by Rock, Judith
“It was only a noise outside, mon père,” Charles said soothingly. “You can sleep a while longer.”
Jouvancy blinked and mumbled something, and his eyes closed again. Charles went to see if there was more wine in the pitcher. Thanking St. Martin, patron of winemakers and beggars, he poured a little more into his glass and wondered how much longer it would be before he got anything to eat. He was eyeing the cupboard’s closed doors when the gallery door opened and Père La Chaise hurried through the anteroom.
“All is well,” he said. “I—oh. Sleeping, is he?”
But Jouvancy had heard him and struggled upright. “Only a little nap, mon père, and very welcome.”
La Chaise settled himself again in his armchair and Charles resumed the stool.
“So. Here is how tomorrow will go,” La Chaise said. “I want you both to accompany me to the king’s morning Mass at ten o’clock. If the other two are here by then, well and good. If not, no matter. You will not be presented to the king before the Mass, but he will see you.”
Jouvancy’s eyes widened. “Do you mean that he will be at the presentation of the cross?”
“No. I have advised him not to be there. You are presenting it to the lady, not to the king, and his presence would only call attention to their—connection.” Jouvancy and Charles both opened their mouths, but La Chaise’s face made it clear that there would be no discussion of that interesting question. “Now,” he went on, “know that Louis misses nothing that happens around him. He sees and he remembers. His public presence is even-tempered and courteous almost to a fault.” La Chaise shrugged and lifted open palms. “The man raises his hat to kitchen maids. Any failure of courtesy infuriates him, and so does any breach of ceremony. No, no, mon père,” he added quickly as Jouvancy opened his mouth to protest. “I am not in the least implying that you might be discourteous, I am only trying to give you some understanding of the king. Because unless you somewhat understand him, you will not understand our Madame de Maintenon, and it is she whose heart you must touch tomorrow.”
“It’s said she doesn’t have one,” Charles murmured, mostly to see if he could provoke a little useful indiscretion and a little more information.
Jouvancy frowned, and La Chaise eyed Charles in surprise. Less, Charles thought, because of what he’d said than because a mere scholastic had ventured to say it.
“Many things are said about those who live here,” La Chaise retorted. “As you obviously know.” Charles bowed his head slightly to the riposte, which La Chaise softened by saying, with laughter in his voice, “Many things are said about me by many people, including Madame de Maintenon. As I am also sure you know. Even though I spend less time here at court than at our Professed House in Paris.” His face sobered. “Madame de Maintenon has not only a measure of wit but also an essentially kind heart, I assure you. But she gives her heart very rarely. So far as I know, she has given it only twice: to the king and to his eldest son by Madame de Montespan, our young Duc du Maine. She was governess, you know, to him and some of his brothers and sisters. She loves all those children, the more because she feels their mother has virtually ignored them. But Maine has a lame leg and is her favorite. She did everything that could be done for him, though little helped his lameness. He is her heart’s darling.”
Jouvancy was watching him curiously. “As I listen to you speak of her, mon père, I could almost believe that you do not dislike the woman.”
La Chaise’s eyebrows rose. “Dislike her? I don’t know that I do dislike her. She is without pretense my enemy. But I often have the feeling that if we had been thrown together under different circumstances, we might have been friends.”
Fascinated, Charles ventured, “Why do you think so?”
“There’s much about her I respect. Her piety. Her austerity of mind. She has no use at all for self-indulgence. Or for false or easy answers. Or for impiety—under the Caesars, she would probably have ended in the arena.”
Jouvancy laughed. “One might feel sorry for the lions.”
“One might, indeed.” La Chaise shrugged and held out his hands. “But things are as they are, and we are not friends. She is an idealist. I am a realist. She loathes my realistic lenience with my royal penitent. But a king, especially this king, can only be guided by a loose rein. I choose to think that better than no guidance at all.”
Jouvancy and Charles nodded somber agreement with that. They all sat without speaking—busy, it seemed to Charles, with thoughts loosed by what La Chaise had said. The light was fading, and Charles saw that it was raining in earnest now. Out in the gallery, the clattering noise of heels echoed on the marble floor, and Charles found himself wondering how late it would go on. Louis le Grand was a noisy enough place during the day, but quiet was the rule at night.
La Chaise sighed. “What I fear most just now is the king’s lust for war. Which is coming—and not altogether at his behest this time. Now that the Turks have been beaten back in the east, the Protestant countries of the League of Augsburg—the Holy Roman Emperor and the Germanic states, Sweden, and Spain—have breathing space to think of clipping France’s wings once and for all. Or at least, to try.”
“How soon do you believe they will try?” Jouvancy’s pinched face had grown anxious.
“The spies and rumors are saying it may not be this year. But by the next, for certain.”
“Well, you may be sure,” Jouvancy said triumphantly, “that in our own small way, we are doing what we can at Louis le Grand to help gird the loins of France.”
La Chaise looked at him in surprise. “Oh, yes?” he said, half smiling. “And with what are you girding her loins, mon père?”
“With our rousing August ballet. It’s called La France Victorieuse sous Louis le Grand. I chose it to proclaim the strength of our realm and our Most Christian King in the face of our enemies. Our students performed it several years ago, but Maître du Luc is revising it to make it more current, so that it fits with what is happening now.”
Charles bit his tongue.
“France Victorious under Louis the Great,” La Chaise said meditatively. “Yes, that’s good. Perhaps I can contrive to mention that tomorrow morning.” He peered at Jouvancy. “I must let you go and rest, but first, let me briefly explain what will happen tomorrow after the king’s Mass. From the chapel, we will go to Madame de Maintenon’s antechamber and wait there until we are called into her reception room. Some of the royal children will be there, and an assortment of courtiers. We will go over the ceremonial procedure in detail tomorrow, but the crux of it is that you, Père Jouvancy, should present the reliquary directly into Madame de Maintenon’s hands—unless it is too large or heavy?”
“No, no,” Jouvancy said, “it is only about the height of two spread hands.”
“Good. After she takes it from you, she will thank you and the Society of Jesus, and everyone will admire the gift. Then she will give the signal for the three of us to retire. And then it will be dinnertime. What I went to confirm just now is where we will eat. I am happy to tell you that we are invited to the Duc de La Rochefoucauld’s table. A very good table indeed. He is a friend of Madame de Maintenon’s and pleased by your gift.” La Chaise smiled at Jouvancy and stood up. “For now, let us get you settled in your own chamber for a little more rest. Besides the door from this chamber, there is also a door into the gallery. You will find a latrine in the corner of the gallery to your left.”
Jouvancy began to struggle out of his chair, and Charles went quickly to help him.
“Oof! I feel as stiff as a new boot,” he said, holding to Charles’s arm as he slowly straightened. “Will you get our saddlebags, maître?”
La Chaise took his place at Jouvancy’s arm, and Charles went to the anteroom for the saddlebags. As he hefted them over his shoulder, what sounded like thunder crashed and echoed out in the gallery, and women began to scream.
Chapter 3
Charles left the saddlebags and ran out into the gallery. A huddle of
courtiers blocked the way, crowding around the staircase he and Jouvancy had come up. Some were trying to get closer and some were already retreating, staring at one another, hands pressed to their mouths. Two young women turned hastily and hurried in Charles’s direction, the linen and ribbons of their fontange headdresses quivering as they leaned close and whispered avidly to each other.
“…old Fleury,” he heard, as they came closer.
He stopped where he was. The Comte de Fleury? Surely not. Surely not the same Comte de Fleury he’d known as a soldier.
“Well, no one will miss him,” the other woman said, half laughing. “None of the young serving maids, anyway. Dear God, the man was a lecher!”
“Such an undignified way to die, though.” The first woman’s mouth puckered in a moue of distaste, quickly smoothed away as she saw Charles. “But may God receive his soul,” she said loudly. Both women crossed themselves and disappeared, giggling, around the corner.
Charles pushed his way to the front of the crowd and looked down at the man sprawled at the foot of the marble stairs. It was the same Fleury, and from the way he lay, it was clear that he’d broken his neck in his thunderous plunge down the stairs. Charles stared down at the man’s dead, empty eyes, remembering… It had been ten years ago, in April 1677, outside the defeated city of Cassel in the Spanish Netherlands. He’d pleaded with the Comte de Fleury for the lives of three terrified common soldiers. The oldest was eighteen. It had been their first battle, and they’d fled in terror through the broken bodies of friends and enemies. Caught and brought back to face their commanding officer, they’d cowered, weeping, beneath the hanging ropes already strung in a tree. Charles had begged the Comte de Fleury to give them a second chance, but he was a hard and arrogant commander and had hanged them then and there. He’d nearly hanged Charles, too, for interfering.
A courtier bent over Fleury, searching uselessly for signs of life, straightened, and took off his white-plumed hat. “He’s gone.”
The young footman Bouchel, standing white-faced at the foot of the stairs, slowly crossed himself. The men in the crowd of courtiers removed their hats with a decent show of respect. But one laughed and said, “Well, our poor dear Conti will never collect those gambling debts, anyway! And at least Fleury’s nephew can stop shaking in his boots, now that the old man won’t be after his money anymore.” That got muffled laughter and knowing looks, but the courtier standing beside the body shook his head reprovingly.
“Trying to reach the latrine, I think, poor soul,” he said, and Charles realized that Fleury was without coat and hat and that his brown breeches were partly undone. The smell of bowels was thickening the air, and vomit streaked the front of the dead man’s linen shirt.
Bouchel swallowed and nodded. “I was up there putting a pot under a ceiling leak. I saw the old—I saw him run out of his room toward the stairs.”
“Ah, yes, he lived up above,” someone said, jerking his head at the ceiling, “and the latrine up there is closed. They’re making it into a lodging.”
Someone else groaned. “That one, too? So we’ll have even more—nuisances—left in the gallery alcoves.”
A hand gripped Charles’s shoulder and Père La Chaise said, “Go to Père Jouvancy. He’s lying down and should stay in his bed, he doesn’t need to come and see this.”
Charles pulled himself together and stepped back, and La Chaise took his place at the front of the crowd. As Charles started back to the chamber, someone said, with the carrying diction of an actor, “I wonder, though, why the poor old thing didn’t just use his chaise de commodité?”
Charles spun on his heel and saw a young man in a gold-trimmed coat and a frothy wig nearly as golden as the trim smiling brightly into La Chaise’s face.
“A good question,” La Chaise answered evenly. “Though from the smell of him—if, of course, it’s him I smell—I’d say his chaise de commodité might well be full.”
“Oh, well said, Père—ah—La Chaise.” A small man in russet satin grinned, lynx-eyed, over his shoulder at the crowd and raised a ripple of stifled laughter.
Ignoring the insults, La Chaise turned to Bouchel. “Did you see him fall?”
“No, mon père.” Bouchel jerked his head at the stairs. “But as I said, I saw him come out of his room, and he was groaning as if he might die. And I know there was water on the floor—from the leak, you understand. He must have slipped as he started down the stairs.”
La Chaise nodded and looked again at the body. “We have to get this body out of the palace. And quickly.” By tradition, a king of France could not stay in a building with a corpse.
Bouchel nodded. “Shall I go for the Guard?”
“Yes. And then for Monsieur Neuville. When the Guard has Fleury in the mortuary, the physicians will have to look at him to confirm how he died.” La Chaise’s dark gaze swept across the courtiers. “Did any of you see the Comte de Fleury earlier?”
“I saw him at dinner today, at the Duc de La Rochefoucauld’s table,” an older woman in burgundy velvet said hesitantly, flicking a lace-edged painted fan in front of her nose to disperse the smell. Her eyes were troubled and she frowned at La Chaise. “He seemed quite well then. I know he was old… but to be so suddenly ill… one could be forgiven for wondering…” She shivered and crossed herself.
“One could,” La Chaise said grimly, and also crossed himself. “While we wait,” he said firmly, “we will say the prayers for the dead.”
A chastened hush descended. Charles left the Comte de Fleury’s soul to La Chaise—or more likely, he thought uncharitably, to the devil—and turned back to the bedchamber and Jouvancy. He went in through La Chaise’s anteroom, picked up the saddlebags, and made his way to the adjoining chamber. In spite of all the noise in the gallery, Jouvancy had fallen fast asleep on the wide, green-curtained bed, curled into himself like a snail in its shell. Good, Charles thought, and untied the bed curtains and closed them. He tiptoed to the second, smaller bed and pulled off his riding boots to make his moving about the room quieter. The second bed was tucked into a tiny alcove between this second chamber and its antechamber, where the door into the corridor was. Narrow and plain, obviously meant for a servant, it was still softer than any Jesuit bed he’d ever slept in. Charles opened the larger saddlebag and began taking out his and Jouvancy’s fresh linen. His head came up as a sudden tramping of feet passed in the corridor. The Guard coming for the Comte de Fleury’s body, he thought, and found himself utterly unable to pray for the man, unable to be anything but glad he was dead, hoping even that he’d suffered at least a taste of terror at the end, like the men he’d hanged. But those were sinful thoughts, because vengeance belonged to God. Though it was easy enough to see Fleury’s end as appropriate divine vengeance.
As he put tomorrow’s clean shirts away in a tall cupboard of polished dark wood, the door opened and closed in La Chaise’s chamber. Charles went through the connecting door, expecting to see the king’s confessor returned, but instead found the footman Bouchel on one knee at the hearth, beside a basket of wood. Hearing Charles, he looked up, smiling, and shook his thick brown hair back from his face.
“Making a fire, mon père,” he said in his rasping voice. “Dark soon. And Père La Chaise will likely want to cook.”
“I’m only maître as yet, monsieur.” Then Charles said, startled, “Did you say ‘cook’?”
“Yes, he boils up his bouillon most nights.”
Charles’s heart sank into his empty belly as the visions he’d entertained of a laden supper table disappeared. La Chaise probably felt it was unfitting for Jesuits to feast openly, or at least too often, he thought with a sigh, admonishing himself for gluttony.
The footman got to his feet as a blaze rose from the neatly built new fire. “The courtiers all do it—well, more do than don’t, anyway.”
“They all cook?” Jesuits supping frugally on a bouillon made over their own fire was one thing. But courtiers? “Why?”
Bouchel laugh
ed and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “No money. Plenty of pretty clothes and mortgaged jewels, but half of them haven’t got the price of a radish in their purses. Sometimes they eat in the Grand Commons refectory—that’s across the street from the south wing. But that costs them, too. Sometimes they eat at the Tables of Honor, but one can’t always be invited, so the courtiers get cooking pots—or their servants get them—and man or master cooks the bouillon. Usually they send someone like me out into the town for bread and cheese and a little pot of wine. And—voilà—le souper!”
Bouchel took a copper pot from the cupboard, carried it into La Chaise’s antechamber, brought it back half filled with water, and set it on a solid iron trivet at the edge of the fire. Then he pulled the square table out from the wall and brought over a round loaf of bread, a little cloth-wrapped cheese, and a sadly small pottery pitcher of wine, which he set on the table next to the silver pitcher that was already there.
“There,” he said, adding a candle in a brass holder to the table array. “Père La Chaise will take over from here when he comes back.”
Bouchel made as if to go, but Charles said, “I thought I heard the Guard go by.”
“You did. They took the Comte de Fleury’s body away, but we’ve not heard the end of it, you can be sure as rain of that.”
“Why do you say so?”
Bouchel’s harsh, damaged laughter filled the darkening room. “This is Versailles, maître. Drop dead from anything, including a broken neck, and before Mass tomorrow, the whole palace will be saying it was poison.” He shrugged, bowed, and became again the well-trained royal footman. “With your permission, maître. I wish you a good night.”
“And God give you a good night, also,” Charles said absently, his thoughts gone to poison. Poison was often suspected when a death came suddenly, and not just at court. But Fleury’s death seemed so obvious—sickness, a rush to the privy, a wet floor, a headlong fall down marble stairs. He eyed the unpromising pot of water on the hearth. On the other hand, perhaps it was just as well to cook over one’s own fire here.