by Rock, Judith
La Chaise straightened and nodded in turn to Charles. “We must go to the buffet salon for a time, not to our chambers yet.”
They joined the crowd’s slow drift toward the door and into the adjoining salon, where courtiers gathered around tables covered with platters of cold meat, plates of heaped pastries, and elaborately constructed pyramids of hothouse strawberries, plums, and peaches. Wine pitchers and ranks of short-stemmed glasses reflected the chandeliers’ flickering light.
“They’ll be pillaging the tables for a while,” La Chaise said, under the pitch of the crowd’s loud talk. “It does look inviting, doesn’t it?”
“You must be feeling better, mon père. Are we allowed to pillage, as well?”
“If we do it without making an unclerical spectacle of ourselves. And you’re right, I am better.” After filling plates and glasses, La Chaise led the way toward a dark alcove where they could eat unobserved. But when they got closer, they saw a man’s back and the rose-colored edge of a woman’s skirt framed in the alcove’s arch.
La Chaise muttered in exasperation and looked around for somewhere else. But Charles put his plate and glass down on a side table and strode to the alcove. The rose-colored skirt was overlaid with delicate white lace and the coat was the same black brocade as Henri Montmorency’s.
“Bonsoir, Monsieur Montmorency,” Charles said, loudly and brusquely.
Montmorency twitched a shoulder without looking to see who spoke. “Leave us. You intrude.”
“Turn around, monsieur.”
The flat order made the boy turn so fast and angrily that his sword smacked against Lulu’s skirt and she exclaimed impatiently. To Charles’s surprise, Montmorency seemed not at all alarmed when he saw who was talking to him. And seemed not to see La Chaise, standing a little aside, at all. Instead of giving Charles the courteous greeting and bow he owed a professor, Montmorency glowered. “What do you want?”
“To know what you are doing here.” Charles glanced into the shadows where the king’s daughter stood. “‘Here’ in all senses of the word, Monsieur Montmorency.”
That produced a giggle from Lulu and a darker scowl from Montmorency.
“I am here with the rector’s permission,” the boy said stiffly.
“I am relieved to hear it,” Charles returned. “Why are you here?”
Montmorency shifted his feet and groped for words, which never came quickly to him. “The ball. Why should I not be here?” He lifted his square chin and fell back on the central tenet of his universe. “I am a Montmorency.”
“And so the king invited you? But you were rudely late.”
The whites of Montmorency’s eyes showed as he glanced into the shadows. “Yes! I mean, no, but—”
“Oh, have done!” Lulu surged out of the alcove, twitching her fan like an angry bird flicking its tail. “I invited him, maître.” Her eyes traveled caressingly over Charles, who removed his bonnet and willed himself not to blush. She tapped him on the arm with the fan. “I sent him a note. So of course he came. Isn’t he fortunate? Wouldn’t you like to have a note from me?” Charles’s distantly polite expression didn’t alter and her voice chilled. “You, I see, only came to celebrate my being sold to Poland.” Her lips trembled and she bit them to stillness.
“No, Lulu,” Montmorency cried, “you know I will never let—”
“Shut up, mon cher!” Her false brilliant smile was back, and she kept it trained on Charles. “Your pupil has the Montmorency love of lost causes, maître. But who knows? Perhaps when I get to Poland, I shall at least enjoy the wolf hunting.”
“You will never go there.” Montmorency tried to take her hands. “I will—”
“You will nothing,” she said, pulling her hands out of reach. As she moved, something clattered to the floor. Montmorency bent to retrieve it, but she was before him. Charles saw that it was a ring, old and heavy, with a deep blue stone capping an elaborate raised setting.
“A lovely jewel, Your Highness,” he said.
Montmorency swelled with pride. “I gave it to her.”
“A small parting gift.” Lulu slipped the ring onto her right-hand middle finger.
“I put a lock of my hair in it,” Montmorency said proudly. “Show him, Lulu.”
She shrugged slightly at Charles and held out her hand. “It’s a locket ring.” She touched the side of the blue stone and the setting opened like a tiny book. A coil of fair hair nestled inside. “Monsieur Montmorency wished me to take something of him with me to Poland. He knew it would be a comfort for me.”
She closed the ring and folded her other hand over it. Montmorency gazed at her with his heart in his eyes.
“I have one, too,” he said, thrusting his hand at Charles. His locket ring had a red stone. He opened it to show the dark blond curl it held.
Lulu glanced at it and looked down. “I must go now,” she said gravely, moving her shoulders a little, as though trying to shrug off the weight of the gleaming pearls. “My women will be looking for me.”
She turned and left, and Montmorency started to follow her, but La Chaise cleared his throat and stepped into his path. “Why are you private with the king’s daughter, monsieur? What business of yours is her going to Poland?”
Penned between the alcove’s archway and the two Jesuits, Montmorency shifted uneasily. “Oh. Well, only that—that she’s—well, going. And—” He flushed and stared at his shoes.
“And what?”
Charles watched the all too familiar spectacle of Montmorency making a mental effort. The results, if any, were unlikely to get the boy off whatever hook La Chaise was trying to hang him on.
“Mon père—maître—” Montmorency looked miserably from one to the other. “Can you not make the king change his mind?” He clasped both hands over his heart. “I shall die if she goes!”
Moved in spite of himself by the boy’s unhappy devotion, Charles shook his head slightly at La Chaise, who was clearly not moved in the least.
“Monsieur Montmorency,” Charles said carefully, “you must know that Mademoiselle de Rouen is not for you. Your house is ancient and great, but the king will marry his daughter only to royalty. I am sure you are aware of that, painful as it is to accept.” Charles had learned the hard way that appealing to his sense of family was the only way to reason with the boy.
Montmorency bowed his head and stood with one hand on his sword—the very picture, Charles thought, of noble renunciation.
The boy drew himself up, resolution in his dog-brown eyes. “I am going to ask the king if he will let me win her right to stay in single combat. I am not so bad with a sword. Even if she could not marry me, at least she would be where I could still see her.”
Charles told himself sternly not to laugh. “Single combat with whom?”
Montmorency shrugged. “I don’t care. One of those ambassadors? Whomever the king chooses.”
Very gently, as though each word were an egg that might break, Charles said, “Your heart does you credit, Monsieur Montmorency. But single combat is no longer done. Your request would not be granted.”
La Chaise, unfortunately, found his voice. “Of course it wouldn’t. You are talking like a fool. Go back to Louis le Grand and stay there. The girl is going to Poland and if you lift a finger to stop her, you will be guilty of treason. Come. I will find you a carriage.”
Montmorency was a head taller than La Chaise, and as he glared at the king’s confessor, his considerable bulk seemed to grow. For the first time, Charles saw a man’s anger showing hard and bright behind the boy’s yearning.
“I am not going back. I have leave to be here.”
Charles had the feeling that if La Chaise had not been a cleric, Montmorency might have invited him out to the garden to settle the matter. But then the façade of Montmorency’s new manhood wavered, and the boy showed through. “Leave me alone!” He dodged clumsily around La Chaise and made for the doors.
“Dear God,” La Chaise muttered. “We have to get him
out of here. Do you realize what he’s flirting with?”
“I realize who.”
“Don’t you start playing the fool. Montmorency is the perfect dupe, and the girl will use him if she can. If he goes on talking about challenging the king’s plans for her—or, God forbid, actually makes a move to challenge them—we’ll be blamed nearly as much as he will, because we’ve educated him.”
Charles snorted. “No one has educated Montmorency, believe me—” Something hit his shoulder and he turned sharply, jostling La Chaise, who spilled wine down his cassock. A thin middle-aged woman stood in the alcove’s archway, frowning up at him.
Chapter 9
Sweeping her fan from side to side like a sword and frowning—which made several of her star-shaped beauty patches collide over her nose like an ominous planetary conjunction—the woman pushed her way between Charles and La Chaise.
Openmouthed, La Chaise watched her green gown and bright yellow wig disappear into the crowd. “Blessed Saint Roch.” He turned to stare at the alcove. “Did she come from in there?”
“She must have,” Charles said, wondering why La Chaise had invoked a plague saint.
“So she was in there all the time, in there with the two of them.” La Chaise stood on his toes, trying to see over the mass of talking, eating courtiers. “You’re taller; can you still see her?”
Catching sight of the yellow ringlets, Charles nodded. “She hasn’t gone far, she’s talking to someone. Who is she?”
“Her Royal Highness Marguerite Louise, Grand Duchess of Tuscany. Known as Margot. She’s the king’s cousin, and twelve years ago he sent her, much against her will, to Italy to marry Cosimo de Medici. She has fought constantly against her husband and the marriage, and Louis has finally permitted her return to France. All of which makes her the very last person who should be anywhere near Mademoiselle de Rouen just now.” La Chaise finished his wine in one gulp and put down his glass on the little table where Charles’s own untasted wine and food still waited. “I will find Montmorency and make sure he goes back to Paris. You engage the Grand Duchess of Tuscany in talk. Stay with her. If you can’t stay with her, watch her. And for God’s sake, keep her away from Lulu. Do not let the duchess out of your sight until she is in her carriage and the carriage is turned for Paris. When you’ve seen her carriage pass the gates, report to me.”
When Charles didn’t move, La Chaise said grimly, “I know I am not your religious superior. I know you are only a scholastic. But I am asking you to help me. You say you are loyal to the king. Prove it now.”
Since the only possible answer to that was agreement, Charles nodded and waded into the crowd after the bobbing yellow wig. His path crossed the duchess’s near a door into the gallery. She was carrying a half-empty glass of dark red wine and swaying happily on her high heels. Some of her thickly plastered beauty patches had come unglued in the heat and landed like black shooting stars on her bare bony shoulders. She checked for a moment when she saw Charles and then greeted him loudly, spilling wine down his cassock as she tried to kiss him.
Courtiers around them egged her on. “Ah,” someone sang out, “the Grand Duchess of Tuscany is a veritable Venus tonight, and who can resist her?”
Sighing inwardly, Charles fended her off. “May I be of service, madame? May I escort you to a seat?”
Margot laughed in his face. “Do I look so tired? Is Venus ever tired? Or are you too tired, poor celibate stick?” She regarded him, head to one side. “We might go back to that pretty little alcove and find a cure for your—limpness.”
That brought delighted gasps and caws of merriment, and Charles felt himself turning as red as his tormenter’s wine.
“Shall we walk out into the gallery, Your Royal Highness? It is cooler there and will stop your face from losing its celestial beauties.”
The apt double entendre made the listening courtiers eye Charles with new respect. He stepped aside so that Margot could precede him through the door and followed in the wide wake of her summer-green skirts, praying fervently that Jouvancy would be well enough in the morning to ride in a carriage back to Paris and get them out of this place.
Not only was the gallery cooler, but it was nearly deserted and quieter, except for what Charles took at first for the sound of an indoor fountain, then realized was an unseen man pissing in one of the small dark gallery alcoves. A few couples sat on scattered benches or strolled, whispering together, along the black-and-white tile. Charles led Margot to a bench, and as she sat down and spread her skirts, he bent to look more closely at the bench’s soft luster in the light from the wall sconces.
“Silver?” he said incredulously.
“Of course, silver. Whatever my dear cousin Louis wants, he must have.”
“And you?” Charles said boldly, sitting on the bench’s end. If he had to dog her steps, he might as well find out all he could about her. “It seems you’ve gained what you wanted in coming back to France.”
She drained her glass. “Yes. And it took twelve miserable years of my life. How long do you suppose it took Louis to get this?” She slapped a hand down on the gleaming silver and hiccupped.
“Not twelve years,” Charles said, knowing that was his next line in this script. “Do you dislike your husband so much, then?”
She gave him a wide, gap-toothed smile. “I loathe Cosimo de Medici. I loathed him on sight. I loathed the very thought of going to Italy and marrying him. But what did that matter to Louis?”
“A hard fate for a woman,” he said, both because it was the truth and also to see how she might respond.
“You may well say so.” She glanced sideways at him. “And now I must watch poor little Lulu go through it all. And Poland is much farther away and will be harder to escape than Italy was. But perhaps her little prince will be less disagreeable than Cosimo. So ugly, Cosimo, and I always dislike ugly men. I wouldn’t even bother sitting here with you, if you were ugly.” She tapped him on the chest with her closed fan. “You are not ugly at all, are you, mon cher?”
“Whatever else I am, I am a cleric, Your Highness,” Charles said quietly.
“Whatever else you are, you are a silly young prude,” she mocked, “and you will have to account to the bon Dieu for such waste.” She hiccupped again and turned her head toward the sound of another man making use of an alcove. “Ah, the sweet sound of flowing water. Always it calls to my own water. And, alas, I cannot make use of an alcove. Help me up, mon cher.”
Charles stood quickly and pulled her to her feet. Her skirts swept her empty glass from the bench, and it shattered on the floor.
“No, no, we must not be indelicate,” she laughed, as Charles made to accompany her. “You cannot escort me to la chaise de commodité—the real one, I mean, of course. I have no desire to meet the other one any more often than I must.” Giggling drunkenly, she wove her way down the gallery.
Charles hesitated, wanting no more of her company. But his orders were not to leave her. Soft footed, he followed, keeping her just in sight. The farther they went, the more deserted the gallery was. The wall sconces grew farther apart, but even in the dimming candlelight, the yellow wig led him like a beacon. And the beacon’s progress was straight as an arrow. Margot’s drunken wavering was gone and her heels tapped purposefully along the marble. Which made Charles follow with greater interest and think, as she turned corner after corner, that surely she must have passed a privy by now. But she never slowed. She vanished suddenly and he heard her pattering rapidly down a staircase. He ran lightly to its opening and felt his way down. At the bottom, he heard her steps fading away on his right. Knowing that if he lost the duchess he’d never find her in this maze, he put on a burst of speed. And cannoned into a massive figure who stepped suddenly into his way without seeing him.
The man swore, lumbered backward, and stood against a door, glaring at Charles.
“Did a woman in a yellow wig and a green gown pass just now?” Charles said.
The man—a footman, Charl
es supposed—set his back more solidly against the closed door.
“If she didn’t pass you, she must have gone through that door you’re guarding so well.”
The footman ignored him and Charles drifted a little aside, as though giving up the effort to communicate. He hit the wood-paneled wall as hard as he could with the flat of his hand, and the footman jumped and swore again.
“So you’re not deaf,” Charles said pleasantly. “Which means you’re probably not mute, either. “Did a woman go into the rooms you’re guarding?”
“What’s that to you?” the man growled.
His stare was beginning to remind Charles of an implacably belligerent dog deciding where to bite, and he stepped a little farther away. “Whose rooms are these? Come on, mon brave, you may as well tell me; I can easily find out from someone else.”
“Then go find out.”
Charles withdrew. When he reached the staircase, he stepped into the dark stairwell and settled himself against the wall, veiled in shadows, and watched the door. Unless Margot decided to stay the night, she would eventually emerge into the gallery. With luck, she would then simply find her carriage and leave. And he could go to bed. After, of course, reporting to Père La Chaise. He wondered why Margot had feigned drunkenness. Simply to be rid of the “silly young prude”? But she was royal; she had no need to be subtle when she tired of someone’s company. Had she been making sure he wouldn’t follow her? And what had she truly been doing in the salon alcove with Mademoiselle de Rouen and Montmorency? Charles shook his head. Were La Chaise’s suspicions of the women—both Margot and Lulu—justified, or did they only mean that he’d been too long in this hothouse of rumor and suspicion?
Charles sighed with weariness and began to recite one of Cicero’s speeches to himself to pass the time. When he was done with that and there was still no sign of Margot, he tried to pray, but closing his eyes took him to the edge of sleep. Last night’s sickness, he supposed, had left him more tired than he’d realized. He tried planning the next section of the college ballet, but the ballet made him think about the king’s wrongdoings and his own helplessness against them. From there, his thoughts jumped to courtiers and then to the Comte de Fleury lying dead at the foot of the gallery stairs, and then to the dead gardener beside the lake. He heard the Prince of Conti’s lazy, ironic voice in his head. So now you’ve found a drowned rat. For no reason he could fully explain, Charles was still certain that Conti had followed him from the fountain. But why?