Paris: The Novel

apprenticenor 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 theday 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