Plague of Lies cdl-3

by Judith Rock

Catching sight of the yellow ringlets, Charles nodded. “She hasn’t gone far, she’s talking to someone. Who is she?”

  “Her Royal Highness Marguerite Louise, Grand Duchess of Tuscany. Known as Margot. She’s the king’s cousin, and twelve years ago he sent her, much against her will, to Italy to marry Cosimo de Medici. She has fought constantly against her husband and the marriage, and Louis has finally permitted her return to France. All of which makes her the very last person who should be anywhere near Mademoiselle de Rouen just now.” La Chaise finished his wine in one gulp and put down his glass on the little table where Charles’s own untasted wine and food still waited. “I will find Montmorency and make sure he goes back to Paris. You engage the Grand Duchess of Tuscany in talk. Stay with her. If you can’t stay with her, watch her. And for God’s sake, keep her away from Lulu. Do not let the duchess out of your sight until she is in her carriage and the carriage is turned for Paris. When you’ve seen her carriage pass the gates, report to me.”

  When Charles didn’t move, La Chaise said grimly, “I know I am not your religious superior. I know you are only a scholastic. But I am asking you to help me. You say you are loyal to the king. Prove it now.”

  Since the only possible answer to that was agreement, Charles nodded and waded into the crowd after the bobbing yellow wig. His path crossed the duchess’s near a door into the gallery. She was carrying a half-empty glass of dark red wine and swaying happily on her high heels. Some of her thickly plastered beauty patches had come unglued in the heat and landed like black shooting stars on her bare bony shoulders. She checked for a moment when she saw Charles and then greeted him loudly, spilling wine down his cassock as she tried to kiss him.

  Courtiers around them egged her on. “Ah,” someone sang out, “the Grand Duchess of Tuscany is a veritable Venus tonight, and who can resist her?”

  Sighing inwardly, Charles fended her off. “May I be of service, madame? May I escort you to a seat?”

  Margot laughed in his face. “Do I look so tired? Is Venus ever tired? Or are you too tired, poor celibate stick?” She regarded him, head to one side. “We might go back to that pretty little alcove and find a cure for your-limpness.”

  That brought delighted gasps and caws of merriment, and Charles felt himself turning as red as his tormenter’s wine.

  “Shall we walk out into the gallery, Your Royal Highness? It is cooler there and will stop your face from losing its celestial beauties.”

  The apt double entendre made the listening courtiers eye Charles with new respect. He stepped aside so that Margot could precede him through the door and followed in the wide wake of her summer-green skirts, praying fervently that Jouvancy would be well enough in the morning to ride in a carriage back to Paris and get them out of this place.

  Not only was the gallery cooler, but it was nearly deserted and quieter, except for what Charles took at first for the sound of an indoor fountain, then realized was an unseen man pissing in one of the small dark gallery alcoves. A few couples sat on scattered benches or strolled, whispering together, along the black-and-white tile. Charles led Margot to a bench, and as she sat down and spread her skirts, he bent to look more closely at the bench’s soft luster in the light from the wall sconces.

  “Silver?” he said incredulously.

  “Of course, silver. Whatever my dear cousin Louis wants, he must have.”

  “And you?” Charles said boldly, sitting on the bench’s end. If he had to dog her steps, he might as well find out all he could about her. “It seems you’ve gained what you wanted in coming back to France.”

  She drained her glass. “Yes. And it took twelve miserable years of my life. How long do you suppose it took Louis to get this?” She slapped a hand down on the gleaming silver and hiccupped.

  “Not twelve years,” Charles said, knowing that was his next line in this script. “Do you dislike your husband so much, then?”

  She gave him a wide, gap-toothed smile. “I loathe Cosimo de Medici. I loathed him on sight. I loathed the very thought of going to Italy and marrying him. But what did that matter to Louis?”

  “A hard fate for a woman,” he said, both because it was the truth and also to see how she might respond.

  “You may well say so.” She glanced sideways at him. “And now I must watch poor little Lulu go through it all. And Poland is much farther away and will be harder to escape than Italy was. But perhaps her little prince will be less disagreeable than Cosimo. So ugly, Cosimo, and I always dislike ugly men. I wouldn’t even bother sitting here with you, if you were ugly.” She tapped him on the chest with her closed fan. “You are not ugly at all, are you, mon cher?”

  “Whatever else I am, I am a cleric, Your Highness,” Charles said quietly.

  “Whatever else you are, you are a silly young prude,” she mocked, “and you will have to account to the bon Dieu for such waste.” She hiccupped again and turned her head toward the sound of another man making use of an alcove. “Ah, the sweet sound of flowing water. Always it calls to my own water. And, alas, I cannot make use of an alcove. Help me up, mon cher.”

  Charles stood quickly and pulled her to her feet. Her skirts swept her empty glass from the bench, and it shattered on the floor.

  “No, no, we must not be indelicate,” she laughed, as Charles made to accompany her. “You cannot escort me to la chaise de commodité-the real one, I mean, of course. I have no desire to meet the other one any more often than I must.” Giggling drunkenly, she wove her way down the gallery.

  Charles hesitated, wanting no more of her company. But his orders were not to leave her. Soft footed, he followed, keeping her just in sight. The farther they went, the more deserted the gallery was. The wall sconces grew farther apart, but even in the dimming candlelight, the yellow wig led him like a beacon. And the beacon’s progress was straight as an arrow. Margot’s drunken wavering was gone and her heels tapped purposefully along the marble. Which made Charles follow with greater interest and think, as she turned corner after corner, that surely she must have passed a privy by now. But she never slowed. She vanished suddenly and he heard her pattering rapidly down a staircase. He ran lightly to its opening and felt his way down. At the bottom, he heard her steps fading away on his right. Knowing that if he lost the duchess he’d never find her in this maze, he put on a burst of speed. And cannoned into a massive figure who stepped suddenly into his way without seeing him.

  The man swore, lumbered backward, and stood against a door, glaring at Charles.

  “Did a woman in a yellow wig and a green gown pass just now?” Charles said.

  The man-a footman, Charles supposed-set his back more solidly against the closed door.

  “If she didn’t pass you, she must have gone through that door you’re guarding so well.”

  The footman ignored him and Charles drifted a little aside, as though giving up the effort to communicate. He hit the wood-paneled wall as hard as he could with the flat of his hand, and the footman jumped and swore again.

  “So you’re not deaf,” Charles said pleasantly. “Which means you’re probably not mute, either. “Did a woman go into the rooms you’re guarding?”

  “What’s that to you?” the man growled.

  His stare was beginning to remind Charles of an implacably belligerent dog deciding where to bite, and he stepped a little farther away. “Whose rooms are these? Come on, mon brave, you may as well tell me; I can easily find out from someone else.”

  “Then go find out.”

  Charles withdrew. When he reached the staircase, he stepped into the dark stairwell and settled himself against the wall, veiled in shadows, and watched the door. Unless Margot decided to stay the night, she would eventually emerge into the gallery. With luck, she would then simply find her carriage and leave. And he could go to bed. After, of course, reporting to Père La Chaise. He wondered why Margot had feigned drunkenness. Simply to be rid of the “silly young prude”? But she was royal; she had no need to be subtle when she tired of someon
e’s company. Had she been making sure he wouldn’t follow her? And what had she truly been doing in the salon alcove with Mademoiselle de Rouen and Montmorency? Charles shook his head. Were La Chaise’s suspicions of the women-both Margot and Lulu-justified, or did they only mean that he’d been too long in this hothouse of rumor and suspicion?

  Charles sighed with weariness and began to recite one of Cicero’s speeches to himself to pass the time. When he was done with that and there was still no sign of Margot, he tried to pray, but closing his eyes took him to the edge of sleep. Last night’s sickness, he supposed, had left him more tired than he’d realized. He tried planning the next section of the college ballet, but the ballet made him think about the king’s wrongdoings and his own helplessness against them. From there, his thoughts jumped to courtiers and then to the Comte de Fleury lying dead at the foot of the gallery stairs, and then to the dead gardener beside the lake. He heard the Prince of Conti’s lazy, ironic voice in his head. So now you’ve found a drowned rat. For no reason he could fully explain, Charles was still certain that Conti had followed him from the fountain. But why?

  Torchlight flared from the stairs, and Charles withdrew farther into the darkness. A servant with a small wax torch came from the stairs and led a chattering group of men and women along the gallery. Returning from the ball, Charles guessed, from the glitter of their clothes in the torchlight. They passed by the footman and twinkled and glimmered into the distance. As Charles settled against the wall again, the footman moved suddenly and the door opened. The Grand Duchess of Tuscany emerged, cloaked and hooded. She walked briskly in Charles’s direction, and the footman fell in behind her.

  Following after her stolid watchdog, Charles breathed a prayer of thanks when she made for the forecourt where Charles and Jouvancy had dismounted on their arrival at the palace. Which seemed weeks ago now, Charles thought dismally, though this was only their third night there. From a gallery window, he watched with relief as the footman handed Margot into a waiting carriage and climbed up behind. The coachman turned the pair of horses and the carriage began to roll toward the palace gates.

  But Charles would have been more relieved if Margot’s drunkenness had not disappeared so abruptly when she’d left him.

  Suddenly needing to breathe fresh air, Charles went outside. The evening was mild. There was a small breeze, and the stars were half veiled in rags of cloud. The courtyard wasn’t busy; only a few carriages waited for nobles, and members of the Guard stood at their posts or patrolled their appointed territory. Charles wandered across the gravel toward the south wing, breathing in the breeze-blown sweetness of grass and trees, glad even for the pungence of horse smells and burning torches, glad for anything that wasn’t the smell of sweated cloth, dirty wigs, and bodies less clean than their snowy linen. At least, he thought, he was spared breathing air drenched in clashing perfumes, since the king had grown to dislike them.

  Dogs barked in the town and dogs in the royal kennels answered them. The swift gray flight of an owl brushed Charles’s cheek. And something-the dogs, the kiss of the owl’s wing-made him nearly cry out with longing for home, for the hot dry smell of Languedoc, the call of nightjars from dark trees, the spare coolness of his mother’s old stone house. Grapes swelling in the vineyards, fatter in the morning than they’d been the night before, the sight of Pernelle at fifteen in the firelit doorway, all fine bones and a cloud of black hair, calling him to come in. Himself, seventeen and blind with love for her. He closed the memory gently, the way he closed old books, and prayed for her.

  His prayer finished, Charles looked up at the windows of the palace’s south wing, most with shutters still open on candlelit rooms. Tired, but not wanting to shut himself back inside yet, he walked slowly to the end of the wing and turned toward the garden side, thinking to go in by a back door. Sounds of the forecourt fell away as he turned the building’s corner and went slowly toward the dark gardens. But when he turned along the torchlit side of the wing, he stopped short. Half a dozen chattering men in court dress came out of a door onto the gravel.

  “You do me too much honor, monsieur,” a light, ironic voice said.

  Charles retreated from the torchlight. The last thing he wanted at the end of this day was another meeting with the Prince of Conti. But as he watched the men stroll toward the gardens, he recognized the largest among them as Henri de Montmorency. Whom La Chaise should have had on his way back to Paris by now. Hoping that the Lulu-besotted Montmorency had not left the king’s confessor somewhere with a broken head, Charles stayed out of the light and considered what he ought to do. Montmorency was following Conti like an overgrown puppy, all but treading on his heels. That the boy would want to curry favor with a Prince of the Blood was no surprise. The surprise was that Conti was tolerating him, and it seemed politic to find out why. Not least for Montmorency’s sake.

  Charles set himself to follow the courtiers. Unexpectedly, Conti turned suddenly aside, through the gate of one of the walled gardens. Charles had thought the men would stroll the paths, chattering and vying for Conti’s attention, and had intended to come upon them as if by chance and draw Montmorency away. But now, full of misgiving, he stepped off the gravel onto soft turf and slipped into the garden. At first, he heard nothing. Then he caught a low urgent voice away on his left, and as he moved toward it, he realized it was Conti’s.

  “Of course,” Conti said, “Monsieur le Dauphin is the-mildest, shall we say, of men. He understands that he will need the help-”

  Someone sneezed and covered Conti’s words. Then Charles heard, “…and last winter, we all-um-feared-the time had come.” There was a low rumble of exclamation and a snigger of laughter, quickly hushed.

  “I wish it had!” The voice was Montmorency’s, and his words created a taut silence.

  Charles winced, wondering if anyone could really be as innocently stupid as Henri de Montmorency seemed.

  “Well-I mean-if he’d died, Lulu wouldn’t have to go to Poland!” Montmorency said lamely.

  “Your heart does you credit, does it not, messieurs?” Conti said softly.

  The others murmured agreement with the prince. Charles’s hair rose on the back of his neck. Neither Conti nor the others were laughing.

  The prince said, “And exactly how will you help her?”

  Charles barely stopped himself from charging into the little coterie and dragging Montmorency out of it by main force. Conti was smoothly herding the boy to the edge of treason-treasonous talk, at least. And doing it before a gathering of avid courtiers in the palace garden.

  Charles ran soundlessly out of the garden and a small way along the turf back toward the palace. Then he stepped onto the gravel, faced away from the walled garden he’d left and shouted, “Monsieur Montmorency!” That, of course, got no answer, and Charles walked innocently on, peering into the darkness, until he reached the edge of the torchlight from the palace. “Monsieur Montmorency,” he called again, “are you here? Madame, your mother wishes to speak with you.”

  He waited until he heard heavy quick steps on the gravel behind him. Then, as though he’d heard nothing, he called again, facing along the building, “Monsieur Montmorency, are you in the garden?”

  “I am here,” Montmorency panted, and Charles turned to meet him with a creditable show of surprise. The boy’s face loomed anxiously in the torchlight. “Where is she?”

  “We must go inside.” Charles led him into the first door they came to and hurried him along the corridor to the gallery leading to the south wing.

  “But where is she?” Montmorency’s eyes were searching the gallery in confusion. “Why is she here?”

  “She’s not. Though wherever she is, I’m sure she always wants to talk with her son. We’re going-”

  “You lied?” Montmorency stopped short and scowled at Charles. “I don’t have to go-”

  “I didn’t lie. Not technically. We are going to Père La Chaise. Unless you did away with him when he tried to send you back to schoo
l.”

  “He has no right to give me orders.”

  “You are still a student and under the college’s protection, and therefore the protection of Jesuits. And I am your professor and do have a right to give you orders. Come.”

  “I do not need your protection.”

  “Oh, but you do, monsieur,” Charles said grimly.

  Montmorency was tall and broad, but he still had to look up a little at Charles, and what he saw in Charles’s face closed his mouth. Charles gripped the boy’s arm, and they made the rest of the long walk to La Chaise’s door without speaking.

  They found La Chaise dozing in his chair by the light of a single candle, to the accompaniment of Jouvancy snoring lightly in the next room. The king’s confessor opened his eyes and regarded them owlishly for a moment. Then he swore and leaped to his feet.

  “What in the name of all hell’s devils are you doing back here?” He scowled at Charles. “And you-is the lady gone?”

  “Yes.” Charles pushed Montmorency farther into the room. “And Monsieur Montmorency has come to tell you what he’s doing here, mon père.”

  “I haven’t come to tell you anything.” Montmorency gripped the hilt of the light, slender court sword hanging at his side.

  “Unless you are thinking of relieving your feelings by drawing on me,” La Chaise said, “remember the manners our college has taught you and leave your sword alone.”

  “Oh.” The boy dropped his hands to his side as though his sword had caught fire. He blinked at La Chaise and bowed slightly. “I wouldn’t. Draw on you, I mean.” And then he added, “You’re not armed.”

  Charles and La Chaise exchanged a look, and Charles had to turn his face away to hide his incredulous grin.

  “When did you ever see an armed Jesuit, Monsieur Montmorency?” La Chaise raised a hand as Montmorency opened his mouth. “Never mind. Maître du Luc, perhaps you could jog this noble pupil’s memory about what he’s come to tell me.”

  “I came on him in the garden, in company with the Prince of Conti and his friends.”