Paris The Novel

Chapter Ten




• 1572 •


He was just a very ordinary little boy. No one would have imagined that he’d change the history of his family by opening a window when he had been told that he must not.

On this Monday morning, the eighteenth day of August in the year of Our Lord 1572, young Simon Renard was excited. His father’s cousin Guy was about to arrive. And then Uncle Guy, as he called him, and his father were going to take him to see the royal wedding. He’d never seen such a thing before.

And he was doubly curious after his father had told him: “This is the strangest royal wedding that’s ever been seen in Paris.”



Simon was eight years old, and he lived with his parents, Pierre and Suzanne Renard, in a small house that lay down an alley of storehouses, near the fortress of the Bastille.

Simon liked the old Bastille. He knew that long ago it was put there to protect the Saint-Antoine city gate from the English. But there was no fear of English attacks nowadays.

In the previous century, cunning King Louis XI had seen to that. He’d wanted to make his kingdom into a mighty country, and he’d succeeded. While in England, the Plantagenets had torn each other to pieces in the Wars of the Roses, King Louis, by fighting, and by devious diplomacy, had spun his spider’s web until he’d gathered all the great independent regions—Normandy and Brittany in the north, Aquitaine and warm Provence in the south, mighty Burgundy in the east—into the huge, hexagonal entity that would be known henceforth by the single name of France. For a while the English had kept one town, the northern port of Calais. But now they’d lost that too. The English threat was over. Paris was safe. And the Bastille just seemed a friendly old place to the little boy.

He’d also grown up with a deeper security.

Pierre and Suzanne Renard were good Catholics, and they loved their only son. Two little girls had been born after him. Both had died in infancy. But Pierre was in his early thirties and his wife a little younger. So they still had every hope of having more children, if it was God’s will. In the meantime, Simon knew, the two baby girls were safely with their Father in heaven.

Apart from his parents, there was only one serving girl to help his mother, and an apprentice. The serving girl slept in the attic; the apprentice in the loft over his father’s storehouse behind the house.

The little family was particularly intimate, therefore. Each day Simon helped his parents. Each night they said prayers together before he went to bed. And thanks to this gentle rhythm of life, Simon knew in his heart that his parents loved him and that his soul was protected by his Savior.

He did wonder sometimes about his wider family. His mother had come from a village the other side of the city of Poitiers, and though they had traveled down there once when he was a very little boy, he hardly remembered them. He knew that his father had relations in Paris, but for some reason, apart from Cousin Guy, he never seemed to meet the other members of the Renard family.

He liked Guy, though, very much. Guy was in his late twenties, not married yet, and lived in another part of the city. He was a handsome young merchant with a short, neat beard and mustache and thick, dark red hair which he wore swept back. Every month or so he would look in, and whenever he did, he would talk to little Simon and make him laugh. Simon was very glad that Guy was taking him to see the strange royal wedding today.



As Guy Renard drew near the house, he silently cursed. He did so for two reasons. The first was that he always felt irritated when he went to see his cousin Pierre.

Why did Pierre have to be such a fool? He shrugged. Because Pierre’s father, Charles, had been a fool too, he supposed.

A century ago, when Cécile Renard had married young de Cygne, the family had been at the height of its wealth. The next generation produced several Renard sons, who’d shared that wealth. But it was in the time of their children, in the glorious reign of King François I, that the parting of the family ways began.

What a time that had been. The age—as history would call it—when the Renaissance came to France. Italian architecture had been transformed by the warm and delightful sensuality of the French into the glorious royal châteaus of the Loire. Humanist writers had been nurtured in that soil, like Ronsard the poet, and earthy Rabelais.

And François was everything a Renaissance prince should be: tall, handsome, a patron of the arts. The scandalous but brilliant goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini had worked in Paris. New improvements were undertaken on the growing royal palace of the Louvre. And Leonardo da Vinci himself, bringing the Mona Lisa with him, had come to spend his last days in the valley of the Loire, and died in the French king’s arms.

The king was a man of vision too: Verrazano’s voyage to America was financed thanks to him; colonies in Canada were founded; explorers sent to India and beyond. He’d opened trade across the Mediterranean with Morocco. To balance the power of the Hapsburg Holy Roman emperor, he’d even formed an alliance with the Moslem Suleiman the Magnificent, of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Though he’d also married his son to Catherine de Médicis, of Florence, with a rich dowry promised by her kinsman, the pope.

But Guy’s favorite tale was what happened when King François had met that great bully, Henry VIII of England.

“Imagine it,” he gleefully told his little cousin Simon, “they met at a magnificent congress called the Field of the Cloth of Gold. And Henry of England, who was big and powerful and very pleased with himself, challenged King François to a wrestling match. The two men wrestle. The crowds are watching. They are both strong. But maybe François is stronger, or more skillful, and no doubt more intelligent … and suddenly—oopla—Henry’s in the mud. He’s flattened. King François beats him.”

“Was King Henry angry?”

“He was furious. But there was nothing he could do. He was beaten.”

“Was it King Henry who had six wives?”

“Yes. But it didn’t do him much good. He was a terrible man. Whereas King François was a great man. And of course,” Guy added proudly, “he had many beautiful mistresses.” Like most Frenchmen, and certainly Frenchwomen, Guy liked his rulers to have mistresses. It showed they were virile, and powerful. Either that, or they could be saints.

“Why do kings have mistresses, Uncle Guy?” Simon asked.

“For the honor of France.”

But what Guy was really thinking—though he did not say it to the boy—was that the reign of François I had been the time when his own father and his uncle Robert had both made large fortunes. The king might have spent too much, but the Renard brothers had done very well out of supplying his court.

Whereas Simon’s grandfather had not. Uncle Robert had even offered to bring him into his own business, but Charles had refused. In that glorious age of adventure, he’d managed to lose most of his money.

And to make matters worse, his son Pierre had no interest in getting the money back. He worked just hard enough to get by, and hardly that. He seemed to have no ambition of any kind. He didn’t want any help. He was completely placid. As the years passed, this younger branch of the Renards had been written off by the rest of the family as poor relations. But Pierre didn’t seem to mind. He was always cheerful.

And this situation irked Guy. He couldn’t help it. He was proud of his family’s success. He was ashamed if any of them went down in the world. And so he’d gone on a personal mission to see if he couldn’t do something about it.

“It’s good of you to try,” his father had told him, “but I’m afraid you’re wasting your time.”

“Pierre’s hopeless,” Guy agreed, “but the boy’s a dear little fellow, and he seems quite intelligent.”

Once when he was visiting the family, Guy had casually mentioned the marriage of Cécile Renard to de Cygne. Young Simon had turned to his father in astonishment. “Our family married nobility?” he’d cried.

“Oh, that was just one rich lady, centuries ago,” Pierre told him. “Nothing to do with us.” And afterward he’d taken Guy aside and gently requested: “Don’t put ideas into the boy’s head. We live in quite a different world these days.”

“What are your plans for Simon?” Guy had asked him once.

“One of our friends is a baker, and he’s suggested he might take Simon as an apprentice in a few years. Simon quite likes the idea.”

Guy was careful after that. If he was going to have any hope of doing something for Simon, he knew he had to keep on good terms with the parents. He never let his irritation with Pierre show. But he was constantly on the lookout for ways to engender some spark of ambition and adventure in the boy. If young Simon showed that, then the rest of the family might be prepared to do something for him when he was older.

He’d tell Simon stories of the great merchant heroes of the city, like Étienne Marcel, who’d built the city fortifications; he’d talk about the adventurers sailing to the New World; he’d tell the boy about how this small merchant or that had made his fortune through hard work or ingenuity. So far, he had no idea whether he was succeeding or not, but he wasn’t going to stop trying. He was a Renard, after all.

It wasn’t surprising, then, that each time he saw his cousin’s house, he secretly cursed Pierre for putting him to all this trouble.

The second reason he’d cursed, however, belonged to the day. In fact, he wasn’t sure they should be taking little Simon out into the streets at all. Because Guy Renard trusted his instincts—and he scented danger.

There was something very suspicious about this royal wedding.



Guy was watchful as they came down past the Convent of the Celestines to the riverside. A defensive wall ran along the bank of the Seine for a little way. After that, they could look across the water to the Île Saint-Louis, the small, bare island covered with woods and rough grazing that lay just upstream from the Île de la Cité, where the gray mass of Notre Dame loomed ahead. They passed the old Grève embankment, where a couple of watermills on a quay jutted out into the water. The roadway was full of brightly dressed people, moving in the same direction. Along the waterside, the tall, steep-gabled wooden houses with their open galleries and balconies hung with festive garlands and ribbons stared over the river, which was full of boats and barges.

Young Simon was walking happily beside him, his father on the other side. So far, no sign of danger.

The ceremony was being held under a magnificent awning on the parvis of Notre Dame, just in front of the cathedral’s great west doors. There the king’s little sister was going to marry her kinsman, Henry of Bourbon, King of Navarre.

In a way, it was a dynastic marriage—perhaps a necessary one—for her family and for France. For although her two brothers were living, they had no male children as yet. In another generation, the Valois line of the ancient Capet royal family would die out. And who was next in line? Quite a distant cousin, as it happened. The Bourbon line descended directly from a younger son of that saintly King Louis who’d built the Sainte-Chapelle two centuries ago. The bridegroom’s father had married the queen of the little mountain kingdom of Navarre that lay between France and Spain in the Pyrenees, of which his son Henry was now king. So if Henry of Navarre did inherit the throne of France, the Bourbon and Valois lines would be conveniently joined again.

But despite the dynastic convenience, this marriage provoked one, very big question.

“Cousin Guy,” Simon now demanded, “why is the Princess of France marrying a Protestant?”



It was amazing really, Guy considered. Fifty years ago an obscure monk named Luther had challenged the Catholic Church, and because of it the whole of Western Christendom was now divided into two armed camps. To the north and east, the Netherlands, many of the German principalities and much of Scandinavia was in the Protestant camp. England was too. The pope had just excommunicated the heretic Queen Elizabeth, and invited good Catholic rulers to depose her. Spain, meanwhile, and the Holy Roman Empire of central Europe were in the hands of the most Catholic Hapsburg dynasty.

And France? The humanist King François had tolerated Protestants in his realm for a while. By the time he’d decided they were dangerous, it was too late. The north of France was solidly Catholic. So mostly was Paris. The modest numbers of Protestants in the city worshipped quietly, in their own houses mostly, and took care not to draw attention to themselves. But in the southern mountains and Atlantic ports like La Rochelle, huge numbers of people had taken the new faith. They went by many names—Protestants, Reformers, Calvinists, Huguenots. Many were humble craftsmen, but others were merchants and knights. Admiral Coligny, the finest military commander in France, had gone over to the new faith. And the mother of Henry of Navarre had also converted, and taken her family with her.

The Protestants had demanded freedom of worship. The royal government had clamped down. There had been a succession of regional conflicts and truces.

“You know,” Guy said to young Simon, “that there has been fighting with the Protestants in recent years? Not here in Paris, thank God, but in other places.”

“Yes. But we are in the right, aren’t we? The Protestants are heretics.”

“Yes, you are a good Catholic and so am I, little Simon. But it is sad that Frenchmen should kill each other, don’t you think?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it is hoped that this marriage will help to stop any more fighting.”

“And after this marriage,” Simon asked, “will the Catholics and Protestants be able to agree?”

“That may be difficult. We just hope they won’t fight anymore.”

That was the official explanation. It satisfied many people. The boy seemed to believe it, anyway.

They were approaching the great bridge that led across to the Île de la Cité. This had been magnificently rebuilt in stone around the start of the reign of the great King François. As well as the roadway, its high arches also supported a line of tall, gabled houses that acted like a curtain, blocking off the view downstream. This was the way to Notre Dame.

But when they reached it, they found that the press of people was so great that it was impossible to cross. Simon was disappointed. He wanted to see the wedding. Guy was secretly glad. If there was going to be trouble, he’d sooner be here on the open Right Bank than trapped in the narrow confines of the city’s central island.

“We’ll try the next bridge,” he suggested.

But the Pont au Change, also covered with houses, was blocked too. And further downstream, the untidy old bridge of watermills—most of which had been converted into private houses now—had been sealed off to all traffic.

“I’m afraid we can’t get across,” Guy said. “And if we want to watch the nobles riding back afterward, we’d do better to find some open space. Let’s walk a bit farther.

Downstream from the bridges the view opened out a bit. Ahead, the towers of the old Louvre fort rose over an unfinished collection of royal buildings that seemed still to be struggling against each other to form a cohesive royal palace.

Simon wanted to run ahead a little way. The two men did not stop him.

They were coming level with the downstream tip of the island when Pierre turned to Guy and asked him quietly: “You seem uneasy. Why is that?”

“This wedding frightens me.”

“You don’t think it may bring peace to France?”

“No.” Guy glanced bleakly at Pierre. “I don’t think it’s intended to.”

“Explain to me. You know I am not worldly.”

“Who arranged this wedding?”

“The king and his mother, I suppose.”

“Forget the king. His mother. Catherine de Médicis. She was the one who was so determined on this marriage. When her daughter tried to refuse to marry a Protestant, she whipped her soundly. That’s the word I hear. Even tore out the poor girl’s hair.”

“That is terrible.”

“Now consider something else. For the last year or so, Catherine and her inner council have been courting Admiral Coligny, the Protestants’ great commander. Inviting him to visit them. Flattering him. And what does Coligny want?”

“He wants freedom for Protestants to worship.”

“Yes, certainly. He also wants to help the Protestants in the Netherlands against their Catholic oppressors, the mighty Hapsburgs. Quite apart from the fact that I am a Catholic, I happen to think it’s madness. The last thing we need is to put ourselves at war with the Hapsburg king of Spain.”

“God forbid.”

“Indeed. Yet now, to please Coligny, Catherine has even sent some troops to the Netherlands to support the Protestants. What do you make of that?”

“To me, it is very strange.”

“Well, I think it’s more than strange. I think it’s unbelievable. Are we really suggesting that an Italian Médicis, the kinswoman of popes, is going to tolerate Protestants in her realm?” He paused. “There is one more person to consider. Who is Catherine’s greatest supporter?”

“I should say the Duke of Guise.”

“Indeed. The mighty house of Guise. Her closest counselors. The duke’s uncle is a cardinal in Rome. And let us not forget Mary, Queen of Scots. Devout Catholic. Rightful Queen of Scotland. Claimant to the throne of England. Elizabeth of England holds her in captivity now, and fears her. And who was the mother of Mary, Queen of Scots? The cardinal’s sister, Mary of Guise.”

“Unlikely sponsors of Protestants.”

“Exactly. Now I have one last question. Knowing what we do of Catherine de Médicis, by what principles will she be guided in all her actions?”

“By her faith, surely.”

“I said in her actions.”

“I do not understand.”

“You have heard of the great Machiavelli, I am sure.”

“Who has not? An evil man.”

“He merely described the ruthless cunning, the cold calculation, the poisonings and murders that he saw all around him among the rulers of Italy—the Florence of the Médicis in particular. Our queen mother will act exactly like that.”

“And so this wedding …?”

“Is a diabolical trap. Think of it. Coligny is here. Almost every leading Protestant in France has come into Paris for this wedding, along with their followers. What a chance.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She’s going to kill them all. She and the Guises.”

“But there are hundreds of them.”

“Thousands. It’s most convenient.”

“But that is evil. Unspeakably evil.”

“You have missed the point. It is logical.”

“But we are Christians.”

“You think the pope is going to object?”

“But what of Henry of Navarre? The bridegroom.”

“Ah. That is interesting. Catherine has already isolated him. Very cleverly.”

“In what way?”

“Who made Henry a Protestant in the first place?”

“His mother, the Queen of Navarre.”

“And what happened to her?”

“She died.”

“Exactly. Not long ago. When she was visiting the queen mother, who had begged her to come—so that they might learn to be friends.”

“What are you saying?”

“Catherine poisoned her.”

“There is no proof.”

“There never will be. But once Henry is left married to Catherine de Médicis’s daughter, with his mother gone, and Coligny and all his supporters murdered, he will be entirely isolated. He will either convert to Catholicism, or …”

“This is terrible.”

“I agree.”

“I shall pray that you are wrong.”

“Will you?” Guy gazed at him coolly. “Neither you nor I would do this deed. But will we regret it when it’s done?” He paused to let the cold truth sink in. “Do you want civil strife, Pierre? Do you want a Protestant king?”

But Pierre had done with questions.

“I thank God,” he said quietly, “that my home is a haven of peace.”

“May it always be so,” answered his cousin. “Ah, here comes young Simon, back again.”

They stayed out in the street several hours, and learned that the wedding had been safely accomplished, and saw many fine noblemen ride by that day.

And by evening, when nothing untoward had occurred, Guy almost dared to hope that he’d been wrong.



For Simon, the next three days were quite annoying. News came of the great feasts and tournaments taking place between the Louvre, the Île de la Cité and the Latin Quarter, and he would have liked to go and watch.

“Can we not see the knights jousting?” he cried.

But his father was always pleading that he was too busy, or giving some excuse why he couldn’t take his son out. He wouldn’t let the apprentice go either. And both his parents adamantly refused to let him wander off alone, even to one of the great aristocratic houses in the nearer part of the city, where he could at least have hung around by the gates and watched the parties of noblemen and their liveried retinues as they came and went between the celebrations.

If the royal marriage was intended to improve relationships between the Catholic followers of the Duke of Guise and the Protestant followers of Coligny and Henry of Navarre, then things appeared to be getting off to a good start.

On Friday morning, Pierre had to go out to the market, but he made Simon stay at home.

At noon, his father came back ashen.

“Coligny has been attacked. Stabbed.”

“Is he killed?” asked Suzanne.

“No. Wounded but not badly. The assassin got away. Nobody knows who it was or where he is. But Coligny’s people are furious. Most of them think this was the work of the Guises, or even the king’s mother. One way or the other, everyone’s afraid there’s going to be a fight.”

Simon wasn’t allowed even to go into the street after that. At the end of the afternoon his father went out again to gather news, but returned without anything definite.

Saturday morning came. Coligny was safely in his lodgings. The old hero had lost two fingers, but that was all. He was receiving people. The royal family had been to see him. They were determined to find his attacker. The only fear was of a Protestant backlash. And with large numbers of Protestant knights and men-at-arms being lodged in the buildings of the Louvre, this was frightening indeed. But as the hours passed, nothing happened. Whatever their suspicions might be, the Protestants were holding back.

It was a long, hot August day. As evening fell, a dusty warmth pervaded the streets. Tomorrow, in the calendar of the Catholic Church, it would be the Feast of Saint Bartholomew. Both the serving girl and the apprentice had been allowed to go to their families for the day, so Simon and his parents were quite alone in the house.

Dusk was just falling when there were the sounds of a horseman coming to the door of Pierre Renard’s little house. The horseman entered quickly. It was Guy.

He came into the room where the family was sitting. His face was pale.

“Pierre. You must take these.” He held out a handful of white objects to his cousin. Simon watched curiously as his father inspected them. They were white armbands. “Put them on. All of you. Keep them on. Don’t take them off even when you are sleeping. At dawn, you will hear bells. Stay indoors. Do not go outside. Whatever else you may hear, besides the bells, do not open the door. But if for some reason, Pierre, you should have to step outside, then be sure to wear a white armband. On no account be in the street without it.”

“What is this about?” demanded Pierre.

“Do not ask. And do not speak of this to anyone else. I should not be here, but you are my family.”

“Should we be afraid?”

“No. Just thank the Lord that, in His grace, He has made you a member of the true Church. But stay indoors all the same. And speak to nobody.”

Simon watched his father’s face. Pierre was looking very grave, and thoughtful.

“This is terrible,” he said to Guy.

“I know.”

“Will people come to the door and ask to see the armbands?”

“They might. But it’s unlikely.” He gave his cousin a grim look. “We already know where all the Protestants live.”

“We? You are part of this?”

“I didn’t say I liked it.” He turned. “Do as I’ve told you, Cousin,” he said, and was gone.



The night was silent. The family slept in two rooms. Simon’s room was tiny, but it had a small, square window that looked out into the alley.

He slept soundly for several hours, even as a single bell began to toll, somewhere near the Louvre. Soon other bells were following, but still he slept.

Suddenly, he sat up in bed. He did not know it was a terrible scream that had awoken him. He listened. Then he got up and went to the window. It must be early morning, but without opening the shutter, it was hard to tell what time it might be. He hesitated. He heard a party of horses going by in the street at the end of the alley, but they didn’t turn into the alley itself. He went to the door of his room. A sound from the back of the house told him that his mother was in the kitchen downstairs. He went back to the shutters and pushed them open, just a little.

The alley was deserted. Usually, first thing in the morning, the yard gate to the wooden storehouse just up the alley was opened by an apprentice. But today was Sunday, and it was still closed. There was something, though. A sack, by the look of it, lying in the road. He couldn’t see it clearly enough to be sure what it was.

Then he heard another sound, nearby. A scuffling sound. It was almost under his window. A dog or a cat, perhaps. He pulled himself up, got his stomach on the window ledge and leaned out.

It was a dark-haired little girl. About five years old, by the look of her. She was wearing just a nightdress. Her small round face was looking straight up at him. Her eyes were wide with terror. She was trembling, white as a ghost. He gazed at her.

“What are you doing?”

She didn’t answer. She was staring at him with fear.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.

She continued to stare at him.

“Why are you all by yourself?” he asked.

She still didn’t answer.

“I’m Simon,” he said.

“That’s my mother,” she whispered. She pointed up the alley. And Simon realized that she was pointing at the shape he’d thought was a sack.

“Where’s your father?” he said.

She didn’t reply, but she shook her head in a way that was so final that he supposed it could mean only one thing.

“Wait,” he said.

He crept down the wooden stairs. At the bottom, he paused. He heard his mother shoveling ash out of the grate in the kitchen. She’d be taking the ash out into the little yard at the back. His father usually went into his small store, off the yard, first thing in the morning.

He knew he should go and ask his parents what to do. He knew that, on no account, should he open the door or go outside. So he did exactly what most children in his place would do.

Very carefully, he slid back the bolts of the street door. He looked outside. The little girl hadn’t moved. The alley was empty. He stepped out and took her hand.

“Shh,” he whispered, “Don’t say a word.”

They stepped inside. He closed the door carefully and bolted it again. He could still hear his mother in the kitchen. Softly he led the little girl to the stairs and they crept up together. He put her in his bed. She was shivering, so he covered her with a blanket. Then he sat down beside her.

“What’s your name?” he whispered.

“Constance.”

“You’ll be all right here. But don’t make a noise. I wasn’t supposed to open the door.”

She lay still. She was still shivering a bit. She was watching him, still uncertain, he supposed, whether she was really safe there.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Nor do I,” he said.

For about a quarter of an hour they stayed like that. He said nothing. She watched him. Then he heard his mother’s voice, calling softly up the stairs to see if he was awake. He thought quickly. He didn’t want his parents coming up to his room.

“I’d better go down to my mother,” he said to the little girl. “You stay here. All right?”

She nodded.

His parents were sitting in the kitchen. They were looking solemn.

“I heard the bells,” he said.

“We must stay inside today,” said his mother.

“Are they killing people?” he asked.

“Why do you say that?” said his father.

“I don’t know.” He waited for a reply, but none came. “Can I have some bread and milk?” he said. His mother gave it to him. “I think I’ll take it to my room,” Simon said. “I feel sleepy.” And his parents seemed quite glad that he should go back up there.

When he got back to his room, he gave the bread and milk to the little girl. After she’d finished it, he put his arm around her. Then she fell asleep.

It was about an hour later that he heard a horse’s hooves outside his window. Then a rap at the door. He stole out of his room to the top of the stairs. He saw the top of his father’s head as he went to the door and called out, “Who is it?” Then he heard the door open.

“I can’t stop, Cousin.” Guy’s voice. “Don’t go out there. They’ve killed Coligny, and all the Protestants staying at the Louvre. Every one of them. They’ve been going around every lodging where Protestants are staying. The Protestants have realized what is happening and they’re trying to leave the city. But they can’t. All the gates have been locked to keep them in. You don’t hear it here, but they’re hunting them down in the streets. I saw twenty bodies floating in the river as I came this way. There’s a dead woman in the street at the end of your alley.”

“A woman?”

“They’re killing all the Protestants, Pierre. Men, women, children, all of them. It’s even worse than I imagined. I don’t know if it’s part of the plan, but there are mobs out in the street now. If they think someone might be a Protestant, they butcher them. One Catholic family were sheltering a Protestant, and so they killed them as well.”

“This is terrible. It must be stopped.”

“By whom, Pierre? Who’s going to stop it? This is all done by royal order. It’s the churchmen who are ringing the bells.”

“But it is evil.”

“Don’t say that, Cousin. They’ll say you’re a heretic and butcher you too. Keep your mouth shut, I beg you. And keep your door shut too. And wear those armbands. I have to go.”

Simon heard his father close the door and slip the bolts.

Then he went back into his room, and sat on the bed beside the little girl, who remained asleep, and wondered what he should do.

It was an hour later that he went downstairs into the kitchen, found his parents alone and told them what he had done.

“You did what?” His mother was past him in a flash and up the stairs. Moments later she came down again. She looked at her husband, then at Simon. It was a look of reproach, almost of hatred, that he would never forget. “She must go, Pierre,” said Suzanne. “We must put her out.” She made a gesture of desperation. “We have to.”

Simon shook his head.

“Maman, Papa hasn’t told you what Uncle Guy said when he came to the door. But I heard him from the top of the stairs. They are killing the Protestant children in the street. They will kill the little girl.” He looked from one parent to the other. “How can we put her out?”

Neither of his parents spoke.

Just then, they heard a small bump on the staircase. Then another. The child was coming down. She reached the foot of the stairs and walked back to the kitchen doorway. She looked a little sleepy. But when she saw Simon she went to his side and took his hand.

“I am Constance,” she said.



They kept her for two weeks. The difficulty was where they were to hide her.

“Nobody must know she is here,” Pierre insisted. Neither the apprentice nor the serving girl must know. Nor even his cousin Guy. “One careless word, one slip and the secret’s out.” He did not want to say what that could lead to. And there was only one way to achieve that.

“She will have to stay in your room with you, Simon. All the time. And no one must ever go in there. You will have to pretend to be sick.” He did not say so, but the message to his son was clear: “You have brought the girl in, and now you will have to suffer the consequences.”

As for the little girl herself, Pierre was kindly, but blunt. The first thing he did was to put a white band around her arm.

“If anyone ever asks,” he told her, “you must say that you are Catholic. If you say you are Protestant, they will kill you, like your mother and father. Do you understand?” It was a terrible thing to say, but he knew it was necessary. “They will probably kill all of us too,” he added.

Little Constance nodded solemnly. She understood.

“If anyone ever sees her,” Pierre continued, “we shall have to say she is a cousin who is visiting us. But people will be suspicious. So let us keep her out of sight until we can find out what to do.”

By gentle questioning during that very day, her story became clear enough.

Her parents had come from the great western port of La Rochelle, with a party of other merchants and craftsmen who had thought this a safe opportunity to see the capital. Dragged from the tavern where they were staying, her father had been killed at once, but her mother had managed to escape. As she ran down the street, hearing a horse’s hooves coming around the corner behind her, she’d whispered to the child to hide, and shoved her into the shadows of the alley as she passed. A moment later, she’d been cut down.

“Did other family come with you to Paris?” Suzanne asked her. The child shook her head.

“Have you family in La Rochelle?”

“My aunt and uncle.”

“God willing,” Pierre said to his wife afterward, “we can return her to La Rochelle when it’s safe to do so.”

They were both silent for a moment. Neither of them spoke the thought that was in their minds: unless the Protestants of La Rochelle had all been killed as well.

During the first days, the Renard family were very frightened. For the terrible massacre on the Feast of Saint Bartholomew lasted well past the day itself. Estimates varied, but thousands were slaughtered in Paris alone. Soon news came that the massacres were taking place in other towns and cities as well. What the royal family and the Guises had started in Paris, the mob continued all over France. Orléans, Lyon, Rouen, Bordeaux, in one after another, Catholic mobs massacred Protestants in the thousands. As yet, it seemed, the great stronghold of La Rochelle had not been touched. But who knew what might come next?

Outside France the news of the massacre traveled like wildfire. The pope sent the King of France a formal congratulation, had Vasari commemorate the event in a fine painting and ordered a Te Deum to be sung in celebration upon that day for years to come. It was said that when the King of Spain heard of the massacre, it was the only time he was ever heard to laugh. Only one great Catholic ruler seemed to have doubts about the merits of the murders. The Holy Roman Emperor, though he was the King of Spain’s cousin, thought that it was not a Christian thing to do.

In France itself, however, the massacre had one immediate effect. Guy Renard brought the news to his cousin’s house on the morning after the massacre.

“King Henry of Navarre has converted to Catholicism. So now our Médicis queen has a Catholic son-in-law.”

“Do you think it was a sincere conversion?” asked Pierre.

“Oh, very. He was told to do it on the spot or they’d cut his head off.”



It was a strange existence for Simon and little Constance. The door of his room was kept shut all the time. Now and again his mother would come in with a little broth or some other food that might nourish an invalid, and then she’d put some of it in a second bowl she’d concealed and feed them both. At these times she’d stay and talk in low tones to them both, though only Simon was permitted to reply. After she had gone, the two children would remain as quiet as a pair of mice.

The serving girl came past the door each day, but she never dared open it. Suzanne had told her firmly that she’d be whipped if she did.

“I don’t want you getting sick as well. You’ve work to do,” she said.

The apprentice once asked Pierre if he thought that the shock of the massacre had caused Simon to fall sick, but Pierre was dismissive of the idea.

“He started looking feverish the afternoon before,” he remarked. “And he certainly never saw anything.”

Each afternoon, however, he and his wife contrived that the house would be safe for the children to come out of the room. Either Pierre would take the apprentice out and Suzanne send the serving girl on an errand that would take her some time, or vice versa. Then, most days, with one or the other parent guarding the door, the two children would come down and go into the yard at the back, where no one could see them, and walk about and get some fresh air. They could even play ball, so long as they spoke only in whispers. In this manner, they usually got out of Simon’s little room for an hour or two each day.

For the rest of the time, however, they had to devise ways of keeping the children amused. Fortunately, the little girl liked to draw. And Simon could read. But within a day or two, her curiosity about what he was doing led to a new game. He taught her the letters of the alphabet.

Constance would make a drawing of a simple object—a cat, a dog, a house—and Simon would write the word in question and, in the lowest whisper, explain to her what sound the letters made, and show her how they were formed. Since they had nothing much else to do, it was not many days before the little girl knew the whole alphabet. Simon was impressed with how quickly she understood things.

After a few days, his mother brought them a checkerboard, and he showed Constance how to play checkers. It took only a couple of days before she could hold her own. Sometimes she beat him.

And so the two children lived their strange and secret life. And each night little Constance would curl up in Simon’s arms and fall asleep, and he would sleep contentedly too, knowing that he was her protector.

Once or twice Uncle Guy came to see Simon’s parents. He was sorry to learn that Simon was unwell, and wanted to come up and see him, but Pierre and Suzanne would tell him that it was better he not. “He’ll be up and about soon enough,” Pierre promised. And although Guy was slightly annoyed at not being allowed to see the boy, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

Even though Simon always heard Guy arrive, he could not hear what was said in the parlor. But once, after Constance had been there for ten days, he did overhear one scrap of conversation as Guy was leaving. He had mounted his horse just under Simon’s window, so his head was only a few feet away. He had turned down to his cousin, who was standing in the doorway.

“You know, Cousin,” he remarked, “this killing of Protestants is a nasty business, no question. Yet when it’s all over, we may be glad of it. If destroying one community of heretics is the price of uniting France, maybe we should pay it.” Then he had ridden away.

The words had come through the window quite clearly. Simon looked down at little Constance. Had she heard? Had she understood? Yes. Her face was quite still, but her mouth was open in shock. He put his arm around her. After a few moments he felt her shaking, and saw the tears roll down her cheeks, but she cried silently, because she knew she must not make a sound.

And somehow, after that, he could never love his uncle Guy the way he had before.

Constance had been there for two weeks when Pierre told his son that it would be safe for him to take her to her family in La Rochelle. “There has been no assault on the town so far,” he explained, and the roads seemed to be clear. “I shall say that I am returning a niece to your mother’s family in Poitiers. That’s well on the way. I should be able to get Constance safely across from Poitiers to La Rochelle.”

He was going to leave the city the following afternoon. Simon’s mother would take both the apprentice and the serving girl out with her while they left.

“Just think,” Simon whispered to her before they went to sleep, “you’ll see your family soon.”

“I shall miss you,” she whispered back. “Will you come to see me?”

“Of course,” he said, though he had no idea whether such a thing would ever be possible.



They were standing together in the parlor the next afternoon, while Pierre was saddling his horse. The house was empty. Simon looked at the dark-haired little girl he had been living with for the last two weeks and felt the need to say something.

“When I’m grown up, I shall marry you,” he declared.

“You will?”

“If you like.”

Just then, Pierre came into the room.

“Time to go,” he announced, and took Constance by the hand.

But when they got to the door, she turned and ran back to where Simon was standing, and kissed him before his father led her out.