Plague of Lies cdl-3

by Judith Rock

  A courtier bent over Fleury, searching uselessly for signs of life, straightened, and took off his white-plumed hat. “He’s gone.”

  The young footman Bouchel, standing white-faced at the foot of the stairs, slowly crossed himself. The men in the crowd of courtiers removed their hats with a decent show of respect. But one laughed and said, “Well, our poor dear Conti will never collect those gambling debts, anyway! And at least Fleury’s nephew can stop shaking in his boots, now that the old man won’t be after his money anymore.” That got muffled laughter and knowing looks, but the courtier standing beside the body shook his head reprovingly.

  “Trying to reach the latrine, I think, poor soul,” he said, and Charles realized that Fleury was without coat and hat and that his brown breeches were partly undone. The smell of bowels was thickening the air, and vomit streaked the front of the dead man’s linen shirt.

  Bouchel swallowed and nodded. “I was up there putting a pot under a ceiling leak. I saw the old-I saw him run out of his room toward the stairs.”

  “Ah, yes, he lived up above,” someone said, jerking his head at the ceiling, “and the latrine up there is closed. They’re making it into a lodging.”

  Someone else groaned. “That one, too? So we’ll have even more-nuisances-left in the gallery alcoves.”

  A hand gripped Charles’s shoulder and Père La Chaise said, “Go to Père Jouvancy. He’s lying down and should stay in his bed, he doesn’t need to come and see this.”

  Charles pulled himself together and stepped back, and La Chaise took his place at the front of the crowd. As Charles started back to the chamber, someone said, with the carrying diction of an actor, “I wonder, though, why the poor old thing didn’t just use his chaise de commodité?”

  Charles spun on his heel and saw a young man in a gold-trimmed coat and a frothy wig nearly as golden as the trim smiling brightly into La Chaise’s face.

  “A good question,” La Chaise answered evenly. “Though from the smell of him-if, of course, it’s him I smell-I’d say his chaise de commodité might well be full.”

  “Oh, well said, Père-ah-La Chaise.” A small man in russet satin grinned, lynx-eyed, over his shoulder at the crowd and raised a ripple of stifled laughter.

  Ignoring the insults, La Chaise turned to Bouchel. “Did you see him fall?”

  “No, mon père.” Bouchel jerked his head at the stairs. “But as I said, I saw him come out of his room, and he was groaning as if he might die. And I know there was water on the floor-from the leak, you understand. He must have slipped as he started down the stairs.”

  La Chaise nodded and looked again at the body. “We have to get this body out of the palace. And quickly.” By tradition, a king of France could not stay in a building with a corpse.

  Bouchel nodded. “Shall I go for the Guard?”

  “Yes. And then for Monsieur Neuville. When the Guard has Fleury in the mortuary, the physicians will have to look at him to confirm how he died.” La Chaise’s dark gaze swept across the courtiers. “Did any of you see the Comte de Fleury earlier?”

  “I saw him at dinner today, at the Duc de La Rochefoucauld’s table,” an older woman in burgundy velvet said hesitantly, flicking a lace-edged painted fan in front of her nose to disperse the smell. Her eyes were troubled and she frowned at La Chaise. “He seemed quite well then. I know he was old… but to be so suddenly ill… one could be forgiven for wondering…” She shivered and crossed herself.

  “One could,” La Chaise said grimly, and also crossed himself. “While we wait,” he said firmly, “we will say the prayers for the dead.”

  A chastened hush descended. Charles left the Comte de Fleury’s soul to La Chaise-or more likely, he thought uncharitably, to the devil-and turned back to the bedchamber and Jouvancy. He went in through La Chaise’s anteroom, picked up the saddlebags, and made his way to the adjoining chamber. In spite of all the noise in the gallery, Jouvancy had fallen fast asleep on the wide, green-curtained bed, curled into himself like a snail in its shell. Good, Charles thought, and untied the bed curtains and closed them. He tiptoed to the second, smaller bed and pulled off his riding boots to make his moving about the room quieter. The second bed was tucked into a tiny alcove between this second chamber and its antechamber, where the door into the corridor was. Narrow and plain, obviously meant for a servant, it was still softer than any Jesuit bed he’d ever slept in. Charles opened the larger saddlebag and began taking out his and Jouvancy’s fresh linen. His head came up as a sudden tramping of feet passed in the corridor. The Guard coming for the Comte de Fleury’s body, he thought, and found himself utterly unable to pray for the man, unable to be anything but glad he was dead, hoping even that he’d suffered at least a taste of terror at the end, like the men he’d hanged. But those were sinful thoughts, because vengeance belonged to God. Though it was easy enough to see Fleury’s end as appropriate divine vengeance.

  As he put tomorrow’s clean shirts away in a tall cupboard of polished dark wood, the door opened and closed in La Chaise’s chamber. Charles went through the connecting door, expecting to see the king’s confessor returned, but instead found the footman Bouchel on one knee at the hearth, beside a basket of wood. Hearing Charles, he looked up, smiling, and shook his thick brown hair back from his face.

  “Making a fire, mon père,” he said in his rasping voice. “Dark soon. And Père La Chaise will likely want to cook.”

  “I’m only maître as yet, monsieur.” Then Charles said, startled, “Did you say ‘cook’?”

  “Yes, he boils up his bouillon most nights.”

  Charles’s heart sank into his empty belly as the visions he’d entertained of a laden supper table disappeared. La Chaise probably felt it was unfitting for Jesuits to feast openly, or at least too often, he thought with a sigh, admonishing himself for gluttony.

  The footman got to his feet as a blaze rose from the neatly built new fire. “The courtiers all do it-well, more do than don’t, anyway.”

  “They all cook?” Jesuits supping frugally on a bouillon made over their own fire was one thing. But courtiers? “Why?”

  Bouchel laughed and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “No money. Plenty of pretty clothes and mortgaged jewels, but half of them haven’t got the price of a radish in their purses. Sometimes they eat in the Grand Commons refectory-that’s across the street from the south wing. But that costs them, too. Sometimes they eat at the Tables of Honor, but one can’t always be invited, so the courtiers get cooking pots-or their servants get them-and man or master cooks the bouillon. Usually they send someone like me out into the town for bread and cheese and a little pot of wine. And-voilà-le souper!”

  Bouchel took a copper pot from the cupboard, carried it into La Chaise’s antechamber, brought it back half filled with water, and set it on a solid iron trivet at the edge of the fire. Then he pulled the square table out from the wall and brought over a round loaf of bread, a little cloth-wrapped cheese, and a sadly small pottery pitcher of wine, which he set on the table next to the silver pitcher that was already there.

  “There,” he said, adding a candle in a brass holder to the table array. “Père La Chaise will take over from here when he comes back.”

  Bouchel made as if to go, but Charles said, “I thought I heard the Guard go by.”

  “You did. They took the Comte de Fleury’s body away, but we’ve not heard the end of it, you can be sure as rain of that.”

  “Why do you say so?”

  Bouchel’s harsh, damaged laughter filled the darkening room. “This is Versailles, maître. Drop dead from anything, including a broken neck, and before Mass tomorrow, the whole palace will be saying it was poison.” He shrugged, bowed, and became again the well-trained royal footman. “With your permission, maître. I wish you a good night.”

  “And God give you a good night, also,” Charles said absently, his thoughts gone to poison. Poison was often suspected when a death came suddenly, and not just at court. But Fleury’s death
seemed so obvious-sickness, a rush to the privy, a wet floor, a headlong fall down marble stairs. He eyed the unpromising pot of water on the hearth. On the other hand, perhaps it was just as well to cook over one’s own fire here.

  The door opened again to admit La Chaise, who walked heavily to the fire, shaking his head. “A terrible thing to happen. But marble stairs are slippery at the best of times, and if the floor upstairs was wet… And it clearly was not the best of times for the Comte de Fleury.” He shrugged as though to shrug off his thoughts. “Is Père Jouvancy resting?”

  “He’s asleep, mon père. May I help you with the supper?”

  “Yes, thank you.” La Chaise glanced down at the simmering water, then out the window at the densely clouded sky visible above the roofs across the courtyard. “Light the candle on the table, if you will. Rain brings the dark sooner, even in June.” He took a long wooden splinter from a box beside the hearth, lit it, and handed it to Charles, who used it to light a short, stubby candle.

  “Wax?” Charles said. “That’s pleasant, instead of tallow.”

  “Yes, Bouchel saves me from the evil smell of tallow. He gathers wax candle ends from courtiers’ servants and keeps them aside for when I have to stay the night. A good servant, and a pleasant one. And he knows everything about the town, he was born in the village here.”

  “Village? Most of the buildings I saw riding in look as new as the palace.”

  “They are. But yes, there was a village. Small, but it had been here time out of mind. The king demolished it when he decided to turn his father’s old hunting lodge into this palace.”

  Charles shook his head. “And how did the villagers take that?”

  “Not well. But the king employed them in the building, so they got something out of it. If I remember correctly, Bouchel said once that his father was one of the masons.”

  “Oh? And now Bouchel works in the palace his father helped to build. Do you know what happened to his voice?”

  “No, but I do know that while the palace was being built, there was an enormous camp for the workers. During the work, the whole place, including the old village, became very wet and unhealthy because of massive digging and rerouting of water. I suppose anyone who lived here-villagers as well as incoming workmen-risked chest and throat sickness.” La Chaise went to the cupboard and brought out a tall pitcher covered with a white linen cloth. Crouching down, he removed the cloth and poured the contents of the pitcher into the simmering water. “The remains of last night’s bouillon,” he said, straightening and taking a long spoon out of the cupboard. The savory smell of onions and leeks in beef broth filled the room. Charles’s stomach began trying to climb up his backbone to get to the food.

  “And I am going to add a little more beef and another bone, though my mother would be scandalized at my short way of making bouillon.” La Chaise reached into the cupboard and brought out a bloody paper packet, unwrapped it, and dumped its contents into the pot. “Now we have only to wait.”

  Charles swallowed hard. “How long will it need to cook?”

  “Not long, the meat is chopped somewhat fine.” La Chaise smiled suddenly. “When I was a scholastic, I was hungry all the time. If you’re hungry now, break some bread from the loaf there. And let us have a little wine while we wait for the soup to become soup and for Père Jouvancy to wake.” His face fell as he looked at the pot of wine Bouchel had brought. “Oh, dear. A little wine is the apt word, unfortunately. Oh, well, we can water it. Or not water it and drink water with our supper. Anyway, wine now!”

  Charles looked for a knife to cut the loaf, that being the polite modern custom, but La Chaise only said, “No, no, break it. If Louis can use his fingers to eat, so can we.”

  Gratefully, Charles broke a piece off the brown loaf and La Chaise refilled the cone-shaped glasses they’d used earlier, but only to the scant side of half full.

  “To your health, maître,” he said, handing a glass to Charles and raising his own.

  Charles returned the compliment and they drank.

  “Sit. No, have the chair.” La Chaise gestured Charles to the thinly cushioned chair fringed with red silk where Jouvancy had sat, and settled himself in the other. “Aaah.” He drank again and closed his eyes briefly. Seeming to open them again with an effort, he said, “Have you had much sickness in the college?”

  “Yes, these last weeks. Our infirmarian thinks it’s some unbalance of humors caused by the weather going from cold to warmer after such a bad winter. He says the change makes the stomach and bowels grip, and then the blood boils trying to get through them, which raises a fever. Though hardly anyone dies of it, he says.”

  La Chaise grunted. “Unless they fall downstairs trying to reach the privy. Does this illness come on suddenly?”

  “Oh, yes. Père Jouvancy was well one afternoon at the beginning of the rhetoric class, and deathly ill and spewing before it ended. I could hardly get him to the infirmary.”

  “Have you, too, been ill?”

  “No, thank Saint Roch and Saint Stephen,” Charles answered fervently, naming two saints known for protecting against contagion. “If I may ask, mon père, are you thinking that the Comte de Fleury was ill in the same way?”

  “Possibly. You may have heard the woman in the corridor say he seemed well enough at dinner today.” La Chaise rose and stirred the soup, whose scent was so enticing now that Charles felt like biting at the air to see if it tasted like it smelled. To distract himself, he said, “I saw three young people playing in the court below the window soon after we arrived and recognized two of them as the king’s children, who did us the honor of coming to our college performance in February, the Duc du Maine and Mademoiselle de Rouen.”

  “Two of our legitimées de France. You know, of course, that he had his children by Madame de Montespan declared legally legitimate.”

  “The other was a small girl. But very quick at the game they were playing.”

  “Very little? Bright brown hair?” When Charles nodded, La Chaise said, “That was Anne-Marie de Bourbon, Princess of the Blood, a daughter of the new Prince of Condé.”

  “Ah.” Charles nodded. The Condés were Bourbons, as royal blooded as the king and in line for the throne. The present Prince of Condé had come into his title only in December, when his father died.

  “In case you have to speak to the princess,” La Chaise said, “she’s styled Her Serene Highness and her title is Mademoiselle d’Enghien. She looks six, but she’s eleven or twelve, I think. The new Condé’s daughters are all tiny, like their grandmother Claire Clemence. People call them ‘Dolls of the Blood.’” Watching the fire brighten as the light faded, La Chaise said reflectively, “Have you ever thought how oddly things are passed on in families? Take those two children of the king you saw. Maine is dark like his father. But Lulu, as Mademoiselle de Rouen is called, is nearly blond, like her mother, Madame de Montespan. And her character could not be more different from her brother’s if she came from the other side of the world. Maine’s a quiet boy, doesn’t seem to like public life much. He’d rather be in the woods with his huntsman and the dogs, so I hear. Though his limp doesn’t help his riding. I will tell you-in confidence-that he’s the king’s favorite child. Though they say he’s not living up to his promise. He was a brilliant little boy, but now he has-well-faded, somehow. In my opinion, Madame de Maintenon has kept him too close, too tied to her, probably because of his limp. She tried very hard to cure him, you know. But limp or not, it’s high time the king sent Maine to the army. The boy is seventeen. Far too old to be mooning around here at court playing children’s games.”

  “And what of Lulu, as you called her? How old is she?”

  La Chaise sighed. “Yes. Lulu. She’s-let me see-almost sixteen. Her Highness’s real name is Louise Marguerite. Louise after her father, of course, and Marguerite after his mother’s mother, Marguerite of Austria.”

  “So she’s nearly marriageable.”

  “In fact, nearly married. And furi
ous about it. She’s tried to change the king’s mind. But he pays no attention and she’s causing a world of trouble. I live for the day she’s finally dispatched to her husband, I assure you.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A Polish prince, the younger son of King Jan Sobieski. We need to strengthen ties with Poland, since Sobieski has too often aligned himself with France’s enemies. Particularly the Hapsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire. Of course, Sobieski had no choice but to fight on the Hapsburg side against the Turks at Vienna and Buda, the Turks being such a danger to Poland. But Louis hopes to make Sobieski our ally with this marriage.”

  “However the girl herself feels about it?”

  La Chaise looked at Charles as though he’d begun speaking Chinese. “She’s known all her life that she would be married for royal reasons. Why she’s making so much trouble about it, I can’t imagine.” He shook his head and sipped from his glass. “Poland is an odd place. Did you know that Polish nobles elect their king? They usually choose the old king’s son, but not always. It seems to me an affront to God to show so little trust in the royal lineage.”

  Charles was silent, wondering how different things might be in France if the French king were elected.

  “With his daughter married to Sobieski’s son, Louis will have more influence on the next vote, whenever that should come. So Lulu’s marriage-” La Chaise stopped short and turned in his chair as the connecting door between the chambers opened.