The Whispering of Bones

by Judith Rock

  “No, not even that. He said he didn’t want me there when he left; he refused my company on his walk to the Novice House. He said it would make going too hard for him, even though he wanted to go. So I went to stay with friends to let him have his way. I went with a very heavy heart, I can tell you.”

  “Oh? Who did you stay with?” La Reynie said, as though the answer didn’t much interest him.

  “A good friend who lives a little way south of the city. The family name is Coriot.”

  “Didn’t your servant know where to find you? Why didn’t he send you word there instead of sending to the country?”

  Lunel smiled sadly. “I forgot to tell him I was going there first. I was only there for two days and then I went to Chaillot, to our mother. That’s where I found the message from the Novice House about Paul’s absence. It was addressed only to me, and when I read it, I thought that my brother’s nerve had failed him, that he had come to his senses and was lying low with his own friends until his embarrassment passed and he could come home and admit his mistake. I didn’t tell my mother because I didn’t want her to get her hopes up. I—I’m sorry.” He looked pleadingly at his mother.

  “I knew how she would worry if I couldn’t tell her where he’d gone.” His shoulders slumped. “I will blame myself all my days for not telling what I knew. If I had, it might have saved his life.” His sudden look at La Reynie and Charles was full of anguish. “After it was discovered that he’d been killed, I sent to everyone I could think of, asking if he’d been there. But no one had seen him. Where can he have been those three weeks? And why, dear God, why would anyone kill a boy like Paul?”

  His mother finally looked up, but there was no warmth in the look. “Softly, Alexandre. You thought you were acting for the best. We can’t change things.”

  La Reynie waited a decent moment and then said to Lunel, “I want a list of the families you contacted, a list of Paul’s friends.”

  “Of course. Though I don’t see the good of that now.” He went to a bureau with an intricate crisscross pattern of black and gold in its dark wood and took a quill and paper from a small compartment.

  “Madame,” Charles said, “if I may ask, why did Paul’s father not send him to Louis le Grand, if Paul had some inclination toward the Society of Jesus?”

  The sound of Alexandre Lunel’s quill scraping suddenly across his paper drew everyone’s eyes. He muttered in exasperation, examining his pen. Then he smiled an apology over his shoulder. “Your pardon. I didn’t see that the point was gone.”

  As he rummaged for another one, his mother replied, gazing out the window across from her chair, “When Alexandre here was a child, he was sickly, his eyes were weak. He could not go to school, so we hired a tutor for him. My husband felt that his education was very good, and decided to have the same for Paul. So they both stayed at home and studied. My husband had found a Jesuit tutor to teach Alexandre but was persuaded to try a young layman to tutor Paul. Which worked out very well. Though Paul was disappointed not to have a Jesuit. He’d heard so much about your missions,” she said to Charles. And added, “He had a silly idea of doing something like that after—”

  “That’s everyone I can think of,” Alexandre Lunel said, cutting her off and holding out his list to La Reynie.

  “My thanks, monsieur.” La Reynie tucked the paper into his coat pocket and looked from under his brows at Charles.

  Belatedly reminded of their agreement, Charles said, “If you will excuse me for a moment? I must—um—” To his annoyance, he felt his face grow red.

  Mme Lunel glanced at him with distaste. “Just go down the stairs and beyond the red curtain,” she murmured.

  Her son started to object, but Charles ignored him. When he reached the foot of the stairs, he noticed that the cloaks and the walking stick were still on the side table. He listened for a moment at the velvet curtain, then pushed it aside and went into the passageway beyond. There were closed doors on either side of it and what looked like an outside door at the end. It opened onto a cobbled court walled by two short wings of the house. There was a covered well in one corner, a privy house in another, and an arched wooden gate across from the door where Charles was standing. The court was strewn with evidence of the Lunels’ return from the country: a scattering of barrels, an enormous basket of autumn vegetables, hothouse fruit in straw-lined wooden frails.

  Two coatless young men came out of the door in the left-hand wing, laughing and talking. When they saw Charles, they fell abruptly silent, staring at him in obvious dismay. Surprised and wondering who they were—by the lace on their shirts, they weren’t servants—Charles smiled amiably and wandered into the courtyard, pretending an interest in the vegetables. Instead of any courteous greeting, one of the pair muttered something to the other, and both turned to go back inside. Then someone pounded on the gate. The man who’d spoken ran to open it, and a half dozen brown and white goats trotted in, followed by the same old woman Charles had seen at The Dog.

  “Ah, I see you’re getting goat’s milk,” Charles said to the man, as though they’d been introduced. “Do you live here with Monsieur Lunel?”

  “We’re helping him get settled,” the young man said curtly, pushing a goat away from his shirt cuff. “Madame Lunel needs the milk. She isn’t well.”

  He urged the old woman and her goats toward the door he’d come from, but the goats were more interested in the hothouse fruit at Charles’s feet. He leaned down to push one away from the basket, and it captured his swinging rosary in its mouth.

  “No, no, not that!” Half laughing, he pulled the rosary out of reach. “I refuse to tell the clothing master that a goat ate my rosary, ma chère.”

  The goatherd shook off the young man who was trying to get her into the house. Standing still, she watched Charles stroking the head of the marauding goat. Her small brown face was a tangle of lines, but her black eyes were sharp and knowing.

  “Grandmère, quickly, we haven’t all day. Come and get the pail.” The young man pulled at her arm, and the strap of the coarse linen bag she carried slipped from her shoulder.

  The bag dropped like a stone and a big wheel of dark bread fell onto the cobbles. Cursing the man, she picked it up, stuffed it back into the bag, and hauled the bag back onto her shoulder. Then she darted across the cobbles to Charles and grabbed his hand. She turned it over and traced its lines with a finger. Charles tried to pull away, but her grip tightened.

  Her eyes closed and her long dirty nails dug into his palm. She swayed slightly and her eyes closed. “Follow the dead, find your death.” She was half singing, her voice thin and high. “Follow the dead, find your death.”

  No one moved. Then she opened her eyes, blinking irritably at Charles as though he’d been standing in her way, and herded her milling goats toward the door in the house wing.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE FEAST OF ST. GONSALD OF LIMOGES,

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1687

  Charles stood in the street, looking fearfully up at the night sky as showers of falling stars plunged toward him. Then, between one breath and another, all the lights in Paris died, and the darkness was thick and silent. Terror overcame him. He felt night creatures slinking past his cassock skirt, and clouds billowed around him in a wind he couldn’t feel. Then a door straight in front of him burst open and light brilliant as fireworks outlined a woman with a musket. She cried out in triumph and fired. But the bullet never reached him. Instead, a cassocked man with a sword in his hand ran at him. The man was Maître Richaud. He was laughing and a trail of blood was dripping from his cassock. His sword was aimed at Charles’s heart. Charles screamed and twisted wildly away.

  “Maître, wake up! You’re dreaming, hush now!”

  Breathing as though he’d been running, Charles flinched away from Père Thomas Damiot, his neighbor across the corridor, who stood over him holding a candle.

 
; “You screamed, you were dreaming.” Damiot put the candle down on the stool beside Charles’s bed. “Here, let me untangle you.” He pulled the twisted bedcovers back into place and straightened them. “Do you want a drink?”

  “Please.” Charles wiped sweat off his face with his sheet. “I woke you? I’m sorry.”

  “It’s a little after midnight; I was already waking from my first sleep.” Damiot went to the copper pitcher on the table. “Are you fevered again?”

  “No. I don’t think it was a fever dream.” He took the cup Damiot handed him and drank gratefully. “But it was nearly as odd. I dreamed all the stars were falling. And then the street lanterns went out and then—” He caught his breath as he remembered the woman with the musket, the woman at the Battle of Cassel. “—and then Maître Richaud tried to kill me with a sword,” he finished, and put the cup down beside the candle.

  “Maître Richaud? One cannot imagine him knowing what to do with a sword,” Damiot said dryly. “But you have more reason than most of us to scream at a dream like that, since someone tried to run you through so recently.”

  “Well, not to run me through, exactly. It was only a knife.”

  “Only?” Damiot cast his eyes up. “The reply of an intrepid soldier, maître. According to Frère Brunet, the knife nearly served to do the job.”

  Charles turned his face away, seeing the woman again. “Hardly intrepid.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right now?” Damiot said.

  Charles nodded abstractedly. “Mon père, what have you heard people saying about Maître Richaud’s disappearance?”

  “Here in the college? Most think he’s been murdered. Possibly by the man who attacked you and killed our almost-novice. And you must admit, his bloody cassock being found does suggest a violent death.”

  “In my dream his cassock was dripping blood. But he was laughing.” Charles hesitated over what he wanted to say. In dreams, after all, logic came and went like flickering light. “The dream made me wonder if the cassock was meant to be found, meant to suggest a violent death?”

  To Charles’s surprise, Damiot didn’t laugh at him. “I suppose it’s possible. If that’s the case, it would suggest he’s been kidnapped. But why would anyone snatch Maître Richaud? No one’s asked for ransom, at least not as far as I know. And if the college were asked for one . . .”

  He and Charles looked sheepishly at each other.

  “. . . would we pay to have him back?” Charles finished for him.

  “I can think of better investments to make, I must confess. Though not wanting him back doesn’t mean I want him dead.”

  “No.” Charles sighed. “But if he is dead, why hasn’t his body been found?”

  “Any number of reasons. It could be in the river or hastily buried or sold to the anatomists.”

  “True enough.” Charles sat up enough to lean against the wall. “Another question, then. We joked the other day about the village witch. But do you believe in witches?”

  Damiot didn’t even blink. “Witches,” he said consideringly. “Did you dream about them, too?”

  Charles shook his head.

  Damiot moved the candle and cup to Charles’s small table and sat down on the stool. “Well, it depends on what kind of witches you mean. There are different kinds, you know.” He squinted at Charles. “If you’re looking for one, it’s a little safer to do that now than it used to be. Witchcraft’s not a crime anymore, at least not the white witch kind. Legally, it’s just fraud. Only sorcery’s a crime—calling up the devil and so on.”

  “What I’m talking about,” Charles said carefully, “is the kind of woman I remember from the villages around my father’s land. The wise-woman, the herb-woman who cures sicknesses—”

  “—and gives love philtres and delivers babies and reads the future.” Damiot was nodding. “Or pretends to read the future. Half the peasants in France, here as well as in the south, would die without the help of those women in sickness and childbirth. Of course I believe in them! Every village priest believes in them. Around here, most village priests help choose the next one when the old one dies.”

  “Does Paris have women like that, too?”

  “Of course. All the poor neighborhoods have them. But everyone consults them. Which infuriates the University physicians.” He smiled ruefully. “My mother swears by her favorite wise-woman.”

  “Does she think the woman can see the future?”

  Damiot frowned. “Where is all this leading, maître?” When Charles remained stubbornly silent, Damiot said, “The Bible mentions witches. And wiser men than I have believed they can tell the future. Under God’s will, of course. So yes, my mother listens to her favorite wise-woman. Now. Why are you asking all this?”

  “Because of what an old woman with a herd of goats said to me yesterday.”

  “Goats? Ah. Was she a little, wizened woman? With a big canvas bag?”

  Charles nodded.

  “That was Hyacinthe.” Damiot smiled. “My mother’s witch. Can you imagine a more unlikely name for a goatherd? My mother also buys goat’s milk from her.”

  “Well, this Hyacinthe grabbed my hand and went into a sort of trance. I didn’t like what she said.” He repeated the woman’s words.

  Damiot’s black eyebrows drew together. “I wouldn’t much like that, either,” he said soberly. “What do you think it means, ‘follow the dead, find your death’?” He looked sharply at Charles. “You did find a dead man.”

  “Yes. But it was his death, not mine.” Charles looked down at the coarse brown blanket. He couldn’t say what was really worrying him about her words. When she’d said them, he’d thought, of course, of the murdered Paul Lunel. Since then, however, when he repeated the words to himself, they took him into his memories of Cassel. But he’d long ago found the bodies in the ruined cottage and was still alive. And how could the old woman know anything about Cassel?

  When Charles said nothing more, Damiot frowned and said, “I think there’s something you’re not telling me. Whatever it is, maître, don’t dismiss what the goatwoman says. Perhaps she’s done you a good turn with her warning, because I suspect—no, you don’t have to tell me—I suspect that you are doing what you usually do and looking for that boy’s killer. Hyacinthe has a reputation for these sudden ‘seeings.’ She claims the Blessed Virgin talks to her, which is one reason my mother believes her. And one reason you should, too.” He stood up and stretched and picked up his candle. “If I leave you now, will you be all right? Can you sleep again?”

  “I think so. Thank you for coming to pull me out of my night terrors. And I won’t forget what she said.” Charles slid down under the covers. “Bonne nuit, mon père.”

  “May the holy angels defend you through the rest of the night.” Damiot turned to go. Then he turned back. “There’s something else I should tell you about the goatwoman. It will help you take her seriously, which I’m not sure you’re doing yet. Last Saint Nicholas Day she told my uncle—my mother’s brother—that he’d die before the Epiphany. He spent the rest of December feasting and dancing and laughing at her. He collapsed and died two days before the Epiphany.”

  “Oh, yes, that should definitely help me go back to sleep.” Charles turned over with his back to the door.

  When Wednesday’s sun rose, it stayed hidden beyond a damp gray sky. As Charles was leaving breakfast, a lay brother brought him a message from La Reynie, telling him that the Novice House rector had agreed that Charles could come and question the novices from Paris who had known Paul Lunel or his family even slightly. Since it was also the day when Maître Henry Wing was going there to make up the St. Augustine sessions he’d missed, he and Charles set out for the rue du Pot-de-Fer together.

  The still air had thickened with mist, and as they walked up the rue St. Jacques, the mist beaded on their cloaks like tiny pearls and found its cold way
under their collars. Carts were hauling loads of wood up from the quays for householders’ winter fires, and an old clothes seller calling, “Old cloaks, better than none!” was striding down the hill, his long pole hung with cloaks braced on his shoulder. As Charles and Wing turned right, past The Dog, Charles lifted his head and sniffed like a beagle.

  “Chestnuts?” he said hopefully, and sniffed again. “No, it’s just someone’s fire. I thought I smelled chestnuts roasting, but I suppose it’s still too early for them.” He looked to see if La Reynie had someone watching the bookshop in the hope that Madame Cheyne would give herself away, but if a man was there, he was well disguised or well hidden.

  Wing was also looking back at the bookshop, but not, from the expression on his face, watching for police. “Do you think we’ll see Mademoiselle Ebrard today?”

  Charles looked sharply at him. “I doubt it. Why?”

  The Englishman blushed furiously under his hat. “She’s nice.”

  Charles let a moment go by. “Yes. I believe you find her pretty, too,” he added, to see what the Englishman would say.

  Wing’s pink face and defiant glance made Charles think of an offended piglet. “God makes beauty, Maître du Luc,” Wing said stiffly. “Why shouldn’t we admire it?”

  Admonishing each other in charity was part of a Jesuit’s obligation toward his brothers. And when the brother Jesuit was as innocent as Wing seemed to be, the admonishing might be downright urgent.

  “Jesuits are supposed to admire female beauty cautiously, Maître Wing. To say the least.” Charles wished he could make it clear that he spoke from personal knowledge of caution’s failure and not from a Richaud-like urge to chastise.

  Wing was silent, watching his feet walk.

  Trying to sound offhand, Charles said, “Did you—um—know girls before you entered the Society?”

  Wing sighed. “Hardly any other than my sisters. We lived quietly and the Yorkshire countryside isn’t a very social place.” He looked up at Charles. “May I tell you something?”