The City of Tears Page 6

  She had come to the keep, away from watching eyes, and wept herself dry. Usually so steadfast, this time she felt quite hollow with misery.

  Alis rested her head against the glass. Neither the azure sky nor the red-specked orchards in the valley lifted her spirits. They only reminded her of how three days previously, she and Aimeric had gone walking arm in arm through the apple trees, talking until the sun went down.

  It was foolish to be so affected by her brother’s departure. She should consider it a blessing that he had been able to spend any time at Puivert with them at all, especially without his wife in tow. There had been times, during the worst of the fighting, when they had not heard tell of him for months.

  But what if, this time, he never came back?

  As Alis turned back to the altar, something about the quality of light caught at her memory. Without warning, she was suddenly assaulted by the image of her seven-year-old self, being held captive in the castle here by the priest with the white streak in his hair. A child, lost and alone.

  Image after image flashed unbidden into her mind, lightning sharp: being dragged into the woods where the pyre was burning, a rope tethered around her neck; of Minou tied to the stake in the flames; of Aunt Salvadora lying bleeding upon the ground; of the previous châtelaine turning the knife upon herself and her unborn child. So much blood.

  ‘No!’

  She would not walk in the shadow of the past. She had survived. It had left her strong and self-sufficient. It was only that, today, the person she loved most had gone. Solitude did not suit her, Minou always said so. It made her a prisoner of her own anxious thoughts.

  Time would do its work. Each day, the ache of Aimeric’s absence would lessen. June would pass, then July. In a matter of weeks, they would be together in Paris. For now, company was what she needed, the guileless chatter of her niece, even her aunt’s endless discussions of the latest fashions of the court.

  Alis exhaled. She would heed Minou’s advice. When she heard the bell ring for two o’clock, she would go to the top of the tower to watch out for her family coming home from the woods. She would have a clear view from up there. She would spend the afternoon in their company and brood no more on Aimeric.

  August would come soon enough.

  PUIVERT WOODS

  At the rumble of hooves behind her, Minou turned.

  ‘My lord, what kept you?’

  ‘The victory is yours.’ Piet smiled, leaning across to kiss her as he drew level.

  ‘You concede, sire?’

  ‘I concede,’ Piet said, kissing her gloved hand, then the inside of her wrist, then her lips.

  Struggling to hold his restless stallion, he dismounted, then reached to assist Minou as she unhooked her leg from the pommel and slid from her saddle.

  ‘Vas-y,’ Piet said, summoning the groom to hold the horses.

  Minou threaded her arm through his, rejoicing in the dappled sunlight and the heady scent of the pine trees. On a branch, a mistle thrush with its boldly speckled breast sang for the arrival of summer.

  ‘What were you and Aimeric whispering about?’ she asked.

  Piet laughed. ‘I told him that if he did not find us adequate lodgings in Paris – and I was obliged therefore to endure Salvadora making complaint for the duration of our sojourn – I would be forced to take my dagger back and turn it upon myself!’

  ‘That is indeed a fate none of us wish for! Though, in point of fact, I did not mean this morning at the gatehouse, but rather last evening. You were talking until dawn.’

  Piet drew his arm away.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ he asked sharply.

  Minou stared at him. ‘Mean by it? Why, nothing more than I said. I could not sleep, so I got up and opened the window. I heard you talking in the courtyard.’

  ‘You were eavesdropping?’

  ‘Eavesdropping! Piet, how can you say such a thing?’

  ‘Listening to a private conversation, what else would you call it?’

  She was bewildered by the cold expression on his face.

  ‘It was humid after the rain, the chamber was airless…’ She touched his arm. ‘Why have you taken offence when none was intended? Do you doubt the wisdom of us accompanying you to Paris?’

  ‘No! I would not leave you here without my protection.’

  ‘Protection! Whatever do you mean?’ Minou held his gaze, trying to read the story in his eyes. ‘Husband, whatever it is that occupies your thoughts, please tell me.’

  Piet sighed. ‘I am only concerned that the mere presence of so many Huguenots in Paris will be seen as provocation to many, regardless of the wishes of the King or the Queen Mother.’

  ‘Is it this you were going to say to me yesterday?’

  Piet didn’t meet her eye. ‘Of course.’

  ‘We are safe here,’ she said.

  ‘Safe!’ he exploded. ‘Nowhere is safe! There are spies everywhere.’

  Minou looked at him in astonishment. ‘Piet, please tell me what is wrong. There is something more, I know you well.’

  For a moment, he held her gaze. She could see the indecision in his face, then his eyes slipped away and a tiny piece of her heart broke.

  ‘Forgive me, Minou,’ he said, his voice suddenly weary. ‘I am tired. Pay no heed to my ill-humour. You are not at fault.’

  Without giving her the chance to say more, he mounted his horse and galloped away through the woods, leaving Minou at a loss to know what had actually taken place between them.

  CHAPTER TEN

  For a moment or two, Minou just stood watching the empty space and wondered what secret her husband was keeping that he thought too troubling to share with her. Then she realised Bernard, Salvadora and the servants were all looking in her direction.

  Minou forced a smile upon her face, as if the quarrel had not happened, and walked forward into the green glade to join them.

  ‘Maman!’ Marta cried. ‘See what I have drawn.’

  The small folding table was now covered with paper, pens and ink, a hinged ruler and colouring chalks.

  ‘Show me, petite,’ she said, as brightly as she could manage.

  ‘It’s a map!’ Marta said, pointing at a drawing. ‘Gran’père let me use his compass to put things in their rightful place.’

  ‘That was kind of him.’

  ‘We are here.’ The little girl pointed at a rough outline of the castle. ‘And this is the route we shall travel, though I need to show it to Papa to make sure it will serve.’ Marta peered around her. ‘Where has he gone?’

  ‘Papa has urgent matters of business to attend to. You can show him later.’

  Marta pouted. ‘I wanted to—’

  ‘Go and play with your brother,’ Minou said firmly, gesturing to where Jean-Jacques was balancing on a fallen tree trunk with his nurse’s assistance. ‘And this,’ she added, removing the box compass from her daughter’s hand, ‘can stay here. It is not yours. Unless Gran’père said you might keep it with you?’

  ‘He did not,’ said Bernard mildly, though he was smiling.

  ‘I was going to keep it safe.’

  ‘I warrant it will be safe enough here,’ Minou said, putting the treasure back on the table. Marta had the grace to blush.

  Minou watched her daughter skip to join the others.

  ‘Filha,’ Bernard said, patting the bench. ‘Sit with me.’

  ‘Marta is a magpie,’ she said. ‘She should not take things that do not belong to her.’

  ‘She is curious. She will learn,’ he replied. ‘Is her drawing serviceable?’

  ‘In point of fact, it is excellent. She has a good hand and a fine eye for detail, though perhaps her perspective is not quite what it might be. Puivert is rather larger than it warrants. She has fashioned it the same size as Paris!’

  Bernard smiled. ‘Puivert is the centre of Marta’s world. If she spent all her days in Carcassonne, I have no doubt La Cité and Paris would be the twin pillars on which France is founded.’
>
  Minou laughed. ‘That is true.’

  ‘Your mother drew you a map of Carcassonne when you were about the age Marta is now. Red chalk for La Cité, green for the Bastide, blue for the river in between, our bookshop in the rue du Marché and our house in the rue du Trésau both coloured in yellow. Do you remember?’

  ‘Of course. I have it still.’

  Bernard’s old face brightened. ‘I had thought it lost these many years.’

  ‘I keep it inside my journal for safekeeping.’

  ‘Ah, your journal! Florence would be astonished to know her rough sketch has done such good service.’

  A gentle silence fell between them. Minou sensed Bernard was waiting for her to speak and, though she did not wish to be disloyal to her husband in any way, she was in need of her father’s wisdom.

  ‘You heard our quarrel?’ she asked, and was grateful when he did not feign ignorance.

  ‘I did.’

  She sighed. ‘One moment we were at ease in one another’s company, then the next … I don’t understand it.’

  ‘If you will forgive me for giving voice to what you know, Filha, but since his injury, Piet has struggled to find a role he can play with honour, with purpose. For the most part, he has succeeded.’

  ‘Do you think I do not know that!’

  ‘Perhaps watching Aimeric depart with his companions this morning was an unwelcome reminder of what he has lost?’

  Minou felt her eyes prick with unexpected tears. ‘Perhaps. It is just I overheard him talking with Aimeric in the courtyard last evening. I feel sure there is something he is holding back from me.’

  Bernard raised his eyebrows. ‘Overheard…’

  Minou flushed. ‘I should have withdrawn. I did, as soon as I realised. But what distresses me, Father, is when I asked – without any guile – what had been the substance of their conversation, Piet behaved as if there was some terrible secret. I even entertained the thought he might have a mistress in Toulouse.’

  Bernard roared with laughter. ‘Daughter, you can dismiss that from your mind. I have never known a man so constant in his affection for his wife as Piet.’

  Minou blushed. ‘I know. I felt guilty for even allowing such a disloyal thought to enter my head. But there is something. He has been so withdrawn of late. And yesterday, before we came into the solar to join you all, he said there was something he needed to tell me. His demeanour was sombre and measured. Then Marta interrupted, and the moment was lost.’

  Bernard sighed. ‘The key to a long and happy marriage is not to avoid discord, nor to be scared of it or deny it. Rather, it is about trying to find ways of turning differences – especially those that seem insurmountable – into a source of strength. Speak to him again.’

  ‘I have tried, but he refuses to hear.’

  Bernard considered. ‘If not infidelity – which we both agree it is not – then go through the possible reasons for his preoccupation and strike those from your mind: financial matters, concern for the children, the prospect of further fighting, this year’s harvest, the journey to Paris. Then ask yourself what else could it be?’

  Minou thought, then a trickle of dread ran down her spine. It was suddenly so obvious.

  ‘Vidal…’ she breathed.

  Vidal, Piet’s dearest friend from his student days in Toulouse. They had been as close as brothers once. Vidal had first betrayed him and then – in league with the previous châtelaine of Puivert – had attempted to kill him, hunting them down from Carcassonne, to Toulouse and finally to Puivert.

  So many dead for the sake of a fragment of old cloth, a holy relic.

  Piet never spoke of Vidal – and Minou never asked him for fear of putting an unborn idea into his head – but often she wondered if his dreams were tenanted by the man he once had loved. And if, in those dishonest hours between dusk and dawn when the night terrors came, the memory of Vidal’s piercing black eyes and white streak of hair still haunted him, as much as they haunted her.

  Minou caught her breath. Could it be? The events that had brought them so violently into conflict with one another were in the past. Vidal had acquired what he wanted. A decade had passed without evidence of his continuing malice or interest in them. Why would Vidal bother with them now?

  But what if that was not true?

  ‘Vidal,’ Minou said again, hating how even speaking his name polluted the soft, afternoon air.

  ‘Has there been word of him?’ Bernard asked sharply.

  ‘Not that I know of. However, Vidal is certain to be present at the royal wedding. He is high in the Duke of Guise’s esteem. Perhaps it is the thought of seeing him again which disturbs Piet’s peace of mind.’

  ‘You will not know, Filha, unless you ask him. For the sake of the love between you, encourage him to open his heart to you.’

  ‘And if he will not?’

  Bernard laid his liver-marked hand over hers. ‘You will resolve matters between you, of that I have no doubt. Piet loves you, and you him.’ He pulled himself to his feet, signalling the conversation was over. ‘Now is it not yet time to eat?’

  Minou put the stick into her father’s hand and, side by side, they walked towards the dining table. A wooden bowl of cherries, a platter of fromage de chèvre with mountain honey, baskets of pan de blat, earthenware bowls brim full with ale. All that remained was for the salted ham to be unwrapped from the damp muslin cloth.

  ‘Go, Minou. We will manage here without you.’

  ‘I should stay. The children—’

  ‘– are content.’

  She looked over. Jean-Jacques was curled sleeping against the nurse, who was singing a gentle lullaby in the old language Minou remembered from her own childhood. Marta was trailing after Salvadora, who was rearranging crockery on the table, and criticising the state of the linen.

  ‘Go,’ Bernard repeated. ‘Resolve matters with your husband.’

  Minou hugged him, feeling how sharp his ribs were through his doublet. ‘Thank you. What would I do without your good counsel?’

  ‘What are fathers for, if not to advise their daughters?’

  They walked a few steps further, then Minou stopped. ‘Do you still miss her, Father? Even after all these years?’

  ‘Every day, Filha. I miss your mother every single day.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Piet gave the stallion his head.

  He wanted to shout, to clear the poison from his blood and the bile in his stomach. He bent low in the saddle, riding faster and harder, as if he could outrun his malevolent thoughts.

  He was limed in a trap of his own making, each untruth twisting and winding around the next, until he could not breathe. Minou was his love, his affectionate companion and helpmate. They completed one another. So how to explain the reluctance to confide in her? A situation that made him, if not a liar exactly, certainly a man who concealed? His silence was building a wall between them, he knew it. Yet on each occasion when he steeled himself to speak, fear took his tongue.

  It was his duty to look after his family, to keep them safe.

  Piet felt shame working its way up from his chest and into his throat until he could barely breathe. He kept telling himself he remained silent for Minou’s own good, as he had each day since receiving the letter from Amsterdam. He told himself there was no sense sharing the dread that held him, helpless, in its grip until he had proved the letter was genuine. That the threat was genuine. Minou was inclined to worry, so why burden her unless he had to?

  Even now, he remembered the initial shock of reading the single name at the foot of the paper: Mariken. Her compassionate face was linked forever in his mind with his mother’s blue lips in that cold and derelict room on Kalverstraat. He remembered the lap of the canals and waterways as if it was yesterday, the smell of peat and of herring, as Mariken led him later through narrow Amsterdam streets to safety.

  Piet had spent the past weeks attempting to prove the veracity of Mariken’s letter. He had sent word to his comrades
in the Low Countries, rebels in Brielle and Utrecht, with no success. He could only hope that once Aimeric reached Paris, and made contact with Dutch communities there, he might know more.

  Once he knew for certain, he vowed to himself, he would tell Minou. But for now, he owed her an apology. The last thing he wanted was to hurt her. He looked around, and realised how far north he had ridden.

  ‘Hie,’ he said, turning back towards home. ‘Vas-y.’

  * * *

  The bell in the village below struck two o’clock. The assassin waited. Then, above the whispering of the wind, he caught the sound of the door and then a flash of green.

  She was early today.

  ‘Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio,’ he prayed, sending words up to the archangel for whom he was named. ‘Defend us in battle.’

  This single act of assassination would be as much an act of war as any siege or infantry charge. He was a soldier in the army of Christ.

  The assassin quickly crossed himself, then stepped out of the cover of the undergrowth. He had assessed the range and angle to the parapet, where it was the châtelaine’s custom to sit, and calculated the optimum position. If she remained by the door, he would not have a clear shot. He needed her to come closer to the edge.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ he urged his victim. ‘A few steps more.’

  He steadied his breathing and fixed his gaze on his quarry. The powder, ball and shot were in place. His grip tightened upon the trigger. He set his eye along the muzzle.

  He watched as the false châtelaine walked to the far side of the roof to look out over the lands to the north. He kept his arm steady. Finally, the heretic whore turned towards her accustomed spot on the crenellated parapet. The angle wasn’t quite right, she was standing further away than usual, but he had her in his sights all the same.

  At last.

  Tilting his arm by some forty-five degrees to keep steady the priming powder in the pan, he squeezed his finger and thumb, and fired. In one seemingly simultaneous moment, he heard the clicking of the wheel, the tension of the mainspring, the sharp white-hot sparks of the fool’s gold as the pyrite hissed and spat and the bullet left the gun.