by Judith Rock
The hair straying from under her starched white coif was nearly as fair as Martine Mynette’s. Charles hoped fervently that Martine Mynette would find her donation. Or that she could at least prove that she was a legitimately born orphan. He wondered why her adopted mother had never married and had children of her own. A woman with family wealth would almost certainly have had marriage offers, unless there was something direly wrong with her. How could her father have been so sure that she wouldn’t marry after his death? If she had, and had borne children, his promise to the Jesuits would have been meaningless. By law, no one could will a patrimoine away from blood relatives.
But Anne Mynette hadn’t married. So now, if her adopted daughter’s donation wasn’t found, and the girl went on refusing the Brion son, her guardian could make life difficult indeed for her. Without the donation, even entering a convent would be difficult for her, since most convents required dowries. And even with a dowry, the better ones wouldn’t have her at all unless she could prove that she’d been orphaned, not abandoned. The chance of a gently reared girl like Martine descending to the shame of domestic service was unthinkable. Charles had awakened in the night worrying about her. Something about the girl’s aloneness touched an answering aloneness in himself. Though his own present loneliness came from his own choice not to marry and have children, it companioned him these days like a sad ghost. Not that he was alone in the world-he had legions of Jesuit brothers and also living blood relatives: his mother, sisters, a brother, and more cousins than he could count.
His cousin Pernelle, in Geneva, haunted too many of his restless nights. Most du Lucs were Catholic, but Pernelle, his second cousin and first love, was a Huguenot. The king’s recent decree making Huguenots outlaws had unleashed havoc all over France, and last summer, against the laws of king and church, Charles had helped Pernelle escape the king’s soldiers. Charles took his faith and his Jesuit vows very seriously. But blood was blood, and even more than that, he believed with all his heart that the beginning and end of God was love. Which made cruelty in the name of religion the worst kind of blasphemy. But helping Pernelle had rekindled both his old love for her and his vocational doubts.
At the end of the summer, he’d made an eight-day retreat with other Jesuit scholastics, and at the end of it he had renewed his first-level vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, publicly reaffirming his vocation. The autumn had been a time of willing penance for the vows he had broken. It had also been a time full of the grieving that comes with deep choice. It was grief without the scourge of regret, thank God; but nonetheless, Martine Mynette touched the sorest place in his heart.
As Charles started across the bustling Place Maubert to the rue Perdue, he saw a small crowd gathered outside the open gates of the Sign of the Rose. He stopped and stared, and then broke into a run.
“What’s happened?” he asked urgently of the first person he reached.
The man, a baker by his apron and baglike cap, turned, his mouth open to answer, but when he saw Charles, his mouth closed with a snap and he turned away. A woman next to him glared at Charles.
“Listen to that one,” she muttered to her neighbor. “Pretending he doesn’t know what’s happened, but that’s them all over. Hypocrites, all of them.”
Charles, pushing through the crowd into the court, hardly heard her. An aproned apprentice took his arm. “Don’t pay attention to them,” he said in Charles’s ear. “The commissaire just went in-that’s all anyone knows.”
Charles nodded and made his way to the house door, which stood open, and was inside, staring at what lay on the antechamber floor, before the sergent standing guard could stop him.
“Here, mon pere,” the sergent growled, “stay out, there’s been murder here!”
Then he saw the stricken look on Charles’s face and stepped aside. Like someone in an evil dream, Charles crossed the antechamber to the foot of the stone staircase. Martine Mynette’s face was turned away, her silvergilt hair spilling from its little black coif. The blood from the wound in her neck hardly showed on her black gown. But blood stood in pools on the stone-tiled floor around her. A weeping woman knelt beside Martine. A hand gripped Charles’s shoulder, and Charles pulled roughly away, thinking it was the sergent.
“Pray for her, maitre,” M. Callot quavered. He was as sober as a gravestone, but he reached for Charles’s arm as though he might fall. “Pray for all of us. Who would do this to little Martine?”
Charles, beyond speech, shook his head.
Callot tightened his grip. “Pray, maitre!”
From somewhere, Charles dredged up the opening words of the prayers for the dead, and Callot joined him. When they finished the familiar, steadying words, Charles’s brain was working again. He realized that the weeping woman kneeling beside Martine was Isabel Brion.
“Did you and Mademoiselle Brion find Mademoiselle Mynette’s body?” Charles asked.
“We came to see how she was, after being so upset yesterday. The girls still hadn’t found Martine’s paper, of course. Nor did my lazy, useless nephew, so far as I know-I haven’t seen him yet today, he’s probably still sleeping. And when I get my hands on him-dear Blessed Virgin, if I’d known what was happening here-no servants but a kitchen boy and that drunken maid. I tell you, Henri is as guilty of her death as anyone, the miser! If she’d been properly looked after, this wouldn’t have happened, how could it? If Martine had only told us how things were, we would have taken her in. But as you heard, she didn’t want to come to us because of Gilles. I see now that Henri let this household fall apart to try to force her to come and live with us. Because he didn’t want to spend any of the Mynette money on this house and its servants!” The old man was shaking with fury. “And the servants certainly knew the donation was missing.” He sighed. “In fairness to my unspeakable nephew, I should have known they’d start leaving as soon as they heard that. What can you expect-they knew they’d be out on the street soon enough if the paper wasn’t found, so they went looking for more secure places.” Callot shook his head and breathed hard to steady himself. When he could speak again, he said more quietly, “When Isabel and I arrived here, Martine’s maid was screaming. She’d just come down and found her. The idiot woman reeks of wine.” Callot wiped his eyes and jerked his head at an alcove to the right of the stairs. “I sent the kitchen boy for the commissaire.”
The sergent stood at the alcove’s entrance now, and beyond him was a tall man in a commissaire’s long black legal robe and black hat. A clerk scribbled at his side, taking down the testimony of a sobbing woman in a smoke-blue skirt.
“The commissaire is still questioning the sot of a maid,” Callot muttered. “Much good that will be to him. Dear God, who would do this?”
Charles patted the old man’s arm and went to Isabel Brion. Seeing that she was kneeling in blood, he pulled her gently to her feet. She looked up at him, her face drowned in tears.
“Maitre du Luc? How could this happen? Poor Martine, she never harmed anyone!” She covered her face with her hands.
With his arm around her for fear she would fall, Charles led her to a carved bench against the wall and settled her on it. Then, hoping his face showed nothing of the storm of pity and anger that raged inside him, he went back to Martine’s body and bent over it. The barest of touches told him that while the front of the bodice was soaked in blood, the skirt was hardly stained. He leaned closer, studying the ragged rip in the right side of the young woman’s neck. Swiftly, closing his ears to Mlle Brion’s gasp of surprise, he raised Martine’s upper body so he could see her back. There was blood there, but it could as easily be from the blood pooled on the floor as from another wound. But that would not be sure until the body was undressed. There was, at least, no other visible wound. Charles started looking for the blade. A small knife, he thought, but deadly sharp. If the blade hadn’t ripped open the great artery, the wound in her neck would have been much too small to kill her. He combed the floor and the staircase, looked under the be
nch, but found nothing. There were blood splashes, though, on the plaster wall nearest her body, which made Charles think that the murderer had almost certainly been splashed himself. Even so, the man had been self-possessed enough to take the weapon away with him. Charles leaned down and touched Martine’s hand. It was cooling-she would cool quickly on the cold floor-but some of her body’s warmth was still there. Not long, then. She had been alive to see the morning, if not the light. He went to the open house door and looked at the elaborate lock. Then he saw the iron key, as long as his hand, hanging beside the door. He went back to Isabel.
“Mademoiselle, did the maid have to unlock the door to let you in?”
She hesitated. “No, she didn’t. When we heard her scream, my uncle pushed on the door and it opened.”
Charles nodded. “Another question, mademoiselle. Did Martine Mynette’s mother have an uncle who was a Jesuit?”
“Oh. Yes, she did. But he died a long time ago. Before Martine and I were even born, I think. I remember my father saying that he was a teacher at Louis le Grand.”
It was the answer he’d expected. “Thank you, mademoiselle. Shall I find your great-uncle and ask him to take you home?”
“No. No, I thank you, but I want to stay here. Martine was my dearest friend. When they will let us, I will help the maid do the last things for her.”
Charles had to swallow before he could speak. “You are a good friend to her. I will pray for you and for Mademoiselle Mynette. If you will allow it, I will come tomorrow to see you and Monsieur Callot.”
She nodded, and he took his leave of her. He went to where Martine lay and looked once more at her still face. Then he left the house, deaf to the growl of angry talk as he passed the crowd around the gate. He walked quickly, numb with grief for this girl he’d met only yesterday, blackly full of anger at whoever had destroyed her. Before he reached the college, snow came. It settled on his shoulders, stuck to his eyelashes, and half blinded him. It comforted him, silencing the streets and seeming to shroud the houses in cold white mourning.
Chapter 5
“Dead?” Pere Le Picart looked up from his desk. “Dear Blessed Virgin,” he whispered. And then, “God forgive me.”
It was Charles’s turn to stare. Then he understood. The girl had been the unexpected and unwelcome obstacle between the college and the Mynette fortune. Which the college badly needed. Le Picart had no doubt been trying not to think about-let alone hope for-the only two things that would remove the obstacle: failure to find the lost donation entre vifs, or the girl’s death.
Le Picart let his held breath go. “How did she die? Some sudden illness?”
“Sudden, yes. But no illness.” In spite of the rector’s small fire and the worn red-and-green carpet on the floor, Charles huddled deeper into his cloak, cold to the bone, though not from the snow. He took a deep breath. “She was stabbed.” He crossed himself.
Le Picart did likewise, his eyes wide with horror. “Ah, no! May God receive her soul,” he whispered.
“I should also tell you it is definite that Martine Mynette’s adopted mother was the Anne Mynette you spoke of,” Charles added.
Le Picart looked down at his clasped hands, braced on the desk as though for an ordeal. “The police were there?”
“The local commissaire and a sergent, yes.”
“Do they suspect someone?”
“I don’t know, mon pere.” Charles sighed. “I was crossing the Place on my way to the Brion house when I saw a crowd outside the gate of the Mynette house. I went in, and the commissaire was questioning a maid. From what I learned, it’s obvious how the killer got in. The house door was not locked or barred when the maid found the girl’s body.”
“A thief, perhaps, and she interrupted him?”
“Perhaps.”
For a long moment, the only sound was snow against the window. Listening to its soft patting at the glass, like some small creature wanting in, Charles tried to think how to say what he had to say.
A log broke in the fireplace and the rector straightened in his chair. “Whoever it was, we must find him.”
Charles looked half fearfully at Le Picart, wondering if the man had read his mind. “Yes, mon pere. We must.” He realized too late the fervor in his voice.
“I wonder if our reasons for thinking so are the same,” the rector said cautiously.
Charles looked at the window and the gray snow light. “Martine Mynette had no family,” he said carefully. “There is no one to see that justice is done for her.”
“There is Lieutenant-General La Reynie and his police.”
Charles said nothing.
“I think that more than just this girl’s murder is wringing your heart. Was she beautiful?”
“I want to see her killer found. Is that wrong?”
“That depends on who is speaking-the bodily man grieved for a beautiful young girl, or the Jesuit caring for a human soul.”
To Charles’s dismay, he felt blood rising to his face. He bowed his head, thinking that it might well take him the rest of his life to sort the one from the other.
“Don’t bother to dissemble, Maitre du Luc, I don’t have time for it. Outrage is useful in getting at facts. But if you want to see clearly the facts you find, you will have to call some degree of dispassion to your aid,” Le Picart said. “Our need to find this girl’s killer is more urgent than you probably realize. If the man who killed Martine Mynette is not found, the Society of Jesus will be accused of her death.”
Charles’s head came up and he suddenly remembered the angry muttering in the crowd outside the Mynette house. “Because now the Mynette money will come to us?”
“Yes. And even more because smoldering hostility to the Society is never very far below the surface in Paris. Parisians never forget anything, and all they need is a small spark to light the past into flame.”
“And Martine Mynette’s death is more than a small spark,” Charles said flatly.
Le Picart nodded wearily. “Again yes. And why? Because no one here will ever forget our poor Jean Chatel and his attack on King Henry.” Nearly a hundred years ago, a former Jesuit student named Jean Chatel, a deranged and rabidly fanatical Catholic, had tried to kill King Henry IV, a Huguenot who had converted to Catholicism in order to claim the throne. Chatel had been executed and his family house razed. One of his Jesuit teachers had been hanged and burned at the stake. The Society of Jesus had been banished from the realm for years.
“Feeling against us has grown again.” Anger flashed in the rector’s eyes. “Largely because our enemies fan the political flames, twisting all the facts and accusing us of being only the pope’s men and not the king’s.”
“We are far from innocent of misdeeds,” Charles said soberly, thinking of the Jesuit role in the Huguenots’ plight. “But our first loyalty is to the pope and the church. Isn’t it?”
“Yes. But we are also loyal to the king.” Le Picart picked up a quill from the tray at his elbow and smoothed the feather barbs as though quieting himself. “Why is it that human beings so rarely see that two things can be true at once?” He pointed the quill’s nib at Charles. “The world is changing. The pope’s power shrinks as the power of kings and states grows. And so those who want us gone-especially the Gallicans in France’s Parlements, who want no foreign influence in France-whisper that we are plotting to regain power for His Holiness. What the hypocrites really want is our power and property for themselves. So they say we are not Gallican enough, not French enough, for these enlightened times. And if, on top of that, people begin whispering that we killed Mademoiselle Mynette, or had her killed, to get her money, all these angers and hatreds will flare into a conflagration.” He threw the pen down. “And before it ends, people will no doubt believe that we also stole the girl’s donation entre vifs, and probably poisoned her mother into the bargain. Dear Blessed Virgin, I wish with all my heart the girl had not been killed! For her sake, God knows, but also for ours.”
“Wha
t are we going to do? If I may ask, mon pere.”
“What I should do is tell you to go about your lowly scholastic business.” The rector shook his head, almost angrily. “But you proved last summer that you have some skill in picking apart this sort of coil. So. Let us see if you can put your personal feelings about this girl aside and act not for yourself, but for the Society. Will you do that?”
“With all my heart, mon pere!” Seeing Le Picart’s skeptical expression, Charles added hastily, “I mean-that is-to the best of my ability, I will. God helping me.”
“Good. You have worked a little with Lieutenant-General La Reynie, and he respects you. I want you to watch the police investigation during these next few days and keep me informed.” Le Picart’s eyes narrowed, and there was unmistakable warning in his gaze. “As I did last summer, I give you permission to go and come as you will, unaccompanied. But you will not take advantage of that or neglect your college responsibilities.”
“So I will continue to assist in Pere Pallu’s morning rhetoric class as well as work with Pere Jouvancy on the February performance?”
The rector considered for a moment. “If this task I am giving you lasts beyond the beginning of the rhetoric and grammar classes on Monday, I will tell Pere Pallu that you will be absent for a time. But you will continue working on the February performance with Pere Jouvancy. If a few assignments take longer in Pere Pallu’s class, that is a small matter. But the performance date is set and cannot be altered. Pere Jouvancy needs you at every rehearsal. Meanwhile, you have today, tomorrow, and Sunday to do what I am asking. I want you to discover and tell me everything possible about what the police uncover. Facts won’t stop the mudslinging, but facts will help me decide what actions to take. Or not take. For my part,” he went on grimly, “I am going to get from our idiot notary Monsieur Henri Brion everything he knows about this affair, if I have to go through his sluggish brain with a soup ladle. Before you returned, I sent a lay brother with a message demanding Brion’s presence immediately after dinner. With the girl’s death, he should at least be more willing to speak to me freely about this donation. After I hear what he has to tell, I will send a report to Pere La Chaise at Versailles.”