City of Tears, by Kate Mosse
The assassin crouched in the tangled undergrowth, his finger and thumb stiff in position around the wheel-lock pistol. His gaze was fixed upon the highest point of the castle. He was ready, had been so since first light.
He had made his confession and prayed for deliverance. He had laid his offering at the grave in the woods of the previous châtelaine, a pious and devout Catholic lady murdered by Huguenot vermin. His soul was pure. Shriven.
He was ready to kill.
As expected, a young woman in a green dress finally appears on the castle rampart and the hired assassin shoots. Little does he know it was the wrong woman. And that she didn’t die.
Setting
City of Tears is a complex and moving story of a French Huguenot family tossed around in the turmoil of sixteenth century France.
It is a huge privilege to have been invited to Paris to attend the state wedding of Protestant Henry, king of Navarre and devout Catholic Marguerite de Valois, daughter of the powerful Catherine de’ Medici. Surely, this judicious marriage will restore peace to the hate-filled, bleeding land of France? Are the wars are now over?
The question remains: Why was that young woman shot? And on whose orders?
The victim was Minou Reydon-Joubert’s sister, Alis Joubert. She is too badly injured to travel. But Minou makes the difficult decision to accompany her husband, Piet Reydon, to Paris for the glamorous occasion. They take with them their two young children, seven-year-old Marta and baby Jean-Jacques, as well as Minou’s soldier brother, Aimeric, and their fussy Catholic aunt Salvadora.
Thus the family odyssey begins.
Historic background
In Paris, Aimeric joins the troops accompanying the Huguenot leader Admiral Coligny. They are wary of the intentions of his arch-enemy, the Duke of Guise. The royal wedding seems like a sideshow when the large-scale slaughter begins that has gone down in history as the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
Other characters, who play important roles in the book’s unfolding plot, emerge: Cardinal Vidal, the personal confessor of the Duke of Guise; Vidal’s illegitimate son, Louis; the mysterious young Dutch woman, Cornelia van Raay, who is desperately trying to pass on a message to Piet; and the impetuous, reckless Marta, who finds herself in the midst of the bloody fray and ends up lost in the heart of turbulent Paris.
We learn much about the alarmingly violent political and religious tensions, not only in France but also in the Low Countries. Will the governing body of the Catholic stronghold of Amsterdam yield its authority peacefully to the rival Huguenot immigrants? And will inter-faith friendships survive the upheaval?
Family intrigue
What is the strange mystery driving Vidal’s attempts to find Piet and to lay his hands on documents Cornelia knows where to find? What drives his desperate attempt to hide from his former overlord, the Duke of Guise? And what is his real purpose in life?
Throughout their years of exile, Minou never gives up hope that their runaway daughter Marta is still alive somewhere, by now a young woman with a life of her own.
About the book
The book climaxes by unravelling these interlocking plot themes. But the drama of those final events is not entirely convincing.
In places, the tension of unfolding events is tangible, giving the reader a penetrating insight into the motives behind historic developments. While Aimeric urges Admiral Coligny…
Tell your men – and make sure the message is clearly heard beyond the walls of this house – that there is to be no retaliation. Leave it in God’s hands. No tit-for-tat reprisals, do you understand? Guise wants an excuse to move against us. Make sure we do not give it to him.
… the Duke of Guise announces to his confessor, Cardinal Vidal:
Make no mistake, you cannot stop what is to come. No one can. Things are too advanced. This pretence that the Huguenots wish nothing more than to worship peacefully, this lie is destroying France. Destroying our values. They mask their true intentions beneath a sickening piety, whereas the truth is that all de Coligny and Navarre want is power. They will not be content until they have driven every last Catholic from our shores and made France a Protestant state. I will not stand by and let that happen. Do you understand? I am a prince of the royal blood, a descendant of Charlemagne. This is my birthright, not that of any Valois half-blood descendant of that Italian sow.
On the other hand, beautifully poetic descriptions conjure up vivid scenes:
All around, so far as the eye could see, stretched green fields and golden wheat and shy red poppies. At this time of the day, with a light breeze, long shadows seemed to dance along the pathways as if they were late for some charming rendezvous. Butterflies fluttered, dipped, settled and spread their wings, before spiralling up into the sky again. The air was alive with the conversation of songbirds and the humming of bees. A wood thrush called to its mate. Sparrows shimmered in and out of the formal hedges of box, rosemary and privet that led to the front door.
Occasional remarks reveal contrasting but deeply held theological views. For instance, Minou responds to Cornelia’s devout Catholic father:
I think perhaps that is the difference between us, Burgher van Raay. You believe in original sin, that man is fallen. We believe that man will be saved through God’s grace and God’s grace alone. We do not need intercession, only our own true spirit.
City of Tears is a multifaceted book, the second of Kate Mosse’s The Joubert Family Chronicles trilogy. Its sixteenth century setting – the period of religious wars in France – precedes the equally dramatic events after Louis XIV’s repeal of the Edict of Nantes a hundred years later.