by Judith Rock
Golden boxes? Charles peered more closely at the dirty seamed face and recognized the man who had attacked the Condé’s reliquary on Christmas Eve. He looked for the young companion who had seemed to be the old man’s keeper, but didn’t see him.
“That box is not ours to sell, monsieur. We must do with it what its giver asked. What is your name?”
The man froze like a wary animal. Then his sinewy hand shot out and snatched the green coat, and he limped away with surprising speed. The boys began to murmur indignantly, but Charles hushed them.
“Do you think men always control their fate?” he asked reprovingly, and reminded them of all the things that could bring an ordinary man to begging. Sin, surely, but also simple ill luck, sickness of body or mind, all the misfortunes that crushed a man as though he were a flea. No matter how much the flea might pray, some impious voice said in Charles’s mind. Then a clutch of women surrounded by crying, shivering children pushed their way to the front of the crowd, and for the next half hour, he and the boys were too busy for thinking.
By the time the store of alms was gone, the final blessing given, and the great doors shut, the short winter afternoon was already beginning to fade. The boys put the walnut table back in the salon and gathered around Charles. He led them in prayers of thanksgiving to the Virgin, finished with an Ave, and dismissed them to their waiting tutors. Before anyone else could want him for something, he was through the postern and on his way to the Place Maubert police commissaire and the rue Perdue.
The commissaire was not at home. His sergent, of course, had no idea where Lieutenant-Général La Reynie might be found. Henri Brion was still not at home, either. The maidservant took him up to the salon, where Mlle Brion and M. Callot rose from their chairs on either side of the fire to greet him. Isabel Brion was dressed in black now. Her eyes were red and her face tired and drawn. She looked a different creature from the rosy, exuberant girl Charles had met the day before. Callot was sober and nearly as subdued as his great-niece. He placed a cushioned and fringed chair for Charles between the other chairs, and they all sat quietly until Charles broke the silence.
“Monsieur Callot, your servant says that Monsieur Henri Brion is not yet at home.”
“No. He is not.”
“Where do you suppose he is?”
“Nowhere I care to mention before my great-niece.”
Charles decided that he would have to leave finding the elder Brion to Lieutenant-Général La Reynie, but before he could ask about Gilles, Isabel Brion spoke.
“Martine is to be buried on Monday morning, maître. Her funeral Mass will be at Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet, do you know it? It is just a little south of the Place. Will you—oh—but no, forgive me—” She colored and looked away, and Charles thought he knew why.
“I know what is being said about her death, mademoiselle,” he said gently. “But if my rector permits, I will be there.”
M. Callot spoke from the flickering shadows on Charles’s other side. “And that which is being said, maître, do you swear it is false?”
His great-niece gasped. “Uncle Callot! Be quiet! Of course it is false, you have only to look at him to know he tells the truth!”
“I am not a young girl, Isabel, to have my mind made up by a handsome face.”
Charles felt himself go as red as the flames in the fireplace. Thankful for the room’s dimness, he turned toward Callot. “I assure you, monsieur,” he said evenly, “the Society of Jesus had nothing whatever to do with Mademoiselle Mynette’s death. You well know that there are always those ready to accuse us of any ill thing that happens.”
Callot grunted. “But money is money. A significant sum of money, which more than a few would do much to have.”
“Including your nephew, I understand.”
The old man bridled at Charles’s riposte. “So you’ve learned more about the unhappy courtship my nephew forced on his son? Ah, well, it is true enough.”
Charles decided that bluntness was the fastest way to what he needed. “How much did young Monsieur Brion dislike being forced into courtship?”
“He didn’t kill her! He would never kill anyone!” Isabel Brion shook her head so hard that one of her pearl earrings fell into her lap. “He was obeying my father. Although I would dearly have loved having Martine as my sister, I begged my father and begged him to stop forcing Gilles, but he—he—oh, may God forgive him, my father is so greedy!” Trying to hold in tears, she rose and went to the small mirror beside the fireplace to replace her earring.
“Is your father in such urgent need of money, mademoiselle? And where is he, does he know of Mademoiselle Mynette’s death?” Charles ventured.
“I don’t know where he is. Or whether he knows she is dead. He is the master here and comes and goes as he will.” She sighed. “As for money, who is not in need of more?” She turned from the mirror and wiped her eyes with a tiny black linen handkerchief. “But to get it, my father has made Gilles desperately unhappy. He wants to be a monk. And my father will never let him.”
“Having his religious vocation thwarted could make a man very angry,” Charles said quietly. “Where is your brother, mademoiselle ?”
Too late, she saw the danger of what she said. “Gilles is across the river with the Capuchins, where he always is!” she flung at Charles. “Go and see, if you don’t believe me!”
“Ah, it seems you are no longer so handsome, maître,” Callot murmured.
“Mademoiselle,” Charles said, “someone viciously murdered your friend and must be discovered. At any cost. No one is beyond suspicion.”
“What about me, then?” she demanded.
Charles started to say that she could hardly have a reason to wish her friend dead but then held his tongue. For all he knew, she might have some motivation, though he couldn’t imagine what it would be. “Where were you, then, mademoiselle, when she was killed?”
“Here,” Isabel Brion said hopelessly, all the fight suddenly gone out of her. “Asleep, I suppose. Then I went to her house with Uncle Callot and she was dead.” She turned to the fire, wiping her eyes. “Oh, Blessed Virgin, I wish I had been with her to keep her safe. Or that she had come to us, as my father wished!”
“Can anyone swear that you were here asleep?” Charles pressed her, thinking that he might as well do the thing thoroughly.
She spun around in surprise, realizing that he was taking her seriously. “My maid. She sleeps in my chamber.”
Not necessarily proof, but Charles let it go. He could not believe in Isabel Brion as her friend’s killer. Though not believing is hardly the same thing as knowing, the ruthlessly blunt part of himself pointed out. He turned to Callot. “And you, monsieur?”
“The same. Asleep. Though with no one to swear to it. I have no valet. But you have only to look at me to know that I have not the strength to do what was done.”
Charles was not sure he believed that, either, but Callot seemed as unlikely a killer as his great-niece. Beyond the salon windows, the December dusk was closing in and the corners of the room were filling with shadows. Charles shifted in his chair, knowing he should leave. “What about Mademoiselle Mynette’s maid, the one who found her?”
“Renée? Oh, she’s too lazy to kill anyone,” Isabel Brion said dismissively. “And from the smell of her, she’d drunk herself to sleep the night before. She’s a good enough woman, though, good-tempered, and she’d been with the Mynettes for a long time.”
“I see. Well, it grows late and I must take my leave, mademoiselle, monsieur.” Charles got to his feet. “When Monsieur Henri Brion comes home, I beg you—”
The salon door opened, and Charles turned eagerly, thinking that the notary had at last returned, but it was a much younger man who stood hesitating on the threshold.
“Gilles!”
Isabel rushed to embrace her brother, but Callot remained sitting by the fire, eyeing his great-nephew.
“I’m so glad you’ve come home,” she cried. She looked over
her shoulder. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” she said to Charles, and stepped away from her brother. “Maître du Luc, may I present my brother, Monsieur Gilles Brion?”
The young man turned his wary, slightly open-mouthed stare on Charles, and his sister made an exasperated noise.
“Gilles?”
Her voice prodded him into an awkward bow, and Charles inclined his head in return. Gilles Brion stood barely as tall as his sister, small boned and delicate. He seemed younger than Isabel, though Charles didn’t know his age. His elaborate light brown wig dwarfed his sallow face. Finely embroidered lace frothed at the neck and cuffs of his ash-brown broadcloth coat, and the heels on his water-spotted but well-made shoes were unnecessarily high. Without them, he probably wouldn’t even reach the tip of his sister’s nose.
Poor Martine, Charles thought, before he could stop himself. Or, perhaps, poor Capuchins . . .
Mlle Brion laid a hand on Gilles’s arm. “We have been talking about Martine.” Her eyes searched his face. “You may not know, Gilles, but she—she is dead. Someone killed her.”
“Dead?” Young Brion—it was hard not to think of him as a boy, though he must be in his twenties—was suddenly radiant. His eyes shone and he clasped his hands to his breast. Seeing the look on his sister’s face, he let his hands fall and tried for a suitably shocked countenance.
“That is terrible, Isabel. But how can she be—” He shook his head in seeming confusion. “Who would kill Martine?” His eyes went from face to face. Everyone was watching him intently, and no one answered him. The blood drained from his cheeks, leaving his eyes dark as caves. “Who, Isabel?” He clutched her hand. “Have they found him? If they have not found him, the commissaire will say it was me!”
“Was it?” Charles said pleasantly.
Gilles caught his breath, suddenly as red as he’d been pale, and his jaw set with anger. “How dare you say that!”
So, Charles thought, not quite as limp as he seems. “I was only startled by your own words, monsieur. Why would anyone think you killed her? Where were you early this morning?”
“That is none of your concern, maître,” Gilles said through stiff lips.
Charles rose from the chair and advanced on him. “I met Mademoiselle Mynette just yesterday, Monsieur Brion. This morning I saw her lying in her blood. Finding a murderer is every man’s concern. So I repeat, where were you early this morning?”
Brion flinched. “Here, of course. Before dawn, I mean. Asleep. Like everyone else. Then I went to the Capuchins for Prime.”
“I understood that you were paying court to Mademoiselle Martine Mynette?”
“No! I mean—yes. But only because—” Brion stared at Charles like a hunted animal. “My father forced me,” he said defiantly. “She was a good girl. She—but I didn’t want her! I don’t want any girl; I want to be a monk.” His shoulders slumped and he sighed hopelessly. “Everyone knew it, and now the commissaire will think I killed her. Blessed saints, alive she was a stone around my neck, and dead she will pull me down to hell! God knows, I am sorry she is dead, but I had nothing to do with it!”
Callot finally spoke. “So go and tell your monks they can have you now. Quickly, before your father finds you another heiress. And before the police commissaire comes for you.”
Brion looked in panic at the windows. “Is he coming?”
Callot rolled his eyes. “Can I see through walls? How do I know? He was here earlier and I told him you were off praying.”
Isabel Brion looked at Callot suspiciously. “Was he really here, uncle? Why did you not tell us?”
Callot smiled blandly. “Our good commissaire was not worried. He knows he will not need to hunt your brother through the taverns.” He looked the boy up and down. “And certainly not through the usual brothels, more’s the pity.”
“God forgive you.” Brion’s eyes filled with tears and his voice quivered. “If I were as old as you, I would have more care for my immortal soul.”
“You will not need to, when you are as old as I, Gilles. Your frightened little soul will long since have left your unused body and be flapping around God’s ears like a mosquito, whining its little prayers.”
The old man’s attack was so full of acid that it took Charles’s breath away. For the first time, Charles felt some sympathy for Gilles Brion. But if the young man thought that the Capuchins were going to coddle his overweening self-love, he was, from what Charles knew of Capuchins, in for an unpleasantly surprising novitiate. If he ever got even that far.
Both the young Brions were staring furiously at Callot. The boy’s mouth was still trembling but the girl looked as though, had Charles not been there, the commissaire might have had two murders on his hands. Gilles Brion finally blundered out of the salon, and his sister followed him. Charles and Callot listened to their footsteps on the stairs. The murmur of their voices rose and fell in the foyer until, upon a dismayed cry from Mlle Brion, the house door opened and closed. Then they heard her on the stairs again and saw her hurry past the salon door and climb to the floor above. She was crying as though her heart would break.
Callot sighed heavily. “I apologize for Gilles. As they say, dress a spindly bush in lace and fine cloth, it looks like a man. Undress it, it is nothing but a bush.”
“Still, you love him, don’t you?” Charles said, standing by the fire. “Even though you nearly flayed him alive just now.”
“You have a very hearing ear. God help me, of course I love him, I have to love him, he’s my niece’s son, though she was worth a dozen of him. And a dozen of his father, too. But Gilles made me ill just now, the way he talked about Martine. That precious girl is dead, and he thinks only of himself.”
“Do you think he killed her?”
Callot spat into the fire. “Of course not. No matter how much he whined about her—can you imagine complaining about marrying that delectable girl?—he is not stupid enough to have killed her. But I tell you, if he says one more selfish word about her, I may kill him!”
Chapter 8
Outside, the cold was deepening and it was full dark. The street lanterns were lit, but the little rue Perdue had few of them, and Charles had to pick his way carefully over patches of ice. As he went, he admonished himself for his contempt toward Gilles Brion’s claim to a religious vocation. Any Jesuit should know better. “There are very few people,” St. Ignatius had written, “who realize what God would make of them if they abandoned themselves into His hands, and let themselves be formed by His grace.”
But, Charles told himself, even if he had no right to judge Gilles Brion’s vocation, he had every right to find out if the young man had committed murder. And if he had, to bring justice on him. On the whole, though, Charles doubted that he had, simply because he couldn’t imagine Gilles taking such decisive action. He wondered, though, why Mlle Brion had been crying after talking to her brother alone. She was worried, exhausted, grieving, all of that. But she’d left the salon dry-eyed and angry. What had her brother said to reduce her to such despairing tears?
Ahead of Charles, shouts and singing spilled from a tavern. La Queue du Cheval’s sign showed plump brown equine hindquarters, with a long yellow tail sporting a bow of blue ribbon. The Horse’s Tail was doing a good Friday night business, crowded with Parisians celebrating the holidays. In spite of the cold, the door was open, and as Charles got nearer, he caught the words of the song the patrons were bellowing.
“Elle était riche, elle est morte
Les Jésuites dansent sur son corps.
Elle est perdue, pour ainsi dire,
Les Jésuites pour enrichir!”
His first furious reaction was to start for the tavern door, but his second was less stupid and he kept walking, repeating the gist of the song under his breath. “She was rich, she is dead,” the drinkers were bawling, “the Jesuits are dancing on her corpse. She is lost—so to speak—to make the Jesuits richer!” Though cautiously not saying it outright, the song was claiming that Jesuits had ki
lled Martine or connived at her death. And with a clever little slam at the Society’s commitment to dance—something enemies frequently criticized—thrown in for good measure.
Behind him, men were coming out of the tavern, and Charles moved close to a house wall, as far into shadow as he could, and stood listening and watching.
“So let’s take pots and bells and sing it under their windows, the greedy bastards!” someone said, to a chorus of enthusiastic agreement. “Treacherous to France, that’s what they are,” someone else said drunkenly. “Always after power and gold for the pope.” That got angry muttering, which swelled into shouts of, “Let’s serenade them, then, let’s go!”
But they only reeled around the corner of the tavern, fumbling with their breeches so they could water the tavern wall.
Charles walked on and got back to the college and the fathers’ refectory with time enough before supper to wait for Père Le Picart in the passage outside the door. Tonight it was someone else’s turn to supervise the students’ supper, so Charles ate with the other Jesuits. When Le Picart arrived, Charles told him about the elder Brion’s continued elusiveness and the younger Brion’s connection to Martine. Then, reluctantly, he recounted the song being sung in The Horse’s Tail. Grim-faced, Le Picart nodded and dismissed him to sit with the other scholastics. Grace was said and Charles greeted the others at his table. Then, avoiding as much conversation as he politely could, he ate his way steadily through a stew of salted fish followed by dried apples. He was more grateful for the crackling fire in the great hooded fireplace than for what was on his plate, but too worried about Martine Mynette’s murder and the poisonous tavern song to pay much attention to either. When the final grace was said, he escaped and went to his chamber—cold, but blessedly quiet and even more blessedly private.
In spite of the chill, he opened a shutter and looked out at the street. The night was windless and the street lanterns hung motionless from their long iron hooks on the sides of buildings. When he’d arrived last summer, the lanterns had hung from chains stretched across the street, but during the autumn the chains had been taken down and the hooks put in place, making it easier to lower and raise the lanterns to replace the two-pound candles they burned. The candles would burn till after midnight, casting gold-tinged shadows on the ground and picking out the ruffles of snow lying along window ledges and the tops of walls. Across the rue St. Jacques, the windows of most of the University houses were dark, but that would change soon, as scholars and professors returned for the start of new classes. On Sunday, Père Jouvancy would return, and he and Charles would begin working in earnest on the theatre performance scheduled for mid-February. And then it will be Lent, Charles thought, with an inward sigh. A holy season with much to offer mind and spirit, but one the body perpetually dreaded. Fasting was no longer as strict as in times past, but it was strict enough. And would likely be even more so in the refectory this year. Especially if the Mynette fortune went elsewhere.