Plague of Lies (9781101611739)

by Rock, Judith

  The girl winced and pulled her hand away, and to Charles’s surprise, her lip trembled. “You hate me,” she said.

  Conti shrugged at Charles. “Sometimes I think I will become a monk of some sort. To get away from women. They’re utterly incomprehensible. My darling Lulu, what does hating or not hating matter? You are going to Poland. I am desolate, but what can I do about it?”

  “Much, if you only would!” She gathered her skirts and fled, like some rare silvery green bird taking flight, and disappeared beyond the fountain.

  Anne-Marie and the dog followed her, and Conti rolled his eyes at Charles and strolled after the three of them. Charles replaced his hat; picked up his livret, ink, and quill; and went quickly up the steps in the other direction, with an irrational feeling—half irritation and half fear—that more Bourbons would appear in his path, no matter what direction he chose. He turned aside along a dark green hornbeam hedge, wanting to be out of sight of the fountain, and kept walking. Turning repeatedly and at random among hedges and rosy brick walls surrounding a myriad of small gardens, he kept walking until dizziness reminded him that he was still recovering from last night’s sickness. He slowed as he turned yet another corner and saw an enormous expanse of water ahead of him. It was half surrounded by piles of dirt, and two workmen were doing something at the water’s near edge. As Charles’s footsteps crunched along the gravel walk, one of them straightened and waved his arms.

  “Mon père! Come quickly—he’s dead, poor sod, and you’re needed!”

  Chapter 7

  The workman met Charles halfway, squelching water from his shoes, wiping his hands dry on his stained brown-linen coat, and still talking. “Your prayers will be worth more than mine, that’s sure!” He dropped his voice. “He looks like he drowned, but he didn’t. You’ll see what I mean. Will you stay with him, so me and my boy can go for the Guard?”

  “You’re sure the man is dead?” Charles was reluctant to encounter a second man, in just three days, dead practically at his own feet. “Who is he?”

  “Bertin. Bertin Laville.” He shook his head sadly. “My daughter’s husband. He works—worked—in the kitchen garden. Over there.” He gestured vaguely toward the palace.

  They reached the edge of the lake, where a white-faced teenage boy knelt beside a man’s prone body. The boy got up awkwardly and bowed to Charles. Charles squatted on his heels and put a hand on Bertin Laville’s sodden chest, though it was plain enough that the breath had long gone from this man. Squinting in the glare of the sun off the white gravel, he ran his eye carefully over the body and then gently turned Laville’s head to one side. Charles took off his bonnet, held it to block some of the sun’s glare, and parted the man’s dripping dark hair at the crown.

  “So. You see,” the elder workman said.

  Charles winced as his fingers found the jagged-edged circle of bone and felt lightly at the sickening hollow inside the circle. Dropping his hat beside the body, he cupped the ruined skull in his hands as though he could still protect it and said a quick silent prayer. When he crossed himself and stood up, the workmen hastily crossed themselves, too.

  “Shall we go for the Guard now, mon père?” the older one said.

  “In a moment. When did you last see your son-in-law?”

  “Me? Not since yesterday. Sometimes he helped in this part of the gardens, but I didn’t see him today.” The speaker jerked his head at the boy. “Nor did my son.”

  “May I know your names?” Charles said. “I am Maître Charles du Luc.”

  “Me, I’m Jean Prudhomme. Gardener. My boy is Jacques.”

  “Who might have wanted to kill your son-in-law, Monsieur Prudhomme?”

  The father gave his son a warning look, and they both shrugged.

  Charles opened his mouth to say he would pray for the dead man. Instead, he heard himself say, “Was there any talk about Bertin? Did he dice? Run after women?”

  The boy looked up, but his father’s heavy hand descended on his shoulder and he looked down again.

  Prudhomme eyed Charles. “Why are you asking? He’s the Guard’s business now.”

  “Not that they’ll do much,” the boy muttered at the ground.

  Why do I want to know? Charles asked himself wearily. The obvious answer was that he was religious and the man had a soul about which he had to care. And did care. In truth, though, he would rather not care about this unknown peasant beyond a few prayers. He wanted no more barriers in the way of his going home. Though if this turned out to be no more than a peasants’ quarrel over money or women, the Guard would do less than if a man of quality had been found dead in the royal precincts.

  Charles said, “Your son-in-law was a man, and he’s dead. Without chance to be shriven. And with the rest of his life stolen from him. And from his wife. So if you know something…”

  The gardener’s seamed, sunburned face went still and watchful. His deep-set black eyes were as opaque as a raven’s, and Charles had the feeling that this man could wait as enduringly as a tree in the garden, if he had to. Young Jacques opened his mouth, but his father’s look made him shut it again. The shadows at their feet had shifted a hair’s breadth or two before Prudhomme finally said, “There were women, yes.”

  “Other men’s women?”

  “Maybe.” The gardener sighed. “My daughter just gave birth. You know—or maybe you don’t—what men do when their wives are breeding.”

  “Whose woman did he poach?”

  That got only another long raven’s stare.

  “Well, if you will go for the Guard, I will stay with the body.”

  Taking his son with him, Prudhomme trudged toward the palace. Charles knelt beside the body again and studied the battered skull. The wound seemed too rounded to have been made by a shovel. A large stone, perhaps, though the grounds were too manicured for stray stones large enough to be lying ready for use. He rose to his feet and scanned the nearest brick wall around one of the small formal gardens. The wall was intact, and a brick wasn’t rounded enough, anyway.

  Exasperated with himself for going after answers like a dog after the scent of deer, Charles turned his back determinedly on the wall and the dead man. He was never going to know what—or who—had killed Bertin Laville, because he and Jouvancy were leaving. Tomorrow, please God. He watched occasional chattering tourists cross the opening of the path he’d come down, until he realized that he was also watching for a sea-green gown and the king’s alarming daughter. And that if he saw her, he was going to flee in the opposite direction and leave the dead man to take his chances. Coward, he told himself, and knelt again, shut his eyes, and prayed determinedly for Bertin Laville’s violently ejected soul.

  “So now you’ve found a drowned rat.”

  Charles’s eyes flew open, and what the Prince of Conti saw in them made him compose his grinning face a little.

  “So sorry to interrupt your prayers. I returned our dear Lulu to her ladies and decided to follow your admirable example and take a healthful stroll.” He smiled down at Charles. “By all means, go on praying.” He widened his eyes facetiously. “Why not pray for a miracle? I’ve always wanted to see one. Especially a resurrection. Even a peasant’s would be remarkable. Oh, make no mistake—my desire to see a miracle is not from any special holiness of mine, I assure you. As Père La Chaise would also assure you. But you Jesuits exist to help souls, do you not? Here am I at your disposal, a soul greatly in need of the convincing help of a miracle!” Conti threw his arms wide, displaying his coat’s deep braided cuffs and sparkling buttons.

  Charles had picked up his hat—unpleasantly wet now from the water around the body—had put it on, and was standing between Conti and the dead man, instinctively blocking Conti’s view of the broken skull. He was also badly wanting to smack the face of this Prince of the Blood for making light of death.

  “Your Serene Highness, the dead man’s soul is in far more need of help than yours. And though a Jesuit, I am not a priest. Of your courtesy, will
you go for a priest?”

  Conti’s mirth vanished. “Find a servant.” He looked coldly at Charles. “Or, better yet—and perhaps suiting your quality—run your own errands.”

  Charles produced a smile as charming as Conti’s had been and even more insincere. “Ah, how could I be so naive as to think that death takes precedence over precedence itself?” He swept off his wet hat, snapping his wrist to make sure the hat sprayed water on the fine fall of lace down the front of Conti’s coat.

  There was a tense silence. Then, to Charles’s surprise, Conti laughed uproariously.

  “Well. You are surprising. Touché.” He eyed Charles with new and disconcerting interest.

  His dark eyes wandered appreciatively over Charles’s face and then shifted beyond Charles to what he could see of the dead man. “No point in hiding him from me, you know. Everyone will know everything about him by supper. A workman, by his clothes. They died like flies when the place was being built. I suppose this one took a glass too much at the tavern and fell into Louis’s nice new lake?” He walked around Charles. “Oh, oh.” He prodded the corpse’s head with his stick. “Not drowned, then. Yes, you do need the Guard. Though that may not be all you need.” His dark eyes lingered on Charles’s face for a moment, and then he strolled away.

  Wishing he could drown his anger—if not Conti—in Louis’s nice new lake, Charles scanned the walkways from the palace, hoping to see the Guard coming to take this situation off his hands. He couldn’t just leave the body. Not only would that be irreligious, but he was sure that the body had not been long in the lake and was guessing that someone had put it there temporarily. Which meant that someone might be coming back to dispose of it more permanently. Probably not in daylight, but why take chances? He turned to look out over the water, which was wide enough for the maneuverings of a ship or two, and wondered how long it had taken—and how many men—to dig this improvement on nature. Digging like this was the sort of thing soldiers were often set to do, and just the thought of that made his old shoulder wound ache. He picked up his livret and pen, glad that his battles were on paper now, and that Jesuit life did not involve digging lakes.

  Footsteps crunched heavily on the path behind him, and he turned with relief to confront a stocky, grim-faced officer, by his blue coat one of the French Guards.

  “Captain Yves Frenel, maître.” The officer bowed, and Charles noted with surprise that the man had called him by his correct title. “The men you sent told me what they found.” Captain Frenel went to the body and bent over it. Then he straightened and faced Charles. “Dead—or nearly—when he went into the water, from the looks of his head. I believe you arrived day before yesterday?”

  “We did.” So the Jesuits’ comings and goings were well watched. But then, Louis being the best-guarded king in Europe, everyone’s movements here must be watched. “My companion and I would have been gone by now, except that he is unwell. We hope to go back to Louis le Grand tomorrow or the day after.”

  “No reason I can see why this should keep you.” The captain shrugged. “If you were conspiring against the king, you’d hardly be doing it with a casual laborer. That’s too subtle even for Jesuits.” He laughed.

  Charles didn’t.

  “No need to stay with the body,” the captain said. “My men are coming to move it.”

  “Where will you take it?” Charles asked curiously.

  “To the mortuary near the guard barracks.”

  Reminding the man to call a priest, Charles took his leave and started back toward the palace. He had done what he could. His task now was to get Jouvancy well enough to travel and take him back to Louis le Grand. And once there, Charles told himself, even if he had to take over directing the tragedy as well as the ballet, he would manage. He felt willing to cope with anything, as long as he didn’t have to do it here at Versailles.

  He went into the south wing of the palace by the nearest garden door, and as he turned the corner, he again heard deep-throated barking and wondered, as he had during the night, why on earth someone was keeping a dog that size indoors. The barking grew louder, a chamber door burst open, and Charles stopped in alarm, hoping the dog was friendlier than it sounded.

  But to his surprise, it wasn’t a dog, it was a man. Three men, in fact. The disheveled little man in the lead was baying, nose to the sky, and two larger men barked halfheartedly in his wake as they chased him.

  “No, mon prince,” the closer one said wearily, grabbing a fistful of the little man’s dirty yellow brocade coat skirts. “The moon is not up yet, it’s too soon for us to be out.”

  Charles realized with a shock that he’d seen mon prince before. This was the new Prince of Condé, son of the Great Condé, who had died in December. At the funeral Mass in the Jesuit church of St. Louis, the son had seemed ordinary enough—though Charles had heard whispers that he was more than a little peculiar. But this was beyond anything he’d imagined.

  “We should go back and eat our dinner,” Condé’s second attendant said, taking hold of the prince’s arm. Seeing Charles, he pointed a finger at his own temple and rolled his eyes. “Come now, mon prince, you must eat to be fresh for roaming later.”

  Courteously enough, but very firmly, they turned the little man around and took him back to the door he’d come through. Anne-Marie de Bourbon stood forlornly in the doorway, cradling her little dog in her arms. As she stepped aside to let her father and his attendants past, she saw Charles watching. Her face flamed, and she withdrew into the Condé’s rooms in a swirl of blue skirts. The door closed and deep-throated barking began again behind it.

  Feeling deeply sorry for the child, Charles hurried through Père La Chaise’s antechamber. Resisting the urge to bolt the door behind him, he took a glass from the side table, filled it from the copper reservoir’s tap, and drank thirstily. With a sigh, he went into the adjoining room to tell La Chaise about the dead workman, but La Chaise was asleep in his armchair. On a wave of panic, Charles hurried past him into the adjoining room and pushed Jouvancy’s bed curtains apart. He let his breath out in relief. Jouvancy was sleeping quietly and there was faint color in his face. Charles closed the curtains and turned to contemplate his own bed. But La Chaise stirred in the next room and called out to him.

  “I saw you come in, maître. No one has gotten past me, you need not worry.”

  Reluctantly, Charles went back to the other room, closing the door between to keep from waking Jouvancy, and stood respectfully before the king’s confessor. “I am glad to hear it, mon père. He looks some better.”

  “Yes. He ate a little bread and kept it down. Sit. We need to talk about this evening.”

  “This evening?” Charles’s heart sank. The only evening he wanted was supper and prayers and bed.

  “There is a ball this evening to honor the Polish ambassadors and Mademoiselle de Rouen. Unfortunately, I am bidden to attend. And so are you, in Père Jouvancy’s place. It begins at seven, and there will be festivities after, but we need not stay for all of that.”

  “Why are we summoned to a ball?”

  “To stand near the royal chair and remind the Poles that Louis is Europe’s Most Christian King. And I suspect that the invitation is also meant as a way of thanking us for giving the reliquary to Madame de Maintenon.”

  Summoning resignation, Charles said, “Of course, mon père. Meanwhile, there is—”

  “—the question of getting a little sleep before this evening. And also the question of our supper,” La Chaise finished firmly, smothering a yawn. “Bouchel is bringing us a roasted chicken from the town.” He started to get up from his chair.

  “Mon père,” Charles said, “please, there is something I must tell you.”

  La Chaise slumped into his chair again and regarded Charles without enthusiasm. “From your face, it’s something I don’t want to hear.”

  La Chaise was clearly not in a mood to listen, and Charles decided there was no real reason to mention Lulu. Or Conti—at least, not yet. Ch
arles kept his story brief, and about only the dead body. “The back of the man’s skull was crushed, it has to be murder,” he finished.

  “At least he wasn’t poisoned. What does the Guard captain think?”

  “That it was most likely a workmen’s quarrel.”

  “Good.” La Chaise rubbed his head as though it hurt. “Anything more serious than that we do not need here just now.”

  So a workman’s murder is not serious? Charles just stopped himself from saying.

  But it must have shown on his face, because La Chaise said impatiently, “I am not indifferent to the man’s death. But my point is that it probably has nothing to do with the king. If there is a threat to him, it will come from much closer at hand.”

  “Meaning?” Charles hazarded.

  “You do not seem to know your place, maître,” La Chaise said ominously.

  “Is it not the place of any Jesuit to want to know the truth?”

  “Knowing when to hold your tongue is also a virtue.”

  “But if I know more of the truth, I will know better when—and with whom—to hold my tongue.”

  La Chaise studied Charles for so long, he might have been weighing him in St. Peter’s scale to determine his entrance—or not—into heaven. He finally said, “Very well. For that reason, and that reason only, I will tell you. But if thereafter you do not hold your tongue when you should, it will be the worse for you when you return to Louis le Grand.” He sighed. “The most likely source of a threat to the king is the circle of young men who have gathered around the heir to the throne. They began courting the Dauphin, last winter when the king was ill, clearly hoping that he would die so that his timid and malleable son would become king. The intimates of a weak king are like pigs at an endlessly full trough. And they push ruthlessly to gain a place there before the feeding starts.”

  On impulse, Charles said, “Is the Prince of Conti one of them?”

  La Chaise’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”

  “He—” Charles nearly said happened along, then didn’t, realizing that he didn’t believe Conti had been there by chance. “He was there while I was waiting with the workman’s body. I also saw him earlier, with Mademoiselle de Rouen.”