Page 95 of A Column of Fire

She laughed. ‘I prefer dancing.’

‘So do I. Happily there’s a ball tonight.’

‘I can hardly wait.’

‘I look forward to seeing you there. I must speak with your Uncle Charles. Excuse me.’

Walking away, he felt good about that brief encounter. He had made her laugh, and she had treated him almost as an equal.

Charles was in a side room with a small boy who had the blond hair of the Guises. This was his nephew Henri, aged eight, eldest son of Scarface. Knowing that the boy might one day be the duke of Guise, Pierre bowed to him and asked if he was having a good time. ‘They won’t let me joust,’ Henri said. ‘But I bet I could. I’m a good rider.’

Charles said: ‘Run along, now, Henri – there’ll be another bout in a minute and you don’t want to miss it.’

Henri left and Charles waved Pierre to a chair.

In the year and a half that Pierre had been spying for Charles, their relationship had altered. Charles was grateful for the names and addresses Pierre had brought him. The cardinal’s file on clandestine Paris Protestants was far better than it had been before Pierre had come along. Charles could still be scornful and patronizing, but he was like that with everyone, and he seemed to respect Pierre’s judgement. They sometimes talked about general political issues and Charles even listened to Pierre’s opinion.

‘I made a discovery,’ Pierre said. ‘Many of the Protestants use a tailor in the rue St Martin who keeps a little book with all their names and addresses.’

‘A gold mine!’ said Charles. ‘Dear God, these people are getting brazen.’

‘I was tempted to pick it up and run off down the street with it.’

‘I don’t want you to reveal yourself yet.’

‘No. But one day I’ll get hold of that book.’ Pierre reached inside his doublet. ‘Meanwhile, I wrote down as many of the names and addresses as I could memorize.’ He handed the sheet to Charles.

Charles read the list. ‘Very useful.’

‘I had to order a coat from the tailor.’ Pierre raised the price. ‘Forty-five livres.’

Charles took coins from a purse. He gave Pierre twenty gold ecus, each worth two and a half livres. ‘Should be a nice coat,’ he said.

Pierre said: ‘When will we pounce on these deviants? We have hundreds of Paris Protestants in our records.’

‘Be patient.’

‘But every heretic is one less enemy. Why not get rid of them?’

‘When we crack down, we want everyone to know it’s the Guises who are doing it.’

That made sense to Pierre. ‘So that the family wins the loyalty of the ultra-Catholics, I suppose.’

‘And people who advocate tolerance – the middle-of-the-roaders, themoyenneurs– will be labelled Protestant.’

That was subtle, Pierre thought. The Guise family’s worst enemies were people who advocated tolerance. They would undermine the entire basis of the family’s strength. Such people had to be pushed to one extreme or the other. Charles’s political shrewdness impressed him repeatedly. ‘But how will we come to be in charge of stamping out heresy?’

‘One day young Francis will be king. Not yet, we hope – we need him first to establish his independence from Queen Caterina, and come completely under the influence of his wife, our niece, Mary Stuart. But when it happens . . .’ Charles waved Pierre’s sheet of paper. ‘That’s when we use this.’

Pierre was downcast. ‘I hadn’t realized your thinking was so long-term. That gives me a problem.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve been engaged to Sylvie Palot for more than a year, and I’m running out of excuses.’

‘Marry the bitch,’ said Charles.

Pierre was horrified. ‘I don’t want to get stuck with a Protestant wife.’