“This is terrible.”

“I agree.”

“I shall pray that you are wrong.”

“Will you?” Guy gazed at him coolly. “Neither you nor I would do this deed. But will we regret it when it’s done?” He paused to let the cold truth sink in. “Do you want civil strife, Pierre? Do you want a Protestant king?”

But Pierre had done with questions.

“I thank God,” he said quietly, “that my home is a haven of peace.”

“May it always be so,” answered his cousin. “Ah, here comes young Simon, back again.”

They stayed out in the street several hours, and learned that the wedding had been safely accomplished, and saw many fine noblemen ride by that day.

And by evening, when nothing untoward had occurred, Guy almost dared to hope that he’d been wrong.

For Simon, the next three days were quite annoying. News came of the great feasts and tournaments taking place between the Louvre, the Île de la Cité and the Latin Quarter, and he would have liked to go and watch.

“Can we not see the knights jousting?” he cried.

But his father was always pleading that he was too busy, or giving some excuse why he couldn’t take his son out. He wouldn’t let the apprentice go either. And both his parents adamantly refused to let him wander off alone, even to one of the great aristocratic houses in the nearer part of the city, where he could at least have hung around by the gates and watched the parties of noblemen and their liveried retinues as they came and went between the celebrations.

If the royal marriage was intended to improve relationships between the Catholic followers of the Duke of Guise and the Protestant followers of Coligny and Henry of Navarre, then things appeared to be getting off to a good start.

On Friday morning, Pierre had to go out to the market, but he made Simon stay at home.

At noon, his father came back ashen.

“Coligny has been attacked. Stabbed.”

“Is he killed?” asked Suzanne.

“No. Wounded but not badly. The assassin got away. Nobody knows who it was or where he is. But Coligny’s people are furious. Most of them think this was the work of the Guises, or even the king’s mother. One way or the other, everyone’s afraid there’s going to be a fight.”

Simon wasn’t allowed even to go into the street after that. At the end of the afternoon his father went out again to gather news, but returned without anything definite.

Saturday morning came. Coligny was safely in his lodgings. The old hero had lost two fingers, but that was all. He was receiving people. The royal family had been to see him. They were determined to find his attacker. The only fear was of a Protestant backlash. And with large numbers of Protestant knights and men-at-arms being lodged in the buildings of the Louvre, this was frightening indeed. But as the hours passed, nothing happened. Whatever their suspicions might be, the Protestants were holding back.