Chapter 34
A village near Villebon
July 1637
The mill was located on a creek, of course. That was a prerequisite for a mill. So it had a bit of distance from the other houses in the village. The attached house was sturdily constructed and of fair size, which was just as well. As he entered into his sixtieth year, Thierry Durand was in the happy position of having several adult children, most of them male, three still living at home and working with him at the mill.
He also had a wife.
Fifteen years earlier, a group of young men, guests of Sully’s oldest son, thoroughly intoxicated, riding drunkenly from the château toward the village, had stopped to harass a girl who was walking along the side of the road carrying two pails of milk. Not a young woman nor even a girl past puberty. A child, one old enough to carry two pails, but a child. She attracted their attention because Madeleine was not quite right in the way she looked, the way she moved her arms and legs. An easy object of mockery and derision.
It might have stopped at that except that Babette, his wife, had run out and started scolding at them to leave her daughter alone.
Waving a towel, her apron blowing in the stiff wind.
Horses are prey animals. Most do not react well to unexpected movement in the periphery of their vision field. These were not war horses, trained to steadiness in the confusion of a battlefield. They were riding horses: expensive ones, but prone to customary equine panic attacks. One of them reared and jumped, catching her on the shoulder with a hoof as he came down. The blow threw her aside. She landed hard, hitting her head against a corner of one of the massive stone slabs that made up the steps from the road into the mill house. And unseating his rider, who made an embarrassing, rump-first, landing in the dust.
Two of the young men, indignant that an ordinary woman had dared to rebuke them, dismounted and, rather than attempting to help Babette, spilled the milk in Madeleine’s pails over her, while the others, including the unseated rider, watched, hooting and laughing. Then they remounted and rode on.
Nothing was ever done to them. They were of high rank, friends of the duke’s oldest son. The one whose horse injured Babette was the duke’s oldest son, who went by the title of marquis de Rosny. And they went away—to Paris, perhaps; to serve in the king’s armies in the Low Countries, perhaps; maybe to go adventuring in far colonies. The miller and his sons did not know.
Babette mostly recovered, at least in body, but sometimes, ever since, she did not recognize who her husband and children were; she could not do much work, nothing that required close attention, because her mind forgot itself every half-drop of the hourglass or so, and she didn’t remember what she had been doing before. Sometimes she wandered away, with no idea of where she was going, or why. Prior to the attack she had been a healthy, competent, helpmeet to her husband; ever since, she had become a burden whose constant care had to be borne by the rest of the family. Along with Madeleine who was, still, and always would be, not quite right, which made it more than twice as hard for the rest of them, since they also lost the care that Babette had provided for her.
It was a constant, grating, reminder of what happened, because of their mother’s continuing condition . . .
“How can we forget?” Jean had asked his father over and over. “How many days, when it looks like we’ve just shrugged our shoulders and gone on with our lives, a bunch of stupid dullard peasants who accept that whatever fine gentlemen choose to do to us is inevitable, are we thinking about it? It’s under our skins, like a festering boil. Why should we forget what they did to her and go on with our lives as if it doesn’t really matter? As if she doesn’t really matter? As if we don’t really matter?”
Then Sully died.
“Do you suppose he’ll come here for the old duke’s funeral?” Claude asked at supper. “Who? The man whose horse clipped her?”
“Yes, Rosny.”
“There’s no way to tell until we see him arrive. Or don’t,” their father answered.
“Or the men who started it—who treated our Madeleine like she was a freak?” Jean said. “Brothers are supposed to protect their sisters. Remember Dinah. In the Bible. What her brothers Simeon and Levi did after Shechem raped her.”
“Madeleine is fine,” Renaud snapped. “Or as fine as she ever is going to be. Nobody raped her. She’s forgotten about that day and the milk, just as she has forgotten the day before it and the day that followed. We’re supposed to forgive our enemies. Jacob blessed Judah instead of Simeon and Levi.”
“We don’t even know who those two were,” Thierry said. “We wouldn’t recognize them if we saw them. Nor is it likely that even if the old duke’s son comes for the funeral, every man who was with him on a certain day fifteen years ago will come again.”
Jean bit down viciously on a slice of hard bread and chewed. “Not fucking likely that I’m going to forgive my enemies. Madeleine may not be any worse off than she would have been if they’d ignored her. I don’t like to agree, but I’ll grant you that. Except that she lost her mother, for all practical purposes. Maman isn’t fine and never has been since it happened. It’s like . . . like he knocked the soul out of her body. The corporal part is still here, but there’s nothing inside it. Like the Bible says when it is written, ‘the letter kills but the spirit gives life.’ There’s no spirit that gives her life. There hasn’t been, all these years since . . . ”
“If he does come, could we even get near him?” Claude asked. “It’s not likely that we’ll be able to weaken every man in the funeral procession by persuading them to all get circumcised the night before they bury Sully.”
Jean talked to the rest of the family. Pierre so vociferously refused to have anything to do with a revanche that they quarreled. His twin Paul threatened to go to the mairie if Jean so much as mentioned the idea again. So he didn’t mention it again. To them.
He ended up with about a dozen: three of his brothers, counting Renaud and Claude; five nephews ranging from the mid-teens to early twenties; a few cousins. Plus a couple dozen more from the village proper, friends of his nephews, older apprentices and young journeymen, who were enthusiastic about the chance to provide some kind of a distraction. Most of those didn’t want to be involved in any actual attack, though. They had, as one of them said, lives still to be lived in a world where pestilence and war made mortal life uncertain in the best of times.
Thierry tried to talk his sons out of it on the grounds that it wouldn’t work. “It’s not as if you can go out and buy a bunch of weapons all of a sudden,” he said. “Someone would notice.”
“We have knives.” Jean was nothing if not pig-headed. “We have daggers.”
“So will they. Plus swords. Probably guns.”
Renaud shook his head. “There will be ladies. I don’t think they’ll be so stupid as to shoot guns at us when they might hit their own ladies. They might not mind harming women like Maman and Madeleine, but heaven forbid that they would endanger fine ladies. Unless they’re drunk, that is, and they shouldn’t be drunk right after they’ve spent three or four hours listening to a funeral sermon. At least, not most of them. I suppose that some will bring flasks.”
Claude asked, “Are you willing to accept that if we do what is needed to bring the man down, we’re likely to end up dead too?”
Jean thought for a minute. “Oui. For that, I am willing to be dead.”
He thought for another minute. “Last summer, when the duchesses escaped from Paris . . . Achille at the tavern had a newspaper . . . The reports said something about pots that made smoke . . . And one of them told how the things were made . . . We have knives and daggers. We have pickling crocks, too, and a couple of days until the funeral . . . That’s what the boys from the village can do. Throw those.”
“I read those reports, too,” Claude objected. “Where are we supposed to get fireworks to put inside them?”
“We don’t have fireworks,” Jean retorted, “but we have flour.” He looked around the mill. “Lots and lots of flour.”
There might have been one miller’s son somewhere in France who had never, ever, while he was growing up, made a bit of flour explode. Probably not two, though.
“I think we ought to focus on pots that just make smoke,” Renard said. “At least, if what you want to do is kill him and not burn us up. I’ll see if I can find out how they make those. How big does the pot need to be? If they’re too big to fit under a tunic, it won’t work.”
“What are you going to use for fuses?” Claude asked. “How are you going to light them in a hurry with a lot of other people around? You’ve got to think, Jean. Think. We’ll all have to be down at the road, mixed up with everyone else who comes to see the procession. What’s the best time to make a move? Who’s supposed to be doing what? How will we know when to start? It’s all very well that you’re willing to die, but while you’re dying, we’ve got to get one of us close enough to kill the marquis or else it’s going to be a big waste of time and money.”
Paris
July 1637
Sully had died.
Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully, Rohan’s father-in-law, had always been Rohan’s major sentimental obstacle when it came to suggestions that had been dropped over the course of many years that he might want to consider the merits of divorce. The old man was close to eighty, but his death was rumored on the gossip circuit to have been caused by apoplexy at the thought of the possible impact of Soubise’s marriage, combined with his daughter’s current scandal, on the prospects of his granddaughter Marguerite. According to the encyclopedias, he had lasted for another four years up-time.
Sully’s sons would not constitute a sentimental obstacle to a divorce.
If Rohan remarried and had more children . . . Neither Mademoiselle Anne nor Soubise was in the least pleased by the prospect of a Rohan divorce.
Divorces took time, of course, even among Calvinists. There were church courts to be satisfied. And the king could refuse to recognize a divorce’s validity, should he be so inclined, even if the church granted it. Lawyers could drag it out so long that all of the principal parties died before there was so much as a hearing.
King Gaston refused permission for Rohan to attend the funeral. Not that it would have been safe for Rohan to attend, but it was a matter of principle for him to send a request.
Villebon
July 1637
Raudegen attended the funeral as a member of the household of the duc de Soubise. Looking around, he shuddered inwardly. Funerals were always nightmares from a security perspective: the procession on foot, strung out sometimes for a half mile or more, and no way to control who came to join the hundreds, sometimes thousands, of spectators along the sides of the street or road.
Marc attended the funeral as an inconspicuous member of the general public, standing among many other equally inconspicuous members of the general public in the immense crowd that gathered outside of the temple. His hair stood on end when he saw a certain couple approach the entry, even though the woman was heavily veiled. There was something about deep mourning. Not that half of the noblewomen in France didn’t wear mourning on a regular basis, given the prevalence of death by war and pestilence. Not so much by famine—not for the nobility. In the ranks of society that died from famine, the survivors could rarely afford formal mourning clothes.
Few women, though, whether in mourning or not, appeared in public when they were so startlingly pregnant.
Raudegen had a much better view.
Soubise and his sister hadn’t been able to prevent François de Béthune, usually known by his title of d’Orval, from inviting la duchesse de Rohan to attend her father’s funeral. The two of them were Sully’s only surviving children from his second marriage to Rachel de Cochefilet and, what was more pertinent, she had been living with her father for the past months.
D’Orval briefly considered not inviting Soubise and Anne, but his wife persuaded him that protocol wouldn’t let him get away with it.
The king decided not to attend a service at a Huguenot temple. Sometimes life bestowed small blessings on a harried heir.
Before the service even got under way, Anne, dragging Soubise by the elbow, stepped forward, confronted the couple, and announced, “We are representing the House of Rohan.”
“You!” In spite of the veil, the word was clearly spat out. “You are a traitor to the House of Rohan. I am representing the duke.”
Katharina Juliana stepped sideways and took refuge behind a large man wearing a Geneva gown.
“You should be ashamed to appear in public. So advanced in your pregnancy; at your age; carrying a bastard. Another one!” Anne raised her hand.
Soubise, his elbow now free, stepped back behind the Geneva gown as well. This was neither the place nor the time . . .
Candale stepped forward, stopping the slap aimed at his companion’s face.
“Oh yes, so charming,” Anne spat. “Here with your lover. The father of your bastard. To represent your husband. It’s not just that you have been regularly unfaithful to your husband; you haven’t even been faithful to your lover. Yes, you’ve been with Candale at intervals, but you certainly entertained yourself with others between those intervals. Which I do not have to say, because everyone at the court has always known it. You are a disgrace to the faith to which you claim to belong.”
“Mademoiselle,” Candale said in a moderating voice. “Perhaps . . . not here . . . not now.”
“You’re a fine one to speak.” Anne managed to enunciate the word convert as an epithet. “Adulterer and not even a faithful adulterer.”
“I may not have been faithful to her, as you mean it,” Candale said, “perhaps it is not in me to be faithful to a woman that way. However, I have been loyal to her since the first day that we met. Just as she may not have been faithful to your brother, as you use the word, but she has been unswervingly loyal to him throughout the vicissitudes of their married life. Which, if I may say so Mademoiselle Anne, at present you are not.”
It took quite some time for the assorted clergy to regain control over the ceremony.
Somewhat over an hour into the sermon, as the speaker paused to draw a deep breath, Candale stepped out of the cluster of mourners. This caused nothing more than a murmur. No one expected every member of a congregation to be able to resist calls of nature during services that frequently lasted for three or four hours. Sliding toward a side door, Candale passed by the location where Raudegen was standing, twitching the cuff of his coat.
“We feel,” he said, as they paused outside the building, “some remorse that the existence of Tancrède plus this current pregnancy might be used and it looks like they will be used to cast doubt on little Marguerite’s position. I, ah, thought you would be here. Sully had gathered some material; we have collected more these past few months. If you could make sure that it gets back to Rohan?”
As Marc had not been a prominent attendee at the funeral, all anyone else might have noticed, if anyone had been paying attention, was that an apparently bored young onlooker brushed by the two men. Candale returned to the service. Raudegen slipped the package to Marc and resumed his position near Soubise. Such was life in the vicinity of a certain sneaky French count and that conniving French duchess—he had thought that about them once before and didn’t perceive any reason that he should change his mind now.
As Marc drifted away from the crowd, no one paid any particular attention to his departure. He was on his way to Besançon before the sermon was over.
The sneaky count, the conniving duchess, Soubise with his new wife on one arm and Mademoiselle Anne on the other, with Colonel Raudegen walking some distance to the side of them, far enough that he was clearly making no claim to be part of the noble entourage but close enough to intervene at need, followed d’Orval and the remainder of the late duke’s immediate family in the elaborate procession back to Sully’s estate, where the staff had spent the funeral hours laying out a lavish spread of buffet food.
D’Orval had taken charge. His older half-brother, the new duc de Sully, albeit the holder of such grandiose designations as peer of France, marshal of the armies, and governor of the Bastille, was stumbling drunk. As usual. If there was ever a case of a man who survived life upon the unearned privilege granted by his status at birth . . .
Raudegen looked around. He would have been happier if there were a fence, even a flimsy temporary fence, between the crowd of people who had come to pay their respects at a distance and the guests of more exalted rank. He would have been infinitely happier if the buffet had been set up in the courtyard of the massive brick pile with its towers and turrets rather than on the lawn, but nobody had asked his advice.
There weren’t many bodyguards around the guests, either; most of those present had remained in the vicinity of the bier. Perhaps they were relying on the sheer dimensions of the nearly thirty acres of landscaping as a protection: the “lawn” at Villebon would have counted as a large park most places. But, as his mother had often said, “it is what it is.”
He snacked on salty things, avoiding those with cream sauce or custard, advising Soubise, his wife, and Mademoiselle Anne to do the same. His acquaintance with Madame Dunn had made him conscious of the most common causes of food poisoning.
Food poisoning was a constant hazard. So was poison, of course. Snipers. Bulls that escaped their pens. The monstrous reptiles that illustrated the pages of exploration narratives written by those who visited the New World. But food poisoning, caused by the invisible germs that Madame Dunn harped on so incessantly, was just as deadly and more easily avoided.