“Thank God!” says a relieved Walsingham.
They are King Charles’s personal bodyguard, in extravagant blue-and-yellow livery, well-armored with helmets, breastplates, pikes, halberds, and guns. Their captain is shouting and gesturing, commanding everyone to move away from Walsingham and Fellowes. Fellowes might weep with gratitude. He has never been so pleased to see anyone his entire life.
“But what in God’s name are they doing here?” he asks as they descend to the courtyard. “And why do they wish to save us? How do they even know who we are?”
“M’sieur,” the captain greets Walsingham with a lazy touch of the brim of his helmet.
“I am indebted to you, sir,” Walsingham says. “And especially your markman.”
Fellowes can feel his entire body trembling with relief.
“Don’t thank me, m’sieur,” the captain says. “Thank her.”
He indicates the caroche.
“Her?”
Fellowes peers. A window is lowered and a red-sleeved arm waves. It is not a summoning gesture, as he might have expected, but one of pleasure, of glee even, and the arm is long and slender and belongs to a woman.
Fellowes and Walsingham turn to each other.
“Great God in heaven,” Fellowes breathes.
It is Isobel Cochet.
CHAPTER TWO
Paris, same day, August 24, 1572
Mistress Cochet pulls back her hood to reveal she has lost her cap, and that her hair—dark with a tinge of red—has escaped its confines. Fellowes feels his mouth go dry, for her beauty is the sort to make any man—and woman, and child, and horse, and dog even—stop and stare: to open and turn toward her like a daisy to the sun. They wait to be warmed by her smile, to be lost in her brown-eyed gaze, to be lifted up by just a moment’s attention, and here is Fellowes sitting on a bench in a caroche, with his knee touching hers. Though there is another man in the cabin with them, and though all are turned to the window, struck by the horror unfolding in the streets, a little part of Fellowes is concentrated fiercely on his kneecap.
“How did you know it was us?” Walsingham asks.
“I saw you on the wall,” she says. “I thought, my God, I recognize that rump. It is Master Walsingham’s.”
Walsingham reddens.
“It was not very dignified,” he admits.
She flicks her wrist. Her bracelets chime. She is in dark blue linen, with those red sleeves, but she has on her feet very fine riding boots, heeled, chisel toed, and polished like a fresh-spring conker.
“Some things are not worth preserving,” she says.
“But where were you going?” he goes on. “And how did you come by this caroche? And a guard of the king’s troops?”
“I persuaded the Queen Mother to send them to Saint-Marceau,” she tells him. “In case the mob had reached the residency yet. And I thought I should come, too, just in case.”
Walsingham sits back, finally believing what he is seeing, and laughs sibilantly.
“My God, Isobel, my God. I knew you would be able to look out for yourself, but for us, too? You have my gratitude.”
She smiles distractedly. She is looking out of the window but winces when a moment later a hand bangs against the shutters and there is a growl of command and the stamp of horses’ hooves. Soldiers struggle to keep the crowd back while the gates open to allow the caroche off the bridge and onto the south bank.
“What happened?” Walsingham asks.
“No one knows yet,” Isobel tells them. “But either the Queen Mother or the Cardinal of Lorraine ordered Coligny murdered in the night. They went to his bed and threw him out the window, and then the king’s Swiss Guard evicted every Huguenot from the palace and murdered them in the street. Women and children, too, with those halberds of theirs. Then Saint Germain’s was set to ring, and every man in Paris took to the streets, and so it began.”
“So it is planned?”
She shakes her head.
“I am not certain,” she says. “To begin with, yes. The Swiss Guard, by God. You should have seen them. But I think all this”— she indicates the streets—“was unexpected, but there is such fear: you can see. Look. They are almost relieved to be doing it to others before it is done to them.”
My God, Walsingham thinks, she is right: it is relief.
“This is the start of something terrible,” he says. “Something that will consume all Christendom. Catholic will kill Protestant, and Protestant will kill Catholic. And this time, there will be no crowd of groundlings to stand and watch: All must play their part. All must bloody their hands.”
Fellowes is hardly listening. He stares at the skin of Isobel Cochet’s throat where a pulse beats so prettily.
“But what were you doing in Paris, Master Walsingham?” she asks. “So far from home?”
Walsingham makes a small movement of his hand that she understands: you do not need to know and it is better you do not. But Fellowes sees a tiny splinter of steel appear in her eye. She is not used to being checked, of course. She glances at him and tries to hide it with a smile that melts his bones. He finds himself gabbling something about his gratitude to her for having saved his life, and that he would unquestionably and unquestioningly do the same for her if ever the opportunity arose.
She smiles with gentle amusement and he feels somehow shut out of something, like a child in conversation with adults.
Walsingham pats his arm.
“Well,” he says, “there is a chance you may soon redeem your obligation, Oliver.”
Fellowes turns to him, finally relieved
