by Rock, Judith
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Special Excerpt from A Plague of Lies
Berkley titles by Judith Rock
The Rhetoric of Death
The Eloquence of Blood
A Plague of Lies
eSpecials
Pernelle’s Escape: A Rhetoric of Death Novella
Pernelle’s Escape
A Rhetoric of Death Novella
Judith Rock
BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) * Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England * Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) * Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) * Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India * Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) * Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
PERNELLE’S ESCAPE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2012 by Judith Rock.
Cover art: Empty Street in Old Center copyright © by Aleksej Polakov/Shutterstock. Paris Architecture copyright © by Tatiana Morozova/Shutterstock.
Cover design by Danielle Abbiate.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley eSpecial edition / September 2012
Berkley eSpecial ISBN: 978-1-101-58583-2
Chapter 1
Geneva, Switzerland
September 1686
Pernelle du Luc Bayle sat in front of the red tiled hearth, listening to thunder fading toward the west and rain still spattering against the window. Supper was over and soon there would be prayers, but the time between was her own, hers and her daughter Lucie’s. Pernelle shivered and stretched her feet toward the warmth, staring into the flames as though they might show her the future.
She smoothed her black skirt, grateful for its good thick wool. Like most Huguenots—as French Protestants were called—she often wore black, but this skirt was widow’s black, worn for her husband, David. David had died last December of a wasting sickness, leaving her alone with Lucie to raise, her own parents and only brother being long dead. When she’d had to flee the religious persecution flaring all over France, she’d left everything behind. Now she and Lucie had only what David’s parents gave them, including these good black widow’s clothes. Which would soon be put off, if Mme Bayle, her mother-in-law, had her way. Mme Bayle had made it ominously clear that Pernelle was expected to marry again when her mourning year ended after Christmas. Though, as her mother-in-law too often reminded her, with no money or property to tempt a new husband, a penniless widow with a child was not an attractive prospect in the marriage market. Even so, when the family walked to church—the old Catholic cathedral of St. Pierre, stripped bare now of images, color, and anything else that might distract the faithful from God—Pernelle felt men’s eyes on her. She was not grateful for their scrutiny, but she was unspeakably grateful for the refuge of Geneva, an independent city where Protestants governed and worshipped in peace. Where Lucie could grow up in safety.
Last May, Pernelle had fled with Lucie and her sister-in-law Julie from the southern French town of Nîmes. When the French king Louis the XIV had outlawed Protestantism nearly a year ago, Pernelle and David, like most of their Huguenot neighbors, had outwardly accepted Catholicism, but only to protect themselves and Lucie from the violence of the king’s dragoons—“missionaries in boots,” as their victims called them. When Pernelle was caught praying with fellow Huguenots and threatened with having Lucie taken from her, she’d dared the odds and started for Geneva.
Pernelle leaned back in the old, thinly upholstered chair, looking down at her daughter. Lucie, who was nearly three, now sat beside her on a little wooden stool, cradling her doll. Grandpère Bayle had made the stool, and Grandmère Bayle had made the doll. Pernelle might be unwelcome—at least to her mother-in-law—but both of David’s parents adored their granddaughter. Pernelle smiled as Lucie began singing a tuneless lullaby to the doll. Well, if some kind, decent man proposed marriage, at least she would know he wasn’t after her money, since she had none. And she would have a home of her own. Lucie would have a stepfather and better prospects when the time came for her own marriage. What, indeed, would be so wrong with that? But she knew the answer and rose from the chair so suddenly that Lucie flinched, looking up at her with wide black eyes.
“I didn’t meant to startle you, little bird; nurse your baby, all’s well.”
She kissed the top of the child’s head and went to the window. The perilous journey from Nîmes to Geneva had left its marks on Lucie, as it had on her. And on her eighteen-year-old sister-in-law, Julie, too. The three of them had been terrifyingly separated during their flight, but Julie, bless her, had shown unexpected bravery, going on alone and getting herself and Lucie safely to her parents in Geneva. It was September before Pernelle arrived there, only to find that the family had given her up for dead. Which perhaps her mother-in-law would have preferred, Pernelle thought with a sigh.
Across the rue du puits St. Pierre, named for the wells near the church, candle flames glimmered through the rain. The late September evening was wet and cold, and even the color of warmth was good to see. Hugging herself, Pernelle wished she could wear yellow and orange and red all winter. Her father-in-law, who welcomed her because she’d brought him his granddaughter Lucie, had said that in October, they would light the big tiled stove downstairs and then she would know what winter warmth really was. Warmer than your south of France, Pernelle, you’ll see, he’d said. One more reason to be grateful to him, because she was already finding this Swiss September cold enough.
Gratitude to her mother-in-law, though, g
rew more difficult by the day. Mme Bayle doted on Lucie, but to her son’s widow she was punctilious in her obligations and nothing more. Pernelle often thought that if she’d never arrived in Geneva, Mme Bayle would not have minded much.
Behind her, Lucie was still singing her sweet tuneless song. Lucie’s attempt at singing made her think of her beloved second cousin Charles. Some du Lucs could sing and some—like herself—couldn’t. But Charles sang like a troubadour. She laughed softly, remembering him singing the old Provençal poem he’d set to new music for her when she was sixteen and he was eighteen, and they’d made a foolish secret promise to marry.
“Joyous in love, I make my aim forever deeper in Joy to be.
The perfect Joy’s the goal for me: So the most perfect lady I claim . . .”
Charles’s family, the Catholic du Lucs, were minor nobility and had land outside Nîmes. Pernelle’s Huguenot father had been a silk merchant in Nîmes. Charles and Pernelle had grown up together, there being no rift between the family in spite of their religious differences. But when the pair fell in love and their parents discovered their secret betrothal, they’d been separated fast and ruthlessly. Second cousins married often enough, but even before the king outlawed Protestantism, life would have been impossible—and dangerous—for a husband and wife of different religions. So Pernelle’s parents had summarily betrothed her to David Bayle, nephew of Protestant neighbors, who had come to Nîmes from the real Geneva to establish a watchmaking business. And Charles had taken his broken heart into the army.
Then, last May, ten years after they’d been separated, Charles had come like a knight out of an old song when she needed him. Not to claim her as knights claimed their ladies—he was a half-fledged Jesuit now—but to get her out of Nîmes before the dragoons got her.
Neither of them had meant for her to end up in Paris. But she had, and that first, last, and only night with Charles had left a small fire of love burning in her heart. She knew that it would burn all her life, no matter whom she did or didn’t marry.
Lucie stopped singing, and Pernelle looked over her shoulder to see the little girl rubbing her eyes.
“Sleepy, birdling?”
Pernelle went to the fire, stirred its flames higher, and sat down in the chair. Lucie climbed up on her lap and leaned sleepily against her, and she put her arms around the little girl. Watching the fire, she remembered the night in Nîmes last May, when Charles had come to David’s narrow stone house among the little streets tangled like vines behind the old Roman temple.
Chapter 2
Nîmes, France
May 1686
The night was warm and moonless, and most of Nîmes was sleeping. Which was to the good, Pernelle thought, sitting tensely beside the cold hearth. But the air was still, with no breath of wind to trouble the burning candle or blur the sounds of escape, and that was not good. Still, at least one of the two men who’d been set to guard her was gone. The old parish priest who’d caught her had not chosen his guards well. He hadn’t remembered that the youngest guard was besotted with the neighbor’s pretty daughter. He hadn’t stopped to think how easy it would be for the girl to draw him away—just for a very little moment, Jeannot!—to noisy festivities in her father’s house, festivities arranged to help give Pernelle her chance.
After David’s death, she had gone on holding Huguenot meetings for prayer and study in her attic, and it was simply her bad luck that the little group had been caught. Her terrifyingly bad luck that dragoons were coming for her tomorrow, for her and Lucie and David’s sister Julie, who’d come to live with them the spring before David died.
Pernelle tried to push an escaping coil of her thick unruly hair back into place. When it refused to go, she pulled the bone pins from her hair and let if fall over her shoulders in a curtain nearly as black as the widow’s skirt and bodice she wore. One of the small things she hated about losing David was always wearing black. Since December, she’d worn only black. Black had nothing to do with David, with his easy laughter and bright blue eyes. She hadn’t loved him when they married, but she’d grown to love him.
She put her hand over the little Huguenot cross she wore under her bodice. What if Charles hadn’t gotten the letter from his mother telling him to come to Nîmes? Mme du Luc, a widow now and still living on her land outside the town, was a staunch Catholic, but a stauncher du Luc. Even a Protestant du Luc was family, and Charles’s mother considered herself more than a match for any number of dragoons. But what if Charles’s superiors refused him the several days’ leave he would need? What if he didn’t come? Pernelle asked herself angrily where her trust in God—and Mme du Luc—had gone. Biting her lip, she twisted her mass of hair up out of the way and reached for a pin, but footsteps outside froze her hand. A soft quick knocking at the house door brought her to her feet, breath tangled in her throat with hope and fear.
She went to the window and opened the shutters a little. “Who comes?”
“Bobo.”
Relief turned her almost giddy and she stifled laughter. “Yes? And is the pope busy, Bobo?”
“Oh, very busy.”
Pernelle closed the shutter, caught up the candle, and flew down the steep stone stairs. Setting the candle on a chest, she unbarred the thick-planked door and reached out into the darkness. “Quickly!”
A hard hand took hers, and the cloaked shadow slipped inside. When they’d put the heavy bar across the door, she turned, pushing her hair back from her face, and smiled at him.
“Charles.” Her voice caught. “I can hardly believe it. Ten years . . .”
Her second cousin, Charles Matthieu Beuvron du Luc, scholastic of the Society of Jesus, dropped his leather satchel and wrapped his arms around her. And let her go so suddenly that his balance wavered. Even by the soft candlelight, she could see his blush.
His wide mouth quirked into its old smile. “You look just the same, Pernelle. Even after these ten years.”
“I don’t, my dear liar. But you do.” She glanced at the shuttered window beside the door and tilted her head toward the stairs. “Upstairs, mon cher,” she said softly, picking up the candle, “ears listen at shutters.”
Charles picked up the satchel and followed her. “I found one guard asleep at the back gate. Is there another?”
Pernelle told him about the neighbors’ party. “The man at the back probably doesn’t even know his fellow is gone. His wife just had a child and he’s hardly slept since, so I hear. And my sister-in-law Julie very kindly took him some wine. A large jug of wine.” She led Charles into the low-beamed, stone-walled room where she’d waited. Putting the candle on the table, she nodded at the straight-backed armchair. “Sit, I’ll bring you wine and something to eat.”
“No, I’ve eaten. We have little time.” He opened the satchel and brought out a small cloth bag. “What happened? How were you caught?”
“David’s hellbound apprentice Michel brought the priest down on us. May God forgive me, but if I had his neck in my hands, I’d twist it. Michel’s, not the priest’s. The priest is only doing his duty. But since David died, Michel has been at me and at me to marry him and give him David’s watchmaking business. He’s twenty years old, nothing but a crowing little cock! I kept refusing, so he turned informer. Well, informing will serve him nearly as well as marriage,” she said acidly. “He’ll likely get the business now, as well as a portion of my goods. The rest, of course, will go to the even more hellbound king.” She sighed. “Did you have trouble getting leave from the college?”
Charles grinned. “Maman sent a servant—old Fanchot—with a letter. Two letters, one for me and one for the rector’s eyes. She wrote his as from her doctor, saying that she was very ill, perhaps mortally, and was asking for me. And that her illness might possibly be a form of plague. The rector let me go alone so as not to expose anyone else. And told me to stay gone long enough to be s
ure I had not taken the contagion.”
Clothing rustled in the doorway. Pernelle turned sharply. “Julie, you frightened me! Come into the light. Is Lucie still asleep?”
A girl in a plain dark blue gown and a white coif came hesitantly into the room. She was small, perhaps eighteen, as fair and round as Pernelle was thin and dark. She nodded in reply to Pernelle’s question, her round blue eyes on Charles.
“This is my cousin Charles,” Pernelle said. “Charles, this is Julie Bayle, David’s sister. She’s been staying with us, and since David died she’s been my mainstay. I couldn’t have managed without her.”
Charles smiled at her, but the hostility in Julie’s face didn’t lessen.
Pernelle said suddenly, “Charles, I don’t want to say this—” She closed her eyes for a moment and drew in a long breath. “But I must. What about the others who were with me when they caught us praying in the attic?”
Julie frowned slightly, but said nothing.
Charles’s hands stilled from taking pots and brushes out of his cloth bag and he looked up. “Where are they?”
“Two are under house arrest. The other, a young man, got away. He can fend for himself. But the two, the Chauliacs, are old. And they have only one gate, so there’s only one guard.”
Charles’s eyes searched her face. “You realize, don’t you, that the more of you there are, the more chance of being caught.”
“Yes. I’ve been fighting with myself all day.” She took a step toward him. “Because I have Lucie to think of. If I didn’t—” She clasped her hands tightly and bowed her head onto them, rocking slightly, not sure whether she was praying or already mourning the quiet-faced old man and woman. Finally, she let her hands drop and raised her head. “I can’t,” she said bleakly. “I can’t risk Lucie. We’ll go alone. God forgive me.” She drew herself up and her voice steadied. “We’ve nearly finished readying the little we can take. We have a horse, I kept David’s.”