Conspiracy. S. J. Parris
perfume followed me down the stairs. I left feeling deeply uneasy on several counts, hoping that I had not just made a pact to disguise a murder for my own advantage.
I woke late the next morning, opening my eyes to a dusty grey light with a lingering sense of dread. Easing myself on to my elbows, I registered the bruises along my shoulder and hip from my plunge the day before, but it took a moment longer for my mind to struggle through the fog of sleep until I could be sure that I had not dreamed my nocturnal audience with the King and its unwelcome conclusion.
So she had fled to Paris, as I had suspected. Sophia Underhill, the woman I had known in Oxford and Canterbury. The King was right; she had bested me, and the memory of it still burned. Like a fool, I had thought myself proof against the wiles of women; the self-discipline I had learned in thirteen years as a Dominican served me well enough to withstand the cynical and obvious seductresses of the French court, but nothing had prepared me for a woman like Sophia. Educated, spirited, hungry for life, knowledge, independence, she had found herself ceaselessly frustrated by the constraints placed on her by her sex. Life had not been kind to her, and those scars had lent her a lean and wary look, and an edge of ruthlessness in her determination not to be duped. She made it a matter of principle to strike first, before you could touch her; she trusted no one. That was a bitter lesson, and one I had learned too late. I had done my best to excise her from my heart and my memory, but the agitation I now felt at the possibility that she might still be in Paris suggested I had not succeeded. I tore a comb through my hair and examined my face in the glass to judge how much I had aged since she last saw me, all the while cursing her under my breath. Now I would walk every street searching the crowds for her face, despite myself.
Outside, the rain had relented but a thick mist lay over the streets, rising in curlicues from the river; it would not burn off now, with the air so cold and dank. Resting one hand on my dagger beneath my cloak and darting frequent glances over my shoulder, I followed the rue Saint-Jacques north towards the river, picking my way through hoof-churned mud and waterlogged wheel-ruts as the damp seeped through the soles of my boots. A bell tolled sullenly nearby; students hurried between the faculties of the Sorbonne, urgent voices carrying out of the mist before they emerged like rooks, robes snapping around dirt-spattered ankles, deep in earnest debate. I kept my head down, but my senses alert. No one appeared to pay me any attention, for which I was grateful.
The church of Saint-Séverin squatted on the corner of Saint-Jacques and rue des Prêtres, one street away from the river, a sprawling mongrel of styles and stones jumbled together over four centuries. Gargoyles leered down from its buttresses. I was surprised to find a crowd of at least a hundred gathered in the churchyard, clustered around a tombstone on which a man with grey stubble and fiery eyes stood shouting with his legs planted wide and a fist raised. I wondered first if he was mad, but as I drew closer I could hear his voice ringing out clear and purposeful, as if he were accustomed to oratory; some among his audience were clutching sticks and pokers and bellowing their agreement. The mood felt as edgy and dangerous as it had the previous Sunday, after Paul’s sermon.
‘The House of Valois believe they can defy all the laws of God and man without consequence,’ he cried, to an appreciative roar. ‘For years they have been stained with incest and murder, sorcery and heresy.’ (More roaring.) ‘Now our king allows heretics to flourish in France and we all know what is coming, don’t we, my brothers and sisters?’ (A frantic chorus of agreement.) ‘When the Huguenot Navarre is king, the Protestants will take their revenge for Saint Bartholomew’s night. They will rise up and cut us down in our homes. The streets of Paris will run red with Catholic blood, yours and mine, brothers and sisters!’ (A scream of ‘God have mercy’ from a woman in the throng.) ‘God has turned his face from France. Our harvests have failed, our armies are defeated, children and widows starve in the gutters. And what right have we to expect otherwise, when we allow ourselves to be governed by a king who is a blasphemer, a sodomite and a murderer, and his witch mother?’
The crowd almost lost control, roaring and brandishing their weapons; I stepped back in alarm as a man near me swiped a butcher’s cleaver through the air. I began to wish I had stayed away; there would be blood spilled before this was over.
‘Our dear curé, Père Lefèvre, has been murdered in cold blood for daring to speak out against the decay and corruption of the royal line. Thus the Valois show their contempt for the Church, for the laws of God and for human life. There will be no justice for him unless we the people demand it. We must march on the Louvre! Justice for Père Lefèvre!’
The crowd erupted in a cacophony of righteous fury; ‘Death to the King!’ and ‘Justice for Père Lefèvre!’ rang in the damp air. I took the opportunity to scurry away to the church. The main door was locked, but I followed a path around the back and found a side door that had been forgotten. It was a relief to step into the cool gloom of the empty nave. Despite the mist outside, a pearly light filtered through the high windows, painting faint jewel colours over the delicate arches of the vaults and the worn faces carved on the capitals. Here the air was cold and clear; the mineral smell of old stone cut through lingering traces of beeswax and stale incense. It seemed a lifetime ago that I had listened to the echo of my footsteps on these same stones on my way to corner Paul in his confessional. The dust swirling in ribs of light might have hung in the air for centuries. I stood before the altar, casting around as if I had lost something, until I attracted the attention of a young curate crossing one of the side aisles, a red-haired man in his mid-twenties with a preoccupied air and a tic in his left eye that gave the impression he was frantically winking at me.
‘The church is closed, monsieur. How did you get in?’ He sounded frightened.
‘I’m not one of them,’ I said, jerking my thumb towards the door. ‘I was a friend of Père Lefèvre.’
‘May God have mercy on his soul,’ he muttered, crossing himself. ‘A very sad business. But I can’t help you. The doors are supposed to be barred until they disperse.’ He chewed his lip and pulled at a thread on the cuff of his cassock.
‘I only wondered if anyone knew what had happened. I heard him preach on Sunday. It’s been a terrible shock.’
The young curate bit his thumbnail. ‘I understand there was an accident.’ His gaze flicked past me to the pillars of the ambulatory and the recesses behind. ‘He was attacked outside the city walls, they said.’
‘That doesn’t sound like an accident.’
Another sideways glance. ‘I don’t know any more than that.’
‘He seemed anxious recently. Something was troubling him.’ I left this hanging, neither quite a question nor a statement. This young man, for all his twitching, appeared shrewd; if he worked with Paul every day, he would surely have noticed any unusual behaviour.
Recognition sparked in his eyes for a moment, before it was replaced by the shadow of suspicion.
‘Who did you say you were?’
I searched his eyes again. A man in a priest’s robes, the laundress had said. Not this one; the voice was wrong. But there would be other curates here, potentially his friends or confederates.
‘I’ve known Paul – Père Lefèvre – for a long time. Before he was ordained. We were at the Sorbonne together.’
‘Before he joined the League, then.’ His tone gave nothing away. I had the sense that he was testing me. I decided to take a further risk.
‘Yes. Back when he was still human.’
The young curate’s face visibly relaxed. ‘I did not have that pleasure. I have only been here six months.’ He fixed me with a look that seemed intended to convey what he felt he could not voice. ‘I don’t think I have seen you here before?’
‘I did not attend often. I found Paul’s sermons increasingly hard to swallow.’
‘You were not alone there.’
Little