The Whispering of Bones
Page 7
He and Richaud left and Charles stayed in the dimly lit anteroom.
“‘The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance,’” he said out loud, amazed at how perfectly St. Augustine summed up his own experience. For ten years, his mind had been commanding itself to at least temper the terrible guilt he’d brought with him from the battle of Cassel, but it had gone on festering and aching. Whether it would help or hurt to see Amaury, he didn’t know, he only knew he had to see him. He jumped, startled, when the anteroom door opened and Quellier reappeared.
“The rector says you may see Monsieur de Corbet. For a quarter of an hour only. Come.”
When they reached the visitors’ room, Quellier said, “Wait here and I will bring him.”
Charles stood facing the door, his heart speeding as though he’d been running. The priest was back almost immediately, ushering a tall, very slender novice before him.
“He was just outside in the garden.” Quellier took a small hourglass from a shelf, turned it, and set it on the table. “A quarter of an hour.” He nodded to Charles and left them.
Amaury stood just inside the room, eyes on the floor, hands folded at the waist of his black cassock, his outdoor hat under his arm. “Hello, Maître du Luc.” He raised his head and smiled. “I wondered if you knew I was here.”
“I didn’t until yesterday.” Charles studied the face of the man standing before him. He wouldn’t have known him again, at least not by his face. Ten years of weather and fighting had aged him far beyond the gangling, anxious youth Charles remembered. The eyes, though—those deep-set, brown-black eyes were what he remembered best. How full of anguish they’d been as Amaury tried and failed to control his men at Cassel. How wide with fear they’d been when he tore away half his own shirt and pressed it over the gaping wound in Charles’s shoulder on the battlefield at St. Omer. How those eyes had dared him not to listen, dared him to die, while Amaury’s voice vied with death for his attention with learned talk about wine until the wagon picking up the wounded made its slow way toward them.
“Maître du Luc?” Amaury said hesitantly, breaking the silence and glancing at the sand running through the glass on the table.
“Forgive me. I was—remembering. One reason I wanted to see you is to thank you for saving my life all those years ago.”
Amaury nodded gravely. “Are you well?”
“I am. And you? Does it go well with you here?”
“Well enough. I’m older, of course, than most of my fellow novices. The senior novice in our chamber is twenty-one. He makes me feel like an old man.”
Charles laughed. “As I recall, you’re a year younger than I, so none of that, if you please! And the other two in your chamber? Are they as young?” Charles was vividly remembering his own novitiate and the scrupulously neat four-bedded chamber they’d shared for two years.
“We’re only three in our chamber. The fourth didn’t arrive. I suppose his family intervened. Or perhaps he lost his nerve.”
Charles shrugged. “Both of those things happen.”
A new silence fell as the two men studied each other.
Nerving himself, Charles said, “Charles-François told me you were here.”
Amaury flinched. “He’s very angry with me.”
“But more angry with me,” Charles said, half smiling.
“That’s my fault. He knows it was because of you that I first thought of offering myself to the Society. Though the guilt of waiting so long to do it is all mine.” Amaury looked beyond Charles at the crucifix on the wall. “I felt I had to wait until my father died. I told myself that was filial respect, but really, you know, it was only cowardice.”
Charles flinched inwardly. Cowardice. There it was again, the word that seemed to bind the two of them together. “Is that why you followed my cousin into the navy? Because your father wanted it? I would have thought that, after what happened at Cassel, you would have wanted to stay as far from Charles-François as you could.”
Amaury’s face flushed. “I didn’t follow your cousin.” He sighed heavily. “After—because of what happened at Cassel, I told my father I wanted to leave the army. I thought he was going to kill me. He said that if I left the military, he would disown me, disinherit me, and make sure no one helped me to anything else. And I—I gave in to him. Then he got me into the Royal Marine. I was assigned to your cousin’s ship, but he chose to think I asked to be under his command. Later, when I asked him about you and he told me you’d joined the Society, I knew you’d done it because of Cassel. That was the first step on my own way here. I’m very grateful.”
Charles looked at him helplessly. “No. Cassel was not the reason—certainly not the most important reason—why I joined the Society. I joined because I read Saint Ignatius’s biography while I recovered from my wound. I joined to help souls. I joined because I thought I could come closer to God than in any other way of living. I brought my guilt with me, of course I did, but guilt is not a good reason for becoming a Jesuit! We’re not cloistered monks turning our backs on the world for our own salvation. You’ll never make a Jesuit, if that’s all you want.”
Amaury drew himself up, and Charles had a startling glimpse of generations of unchallenged noble authority staring from suddenly cold eyes.
“I am giving my life to God in penance for what I failed to do at Cassel,” Amaury said, his lips barely moving. “Who are you, maître, to tell me that’s wrong?”
“Who am I? A Jesuit for eight years, that’s who I am. And I’m telling you that being here will not wipe away what happened at Cassel.”
Amaury’s reply cut like a sword thrust. “I think that what you’re telling me is that you have not been penitent enough for what happened at Cassel.”
To Charles’s horror, something of the momentary swell of insulted nobility he’d felt in the confrontation with his cousin Charles-François rose in him. He quelled it and managed a conciliatory smile. “I wish you only good,” he said. “Here and everywhere. But, I beg you, think on what I’ve said.”
Amaury’s only reply was a look at the hourglass. “Our time has run out.”
He bowed humbly, as to a superior, but his back was rigid with offense as he walked from the room, leaving Charles looking after him with regret that he’d given in to anger. And with deep misgivings about this new novice’s vocation—for which the novice in question held him at least partly responsible. Charles left the visiting parlor with his own burden of guilt heavier than when he’d arrived.
CHAPTER 6
It was a silent walk back to Louis le Grand. Maître Richaud seemed as preoccupied and disinclined for talk as Charles was. When they reached the church of St. Étienne des Grès, just before Louis le Grand, Richaud stopped.
“Please, maître,” he said ingratiatingly. “I am going to stop here and pray for a while. I will fast through dinner and join you after in the scholastics’ common room.”
Charles nodded and Richaud went slowly up the steps and into the old church, the picture of self-effacing piety. Shaking his head, but glad to be rid of the man, Charles went on to the postern and rang the bell. Frère Martin let him into the street passage and quickly shut the door. “Maître,” the porter said, “Lieutenant-Général La Reynie’s here. He wants you to come to the grand salon.” Martin widened his eyes at Charles. “Me, I think it’s about that dead man you found.”
“Thank you, I’ll go.” Charles had been expecting La Reynie to come looking for him. The abbess had summoned the nearest police commissaire to Notre Dame des Champs, and the news would soon have reached La Reynie, the head of the police. Charles started to walk away and then turned. “How did you know about the dead man, Frère Martin?”
“Louis le Grand has the very best air for carrying news.” Martin shrugged and winked at Charles. “My village had the same air, can you believe it?”
“Pray God it is.” Charles went heavy hearted through the side door from the passage. The main building’s grand salon, where visitors normally waited, was empty. But the rector’s office door opened and Le Picart looked out.
“Ah. I hoped it was you I heard, maître. In here, please. Monsieur La Reynie wishes to speak with you.”
“Yes, mon père.” With a sense of girding his loins, Charles crossed the salon. He’d helped La Reynie in the past, and he’d come to like and respect the man, even to feel warmly toward him. But having the head of the Paris police seek him out still made him uneasy. When he reached Le Picart’s office, the rector was sitting behind his desk and Lieutenant-Général Nicolas de la Reynie, a big man in his sixties, faultlessly dressed in coat and breeches of finely woven black wool, stood stiffly in front of it. Charles could almost see the tension arcing between the two men. He could certainly feel their inheld anger.
Charles bowed first to his rector and then to the king’s officer. “Mon père. Monsieur La Reynie.”
“Bonjour, maître.” A muscle in La Reynie’s cheek was twitching as he bowed slightly. “I trust you are well?”
“Very well, I thank you,” Charles said warily. “And you?” The tension in the air made him feel as though they were trading conversation from a textbook of manners.
“I was well enough.” La Reynie glared at the rector. “I had hoped—”
“One moment.” Le Picart plucked the conversational bit out of La Reynie’s mouth. “I will explain. Maître, we owe the honor of the lieutenant-général’s visit to your discovery of the dead man—may God receive his soul—in the Carmelites’ crypt. Monsieur La Reynie has been trying to discover the man’s name and wishes to ask you a few questions about what you saw yesterday. Brief questions.” He leveled a chilly gray glance at La Reynie. “Before you go to your dinner and then to your studies.”
“I am at your service, mon père,” Charles said carefully. He knew the rector in this inflexible mood. It usually meant that Le Picart was protecting something or someone.
“Mon père,” La Reynie said through his teeth, “I am hunting a murderer. Surely my questions matter more than anyone’s dinner.” He turned to Charles, almost but not quite turning his back on Le Picart. “Mère Vinoy, the Carmelite abbess, said that you saw a man at the foot of the crypt stairs. No one else reports seeing anyone come up the stairs. Describe the man you saw.”
“As I told the abbess, I saw only his outline. And mon lieutenant-général, it seems very easy to go and come from the crypt unseen. I’m certain that no one saw Père Dainville and me go down.”
La Reynie frowned and grunted. “Well? The man you saw?”
“He was silhouetted against the single candle there as he waited for us to reach the bottom of the stairs so he could go up. He waited very patiently—there was no sign that he was angry or disturbed. I thought he’d just finished praying in the chapel.” Charles hesitated. “It would have been courteous to speak, but he didn’t, though perhaps that was only his being a somewhat rough man, not a man of quality. I say that because from the shape of him, he wore no wig or wide cuffs or coat skirts. Just ordinary clothes. I’d say he was of middle height, and young, or at least not old, from the speed of his climbing the stairs after we passed.” Charles held out his hands. “That’s all I can tell you about him. Did you learn anything else from the body?”
“There were no other injuries. Though his wrists were somewhat chafed, as though he’d been tied. And he was a young man of quality. Expensive clothes and fine linen, well fed, soft hands.”
“Do you know yet who he is?”
Instead of answering, La Reynie said, “I understand you’ve just come from the Novice House.”
Charles glanced at the rector, who nodded slightly. “Yes, I had a class there, as Père Le Picart has no doubt told you.”
“One of the few things he’s told me,” La Reynie said irritably. “Did anyone at the Novice House speak of a new novice who never arrived?”
“How did you know about that? The novice who didn’t arrive was supposed to be the fourth in the chamber of the man I was visiting.”
“Who is that?”
“Monsieur Amaury de Corbet, a new novice. I knew him slightly in the army and wished to welcome him. But you haven’t said how you know that one of the novices never arrived.”
The police chief smiled slightly. “Because servants are not only very useful, they know everything. I have a maid whose son lives at your Novice House. Not as a novice, he’s only thirteen. He’s one of several boys there who gets shelter and food and some teaching, in return for menial chores. I heard him telling his mother about the missing young man. I’ve spoken with the Novice House rector, Père Guymond, who tells me that the absent novice is a seventeen-year-old named Paul Lunel, from Paris. When he didn’t arrive, the rector made inquiries about him at the family town house but had no reply. The family—the mother and a brother—are away. Neither of them made any inquiry about young Lunel these last three weeks, which suggests that they assumed he was where he was supposed to be.”
Charles thought about the smooth, softly rounded face he’d uncovered. That young man could well have been only seventeen. “So you’re thinking that the dead man may be the missing novice?” Charles said.
“I am eliminating possibilities. A dead young man of quality where a dead man should not have been. A young man of quality missing from where he should have been. One never knows.”
“And what are you going to do now?” Le Picart said, with a hint of impatience.
La Reynie took his time flicking imaginary dust from his lace cuffs. “Père Guymond is coming to the Châtelet this afternoon to look at the body.” He looked up at Charles. “After that, perhaps I should speak with your novice friend.”
“From what he said, I don’t think he knows the missing novice.”
“How can you be sure?”
“By the way he spoke of him. And also because Amaury de Corbet isn’t from Paris, and is at least ten years older than this Paul Lunel.”
The college bell sounded from the courtyard, ringing for midday dinner, and Le Picart stood up. “We must leave you now, mon lieutenant-général.” The rector’s smile was courteous, but without warmth. “I will pray for your success in discovering who the murdered man was and who killed him. God go with you.”
“I am going, mon père.” La Reynie showed his teeth in what Charles had learned not to take for a smile. “As for le bon Dieu’s plans for the afternoon, I couldn’t say.” With the slightest of bows and a roll of his eyes at Charles, he swept out of the rector’s office.
Charles, swallowing laughter, started to follow him, but Le Picart called him back.
“I must speak further with you,” the rector said. “If you miss your dinner, you may ask something from the kitchen, as you did last night.” Le Picart went to the small window that gave onto the main courtyard and opened its casement of old greenish glass. The ceaseless noise of feet just outside, crunching over the courtyard’s gravel to the college refectories, sounded like an army passing. “I could see,” Le Picart said, his back turned to Charles, “that you were surprised by my coolness to Lieutenant-Général La Reynie. Though he didn’t say it in so many words, he came hoping you would help him in this matter. I have allowed you to assist him in the past, for the good of the college and the Society of Jesus, as well as for other reasons. But I cannot and will not allow you to help him again.”
“But—” Charles saw the rector’s back stiffen and swallowed the rest of his protest.
When Le Picart turned around, the expression on his thin face was deadly serious. “Listen to me. I understand that if this murdered young man is indeed the missing novice Paul Lunel, then the lieutenant-général will have to ask questions in the Novice House. And though he represents the king’s justice, he will not be able to find out things as easily as a Jesuit could.” He paused and smiled briefly at the consternation on Charles’s face. “Oh, no one would lie to him. Père Guymond, the rector, will want the killer caught as much as anyone does. But the obvious attention of the police is never welcome to the head of a Jesuit house. As I too well know.”
Charles nodded, struggling inwardly with all the things he wanted to say. Le Picart hadn’t said it outright, but Charles knew well enough that his being forbidden to help La Reynie was mostly because of the royal attention he’d drawn to himself so dramatically last summer.
“I told you when you returned from Versailles,” the rector continued, as though reading Charles’s thoughts, “that some of your brother Jesuits here in the college resent the scope—and the freedom—I’ve sometimes given to you, a mere scholastic. I am not sorry to have done so. What came of your actions in each case served the king’s justice and God’s, and also served the Society.” He sighed and shook his head slightly. “Nevertheless, as a result, you and I are both under scrutiny, and not only by Jesuits inside these walls. I am under scrutiny by my superiors here in the Paris Province for what I allowed you to do. You are under the same scrutiny because a scholastic calling so much attention to himself is unseemly and raises questions about his future.” His bleak gray eyes held Charles’s gaze, and he nodded as he saw Charles take in what he’d said. “Furthermore,” he continued, “this murder at Notre Dame des Champs has nothing to do with the college, even if the dead man should turn out to be a Jesuit novice.”
“But if—” Charles heard his indignance and started over. “What I mean,” he said quietly, “is that if a novice of ours has been murdered, and one of us can help to bring justice to bear, shouldn’t that be done?”