The Black Plague
Volume 1 : The Conspiracy of the Lilies

A maiden of royal blood seeking to regain her rightful place; conspirators working to reestablish justice and a king’s honor; a turbulent love story in a country ravaged by the Plague… A great cloak-and-dagger novel!

1324. Queen Clémence, widow of Louis X who died eight years earlier, gives birth in the greatest secret to little Eugénie, fruit of her secret union with the poet Renaud d’Aignan. In order to protect her, he pledges to raise her far from Paris, in his native Gascony.

Twenty years later, Eugénie has become a magnificent young woman. Married to the booming Geoffrey d’Eauze, her life is turned upside down the day her father reveals the secret of her illustrious birth. From that moment on, the young woman, determined to regain her rank, decides to join forces with the members of the Conspiracy of the Lilies who seek to restore Jean, Eugénie’s brother and true heir to the throne of France, to his rightful place. Thus begins a tumultuous adventure for her that will take her to the four corners of the kingdom and where she will confront a thousand perils. But kidnapping attempts, pursuits and traps of all kinds are nothing compared with the scourge that befalls the country, preceded by its cortège of black rats and sowing terror: the Black Death, this devastating disease that spares no one, indifferently killing common folk and nobles alike in atrocious suffering. Escorted by death, Eugénie advances resolutely towards her destiny. Might she be the object of some strange curse? Is it possible that she bears the devil’s beauty within her?

Here, with his seasoned pen, Gilbert Bordes paints a vast fresco in this historical novel. Staging a mythical page in the History of France (the Black Death epidemic wiped out nearly half the French population), he exploits with brio and modernity one of the major themes that haunt our collective imagination: the Plague.