For the Cause

Paris, November 1589. The city starves behind its walls while the army of the League watches from without, and within its streets, murder wears the mask of piety. Felix Portail returns one evening to find his father butchered by a mob - not for any crime, but for the sin of being moderate in an age of extremes. His sister Marie is consumed by a grief that borders on madness, and Felix must choose: will he avenge his father in the chaotic streets where any stranger might be killer or saviour, or does he pursue the stranger who appeared that night with his cynical, dangerous counsel? As factions fracture and reform around him - Leaguers, Huguenots, the remnants of the throne - Felix discovers that in 1589 Paris, loyalty itself has become the most lethal conspiracy. Weyman builds his historical romance with the atmospheric dread of a city under siege, where personal vendettas and political betrayals intertwine until no man's hands are clean. For readers who want their historical fiction dark, morally complex, and drenched in the particular violence of faith.