The Eloquence of Blood

by Judith Rock

  “And they went toward the river? You’re sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Where does this Monsieur Bizeul live?”

  Her hand stilled. “I will have to think on that.”

  “Think well, Reine.” But he didn’t press her. Instead, he turned to the woman kneading dough. “Did you see any of this, Renée? Do you know these men?”

  She shook her head and reached up to tighten the white linen kerchief she wore over her brown hair, fumbling with the knot at the nape of her neck. “I was back here, how could I see them?” she said, returning to her kneading as if she had her enemies under her hands.

  “You were not, you were still at your Martine’s house,” the cook said laconically, without looking around.

  The woman flung her head up and spat over her shoulder, “What if I was? Who cares where I was?”

  La Reynie glanced at Reine, listening intently from her corner, then turned back to Renée. “Ah, yes, you worked in the Mynette house,” he said to the younger woman, making it a statement, not a question. “How could I have forgotten that?” His tone made it clear to Charles, at least, that he had not forgotten for a moment.

  Renée leaned on her fists in the dough, her breath coming short. “Yes, I worked there. And if I could find the animal who murdered her, I would tear his throat out. Whoever he is, he came there to kill her. Don’t bother thinking he was some ordinary thief she interrupted as he was about his black business. Your commissaire made me search the whole house and nothing was taken. Nothing!”

  Flames leaped as a log broke in the fireplace, and Charles saw that Renée’s eyes were the same vivid green as the old woman’s. Her face, though, was round and plain, while the old woman had bones a duchess would pine for. Charles suddenly remembered where he’d seen Renée’s smoke-blue skirt, good-quality wool, much better than a kitchen servant would have.

  “You were Mademoiselle Mynette’s maid,” he said, moving so that she could see him. “I had a glimpse of you yesterday morning at the Mynette house, when the commissaire was questioning you.”

  La Reynie nodded at Charles and stepped a little aside. Taking his cue, Charles said courteously, “I am Maître du Luc. I know the Brion family. Before you found Mademoiselle Mynette yesterday morning, did you hear anything unusual, anyone in the street, or at the door?”

  Suddenly shamefaced, Renée shrugged and looked away, biting her lip. Charles remembered M. Callot saying angrily that the maid had been the worse for drink when she found Martine.

  “I think you did hear something,” Charles said, watching her.

  She turned back to him, her eyes glistening with tears. “I heard—I thought I heard—someone call up to her from the street. But I didn’t get up to see.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I was heavy with sleep.”

  “With drink,” the cook said laconically from the fireside. He upended his glass and refilled it.

  “Hush, Giuseppe,” the old woman said sharply. “Let her be!”

  “And being understandably tired the night before from all your work—I’ve heard that the other Mynette servants had already left—perhaps you forgot to lock and bar the street door?” Charles read the answer in her sullen face. “You were alone in the house with Mademoiselle Mynette, were you not?”

  “Except for the boy who turned the spit in the kitchen and laid the fires. The others went like rats from a foundered ship. They knew that paper she needed was gone, and if she didn’t get it back, how would she pay them?”

  “Did any leave with pay owing to them?”

  “No! She had her faults, but she would have fasted to a bone before she let any go unpaid.”

  Charles was sure that Martine Mynette would have done exactly that. “But grudges can still be held unfairly. Who were the servants who left?”

  Renée’s eyes, suddenly calculating, went from Charles to La Reynie.

  “There was Paul Saglio. The footman. My young mistress turned him out when her mother was ill. She wouldn’t tell me exactly why, but it wasn’t hard to guess. Monsieur Saglio was much too free with his hands,” she said resentfully. “With Mademoiselle Martine’s mother lying ill, he thought there was no one to protect her.” Her eyes flashed and she picked up a knife lying beside the bread board and shook it at Charles. “If I’d seen him, I would have made him a capon, you may be sure of that. And he would never have bothered another woman!”

  Charles regarded her thoughtfully. “So you are saying that this Paul Saglio likely went away angry at Mademoiselle Martine. Where did he go?”

  “Vaugirard, most likely. He always said he knew someone there who could get him a better place, if he wanted it.”

  Then it shouldn’t be hard to find him, Charles thought. The village of Vaugirard was only a few miles south of Paris. “Did anyone else leave with a grudge?”

  “The gardener, maybe. Tito he’s called.” Renée glanced at Reine and said, “He left in the autumn. And good riddance.”

  “Why?”

  “He was a liar.”

  A rustling came from the corner. “You’ve told me he was just soft-witted, Renée,” the old woman said reprovingly.

  “That, too. He was always saying people took things from him. What did he own? Nothing. What would anyone take from him? Anyway, he left.”

  “Why did he leave? And what is his surname?”

  Renée dealt her dough a hard slap and turned it over. “He’s Tito La Rue. Late one night at the start of November, I found him opening Mademoiselle Martine’s bedchamber door. Mademoiselle Anne was already ill, but not yet so desperately ill. She’d fallen asleep and Mademoiselle Martine had gone to bed, too. I was just going to my own bed when I saw him. I chased him downstairs and outside, and he spent the night in the garden shed. When I told Mademoiselle Anne the next day, that was the end of him.”

  “Was he angry at being dismissed?”

  She snorted. “No, he wept and pleaded with Mademoiselle Anne to let him stay. Even if he is soft-witted, he’s a man and he knew what he was doing!”

  “Where did he go?”

  She shrugged and shook her head. “Who knows? If you want to know about all the servants, there was also the cook, Thérèse, her name is. After Mademoiselle Martine’s mother grew ill, Thérèse started taking things. Little things, but worth something. But she is an excellent cook, so Mademoiselle Martine only warned her. And locked the jewelry and silver away. Thérèse pretended to be very insulted and went home to her mother in St. Denis. To sell what she’d stolen.” Renée pummeled her dough.

  Servants could be punished severely for attempting assault on a mistress or for stealing. Tito and Thérèse had gotten off lightly and would have known it, would have had every reason to be grateful. Mentally dismissing the light-fingered cook along with the lusty gardener, Charles said, “So only Paul Saglio seemed truly angry at Mademoiselle Martine Mynette. Yet the others left. All except you.”

  “I’m loyal, me.” Muttering under her breath, Renée wiped her hands on her apron and went to the fire, where she plucked the cook’s glass from his hand and drained it. Without a word, the cook took it from her and filled it again. Renée stalked back to her dough.

  Well, Charles thought, loyal or not, there was little need to ask why she’d stayed with Martine Mynette. And little need to wonder if she might have killed her young mistress herself. Why would she destroy the soft nest she’d found for herself? In a disintegrating household, Renée would have been well fed and free to drink herself to sleep every night under a good roof, with no one the wiser. Charles looked questioningly at La Reynie, who shook his head slightly and glanced toward the door into the coffeehouse. They thanked the women and the cook and took their leave, but before they reached the door, Reine called out, “Nicolas, you will find Monsieur Bizeul the goldsmith at the Sign of Two Angels, on the rue Christine.”

  La Reynie walked back to where she sat. “What else do you know about him?”

  She looked up from her carv
ing and smiled, revealing missing and blackened teeth. “Much that was of use to me. Nothing that would be of use to you.”

  La Reynie moved closer to her, and Charles saw coins glint in the firelight. Then Charles followed him back to the front room and the counter where the Sicilian woman was busy over her accounts.

  “On Thursday, madame,” La Reynie said, “not long before you closed, three men were here together. Monsieur Claude Bizeul the goldsmith, Monsieur Henri Brion the notary, and another man. Do you remember them?”

  Her black eyes were opaque, her face expressionless. “No, monsieur.”

  “Surely you are more noticing of your customers than that, madame.”

  “They gave me no reason to notice them.”

  La Reynie leaned closer. “Then tell me what you did not notice, madame. Because one of them, Monsieur Henri Brion, is dead. As I am certain you already know.”

  Dislike flared in her face and was as quickly gone. “Of course I know. Old Reine told me. But it’s nothing to do with Procope’s. And how can I tell you what I did not see?”

  The lieutenant-général gave her his teeth-baring smile. “Easily, if you wish Procope’s to remain in business, madame.”

  She breathed in slowly, her nostrils white and pinched. “Perhaps I remember them slightly. The dead man was here often and so is Monsieur Bizeul. The third, the younger one, I had not seen before. That is the truth, as the Virgin sees me. They argued, but not so I could hear what they said. In his anger, Monsieur Brion spilled his coffee onto the floor. Monsieur Bizeul said to me that Monsieur Brion was drunk. The two pulled Monsieur Brion to his feet, apologized to me for his discourtesy, and the three of them left. That is all.”

  A small hissing sound made Charles look toward the fireplace. The waiter who had served them earlier rolled his eyes at the woman and shook his head. As though bored with waiting for La Reynie, Charles wandered toward the street door. The waiter grabbed a broom and energetically swept his way to the door.

  “I heard your talk with her, mon père, I cannot help it. She is lying.” He glanced at the woman behind the counter and pulled a towel from the waist of his breeches. Flourishing it across the seat of a chair, he said, “The little notary did not spill the coffee. The young companion, the one she did not name, he pushed it off the table, and they blamed the notary to make him leave. You understand?”

  Charles nodded. “Who was the young companion, mon ami?”

  “Alas, I do not know him. But the notary, he did not want to go! He pulled from them, he cursed them, but they forced him. They repeated that he was drunk and apologized for him.” The waiter’s eyes were as round as the coffee bowls, and his jet eyebrows were halfway up his pockmarked forehead. “But they were very angry with him. And now Reine says he is dead.”

  “Luigi!” The woman’s voice was furious. “To your work!”

  The waiter made an eloquent face at Charles and scurried away. Charles smiled vaguely at several men who had watched the exchange and went casually into the street. When La Reynie joined him, Charles told him what the waiter had said.

  “So the spilled coffee was an excuse for taking Brion out of here,” the lieutenant-général said grimly. “And he has not been seen, so far as we know, by anyone else since he was taken out of here. Why a respectable goldsmith would have a hand in killing him is hard to imagine. But I am going to the barrière for the sergent, and he and I are going to call on Monsieur Bizeul and see what story he cares to tell.”

  “And me? Am I dismissed?”

  Le Reynie’s mouth twitched. “I am only lieutenant-général of Paris. If memory serves, I have not been entirely successful at telling you what to do.”

  Before Charles could answer that, a loud and untuneful voice made them turn toward the end of the street. A street vendor, the frayed and wilting brim of his plumed hat at a rakish angle, his arms full of printed sheets, was walking toward them, singing:

  “Elle était riche, elle est morte

  Les Jésuites dansent sur son corps.

  Elle est perdue, pour ainsi dire,

  Les Jésuites pour enrichir!”

  Chapter 11

  Charles started toward the singer, but La Reynie put out a hand and stopped him. The singer, seeing Charles, grinned and redoubled his efforts, flourishing his song sheets at house windows as he bellowed out the words. An upper casement opened, and a woman shouted down that he should leave a sheet on her doorstep. As she tossed him a coin, two grinning men came out of a shop to buy copies. Charles seethed but held where he was. La Reynie leaned on his walking stick and watched. The singer kept coming. Then he saw La Reynie, shut his mouth abruptly, and disappeared into an opening between houses. Charles hurried to the place where he’d turned and found a tiny alley snaking into shadows.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” La Reynie said behind him. “Anyone could be waiting for you down there. Or for me. I am even more unpopular than you are.”

  “The man is inciting violence! Men have already—” Charles swallowed the end of his words, belatedly remembering the rector’s order not to talk about the attack on Louis le Grand.

  La Reynie cocked an interested eyebrow, but contented himself with saying, “When one broadside seller is peddling a scurrilous song, you may be sure that two dozen others are doing the same across the city. You look like you’ve heard that song before.”

  “Last night. As I passed a tavern called The Horse’s Tail, near the Place Maubert. If you let them go on singing the thing all over Paris, Jesuits will not be able to go out into the streets! Nor will our students, and most of our classes for day students are about to start.”

  “Maître.” La Reynie sighed. “Even in Provence and Languedoc, you must have had broadside sellers. If the songs are seditious, I imprison the sellers and try to find the printers. But these people are like fleas; who can be rid of them? And this song does not even mention the king. Yes, it stirs up the people and I will try to find out the source. But surely you know that the only thing that will stop it is catching the Mynette girl’s killer. And Henri Brion’s killer, because, as you have already implied, Henri Brion is going to be the song’s next verse unless the killer is quickly found. And now, before I look for the would-be monk, who seems to stick to his Capuchins like a leech and is probably the least likely of my suspects to disappear, I am going to visit Monsieur Bizeul the goldsmith.” He smiled ominously. “I regulate the guilds, you know. If he is innocent, he will tell me what he knows rather than provoke me. If not—I will provoke him. As for you, go back to the college by the main streets. And shut your ears to insults. Your soldier’s training will not serve you against a crowd, nor will a reputation for street brawling improve things for the Society of Jesus.”

  “That sounds suspiciously like an order.”

  “Does it?” La Reynie laughed softly as he bowed. “Then God go with you as you obey it.”

  “Wait, mon lieutenant-général—what about Paul Saglio?”

  “Saglio?”The lieutenant-général looked momentarily blank. “Yes, Saglio.” He sighed and shook his head. “Do you have any idea how many men I do not have? When I find someone to send to Vaugirard, I will send him.”

  On his way back toward the college, no one challenged Charles, but he felt as though accusing eyes watched him from every doorway, as though everyone he passed were about to start singing the tavern song. He walked along the rue des Fossés, looking out at the Faubourg St. Jacques, the suburb that had grown up south of the walls. The Faubourg was thick with recent monastic foundations, built solidly of stone, with ample land around them. Beyond the gray lace of winter trees lay the walled precincts of the Feuillantines, Ursulines, and Daughters of Mary, their frozen gardens bare and empty. The great dome of Val de Grace, the Benedictine house beloved by Louis XIV’s mother, rose above the convent walls like a sugared Christmas cake.

  New private houses of gleaming stone were scattered along the road among the religious foundations, but not far beyond them, the countrys
ide still spread itself. Soon, Charles told himself, plowing would start in the barren fields, fruit trees would blossom, the sun would come back. And, please God, his own heaviness of spirit would lighten. In truth, though, he wasn’t sure. He’d chosen clearly and from his heart to remain a Jesuit. But his grief for what he hadn’t chosen had been ripped wide open by Martine Mynette’s murder, by her loss of the future she should have had. Nothing is wasted, the Silence had said—not death, not grief—unless you waste it. Was this renewed grief of his meant to drive him to find her killer? Was that what the Silence had meant?

  He waited, very still on the windswept roadway, hoping the Silence would answer him. And caught his breath, wondering if the white horse galloping along a path beside a snowy field, its rider’s black cloak flying, the man’s streaming hair black as a crow’s feather in the gray light, might be a sign. He watched them out of sight, but the Silence held its peace and the horse and rider only left him yearning to ride in the wind’s teeth and leave grief behind.

  Charles was nearly at the college when he saw a huddle of beggars in the street ahead of him, outside the church of St. Étienne des Grès. A halting voice came from their midst, and he realized that someone was reading aloud. A man hushed a chattering woman, who hit him and started pushing her way out of the huddle. The reader’s voice grew louder. “Elle était riche, elle est morte, les Jésuites dansent sur son corps . . .”

  Bursting from the group nearly in Charles’s path, the woman who’d been hushed screeched, “Here’s one, here’s a Jesuit vulture! But he can’t eat us, we’ve no gold for his guts!”

  The others turned and Charles saw that the reader was the young man who’d pleaded for the old beggar on Christmas Eve. When he saw Charles, his eyes grew round with fear and he dropped the sheet of paper and backed away. Some of the beggars started singing the words of the tavern song, but the old man who’d attacked the Condé’s reliquary limped close to Charles, thrust his head forward, and squinted at him.