‘I don’t know.’ I covered the book again and laid both hands flat over it in my lap. ‘I had thought of going back to England. There is business I must attend to there.’
‘Is that wise?’ His great eyebrows knitted together with concern. ‘Would you be safe there?’
‘Probably safer than in Paris.’
‘Really? Even with Simon?’
I gave him a tired smile. ‘I can’t have Simon following me around for the rest of my life.’
Simon was the bodyguard Henri had detailed to look after me, one of his own forty-five strong men and true; an affable six-footer from the Languedoc, of few words but reassuringly huge fists, who now accompanied me everywhere with his broadsword hanging ostentatiously at his side. He made me feel oddly claustrophobic, though he had charmed away the resistance of Madame de la Fosse, who had set up a temporary bed for him in the downstairs hallway so he could watch the door at night, and had taken to feeding him elaborate baked goods in return for odd jobs around the house. It amused me to see him jump up, looking boyishly guilty, whenever I came in and found him on a stool by the kitchen fire with his face full of cake.
‘Well, give it some thought,’ Jacopo said, draining his glass. ‘Don’t do anything hasty. And come for Christmas, won’t you? I will be needed at the Tuileries on Christmas Eve, but I want to keep my Christmas Day feast here, with friends. I have invited the Gelosi.’
‘Then I had better stay away. Francesco will want to give me a bloody nose for Christmas.’
‘Well, he might take a swing at you to keep up appearances,’ he said with a grin, ‘but you know Francesco – he doesn’t hold a grudge. Besides, he will have been dining out on the story all the way to Lyon and back. Though I suspect in his version, he will be the one who escaped out of a window and stole a duke’s horse.’
I flicked the chestnut shell into the fire and fell silent for a moment.
‘I’m sorry for my words before,’ I said, after a while. ‘When I accused you of conniving at murder. I should not have said that.’
‘I did not understand what she was planning until it was too late.’ He spoke quietly. ‘But you were right, in a sense – even once I realised, I could not have stopped her. I have tried, over the years, to be the voice of her conscience, but she is a Medici.’ He held his hands out, palms upward, to indicate helplessness in the face of such a legacy. ‘Sometimes I have no choice but to turn a blind eye. That does not make me proud of myself, but I am not a brave man, Bruno. Not like you.’
I stood, brushing chestnut shell from my clothes as I clutched the book to my chest in the crook of my right arm. ‘Some would say there is a very fine line between brave and foolhardy.’
Jacopo came around the desk and laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘And I would say the difference is obvious. Bravery is doing something foolhardy for the sake of others.’
I smiled and he crushed me in a paternal embrace.
‘Tomorrow is Saint Lucy’s day, Bruno. The darkest point of the year. After that, the days will grow brighter.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ I said. I wished I could share his optimism.
‘I will see you for Christmas, then,’ he said, at the door, handing me my cloak that Henri had sent back from the palace, freshly laundered. ‘You can bring Simon.’
‘I will,’ I said, as my large companion lumbered amiably into view from the kitchen. ‘We’re inseparable.’
We crossed the Pont de Notre-Dame under an iron sky. Occasional flakes of snow floated down half-heartedly; a crust of ice had formed over the mud-churned drifts in the streets. The church of Saint-Séverin loomed up ahead. I told Simon that I wanted to go inside, but that he could wait for me by the door.
I stepped alone into a reverent silence. The air smelled of cold stone and incense, just as it had on the day I came here to find Paul Lefèvre. I could almost believe that nothing had changed, that I might still find him there inside the confessional in the chancel, on the bench worn smooth by generations of penitents. How different the last few weeks would have been – for me, at least – if I had not decided to seek him out that day. I approached the confessional with slow steps and a heavy heart; even though I knew now that Paul had not been murdered because he was seen talking to me, still I could not escape the sense that my visit that day had set in motion everything that followed.
I reached out and touched the wood of the confessional with my fingertips. I closed my eyes, recalling his snide tone, his pompous certainty. Then I thought of that charred scrap of the letter he had written to save a life, and felt a wave of sadness. He had not deserved his death. None of them had.
‘Are you making your confession today, Doctor Bruno?’
I spun round, startled out of my thoughts by a clipped English voice, impeccably polite. A small man with a reddish beard was standing a few feet away with his eyes closed, apparently praying to a statue of the Virgin in a wall niche. He was no one I recognised; my first thought was that Paget had sent him.
‘Should I?’
‘I think it would be a good idea,’ he murmured, still without looking at me. ‘The confessional is empty, after all.’
I glanced back up the nave to the door
