My Brother's Crown

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “The law? We no longer have any redress from the law.”

  “I know Huguenots are no longer allowed to bring cases into the courts, but perhaps—”

  “Catherine,” Jules barked, cutting her off. “I’ll take the proper steps when the time is right. Not before.”

  “But what if there comes a point where we have no choice but to—” Catherine had been about to say “flee the country” but thought better of it at the last moment and held her tongue. Maybe some walls did have ears.

  Still, they all knew what she meant. “Amelie needs to be with us,” she said.

  “For now, she is better off in the convent.”

  “She would be safer with us.”

  “Oh? And how safe do you feel these days, little sister?”

  Catherine cringed, hating the way he turned his last words into an insult instead of a term of endearment.

  Leaning forward, she dropped her voice even lower. “If we are forced to flee—”

  “Do you not understand?” he hissed. “This must be handled with great thought. It’s not just our family who would be cast off into the unknown. So would everyone associated with us.”

  “That is not my concern right now,” Catherine said. It was not that she didn’t care, but there was nothing she could do. Nothing any of them could do in the long run. “My concern is Amelie. If she is not with us, and we are forced to… go… we will we have no choice but to leave her behind. She will be lost to us forever.”

  With a heavy sigh, Jules looked over her shoulder to Pierre, as if to say, You talk sense into her. I cannot seem to get through.

  Turning back, Catherine’s eyes met those of the man she loved. Yet by the expression on his face, she realized almost immediately that he wasn’t going to take her side. Her heart sank, for she couldn’t stand how easily he was influenced by her brother. The two men owned equal shares in the business, but he seemed to follow, without question, every one of his partner’s mandates. True, Pierre was five years younger than Jules, but how could he not have a mind of his own when it came to matters of such importance?

  “Catherine,” Pierre said, hands raised in a gesture of futility. “You must understand—”

  “What I understand is that my cousin is being held against her will in a place run by agents of the king, the very ones who would just as soon see every Huguenot wiped from the face of the earth.”

  Though she had spoken in a whisper, her words hung in the air between them.

  “Even so, I cannot take part in this,” Pierre said, shaking his head sadly. “Your brother is moving carefully in this matter, and that takes time.” He hesitated, and then he added, “You cannot steal away and do this, at least not as soon as you leave here.”

  His emphasis on the words “steal” and “as soon as you leave here” confused Catherine for a moment, but then she realized he was trying to give her a private message by using words only she would understand. He wanted her to go to their secret place, the vault hidden behind the supply room, where they could discuss the matter further in private. She appreciated the thought, but this was of concern to all of them, Jules included.

  “It’s not as if I would go in blindly,” she said, turning once more toward her brother. “I have a plan.”

  Jules laughed. “Oh? And exactly what does this plan entail? Do you think you will be able to sneak Amelie past the Mother Superior as one might smuggle a criminal past his jailer?”

  “If necessary.”

  “And if no one will help you?”

  “Then I shall do it by myself.”

  “Oh?” Her brother’s eyes were mocking now. Cruel.

  “That’s enough,” Pierre objected, though he didn’t outright contradict Jules’s position on the matter. “Catherine, you could not free your cousin now, not for all the money in the king’s vault…”

  “Yes, Pierre, I understand!” she snapped, tired of his attempts to end the conversation now when she knew full well he was only going to maintain his same position once they were alone. Regretting the harshness of her tone, she met his eyes and gave him a knowing nod.

  Then she made one last appeal to her brother. “We owe it to Amelie to free her. And yes, Jules, I will do it alone if no one will help me.”

  “I will help you.”

  The voice was Eriq’s, who until now had been silently listening to the entire exchange.

  “What?” she asked in surprise.

  “I’ll help however you want.”

  She swallowed hard, considering his offer. Though Eriq was only a little more than a year younger than she, Catherine had always thought of him as a child. Now that he was seventeen, however, even if his general demeanor was still not fully that of an adult, at least he had the physique—and clearly the heart—of one more mature. Maybe what she needed most was simply brawn, which he had, as well as the reckless bravery of one who still saw the world with idealism and innocence. Perhaps his help would be enough to get the job done.

  She stepped toward him. “Merci, Eriq. It’s good to know that someone here still understands the difference between right and wrong.”

  She had more to say, but this was not the time or place. Instead, she simply took the young man’s arm and suggested he see her out. Despite her frustration with Pierre, she paused long enough to flash him a look, one that assured him she would meet him as requested, though not until she had a chance to chat with his younger brother first.

  And though Catherine expected to hear objections from both Pierre and Jules as she and Eriq started off through the print shop, neither man said a word.

  Once they were in the office and she had pulled the door shut behind them, Catherine spoke to Eriq in quick whispers, saying he could pose as a rag peddler, which would be a plausible cover as long as he dressed the part. He would need to bring along a cart and rags, which could be used to steal Amelie away from the convent.

  “You plan to hide her under the rags in a cart?” he asked, his eyes wide. The often filthy cloths were used for everything from diapers to corpse wrappings before being collected and thrown, still soiled, into the wagon.

  “If I have to,” she said, knowing she would even climb down in there with Amelie herself if it meant bringing her cousin home.

  In the end, they agreed to meet at six that evening on the west side of passerelle St. Vincent. He was to come with the cart and in disguise so they could head straight to the convent from there.

  “We can do this,” he said when their scheme was set, almost to reassure himself as much as her.

  She gave his hand a squeeze. “Yes, we can. See you in five hours.”

  With a final nod, the young man returned to the shop. Catherine watched him go and then waited there for a long moment, expecting Jules to come in and try to talk some sense into her. When he did not appear, she finally turned to go to meet Pierre in the vault.

  First, however, she had to get herself outside and all the way around to the back of the warehouse, which put her once again at the risk of being sighted by the dragoons. Before going out, she retrieved her headpiece and reaffixed it to her hair. Tugging the veil securely over her face, she unbolted the door, wondering if either Pierre or Jules realized what had happened today, that the youngest among them had been the only one willing to stand up and act like a man.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Catherine

  The dragoons were nowhere in sight when Catherine stepped out of the print shop. She closed the door and headed out, moving along the side of the building as quickly as possible. When she reached the end, she took a moment to glance around and then darted into the alley that ran behind the warehouse.

  Moving past the stables, she spotted Jules’s black gelding in one of the stalls. The papermakers were gone, and there were no other unfamiliar horses or carts in sight. In the equipment shed beside the stable, she noted that the space for the delivery wagon was empty, as were those for the rag carts. That was as it should be for this time of day. All would be
returned later in the afternoon in plenty of time for Eriq to pull aside one of the drivers, make arrangements to borrow cart, rags, and clothing, and still meet up with her as planned.

  Her stomach clenching at the thought, Catherine tried to calm her nerves as she reached the back door of the warehouse and slipped into the building. Thanks to a large pallet of boxes stacked in the delivery area, she was able to make her way unseen to the entrance of the corridor on the far right. The passageway was dark, barely illuminated by a small window near the ceiling about halfway down.

  She pressed forward, confident of her steps as she made her way through the damp, dingy space. She had spent so much time here as a child that she could easily maneuver around, even in the dark.

  All of the children had played hide-and-seek in the warehouse when it had first been built. As the youngest, Eriq’s small stature had left him at a disadvantage, and he would often stomp off in frustration. But the rest of them—Amelie, Pierre, and Catherine—would play there for hours, their fathers and Jules oblivious as they worked nearby.

  Catherine had been the one who first found the hidden vault off the supply room, behind the sliding panel, and she had shared her discovery with the others as proudly as if she had uncovered a cache of gold. Not only had the secret space made a perfect hiding place for their games, but over the years it had also come to serve as an occasional refuge whenever the print shop or warehouse grew too noisy and chaotic and she felt like slipping away somewhere quiet simply to read or write.

  As she grew older and she and Pierre began to think of each other in a whole new way, he sometimes teased her about the two of them meeting there so that he could steal a kiss.

  “But if I give it voluntarily, how can you call it stolen?” she had teased in return.

  Not surprisingly, their first kiss had ended up happening exactly there, in the privacy of the vault, when she was sixteen and he was eighteen. As a proper young woman, sneaking away to a hidden spot for a romantic encounter with a handsome young man was not something she made a habit of doing, not even after that man became her betrothed. But in the two years since that first kiss, they had managed to meet up in the vault for brief moments of privacy now and then, each time Pierre asking if he might steal a kiss and each time Catherine replying that he need not steal it, for it was a gift.

  Smiling at the thought, she reached the end of the corridor now and paused to listen for any telltale sounds. Then she took another couple of quick steps and slipped into the supply room, quickly moving past shelves of paper until she came to the side wall. In the dim lighting, she found the lever at the floorboard, pushed it, and then stepped back as the panel hiding the vault slid upward with a soft swish, propelled by the power of the pulley system her brother had designed. She stopped the door once it had risen by several feet, bent low, clutched her skirts around her legs, and ducked inside.

  Catherine reached for the panel and manually pushed it back down until it was an inch or two from the floor. Even if Pierre would be along soon, she dared not leave the panel open more than that lest someone else happen into the supply room and spot the strange opening.

  Though the windowless vault was nearly pitch-black with the door down, she had never been frightened in it as a child, nor was she now. She moved farther into the darkness to wait for Pierre. Originally designed to serve as storage for important documents, the vault was small, perhaps four paces deep by five paces wide, and it was usually empty except for business cabinets. But this time, after a few steps, she banged into something hard. Stifling a yelp, she took a step back and rubbed her hip before leaning forward to slide her hands over the object she had run into, deciding it was a table. Going by feel, she moved around the obstruction and then tried to keep going—only to bump into something else. When she put her hands down to feel what this item might be, she realized it was not a table but something softer and made of fabric, perhaps a chair or couch.

  Before she could explore more, she heard footsteps in the supply room. Though she knew it had to be Pierre, she spun around and held her breath as she watched the sliver of light at the base of the panel door. That door once again swished open, the glow of a lantern preceding the man who held it as he bent low and stepped inside.

  “Catherine?” Pierre whispered in his deep baritone.

  “I’m here.”

  Standing straight, he pushed down the door and held up the lantern as he moved closer. In the glow she saw that the first thing she had walked into was indeed a table, with a basin and pitcher on top of it. Glancing behind her, she realized that the second item she had bumped into was neither chair nor couch, but instead a small bed tucked against the wall.

  Catherine was startled. She had no idea why this previously functional room had been turned into some sort of bedchamber, though she had a feeling that with all his long hours of late, her brother had needed a place to rest. Regardless, the presence of that bed now made her meeting alone here with Pierre not just borderline inappropriate but positively scandalous.

  “I cannot stay,” she said, feeling her cheeks flush as she turned back to face him.

  “This shouldn’t take long,” he replied, clearly oblivious to the source of her concern. “I just wanted to say how sorry I am that I can’t help you with Amelie. There are things that… things I can’t speak about right now. I’ll be able to explain later. You must trust me.”

  Catherine took a deep breath, aware of his usual scent, a mix of turpentine from the ink, linen from the paper, and sweat from his hard work. She tried to ignore it, just as she was trying to ignore the warm, inviting bed directly behind her.

  “I do trust you, Pierre,” she whispered, forcing herself to focus on the matter at hand. “But I don’t have time to wait. Amelie must be rescued sooner rather than later.”

  “Don’t be foolhardy, Catherine—”

  “Foolhardy?”

  He set the lantern on the table. “Oui. You and Eriq need to cancel whatever grand rescue the two of you have cooked up and wait instead for Jules to decide how the situation should be handled.”

  Catherine understood what he was saying, but she was tired of waiting on Jules’s decisions when it came to anything important. If a matter was business related, he could move on it quickly, but if it had to do with the family, he couldn’t seem to make up his mind. With everything progressing so slowly, they would all be broken on the wheel before he had perfected a plan. There were stories of Huguenots tied to wagon wheels and then beaten, as the large wheels were turned, until their limbs were broken. The torture always ended in death.

  She shuddered. “Non, we will not cancel our plans. You must listen to me instead.”

  Pierre bristled. “Are you saying I need to bend to your will?”

  “Non. You don’t understand.” Catherine stepped away from him, bumping against the table again. “I’m trying to figure out what is best for our families, starting with rescuing Amelie.”

  “We are all trying to figure out what is best for our families—”

  “Non. You and Jules are trying to figure out what is best for the business.”

  “Catherine,” Pierre said, stepping closer. “It’s not that simple.” He reached for her hand. “Give us more time, please. We are working on it. Will you trust me?”

  Her heart skipped a beat. She wanted more than anything to trust him.

  Leaning even closer, he placed a hand on her cheek, his breath on her face warm and sweet. “I know you think you have it all figured out, but things are complicated. You don’t understand all the nuances—”

  She pulled away. She did understand, full well, what was happening. Jules and Pierre lived as if they were men in a fire but denying the flames all around them. “You must not be so rash,” he said.

  Rash. That was a word Jules sometimes used in referring to her. He felt she had been given too many privileges as a young woman and expected too much now, in return. It wasn’t true, but she feared Pierre was beginning to think the same. O
nce again, he had been influenced by his older friend and business partner.

  Her face grew warm this time with anger. “I didn’t come here to argue with you, Pierre. It’s time for me to leave.”

  He was quiet for a moment, and then he said simply, “Fine. I shall walk you home.”

  “Non. You should go back to work.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not safe for you to travel alone.”

  “I managed to get here, didn’t I?” She pushed against his shoulder. “Go.” She didn’t want to spend another minute with him.

  He seemed ambivalent, but finally he handed her the lantern, saying he would leave first, through the doorway to the front of the warehouse back to the shop, and she should wait five or ten minutes to exit through the back, using the corridor, the same way she came in. “Put the lantern on a shelf in the supply room,” he added.

  Then he turned to go, listening at the panel for a long moment before sliding it up, slipping out, and quickly pulling it back down again.

  Catherine exhaled, glad he was gone. Was that normal, to feel this way about the man to whom she was betrothed? She simply didn’t know.

  Putting such thoughts from her mind, she set the lantern on the table and waited for what seemed like an excess of five minutes, left the vault, extinguished the lantern, and set it down in the supply room as directed.

  By the dim light from the high window, she grabbed a stack of paper—the good kind—from a shelf and tucked it under her arm as she hurried to the corridor.

  Catherine made it safely across the bridge without spotting a single dragoon. Retracing her earlier steps, she walked at a brisk pace through the traboule and out the other side, past the cathedral.

  A few blocks from home, she came to La Boutique de Lyon, a dress shop owned by friends who were Catholic. Glancing into the show window as she moved past, she came to a complete stop at the sight of a magnificent Parisian gown. The dress was breathtaking, made with cut velvet and pinked silk, its waist tiny, its skirt full. Though her family certainly had the money to afford such a dress, she knew it was never to be. As a wealthy Huguenot, all of her clothing was well tailored but far less ornate—and almost always gray or black.