The Whispering of Bones

by Judith Rock

  Charles nodded and the Englishman moved closer. “I’ve never kissed a woman,” Wing breathed. “Except my mother.” He looked down, hiding under his hat brim. “I dreamed of Mademoiselle Ebrard last night.”

  Oh, no, Charles thought. Now what do I do? What he wanted to do was to shove Wing out of the Society of Jesus and back into the ordinary world, at least until Wing knew how to kiss a woman and whether doing it mattered to him. But before Charles found something to say, Wing surprised him.

  “Oh, well. It’s not the first time I’ve dreamed about women. My confessors always say it’s just part of being a religious. But it makes what Saint Augustine says about love very interesting, don’t you think? I mean, when he prayed for the gift of chastity, but didn’t want it ‘yet.’ I think that was before he was a monk—I suppose I should have done that, too.”

  Relieved, Charles listened with half an ear as the Englishman mused about St. Augustine’s private life. Beneath the appearance of listening, Charles thought about the Ebrard girl, but not in the way of Maître Wing’s dream. Since he’d found the fragment of Le Cabinet jesuitique’s cover and learned that The Dog sold Dutch pornography upstairs, Charles had wanted even more urgently to know what Mlle Ebrard had really been doing on Friday in the lane near the Novice House. He didn’t believe the story about shortcuts and shopping for needles. What he was reluctantly wondering was whether she was helping her aunt distribute Le Cabinet, or the Dutch books. Or both. He didn’t think there was a bookshop near the Novice House. But she might have been delivering books to customers’ houses.

  And if she is, his coldly logical inner voice said, will you turn her in? Or are her eyes too pretty?

  If she’s delivering illegal books, Charles growled silently back, she’s probably doing it because her aunt is forcing her—maybe her aunt is threatening to turn her out if she refuses. I want to find out before La Reynie does and warn her. She has enough trouble. At the very least, she’ll have nowhere to live if her aunt goes to prison.

  As the scholastics approached the Novice House, a boy ran out of the narrow cleft beside its church, his legs flashing and black jacket tails flying. On an impulse, Charles reached out a long arm and caught his collar. “Hold up, flying Mercury, for one small moment!” Charles turned the boy to face him. “I am Maître Charles du Luc. A friend of Lieutenant-Général La Reynie. Are you the son of his maid?”

  The boy wiped his sweating face. “I am, maître.” His face clouded and his green-hazel eyes grew worried. “Is there trouble? Is my mother ill?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Michel Poulard.”

  “Well then, Michel Poulard, will you do something for me?”

  The boy eyed him. “What would that be, maître?”

  Approving that wariness, Charles said, “I imagine you see most of what goes on around the Novice House. If you see anything odd, anyone coming or going who shouldn’t be there, I want you to go immediately and tell the rector. Tell him I asked you to do that. Will you?”

  “Yes, maître.”

  “Oh, and another thing, Michel,” Charles said casually, “I suppose books get delivered to the house, don’t they? For the novices to use?”

  “Books?” The boy’s slender body was suddenly very still. “Why do you want to know about books?”

  “I thought you might have seen them delivered, that’s all.”

  “I haven’t seen anything like that. I have to go now, I have an errand.” He took to his heels as though they really had sprouted Mercury’s wings and turned down the lane where Mlle Rose Ebrard had gone.

  Wing turned anxiously to Charles. “He’s going down the lane where you rescued Mademoiselle Ebrard. You don’t think she’s there again and needs help, do you? Should we go and see?”

  “Of course not! You heard the boy, he just has some sort of errand there.” Charles hoped fervently that he was correct, and that Rose Ebrard was behind The Dog’s downstairs counter, selling blameless books.

  Wing followed Charles to the Novice House door but kept looking over his shoulder.

  “Listen,” Charles said, “if I’m not here at the door when you leave, that will mean I’m still busy with Père Le Picart’s errand and you’ll have to go back alone.” That was the explanation Charles and the rector had agreed would be given to Wing for Charles’s going to the Novice House. “If that happens,” Charles said sternly, “don’t go down that lane looking for Mademoiselle Ebrard. Just go straight back to the college.”

  Wing looked mulishly at Charles and said nothing.

  “Maître Wing,” Charles said, “there are plenty of men who would happily set on a lone religious for fun.” Especially one who looks as defenseless as a piglet, he didn’t say. “Do you want to cause trouble—and unseemly notoriety—by getting yourself attacked?”

  Abashed, Wing shook his head. “I’ll go straight back. I promise.”

  A lay brother answered the bell, and Wing nodded to Charles and started along the gallery to the stairs.

  The brother looked impatiently at Charles. “Where are you going?”

  “I am Maître du Luc. The rector is expecting me.”

  The brother told him how to find the rector’s office and hurried away, muttering to himself about fleas in the martyrs’ rooms. Which sounded ominous, Charles thought, grinning, if you didn’t know that most Novice Houses had sleeping chambers named after Christian martyrs. Before he reached the rector’s office, he met the rector coming toward him.

  “I think you must be Maître du Luc,” said the slender, balding, graying Jesuit. His downward-sloping brown eyes were tired and preoccupied. “The brother put his head in on the way past my office and said you were here. I am Père Guymond, rector here. I remembered your name when Monsieur La Reynie’s message came to me early this morning. You asked permission to see our Amaury de Corbet, I believe. And how did you find him?”

  Charles chose his words carefully. “He seemed well, mon père. And glad to be here.”

  “Good. I think he is very glad to be here.” Guymond sighed. “Our Provincial has told me of the task you’ve been given. It was I who identified poor Paul Lunel’s body. Be assured that I am grateful to have you asking questions here instead of the police. You are young and no doubt remember that novices—especially new novices—are easily upset. Indeed, this murder has been a blow to all of us. If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to the room we’ve set aside for you. It’s out of the way, which will help to keep our peace undisturbed.”

  Charles followed him into the garden he’d seen through the gallery windows and toward a long building across the courtyard. The garden was checkered with paved paths and low-hedged flower beds, and in a vegetable garden near the other end of the building they were approaching, several young novices were harvesting cabbage. Charles looked for Amaury but didn’t really expect to see him. He found it hard to imagine the proudly noble Amaury doing anything with cabbages.

  “That is our refectory,” Guymond said. He turned toward a door at the refectory’s north end. “And this we call the Little Room.” He ushered Charles into a room not really so little, but with a good bit of its floor taken up with tools, boxes, and storage barrels ranged against the white plastered walls. “I’ve put you here,” he said apologetically, “for privacy, and also because we dine early. If you’re still busy at dinnertime, this will make it easier for the novices to eat as soon as you’re finished with them.”

  He ducked under a huge ham hanging from a beam, and closed and barred the heavy door leading into the refectory, shutting out soft footfalls, an occasional clattering, and the muted voices of table setters and kitchen workers. Then he pulled two chairs close to the small table positioned just inside the half-open courtyard door. “If you need anything, or need to speak to me, send someone from the refectory to find me. Unless something urgent comes to light, no
need to see me before you leave.”

  Charles thanked him, and the rector withdrew. Charles took quill and paper from his satchel and sat down to wait for the first of his novices. Within moments, a gangling boy of sixteen or so stuck his head around the open door. At Charles’s nod, the boy came in, closed the door, and stood awkwardly before him.

  “Bonjour, maître.” The novice’s big hands, folded at his waist, clutched each other as though one of them might escape. “I am Monsieur Étienne du Bois.”

  “Sit, please,” Charles said, smiling. He needed these young men to talk freely, and standing at attention before even such a lowly superior as himself was not going to encourage that.

  Du Bois stumbled over his feet and fell into the other chair. Charles pretended not to notice. “We are trying to find out more about the unfortunate Paul Lunel, who was to have been a novice with you. You have already been told that he didn’t arrive on the entrance day and was later found dead. I have been asked to talk to some of you who say you knew him or his family before you came to the Novice House.”

  “Me? I didn’t—well, not exactly, only my—I mean—” He shut his eyes, gulped air, and untangled his words. “I didn’t really know him, maître. But I told the rector that my mother knows his mother.”

  “Ah. I see.” Charles thought for a moment about Mme Lunel. “Do you know how his mother felt about her son becoming a Jesuit?”

  “My mother said that Madame Lunel didn’t like it. Oh, Madame Lunel is very devout,” the boy said earnestly. “She and my mother used to go to church together on feast days. But Madame Lunel doesn’t like Jesuits. She’s a—” He frowned anxiously. “A Galliard?”

  Charles couldn’t help laughing, and du Bois blushed. “I think you may mean that she’s a Gallican,” Charles said. “Does that sound right?”

  The young face cleared. “That’s it! But Gallic just means French. Doesn’t it?”

  “It can. But these days Gallican means someone who doesn’t want any non-French influence in France.”

  “Oh. But why doesn’t Madame Lunel like Jesuits? Jesuits are French.”

  “Not all Jesuits are French. Yes, I know, it’s complicated. A Gallican wouldn’t want the Novice House or Louis le Grand to have rectors who might be Italian or Spanish or German Jesuits.”

  “Oh. Do you mean we’re going to have a new rector? I don’t mind. As long as he’s not English. He’d make us drink beer.”

  “I didn’t mean that. Never mind,” Charles said desperately. He asked everything he could think of, but the devotion of Paul Lunel’s mother and her bewildering Gallican sentiments was all he got. From the next novice, he learned only that Paul Lunel had been tutored at home, rather than going to a college—which he’d already known. And that the deceased Monsieur Lunel père, a well-respected judge, had been famously stern with his sons, brooking no rebellion from their future as legal men who would carry on the family name in the nobility of the Robe.

  The third novice, Jean Renier, auburn haired and with the pure profile of a classical statue, was as self-possessed as a courtier and as voluble as the lawyer he had decided not to be. He had shared a dancing master with Paul Lunel, but had apparently had no curiosity about him. After a few minutes, Renier launched into a discourse on the wildly unlikely motives of Paul Lunel’s killer and how the killer could be found, and Charles got rid of him as quickly as he could.

  The fourth and last novice, Monsieur Pierre Lyon, was built like a small bull. He explained that his family’s town house was near the Lunels’ on the rue Jean Tison. But he had only no to say to Charles’s questions. Charles was about to give up when Lyon said shyly, “Please, maître, may I say something else?”

  “Of course. What is it?”

  “I—we’ve heard here about the scholastic named Richaud who’s missing from Louis le Grand.”

  Charles nodded. “Do you know him?”

  “No, I don’t know him. It’s just that you’re asking us about Paul Lunel, and that made me remember that I saw Maître Richaud once at the Lunel house.”

  Charles studied the boy. Lyon seemed stolid and undemanding. Not, Charles thought, someone likely to dramatize himself.

  “When did you see him? And how did you know it was Richaud?”

  “It wasn’t very long ago, only at the end of September, just before I came here. The Lunels live across the street from my father’s house and as I was riding home, I saw a Jesuit come out of the Lunel courtyard. That’s why I noticed, you see, because I could tell by his cassock that he was a Jesuit and I was about to enter the Society. The man he was walking with called him Maître Richaud. I was a little surprised, because they were laughing loudly together, and I thought Jesuits were supposed to be quiet in the street. When I heard he’d disappeared, I remembered seeing him. I’ve been praying he’ll be found safe and well.”

  Laughing? Richaud? “Can you describe him?” Charles said.

  “He was shorter than the other man—small and thin. He had his hat on, of course, but I could see that his hair was dark. And he had a narrow face.”

  “That does sound like him. It’s well that you’re praying for him. We’re all hoping he’ll soon be found unharmed.”

  “But you’re not expecting it.”

  Startled, Charles reappraised the little bull yet again. “The longer he’s gone, the harder it is to expect it.”

  The novice rose and started to make his bow, but Charles stopped him.

  “Did you recognize the man with Maître Richaud?”

  “No. It wasn’t Paul Lunel’s older brother. But he was about the same age as the brother. I suppose he was one of Monsieur Alexandre Lunel’s friends.”

  The bell had begun ringing for the novices’ dinner, and Charles thanked the boy and dismissed him. He put his notes and quill into his satchel and let himself out into the garden, keeping to the path under a line of chestnut trees beside the wall, since he was going against the silent tide of the household coming across the garden toward the refectory. As he approached the main building, the rector came to meet him.

  His former friendliness gone, Guymond held out the book he was carrying. “Do you know what this is?”

  Charles took the small book and read the title stamped on its leather cover: Le Cabinet jesuitique. He returned Guymond’s grim look. “Yes. I do. Where did this come from, mon père?”

  “From inside the mattress of your friend Amaury de Corbet.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “No,” Charles said flatly. He handed Le Cabinet jesuitique back to the Novice House rector. “Amaury de Corbet would never have this poison in his possession. Who found it? Who says it’s his?”

  Bridling at Charles’s vehemence, Pere Guymond said, “A lay brother found it. Some of the mattresses were stuffed with new straw yesterday, and new herbs were put in to fight fleas. When the brother reached into Monsieur de Corbet’s mattress to put in the herbs, he found the book and brought it to me. Before you ask, we keep no copy of this anywhere in the Novice House. Nor have I ever before found one here.”

  “I’m sorry to tell you that this book is again circulating in Paris, mon père. I discovered that by chance last week. The Provincial knows of it and so does Lieutenant-Général La Reynie.”

  “God save us. That’s the last thing we need. But if the book is circulating, that would seem to make it even more likely that Monsieur de Corbet brought this with him. Even if someone else hid it in the mattress, Monsieur de Corbet surely would have felt it through the new straw in the night. You know how thin a novice’s mattress is.”

  Charles smiled wryly. “I do know how thin they are, but if Monsieur de Corbet felt something uncomfortable in his mattress, he would probably just move to a different position. He’s spent ten years in the army and navy. I served in the army and I can tell you that even Jesuit novice beds are better than what he’s used to. In any case, if t
he mattress was emptied and restuffed, others obviously had the chance to put something inside.”

  “Possibly. But I think you say all this because Monsieur de Corbet is your friend. You have no proof.”

  “Forgive me, mon père, but neither do you have proof.” Charles braced himself for an indignant reply.

  But Guymond only said, “Come, let us walk. We’ll call less attention to ourselves.” They walked on toward the main building, brushing occasional wet yellow leaves from their cassocks. “Even if Monsieur de Corbet did not bring this into our house,” the rector said, “someone did. Someone who lives here, because no one else could reach the novice chambers, especially his.”

  “Where is Monsieur de Corbet’s chamber?”

  “On the top floor, at the far end of the building from the street entrance. It’s one of the Martyr chambers, the one called Miki, after the Japanese martyr.”

  “Ah. Yes, I heard one of your lay brothers talking about fleas in the martyrs’ rooms. Who shares the chamber with Monsieur de Corbet?”

  “Only two others, since Paul Lunel never arrived. The head chamber novice is Monsieur Joliot. And the other—” Guymond closed his eyes, trying to remember. “I can never remember his name. To myself, I call him the lawyer. He’s—”

  On a hunch, Charles said, “Monsieur Jean Renier?”

  “Yes, that’s him.” The rector looked sideways at Charles. “Interesting that you knew who I meant—since, so far as I know, today is the only time you’ve spoken with him.”

  “Once was enough.” Charles grinned. “‘The lawyer’ describes him perfectly. I’d hardly opened my mouth before he was questioning me. I could hardly shut him up. I wonder if you could send him off to Rome and make a canon lawyer out of him.”

  The rector sighed and lowered his voice. “I’ve had that very thought. Unfortunately, he has to finish his novitiate first. Why is talent so often annoying?” Guymond shook his nearly bald head as though shaking off flies. “I simply don’t understand this book being here at all! A novice has taken no vows. If he changes his mind, if he wants to leave for any reason, he is free to do so. He has no need to convince anyone that terrible things are true of the Society of Jesus. And a novice who wants to be here would never bring this book in. What would be the point? Besides all that, you surely remember how impossible it is to keep anything hidden in a Novice House.”