She smiled. “My best friend in Paris was a Catholic. She sent me this when Denis was born. I kept it for her sake. Now I wear it for him. My beautiful boy.” Her eyes filled with tears and she swiped them away with the back of her hand, as if she were tired of their interruption.
I looked at the medal glinting between her fingers.
“Did your brother give you that?”
She nodded.
“Before he left?”
Another nod.
“Where have they gone?”
“I don’t know.” Her eyes slid to the window.
“Hélène, please.” I knelt in front of her. “I need to know. They have taken something of mine … Sophia has taken something.”
She looked down at me, her liquid eyes full of sympathy.
“Your heart,” she said solemnly. “Ours too. My father can hardly bear it. My son dead, his own son gone.” She bit her lip and looked back to the window.
“At least Olivier gave you justice, of sorts. He could not have stayed, after what he did.”
Her face froze, shocked. “Do you—”
“Do I know? Yes. But no one else does. They will think Doctor Sykes was killed on John Langworth’s orders.” I paused, nodding to the window. “That little jetty at the back of your property must have been useful.”
She pressed her lips together. “Why would you keep our secret, monsieur? What do you gain?”
“Because …” I ran a hand through my hair. “Because I find that in my heart—what is left of it—I cannot condemn your brother for wanting justice.”
“Then I will tell you something else, monsieur,” she said, leaning down close enough that I could feel her breath on my face. “My brother put him in the boat, but he did not hold the knife.” She looked me straight in the eye when she said this, her face inches from mine, fire flashing in her look. No man should underestimate the ferocity of a mother, I thought. I imagined that fiery glare was the last thing Sykes saw as the light faded for him. Well, I could not pity him.
“And the stone? Whose idea was that, to reference the Scripture?”
She frowned.
“What Scripture?”
“The millstone.”
She looked blank. “It was not a millstone. It was just—a stone. To weight him down.”
I gave a wan smile. Sophia was right; sometimes things are no more than they appear. I stood, bowing my head in farewell.
“Goodbye, Hélène.”
“God will pardon me,” she said, defiantly. “It is the least He owes us.”
As I reached the door, she called me back.
“Monsieur? Olivier always used to say he would not be afraid to live in Paris. He was only a boy when the massacre happened, he thinks it would be different there now.”
I watched her as she twisted the medal between her fingers.
“Thank you.”
At the front door, Jacques Fleury leaned in and kissed me once on each cheek in the French manner.
“Do not think me discourteous, monsieur,” he said. He spoke as if every word required a supreme effort, as if it had to be dragged up from the depths of his being like a stone. “You gave us back our boy. For that I thank you. But please, monsieur, I ask you one favour.”
“What?”
“Do not come back to Canterbury.”
I smiled. “Have no fear on that score, Pastor Fleury. I will not look back.”
“
“
From a room somewhere above, I heard the sound of a woman crying.
Epilogue
HAMPTON COURT PALACE
NEW YEAR’S DAY, 1585
“
Michel de Castelnau, ambassador of France to the court of Queen Elizabeth, adjusted his silk doublet, arranged his short cape over his shoulder, and rolled his shoulders back, drawing himself up to his full height. He touched me lightly on the elbow and ushered me forward. I took a deep breath, pausing to tuck the book under my arm so that I could wipe my sweating palms on my doublet. My eyes remained lowered as protocol demanded, so that as the ambassador and I walked the length of the hall all I saw was the synchronised step of our leather boots across the flagstones, but I felt the many eyes trained on us, felt the hairs on my neck prickle at the sense of exposure, as if I were standing naked before the sceptical gaze of the highest nobles in England. All the while I reminded myself to breathe, slow and steady, and to concentrate only on not tripping or dropping the book. One of the court musicians picked out a tune quietly on a lute and from all around came the murmur of conversation and the whisper of rustling silks, but all I heard was the pounding of the blood in my own ears.
The queen kept the twelve days of Christmas at her palace of Hampton Court some miles to the west of London, on the banks of the river. Here the Great Hall was wreathed in garlands of holly, ivy, pine, and yew, and smelled of cloves, logs, and good beeswax; outside, in the damp air, the scent of spiced wine drifted into the courtyard from the kitchens and the light from the blaze of candles warmed the early dark. All across London there had been an edge of manic relief to the festive celebrations; plague had not, after all, come to London in the summer, the queen was still alive and well and England’s shores mercifully free from foreign invasion. None of the year’s dire forecasts had come to pass, and the city was determined to fete its own survival.
The queen’s own Christmas festivities were organized by the Earl of Leicester, Sidney’s uncle, and for her noblemen and ambassadors, attendance at Hampton Court during the season was not a matter of choice but of duty. The tradition of New Year gifts was more than a formality; for her courtiers, it presented an opportunity to make or mar their fortunes for the coming year, depending on whether or not their gift impressed her. Sidney was pleased with himself; over the past months, at various ambassadorial receptions and diplomatic meetings, he had managed to insinuate to Castelnau that the queen was curious to read my new book, until the ambassador had become convinced that presenting it to her was his own idea. Still eager to regain her favour, he had paid from his own pocket for the handsome black Morocco binding, with gilt edges and Elizabeth’s own coat of arms embossed on the cover in gold leaf, and had rubbed his hands with delight at the prospect of presenting me—and the book—at the New Year celebrations.
“She imagines herself a great champion of knowledge, the English queen,” he had said, tracing his fingers lovingly over the leather binding before we had set out that morning, “but she fills her court with peacocks in crimson silks. Now she shall see the calibre of philosophers France maintains.” I doubted he had actually read the book, but he was certainly pleased with its cover.
I felt his fingertips rest lightly on my back, guiding me as we neared the dais where the queen sat on a vast carved throne with her most favoured courtiers to either side and her maids seated at her feet on velvet cushions. From somewhere to my left, a stifled growl rumbled through the crowds, causing the few ladies present to squeal and the boy choristers of the Chapel Royal to gasp in excitement. Some foreign dignitary had seen fit to bring the queen a leopard for her exotic menagerie at the Tower and the poor beast now strained at its leash in a corner, its jaws bound tight with leather straps. The queen had declared herself delighted, but her eyes held a certain weariness; perhaps after twenty-five years on the throne, one has seen enough leopards. It had seemed dazed during its five minutes of royal favour; I guessed it had been given some kind of sedative which was now wearing
