The City of Tears

by Kate Mosse

  ‘So here we are again,’ le Maistre said finally. ‘For better or for worse, brothers in arms.’

  ‘Brothers in arms.’ Piet gave a wry smile. ‘And once again called upon to serve. Shall we go up?’

  As they climbed the steep stairs to the top of the house, Piet noticed with sadness how laboured Antoine’s breathing was. When he suggested they should pause, his old friend waved his concern away.

  They stepped into a fuggy room, the air thick with the smell of herring and wood smoke.

  ‘Reydon!’

  One of the leaders of the Lastage faction of Calvinist rebels was Jan Houtman – a hard-drinking, uncompromising soldier whose family had been massacred by the invading Spanish troops at the siege of Haarlem.

  He stood up. ‘I was not expecting to see you.’

  Piet’s heart sank. Although most of Amsterdam’s Protestant community had welcomed him, and all who shared their commitment to building this new Protestant nation, there was a hard core of Hollanders and Zeelanders who resented anyone who did not hail from the Dutch Provinces.

  ‘A messenger was sent to my house this evening.’

  In the corner of the room, Piet noticed a rough-looking man picking dirt from beneath his nails with a knife. He matched precisely the description Frans had given of the man who’d accosted him.

  ‘There was no need for you to come in person,’ Houtman said roughly.

  Piet met his gaze. ‘Since the message was not given to me in person, I thought it wisest to make sure that it had been delivered correctly.’

  Houtman threw a furious glance to the man in the corner. ‘I told you! Who did you speak to?’

  ‘Some kid hanging around outside.’

  ‘You’re a fool, Wouter.’

  Piet forced Houtman to meet his eye. ‘I would be sure of what was planned, the better to fulfil any duty assigned to me.’

  Houtman hesitated, then gestured Piet should sit. ‘You must be Antoine le Maistre,’ he said, his voice considerably warmer. ‘You are most welcome, your generosity these past months has been appreciated, monsieur.’

  ‘At your service.’

  Antoine cast a look at Piet before sitting down, as if to apologise for not having confided the extent of his involvement with the group.

  Piet looked around. It was a smaller gathering than usual, and he recognised few, a mixture of Calvinist rabble-rousers, the kind who preached on Plaats whenever the town council was sitting – herring sellers, traders, bookkeepers, chandlers, shoemakers. Ordinary working men.

  ‘Is it true the date has been brought forward to the twenty-sixth?’ asked Piet.

  Houtman glared at his bluntness. ‘It is.’

  Piet wasn’t sure why events had accelerated, nor why the atmosphere seemed so charged. Given the extraordinary personal revelations of earlier in the evening, it was possible he was reading more into things than warranted. But, at the same time, here was proof that the plans for Amsterdam’s becoming a Calvinist city had been agreed. Yet there was an air of dissent in the chamber. He didn’t think he was imagining it.

  ‘You find us in the middle of a discussion,’ Houtman said carefully. ‘About how precisely matters should proceed.’

  ‘I thought the decision had been made?’

  Houtman gave a cold smile. ‘It is more a matter of how we shall proceed, not when.’

  ‘And we don’t have time to go through it all again for the benefit of foreigners,’ another of the other men growled, a Zeelander by his accent.

  ‘We are all brothers in the Reformed faith,’ Houtman said quickly, glancing at le Maistre, not wanting him to feel offended.

  Antoine raised his hand. ‘I understand. It is the times we live in that make us inclined to trust only our own kind. I sympathise.’

  ‘Wouter believes,’ Houtman continued, ‘that the Dirckists will not yield except at the point of a sword or a musket. I do not.’

  ‘We cannot trust them,’ Wouter complained. ‘They signed the Satisfaction, ratified the terms, then paid no heed.’

  ‘There are many moderate Catholics on the council,’ Houtman countered. ‘They will see sense.’

  ‘You’re easily duped if you think so!’

  The room burst into argument. Piet had been party to many such conversations over the years – in Carcassonne, in Toulouse, in Amsterdam. The issue was always the same: whether to act in good faith and assume the other side would do the same, or to assume the worst and strike first.

  ‘Hear me out,’ Houtman shouted into the mayhem. ‘There are as many Catholics who wish to reach a compromise, as there are moderates on our side who work for peace and justice.’

  ‘They’re papist vermin!’ Wouter said, banging his hand on the table.

  Houtman ignored him. ‘Monsieur le Maistre, what do you think? You are free to speak. You are amongst comrades.’

  Antoine raised his hand. ‘I could not possibly put my view. I have been in Amsterdam but a matter of weeks.’

  ‘What of you, then, Reydon?’ Wouter sneered. ‘You are part Amsterdammer at least, though on the distaff side.’

  Piet felt the air sharpen. How tangled were the ties of blood and loyalty and birth. In his fighting youth in Carcassonne and Toulouse his allegiance to Languedoc had often been questioned because he was only part French. More than fifteen years later, and now he was mistrusted because of having too much French blood in him.

  ‘Like le Maistre, I would not presume to speak for Amsterdam. As my friend here points out –’ Piet gestured to Wouter – ‘I am but half Dutch. But by your leave, I will say this. This glorious, magnificent modern city – which has accepted so many of our faith as brothers – I believe should, and will, form the heart of a new Protestant nation. That being the case, do I think our cause to win hearts and minds might be damaged by effecting the transfer of power from them to us through aggression? Yes, I think it would. If you ask how to prove our worthiness as the new leaders of this city, then I would say that our arguments should prevail without force. There has been enough blood spilt.’ Piet looked around the room, taking in each man with his gaze. ‘We deserve to be in power. We should respect the terms of the Satisfaction that Dircksz agreed with the Prince of Orange, even though he and his followers failed to honour it. We should prove that our cause is so unshakeable that we do not need to resort to violence to prevail.’

  For a moment, the chamber was silent. No one spoke, no one moved. Then, one by one, eyes shifted to Jan Houtman.

  ‘You speak well, Reydon. But words may not be enough.’

  ‘We have the people on our side,’ Piet countered.

  Houtman frowned. ‘As well as many of our number in the armed guilds.’

  ‘And men on the inside,’ another said. ‘If they can persuade their fellow burghers…’

  ‘Exactly so,’ Piet agreed.

  Houtman was nodding now. ‘A peaceful transition would give us – our new administration – influence to implement quickly the changes we desire.’

  ‘And if they do not go quietly?’ Wouter countered. ‘Then what? Would you have us down on our knees, like nuns, to beg for the keys to our own city?’

  ‘It will not come to that,’ Piet insisted. ‘They will see their time is over.’

  As he watched the expressions on their faces, he was taken back to another such conversation, in another such room in Carcassonne on the eve of the French wars. A similar debate between men – some of them traitorous, as it later transpired – a number of whom wished to press for peace and others who believed that only force would triumph.

  Piet remembered his younger self – the man he’d been before love and war and loss had exhausted him – taking a battered leather satchel from his shoulder and laying it carefully on the table. He remembered unfastening the buckle and reaching inside, the way the light caught hold of the delicate fabric within and how the pale cloth of the Shroud of Antioch seemed to shimmer, transforming the grey gloom of the modest room into a place of light.
/>   His thoughts tumbling now, Piet suddenly saw himself standing in the Sainte-Chapelle in August 1572, on the day Marta went missing, hearing the guards say that there had been an attempt to take the Crown of Thorns from its reliquary. Now, the memory of those terrible hours of scouring Paris for his lost daughter washed over him like a wave.

  And in its wake, a sudden realisation of why Vidal might be amassing so much wealth. Vidal, his cousin. All the time he and Minou had been talking, it had been rubbing away at him as to why Vidal would trade status and power for a life of obscurity. Maybe this was the answer? His obsession, his ambition, his greed. The lengths to which he was prepared to go. He was a hunter, but not of people or animals.

  Of relics.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  WARMOESSTRAAT

  Leaving their house on Zeedijk, Minou hurried with Cornelia along the street, her heart thudding with the lateness of the hour.

  Over the medieval canals of the Oude Zijde, avoiding squads of civic guards at every turn, concealing themselves in doorways and the shadows until each new patrol had passed by. Minou wondered on whose side the crossbowmen, the young soldiers so vain with their firearms, would be if the coup went ahead.

  She pulled herself up. Not if, but when.

  It was a little shy of one o’clock in the morning when they entered the van Raay house in Warmoesstraat and established themselves in the same chamber where Pauw had made his confession some few hours earlier. As they waited for Cornelia’s father to join them, their conversation ebbed and flowed. The candles guttered, the pale wax pooling on the round brass base.

  ‘Do you think Piet will now try to find Vidal?’ Cornelia asked.

  ‘I do not know.’

  As friendship and trust between them had grown, Minou had confided in Cornelia not only how she had come into her unexpected inheritance and become châtelaine of Puivert, but also how Vidal had nearly succeeded in destroying their family.

  ‘You have to understand that Vidal is always present in Piet’s mind. Like a malignant shadow. To discover that they are cousins, well – Piet has never thought it safe for us to return to France, even though there is a truce at present. But this new knowledge might change things.’

  ‘Because if du Plessis did die without further issue, then it is Piet rather than Vidal who is the legitimate heir to his estates.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Will Piet’s affection for his mother be changed because of what he’s learnt tonight?’

  Minou smiled. ‘No, despite the manner of her life and the tragedy of her death, Piet loved her without reservation. To discover she was married after all, that will only reinforce her goodness in his mind.’

  ‘And blacken the memory of his father?’

  ‘Piet never had any regard for his father. He’d assumed that he was … he despises men who seek to buy women in such a way.’

  Cornelia raised her eyebrows.

  Minou laughed. ‘Piet would close all the flophouses. He’d regulate taverns and taphouses by the harbour where the sailors congregate, and monitor the muster points where the civic guards finish their night watch and then go seeking company.’

  ‘Marriage or nothing?’

  ‘Marriage or nothing,’ Minou agreed. ‘You are surprised?’

  Cornelia considered. ‘I suppose I associate such rigorous morality with the Calvinists. Their austerity of worship and their absolute adherence to living by God’s commandments every second of every day seems to take much of the joy out of things. Piet has never struck me as sharing those views.’

  ‘After the massacre in Paris, attitudes of both Catholics and Huguenots hardened. Moderate voices were shouted down as their leaders moved away from a belief that compromise was possible, to a black-and-white view of the world.’

  Cornelia sighed. ‘You are either my friend, or my enemy. Nothing in between.’

  Minou nodded. ‘I would not say Piet is like that, but he now defines himself first and foremost as Protestant. Before, though he was proud to be a Huguenot, he was also a landowner, a husband, a man of Languedoc, a father.’

  Cornelia nodded: ‘Will Piet challenge Vidal over his inheritance?’

  Minou thought for a moment. ‘There was a time when I would have known how to answer. Now, I’m not sure. We survived the first three wars, only to lose everything after the Paris massacre. Land, wealth, our children’s inheritance, our home. My brother and daughter most of all. Without you and your father, Cornelia, we still would have nothing. Thanks to you, we have been able to rebuild something of what was lost. But Piet will never stop worrying and I fear the roots of that are in his own childhood – the memory of sitting at his mother’s bedside in Kalverstraat and, even though he was so young, understanding she was dying because they were poor. They had no money to pay for lodgings, no food to eat, no way of hiring a doctor to ease her symptoms. So, yes. It is possible that Piet will attempt to gain some of what is – what might be – rightfully his if he believes it could secure our children’s future.’

  ‘I understand that,’ Cornelia said. ‘But what of you?’

  Minou sighed. ‘I do not want Piet to seek Vidal out. For all that I try to reassure him that he cannot harm us now, I fear him.’ She hesitated. ‘On the other hand, if Piet’s petition to prove himself du Plessis’ heir was successful, we would have the resources to renew our attempts to find Marta. We never did that, we couldn’t afford to. We did what we could, we asked questions and sent letters, but we never launched a proper search. We gave up trying, and that is always on my conscience.’

  ‘But Minou, after all this time – is there any hope?’

  ‘At least I would know we tried.’

  Again, they were quiet. Cornelia trying to imagine how it would feel to be so haunted by a child you had lost. Minou trying to imagine – as she had every day since her daughter’s disappearance – what her child would look like now.

  ‘Marta’s eyes are like mine. One brown and one blue. It’s very rare.’

  ‘From the tapestry Alis brought with her from Puivert, Marta seemed to favour you in other ways too.’

  ‘In appearance, she did. In her character, there was more of Alis, if anyone, in her. Marta was forever rushing, forever impatient and quick-tempered, ready to answer back.’

  Cornelia smiled. ‘Alis was exactly as I imagined from your descriptions of her.’

  ‘In the refugee camp outside La Rochelle, and during her time on the road, she disguised herself as a boy!’

  ‘Perhaps, as you realised, as she so strongly reminded me of your brother, that does not seem so outlandish.’

  The tiny counter clock began to whir and shift its weights and click as its single hand found the top of the hour.

  ‘One o’clock,’ Cornelia said. She glanced up, listening for signs of life from her father’s chamber, but the floorboards remained silent. ‘He retires early and is a heavy sleeper. It might be better to return…’

  ‘It should be tonight.’

  Minou shivered and pulled her shawl around her shoulders. She had not told Cornelia why it was so urgent to speak to Willem van Raay. And her friend, knowing her well, had not pressed her.

  ‘Then we shall continue to wait,’ Cornelia said.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  ZEEDIJK

  Piet stopped outside his own front door and heard the bells strike one o’clock. The house was dark. He assumed all had gone to their beds.

  Just as Frans had done earlier, he sat on the step, reliving the events of the evening in his head: the confirmation of his fears about Vidal’s continuing meddling in their lives, the identity of his father, the words of love from his mother heard only now across the years. All the same, Piet knew that for the next forty-eight hours at least he had to put all personal feelings to one side.

  He’d told Minou in good faith that the coup was to be a peaceful changing of the order, from the old way of doing things to the new. No longer a vassal state under the Spanish heel, but Amsterdam
at the heart of the new independent country led by the Prince of Orange. A Protestant state in its own right, nothing less.

  But after listening to Jan Houtman and his followers, he was less confident. He saw the same belligerence in their eyes that he’d seen in the eyes of Guise’s men on the streets of Paris in 1572 as bloodlust stripped all human emotion from their hearts. The same brutality he’d seen sweep through Toulouse on that first night in May 1562 when the city started to burn.

  Then Piet remembered what good had come out of those dark times, for that night in Toulouse was when he’d led his injured comrade into the sanctuary of a house – Salvadora’s house – and found Minou again. A courageous girl, a girl of principle and honour. The girl who would later do him the honour of becoming his wife. Even in the worst of times, it was a miracle how the human heart kept beating.

  Love and hope.

  ‘My lady of the mists,’ he whispered into the night air.

  The smile faded from his lips. He had promised Minou that Amsterdam would pass peacefully from its past to its future. Houtman wasn’t the worst of them by any means. He was an intelligent man, and a man of his word, despite his dislike of foreigners. Had Piet done enough this evening to convince Houtman that their best chance was to behave as politicians not soldiers?

  If he had not, what would happen to them all?

  Without Willem van Raay, they would have nothing. So the question Piet had to ask himself was did he owe his loyalty more to an ideal, to the Huguenot cause, or to those who’d cared for them when they needed it most?

  Piet stood up. Minou was right. He owed it to their friends to warn them. Van Raay was a sombre and dutiful man, he was devout. But for all that, Piet knew that he found the excesses of the Catholic forces troubling. He had to gamble on the fact that van Raay loved Amsterdam more than the men who currently ruled it.

  He had to tell Cornelia’s father what was intended and pray to God that he did not alert the authorities. Otherwise, Piet was as likely to meet his reckoning at the end of a Calvinist sword as a Catholic one. Condemned as a traitor to both sides.