The Whispering of Bones

by Judith Rock

  A stillness gripped Charles. Tell him, the Silence said.

  “What is it, Charles?” Amaury said anxiously. “Are you in pain?”

  Charles shook his head slowly. “No. No, it’s—” He pulled himself farther up on his pillows. He opened his mouth to do as he’d been told and then shut it. Waiting, just in case. In case of what? his blunt inner voice said. In case the Silence changes its mind. His inner voice laughed so loud, Charles thought that Amaury must be able to hear it. Liar, it said. You’re afraid Amaury won’t believe you. You’re afraid he’ll think you’re crazy.

  “Shut up!” Charles said out loud.

  Amaury looked at him in bewilderment. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “No, sorry, I know you didn’t.” Charles sighed. Amaury was going to think he was crazy. But Charles knew he had no choice. “Listen,” he said. “I’m going to tell you something I’ve only told one other person. You asked me how I manage my guilt about Cassel. It’s haunted me, as it does you. I’ve tried to bury it. And to bury my certainty that I was a coward that day and am maybe a coward at heart. Then Charles-François came. He accused me of all of that, and of bearing the blame for your entry into the Novice House.” Amaury opened his mouth to protest. “No, please, just listen.” Charles looked away and fixed his eyes on the crucifix across from his bed. “Sometimes, not often, something I call the Silence speaks to me.”

  “Do you mean God?”

  Charles held the question off with a raised hand. He’d never wanted to answer that question, lest he seem to claim too much. “A few days ago, in the street, I had one of those strange waking dreams of being back on the Cassel battlefield. And in the midst of it, this Silence said, ‘Charles. Nothing is wasted. Not even death.’ Not even death, Amaury. Not even the terrible deaths of those peasants we failed to save. Or the death of the soldier they killed. God wastes nothing.”

  Amaury was holding his breath, and his deep-set dark eyes seemed to burn as he stared at Charles. He reached out and gripped Charles’s hand so hard that Charles nearly cried out. “Do you swear that what you tell me is true? It happened? You heard those words?”

  “It’s true. And I told you because just now the Silence said, ‘Tell him.’”

  Amaury bowed his head onto their linked hands. He made no sound, but Charles felt his tears like a tiny river running through his fingers. A deep and silent peace wrapped both of them.

  That evening, long after Amaury had gone, Wing woke up, seeming much restored, though his bruised face was painful to look at. Brunet brought their supper of boiled beef and bread, and as they ate, sitting up in their beds, they talked. “There’s something I haven’t told you,” Wing said, looking across at Charles. “About what happened in the cottage, at the end.”

  Charles, who had a mouth full of bread, raised his eyebrows. He wondered if it was something about the medicine Brunet had given him that made the Englishman look so bright-eyed.

  “Remember that you thought you’d been shot? When you came to yourself after everyone had come into the cottage?”

  Charles nodded.

  “That was because, just when Alexandre Lunel was about to shoot you”—Wing tried to suppress a grin and failed—“you fainted.”

  Charles’s mouth opened, and he dropped his spoon into his soup. “I did not! I’ve never fainted in my life!”

  “You have now. It made me feel better about fainting in the chapel.” Wing smiled sweetly.

  Charles scowled at the wall. Then his indignation crumbled and he fell back on his pillows in a fit of helpless laughter and spilled his soup. When he could speak, he said, “So you and I are even. And I’ll tell you something, as well. When I was first in the army, an older man said to me, ‘Only stupid men are never afraid.’”

  “Neither of us is stupid,” Wing said seriously, and came to help him mop up the soup.

  Two days later, on Tuesday, the feast of the soldier St. Martin of Tours, they were released from the infirmary, their faces still garishly colored by healing bruises. Late that afternoon, they went to the college’s grand salon, where Père Le Picart had summoned a council. They stood quietly aside on the faded rug, watching the last comer, Père Paradis, assistant Provincial of the Paris Jesuit province, settle himself in the circle that already included the Novice House rector Père Guymond, Père Pinette the Professed House rector, and Lieutenant-Général La Reynie. Père Montville was busily making sure that the offices around the grand salon were empty, and that the doors leading out of the salon were shut and guarded by proctors. Then he nodded to the rector of Louis le Grand, who took his own seat and gestured Charles and Wing forward.

  Le Picart’s sea-gray eyes went slowly around the circle. “I have summoned you,” he said, speaking in French for La Reynie’s sake, “with the approval of our Paris Provincial, whose assistant represents him today.” He nodded politely to Paradis. “The recent deaths of Paul Lunel, intended Jesuit novice, and Louis Richaud, former Jesuit scholastic, concern all of us. As does the coming to light of a Gallican conspiracy against us, and the appearance in Paris of that troublesome forgery, the so-called Jesuit Secret Instructions—this time as Le Cabinet jesuitique. The more we understand about how these unhappy events are related, the more vigilant we can be in the future. To better protect our men, and to prevent the so-called Secret Instructions from circulating.

  “I have said that this matters to us. But it matters also to those who come after us.” Le Picart’s face was as somber as the November afternoon’s gray light. “Lies may be silenced. But lies once heard—or read—are always repeated. As they are repeated, more people believe them and they grow louder. We know, of course, that our enemies are always ready to believe lies. But the simply credulous and ignorant are easily convinced. For the sake of the Society of Jesus and for the sake of truth, the Secret Instructions’ lies must be stopped from spreading.”

  He looked at La Reynie and then at Charles and Wing. “These two scholastics nearly lost their lives in this affair. You see from their faces how ill-used they were in their captivity. Thanks to their courage, and to Lieutenant-Général La Reynie and several others, they are alive and can tell us much we would not otherwise know. They will speak and Monsieur La Reynie will also speak. Then these three will withdraw and leave us to consider as Jesuit heads of houses what should be done to lessen the risk of the so-called Secret Instructions appearing again in Paris. Maître du Luc, you may begin.”

  Charles bowed, marshaling his thoughts. He and Wing had been strictly charged to be brief.

  “As you know,” he said, “three weeks ago the late Père Dainville and I found the body of the intended Jesuit novice Paul Lunel in the crypt at Notre Dame des Champs. He disappeared on the day he should have entered our Novice House. When we found him, he was newly dead but had been three weeks missing. Soon after that, I was attacked here in the college chapel. By Maître Louis Richaud, I learned later, who was himself later killed by one of his fellow Gallican conspirators. Then, when I was somewhat recovered from my wound and allowed to go out again, I happened to pick up the torn piece of a book cover from a bookshop floor.” Charles smiled at the Jesuits in the circle. “I picked it up only because Jesuits pick up trash when they see it. I meant to throw it away, but when I returned to the college, I was summoned to speak with Père Paradis, who had come because of the murder of Paul Lunel. As we talked, I happened to drop the scrap of leather. Père Paradis recognized it as being from the cover of Le Cabinet jesuitique. We assumed it was being sold at The Saint’s Dog, the bookshop where I’d found it.

  “Soon after I was attacked, Maître Richaud disappeared from here. We thought that he, too, had been murdered. And then Maître Wing disappeared.” Charles looked at Wing, who took up the narrative.

  With a new dignity, the Englishman told them about seeing Richaud, following him, and being kept prisoner in the Talking Flea Street house.

 
; “Poor Maître Richaud seemed to have lost his wits,” Wing said, speaking French slowly and carefully. “He told me he wanted to leave the Society of Jesus, but that if he left openly, we Jesuits would kill him. He said he ran away and left his bloodied cassock to be found so we’d think him dead already. He said this conspiracy about the book was his, but it was clear the others were using him. Then Monsieur Alexandre Lunel, the real ringleader, killed him.”

  Le Picart looked questioningly at Paradis, who nodded slightly.

  “I will tell you,” Le Picart said to the circle, “that the unfortunate Richaud was indeed unsettled in his mind. To my shame, I failed to see how deeply unsettled. He had grown very angry at the Society of Jesus and very suspicious of everyone. I knew that he was thinking of leaving and, frankly, I thought it might be for the best. I did not know that he already had Le Cabinet in his possession.

  “Until Richaud began his theology studies last month, he was a cubiculaire responsible for provisioning boarding students’ chambers. Another scholastic, in his second year as a cubiculaire, has recently come to me and said that at the end of the summer term, Richaud found a copy of Le Cabinet in the chamber of a boarding student. That student finished his education and left us in August, and so is no longer under our jurisdiction. Richaud confiscated the book, supposedly to turn in to me. But it’s safe to assume now that he kept it and read it. Le Cabinet’s lies about how we treat Jesuits who leave the Society inflamed his disordered feelings beyond sanity. Through two of our day students, Jacques Coriot and Louis Poquelin—both now dismissed—Richaud joined Victor Coriot’s Gallican conspiracy, a conspiracy of extreme virulence. I think that Richaud fled the college when he did because he feared being discovered as Maître du Luc’s attacker.” Le Picart sighed and looked at Wing and Charles. “Have you more to say?”

  They told what they’d seen and learned in the cottage, and Charles wound up the tale.

  “Alexandre Lunel was uncompromisingly Gallican. He was fiercely against the pope’s interference in France and the French church and fiercely anti-Jesuit. But he had other reasons for hating Jesuits. Tragic reasons.” Charles sighed and shut his eyes for a moment, wishing he didn’t have to tell the next part of the story.

  “Alexandre was sickly as a boy. His father, who was not at all anti-Jesuit, hired a Jesuit tutor for him, Père Grandier. For years, this tutor would take Alexandre to the well chamber in Notre Dame des Champs, where he repeatedly sodomized him. Finally, when Alexandre was fifteen, he killed Grandier and hid the body under the rubble in the old well there. He was horrified when his younger brother, Paul, wanted to join the Society of Jesus. Alexandre was convinced that in a Jesuit house, Paul would suffer the same fate. So Alexandre kidnapped him and kept him prisoner in the cottage while he tried to dissuade him. He even read Le Cabinet to him. But Paul refused to be convinced. He also saw the comings and goings of the conspiracy, and thought he knew where the copies of Le Cabinet were being kept. He managed to escape and went to see if he was right. Alexandre found him there, in Notre Dame des Champs’s well chamber.” Charles sighed and shook his head. “They argued and Alexandre was beside himself with rage. He shook Paul so hard he broke the boy’s neck. He said he didn’t mean to kill him, and I think that was the truth.”

  An appalled silence fell. The noise of shouts and carriage wheels and trotting horses from beyond the antechamber’s great double doors seemed to come from another world. To Charles’s surprise, the famously cold Père Pinette dropped his face into his hands.

  When Pinette finally looked up, his rigid control was gone, leaving his face pinched and drained of color. “I remember Étienne Grandier. He disappeared in 1672 and we never knew what happened to him. We finally assumed that he was dead.” His voice was barely audible. “I was not the Professed House rector then, but I knew him. And I wondered about him.” He looked pleadingly around the circle. “I thought he shouldn’t be a tutor. But I said nothing. God forgive me.”

  “Many Jesuits here at Louis le Grand knew Étienne Grandier,” Le Picart said heavily. “What most of you do not yet know is that he was our Père Dainville’s nephew. He disappeared and was never found.”

  Charles stared unseeingly at the floor, remembering Dainville’s story of his nephew. He was glad Dainville didn’t have to know why Grandier had disappeared. Then he found himself thinking that now, Dainville did know.

  “I think the rest of this is mine to tell,” La Reynie said. “The workmen cleaning out the old well in Notre Dame des Champs’s well chamber found a huddle of bones in a Jesuit cassock. So Alexandre Lunel’s story is confirmed. And copies of Le Cabinet that the conspirators had not been able to remove were found in the well chamber, tucked into a long wall niche that had been blocked with a loose but very heavy stone. Victor Coriot is imprisoned in the Châtelet and has given us names of other conspirators. We don’t have all of them yet, but some of those we have will hang along with Victor Coriot.” La Reynie looked at Le Picart. “Coriot’s brother, Jacques, and young Poquelin, the other student you dismissed, I’ve left to their mothers. Who, I think, will keep them on very short leashes.”

  “What about Hyacinthe, Lieutenant-Général?” Charles said.

  “Oh, yes, Hyacinthe.” La Reynie snorted with laughter, and the others in the circle looked askance at him. “Hyacinthe, the goatwoman, was one of the conspiracy’s book couriers. And a clever choice, because a more unlikely courier would be hard to imagine. She did it purely for money. She can’t read, she wouldn’t know what Gallican means, and she doesn’t hate Jesuits. Indeed, our two scholastics here owe her their lives.” He looked at Père Guymond. “She had copies of Le Cabinet in her bag when she went to the Novice House with her goats. She wasn’t told to leave any there, but one copy fell out of the bag and a young servant who’s just learned to read picked it up. He only wanted a book to read. But he was afraid it would be taken from him, so he hid it in the new straw of a mattress he was stuffing.” La Reynie grinned. “I’m not going to arrest either him or Hyacinthe.”

  Wing spoke up. “I’ve been thinking about her. And what a nice classical touch it was—like Fate in a tragedy, you know—that she knocked Alexandre Lunel to the ground with a bag full of Le Cabinet jesuitique!”

  Le Picart and the other Jesuits frowned at the frivolous interruption and Charles gave Wing a warning nudge.

  “What?” the Englishman said earnestly. “It was just like Fate!”

  Charles gave up and bit his lip, and Le Picart and Paradis indulged in a fit of coughing.

  The Novice House rector was trying to make himself heard. “The boy put it there? Oh, no. Oh, dear Blessed Virgin. And I hounded that poor young man out of the Novice House. I must see him, I must get him back—”

  “No,” Charles said bluntly. “You won’t get Amaury de Corbet back, mon père. I’ve seen him. He’s getting married.”

  Guymond stared at him in horror. “But who—how—”

  “I think we must leave it there, mon père,” Le Picart said quickly. “Thank you, Monsieur La Reynie. Thank you, maîtres. You may withdraw now and leave us to talk together.”

  La Reynie got up from his chair and bowed. Charles and Wing bowed in their turn and followed him through the side door. In the postern passage, La Reynie settled his hat and gazed approvingly at Charles and the Englishman.

  “Well done.” He winced a little, looking at their faces. “Why do bruises always make one look recently dead just when one is, in fact, getting better? But never mind that; I thank God with all my heart that you’re both alive. It took courage to keep trying to learn the truth, in spite of danger and pain. You’re brave men, both of you.”

  Wing fidgeted and muttered something in English.

  La Reynie looked at Charles. “What did he say?”

  “I think he’s surprised that you called him brave.”

  “He is brave. Tell him. My spoken Latin’s deserted me
long ago.”

  Charles told the Englishman what La Reynie had said. And added, “He’s right, you know.”

  Wing looked searchingly at Charles, and then at La Reynie. Then, instead of tangling himself in the long speech of denial Charles was expecting, he drew himself up to his full unimpressive height and beamed at the lieutenant-général.

  “You are very kind, monsieur,” he said in French, enunciating very carefully. “I’ve been using that book we got, maître,” he said aside to Charles. He bowed again and marched away toward the court as proudly as a military procession. La Reynie watched him go. Then his shoulders rose and fell in a sigh and he looked at Charles. “Gabriel has left,” he said abruptly.

  Charles knew something of La Reynie’s long struggle with his estranged son, Gabriel. “Where has he gone?”

  “Rome.” The lieutenant-général watched a dozen teenaged boys walk past the courtyard end of the street passage. “He told me he will never come back.”

  The unhappy silence grew. Looking at La Reynie’s rigid face, Charles wanted to offer comfort, offer something. “Do you remember,” he said carefully, “that when we talked by the rose bushes, the night I was attacked, you said that perhaps you and I are two of a kind?”

  La Reynie didn’t look at him. “Yes.”

  “I think you were right.”

  La Reynie’s mouth opened slightly, and he turned his head, staring at Charles like an actor who had forgotten his lines. Then he blinked hard and walked toward the street. “Open!” he barked, and the lay brother opened the postern for him.

  Charles followed him out into the rue St. Jacques. The early November dusk had come, and people in the houses down the hill were lowering the street lanterns from their walls as the lighter with his bucket of candles worked his way up from the river.