by Judith Rock
“Cut bread,” he said curtly. “Two pieces for each one. I suppose you’ve counted them?”
Charles pulled several loaves toward him, mentally making the nine beggars waiting in the courtyard into eighteen and wondering if he could cut forty thick slices before Tricot caught him. Tricot banged a wire-handled copper pot down in front of the fireplace and ladled soup into it. Lentil, from the smell, Charles thought, and with bacon in it. Keeping himself between the lay brother and the bread, he shoved an uncut loaf into the bottom of the basket and covered it with a mound of cut slices.
“Here, then.” Tricot held out the wire-handled pot. Two large spoons stood in it. “How am I supposed to account for all this food?”
“As a corporal act of mercy?”
Tricot grunted.
“Thank you, mon frère. If there are questions, I will take responsibility.”
Charles took the pot, staggering a little at the weight, and led his flock of beggars past the well and through an archway into the tiny stable court. As he’d hoped, the lantern-lit stable was empty, except for the college’s three horses.
He set the pot down and pulled the double doors closed. The beggars gathered eagerly around the pot. Reine surveyed the stable and then sat gracefully on a bale of straw. The old man sank down beside her and leaned back against the wooden wall. The thin, dark young man—boy, he almost seemed—who was his keeper saw him settled and then sat at his feet with his knees drawn up. The young man’s eyes were shadowed and he was coughing harshly. Charles handed Reine the spoons, put the basket of bread beside the pot, and stepped back, wishing he had left the doors a little open to cut the beggars’ fetid smell. A flurry of hands reached for the bread.
Reine looked at Charles. “A blessing?”
The hands stilled and Charles prayed. Reine gave a spoon to the old man’s keeper at her feet and tossed the other to a young woman on the other side of the pot. Everyone fell on the food. Charles had expected them to be loud and rude, to grab for everything they could reach. But they ate in near silence, passing the spoon carefully from one to another, scooping the lentil and bacon soup from the pot without spilling a drop. When a boy of twelve or thirteen kept the spoon too long, a man cuffed him lightly, plucked it out of his hands, and offered it to the boy’s neighbor. The beggars were indescribably filthy, and in the lantern light, Charles saw that many had some deformity. A young man had a twisted foot and there was a woman with a grossly swollen neck. A blind woman was so marked by smallpox that she seemed to have a webbed veil of white over her face and hands. A man who looked to be in his forties had what Charles thought was a withered cheek, but then saw it was a fleur de lys, the cruel identifying mark burned into the flesh of thieves.
When the soup was gone, the beggars clustered over the pot and wiped it nearly dry with hunks of the coarse brown bread.
The young man sitting with the old man leaned his head on Reine’s knees and slowly ate the last of his bread. She leaned down and pulled his coat more tightly closed as a new fit of coughing took him. The old man absently stroked the young man’s head. But the youth kept coughing, and Reine pulled a length of worn tawny velvet from her neck and wrapped it around his shoulders. He gave her a smile of such sweetness that Charles smiled as he watched. Reine looked at the old man half dozing beside her.
“Marin, will you eat more? There is more bread.”
“Eh? Me, I will always eat more! Where is it?”
A young girl with greasy black braids wrapped around her head brought him the basket. He took the last piece of bread, showing his few blackened teeth in a wide grin, and began chewing carefully. Reine looked up at Charles. Her eyes were like green flares in the dimness.
“Well?” she said challengingly. “Now you know my name and his.”
Unsure what his response should be, Charles bowed. “Thank you.” And added almost involuntarily, “madame.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Very pretty. But at my court, young man, the courteous thing is to give us your name in return. I have heard your name, but the rest of us have not.”
“Gladly. I am Maître Charles Matthieu Beuvron du Luc.” He bowed to the others. “Mesdames et messieurs.”
They stared at him open-mouthed. No one bowed to beggars. Or addressed them with titles of courtesy. The girl with the braids stood up again and curtsied.
“I am Belle,” she said gravely.
The man with the brand said, “I am Richard.”
Then they were all speaking. “I am Matthieu—the same as you!” “I am Thérèse.” “I am Alain.” “I am Edouard, and the skinny one there who keeps Marin out of trouble is Jean.” “I am Pasquier.” “I am Raymond.”
“Thank you,” Charles said. “You saved my life tonight and I am deeply in your debt. But I cannot help asking why you risked yourselves for a stranger.”
Richard stood up, moved a little aside, then cleared his throat and spat. “You gave Marin the new coat,” he said. “And I saw those bastards standing at the corner when you turned down the street toward the tavern. I was at the innyard gate while we begged, it was my turn to keep an eye out for the archers.” He narrowed his eyes and studied Charles. “You know about the archers?”
Charles said uncertainly, “From the Hôtel de Ville?”
“Yes.” Richard spat again. “Them. They’re not good for much except rounding us up and throwing us into the Hôtel Dieu or the Hôpital Général. You’re let out after a while, but if they take you a second time, the men go to the galleys and the women are exiled from Paris. It’s a terrible crime to be poor.”
“It’s not!” The blind woman turned her face toward Richard’s voice. “If needing to eat’s a crime, then Adam and Eve were criminals as much as us!”
“We know for sure Eve was,” a man called out, laughing.
“Shut your mouth, Alain,” the blind woman said. “If she was hungry as me most of the time, she’d eat a sour quince and not care who gave it to her.”
“Well, your belly’s full now,” Richard said placatingly. “The thing is, maître, we knew those three bastards in the street. And when the fight started, we thought you’d need help.” He scratched his ribs. “Though now I come to think of it, they faded away from the fight fast enough. So maybe they weren’t following you. Anyway, you did need help.”
“Indeed I did. And—which bastards do you mean exactly?”
Richard grinned appreciatively. “But yes, one must always be specific, there are so many bastards. We don’t know their names.” He looked at Marin, who was still chewing the last piece of bread. “They’re archers from the Hôtel de Ville, all three of them. They took old Marin in the autumn. To kill him, but Marin got away.”
Charles looked in surprise at the old man. “Why would anyone want to kill Marin?”
Richard grunted sardonically. “Remember when King Louis had the problem with his ass? The doctors were scared to cut on him. I mean, wouldn’t you be? Think you’d be living long, if your cutting didn’t work? So they wanted to practice. The archers started rounding up men and asking them if they had the same problem as the king. No women, just men. Sent them to Versailles and locked them up and the king’s doctor tried out the surgery on them, one by one. A lot died and, when they did, they got dropped out a window, early in the morning, and taken away in a cart.”
Horrified, Charles looked at Marin, who seemed not to be paying any attention to the story. “He told you this?”
“He did. Our Marin’s old, and his ass hurts and his wits wander, but he’s no fool. He got away before they cut him. Hid in the woods and walked all the way back to Paris.”
Charles was speechless, thinking of the college’s approaching celebration for the king’s return to health. Pulling himself back to the need to preserve his own health, he said, “Were the three archers actually fighting outside the tavern?”
“They came down the street behind you, slow like, and they were in the beginning of it; that’s why we came out after them. But then
they disappeared and it was just the ones from of the tavern.”
“Again, I am in your debt.”
Old Marin grunted in satisfaction at Charles’s words. Then he planted his stick and climbed slowly to his feet. “We thank you for our supper, maître.”
His keeper, Jean, jumped up to help him and the others got up, too. On his way to the door, Marin stopped in front of Charles. He reached up and touched Charles’s thickly curling blond hair.
“Almost like my Claire’s,” he murmured. “Kind, too, like her.” He limped out into the courtyard, muttering to himself.
Jean wound Reine’s velvet rag around his throat and smiled at her. “Don’t worry,” he said hoarsely, “I’ll see to him.” He followed the old man out.
The rest filed out, too, and Charles looked questioningly at Reine, who hadn’t moved from her bale of straw.
“One more little moment of your time, if you please, maître.”
Charles nodded. “Certainly, but first I must bar the gate after them.”
He let the beggars out into the lane behind the college, rebarred the gate, and went back to the stable, wondering why Reine had stayed and how he was going to explain her presence if anyone discovered her.
“Madame?” he said to Reine as he pulled the stable doors closed again.
She looked up from the piece of wood she had taken from somewhere in her garments and was busily carving. “How pleasant to be addressed so.”
“It is obviously your right.”
She put her head back and laughed until the stable seemed filled with bells. “You are a most courteous young chevalier,” she said, wiping her eyes. “And a most innocent one.”
“Innocent?”
Her eyes warmed disconcertingly in their net of lines and her mouth curved in the most sensual smile Charles had ever seen. “The things I could tell you—but don’t worry, I won’t. Tell me, are you any nearer to finding Martine Mynette’s killer?”
“Why ask me? I am not the police.”
She bent over her carving again. “You came with Nicolas to The Procope. I saw that he trusts you.”
Charles raised a skeptical eyebrow. Le Picart had said the same thing. But his own impression was that La Reynie trusted no one but himself. “Monsieur La Reynie has arrested Gilles Brion, Henri Brion’s son, for both murders.”
Reine made a dismissive sound. “That is unworthy of Nicolas.”
“You don’t think Monsieur Brion guilty?”
She held her piece of wood a little away and studied it in silence. A squarish shape was emerging, but Charles couldn’t tell what it was meant to be.
Impatient with her silence, he said, “Did your daughter tell you that Mademoiselle Mynette’s necklace was missing when she and Mademoiselle Brion undressed and washed the body? It was a little red enamel heart on an embroidered ribbon, not valuable, but I’m told that she always wore it. Now it’s gone.”
Reine gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Are you saying my daughter took it?”
“Did she?”
The old woman shrugged ruefully, rubbing the carving with her thumb. “Who knows, maître? Renée is weak.” Taking the knife to the wood again, she said, “Renée told you a little about the servants who left the Mynette household. But she told you too little about Paul Saglio. The one who made indecent advances to Martine not long before her mother died. I was there when Martine turned him out, and I tell you, the man was savage with fury! Thank the Blessed Virgin he went, because he’s dangerous. What Martine did not know is that Paul Saglio—Paolo as he was then—killed a man in Italy before he came to France.”
“How do you know that?”
“His brother visited him one day when I was visiting Renée. I heard them talking.” She smiled. “It’s very easy to listen to people. Who pays attention to an old bundle of rags and the old woman dozing inside the bundle? So I heard everything. The two of them together had robbed a man on the road. He’d tried to fight back, and Saglio killed him. Knifed him. Find Paul Saglio, maître.”
“Why did you not warn Mademoiselle Mynette about him?”
Reine shrugged in a wave of shifting colors. “Why would Mademoiselle Mynette listen to someone like me? I charged my daughter to tell her. But Renée was much taken with Saglio, and I doubt she did. She was sure he had long repented, and she wouldn’t hear a word against him. She only grew spiteful toward him when she saw that he preferred Martine.”
“Is Saglio in Vaugirard? Was Renée telling the truth about that?”
“Oh, yes,” Reine said dryly. “He has not come to see her, and she is very angry. Vaugirard is a small place, you should have no trouble finding him.” She tucked the carving and the knife away under her skirts and pushed herself up from the straw bale. Her eyes slid sideways to Charles. “If, of course, he has not come back to Paris for his own reasons.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing certain. I already told you he is handy with a knife.”
“As are you, Reine,” Charles said, on impulse. And watched her closely, waiting to see what she would say.
“Handier than you know. But it was not a bundle of rags that came at you in the street, was it?”
“No. Forgive me.”
“Maître, a man tried to knife you tonight. You, who are looking for Martine Mynette’s killer.”
Taken aback, Charles stared at her, trying to tell if she was talking for her own reasons or giving him something he needed to know. “Do you mean that it was Saglio with the knife? I assumed the man tried to kill me only because I am a Jesuit.”
She shrugged. “Perhaps. But the man was thin and agile like Paul Saglio. Even if you did not see him clearly, I did. And now I must go, maître.”
Still unsure what to think, Charles went to the stable door and listened for a moment. He heard nothing outside, but before he opened the door, he said, “Tell me about Marin.”
Reine’s green eyes opened wide in surprise. Turning away, she went to the gray mare’s stall and began to stroke the velvet nose. “My poor Marin,” she said softly. “Are you asking because of what he did on Christmas Eve?”
“Partly that.”
“Marin is sometimes as sane as anyone, sometimes insane with rage and sorrow.”
Charles hazarded, “Was he a soldier? Is that why he hates the old Condé?”
“No. He hates him because of how the man treated his wife, Claire Clemence, the Princess of Condé. Marin was a servant in her household.” From somewhere in her layers of clothing, Reine took out a small piece of bread and fed it to the mare. “Claire Clemence lived mostly alone in Paris.” She turned to face Charles. “The Condé despised her from the first, though the poor girl did everything she could for him. She brought him money when they married; she raised more money and saved him at least once during the Fronde wars; she gave him children, including a son. But he rarely acknowledged her existence, God rot him. And why? Because he had wanted to marry elsewhere, but his father—and Richelieu, who was Claire Clemence’s uncle—forced her on him. No one said ‘no’ to Richelieu.” Reine smiled bitterly. “It is too long a story for now, and you are wondering what it can be to me. That much I will tell you. Claire Clemence was only twelve years old when she married. Tiny as a dwarf but not one—she was very prettily shaped—and blond.” She smiled a little. “As blond as you, that’s what Marin meant just now when he touched your hair. He was fourteen, two years older than she, and he fell in love with her, beyond reason and deeper than the sea. He is in love with her yet. And I, great fool that I am, fell in love with Marin many years ago. Also beyond reason and deeper than the sea.”
“How did you know him?”
“Blessed Sainte Marie Madeleine,” she said impatiently, “are you truly that innocent?” Twitching her rags off the floor as though they were satin skirts, she gave the mare a last pat and crossed the stable floor to stand in front of him. “I was a whore, my handsome young cleric. When I was young, I was a very expensive whore.”
&nbs
p; Charles surprised both of them by replying with equal boldness. “I do not doubt for a moment that you were very expensive.”
“Ah,” she said with a pleased nod, “perhaps you are not so innocent after all. Good.”
“I was a soldier, madame, before I was a Jesuit. There are no innocent soldiers. Is that how Monsieur La Reynie knows you? From your former life?”
Reine laughed softly. “Yes and no. That particular story is not mine to tell. If he wants to tell you, he will.” She put a hand on Charles’s arm. “Listen to me, maître. I think you do not know this, and Nicolas will never say it. He needs you. Remember that.”
“You do me too much honor, madame. I came to Procope’s café only because my rector ordered me to follow his inquiry on the college’s behalf. I am sure you have heard the rumors about why these murders—Mademoiselle Mynette’s and Henri Brion’s—concern us.”
Reine withdrew her hand. “Do you know that he is sixty-one years old?” she said, with seeming inconsequence. “We are the same age, Nicolas and I.”
“He seems younger than that. As do you,” he added courteously. As do your eyes, he really meant.
They both looked toward the stable doors as voices rose nearby and faded.
“I will go now,” Reine said. “Can you let me out unseen?”
Charles opened the doors enough to look out. To his relief the little court was empty, and they went quickly to the gate.
“Are you going to—” Charles hesitated, not sure what to call the troupe of beggars. “To Marin?”
“Of course.”
“Do you have enough for the night?”
“Enough.”
Charles was suddenly reluctant to have her go. “The beggars seem to look to you as a mother.”
She gave him a pleased glance, slipped into the lane, and walked briskly toward the small street that ran from the rue St. Jacques past the old college of Les Cholets. As Charles replaced the bar, making sure it was strongly set, her voice floated back to him.