèvre was arguing with someone.’