The Incendium Plot Quotes

“Exactly. First of all, the wedding of Henry of Navarre to Margaret of Valois will take place the day after tomorrow. Navarre has invited many prominent Protestants to attend the ceremony, including their leader, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny. The admiral will be vulnerable and there are rumours of an attempt on his life. If that were to happen, there would be more than just his blood on the streets of Paris.’ Christopher did not ask how Sessetti knew this. Walsingham would have intelligencers all over the city”
― A.D. Swanston, The Incendium Plot

“Katherine’s aunt, Isabel Tranter. Two matching oak chairs, each with a high, carved back, rush-padded seat and comfortably broad arms, stood either”
― A.D. Swanston, The Incendium Plot

“Conflagration, my lord,’ replied Christopher”
― A.D. Swanston, The Incendium Plot

“If it were human, London would be a clever young merchant looking to make his way in a life of business. Industrious, quick to learn, determined, sometimes brash. Paris would be a learned theologian.”
― A.D. Swanston, The Incendium Plot

“Unless the weather broke, it would not be long before the plague that had killed his parents arrived and the physicians departed in haste for the countryside, leaving the sick to the quacks and charlatans who were only too eager to put on plague masks and take their places. That fearful, hateful disease could fly through houses and streets and wards like a carrion crow, spreading its poison and sparing neither young nor old, neither rich nor poor.”
― A.D. Swanston, The Incendium Plot

“Even at that hour, London was awake and there would be cutpurses and pickpockets and maunderers about. Each week he saw more and more of them, lurking on street corners and huddled in doorways – vagrants and paupers pouring in from the countryside where they could not eke out a living on land being enclosed for animals, and could no longer turn to the charity of the old religious houses. For all their extravagance and corruption, the ancient monasteries had provided food and shelter to the poor and sick of their counties. Now London grew larger, dirtier and more overcrowded with each day while Londoners grumbled and cursed and demanded an end to the river of vagrants and harsher penalties for their crimes. But to no avail. A man had only to walk along Fleet Street to see that the problem was getting worse by the week. On the corner of Pilgrim Street, butchers and bakers were already setting out their stalls and aiming kicks at the half-naked urchins who scrabbled about in the dirt, squabbling over a stale crust or a scrap of offal. The urchins had to be quick. Hungry dogs sniffed about while kites watched hopefully from the rooftops. Christopher saw a bird swoop from its perch, take a morsel in its beak and flap away before it could be frightened off. A filthy child saw him and dashed across the street to demand a coin. She grabbed his gown and held on like a terrier with a rat until he gave up trying to free himself and tossed”
― A.D. Swanston, The Incendium Plot

“Like any woman, petulance did not improve her looks.”
― A.D. Swanston, The Incendium Plot