“How did you know it was us?” Walsingham asks.
“I saw you on the wall,” she says. “I thought, my God, I recognize that rump. It is Master Walsingham’s.”
Walsingham reddens.
“It was not very dignified,” he admits.
She flicks her wrist. Her bracelets chime. She is in dark blue linen, with those red sleeves, but she has on her feet very fine riding boots, heeled, chisel toed, and polished like a fresh-spring conker.
“Some things are not worth preserving,” she says.
“But where were you going?” he goes on. “And how did you come by this caroche? And a guard of the king’s troops?”
“I persuaded the Queen Mother to send them to Saint-Marceau,” she tells him. “In case the mob had reached the residency yet. And I thought I should come, too, just in case.”
Walsingham sits back, finally believing what he is seeing, and laughs sibilantly.
“My God, Isobel, my God. I knew you would be able to look out for yourself, but for us, too? You have my gratitude.”
She smiles distractedly. She is looking out of the window but winces when a moment later a hand bangs against the shutters and there is a growl of command and the stamp of horses’ hooves. Soldiers struggle to keep the crowd back while the gates open to allow the caroche off the bridge and onto the south bank.
“What happened?” Walsingham asks.
“No one knows yet,” Isobel tells them. “But either the Queen Mother or the Cardinal of Lorraine ordered Coligny murdered in the night. They went to his bed and threw him out the window, and then the king’s Swiss Guard evicted every Huguenot from the palace and murdered them in the street. Women and children, too, with those halberds of theirs. Then Saint Germain’s was set to ring, and every man in Paris took to the streets, and so it began.”
“So it is planned?”
She shakes her head.
“I am not certain,” she says. “To begin with, yes. The Swiss Guard, by God. You should have seen them. But I think all this”— she indicates the streets—“was unexpected, but there is such fear: you can see. Look. They are almost relieved to be doing it to others before it is done to them.”
My God, Walsingham thinks, she is right: it is relief.
“This is the start of something terrible,” he says. “Something that will consume all Christendom. Catholic will kill Protestant, and Protestant will kill Catholic. And this time, there will be no crowd of groundlings to stand and watch: All must play their part. All must bloody their hands.”
Fellowes is hardly listening. He stares at the skin of Isobel Cochet’s throat where a pulse beats so prettily.
“But what were you doing in Paris, Master Walsingham?” she asks. “So far from home?”
Walsingham makes a small movement of his hand that she understands: you do not need to know and it is better you do not. But Fellowes sees a tiny splinter of steel appear in her eye. She is not used to being checked, of course. She glances at him and tries to hide it with a smile that melts his bones. He finds himself gabbling something about his gratitude to her for having saved his life, and that he would unquestionably and unquestioningly do the same for her if ever the opportunity arose.
She smiles with gentle amusement and he feels somehow shut out of something, like a child in conversation with adults.
Walsingham pats his arm.
“Well,” he says, “there is a chance you may soon redeem your obligation, Oliver.”
Fellowes turns to him, finally relieved not to be consumed by the sight of Isobel Cochet’s skin.
“Sir?”
“When we reach the residency, I’d like you to take Tewlis, and half his men, and be ready to lead the party to the barge at Issy.”
Fellowes is perplexed.
“You are not coming?”
“No,” Walsingham says. “I will stay here in Paris, to keep the residency as long as possible. In case of more incomers.”
Now Fellowes is crestfallen.
“Sir Philip might serve,” he suggests. “Or Tewlis himself? My place is here, sir, by your side.”
Though the thought of spending so many days by Isobel Cochet’s side is no mean consolation. However, Isobel speaks.
“I will likewise stay in Paris, Master Walsingham,” she says.
Fellowes feels a swoop of disappointment.
Walsingham frowns.
“Are you sure? Are you not worried about young Rose? Or will Rose not worry about you?”
A shadow crosses Isobel’s face.
“My daughter is with my father,” she says, her voice low and sorrowful. “She is quite safe, but— I will send word, with you, if I may, Master Fellowes?”
She knows his name. Fellowes blushes. “Of course. It would be my pleasure.”
Walsingham looks at him beadily, but they are nearly in Saint-Marceau now, on open ground, and before he can add anything they see over the shutters of the carriage a group of men dragging a screaming naked woman into a field by her hair. Isobel lowers the shutter and shouts at the French captain who halts the coach. A moment later, there is a boom of a gunshot from above, and one of the men in the field jerks his head to one side, and then falls away.
“What a markman!” Fellowes says.
“He is Scottish,” Isobel tells them, as if she has found a new milliner.
“The first time in my life I have reason to be grateful for the Auld Alliance,” Walsingham mutters.
Three horsemen ride out after the rapists. They kill two with their swords, or wound them so badly they might as well be dead, and the others scatter across the fields. Another shot rings from above, wounding one by the hamstring. The horsemen don’t bother to finish him off but ride back. The woman sits up, now saved, and tries to cover her breasts.
“Allons-y!” the captain calls, and the coach lurches to life.
Ahead is the residence, surrounded by a small crowd that retreats at the sight of the king’s guard. The caroche comes to a halt before the gates, and Walsingham calls out to Sir Philip Sidney, who raises his handsome face over the parapet, laughs at what he sees, then drops down. A moment later the gate is opened. Walsingham helps Isobel out, and they turn to thank the captain and the marksman.
The captain nods at the driver’s bench and clicks his fingers.
“Écossais,” he says.
The man watches them with a reserved, dispassionate gaze from his seat. He is tall and rangy, with a broad, freckled face, probably ginger under his helmet. He carries an arquebus of greater than ordinary length.
“Wherever did you learn to shoot like that?” Walsingham asks.
He says something that is utterly unintelligible. A place name? An insult? A threat? Who knows.
“Well,” Walsingham says, “please take this, as a token of my gratitude.”
He finds in his purse only a single coin, an angel, and passes it up. He curses silently, for an angel is three weeks’ wages for an ordinary man and will have to be accounted for. The man reaches down to take it without a word, and it vanishes into a fold in his doublet.
“Well,” Walsingham says, somewhat discomfited. “Good-bye.”
The man nods but says nothing more, and Walsingham can feel his cold-eyed stare as he turns and steps back into the yard, grateful to be safe once more.