Chapter 6

Geneva, Switzerland

September 1686

The fire in Pernelle’s bedchamber had burned low and outside it was full dark. The clocks in Geneva’s towers began to chime, answered by the clock in the downstairs salon. Jarred out of her remembering, she looked down at Lucie. The little girl’s head rested in her lap, her little white coif slipping off and her feathery dark hair spread like a silken net across her skirt.

“Time for prayers, birdling. Are you asleep?”

The little girl stirred. “Du lait, Maman?”

Pernelle laughed and set Lucie on her feet. “Yes, time for milk. But prayers first.”

She settled Lucie’s coif and stood to shake the wrinkles out of her skirt. Then she thrust a sliver of wood into the fire, lit a candle, and took Lucie by the hand. The Bayle house was old, but comfortable in the austere bourgeois Genevan way. Watchmakers for several generations, the family had done well, well enough to send David to establish Bayle watchmaking in Nîmes. Pernelle and Lucie went down the steep wooden stairs, toward the candlelight shining from the salon where Monsieur Bayle led morning and evening household prayers. One thing Pernelle liked about the old house was its smell. In Languedoc she would have expected the scent of lavender in a well-run household. But here it was something else, something sweeter. Dried roses, perhaps. She had never asked her mother-in-law. Even so small a question invited the chilly gray stare, which was turned on her often enough as it was.

In the salon, her father-in-law, a stocky, graying man of fifty or so, was already standing with his back to the blue-and-white tile stove and holding his Bible. His wife stood on his right with the three household servants, and Julie on his left. Pernelle picked up Lucie and went to her place beside her sister-in-law. Julie smiled at her and tickled Lucie’s cheek. Pernelle smiled back. Julie was preparing for marriage to a worthy young Genevan notary and was happier than Pernelle had ever seen her.

“You are late, Pernelle.” Mme Bayle.

M. Bayle frowned at his wife and looked at the imposing long case clock standing across the room. Shining oak, with delicate marquetry patterns of green-stained bone, it had been his master’s work for his guild, and he still tended and fussed over it as though it were his baby. “No, no, not late at all, my chimes have only just stopped.” Smiling at Pernelle, he left his place and planted a smacking kiss on Lucie’s cheek.

Grandfather and granddaughter laughed with delight, and Pernelle laughed with them. No one else dared, since Mme Bayle was glaring as though the unseemly display were Pernelle’s fault. Which in a way it was, Pernelle supposed, hushing Lucie as M. Bayle cleared his throat and opened his Bible. David’s fault, too, of course, for agreeing to the marriage, but his mother would never say that, let alone think it, having cast Pernelle as the black-eyed siren who had lured her son.

“Psalm one hundred thirty-four.” M. Bayle began the psalm tune. Everyone joined in, Pernelle singing gladly with the others, whose unexpectedly musical Genevan French was not so unlike her own Provençal-accented French.

“Behold, bless ye the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord,

which by night stand in the house of the Lord.

Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and bless the Lord.

The Lord that made heaven and earth bless thee out of Zion.”

When the short bedtime prayers ended, the household wished each other God’s blessing for the night, and most went to their beds. Pernelle followed Annette, the youngest maidservant, to the kitchen for Lucie’s milk. The kitchen hearth fire had burned low, and the big room was hung with shadows. The girl took Lucie’s cup of milk from a wall cupboard and held it out. Lucie reached for it with both hands, and Pernelle steadied it while she drank. Annette went to the hearth and picked up the big couvre-feu, the pierced pottery bowl that confined the fire for safety at night but kept the embers alive.

“Madame made me show her your laundry again, madame,” Annette said, putting the couvre-feu in place.

Pernelle knew what her mother-in-law was looking for—signs that her courses had come. Or not. She had said as much to Pernelle directly.

“Captive,” Mme Bayle had said meaningfully, watching Pernelle with cold gray eyes. “Captive to dragoons. We know what dragoons do with Huguenot women. Are you pregnant?”

A penniless widow with two children, one of them a bastard, would have no hope at all for a second husband, would be forever a burden on her in-laws. And so far Pernelle’s courses hadn’t come, not since early August. But exhaustion and being bone thin could account for that, as she was still from all it had taken to reach Geneva. But if that wasn’t the reason, and if she was pregnant—well, she knew that no dragoon was to blame. Not that she wished to blame anyone. Whatever happened, she had no regret.

“I know. I heard her.” This was not something to discuss with servants, but Annette—often enough in trouble herself with Mme Bayle—was in awe of Pernelle’s escape from France and had become her passionate champion.

The girl turned from the fire, her round, pockmarked face full of concern. “If there still isn’t—after a while—” She stopped and licked her chapped lips and her voice dropped to a whisper. “I know someone who could—help you.”

“No, Annette!” Pernelle looked over her shoulder, praying that Mme Bayle had really gone to bed and was not listening. She knew what the girl was suggesting. Most women knew of ways to be rid of an unwanted child.

The girl gave her a fearful glance and looked down. “I only thought—”

“If madame should hear you, she’d report you to the church court. Leave this imagining.” Pernelle handed back Lucie’s empty cup. “God knows more than we do.” She managed a smile. “May He give you a peaceful night.”

Pernelle’s lips were set in a thin line as she carried the half asleep Lucie upstairs. She settled the little girl in bed, tucked in the heavy blue bedcover, and kissed her. Then she closed the embroidered blue curtains and stood with her head bowed against her clasped hands, praying that Annette’s imaginings—and her own—did not come true. Not because the imagined child would be unwelcome. She would welcome it with her whole heart, but no one else would. Telling herself, as she’d told Annette, to leave her imaginings, she took off her black coif and unpinned her hair in preparation for sleep. She had her share to do in the house, and Mme Bayle’s housework began early.

But instead of undressing, she went to the fire and stirred new flames from it. Annette’s worrying and her own had left her restlessly awake. She sat down again in the big, slant-backed armchair and drew her feet under her for warmth. Her hand went to her bodice, searching for the reassurance of the little Huguenot cross David had given her when they were betrothed.

But of course it wasn’t there.