The king has shut himself farther away since his mother’s death, and much of his court has deserted him, slipping away over the frost-hardened roads to their country homes or tall Paris houses. The air is taut with waiting.
The urge to snatch up his family and run snaps at Petrus’s soles like a pack of starving hunters. At any moment the dogs will be upon him, upon them all—lips pulled snarling back from the knives of their teeth, hot tendrils of saliva hanging. Waiting for them to lunge, to sink those teeth through the layers of his cape and doublet and shirt, Petrus feels his lungs squeeze and squeeze within his rib cage, and he blows the air out of his mouth, then sucks it back in, again and again, draw and release, gasp and suck; and yet still he feels as if he is suffocating, some invisible force plugging his chest with straw like a poor man’s mattress, stuffing it so tight that there is no room for anything else.
Before leaving the room, he had taken his coins from their box to count them. Though they were a reward for a lifetime as this court’s resident wild man, they clinked pitifully, as if they knew how few they were, and were ashamed. Petrus felt shame, too, felt it rushing up from his soles to draw like a coverlet over his head. Paltry, he thought—oh, so paltry, so utterly useless. Though he was sitting, though his feet pressed against the floor, he seemed to be falling, down and down; and though he leaned forward, he could not seem to will himself to find the bottom of this fall, it just went on and on, air rushing past, the sickening impact never coming but the waiting for it almost worse. His hair has kept him and his family fed and housed, but now they are losing their home, and he has no idea of how far their few coins will stretch. How much does it cost to hire a coach, horses? How much for a night at an inn?
Catherine looked at the coins, and her mouth folded up tight at the corners. Petrus recalled how she strode through the streets of Lyons, so sure of her way; recalled, too, her merchant’s-daughter stories, how she understood the reasons for the changing price of grain, why silk from one country was considered less valuable than silk from another. He used to think her uneducated, but in truth she knows so much that he does not. She would know where to inquire about a coach, what to pack for the journey, whether a merchant meant to swindle them. She would go out into the city, if he asked it of her, to take care of all these practical matters.
But neither she nor Petrus knows where they can go. He has been a scholar, a curiosity, a bearer of bread, a reader; he does not know where to turn, where any of these skills might be wanted. And the city is dry kindling now, just waiting for the flame. He cannot send his wife into that.
And so he goes in search of Ludovico. He has not seen his friend in days upon days; as ever, Ludovico has been with the king, and Petrus with his own family. But Ludovico has been lurking about the edges of Petrus’s mind, dark head bent near the king’s, mouthing plots, battle plans, intrigues, wading into all those boggy places Petrus always avoids. The thought of it makes Petrus’s belly ache. He imagines Ludovico sinking entirely away, the suck of his plans at his feet, his knees, until, with a last breath, he disappears entirely into their soft, chancy depths.
Late as it is, Ludovico is awake; he opens the door, leans against the doorframe with a shade of his old grin, beckons Petrus inside as if they might toss some dice, drink some wine, talk and laugh and pretend to have forgotten that long-ago night when they were hardly more than boys, and their mouths touched.
But once inside, the wood of the door shutting out the rest of the palace, Ludovico slumps in his chair. A single candle burns, new-lit, the wick scarcely singed; but even by its faint light, Petrus can see the tired way his friend’s face lies, slack as melted wax itself.
If he had to, he’d planned to crumple himself at Ludovico’s feet, to clutch beggarly at his knees. To ask, though he already knows the answer, whether there is any hope that the king might think of them. And then to ask for help, ignoring the deep-dug part of himself that hates the necessity of asking. But now he discards his question about the king entirely, discards it as a child’s question, the wondering of someone too innocent, too self-involved, too thoroughly naive to comprehend that when the king of France is in danger of losing his throne, his life, he will not spare a whisper of a thought for the hairy family that has lived so long at his court. He will run, or fight, or hide; but he will not think of Petrus and Catherine and their children; they will have already been forgotten now, though they still sleep under the same roof as he.
“We must leave,” Petrus says instead. “Mustn’t we?”
The nut in Ludovico’s throat moves up and down with his swallow. Petrus has the strange urge to reach out and touch the ridge of it, to feel it move under his fingertips.
“Yes,” Ludovico says. Swallows again. “You truly must.”
Petrus feels his own throat bob and constrict. “And you—will remain here?”
His friend nods, slow as a horse pulling a cart far too heavy for its strength. “What would I do elsewhere?”
“Live!” Petrus says, an explosion, a war cry. His skull might come apart from the release of the built-up pressure. “You would live! And Henriette and the children, too.”
Ludovico’s smile is gentle. “I’ve worked for this for years, my friend—for this moment, for this fearful moment, when the enemy is surrounding us. I’ve been a part of . . . of great and terrible things. But I can see glory on the other side of it, if I am only clever enough to reach it.”
In his eyes, in his stance—suddenly so eager, so energetic, where only a moment ago he was bent with exhaustion—Petrus knows, very suddenly, with a thud as if he has finally fallen, finally found the bottom he sought earlier: the rumors he ignored for so long must be true. Ludovico was one of the minds behind the Huguenot massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s feast day; behind the screams of women; the weeping voices of children, suddenly silenced. He stares at his friend, and thinks, just as he has always done whenever Ludovico’s name was knotted with such terror, No, it is impossible. But even as his mind forms the words, it is a reflex, only; he knows the truth now, and cannot unknow it. He remembers lying together as boys, planning their futures, the fervency with which Ludovico spoke. The lust he felt for power.
All his years of scheming, of ingratiating himself with others, has purchased for Ludovico a rich and titled wife, a big Parisian house, a place at court where all men pause to listen when he speaks, his voice calm and confident as his swordplay. Sickness rises from Petrus’s belly to his throat, and he swallows and swallows to force it back down. Sickness at the thought of his friend’s calm and confident voice suggesting to the king that the Princess Marguerite’s wedding would be the perfect way to lure the most important Huguenots in the country to Paris. Sickness at the twist of envy in his chest, for the foolish thought that if he had been more like Ludovico—if he had stepped, just once in the last thirty years, from the corners to which he’d relegated himself—then his only means of action now would not be this, this reaching out of his hand, this begging of someone else to unhook his cage latch, to toss him a little bread, a little water. Perhaps he’d have no need of a murderer’s help.
He staggers back a step, the thought too brutal, too raw. And if Ludovico was the orchestrater of such atrocities as occurred that long-ago night, was he not also the boy who chose Petrus above the other children? Could a person be reduced to a single act, to the best or the worst of themselves? He thinks of what he said to Catherine about King Henri—I loved him, and he did terrible things—and forces himself to look up, to meet his friend’s eyes, which are dark and long-lashed and patient. His heart clenches in his chest, threatens to burst itself with too much feeling.
“I . . . need help,” he says. “I need your help. If I’m to take them away—but I do not know where to go. What to do.”
Ludovico nods slowly. “Of course,” he says. “Old friend.” And he clasps Petrus’s shoulders in both hands, the gesture bittersweet, aching, for its familiarity.