Despite Francis's pacification plea, Cardinal Perazzo orders even worse inquisition by his Swiss guards, declaring the Satanist marks of the dark riders branded on the corpses of the executed Protestants proof that Protestants are all extremist heretical rebels. Mary remains aloof from patient Francis and accompanies Louis to an orgy hosted in a French chateau by his brother, king Antoine Condé of Navarre, who wants champion womanizer Louis to stop seeking Francis's trust but seducing Mary, which he refuses. The cardinal's guards arriving with orders to arrest Louis, Leith and Mary help him by cauterizing the branded mark, so Louis can invoke enough doubt to demand a royal ruling. Francis's court spies having found out Cardinal Perazzo truly loves his gay clergyman lover Randall, cloaked Bash incurs an arm stab while branding the 'sodomite', whose mark is publicly exposed, so Francis can force the Cardinal to choose between his love and recanting his lethal ruling on the mark's meaning. Kenna warns sister in law Claude that Catherine is poisoning her, and learns that Claude and Bash were once lovers and confronts both. Catherine confesses to the poisoning because she believes that Claude killed Henriette and Emone, but Claude claims that she didn't do it.
—KGF Vissers