Plague of Lies cdl-3

by Judith Rock

  The three in front halted, Charles hovering a step behind Jouvancy’s right shoulder, and they all bowed their heads to her again. As he raised his eyes, Charles realized from her expression-or lack of it-that she was simply waiting for this to be over. Jouvancy made his short, perfectly composed presentation speech, claiming Madame de Maintenon as a fellow educator and praising her school for young noblewomen, flattering the king’s children she’d raised, and reminding her briefly and delicately in the course of it all that they were kin (which brought, if anything, more frost into the atmosphere, Charles thought). Then Charles handed Jouvancy the box, and Jouvancy held it toward Madame de Maintenon, open like a book to show the reliquary. Her face thawed into a slight smile as she gazed at it. She nodded graciously and crossed herself, everyone else doing likewise. Then she made a brief response, praising the beauty and holiness of the gift and commending the young people present to the protection of St. Ursula. Dragging his lame leg, the Duc du Maine stepped forward and courteously took the box from Jouvancy. La Chaise added graceful thanks for the honor the lady had done them in receiving their gift. Madame de Maintenon listened politely and then, at her gesture of dismissal, the Jesuits made their exit.

  “Well,” Jouvancy said, with a shaky sigh, when they were through the door and back in the antechamber. “Thank the Blessed Virgin that’s over!”

  His words raised a ripple of laughter among the waiting courtiers as the Jesuits started toward the guardroom and the stairway. Behind them, the reception chamber’s door opened and closed again and a light voice said, “I beg your pardon, mes pères.” A young man in rich black velvet and a beautifully curled dark wig passed them hurriedly. He looked back, smiling, his smooth face unmistakably Bourbon. “Very prettily done in there, if I may say so.” Sudden mockery flashed from his eyes. “But you’ll need more than a virgin’s little finger to touch that lady’s heart.”

  That brought a louder and harsher ripple of laughter from the courtiers, which made Charles stand solidly on both feet, stifling an urge to trip the man as he swept from the room. The sudden harsh clash of weapons made Jouvancy startle and gasp, but La Chaise said, “It’s only the Swiss; they always present arms to a Prince of the Blood. Come.”

  “And which Prince was that?” Jouvancy said indignantly, when they were on the stairs and out of anyone’s hearing.

  “His Serene Highness, the Prince of Conti,” Le Picart replied noncommittally, exchanging knowing looks with La Chaise and Montville.

  So, Charles thought, running an appreciative hand along the stair’s yellow-veined marble balustrade, that was the man the police chief La Reynie had asked about as Charles rode out of Paris. Charles tried unsuccessfully to place this Prince of the Blood in the Bourbon family. Conti, Condé, too many branches, too many royal sprigs to keep track of.

  “The Contis are a younger branch of the Condés,” Jouvancy said, seeing Charles’s confused frown. “And no better mannered, either, as you saw.” He looked up at La Chaise, walking beside him. “Do you think we will see the king again before we leave?”

  “His first valet de chambre told me earlier that tomorrow morning he receives the envoys from Poland, coming to negotiate Mademoiselle de Rouen’s betrothal agreements. If you are still here, you can be present with the court for that.”

  Jouvancy looked hopefully at Le Picart, who smiled indulgently at him.

  “I think we can stay for that. After all, we have schools in Poland.”

  Montville nodded his pleased agreement and Charles admitted grudgingly to himself that he, too, would like to see such a ceremony.

  “How many valets de chambre does the king have?” Montville asked curiously.

  “Only one sleeps in his room at night,” La Chaise said. “But there are household officers without number, from dukes to little Parisian barbers who have bought some minor post.” The king’s confessor sighed. “I must say, I had the unhappy feeling in the audience chamber that we still rank somewhere below the barbers.”

  The others commiserated ruefully and Jouvancy said, “Our gift isn’t going to help much, is it?”

  “I think,” Le Picart said judicially, “that it will weigh in our favor. The lady is reputed to be more often just than warm. Is that not so, Père La Chaise?”

  “On the whole, yes.”

  Le Picart smiled and shrugged. “Let us trust, then, to her sense of fair play and believe that our little occasion went off well enough.”

  “And we did have a goodly gathering of witnesses,” La Chaise said. “So let us leave it in God’s hands and turn to happier things. Such as dinner at the Duc de La Rochefoucauld’s Table of Honor.”

  His companions’ faces brightened, and they followed him gladly through more of the palace corridors. When at last they reached the north wing’s garden front, the opposite side of the building from La Chaise’s modest chamber, they found the gallery thronged with richly dressed men and women making their way into La Rochefoucauld’s rooms. Charles tried not to stare at the women. Tall headdresses, confections of ribbon, lace, and starched linen, waved above discreetly padded puffs of hair and curls like bunches of grapes, and scarves like woven air fluttered on their bare shoulders. The men’s gold-embroidered waistcoats glittered beneath open black coats, their sticks tapped, and their dark velvet and wool coat skirts hung nearly to their knees. Precedence-the prescribed order of entrance by rank-was taken, given, and rearranged with narrowed eyes and coldly honeyed words.

  The Jesuits’ turn finally came to greet their host. Francois VII, Duc de La Rochefoucauld and grand master of the king’s wardrobe, was an urbane, tired-looking man who passed the Jesuits on to a footman, who seated them at the large horseshoe-shaped table draped in white linen. When all twenty or so guests were seated, La Rochefoucauld took his place at the table’s center and invited La Chaise to return thanks, and the meal began. After a pigeon bisque so delicious that Charles wanted to find the kitchen and sing an aria to the cook, they began on roast chicken with olive sauce, served on silver plates. Charles was savoring the sauce, which reminded him of his home in the south, when his neighbor on the left said into his ear, “You saw him fall, I believe?”

  “I beg your pardon, monsieur,” Charles said in surprise. “Saw whom?”

  “Fleury. Last evening.” The small spare man in tobacco-brown velvet eyed Charles sardonically from under his double-peaked wig. “How many men have you seen fall downstairs since you arrived?”

  “Only the one,” Charles admitted with a smile. “I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance, monsieur.”

  “Forgive me, everyone here knows everyone. I did not mean to be rude. I am the Comte de Vannes. I guessed who you were, Maître du Luc, the moment I heard your name. And your Languedoc accent. My father met yours long ago, when the court was at the Louvre. My unhappy father was in love with your mother, and you look very like his description of her. I think he still mourns that your father won her away from him. She was wondrously blond, he said, with conversation that sparkled like a diamond.”

  “She’s no longer blond,” Charles said, storing up the compliment to tell his mother, “but her conversation sparkles still.”

  “I will tell my father. Or perhaps I won’t, poor man.” He lifted an eyebrow at Charles. “So, tell me. Did you see old Fleury fall?”

  “No, monsieur. I only heard him. By the time I reached him in the corridor, I saw only that his neck was broken.”

  “A nice diversion from the fact that someone gave him his bouillon.”

  “I-what? I don’t understand. You mean he didn’t make his own?”

  The Comte de Vannes bayed with laughter. “Forgive me-you are from the south and perhaps you don’t have this saying there. ‘Giving someone his bouillon’ is what we say to mean someone’s been poisoned.”

  Remembering the whispers about poison in Madame de Maintenon’s antechamber, Charles studied Vannes’s face to see if he was serious and decided he was. “But why should people think Fleury was
poisoned? He was sick, certainly. But there is a sickness in Paris now that takes people just that way. Half the staff at Louis le Grand have been struck down by it. Isn’t it more likely that the man was simply ill?”

  “It might have been, had the Comte de Fleury not annoyed so many people.” Vannes applied himself to his chicken for a moment. “I understand that they’re doing an autopsy tonight, so perhaps that will settle the question. The king, of course, wants the rumors of poison stopped.” He smiled. “Or confirmed.” With a courteous nod signaling the conversation’s end, Vannes turned to the woman on his other side.

  Charles glanced over his shoulder and gestured for something to drink from the serving men stationed along the wall, where glasses and wine waited on a sideboard. A serving man handed Charles a glass of red wine, and he drank. His eyes widened and he drank again, sighed with pleasure, and gazed into his glass as though he’d never seen wine before. As, by comparison, he hadn’t, he thought wryly, at least not lately, college wine being mostly poor quality to start with and well watered. Beside him, Jouvancy put his glass down on the spotless cloth, and Charles turned to make an appreciative comment about the wine. But Jouvancy spoke first.

  “Help me out of here, maître,” he whispered, “before I disgrace myself.” His face was white and sheened with sweat, and the words were barely out of his mouth before he clapped both hands to his mouth and pushed his chair back with his feet.

  Chapter 5

  Charles sprang up, fracturing the table conversation to silence. Before the others could voice their bewildered outrage at his discourtesy, he pulled Père Jouvancy upright and half carried him toward the outer door. Behind him, La Chaise apologized on their behalf for the disturbance, and Charles heard footsteps following him. A servant touched his arm and guided them into an alcove, pointing to the chair-like closestool standing ready near the wall. The servant hurried to open its lid and Jouvancy tottered toward it. Charles held the little priest’s head while the worst happened.

  “Dear Blessed Virgin, so ill again?” Le Picart said from the door, and Charles glanced up to see Montville’s equally worried face peering over the rector’s shoulder. “We will help you get him to his bed.”

  “Tell the servant to bring a wet cloth, if you will,” Charles said, trying to ignore the weak-kneed feeling Jouvancy’s spewing was giving him.

  He pulled Jouvancy gently upright, sat him down on a chair Le Picart pushed forward, and took the cool wet cloth from the arriving servant and wiped the rhetoric master’s face. Jouvancy’s eyes were wide with terror.

  “I heard what the Comte de Vannes said to you,” he whispered. “Poison! First that old man and now me!”

  “No, no,” Charles said robustly, “this is just your sickness come back because you’ve pushed yourself too far, with the riding yesterday and today’s business. We’ll go to our chamber and you can sleep. You’ll be better after that. And then we’ll-”

  “What is it?” La Chaise said, coming into the room behind them. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Poison, mon père,” Jouvancy moaned dramatically. “It must be! I felt very well before we sat down to eat, and now I’m poisoned, too. Don’t eat anything else here, I beg you, or we will all-”

  “Hush!” La Chaise stood over Jouvancy, his face dark with anger and something else Charles couldn’t name. “You’re raving, mon père. In God’s name, be quiet!”

  Charles put a hand on Jouvancy’s forehead. “He’s fevered. So he’s most likely not poisoned, only ill again. We must get him back to our chamber.”

  Instead of answering, the other three Jesuits conferred for a moment.

  “Can you manage alone, maître? In courtesy, the rest of us should stay and finish our meal. I will explain that Père Jouvancy has simply had a return of his illness,” La Chaise said, ignoring Jouvancy’s protests. “Go now, the less fuss, the better. Follow the corridor around to your right. We will come when dinner is over.”

  With last worried looks at Jouvancy, La Chaise, Le Picart, and Montville went back to the salon and the loud, excited buzz of talk around the table.

  Swallowing hard and telling himself he was perfectly well, Charles helped Jouvancy stand, put his bonnet back on his head, and walked him out of La Rochefoucauld’s rooms into the corridor. The passage was blessedly empty, since most everyone was at dinner.

  “Walk as best you can, mon père,” Charles said. “But if it comes to it, I can carry you.” Though he hoped it wouldn’t, for the sake of his own oddly weak knees, as well as to lessen the gossip about Jouvancy’s sudden indisposition in case anyone saw them. Of course, as soon as he’d thought that, two men turned the corner ahead of them, walking in their direction.

  “What’s the trouble?” one said, taking in the two Jesuits in surprise.

  The other grinned. “Too much indulgence at dinner, I see.”

  “He’s ill,” Charles snapped, adding, “It’s contagious, I think,” for the satisfaction of seeing them scuttle away.

  Jouvancy was too short to rest an arm over Charles’s shoulder, and by the time they were making their way along the north side of the wing, the rhetoric master was limp, his feet barely shuffling. With a sigh, Charles picked him up in his arms like a child. Jouvancy’s head lolled against Charles’s shoulder and his eyes closed.

  Peering anxiously at the rhetoric master’s deathly pale face and closed eyes, Charles muttered anxiously, “Don’t lose consciousness, mon père, please!”

  “I haven’t,” Jouvancy quavered, opening one eye, “but I would like to.”

  With a relieved snort of laughter, Charles turned the corner of the gallery, where their chamber door was finally in sight. He edged through it and across the anteroom and laid Jouvancy carefully on the green-curtained bed. He removed the priest’s bonnet, untied the sash of his cassock and pulled off his shoes, and covered him with the green silk coverlet. Then he stood wondering what else to do.

  “Do you want a doctor, mon père?”

  “You’re supposed to take care of me,” Jouvancy said faintly.

  “Yes, but my experience is with battle wounds,” Charles replied. “If someone shoots you or runs you through with a sword, I can help you. But they haven’t.”

  “Such a pity,” Jouvancy returned, trying to laugh.

  Charles saw that he was starting to shiver and pulled a blanket over the coverlet. “Try to sleep a little, mon père. I will be here beside you, if you need me.”

  Jouvancy sighed and turned his head into the pillow. Charles went into La Chaise’s chamber for the stool. When he came back, Jouvancy was asleep. Charles watched him carefully, trying to remember what he’d looked like the day he’d fallen ill at the end of the rhetoric class. Pale, he remembered that. And weak. And spewing. But he hadn’t been so fevered as he seemed now. Charles went back to La Chaise’s chamber and rummaged in the cupboard for a towel. Then he emptied the old basin of water out the window into the courtyard and refilled it from the copper reservoir. Sitting on the stool with the basin in his lap, he prayed steadily as he wiped Jouvancy’s flushed face every few minutes to cool him. When the others returned, the rhetoric master was still fevered.

  “Mes pères, I think he needs a doctor,” Charles said, looking up at them from the stool.

  “Do you? But he isn’t as ill as he was at the college,” Le Picart said, looking anxiously at Jouvancy. “This was probably brought on by too much exertion, as you said earlier. I blame myself-I should have waited longer before sending him here.”

  “He is still very weak,” Charles said. “I realized yesterday as we traveled that he was weaker than I’d thought. That’s why-”

  “Oh, rest will probably cure him,” Montville said comfortably. “We must just let him sleep and feed him nourishing broth when he wakes. Isn’t that what Frère Brunet does?”

  “Plus his medicines,” Le Picart said.

  “Yes, medicines.” Charles was trying to curb his impatience. “I think Père Jouvancy needs them.
Which is why he needs a doctor.”

  That got him surprised looks for his flat lack of deference.

  “A court doctor will bleed him,” La Chaise said, and Charles realized that till now he’d said nothing. “That will make him weaker.”

  Montville turned shocked eyes on La Chaise. “Don’t you believe in bleeding, mon père? It’s the soul of medicine! It will rid him of whatever is making him sick.”

  “Or whatever has poisoned him,” La Chaise said grimly. “Do you know where the Comte de Fleury ate his dinner yesterday? At the table of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld.”

  Le Picart frowned. “Fleury? Oh, yes, the poor man you told us about, who fell downstairs yesterday.” He shook his head at La Chaise. “But what you say is absurd. Who would want to poison Père Jouvancy? He hasn’t been at court since before he joined the Society.”

  La Chaise simply looked at his companions one by one. Charles felt himself go cold, because he saw fear in La Chaise’s eyes.

  “How do you feel, mes pères?” he said softly. “And you, Maître du Luc?”

  No one spoke. Charles was sure the others were checking their bodies’ feelings as carefully as he was.

  “Père Le Picart, Père Montville, come with me,” La Chaise said. “I will show you where you will stay tonight.” He looked at Charles. “And then I will bring a doctor. Just know that gossip will spread like fire through the palace, true or not, if a doctor comes.”

  The three priests went out through the antechamber, and the gallery door shut heavily behind them. In the quiet they left behind, Charles breathed deeply and tried to get hold of himself. Jouvancy was still sleeping. At least, he looked as though he were sleeping… Charles bent over him, listened to his breathing, and straightened, reassured. But as he straightened, his stomach roiled and sweat broke out on his face. He got up and walked to the window. Why would anyone poison me? he thought, feeling his bowels go watery with fear. I’m no one, I know no one, I just got here. And I’m not ill, it’s just seeing Père Jouvancy like this. And the travel, the strain of being here, the-he cast about for something for it to be. The water, he told himself, water often causes stomach upset, I’m used to Paris water now. The familiar acerbic voice in him said back, So you’re used to water straight out of the Seine, but the water here has undone you? Charles went to the copper fountain in the anteroom, thinking that a drink would help settle his insides. But he put the glass down untasted. If someone had poisoned them, the poison might be in the fountain. He picked up the glass again and held it to the light beginning to stream through the west-facing window.