Fortunes of France 4: League of Spies Read online

  Praise for Fortunes of France

  “Modern-day Dumas finally crosses the channel” Observer

  “An enjoyable read, distinguished by its author’s erudition and wit” Sunday Times

  “Swashbuckling historical fiction… For all its philosophical depth [The Brethren] is a hugely entertaining romp… The comparisons with Dumas seem both natural and deserved and the next 12 instalments [are] a thrilling prospect” Guardian

  “Historical fiction at its very best… This fast paced and heady brew is colourfully leavened with love and sex and a great deal of humour and wit. The second instalment cannot be published too soon” We Love This Book

  “A highly anticipated tome that’s been described as Game of

  Thrones meets The Three Musketeers”

  Mariella Frostrup on BBC Radio 4’s Open Book

  “A vivid novel by France’s modern Dumas… [there is] plenty of evidence in the rich characterisation and vivid historical detail that a reader’s long-term commitment will be amply rewarded” Sunday Times

  “A sprawling, earthy tale of peril, love, lust, death, dazzling philosophical debate and political intrigue… an engrossing saga” Gransnet

  “A master of the historical novel” Guardian

  “So rich in historical detail… the characters are engaging” Sunday Express

  “Compelling… a French epic” Kirkus Reviews

  “This is old-fashioned story-telling. It has swagger and vibrancy with big characters… A gripping story with humour and strength and real attention to historical detail” Mature Times

  “Swashbuckling” Newsday

  “Cleverly depicts France’s epic religious wars through the intimate prism of one family’s experience. It’s beautifully written too” Metro

  “A lively adventure… anyone keen on historical fiction [should] look forward to the next instalment” Daily Telegraph

  “The spectacular 13-volume evocation of 16th–17th-century France” Independent

  “The Dumas of the twentieth century” Neues Deutschland

  “A wonderful, colourful, breathlessly narrated historical panorama” Zeitpunkt

  “Robert Merle is one of the very few French writers who has attained both popular success and the admiration of critics. The doyen of our novelists is a happy man” Le Figaro

  Contents

  Title Page

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Copyright

  LEAGUE

  OF SPIES

  1

  IT WAS ONLY by the slimmest of chances that my good valet, Miroul, and I had finally made good our escape from the horrendous St Bartholomew’s day massacre, aided throughout by our massive Swiss Guard from Berne and our master-at-arms, Giacomi, and found refuge with the Baron de Quéribus in Saint-Cloud. As this gentleman had a rich estate in Carcassonne, he decided to head south, thereby providing a well-armed escort for the three of us as far as Périgord, warning us that the roads and towns of France were now quite dangerous for anyone reputed to be a Huguenot. And since Dame Gertrude du Luc, who’d managed to save the life of my beloved Samson by preventing him from returning to Paris, was desirous of accompanying us, I invited her and her chambermaid Zara to join us, knowing full well that her interest in meeting my father was motivated by her burning and tenacious desire to marry my brother.

  We arrived at Mespech during the grape harvest, but after the initial delight of our reunion with my father and Uncle de Sauveterre, for the first time in my life I was unable to enjoy seeing the beautiful bunches of grapes trampled in the vats by the bare feet of our women, for the red juice which flowed from them suddenly brought back the horror of the oceans of blood we’d seen covering the streets of Paris on 24th August and the days following.

  At the end of the first week, however, remembering all my peregrinations on the highways of France and my incredible adventures in the capital, I began to feel some impatience with the quiet rusticity and slow pace of life in my father’s chateau. In any case, I’d already decided not to spend the winter with my family, but to move to Bordeaux to set up my medical practice there. But my readers know as well as I do that Fortune holds in great derision the will and projects of men, and plays at undoing them just as the waves of the ocean undo the sandcastles that children so painstakingly construct on the beach. I thought I’d stay but two months in Mespech. I stayed two years.

  And though my primary object in these pages is to provide a portrait of my good sovereign, Henri III, as he really was, and not as he was so shamefully smeared by Guise’s people and others in league against him during his lifetime, who spewed out their hateful venom through thousands of libellous verses and lampoons, as well as execrable accusations made from the pulpit, this memoir is also intended to chronicle the life of my family. So I don’t want to rush through those two years of family joys and domestic sorrows shared by my beloved Samson, by my older brother François, by my little sister Catherine, by the Brethren (my father and Uncle de Sauveterre), by Dame Gertrude du Luc and by my Angelina. To the best of my memory the most contentious affair that clouded my return to Mespech in 1572 was the marriage of Samson to Gertrude, a union that should have seemed very advantageous to our Huguenot economy, since the lady wanted to offer him as dowry the flourishing apothecary shop of the Béqueret family in Montfort-l’Amaury.

  “You shouldn’t let Samson do this!” snarled Uncle de Sauveterre to my father as we were riding, along with François, to visit Cabusse at le Breuil. “The lady’s a papist and has been on a pilgrimage to Rome!”

  “Can I prevent my youngest son from such a marriage,” replied Jean de Siorac, “when I allowed myself to marry Isabelle de Caumont?”

  “And you know what a bad decision that was! She’s such a devout Catholic!” croaked Sauveterre, who resembled more than ever an old crow, with his bent back and his increasingly thin neck.

  “The mistake,” replied my father, whose bright eyes went sombre at the memory of it, “was to try to convert her publicly and by force, since the lady had so much tenacity and pride… But she was a good wife to me,” he continued, glancing at François and me, “and I loved her dearly.”

  At this Sauveterre had no more to say. Although he was too good a man not to have tried valiantly to offer her his affection during her short life, he’d had more success in grieving her when she was dead than in cherishing her while she was alive. For Sauveterre, so biblically convinced as he was of the necessity of fecundity, believed that every woman was but a fertile womb by which God’s people grew and multiplied. But the fact that this fecundity required sowing one’s seed in such hostile ground left him quite devoid of sexual appetite and any feelings of tenderness.

  “Have you thought about the fact,” he continued gravely, “that if this lady marries Samson, your grandchildren will suck the superstition and idolatry of the papists with every drop of their nurse’s milk?”

  “Well, I’m not convinced that such milk counts for much,” answered Jean de Siorac. “Charles IX had a Huguenot nursemaid and you saw how much that mattered during the St Bartholomew’s day massacre! Moreover, my brother, since the persecution has broken out again, it may be a good time to disguise our faith. I’m more worried about Samson’s excess of zeal than about his lack of spine. Dame Gertrude will serve as a mask over his innocent face. Not to mention the fact that no one will want a Huguenot
apothecary in a papist town! At the death of the first patient they’ll all be crying ‘Poison!’”

  “I see that you’ve decided to support this business,” growled Sauveterre.

  “Well, would you prefer to see Samson continue to live in sin? Or live emasculated like a monk in his cell?” replied my father, who must immediately have regretted this last phrase, since, as he glanced at Sauveterre, he saw his brother wince at the idea that chastity could be equated with impotence.

  “At least, Baron de Mespech,” came Sauveterre’s icy reply, “see that these ladies depart as soon as possible. I’m tired of their cackling, their affectations and the way of life they’re imposing on us. Ever since their arrival, our expenses for meat, wine and candles have been exorbitant! Especially in candles! Why do Dame du Luc and her chambermaid require ten candles to be lit the minute the sun goes down, when one is enough for me in the library?”

  “Ah, that’s because you don’t primp yourself enough!” smiled my father.

  “But that’s the point!” growled Sauveterre. “What need have they, since the Lord gave them one face, which they hasten to counterfeit with another in its place?”

  “Good écuyer,” soothed my father, “would you have blamed any of our soldiers of the Norman legion for burnishing his arms before a battle?”

  “What battle are you talking about?” sputtered Sauveterre.

  “The one they wage, day in, day out, against our defenceless hearts!”

  “Defenceless!” gasped Sauveterre reproachfully. “A whole month! It’s been a whole month since this plague of locusts fell upon our wheat!”

  “Since there are only two of them, they haven’t ruined much of the crop,” smiled Jean de Siorac. “And how can I chase them away? They can’t go off alone in their coach. You must realize they’re waiting for Quéribus to escort them back to Paris. The baron is enjoying himself at Puymartin’s estate…”

  “Worse than just enjoying himself,” muttered Sauveterre.

  “Yes, Puymartin is so taken with him that he insists on his staying every time Quéribus talks about returning to Paris.”

  “Well, let Puymartin know how we feel.”

  “Not on your life! I’d never dare offend a faithful friend over such a trivial matter—especially a man who’s stood by us through thick and thin!”

  I noticed that my brother François suddenly opened his eyes and pricked up his ears, given that his dearest project, should Diane’s mother ever marry Puymartin, was to marry her daughter, and thereby acquire half a share of the Fontenac estate, and, as the eldest male heir, the title that accrued to that domain. In this way, he’d bear the title of baron even before my father died. Happy François, who had only to open his beak for all the crumbs to fall into it! This was especially galling to me, since my older brother, who loved me so little, owed this good fortune to me for having killed in loyal combat the brigand baron whose sweet, very Christian daughter was going to marry him, papist though she was—a marriage that would doubtless set Sauveterre croaking again! But since the fertile lands of Fontenac so conveniently bordered our own, and since that well-defended chateau could only reinforce the security of Mespech, his strict Huguenot visage could not conceal his secret acquiescence.

  Sensing this, and judging that, papist for papist, Gertrude du Luc was every bit as advantageous a match as Diane, my father couldn’t keep from adding:

  “Dame Gertrude comes from noble lineage. She’s wealthy—and saved Samson’s life by preventing him from heading back into the slaughterhouse of Paris in search of his brother. And as for me, I’m not sorry to see her blonde head brightening our old walls. I like her well enough!”

  “And her chambermaid even better,” added Sauveterre drily.

  At this my father decided to hold his tongue and pretended not to have heard, which was his wont when he desired no further debate on a subject. “Ah, beautiful Zara!” I thought. “How far will you go in your devotion to your mistress?” And this thought so amused me that I shot a look at François and gave him a knowing smile. But François did not return it, his long, regular features remaining thoroughly inscrutable, which was his way of suggesting—hypocrite that he was—that he was content to draw a veil over the foibles of his father, who did not inebriate himself with wine, but rather with women, our good Franchou not being enough for him, if I understood Uncle de Sauveterre correctly.

  I said “Uncle” de Sauveterre, and perhaps my reader will recall that my father and Sauveterre were not brothers by birth but had become so attached to one another during their years in the Norman legion that they had decided to “brother” each other before the magistrate in Rouen (as was the custom then) and join their estates together legally. So, although there was but one Baron de Mespech, the estate belonged to both of them, Sauveterre, though only an écuyer, having the same authority as the baron to decide all matters pertaining to the management of the property—but not, thank God, in matters regarding Sauveterre’s “nephews”.

  That afternoon, the Brethren had gone to le Breuil, at Cabusse’s request, to examine a sheep that seemed to be suffering from a disease called “toad foot” (in which case it would have to be isolated and treated, lest the malady spread to the whole herd, which would be disastrous). Scarcely had they returned to Mespech when Zara knocked on my door, and told me that her mistress required my presence in her room. She managed to use a hundred words for this message when one would have sufficed, accompanying her speech with devastating expressions and inviting looks, smiles and childish lisps, tilts of her head and undulations of her body, all of which, despite my sense that they were the habitual weapons of this arch-coquette, nevertheless had some effect on me, even though I knew that Zara couldn’t help expressing herself in this way.

  She was dressed, as usual, as if she were of noble birth, in a silk gown with diamond earrings, pearl necklace and ruby rings—Dame Gertrude was unable to refuse her chambermaid anything; she was so crazy about her that Quéribus had joked with a wink that he’d never known a maid spend so much time in her lady’s private chamber. Seeing me frown at this, he’d laughed uproariously and added, “Better these inconsequential games among wenches than for Samson to be cuckolded by some Don Juan as soon as they were married!”

  “Monsieur,” I scolded, “remember, I beg you, that you promised you wouldn’t be—or at least would no longer be—that Don once their vows were done!”

  “I keep my promises!” cried Quéribus, throwing his arm around my shoulder and hugging me to him. “And all the more so since I’m so afraid of your terrible sword now that Giacomi has taught you his ‘Jarnac’s thrust’!”

  “You’re making fun of me!” I objected. “Though certainly I have made some progress with it—”

  “Though assuredly I’ve made some progress,” corrected Quéribus, pinching my shoulder painfully to emphasize his emendation of ‘certainly’, since the term was a dead giveaway that I was a Huguenot, as the Baronne des Tourelles had already warned me.

  “…I’m but a novice fencer when compared to you,” I conceded. And although this was no longer entirely accurate, it made Quéribus blush with pleasure, since he adored flattery.

  Zara, for her part, didn’t covet words so much as appreciative looks at her inviting back, as she rolled her ample hips like a sloop in a swell when preceding me down the hallway to her mistress’s room. From a quick glance back at me, I could see that she was estimating my degree of interest out of the corner of her golden eyes, which were partly hidden by the shawl, through which she looked invitingly at me like a mare from beneath her mane.

  Gertrude du Luc was seated in a large, tapestried armchair in front of a bright, crackling fire of pine logs, the only fire allowed this early in the season, by special courtesy of the Baron de Mespech, since it was already quite chilly for an October morning. When I entered, she did not rise and throw her arms around me, pulling her body close to mine in an “innocent” hug, as she usually did given her great appetite for men�
��s bodies. How quiet, reserved, well behaved and angelic she’d become under the watchful eyes of the Brethren! We were, moreover, not alone: Little Sissy, her little fingers clasping a handful of candles, was busily placing them in two candelabra that stood on either side of a mirror set on the dressing table.

  Gertrude remained quietly seated and languorously extended her hand for me to kiss. Little Sissy’s eyes darkened ominously as I did so, which did not escape the notice of the blonde Norman.

  “My girl,” she said, somewhat haughtily, “when you’ve finished placing the candles, go fetch me some more logs for my fire.”

  “Madame, I cannot!” said Little Sissy in a most abrupt manner. “I cannot do that. I will not go!”

  “And why not, you impertinent girl?” gasped Gertrude, open-mouthed to hear herself addressed in such a tone.

  “Because I’m pregnant, and cannot carry such weight,” said the little serpent. “But,” she added in a hiss, “the more important reason is that I don’t want to!”

  “Zara!” cried Gertrude, quite undone. “Did you hear that? Did you ever see such a little earthworm put on such airs! By my conscience! I could die! Zara! Give this silly goose a good smack!”

  At this, Zara, who was certainly not pleased by such a mission, approached the miscreant rather lazily, but the latter, who was barefoot, easily slipped away from her and, in the blink of an eye, ducked behind the table, saying:

  “More logs! And ten candles a day! You’re going to ruin us at this rate!”

  “Quiet there, you little rascal!” I hushed, fearing that she’d continue to chatter on if I didn’t. And taking her by the collar, like a little kitten, I relieved her of her candles and handed them to Zara, who received them very unhappily, as if fearing some contagion.

  “Come, Madame Sharp Tongue,” I continued, pushing Little Sissy before me towards the door. “If you need a taste of the whip to mend your manners, we’ll give it to you!”

  “Oh, no! Not the whip!” cried Gertrude, who, her anger now abated, was so good and full of pity that she would have wept to see a cat toying with a mouse.