Lion of Languedoc Read Online Free PDF Page A

bucket-top boots had cost him a fortune. At least he need have no fears about her future. A lacemaker would always eat.
    â€˜And do you make lace in the Venetian fashion?’
    She laughed. ‘Yes. And keep it secret.’
    â€˜Then you’ll have no trouble in making a living.’
    â€˜No.’ She felt suddenly deflated. Life had been lonely enough these past ten years, but there had always been her grandmother for company. Now there would be nobody. Despite the warmth of the sun she shivered.
    â€˜Sometimes it helps to talk.’
    â€˜There’s nothing to talk about,’ Marietta said as the road curved down through fertile orchards.
    Remembering the events of the past few hours Léon felt she was making something of an understatement. ‘ Why do the men of Evray say you’re a witch?’ he asked curiously.
    â€˜Because they are fools.’
    He laughed. ‘I’ll not argue with you there. But if you’re not a witch, who and what are you?’
    â€˜Marietta Riccardi, and I’ve told you what I am. I’m a lacemaker.’ Her pride in her art was unmistakable.
    â€˜And what were you doing in Evray? Evray isn’t a lace-making village.’
    â€˜My grandmother was too weak to travel further.’
    He waited silently and after a little while she said: ‘As a child we lived in Venice, but my mother was French and these last ten years we lived in Paris.’
    She no longer saw the sun-filled road before them; only the beautiful city of canals and palaces that had been her childhood home. ‘When first she and then my father died my grandmother wanted to return to Venice. She fell sick in Evray and so we remained there, never accepted, always foreigners. Her skill at making medicines from herbs, instead of winning us friends, made us enemies. They said it was witchcraft that gave her the ability to cure fevers and chills. And that witches had to die.’ Her hands tightened on the reins. ‘It was all his fault. Before he came the people were grateful enough to her. It was he who put thoughts of witchcraft into their stupid minds.’
    â€˜Him?’ Léon asked intrigued. ‘Who?’
    She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. ‘ I don’t know. He came late at night when I was asleep. He wanted a poison and my grandmother refused to give it to him. He said she would either give him the formula for it or burn. When I heard his threats and my grandmother’s protests I rushed into the room, but he was already outside and mounting his horse. All that I could see was that he was a man of quality. A nobleman with beringed hands.’
    Léon remembered the jewelled hand of the man who had ridden into the inn yard, demanding torches and more horses. He frowned. ‘Why should a man of substance resort to asking a harmless old woman for a poison? Poisons can be procured easily enough.’
    â€˜My grandmother was an Italian,’ Marietta said simply.
    She had no need to say more. It was the Italians who had first elevated the crime of poisoning to a fine art. Catherine de’ Medici had brought the evil with her when she had arrived in France to be the bride of Henri II. Marie de’ Medici, on her marriage to Henri IV, had continued to spread the evil. The Borgias, the Medicis, all were poisoners and all were Italians, or were believed to be.
    â€˜Are you trying to tell me that your grandmother was skilled in arts other than lacemaking and the making of medicines to cure chills?’
    The full, soft lips closed tight. ‘My grandmother was good,’ she repeated firmly. ‘She never harmed anybody.’
    â€˜But she could if she had wanted to?’
    Her eyes met his, bold and unafraid. ‘She had great knowledge and she never abused it. And neither shall I.’ And with that she dug her heels into Saracen’s side and galloped ahead of him to where plane trees lined the road, giving welcome