Stephanie Merritt 

The City of Tears review – Kate Mosse’s compelling 16th-century French epic

The second volume of Mosse’s wars of religion trilogy vividly depicts persecution and how politics can upturn ordinary lives
  
  

Catholic troops assault the Huguenot city of La Rochelle following the August 1572 St Bartholomew’s Day massacre
Catholic troops assault the Huguenot city of La Rochelle following the August 1572 St Bartholomew’s Day massacre. Photograph: Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Exile and emigration are perennial themes in literature, especially historical fiction, but it’s noticeable, reading the second volume of Kate Mosse’s Burning Chambers trilogy about the Huguenot diaspora, how timely a story of refugees seems at this moment in Europe’s history and how sharply the parallels stand out.

The City of Tears opens, as did its predecessor, The Burning Chambers, with a prologue set in 19th-century South Africa, a foreshadowing of where this epic story of war and displacement will end up, before the narrative returns to 16th-century France, 10 years after the end of the previous book. Minou Joubert and Piet Reydon are living in relative peace in their castle in south-west France, their own family and estates an example of how Catholics and Protestants can amicably coexist. It’s an experiment soon to be imposed on the whole country, as the queen mother, Catherine de Medici, attempts to broker peace by marrying her Catholic daughter Margot to the Huguenot Henri of Navarre, a union opposed by the hardline Catholic faction led by the Duke of Guise. As Minou and Piet make their preparations to visit Paris for the wedding, she asks her brother Aimeric about rumours of trouble.

“‘It is hard to separate truth from untruth,” Aimeric conceded, “but there is no doubt Guise wants unrest. He thrives on it. Though he is careful never to speak out of turn, I do not trust him. He gives one message in public from his own mouth, but yet whips up his supporters in anti-Huguenot sentiments in private.”

Fake news, propaganda and leaders whipping up a mob against the government are nothing new; frequently, the novel offers uncanny echoes of current headlines. The Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572 that followed that ill-advised wedding, when thousands of Protestants were murdered in their homes by Catholic troops, in Paris and across France, has been a favourite subject for novelists and film-makers, but Mosse conjures the chaos and fear of those days with fresh urgency, as Minou and her family scramble to escape the slaughter.

Mosse’s focus in her historical fiction has always been on the untold stories of women and Minou is an appealing heroine, tough and resourceful, holding her family together through unbearable losses and more than once saving her husband’s life through cunning or physical courage. The author’s great skill is to weave extensive research with the conventions of the adventure novel; her villains are enjoyably villainous, her heroines at once exceptional and vulnerably human.

She includes all the ingredients you would expect from a historical epic – murder, treachery, lost children, stolen relics, buried secrets – but she also dramatises the complexities of 16th-century French and Dutch politics, unfamiliar to many English readers, without weighing it down. This is a compelling story of how great political upheavals play out in individual lives and how unexpectedly anyone can find themselves seeking sanctuary and the kindness of strangers.

The City of Tears by Kate Moss is published by Mantle (£20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

 

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