And this situation irked Guy. He couldn’t help it. He was proud of his family’s success. He was ashamed if any of them went down in the world. And so he’d gone on a personal mission to see if he couldn’t do something about it.

“It’s good of you to try,” his father had told him, “but I’m afraid you’re wasting your time.”

“Pierre’s hopeless,” Guy agreed, “but the boy’s a dear little fellow, and he seems quite intelligent.”

Once when he was visiting the family, Guy had casually mentioned the marriage of Cécile Renard to de Cygne. Young Simon had turned to his father in astonishment. “Our family married nobility?” he’d cried.

“Oh, that was just one rich lady, centuries ago,” Pierre told him. “Nothing to do with us.” And afterward he’d taken Guy aside and gently requested: “Don’t put ideas into the boy’s head. We live in quite a different world these days.”

“What are your plans for Simon?” Guy had asked him once.

“One of our friends is a baker, and he’s suggested he might take Simon as an apprentice in a few years. Simon quite likes the idea.”

Guy was careful after that. If he was going to have any hope of doing something for Simon, he knew he had to keep on good terms with the parents. He never let his irritation with Pierre show. But he was constantly on the lookout for ways to engender some spark of ambition and adventure in the boy. If young Simon showed that, then the rest of the family might be prepared to do something for him when he was older.

He’d tell Simon stories of the great merchant heroes of the city, like Étienne Marcel, who’d built the city fortifications; he’d talk about the adventurers sailing to the New World; he’d tell the boy about how this small merchant or that had made his fortune through hard work or ingenuity. So far, he had no idea whether he was succeeding or not, but he wasn’t going to stop trying. He was a Renard, after all.

It wasn’t surprising, then, that each time he saw his cousin’s house, he secretly cursed Pierre for putting him to all this trouble.

The second reason he’d cursed, however, belonged to the day. In fact, he wasn’t sure they should be taking little Simon out into the streets at all. Because Guy Renard trusted his instincts—and he scented danger.

There was something very suspicious about this royal wedding.

Guy was watchful as they came down past the Convent of the Celestines to the riverside. A defensive wall ran along the bank of the Seine for a little way. After that, they could look across the water to the Île Saint-Louis, the small, bare island covered with woods and rough grazing that lay just upstream from the Île de la Cité, where the gray mass of Notre Dame loomed ahead. They passed the old Grève embankment, where a couple of watermills on a quay jutted out into the water. The roadway was full of brightly dressed people, moving in the same direction. Along the waterside, the tall, steep-gabled wooden houses with their open galleries and balconies hung with festive garlands and ribbons stared over the river, which was full of boats and barges.