The Eloquence of Blood cdl-2

by Judith Rock

  When the cistern was close enough, the friars formed lines, filling buckets and passing them forward to the flames. Other friars waited to run the empty buckets back to the cistern. As Charles moved to take a place in the bucket-passing line, he passed the struggling woman, who held a mass of something white against her chest.

  “But the new lace, the ribbons!” she sobbed. “Madame de Fiennes is coming tomorrow-” Then he heard an anguished shriek. “The mules, ah, bon Dieu, the mules!”

  Charles spun around. Mules? Trapped in a burning stable behind the shop?

  “No one is coming tomorrow!” the man shouted at the woman. “There will be nowhere to come to! Never mind the stupid pink mules; you are not supposed to sell them, anyway. No more than you are supposed to work by candlelight and burn the shop down!” He pulled her toward the gates of a townhouse farther down the street. “See, the Fiennes maidservants are at their gate. Come and let them salve your burns.”

  Ah, Charles thought, enlightened, pink mules. Thanks to his mother, he knew that mules were a woman’s backless slipper. The sobbing woman was a marchand de mode, then, a seller of fashion accessories. Though why she wasn’t supposed to sell mules, he had no idea.

  A roar and a crash came from the burning shop, and one of the friars called from the front of the line, “A ceiling beam’s come down!”

  For a bizarre moment, Charles thought that burning white birds were fluttering toward him, but the birds were fragments of the shop’s lace and linen carried on the fire’s heat and vanishing into cinders as he watched.

  A shrill, terrified cry above him made him stumble backward, craning his neck. A boy of eight or nine years was crouched on a window ledge above the shop door, weeping with terror and staring down into the maelstrom of smoke, water, and running people below him. At his back, a wall of flame reared itself where the beam had collapsed into the ground-floor room.

  One of the friars came running with a ladder and tried to lean it against the building, but a sudden draft sent tongues of fire reaching through the shop door and he jumped back, cinders burning holes in his robe and catching in his hair.

  “The boy must jump,” Charles called to the friar with the ladder. He thrust his bucket at someone and hurried as close to the building as he could. “Mon brave,” he called up to the child, “hold on to the casement and stand up.” He turned to the young and sturdy-looking friar. “Do you have rope?”

  The friar looked wildly around, put his ladder on the ground, and ran. Within a few breaths, he was back with a coil of rope.

  Charles took it and shouted up to the child, “Catch the rope and hold it as tightly as you can!”

  But the little boy was clinging to the window casement with his eyes shut, too frozen with terror to move. Behind him, flames rose again from the ground floor, and tongues of flame licked out of the shop door.

  “Mon frere,” Charles said to the Capuchin, “put your arm through the rope coil and climb onto my shoulders. Quickly, here, use my hands!”

  Charles crouched. The friar took his proffered hands, put a foot on Charles’s thigh, and scrambled onto his shoulders. Slowly, Charles stood up. They loosed hands, Charles gripped the monk’s ankles, and the monk stood upright. Above them, the child was watching their acrobatics, momentarily distracted from his terror.

  Charles said, “I will tell the child what to do. Then you will throw him the rope. Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “Mon brave,” Charles called to the boy, “we will throw you a rope. You must put it around your waist and tie it and then hold it with both hands as tightly as you can. Do you hear me?”

  The child nodded.

  “Throw it,” Charles shouted to the friar.

  To his relief, the man’s aim was true and the child caught the rope and fumbled it around his waist. But before he could tie it, a gust of air sent new flames rising behind him.

  “Hold it tight, mon petit!” Charles bellowed. And to the man on his shoulders, “Pull!”

  The child flew toward them, the friar yanking with all his strength to pull the boy past the flames in the shop door, and Charles caught him as he fell. All three of them toppled backward into the fire-melted snow. Capuchins surrounded them. One of them took the child and began to comfort him. The others pulled Charles and their brother to their feet, thanking and blessing them.

  “Well done.” Pere Michaut, the Capuchin superior, bowed slightly to Charles. His white beard was singed and streaked with soot, and his gown was spattered with small holes from burning cinders. Behind him, a young layman in coat and breeches, equally singed and soot blackened, was smiling at Charles and the friar who had helped him.

  Charles said, “Who is the boy, mon pere? Didn’t the shopkeepers know he was up there?”

  “He is their servant.”

  Charles stared at Michaut, remembering the woman’s grief for her lace and pink mules. “And they left him to burn?”

  “You have saved him.” Michaut’s eyes held Charles’s for a long moment. “I am reminded anew that God arranges all things.” He turned to the young man standing behind him, who looked to be twenty years old or so. “Allow me to present Monsieur Fiennes. He lives very near us.” Michaut nodded toward the gates of the townhouse where the shop owner had gone to have her burns tended. His eyes sought Charles’s again. “And he will soon be among us as a novice.” With that, Michaut turned away and took the listening friars with him.

  Fiennes bowed. “Enchante, mon pere.”

  “The pleasure is mine, Monsieur Fiennes. But I am only maitre. Maitre Charles du Luc. Our Jesuit formation is long, and I am still a scholastic.”

  “I hope I will be as faithful in my own vocation.” The young man’s smile was sweet. “I am Aubin d’Auteuil de Fiennes, but Monsieur Fiennes is enough name to call me by.”

  “You do me honor. But after what I have seen tonight, my choice seems a far easier one than yours.”

  “God puts us where our souls need to be,” Fiennes said with a little shrug, as though murderous fire, bare boards, scant food, and wicked cold were things of no account.

  Charles studied the boy. “Will you speak with me for a moment, Monsieur Fiennes?”

  “With pleasure.” The youth looked back at the fire with a sigh. “At least the wind has died and it will not spread. Thank God the house stands by itself. There is not much more we can do. It is so often like that. If only God would show us some better way to fight fire.” Fiennes looked down at his feet. “Shall we move farther away? The water is nearly over our shoes.”

  Charles’s cloak and cassock were wet against his back, and his shoes squelched audibly as he went with the young man toward a townhouse where a knot of servants clustered beside the lantern-lit gate.

  “You seem to know something about fires,” Charles said, as they made their way into the courtyard.

  “With God’s help, I am going to be a Capuchin, and Capuchins are the firefighters of Paris. But I hear from your accent that you are not Parisian, so perhaps you didn’t know.”

  “I did, but I had never seen them at it. I am much impressed by their bravery and effort.”

  “They impress devotion on my heart in every way. Please come inside, maitre, you are welcome.”

  Inside the townhouse, a maid took them to a small salon where fire, reduced to the role of good servant, crackled welcomingly in the fireplace. A basin of warmed water and towels were brought, and when they had cleaned their soot-blackened faces and hands, Fiennes bade Charles sit beside the fire and served him wine and cakes from a side table. Charles looked at the salon’s sumptuous carpets and tapestry, at the rich red wine in his gold-veined Venetian glass, at the upholstered chairs fringed with gold. He, too, had given up some comfort, but nothing compared to what Fiennes was about to leave. Yet seeing him in the light, Charles realized that this son of wealth was dressed very differently from Gilles Brion, with his frothing lace and up-tothe-minute suit. Fiennes’s coat and breeches were of plain, even ro
ugh, brown wool, with only a glimpse of coarse white linen at the throat and wrists.

  Charles ate and drank gratefully, but also guiltily. If Fiennes was who Charles thought he must be, then God-or Michaut-or the fire-or all three together-had delivered him into Charles’s hands. And what Charles needed to ask was not going to be easy.

  But he was wrong. The youth was so radiantly happy that nothing seemed to trouble him.

  “Yes, maitre,” he said simply, in response to Charles’s question, “Gilles Brion is my dear friend. Dearer than life itself to me.” His soft brown eyes were the most guileless Charles had ever seen. “I pray for him day and night. I have gone to the Chatelet, but the guards will not let me see him. He has done no murder, of that I am certain. Why God has put him into prison, I cannot understand.”

  “I think you may be able to help get him out, if you will answer what I have to ask.”

  “I will.”

  “Monsieur Henri Brion was killed early on the Friday morning after the Nativity. And Pere Michaut says that on Thursday night, Gilles Brion was a guest at the Capuchin monastery.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he come to this house during that night?”

  Fiennes looked down. “Yes.” He looked up again, and Charles was disconcerted to see his smile.

  “How long did he stay with you?”

  “He came just after Compline and he stayed until an hour or a little less before Prime. He left me then to go and do something we’d been praying about during the night.”

  “What was that?” Though Charles thought he knew, he wanted to be sure.

  “We prayed that the young woman his father was forcing on him would agree to tell Monsieur Brion that she would not marry Gilles.”

  “And how long was he gone on this errand?”

  “Perhaps three-quarters of an hour. It was still dark when I met him in the Capuchin church for Prime. We were there well before the Prime bell, so no one knew that Gilles had left the monastery.”

  Whether or not Pere Michaut knew that Gilles had been out on that particular night, it was clear to Charles that the Capuchin superior was aware of the pair’s mutual devotion. Though whatever doubts it may have given him about Brion, he seemed to have none about Fiennes. If only Gilles had not left Fiennes to go and plead with Martine. Because that three-quarters of an hour’s absence was plenty of time to do murder. To do both murders, in fact, since Henri Brion’s body had been found so near the Mynette house. And Fiennes’s story also confirmed Gilles’s presence at the Mynette house that morning. Still, though Gilles Brion seemed weak and self-regarding, he was not mad. Charles could not believe that he could pray all night with Fiennes, leave to go murder two people, and then return to Prime as though nothing had happened.

  “How did Gilles seem when you joined him for Prime?”

  Fiennes sighed. “Very upset. His errand had not sped. In spite of all our prayers.”

  Very upset. A detail that would not help convince La Reynie that Gilles had done nothing but talk at Martine’s house. Charles was staking everything on the hope that La Reynie would be swayed by Fiennes’s guileless innocence and demeanor. “Is there anyone here in your house who saw Gilles Brion come and go?” Charles said. “And could swear to the times?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Who?” Charles asked skeptically. It was not the answer he had expected.

  “My mother’s maid. She has been here for years and knows all about Gilles; she lets him in when he comes. And she’s a very early riser and opened the door for him when he left to go across the river.”

  Charles blinked. “Well, what you’ve told me may help your friend. But if you agree to also tell the police, you will be risking hard questions about your connection to Monsieur Brion.”

  “There is nothing wrong in our connection, Maitre du Luc. We love each other, yes. We consider ourselves spiritual brothers. Gilles has been tempted to a baser connection with me. But I have persuaded him that it would be grave sin. Now he wants only for us to be near one another and be truly brothers, Capuchin brothers, serving God together. We have nothing to hide.”

  “Still, it may not be easy to convince the police of that. They may well be merciless in asking what you did that night.”

  Fiennes’s face shone. “We prayed for Gilles. And talked about God. What else would we do?”

  Charles found himself speechless and rebuked. The young man’s words rang with truth. He only hoped La Reynie would hear what he heard, and that it would weigh against that damning three-quarters of an hour’s absence. “Will you go to the Chatelet with me when it’s light? If we can get through the snow.”

  Fiennes jumped up and went to a window. “It’s not snowing anymore. Though the snow is deep. I will ask my father for horses.”

  “Thank you, monsieur. The sooner we get there, the better.” Charles was hoping that Gilles Brion’s long, dark night in the prison had been no more than lonely and uncomfortable, hoping that La Reynie was still holding out against Louvois.

  Chapter 22

  ST. GENEVIEVE’S DAY, FRIDAY, JANUARY 3

  Without the horses, they would never have made it to the Chatelet. Even with them, a ride that should have taken a few minutes took nearly an hour. People wrapped in coats, cloaks, and shawls were wielding brooms and shovels to clear drifted snow from doors, gates, church porches, and streets. It was the Feast of St. Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, a day full of processions through the city, coiling lines of laymen and clergy chanting and carrying relics and candles. Today, though, the saint’s processions were going to be late beginning, because in most of the streets the snow was still deep and uncleared. As the Chatelet’s white-blanketed roofs and towers rose before them, Charles realized belatedly that Lieutenant-General La Reynie might well not be there. He might simply have decided to stay at home beside his fire in this weather.

  The guards at the prison entrance were cold and irritable. The one Charles approached only shrugged and wiped his dripping nose on his sleeve. Cold and largely sleepless, Charles implied harm to the man’s immortal soul if he refused. The guard finally left his fellow holding the entrance and conducted them to La Reynie’s office. An even more irritable voice behind La Reynie’s door called “Come!” when the guard knocked, and Charles released his held breath in a sigh of relief. The guard stalked away. Charles and Fiennes went in.

  La Reynie stood in front of a dying fire, rubbing his face. His cloak was on the floor beside one of the armchairs and his wig lay on the other chair’s seat. Startled at this state of undress, Charles wished him a good morning.

  “It is not a good morning,” La Reynie growled, raking a hand through his spiky gray hair. “What do you want?” He glanced unhappily at Fiennes. “And who is this?” His frown deepened as he looked more closely at Charles. “What’s happened to you?” He reached out toward the burn holes in Charles’s cloak.

  Charles smiled. “Monsieur La Reynie, may I present Monsieur Fiennes? We have been helping the Capuchins fight a fire.”

  The two men bowed to each other.

  “The Capuchins do well,” La Reynie said, eyeing Fiennes. “I wish we had them all over Paris. And how did you come to be helping them, monsieur?”

  “He is soon to be a Capuchin novice,” Charles said, before Fiennes could answer.

  La Reynie grunted, glowering at Charles. “And? Have you come to tell me you’re joining the Capuchins, too?”

  Charles bit back a reply, taking in the lieutenant-general’s shadowed eyes and limp, wrinkled linen. La Reynie had apparently been up most of the night, too.

  “I know now where Gilles Brion was the morning his father died. I have brought Monsieur Fiennes to tell you himself. And there is also another witness to confirm some of what he is going to say.”

  La Reynie closed his eyes and swore softly. Then, still without inviting his guests to sit, he went to the door, jerked it open, and bellowed into the passage. “Guillaume! Wine! Bread! Now!” He turned back int
o the room, swore at the freezing air sweeping through the open door from the passage, went back and slammed the door shut, and dropped into an empty chair.

  “Maitre du Luc, put that wig somewhere-no, give it to me, at least it’s warm.” He jammed the wig on his head. “Forgive me, Monsieur Fiennes, please, sit down. I apologize for being somewhat en deshabille this morning. Maitre, bring a chair for yourself.”

  Charles went to pull a chair away from the wall and closer to the dead fire.

  La Reynie was looking morosely at the cold hearth. “Who would have thought this day could get so much worse, so quickly?” he muttered. He scowled over his shoulder and bellowed “Fire!” at the closed door.

  As Charles sat down in the chair he had brought, the door opened and a cheerful, middle-aged servant edged in, carrying a bucket of kindling and balancing a small pewter tray crowded with pitcher, glasses, and a loaf of bread.

  “Here you are, mon lieutenant-general.” He put the tray on the table beside La Reynie and knelt in front of the fire. “And just so you know,” he said, poking and prodding the ashes as he looked for live embers, “you’re not here today.”

  “I am very glad to hear it,” La Reynie said, sarcasm dripping from his words like melted butter. “Where am I? Am I enjoying myself, wherever it is?”

  “I couldn’t say where you are, monsieur, but I’m certain you’re enjoying yourself more than you would be if I’d told Monsieur Louvois’s man you’re here.”

  “Blessed saints. Thank you, Guillaume. Every day I am so much deeper in your debt, I will never be able to repay you.”

  The man smiled to himself and fell to blowing on a live coal. La Reynie poured wine into the glasses Guillaume had brought, handed two to Charles and Fiennes, and took his own.