Chapter 1

Geneva, Switzerland

September 1686

Pernelle du Luc Bayle sat in front of the red tiled hearth, listening to thunder fading toward the west and rain still spattering against the window. Supper was over and soon there would be prayers, but the time between was her own, hers and her daughter Lucie’s. Pernelle shivered and stretched her feet toward the warmth, staring into the flames as though they might show her the future.

She smoothed her black skirt, grateful for its good thick wool. Like most Huguenots—as French Protestants were called—she often wore black, but this skirt was widow’s black, worn for her husband, David. David had died last December of a wasting sickness, leaving her alone with Lucie to raise, her own parents and only brother being long dead. When she’d had to flee the religious persecution flaring all over France, she’d left everything behind. Now she and Lucie had only what David’s parents gave them, including these good black widow’s clothes. Which would soon be put off, if Mme Bayle, her mother-in-law, had her way. Mme Bayle had made it ominously clear that Pernelle was expected to marry again when her mourning year ended after Christmas. Though, as her mother-in-law too often reminded her, with no money or property to tempt a new husband, a penniless widow with a child was not an attractive prospect in the marriage market. Even so, when the family walked to church—the old Catholic cathedral of St. Pierre, stripped bare now of images, color, and anything else that might distract the faithful from God—Pernelle felt men’s eyes on her. She was not grateful for their scrutiny, but she was unspeakably grateful for the refuge of Geneva, an independent city where Protestants governed and worshipped in peace. Where Lucie could grow up in safety.

Last May, Pernelle had fled with Lucie and her sister-in-law Julie from the southern French town of Nîmes. When the French king Louis the XIV had outlawed Protestantism nearly a year ago, Pernelle and David, like most of their Huguenot neighbors, had outwardly accepted Catholicism, but only to protect themselves and Lucie from the violence of the king’s dragoons—“missionaries in boots,” as their victims called them. When Pernelle was caught praying with fellow Huguenots and threatened with having Lucie taken from her, she’d dared the odds and started for Geneva.

Pernelle leaned back in the old, thinly upholstered chair, looking down at her daughter. Lucie, who was nearly three, now sat beside her on a little wooden stool, cradling her doll. Grandpère Bayle had made the stool, and Grandmère Bayle had made the doll. Pernelle might be unwelcome—at least to her mother-in-law—but both of David’s parents adored their granddaughter. Pernelle smiled as Lucie began singing a tuneless lullaby to the doll. Well, if some kind, decent man proposed marriage, at least she would know he wasn’t after her money, since she had none. And she would have a home of her own. Lucie would have a stepfather and better prospects when the time came for her own marriage. What, indeed, would be so wrong with that? But she knew the answer and rose from the chair so suddenly that Lucie flinched, looking up at her with wide black eyes.

“I didn’t meant to startle you, little bird; nurse your baby, all’s well.”

She kissed the top of the child’s head and went to the window. The perilous journey from Nîmes to Geneva had left its marks on Lucie, as it had on her. And on her eighteen-year-old sister-in-law, Julie, too. The three of them had been terrifyingly separated during their flight, but Julie, bless her, had shown unexpected bravery, going on alone and getting herself and Lucie safely to her parents in Geneva. It was September before Pernelle arrived there, only to find that the family had given her up for dead. Which perhaps her mother-in-law would have preferred, Pernelle thought with a sigh.

Across the rue du puits St. Pierre, named for the wells near the church, candle flames glimmered through the rain. The late September evening was wet and cold, and even the color of warmth was good to see. Hugging herself, Pernelle wished she could wear yellow and orange and red all winter. Her father-in-law, who welcomed her because she’d brought him his granddaughter Lucie, had said that in October, they would light the big tiled stove downstairs and then she would know what winter warmth really was. Warmer than your south of France, Pernelle, you’ll see, he’d said. One more reason to be grateful to him, because she was already finding this Swiss September cold enough.

Gratitude to her mother-in-law, though, grew more difficult by the day. Mme Bayle doted on Lucie, but to her son’s widow she was punctilious in her obligations and nothing more. Pernelle often thought that if she’d never arrived in Geneva, Mme Bayle would not have minded much.

Behind her, Lucie was still singing her sweet tuneless song. Lucie’s attempt at singing made her think of her beloved second cousin Charles. Some du Lucs could sing and some—like herself—couldn’t. But Charles sang like a troubadour. She laughed softly, remembering him singing the old Provençal poem he’d set to new music for her when she was sixteen and he was eighteen, and they’d made a foolish secret promise to marry.

“Joyous in love, I make my aim forever deeper in Joy to be.

The perfect Joy’s the goal for me: So the most perfect lady I claim . . .”

Charles’s family, the Catholic du Lucs, were minor nobility and had land outside Nîmes. Pernelle’s Huguenot father had been a silk merchant in Nîmes. Charles and Pernelle had grown up together, there being no rift between the family in spite of their religious differences. But when the pair fell in love and their parents discovered their secret betrothal, they’d been separated fast and ruthlessly. Second cousins married often enough, but even before the king outlawed Protestantism, life would have been impossible—and dangerous—for a husband and wife of different religions. So Pernelle’s parents had summarily betrothed her to David Bayle, nephew of Protestant neighbors, who had come to Nîmes from the real Geneva to establish a watchmaking business. And Charles had taken his broken heart into the army.

Then, last May, ten years after they’d been separated, Charles had come like a knight out of an old song when she needed him. Not to claim her as knights claimed their ladies—he was a half-fledged Jesuit now—but to get her out of Nîmes before the dragoons got her.

Neither of them had meant for her to end up in Paris. But she had, and that first, last, and only night with Charles had left a small fire of love burning in her heart. She knew that it would burn all her life, no matter whom she did or didn’t marry.

Lucie stopped singing, and Pernelle looked over her shoulder to see the little girl rubbing her eyes.

“Sleepy, birdling?”

Pernelle went to the fire, stirred its flames higher, and sat down in the chair. Lucie climbed up on her lap and leaned sleepily against her, and she put her arms around the little girl. Watching the fire, she remembered the night in Nîmes last May, when Charles had come to David’s narrow stone house among the little streets tangled like vines behind the old Roman temple.