The Whispering of Bones

by Judith Rock

  Charles hauled himself to his feet. His hands were untied, and he made his way to the garden wall. It was nearly dark and—if Charles remembered right—there would be no moon. Trying to think how to use that to advantage, he looked desperately for a loose stone he could pry from the wall. Not that one small stone would do much against three men and a pistol, but it could add a little weight to the scholastics’ side of the scales. If Coriot turned toward Wing, Charles might be able to throw a stone and bring him down silently. But all the stones small enough to throw or hide were solid, and if he bent over to search the ground, Coriot would see him.

  Charles started to turn from the wall. Then something rustled on the other side of it and he looked up. A white, staring face glimmered in a gap in the stones and was gone. Charles strangled a cry, unsure if he’d seen a man or simply a phantom conjured from hunger and exhaustion.

  Back on the straw, once more securely tied, a wave of despair washed over him. Wing curled up and took refuge in sleep, and Lunel and Coriot took their bag of food and their jug and went upstairs. Charles lay open-eyed, in case one of them came back. His exhausted mind was dark with confusion and fear. No one knew where he and Wing were. Even if the glimmering face at the garden wall had been someone from the nearby houses, the poverty-hardened neighbors wouldn’t risk themselves against armed men for strangers. Charles’s eyes wandered over the decrepit room, and he thought of the peasants hiding in the cottages outside the Cassel wall. They had died in a place not unlike this. There would be some symmetry to his death, if he died here. More than that, he dared not claim, but the thought comforted him.

  He listened for a moment to the low murmur of voices upstairs—mostly Lunel’s voice, he realized. It was Lunel he was most afraid of. Yes, afraid, he told his oddly quiet inner voice, in case it was about to comment. As afraid as I was of the soldiers who enjoyed killing at Cassel. With the arrival of Lunel and Coriot, what had seemed a deluded plot spawned by Richaud’s feelings of ill-use had become far more ominous. Charles knew that Coriot was dangerous enough, but Lunel was something else, something more. A Gallican dislike of Jesuits was common. But to the point of conspiracy and murder? And Lunel had hidden his feelings so well when Charles and La Reynie went to his house—to protect the conspiracy, Charles supposed, since La Reynie had already known that copies of Le Cabinet were surfacing.

  Charles shifted miserably on the straw. It was dark now, no light around the shutters, only the small fire that made the shadows blacker. Feet clattered down the stairs, and Lunel and Coriot went to the fireplace.

  “It’s freezing up there,” Coriot said, building up the fire and holding his hands to it.

  Lunel pulled the only somewhat whole chair nearer the hearth, and Coriot sat down on the stool Richaud had put there. Charles gathered himself for one last effort to buy time. Time for what? his inner voice said dispiritedly. I don’t know, Charles said. For God to make up His mind, maybe.

  “You both must be very anxious to hang,” he said to the men by the fire.

  They ignored him.

  “You probably won’t hang for bringing Le Cabinet jesuitique into France and circulating it. But you will most definitely hang, if you kill Maître Wing and me.”

  Coriot drank from the jug and passed it to Lunel. “Oh, we’re not going to kill you,” he said airily. “Richaud’s going to do that.”

  “If we’re going to die, then you won’t mind what you say to me. Are you still keeping your cache of Le Cabinet copies at Notre Dame des Champs? Men must be working in the well chamber by now. What are you doing about that?”

  There was no answer. Charles decided that a wild lie couldn’t hurt and might help. “I might as well tell you,” he said, “this house is being watched. Lieutenant-Général La Reynie knows where I am.”

  “Liar,” Coriot said, but he looked anxiously at Lunel.

  “Don’t be a little girl,” Lunel said back to him. “If La Reynie knows where he is, why hasn’t he come? He knows nothing.”

  Beside Charles, Wing stirred and opened his eyes. “Shhhh,” Charles said softly, as another thought came to him. He raised his eyebrows at Wing, who stared back in confusion. Hoping Wing would follow his lead, Charles heaved a mock sigh. “That’s always the way with plotters, Monsieur Lunel. You think no one else can plot. So much the worse for you.” He broke off and gasped in terror, staring at the window with the shutter hanging on one hinge. “Oh, Blessed Virgin,” Charles wailed, “it’s back, God save us!”

  Wing took his cue. He screamed, staring at the window. Coriot spun toward the window on his chair.

  “What is it?! What did you see?” He stood up. “Did you see it?” he demanded of Lunel.

  “No.” Lunel drank from the wine jug. “Sit down.”

  But Coriot strode angrily to the pile of straw. “What do you mean, ‘It’s back’?”

  “The demon,” Charles quavered. “It was black and had a rope around its neck.”

  “What? No! Are you sure?” Coriot’s eyes were huge.

  “We’re clerics, of course we’re sure,” Wing said impatiently.

  Coriot glanced uncertainly at the window. “I think I did see it, out of the corner of my eye. But I thought it was white.”

  Wing rubbed his leg. “It couldn’t have been white,” he said pedantically. “And Maître du Luc is mistaken about the rope. But he’s right about the color. The demons the devil sends to fetch murderers’ souls are always much blacker than the usual ones. You must be very stupid not to know that.” Wing gazed at Coriot with the disdain of a professor for a hopeless student.

  Everyone jumped as slow heavy steps sounded on the stairway. Coriot backed slowly away, his face distorted with fear.

  “Get back up there, Richaud; you’re drunk, you’ve caused enough trouble,” Lunel bellowed. “I’ve had enough of your insolence. Come down here and I’ll shoot you for a useless lump of dung.” He picked up his pistol and began ramming shot into the long, engraved barrel.

  Richaud clumped unsteadily to the foot of the stairs. “What did I do? You’re not worthy to hand me my shoe, but I’ve been humble. I’ve done everything for you: I’ve gotten the books into Louis le Grand, I’ve carried them here, I’ve supervised your young idiots, I’ve single-handedly taken these two hell-bound Jesuits, I’m the one who’s been chosen—”

  Hardly looking at Richaud, Lunel leveled the pistol and fired. In shot-deafened silence, the four men watched Richaud crumple to the floor and balance for a moment on his knees, as though he would pray. Then he fell onto his side, blood bubbling from his mouth, and was still. Moving only their eyes, Charles, Wing, and Coriot watched Lunel pull a cloth from his pocket and rub at the pistol.

  “A cleric,” Victor Coriot whispered. “You’ve shot a cleric. Oh, God, what—”

  “What God? The one in whom you don’t believe? Stop acting like a child and help me get him out of here. And you can thank me that there’s one less Jesuit.”

  The two men dragged Richaud out the back door of the cottage. Charles felt Wing quivering on the edge of hysteria.

  “Keep quiet,” he hissed. “Pray. For Richaud’s soul and for us. I’m going upstairs. And when you hear our captors coming back, if I’m not here, keep them out somehow.”

  The Englishman clasped his hands so tightly they were bloodless, rested his face on them, and began the prayers for the dead. Hoping Wing had taken in what he’d said, Charles braced his back hard against the wall and rose to his feet. He forced himself quickly up the stairs. There were two small rooms, one unused and stinking of mice. The other stank almost as much, but it had a straw pallet and blanket on the dusty floor. A large leather satchel lay empty by the pallet, a small, tapped wine barrel stood in a corner, and a stack of Le Cabinet jesuitique stood on the floor under the shuttered window. Wishing his hands were loose so he could pick up a book and hide it in his cassock, Charles did the next best
thing and kicked a copy into the darkest corner where there was already a small pile of refuse. If he and Wing died, at least there would be evidence, a book here to be found. If, of course, anyone looked. He was barely back downstairs and on the straw before Lunel came in from the overgrown garden.

  Wing cocked an eye at Lunel and started talking. Trying, Charles thought gratefully, to keep him from noticing Charles’s breathlessness.

  “Well, monsieur, did you see more demons out there? Go and look again, then. The devil usually sends at least a dozen to take killers to hell. You don’t really deserve a chance to save your soul, but I suppose I’m honor bound to tell you that if you change your mind about killing us, the demons will go away.”

  Lunel, wiping his hands on the cloth from his pocket, paid no attention. Wing ran out of words as Coriot came back, sweating and white with fear.

  “Alexandre,” Coriot said, “are you mad? We can’t just leave him hidden out there. He’ll be found; we have to bury him.”

  “Then bury him.”

  Coriot stood openmouthed for a moment and then went back outside. Lunel went back to the fire. Charles began to murmur his own prayers for Richaud, and Wing joined him.

  “Shut up!”

  They flinched and opened their eyes to see Lunel standing over them. He struck them both across the face and backhanded them for good measure. “Why are you praying for Richaud? Especially you, du Luc. Didn’t he tell you that you owe your knife wound to him?” Lunel went to his chair and sat, staring into the fireplace.

  Charles lay still. Wing groaned and was sick into the straw. The back door opened and Coriot burst in.

  “Come and help me, damn you! There’s no shovel.”

  “Get one,” Lunel said, without looking at him. “We have three graves to dig.”

  Shaking his head and close to tears, Coriot went out by the front door.

  Lunel, haloed by the firelight, turned his pistol this way and that, making the light flicker redly along the silvery barrel. Charles watched him, aching all over and half wishing the man would just shoot them and finish this.

  “Why do you hate Jesuits so much?” he said.

  A visible tremor went through Lunel’s body. “Because I’m a good, free-thinking Gallican noble of the Robe. Why else?”

  “Few Gallicans hate Jesuits to the point of torturing and killing them.” Charles felt Wing move convulsively beside him and leaned gently on him to keep him quiet.

  Lunel turned his head and looked at Charles. Even in the tricky firelight, his eyes looked dead. “Torture? You don’t know the meaning of the word.” The even, flat hopelessness of his words were like a miasma of death spreading on the air.

  Charles waited. “You’ve been tortured?” he said carefully.

  The dead eyes stared through him. “Oh, yes.” Lunel lifted the pistol and laid it alongside his cheek as though to comfort himself.

  Charles swallowed. “When?”

  “Do you want to gloat over me, Jesuit?” Lunel made to rise, but his body sagged and he sank back onto the chair. He raised the pistol and pointed it at Charles. “I was tortured by day and I dreamed it all over again at night. I turned into a puling little wraith. But everyone thought I was only more sickly than before.” His arm dropped and the pistol hung from his hand as he picked up the jug and drank, turning it nearly upside down to drain it. Then he slammed it down onto the hearth, and pottery shards sprayed around the fire.

  Charles tried to get enough spit in his mouth to speak again. Shut up, keep quiet, are you mad? Leave him alone, do you want to die here and now? Charles felt almost sorry for his terrified inner voice. No, I don’t want to die, he told it. But at the very least, if he’s talking, he’s not shooting. And if he talks long enough, Charles thought, something may change, something . . .

  He said, “I think you’re telling me that a Jesuit tortured you.”

  Lunel spat on the floor. “The good Père Grandier. My tutor. Oh, yes, my tutor, he was certainly that.” His raucous laughter bent him double so that his face rested on his knees.

  “What did Père Grandier do?”

  Lunel stared furiously at Charles. “Don’t mock me. You know what he did! You do the same, they all do, that’s why I had to save Paul! He wouldn’t listen, he didn’t believe me. Oh, God, he wouldn’t listen. He was so young, so beautiful, and he didn’t believe me.” Lunel struggled for breath, as though he’d been running.

  Charles felt sick. “And what happened?”

  Lunel wrapped his arms around himself. “Grandier was big. Like his name. Bigger than you. Too big to fight. I was small, not very well, not strong.”

  “What did he do to you?” Charles asked again. He was sure he knew, but if the man would say it, he might be somehow eased and less dangerous.

  “He used me. He used me like a girl.” Lunel turned his head from side to side like a tormented beast. “And when I was big enough, I killed him.”

  “Killed him?” That Charles had not expected. “But—you were a child. How could you hide his body? Or was he found? Did your parents know?”

  As Lunel straightened and looked at Charles, a log broke in the fire, and new flames leaped behind him. Seeing the man outlined in the halo of flame removed Charles’s last doubt. But his certainty brought no triumph, only a leaden sadness.

  “I was fifteen,” Lunel said, “big enough to hide him. No one knew. No one will know, because I’m going to kill you, too. I have to.”

  “Alexandre.” Charles held his gaze. “Tell me what happened to Paul.”

  Something like a sob escaped the man and he looked away.

  “Tell me.”

  Lunel looked defiantly at him. “Why not, then? You’ll be telling no one. Paul wouldn’t listen. Don’t you see? I had no choice! I made him think I’d left Paris, that I wasn’t going to stand in his way any longer. But I went after him and I caught him before he got to that cursed Novice House. I brought him here. I thought if I talked enough, if I told him everything, he’d understand. I showed him Le Cabinet, I read it to him, I told him he could help us. But nothing made any difference. Then he got free somehow. He’d guessed where we stored the books, because he knew they weren’t here in the cottage. I thought he’d go there and that’s where I found him, in the well chamber in Notre Dame’s crypt.”

  “What made him think the books were there?”

  Lunel laughed harshly. “Because I myself had taken him there. Oh, God knows I didn’t want to, but my father made me. He knew that my strangely vanished tutor had taken me there often, to see the old paintings still visible on the wall. That was the reason Grandier gave my father, but he really took me there to use me—a deep, deserted chamber, thick walls, thick door.” Lunel shuddered. “So my father made me take Paul there to see the paintings. Paul liked them, but he was fascinated by the old well.” Lunel put the pistol in his lap and covered his face with his hands. “We agreed it was a good place to hide things,” he said through his fingers. “Paul said that if he ever had a treasure to hide he’d take out the rubble and put his secret treasure in the well and no one would ever find it.” Lunel laughed hysterically. “But there was already a secret there!”

  “You put your tutor’s body in the well.”

  “It was the only place. I told you, he was big. I was fifteen, but I couldn’t carry him up the stairs.”

  “And Paul?”

  “I only wanted to save him.” Lunel spoke so softly that Charles could hardly hear him. “He was too angry about the books to listen. I—I shook him.” Lunel looked beseechingly at Charles, as though trying to make sense of his own words. “I shook him and his neck snapped—I heard it and let go and he fell back against the wall. I didn’t mean to kill him.”

  Charles was racked with pity and horror. But he made himself go on. “And then you went to get a shovel. Something to help you clear rubble from the
well and hide Paul’s body there.”

  Lunel jumped to his feet. “No, not in the well, there are other places in the crypt!” He began to shake. “You think I would put Paul with that evil Jesuit? Curse you, I’ll kill you for saying that!” He grabbed his pistol and lunged unsteadily at Charles. Wing screamed and rolled to the wall. Charles drew both knees to his chest and kicked Lunel in the groin. Lunel howled and bent double. With his last strength, Charles got to his knees between Lunel and Wing.

  Lunel, still clutching himself, leveled his pistol at Charles. Both cottage doors thundered against the walls and the apparition from the garden wall flew at Lunel, wailing like something out of hell, a swarm of creatures shouting and crowding behind her. She raised both arms and a swarm of black things flew through the firelit air. Lunel went down, but his pistol was still trained on Charles and a shot cracked and roared. Charles toppled gently into the straw, wondering why there was no pain. Follow the dead, find your death, he heard or thought he heard. His last thought was that his death was easier than he’d expected.

  CHAPTER 25

  The face hovering over him when he next opened his eyes was not God’s, or at least not any face of God his imagination had ever conjured. This face was scowling and yelling orders, and its plumed hat was awry.

  “Bring more light, damn you! Now!”

  A lantern swam into view and Charles squeezed his eyes shut against its glare. God gave orders. But He was unlikely to need a lantern. Or a hat, for that matter. Ergo, this loud, angry man could not be God. Given that every part of his body hurt, this seemed to Charles an admirable feat of logic.

  An ungentle hand brushed his hair back from his face. “Look at this,” a different voice said with quiet menace. “May Lunel’s soul feed all the devils of hell.”

  “Lunel—” Charles couldn’t follow a thought very far, but far enough to find a welter of feelings about Alexandre Lunel. “He told me—”

  A cold wet cloth sponged his face and cut off his words. A cup of water was held to his lips. Charles opened his eyes. His cousin Charles-François de Vintimille du Luc was down on one knee in front of him, holding the cup like a one-armed worried mother. Lieutenant-Général La Reynie was peering anxiously over his shoulder at Charles.