by Judith Rock
Charles let that go. “But the knife—no Jesuit has a knife!”
Richaud bent over him. His foul breath made Charles turn his face away. “You’re too stupid to live. Have you forgotten that I saw you slavering over that woman from the bookshop? The very day your beloved Père Dainville died. I saw you from the porter’s room. Where students have to leave weapons at the start of the term. I had a nice choice of knives.”
“I heard you running in the gallery above me,” Wing said suddenly. “But no one else did because you were running in your stockings.”
Richaud looked at him in surprise. “Well, a glimmer of intelligence. It was so easy. The north stairs end away from the light, near the courtyard door. I only had to run down them, slip my shoes back on, and act like I’d just come in from the courtyard.”
“You’re right about one thing, Richaud,” Charles said. “We’ve all underestimated you,”
The ex-scholastic gave him a sly smile. “Envy always underestimates brilliance.” He turned his back on them and picked up his hat from the table. Pulling it well down over his straggling brown wig, he went out by the back door.
Charles tried to sit up, gritting his teeth against nausea. “It’s our chance. Come on, help me.”
Wing lay where he was, shaking his head. “He’s only gone out to piss.”
“He puts on his hat to go and piss?”
“He’s terrified someone will recognize him.”
The light from the open door made Charles’s head hurt more, and he squinted at the Englishman. “How did you get here? Why in God’s name didn’t you go straight home from the Novice House?”
“I did. I mean, I was going there. But I got lost. Then someone told me another way, but I ended up at a market and that’s when I saw him.”
“Richaud?”
Wing nodded eagerly. “But he was wearing what he’s wearing now and I wasn’t sure it was him. So I followed him till I was sure and then caught up with him. He told me he was hiding from the secret, powerful Jesuits who wanted to kill him. I told him Jesuits wouldn’t kill him, but he said I was stupid and naive. Then he said that because I’d seen him, they’d try to kill me, too, but if I came with him, I’d be safe.” The Englishman sighed and glanced at Charles. “I said no, but he grabbed my arm and showed me a knife in his other hand, and I went. I was afraid. How did he get you, maître? I thought you’d be too shrewd for him.”
“Unfortunately, I wasn’t, I saw Richaud and chased him. I lost him and he came up behind me and hit me on the head. Listen, these helpers of his, these ‘handmaids,’ do they come here?”
“Oh, yes, you’ll—”
The door scraped open and Richaud was back. He ignored his captives and busied himself making a fire on the small hearth. Then he took a loaf of bread from a bulging satchel beside the hearth, and threw ragged pieces to Charles and Wing.
“How are we supposed to eat?” Charles said, lifting his tied hands behind his back.
“Like the animals you are.” Richaud took the wine he’d heated for himself, the rest of the bread, and the satchel, and went upstairs.
“Like this,” Wing said. He twisted on the straw and picked up the bread in his teeth.
It was a tedious business, and by the time Charles had eaten—the smaller the piece grew, the more difficult it became to eat and the more straw came with it—his head was pounding and another need was demanding his attention.
“How are we supposed to piss?”
Wing, sitting up now and leaning against the wall’s peeling plaster, called out, “Maître! I mean, Monsieur Richaud! Please, we need to go outside.”
Charles was wondering how much longer he could hold out when Richaud finally came downstairs.
“Get up, then,” he said, standing over them. “And don’t make noise out there or you’ll be dead sooner rather than later.”
Wing managed to get to his feet, but Charles’s headache was too blinding and he fell back on the straw. Richaud untied Wing’s hands and let him pull Charles up. Then he herded them out a low back door into the wildly overgrown garden.
“You first,” he said to Wing.
Wing started wading through the overgrown garden to its crumbling wall. Though his hands were still tied, Charles launched himself at Richaud, knocking him to the ground and falling on top of him.
“Help me!” Charles yelled, and Wing came at a run. But he was too slow, and Richaud heaved Charles off with surprising strength and pulled a long knife from under his coat.
“Stop! Don’t move, he has a knife,” Charles cried, and curled into a ball as Richaud kicked him savagely in the thigh.
“Shut up! Get back inside, crawl if you have to, you scum,” Richaud hissed at Charles. “You, too, Englishman.”
To Charles’s surprise, Wing ignored him and helped Charles up. “You have to let him piss, too,” he said sternly to Richaud. “It already smells bad enough in there. And you have to breathe the air just like we do.”
“Get away from him.” Richaud made a feint with the knife at Wing, who ducked and clapped a hand over his mouth, trying not to cry out, his momentary courage gone. With a swing of the knife, Richaud warned Charles not to move. Then he retied Wing’s hands and ordered Charles to turn around.
“Go piss,” he said, when Charles’s hands were free. “Make any other move, make a sound, and this one’s dead.” He went to Wing and stood behind him with the knife at the Englishman’s throat.
Charles limped away through the undergrowth, telling himself that he would have a chance to try again. When he was relieved from his body’s clamoring, he limped back, breathing deeply because he’d remembered from the army that sometimes breathing was almost as good as eating. He filled his lungs with cold morning air and the faint scents of herbs like rosemary and mint rising from plants long gone wild and crushed underfoot.
Richaud and Wing stood exactly as Charles had left them. Richaud ordered Charles to stop and turn around. Charles turned slowly, eyeing the length of rope dangling from Richaud’s free hand.
“Walk backward to me,” Richaud snapped at him. When Charles reached him, Richaud started retying his wrists. Wing started complaining that his rope was too tight and Richaud’s hands stilled. Charles felt him turn to look at Wing. “Stand still and shut up,” he muttered at the Englishman.
Charles glanced over his shoulder. Wing was still wriggling and complaining and Richaud was looking at him instead of at what he was doing. Charles pulled one wrist slightly higher than the other and managed to hook a thumb through a loop of rope. He had to bite his cheek to keep from crying out as the rope was tightened on his thumb joint, but he went meekly back inside with the satisfaction of having given himself a small weapon.
Inside, however, more trouble was waiting. Two well-dressed young men whom Charles had never seen before stood beside the fireplace. One had stripped off his gloves and was impatiently slapping the table with them. The other had pulled off his wig and was swearing as he tried to brush a fat brown spider off it.
Richaud flicked a glance over them as he herded his captives back to the straw. “What kept you?”
The man with the gloves ignored the question. “Is all ready for us?”
“Yes, no thanks to you. Since you leave me to see to everything.”
The men glanced indifferently at the scholastics, as though they were chickens trussed for sale in the market.
“Go up.” Richaud waved his hand magisterially at the staircase. The man with the gloves mounted the stairs, but his companion stamped on the spider and then went to the hearth to peer into the jug of wine.
“This should be steaming, mon cher Richaud. Heat it and bring it with you.” He shook out his wig, put it on, and took the stairs two at a time after his companion.
Richaud, swearing resentfully under his breath, went to the hearth and poked up the fire to
warm the wine. On the floor above, the two men talked in low voices and there was a volley of thuds as something fell to the floor.
Richaud took the wine from the fire and glanced at the Jesuits. “If you move from the straw or make noise to attract attention from the road, I’ll kill you now instead of later.” As he stamped upstairs, Charles began straining against the rope around his wrists, softly telling Wing what he’d done outside. The Englishman prayed and Charles patiently twisted the rope, biting blood from his lip to stop himself yelling from the pain in his newly healed stab wound. But the knot refused to slip.
Finally Charles shook his head. “It’s not working.”
“Then we should both pray.”
Their prayers were short. As Charles had learned on the battlefield, when death seemed likely, there was surprisingly little to be said, and that little was simple enough. “Oh, God, make haste to help me.” And if one could manage it, “Not my will, but thine be done . . .” Though, more often it was, “Save me, God! And I will do this and that and this other thing for you, I swear it . . .” When their prayers were done, quiet talk and purposeful noises from the upper floor told them that the three men were absorbed in whatever they were doing.
Wing snuffled the air like a forlorn piglet. “You smell like rosemary,” he said softly. “From the garden. That’s nice. It smells bad in here.”
Charles smiled at him, wishing that the two of them were likely to live long enough for their friendship to grow. Then feet clattered down the stairs, and the two young men appeared, dressed now in coarse, dirt-colored coats, ragged breeches, and their own tousled hair instead of wigs. They carried tall, conical baskets on their backs. Richaud, carrying the wine jug, was talking at them and wagging a finger.
“Remember, when you’ve delivered the books to the private customer first, then the bookshops, come straight back. Stop in some working man’s tavern for a joke like last time, and you will bitterly regret it.”
The men with the baskets rolled their eyes at each other. “Filthy dyer’s brat,” the one who’d had the gloves muttered as they went out, just loud enough for Richaud to hear. Which made Charles wonder again why the two put up with Richaud’s assumption of authority as much as they did.
Richaud kicked the door shut so hard that the flimsy walls shook. Then he sat down beside the hearth, poked savagely at the fire, and picked up the wine jug. No one spoke. Charles feigned sleep, trying to ignore his aching head and his hunger. Finally he fell asleep for real, and woke with his head aching less. Beside him, Wing was sitting up, tensely watching Richaud, who was staring drunkenly back at him. From the light, Charles thought it was late afternoon, and was surprised he’d slept so long. Richaud suddenly blundered to his feet and out the front door, and Charles saw from the outdoor light that the day was as far gone as he’d thought. He heard the sound of Richaud’s water on the wall and voices passing on the road. Wing got out the start of a shout for help before Charles could shut him up.
“He’s going to kill us!” Wing whispered. “He’s drunk, and when he’s drunk, he’s terrible!”
“Hush!” Watching the door, Charles turned on his side and moved his wrists against the rope, trying again to feel if he’d been able to defeat Richaud’s tying even a little.
Bewildered and near tears, Wing watched him. “What are you doing?”
Softly, Charles told him. “It could still work. Ah—I think—”
Wing wasn’t listening. “He’s been drinking all the time you were asleep.” The Englishman’s battered face was rigid with fear. “He got more wine from upstairs.”
Richaud came in and slammed the door behind him. “I heard you yell, damn you!” He ran at Wing, and it was a mercy he was so drunk, because the kick he aimed at the Englishman shattered a half-broken chair into firewood. Richaud came at Wing again. Desperately working at the rope, Charles rolled away, got his back against the wall, and drew his feet under him. Richaud rained blows on Wing, but Wing managed to get a leg up and kicked his tormentor savagely in the belly.
Richaud bent double and staggered backward, retching and coughing.
Charles crouched and hurled himself bodily at Richaud. They went down, Charles’s weight pinning Richaud to the floor.
“Get up,” Charles yelled at Wing. “Get out of here, find help!”
“Don’t bother,” a voice said calmly.
The small round pressure against Charles’s backbone made him go limp and absolutely still. Someone kicked him off Richaud, and Charles found himself looking up into the hard eyes of Alexandre Lunel.
CHAPTER 24
For once in his life, Charles had no words. Everything he thought he knew about Richaud and his conspiracy collapsed into confusion as he stared at Alexandre Lunel.
“Richaud’s drunk again,” Lunel said to someone else. “I can smell him from here. Take him outside and empty a bucket over him.”
The other man dragged Richaud through the back door, and Lunel pointed at the straw with his pistol. “Get back there.”
Charles rolled back onto the straw beside Wing. He stared in bewilderment at Lunel.
“You’re part of this? Surely you don’t take Richaud’s ravings seriously.”
“His ravings make him eminently usable.”
“But Le Cabinet—a man like you must know that it’s a libel, a forgery! Educated men have known that since it first appeared.”
“Jesuits have said that since it appeared. As of course they would.”
Charles fought hopelessness. Finding a way to escape from Richaud had seemed possible. Alexandre Lunel was another matter altogether. “I begin to understand,” he said. “You’re a Gallican like your mother. Neither of you wanted your brother to be a Jesuit.”
“Shut your filthy mouth about my brother!” Lunel raised a menacing hand but let it drop as the other man pushed a soaking wet Richaud back into the room.
Almost past surprise, Charles saw now that the other man was Victor Coriot, the lawyer who’d nearly ridden him down in the Coriot courtyard. And whose family, according to young Jacques, owned a ramshackle house on Talking Flea Street—this ramshackle house, no doubt. Richaud came toward the pile of straw, shivering and whimpering, and Charles braced himself for another attack, but Richaud stumbled past and up the stairs.
Victor Coriot laughed. “That gets rid of him for now, anyway. I could almost thank you for that, du Luc.”
“Don’t bother, Monsieur Coriot,” Charles said grimly.
Lunel looked questioningly at them. “I thought I’d told you, Alexandre,” Coriot said. “We met when Jacques was expelled from Louis le Grand. Du Luc brought him home. My young brother is shaping well for us,” he added proudly.
“Shaping well for your Gallican conspiracy, I take you to mean,” Charles said with ironic courtesy.
“Of course,” Coriot made him a mock bow. “We’re going to get the Jesuits out of France. And for good, this time. Henri the Fourth got you out years ago, after your student Jean Châtel learned at Louis le Grand to kill kings and tried to kill Henri. But then old Henri let you creep back. This time you won’t. And France will finally be free to be French.”
Charles dropped his irony. “Jean Châtel was an insane fanatic. And so is your dupe, poor Richaud.”
“Poor Richaud?” Alexandre Lunel reached the straw in two strides, anger radiating from him. “He’s a Jesuit. No Jesuit deserves compassion.”
Coriot shook his head at Lunel. “Softly, Alexandre. As for you, Maître du Luc, ‘poor Richaud’ has beaten you and probably starved you. Not to mention trying to kill you at your college. Why in God’s name feel sorry for the creature? Unless you’re just exhibiting your piety.”
“Because he’s twisted beyond helping himself,” Charles said doggedly. “And you’re using him, like using a simple-wit.”
“Oh, he’s very sane about Jesuits,” Coriot laughed.
“And he has no scruples, which you must admit is useful in desperate enterprises. But surely an ex-soldier knows that.”
“How do you know I was a soldier?”
“My little brother Jacques told me. He says all the boys at the college admire you for it.”
Lunel made a disgusted sound, and a face like someone about to be sick, and went to the hearth. He crouched down, put his pistol beside him on the floor, and started to rekindle the dead fire. Coriot watched him for a moment and then shrugged and went upstairs, swinging the empty wine jug by its handle. As Lunel got the fire going with flint and tinder, Coriot came back with the jug, now full by the careful way he carried it, and poured it into the small iron pot at the edge of the fire. Lunel pulled bread out of a bag and gave some to Coriot. Twilight was showing now around the shutters, and the fire filled the decrepit room with shadows. Charles and Wing tried not to watch the men eat and drink.
Wing sighed suddenly and murmured, “Is it Friday?”
Charles thought for a moment and nodded.
“I’m so hungry. But it’s a fast day,” the Englishman said. “Even if we were at Louis le Grand, we’d still be hungry.”
“Not this hungry.”
The men by the fire looked toward them, and Charles quickly closed his eyes. When nothing happened, he looked at Wing and mouthed, Need to piss?
“Nothing to piss.”
“Pretend.” Charles sat up. “Please, messieurs. We need to relieve ourselves.” They would untie his hands for that and that gave some chance where now there was none.
“Do it in the straw,” Lunel said indifferently.
“I’ll take them. It stinks enough in here.” Coriot got up and pulled Wing to his feet and kicked at Charles. “Get up.”