“I do all in my power to satisfy her,” said Rossignol, “and when that fails I can do no more than throw myself upon her mercy.”
“It is good to meet you!” Bart exclaimed, seeming genuine enough, then let go Rossignol’s hands. The two men burst asunder. But there was no more of furtive glancing at hands. “Now we wait, eh?” Bart said. “You wait for her, and I wait for d’Avaux. You have the better of me there.”
“I am certain that Monsieur le comte will not tarry in Dunkerque, if that will cheer you up.”
“It must be wonderful to know so many things,” said Bart—a way of stating that he knew what Bonaventure Rossignol did for a living.
“Many of those things are very tedious, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, but the power, the understanding it gives you! Take this painting.” Bart extended a blunt, thick hand toward the landscape he had been pretending to inspect a moment earlier. It depicted rolling countryside, a village, and a church, all seen from the garden of a manor house. In the foreground, children sported with a little dog. “What does it mean? Who are these people? How did they end up there?” He indicated another landscape, this one in a dark mountainous country. “And what significance do all of these sieges and battles have to the d’Ozoirs?” For, despite the occasional pastoral landscape, the art in the gallery was heavily skewed towards massacres, martyrdoms sacred and s?cular, and set-piece battles.
“Forgive me for saying so, Lieutenant, but given the importance of the Marquis d’Ozoir to the Navy, it strikes me as remarkable that you do not know everything about his family.”
“Ah, monsieur, but that is because you are a gentleman of Court. I am a dog of the sea, oblivious. But Mademoiselle la comtesse de la Zeur has instructed me that I must attend to such matters if I am ever to rise beyond the rank of Lieutenant.”
“Then as we are both doomed to cool our heels as we await our betters,” said Rossignol, “let me do what would most please her, and spin you a little yarn that will tie together all of these paintings and plaques and busts.”
“I should be in your debt, monsieur!”
“Not at all. Now, even if you are as deaf to politics as you claim, you must know that Monsieur le marquis d’Ozoir is a bastard of Monsieur le duc d’Arcachon.”
“That has never been a secret,” Bart agreed.
“Since the Marquis cannot inherit the name or the property of his father, it follows, by process of elimination, that all of these paintings and whatnot are from the family of—”
“Madame la marquise d’Ozoir!” said Bart. “And that is where I want instruction, for I know nothing of her people.”
“Two families, very different, forged into one.”
“Ah. One dwelling in the countryside of the north, I’m guessing,” said Bart, nodding at the first landscape.
“De Crépy. Petty nobles. Not especially distinguished, but middling affluent, and fecund.”
“The other family must have been Alp-dwellers, then,” said Bart, turning to regard the gloomier and more horrid of the two landscapes.
“De Gex. A poor dwindling clan. Die-hard Catholics living in a place, not far from Geneva, that had become dominated by Huguenots.”
“So the two families were quite different! How did they come to be joined?”
“The family de Crépy were tied, first by proximity, then by fealty, and at last by marriage, to the Counts of Guise,” said Rossignol.
“Err…I am vaguely aware that those Guises were important, and got into some sort of trouble with the Bourbons, but if you could refresh my memory, monsieur…”
“It would be my pleasure, Lieutenant. A century and a half ago, a comte de Guise distinguished himself so well in battle that the King created him duc de Guise. Of his aides, squires, lackeys, mistresses, captains, and hangers-on, several were of the de Crépy line. Some of these developed a taste for adventure, and began to conceive ambitions beyond the parochial. They lashed themselves to the mast, as it were, of the House of Guise, which seemed like a good idea, and served them well. Until, that is, a hundred and one years ago, when the two leading men of that House—Henry, duc de Guise, and Louis, cardinal de Guise—were assassinated by the King or his supporters. For they had waxed more powerful than the King himself.”
There was a pause now to look at some rather sanguinary art-work.
“How could such a thing happen, monsieur? How could this rival House become so powerful?”
“Nowadays, when le Roi is so strong, it is difficult for us to conceive of, is it not? It may help you to know that much of the power that so appalled the King was rooted in a thing called the Holy Catholic League. It had its beginnings in towns and cities all over France, where local priests and gentlemen had, in the wake of the Reformation, found themselves engulfed in Huguenots, and so banded together to defend their faith from that heresy and to oppose its spread.”