Written on Silk

by Linda Lee Chaikin

  Once in the small chamber where she could refresh herself, she sank against the closed door and placed her palms to the sides of her head.

  I will not think of him!

  MARQUIS FABIEN STOOD GAZING at Rachelle as she ascended with her head high and her back straight. She looked more belle than ever, though she wore but a simple traveling cloak of blue with a fur collar. Her dress was also plain — the color of mourning, it covered every inch of her skin and throat. Her thick auburn-brown hair lay tumbled about her shoulders from traveling. He had accidentally touched it, and even now, his senses could feel its softness on his hand. Her paleness, due to so much recent sorrow, touched his heart, but her defiant eyes when he had caught hold of her, left him infuriated.

  “Mille diables!” He breathed, feeling angry and turning on his heel, his boots sounding on the hardwood floor. He snatched up his cloak and strode to the back of the house and down the steep stone steps to the small court past the geraniums.

  “Gallaudet!” he demanded.

  The lithe, muscled page, fair of head and calm, appeared at once.

  “Where have you been?” Fabien demanded with impatience. “Do I need to shout for all to hear?”

  “Non, Monseigneur. I beg pardon. I was just — ”

  Fabien waved a hand. “Never mind. We are returning to my ship.”

  “Now? But I thought Andelot Dangeau wished to see you and — ”

  Fabien’s steely gaze met Gallaudet’s.

  “Just so!” Gallaudet said.

  Reaching the street, Gallaudet turned and went for their horses and began to round up the Bourbon men-at-arms loitering about an eatery.

  Fabien looked back toward Languet’s shop. A strange fury burned in his belly so that he realized he was apt to make a fool of himself if he remained in his frustration.

  Rachelle was behaving most unreasonably. First, she had pleaded with him to stay; now she refused him with cool disinterest!

  He was using sound judgment in leaving France. A year’s absence would do him — and her — good. His feelings were getting out of hand — impossible to make sense of. He would not marry her.

  I will not think of her!

  THE REPRISAL, MOORED AT the docks, was being loaded, sharing her narrow berth with storm-battered ships from the sea routes. Several tall-masted ships were arriving, fine ships, carved and gilded, sliding through the water, with gulls wheeling in their wake.

  The workers on the wharves swarmed noisily. Fleet schooners maneuvered between the ships, unloading their massive holds, hauling off casks of Spanish olive oil, cloves, and cinnamon from the Caribbean.

  French wine and crates of delicate Bruges lace were waiting on the docks to be loaded as workers staggered beneath iron-hooped bales while horse-drawn wagons added to the chaos.

  “Marquis Fabien! Wait!”

  Fabien heard the familiar voice shouting behind him and halted his horse. He turned in the saddle and looked over his shoulder. Andelot was clinging precariously to one side of the step-bar of a wharf taxi-wagon, waving at him with a free hand.

  Fabien’s temper eased at the sight of the young man he had all but adopted as his petit frère, though Andelot, no more than five years younger than Fabien, was swiftly becoming a comely young messire to be reckoned with. Fabien had long ago guessed that Andelot was infatuated with Rachelle, but he had paid scant attention. Now he no longer thought the notion amusing and measured Andelot more seriously as the taxi-wagon rattled closer.

  Fabien swung down from the saddle and turned his reins over to a lackey who led the horse off to the wharf hostler. Fabien watched as Andelot jumped from the wagon and trotted up, breathless and grinning.

  “Marquis! But it is bonne to see you again, I swear it. I meant to speak with you at Languet’s shop, but I was too late. I came just in time to see you riding away. Are you soon to sail?” His eyes searched the harbor. “Which fine ship is yours, Monseigneur?”

  “How did you escape the eye of your kinsman, the cardinal? I would have wagered you to be under his supervision and ready to leave for the university by now. Or would you be pleased to sail with me?” Fabien threw an arm around his shoulder and walked with him toward the ship.

  But the unexpected thoughtful gleam on Andelot’s face told Fabien that he might be taken seriously.

  “Sainte Marie! But you have indeed changed, Andelot, mon bon ami.”

  “I vow, Marquis, you surely entice me to abandon Paris, for I am much dispirited. There is to be no university, for Cardinal de Lorraine has disowned me.”

  “So soon? Then you have a tenfold reason for rejoicing,” Fabien said. “What is the cause?”

  Andelot glanced at him cautiously. “You are the cause, Marquis. He demands I give up my friendship with you and the House of Bourbon.

  There will be no Tutor Thauvet, no great university. I was to first have entered the Corps des Pages, but now the door will be bolted tight against me.”

  “Since I appear to be the stumbling block, mon ami, I will take oversight of your schooling myself.”

  “Ah, but I did not mean to suggest — ”

  “I would have suggested it sooner, except for your call to Chambord to meet your unexpected new kinsmen, the Guises. As for the School of Pages, if I were at Court, I would sponsor you and place you under the training of Gallaudet. But as I am not likely to be at Court for a year or longer, you need to be placed now. Let me consider what noble house you would do well under. In the meantime, you will come aboard to see the Reprisal.”

  “The name is most bonne, Marquis, and very telling!” Andelot grinned. “And you are most generous, a better ami no man could have. I have been thinking that I should like to sail as your valet.”

  “I do not need a valet aboard a buccaneering ship.”

  “A cook, then.”

  “Non,” he said gravely. “The food will be terrible enough without your assistance. Andelot, mon ami, you have the heart of a scholar, and a scholar you shall be if I have anything to say about it. Besides, I want you to keep an eye on the mademoiselle’s safety.”

  “Mademoiselle?”

  “There is only one,” Fabien said, looking at him gravely.

  “Ah, oui . . . Mademoiselle Rachelle.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence as they walked until Andelot asked, “What did you think about the gloves, Marquis?”

  Fabien turned his head. “Gloves?”

  “She did not tell you?” Andelot sounded stunned.

  Fabien stopped on the wharf. “Tell me what?”

  Andelot stared at him, a frown deepening over his brows. “Nor about Oncle Sebastien either?”

  “What about him? He is gone, since the massacre of Amboise.”

  “Ah, Marquis Fabien, then there is much I need to explain and tell you. It concerns the reason we have accompanied Pasteur Bertrand here to Calais. If this was only about him and his cargo of forbidden books, neither I nor Mademoiselle Rachelle would have need to come.”

  Fabien again grew sober. “Come, then. We best talk in my cabin.”

  FABIEN AND ANDELOT CONTINUED along the wharf with Fabien frowning to himself and wondering why Rachelle had not shown more reasonableness with him. So her affairs were her own?

  They stepped onto the gangplank, sloping up to the Reprisal, and despite the mood that pervaded, Andelot was enthused over all he saw as they walked around the deck and then into the captain’s cabin.

  “A ship that will make a name for itself, Marquis, I can feel it. I think I should give you this blessed cross the traveling monk gave me a few years ago. It comes from Rome, from the Vatican. The pope blessed it.” He reached inside his tunic. “If you hang it in the cabin it will bring protection in case you run into a storm or come up against a Spanish fleet.”

  “I think you better keep it. You may yet have dealings with the cardinal from which you need to be delivered. He may be pleased to see you wearing it.”

  Andelot nodded thoughtfully. Fabien opened his
cabin door. He smiled. “Duck your head, the doorframe is low.”

  “Marquis Fabien, sometimes I do not think you truly are a Catholic.”

  “Now why would you think that? I have said as much before, many times.”

  “True, but — ”

  “Even Mademoiselle Rachelle believes I am, as does her Huguenot cousin, Bertrand. It is the reason the Macquinets are cautious of me, I assure you.”

  “If you are leaning toward Geneva, then you ought to tell them, for her parents and Pasteur Bertrand would warm to you.”

  “And that would please you, mon ami?”

  “Bien sûr — ” He stopped, looked at him, and turned his mouth wryly.

  “What will you have to refresh yourself?”

  “A cup of ale, s’il vous plaît.”

  Fabien grimaced. Ale, the petit noir of serfs and slaves. He opened the cabin door. “Gallaudet! Tell Percy in the cook’s room. Make it ale.”

  Gallaudet returned with cups and a foul appearing ceramic jug.

  Fabien gestured with disdain. “This, what is it?”

  “Ale, Monseigneur. As you said. It is the jug Percy gave me.”

  “I wager he does not think his time worthy of washing jugs?”

  “He says washing the jugs will ruin the brew, Monseigneur.”

  “Did he! Can anything ruin so disgusting a brew? Then again, perhaps that is why it ferments.”

  Gallaudet smiled and poured. He bowed, handing it with smooth deference to Fabien. “Monseigneur.”

  He and Andelot raised their cups.

  “To the owner of the Reprisal! Happy hunting, Monseigneur!”

  Fabien returned the bow. He toasted. “Devastation and ruin to Spain’s galleons!”

  “So be it!” Gallaudet said.

  “To the bottom of the sea!” said Andelot.

  Fabien took a mouthful, then pushing open the cabin door, rushed to the rail and spat it out.

  FABIEN PONDERED ANDELOT’S DARK news of Sebastien’s imprisonment. The salle de la question! That Sebastien would be brought before the inquisitors overshadowed all else. He was alive, yes, but for how long?

  “The Cardinal de Lorraine said this, you are certain, Andelot? Sebastien will face questioning by Rome’s inquisitors?”

  “It is so, Marquis Fabien. It is most diabolical. The cardinal called me to his chamber at Amboise and informed me. He was most calm.

  Then he entrusted his own missive to me to deliver to the duchesse.”

  Fabien opened the cabin door again to allow the breeze to circulate.

  The cramped space of the cabin and the low ceiling were tiresome and gave him a feeling of being caged.

  It will be better when I am at sea, he repeated to himself.

  “The news of Sebastien is a double-edged sword,” he told Andelot.

  “Everyone is hoping and praying, Marquis, that your bonhomie with the king will influence him to show grace to Sebastien.”

  “With the duc and the cardinal’s control over Francis through their niece, Mary?” Fabien shook his head. “I should have better success invading a dragon’s lair than altering the young king’s mind to oppose the will of the Guise brothers. Even so, I will do all in my power to see Sebastien free of the Bastille.”

  He would also write to his own kinsmen, the Bourbons, but with Prince Condé also having been secretly involved in the Amboise plot, there was no assurance that even Condé’s position as a prince of the blood would prevail for Sebastien. Even now the Guises would be plotting to strengthen their influence over King Francis, and were not above getting him to move against any Bourbon prince in line for the throne.

  “I am sent by Duchesse Dushane to receive your lettre and deliver it to her. She will take it to the king if she can get past Cardinal de Lorraine whom they say is never far from him.”

  “The cardinal fears that those of a different mind other than he and the duc may gain the king’s ear.”

  This cast a shadow upon his plans. If it had not been for the Spanish galleons that were even now on their way toward the Netherlands . . .

  Fabien leaned against his desk and folded his arms against his chest. He stared intently out the open door where he could see the gray waters of the Calais port and hear the cry of gulls. Sebastien’s imprisonment was not the only unsettling news to arrive while the Reprisal was on the verge of departing. Andelot had told him of the death of Rachelle’s grandmère, the beloved grande dame of Dushane-Macquinet silk. The strange circumstances surrounding her death convinced him of cunning mischief instigated by the Queen Mother.

  He rebuked himself for having risked Rachelle and her family, permitting her to get the key to the listening closet at Chambord before the Huguenot rebellion. If the Queen Mother had given poisoned gloves, it could only be because she discovered Rachelle had dared to enter her royal bedchamber to take the key.

  But then, why was Rachelle spared? He frowned. He could think of but one reason: Catherine planned on using her in the future.

  Fabien turned his gaze on Andelot who stood near the door.

  “Did le docteur suggest Grandmère was poisoned?”

  “Non, but would he dare if he suspected the Queen Mother?”

  “A fair question . . . A perilous thing to do, even with undeniable proof. Ambrose Paré is the best of physicians, a Huguenot. Would he say anything? But then, to whom would he report it? To the young King Francis? Hardly.”

  “Duchesse Dushane has requested an autopsy. Le docteur will tell her what he finds privately.”

  “And the gloves?”

  “They are missing. Does it not appear suspicious that neither pair were found?”

  “If the Queen Mother’s spy, Madalenna, had not been away at Fontainebleau, I would have suspected her of slipping into Madeleine’s chambers and removing them,” Fabien said flatly. “However, Catherine has some equally devious spies, including several dwarves. Were inquiries made of her ladies-in-waiting?”

  “Mademoiselle Rachelle did so, but no one appears to know anything.”

  Fabien had Andelot explain once more what he had seen that day with Prince Charles in the astrologer’s chamber at Amboise. Fabien had known even as a boy about the Queen Mother’s involvement in the occult. There had also been many whispers about Catherine in her younger years when she was married to Henry before he became king. It was said that she had poisoned the dauphin, Henry’s older brother who held the birthright to the throne, to bring kingship to Henry.

  “I was in the chamber with Grandmère and Rachelle during the last minutes of her life, Marquis. We both heard her try to say the word gloves.”

  “And that was to the question of whether she had been poisoned?”

  “Yes, at first we thought it was the apples — or at least I did.”

  Fabien’s anger blazed. “How did Mademoiselle Rachelle accept the death of Grandmère?”

  “Bravely, Marquis. Oui, most courageously. It is her way. But I have noticed a new firmness in her, a new determination I do not recall from the past. She believes the Queen Mother took her grandmère’s life, and if she could, Marquis, I swear she would seek revenge.”

  Fabien stood with hands on hips scowling at his desk. Revenge was not like Rachelle. She had recently been hurt deeply by circumstances that shocked her innocence and left her unsettled and anxious. But now that her father was here, Fabien believed she would receive the support she needed.

  He also thought back to her willingness to enter the Queen Mother’s bedchamber for the key to the listening closet, and agreed with Andelot. She had been through so much recently that it was unfair to hold her to account for her recent behavior.

  Gallaudet leaned in the doorway. “Monseigneur, pardone, but a visitor wishes to see you posthaste. Monsieur Bertrand is here.”

  As Gallaudet spoke, an unexpected shadow fell across the doorway.

  The tall figure in the dark scholarly robe with a white coif and a very wide-brimmed black hat used by the Geneva ministers stood
outside the door. “Bonjour, Capitaine.”

  “Welcome, Pasteur Bertrand. But Nappier, who is an ami, and the finest swordsman I have had the privilege of training under, is presently the capitaine of the Reprisal.”

  “Ah, then, most interesting. So you are a swordsman, are you?”

  Now why is he here, and what does he want? If it had anything to do with the French Bibles and a voyage to England, he would have to disappoint him, even as he had to disappoint Monsieur Arnaut earlier that day at Languet’s lace shop when telling him he could not take him to England. Surely Arnaut would have told this to his cousin Bertrand.

  Fabien trusted that after his order to Julot, the spy would no longer be prowling about Languet’s shop.

  Bertrand entered and Andelot quickly pulled out a chair.

  “Merci. I shall get straight to the point, Marquis de Vendôme. Arnaut is taking Rachelle at once to Paris in order to be with his eldest daughter, Madeleine. The news that Sebastien lives brings glad tidings, but Madeleine will need to be encouraged over his imprisonment. The attack on our own Huguenot assembly resulting in the death of his little one, Avril, is weighty. He is strong in the Lord, however. Arnaut will come through this trial, for we are not so unwise as to think suffering and tribulation will circumvent Christ’s own. This world was no friend to our Savior, and He has forewarned us that it will treat us as it did Him.

  “Andelot assures me, Marquis de Vendôme, that you are most sympathetic to the Reformation cause. As such, I will need your confidential help to bring my cargo to Spitalfields. Your assistance in this matter is of great import.”

  “Pasteur Bertrand, I wish I could help you, but as I already made clear to Mademoiselle Rachelle at the Château de Silk when we discussed this matter, as well as to Monsieur Arnaut this afternoon, my time will not permit. The Reprisal sails tomorrow.”

  “Ah yes, you favored me at the château by telling me about these notorious Spanish galleons.”

  Fabien still wondered why he had told Bertrand and not Arnaut.

  “What I did not explain, Pasteur Bertrand, is how your fellow Protestants, including William of Orange, are counting on us to eliminate those crucial Spanish supplies. There is only one possible way I can see the dilemma of delivering the Bibles can work.” Fabien leaned back against his desk gravely: “Since I fully understand the importance of your mission, I am willing to take you and your smuggled Bibles to England, but only on the condition that it will not impede our attack on the galleons — which unfortunately, would require your presence during fierce battles, endangering your very life and limb. Afterward — assuming we survive intact, I would then be willing to take you and your cargo to England.”