London - Edward Rutherfurd [432]
“Wait a few years,” Carpenter replied. “You’ll see.”
Given all that he knew, it came as no surprise to O Be Joyful that autumn when Parliament reassembled, and the House of Commons voted to alter the succession to exclude Catholic James, that the House of Lords should have rejected the Bill and decided in favour of James. He was well aware that throughout the bitter debate the newly made Earl of St James had been prominent, arguing persuasively for the king and his brother.
The conspiracy was deep. The shining city on a hill was being prepared, before his very eyes, for the rule of the Evil One. It was only to be expected, he supposed, that the former Sir Julius Ducket should be of the Devil’s party, leading them all to hell.
1685
The two children were clinging to him, terrified. One of the troopers, still mounted, was shaking nuts from the tree while two others had just trussed up a pig and slit its throat with a sabre. The officer in command of the dragoons looked at Eugene with a cool insolence.
“We shall need all three of your bedrooms.”
“And where are we to sleep?” Eugene’s wife asked.
“There is the barn, Madame,” the officer shrugged. He eyed the two little girls. “Their ages?”
“Not yet seven, Monsieur le Capitaine,” Eugene answered drily. “I assure you.” If only, he thought, I had never returned.
Despite the protection of their cherished old Treaty of Nantes, the Protestant Huguenots had found his most Catholic Majesty less and less tolerant of their religion with every year that passed. Not only had their Calvinist synods been forbidden; their pastors had to pay special taxes and they were forbidden to marry good Catholics. To encourage them to mend their ways, they were offered tax concessions if they would abjure their heresy and return to the Catholic fold; but, more recently, King Louis had introduced a sterner measure. Any Huguenot child over the age of seven could be converted, without their parents’ consent. Another year or two, Eugene knew, and his girls would be under pressure. Such things would not have happened if he had stayed in London.
His return to France had not been happy. His father had been furious. “You were to prepare the way for us,” he had reminded Eugene coldly, and for a year refused to speak to him. Only when he had married a Huguenot girl whose father was a shipper at Bordeaux, did the rift begin to heal. They were on good terms when, five years ago, the older man had died and Eugene found himself head of the little family. Not that the family strife had ended. Within a year, his father’s young widow had converted, left the house and married a Catholic with a small vineyard. As a result, Eugene had not only his own two little girls to look after, but his unmarried half-sister, who had refused to be a Catholic and accompany her mother.
Difficult though life had been for Huguenots, however, it was only in the last four years that King Louis XIV had made it intolerable. His method was simple: he quartered his troops on them. Time and again Eugene had heard how parties of dragoons had arrived, eaten all the family’s stores, broken furniture, even terrorized the Huguenots’ wives and daughters. Technically, the French king could still say they were free to worship, but in practice it was a policy of persecution. Many times recently Eugene had wondered whether he should emigrate to England again with his family; yet he was unwilling to leave the area he so loved unless he had to – and there was a large financial consideration.
“The king has forbidden any of his subjects to leave France without his permission. That means,” he warned his wife, “that if we try to sell our house or furniture, we’ll almost certainly be arrested on suspicion of leaving. If we go, we’ll only have what we can carry.” His business as a watchmaker brought a modest living; but the family’s capital was in the house with its orchards that he had inherited. Like the other Huguenots in the area, therefore, they had prayed with their pastor, often in their own house, and read their bible,