The prospect of it stuck in my throat. I had no idea if he would consider it in his interest to do me another favour and I was all the more reluctant to ask now that I knew the truth about his relationship with Stafford, but it seemed he was close to the Duchess of Montpensier and he was my best hope of reasoning with her. I took a lantern, unbolted the front door and slipped out silently. Outside, the snowfall had slowed, a few stray flakes still drifting from the densely packed sky, though the ground was now a uniform white, rippled with violet shadows where the drifts rose and fell. The men-at-arms still waited by the gate, rigid and glassy-eyed with cold; they looked surprised to see me, but their orders were to stop unwanted visitors from getting in, so they let me pass without comment.
I could hardly feel my feet by the time I had reached the end of rue des Tournelles. The streets appeared ghostly and deserted; not even a seagull cried over the river, and I walked on virgin snow, as yet unmarked by footsteps. As I turned right on to the rue Saint-Antoine I believed myself alone in this strange, blue-white world. Perhaps this belief made me less vigilant; perhaps the snow muffled the sounds around me. I had barely walked twenty yards when out of nowhere a blade appeared at my neck and a voice hissed in my ear,
‘Nice and still, now. Try not to make a noise.’
TWENTY-FIVE
Before I could gather my thoughts sufficiently to react, a thick hood was bundled over my head, my arms were seized roughly and bound at the wrists, and I was lifted up and thrown over the back of a horse. It all happened before I had time to cry out, not that it would have done me any good. No one spoke while I was jolted along in darkness; the only sound was muted hoofbeats on snow for fifteen or twenty minutes before I heard bolts scraping back and a gate being opened. I was dragged from the saddle and set on my feet, then shoved between two men up a short flight of steps and into a building, conscious all the time of the knife-point held to my ribs. The hood was only removed when I was pushed into a warm room and found myself standing before a table where the Duke of Guise sat with his hands folded, his eyes wintry in the dim light. It was not the grand salon where I had first seen him, but a small study, furnished only with the desk and a row of bookshelves along the wall opposite the fireplace. I was not even certain whose house I was in.
‘And how is our friend the Comte de Saint-Fermin?’ Guise asked, without preliminary, as the door closed and we were left alone with the whisper of the fire.
‘I think the change of air has helped him,’ I said, fighting to keep my voice even.
‘No doubt. Has Corbinelli told Catherine about him?’
‘Yes. He is under royal protection.’ I did not know if this was true, but I thought it might improve the Count’s chances of survival.
‘Much good may it do him. Catherine is the last person who would wish to start raking over the ashes of Saint Bartholomew’s night with accusations.’ He returned his attention to the papers in front of him for a few moments, leaving me to wait, before raising his eyes and fixing me with a reproachful stare. ‘You stole my horse, Bruno. What will it be next? Sleeping with my wife?’
‘I would stop at the horse if I were you,’ murmured a laconic voice in English behind me. ‘If you’ve seen his wife.’
I turned to see Paget leaning against a cabinet in a shadowy corner of the room, turning a letter round by its edges between his fingers. He offered a conspiratorial smirk, though I doubted now that I could rely on much support from that quarter.
‘Quiet, Paget,’ Guise said. ‘Well?’
I turned back to him. ‘I am sorry about the horse, my lord. I only meant to borrow him – I acted on impulse. I trust he was returned to you unharmed?’
‘If he’d been harmed, you’d be dead by now,’ Guise said, without emotion. ‘He and I have been through battles together. He’s worth far more than you are, even as dead meat. On top of that, my sister seems to think you have broken into her private study and stolen some letters.’
‘I have stolen nothing from the Duchess, my lord.’ I felt that deference was the best way to help myself and the Gelosi.
‘You’ll understand why we find that difficult to believe. What were you looking for?’
I hesitated. ‘In truth, my lord, I was trying to find out if she had been the mistress of Frère Joseph de Chartres.’
‘My sister?’ The Duke’s expression hovered somewhere between amused and incredulous. ‘Did you hear that, Paget?’
‘Bruno evidently does not know the Duchess’s reputation for chastity,’ Paget remarked from his corner, not without an undertone of resentment.
‘I thought all Paris knew of it,’ the Duke said drily. ‘What on earth led you to that theory, Bruno?’
‘The fact that she was close to him. There was talk among the other friars at Saint-Victor that he was involved with a married woman. And the way we found him – it seemed likely he had been intimate with someone before he was killed.’
‘So you are accusing my sister of murder as well as fornication?’ He arched an eyebrow.
‘I was investigating a suspicious death, my lord, as you ordered me to.’
‘I didn’t mean you to start pointing at my family.’ His voice had risen; he paused to bring it back under control. ‘So, then. Did you find anything to suggest your theory was correct?’
‘No. And I no longer believe the Duchess to have been involved with de Chartres in any sense.’
‘Well, we are
