by Judith Rock
Most of the men didn’t even look up. “Not here,” someone yelled back, shaking his dice.
Standing slightly aside from the door, Charles yelled back, “Seen him?”
Heads shook and a few men glanced vaguely toward the door. “Not today.”
Charles slid back along the walls, but now the stout woman who had been behind the counter was coming toward him, watching him narrowly. Charles put his hat on, smiling benignly, sketched a cross in the air, and left her staring after him as he let himself out again into the snow.
He crossed the Île, making for the rue Perdue. The snow was slacking, but it was ankle deep and the footing had grown even more treacherous. By the time he reached the Place Maubert, his shoes were soaked. Remembering what had happened to the lay brother a few hours ago, he crossed the Place warily, watching the doorways. But few people were out, and he reached the Brion house without incident. The same awkward footman answered the door, still trying to pull his faded sleeves down to meet his wrist bones and seeming even more uneasy than he had yesterday.
“Oh. My lady is not—that is—no one is—”
“I have come to see your master,” Charles said.
“Oh. No, he—I mean, I already told your lay brother who came earlier. My master is not here.”
“Yes,” Charles said, thinking about that brother’s cut and bruised face, “I know you told Frère Guiscard. When is Monsieur Brion likely to return?”
The footman shook his head, looking everywhere but at Charles. “He—ah—went out—very early. No one has—but we’re not supposed—I mean, we never—I don’t know!” He jerked a bow and closed the door in Charles’s face.
Charles raised a fist to knock again, then shrugged and started back toward the Place, wondering how many coffeehouses there were in Paris, and how many he would have to search before he found Brion. Enough, probably, that he should warn Père Le Picart not to count on seeing Brion this afternoon.
The snow had stopped. Apprentices were beginning to sweep the paving stones in front of shops, and a few shivering maids with pitchers and jugs were picking their way to the Place’s fountain. A church bell struck the hour. Charles was counting the strokes, thinking he was going to be late for dinner, when someone hissed behind him. He swung around and a glaring apprentice raised his broom like a shield.
“There may be snow serpents somewhere,” Charles drawled, knowing even as he said it that the boy was not going to laugh. “But there are none in Paris. Speak.”
The boy backed away, but his glare lost none of its malevolence.
Charles sighed. “Hear me, mon ami. I, too, am grieving for Mademoiselle Martine Mynette. You would do better to pray for her soul than make witless accusations.”
“Not so witless! Convenient for you she’s dead, now you’ll get the Mynette money!”
“The money will go by law where it is supposed to go.” Charles advanced on the boy. “Who is spreading this slander about Jesuits?”
Swinging the broom wildly at Charles, the boy ducked into a baker’s shop and slammed the door. Charles turned away, sick at heart. Who was spreading this anti-Jesuit slander?
From what he’d been told, the University of Paris was usually the first answer when that question had to be asked. But this poison seemed to be spreading from the Place Maubert, not the rue St. Jacques. Jansenists were always a possibility, and there were no doubt Jansenists among the artisans of the Place Maubert. The Jansenists, though Catholics, were so strict and sober minded they seemed more Protestant than the Protestants, and they thoroughly disapproved of the more tolerant and worldly Jesuits. Such an incendiary word worldly could be. Yet the world was where everyone lived, even those in monasteries and Jesuit houses. As far as Charles could see, that included even saints, because when mystical ecstasies ended, where else was there to come back to? For beings of spirit and flesh, the world then was inescapable, as long as life lasted. And if God was not to be found in the world He had made, then where? Absorbed in his theological argument, Charles turned down a narrow lane, hoping to cut a little distance from his walk to the college. Jesuits were called worldly because—at their best, anyway—they used whatever seemed good and innocent in God’s world to help people toward God. But what could be wrong with that? He shook his head in exasperation. Of course, distinguishing between goodand-worldly on the one hand, and sinful-and-worldly on the other, involved thinking. And how many people chose to think, rather than enjoy pleasantly horrified and self-righteous feelings?
Charles stumbled over a loose paving stone, skinned his hand against a wall trying to recover his balance, and swore aloud. No one was in sight—just as well, considering his worldly swearing—but he had the sudden sense that the air around him was listening intently. His scalp tingled. The Silence had not visited him in a long time. During the autumn, he’d longed for the comfort of it, but it had not come. The secret Charles kept even from his confessor was that he’d become a Jesuit because he wanted to come as close to God as a man could, wanted to reach God’s heart. And wanted to do that while solidly rooted in God’s good world, not from behind cloister walls. In his hunger for the Silence, he’d promised himself that if it ever visited him again, he would fall on his knees—on his face, even—in utter gratitude, no matter where it found him. Instead, he did what he usually did when it came. He argued. Which was just as well, considering that he was standing in snow to his ankles.
How could You allow Martine’s death? he demanded. Why? She was so young. She was innocent, good, beautiful.
The air itself seemed to bite back at him. No one young and innocent and good ever dies?
This was murder, Charles flung silently back.
For a long moment, nothing moved at all. Then the air seemed to sigh. I know something of blood, the Silence said.
Chastened, Charles bowed his head. Yes. But Your blood was for healing. What can be worth this girl’s death?
Worth? the Silence said. Life and death are a bargain?
Not a bargain, Charles thought back. But does death mean nothing?
A small cold wind breathed along the lane. Nothing is wasted, the Silence said. And added, Unless you waste it. And was gone.
Charles stumbled out of the lane, breathing as though he’d been running and wondering why he’d longed so desperately for the Silence to come back when it only gave him answers he didn’t want.
Chapter 7
When Charles reached Louis le Grand, he took his turn at overseeing dinner for the pensionnaires and their tutors who hadn’t gone to the country house in Gentilly. During the holidays, the fully professed Jesuits usually ate separately, in the fathers’ refectory, leaving the scholastics like Charles to take turns overseeing student meals. It was a small group, and both younger and older boys ate together in the older pensionnaires’ dining hall. Today’s dinner, for which Charles had little appetite, was a savory mutton gallimaufrée. A half dozen braziers had been brought in as an extra holiday treat, though in the vast room, no one sitting more than a few feet from one felt any warmth. But at least their orange glow was pleasant to see on a dark, snowy day and made the ceiling’s faded gold stars shine between its dark beams.
When dinner was over and the refectory empty, Charles went to Père Le Picart and told him what he’d learned at the Châtelet and the Brion house. The rector demurred at the idea of Charles scouring the city’s coffeehouses and reluctantly decided to give the notary one more day to appear on his own.
“I have thought of something else I could do this afternoon in regard to this, mon père, if you permit,” Charles said. “I keep thinking about the classes beginning on Monday and all that will then be upon us.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I would like to talk to Maître Richaud. He went with me to the Place Maubert yesterday to call on a chandler from the artisans’ Congregation of the Sainte Vierge. He may have heard something about the Mynette household, or about Henri Brion.”
“That is well th
ought.” Le Picart frowned briefly. “I believe—yes, I am sure you will find him just now in the first house on the right in the student court, in the bedding closet.”
Startled—not for the first time—at Le Picart’s minute knowledge of who was doing what in his domain, Charles went through the Cour d’honneur and through an archway into the next courtyard to the north, the student court. The bedding closet was a small, windowless room on the ground floor, where sheets and blankets were kept in old wooden chests and newer cupboards with tall doors. Maître Richaud was indeed there, muttering to himself with his nose nearly touching a heavy linen sheet.
“Holes? How am I supposed to see holes in pitch dark?” He lifted the sheet higher and turned slightly toward the open door.
“You could light a candle,” Charles said mildly from the doorway. “Unless, of course, you prefer to curse the darkness . . .” A strong scent of lavender and wormwood, specifics against moths—and probably also unwelcome to nesting mice—came from a chest whose lid stood open.
“We’re told to save candles.” Richaud looked up irritably. “Oh. It’s you. Well, stand out of the light, if you can call it that.” He went back to examining the sheet.
“Want help?”
Richaud grunted, and Charles pulled a sheet from the open chest. “The other morning, when we went to the Place Maubert,” Charles began, “did you—”
“Look at this! The entire middle is gone! What do they do, stick swords through them?”
“Can’t it be mended?”
“Oh, I suppose so.” Richaud threw the sheet into a pile on the floor and picked up another. “What about the Place Maubert?”
“While you were with your chandler,” Charles said patiently, “did you hear any talk about the Brion family on the rue Perdue? Or about a Mademoiselle Martine Mynette?”
“The one who’s dead?”
“So you know that. How?”
“Probably everyone in the college knows it. Once the porter at the postern door hears, everyone knows. Of course, I don’t listen to gossip,” Richaud added repressively, and nodded with satisfaction—whether at the sheet he held or his own uprightness, Charles couldn’t tell.
Keeping a firm grip on himself, Charles said mildly, “If someone gossiped beside you—in the chandler’s shop on the Place Maubert, say—how could you help hearing it?”
“You’re the one who went to the Brion house, Maître du Luc. And they knew the Mynette girl, so I heard, and knew her very well. Why are you asking me about these people?”
Charles cast his eyes up, glad of the dim light. “Because gossip and what people say of themselves and their closest friends are not often the same thing. And because I’ve been directed to ask, if that salves your conscience.”
Richaud’s eyes slid sideways toward Charles. “What kind of gossip?” He dropped another sheet onto the pile and picked up a stack of neatly folded sheets.
“Any kind,” Charles said, stifling the urge to tear a strip off a discarded sheet and strangle Richaud with it.
“Well . . . I did hear something.” Richaud dumped his stack of sheets into the open chest. “About the Brion son,” he said, straightening. “Gilles, he’s called.”
Charles nodded encouragingly.
“He hated that Mynette girl. Because his father was making him court her and he didn’t want to, he wants to be a monk.”
“A monk?” Charles said in surprise. Well, that explained a lot.
“But his father won’t give him an endowment to take to the monastery,” Richaud said. “Refused to give him anything at all unless he married the girl, who was supposed to get a lot of money after her mother died.”
“Oh?” Charles tried to keep his tone even. “Who told you this?”
“The chandler’s apprentice.”
Charles went on studying the sheet in his hands and considered what Richaud had just said about Isabel’s brother. Was it a motive for murder? An argument could be made either way. On the one hand, Martine would probably have had no qualms about opening the door to Gilles Brion. So he would have had easy entrance to the house if he wanted to kill her. But on the other hand, though Gilles might well have killed Martine in sudden desperation, his father would almost certainly try to force some other heiress on him. So what would taking such a terrible risk gain him in the end? Most people had few choices about their lives beyond what their parents chose for them. Even when they came of age, defying parental choice usually meant losing not only the means to live, but the social connections necessary to get on in the world. Parental will and family gain ruled everything.
Charles wondered if the neighborhood police commissaire knew about young Brion’s forced courtship of Martine. Probably, if even the neighborhood apprentices knew. But it wasn’t something to leave to chance.
“Thank you, maître.” Charles thrust his bed sheet at Richaud and made for the street passage, leaving Richaud complaining loudly that he could at least have folded the sheet first.
But before Charles reached the postern, he was overtaken by a small crowd of teenage boys escorted by their tutors. The boys were all helping to carry a deep basket full of dark round loaves and piles of clothing.
“It’s time, maître!” one of them said excitedly.
Charles had forgotten completely about overseeing the distribution of alms by these representatives of the older pensionnaires’ Congregation of the Ste. Vierge. With an effort, he swallowed his frustration at the delay in seeing the police commissaire and in finding Lieutenant-Général La Reynie, for whom no detail of policing the city was too small and who might be anywhere in Paris. Charles dismissed the escorting tutors and followed the boys into the main building’s anteroom, where the big double doors opened directly onto the street. The boys brought a heavy walnut table from the neighboring grand salon, placed it before the doors, and piled the loaves and clothing on it. Then Charles drew them together to pray for God’s poor and ask the Holy Virgin to increase mercy and generosity in their own hearts. At the “amen,” two boys pulled the doors open to the snowy street. Everyone knew that alms were given out on Friday afternoons, but no one approached until the doors stood open. Charles pulled his cloak more tightly closed, wondering aloud if the weather might keep people away, but the boys all shook their heads.
“No, maître,”Walter Connor said. Connor was one of Charles’s rhetoric students and dancers, and the journey to his home in Ireland was too long for the short holiday. “The worse the weather, the more they need. They’ll come.”
He had hardly finished speaking before three ragged men and a woman appeared at the doors, as though they’d conjured themselves from the air. Charles stepped forward, greeted and blessed them, nodded at the students, and stood back. His role now was to see that the boys distributed the alms courteously and evenhandedly, intervening only if there was need.
The crowd of beggars grew quickly. Connor and three other boys handed out loaves, and the rest offered the worn but serviceable clothing and shoes from the store they’d brought with them. One of the boys held out a long manteau of soft brown wool, hardly worn, to a thin, pockmarked woman. She snatched it from him and held it against her chest, stroking the cloth, wide-eyed at her good fortune. Watching her, Charles thought of the young butcher in the artisans’ Congregation who had given it. Knowing that the man’s wife had recently died in childbirth and that he had other small children to provide for, Charles had urged him to sell it to the secondhand clothing dealers. But the butcher had pushed it into Charles’s arms, saying brokenly that it was his wife’s and that she had always been tenderhearted to the poor.
Charles’s thoughts jumped from that death to Martine’s. Forcing aside his memory of her lifeless body on the bloodfouled floor, he told himself that even if the drunken maid had not left the house door open, only forgotten to bar it, it was possible that someone had a key, honestly or by stealth. Gilles Brion, for example, could easily have come by a key. His father, as the family notary and the girl’
s guardian, surely had a key. Charles took a mental step back and reconsidered the elder Brion. Whom no one admitted to seeing since yesterday. Who had apparently lied about searching for the lost donation at the Châtelet. But why would Henri Brion lie about searching for the donation? He had forced his son to court the girl for the Mynette money. Why would he intentionally conceal the document that ensured that the money would come to her? And if the donation was not found, presumably the Jesuits would get the money. Which was the last thing Henri Brion would want. Those thoughts led Charles back to the younger Brion. If Gilles had killed Martine, what would he do next? Had Henri Brion vanished because he knew his son had killed her and was busy helping him get out of France, busy working out a pretext for the boy’s sudden absence? But would Henri Brion try to save his son if the boy had killed the pretty goose and lost the family’s chance at the golden egg? A son—an only son, as far as Charles knew—was a son, though. For some men, nothing mattered more than that.
“I don’t want that, give me that thicker one, the green one there, you bloated whelp, hand it over!”
Charles came abruptly back to the almsgiving and was at the doors before the angry demand reached its end. A bearded old man leaning on a stick had flung a brown coat onto the table and was grabbing for a green one held by one of the younger students. The boy had backed away from the shouting beggar and was looking anxiously at Charles.
“Calm yourself, monsieur.” Charles took the coat from the boy. “And have some respect for the Virgin’s alms. We are glad to give you this coat, no need to grab for it.”
The man glowered at him, his eyes hollow under straggling gray brows. “No need to grab from them with money and feasts on their table every day? Them with their golden boxes, while other men starve in the street!”