Plague of Lies cdl-3

by Judith Rock

  Charles tried to feel relieved that La Reynie was at Versailles. But La Reynie was probably there because of the Prince of Conti. He had no reason to pay attention to Lulu. But what else can I do? Charles asked the air. He couldn’t walk out of the college and go to Versailles himself. Even Père Le Picart would not save him if he did that. It would be the end of him as a Jesuit. But suicide would be damnation for Lulu.

  Charles put on his boots. And discovered, when he got to the stables, what he should have realized-the college had only two horses now, Flamme and Agneau, and the rector and Montville had taken them both to Gentilly. Agreeing completely with the part of himself shouting in his head that he was being an idiot, that he was ruining his life, he walked purposefully out of the stable gate. He had nearly reached the end of the lane and the street that came up from the rue St. Jacques when he came face to face with Père Donat.

  Donat, walking with another Jesuit Charles didn’t know, folded his big hands across his paunch like a man contemplating a long-awaited dinner. “Where are you going, Maître du Luc?”

  The other man, small and wiry and bright-eyed, was gazing at Charles’s feet.

  “Forgive me, mon père.” Charles held Donat’s gaze and prayed to St. Homobonus, the patron of tailors, to miraculously lengthen his cassock and hide his boots. Or at least to keep the other Jesuit from mentioning them. “I was restless and came to walk in the lane,” Charles said. Which was true, as far as it went.

  Donat’s smile widened. “In boots, for such a short walk?”

  “Yes, mon père.”

  “Go back to your chamber.”

  “Yes, mon père.”

  Charles went back through the gate, feeling their eyes on him and hearing their hissing whispers behind him. In his room, he flung himself down at his prie-dieu. He prayed for Lulu’s safety and the grace to know what he should do-or not do. When he ran out of words and pleas and bargains, he stayed there, his face in his hands, as the evening light filled his room and drained away.

  The next morning, after Sunday’s High Mass, Charles sat under a lime tree in the Cour d’honneur, where a group of older boys was gathering for a walk to Montmartre, to the chapel where St. Ignatius and his friends had vowed their service to God and companionship to one another. While the group waited for its accompanying professors, two of Charles’s rhetoric students were telling him about a game of jeu de paume they’d played. Walter Connor had been one of the tennis players, and Armand Beauclaire, just out of the infirmary, had watched and kept score. As Charles listened, he watched a falcon fly from its perch on the pointed roof of a tower and wished he could come and go as easily and as unseen. No wonder your little talks with Lulu about acceptance of her marriage had so little effect, his ruthless inner voice commented. You still can’t accept your vow of obedience after-what is it now, eight years since you entered the Society?

  Charles dredged up a smile for the two boys, who had reached the high point of their tennis story.

  “Excellent, I’m glad to hear it! Where did you play?”

  “In a court near the Pré aux Clercs,” Connor said. Jesuit students were sometimes taken for recreation to the Scholars’ Meadow, west of Louis le Grand, on the riverbank, where Latin Quarter students had held games for time out of mind.

  “Saint Ignatius went there for recreation when he studied in Paris,” Charles said.

  Connor laughed. “Can you imagine Saint Ignatius with his scholar’s gown off, wrestling in the grass? Or running after a football?”

  “No!” Beauclaire looked scandalized. “Saints don’t-” He fell silent, looking toward the passage through the main building to the postern door.

  Charles looked, too, and jumped to his feet with a cry of relief. Lieutenant-Général La Reynie was striding into the court.

  “Join your fellows, now,” Charles told the boys. “I have some business to attend to.”

  With sideways looks at La Reynie, Beauclaire and Connor withdrew.

  “Maître.” La Reynie bowed slightly, his long dark wig swinging a little forward on his shoulders. His face was tired and harassed, his midnight-blue coat and breeches were dusty, and the lace frothing at neck and cuffs had lost its starch. “I asked to see the rector for permission to talk with you, but the porter said he’s not here.” A smile twitched at La Reynie’s mouth. “He said I could see Père Donat, but I had the feeling he wasn’t recommending it.”

  With a glance at the main building, where Donat’s office was, Charles shook his head. “No, Frère Martin wouldn’t recommend anyone seeing Père Donat. Who would probably refuse anyone’s request to see me. Let’s-”

  “Why? What have you done now?”

  “He doesn’t like me. And if he sees you he’ll turn you out. Come, we can-”

  The main building’s back door flew open and Père Donat emerged, making narrow-eyed for Charles, like a gundog after a shot bird.

  “Hell’s shit!” Charles muttered, and got a shocked look from La Reynie. “It’s Donat. Use your rank. He likes rank.”

  “Fat little flies like honey better,” the lieutenant-général murmured. He bowed to Donat, who gave him a curt nod and pointed a triumphant finger at Charles.

  “No visitors without permission, Maître du Luc.”

  Charles stretched his mouth in what looked like a smile. “This is Lieutenant-Général Nicolas de La Reynie, mon père.”

  “And I know that you are Père Donat,” La Reynie said fulsomely. “I was on the point of seeking your permission for a brief talk with your scholastic. Concerning something he happened to see at Versailles. If there is somewhere private I may speak with him? I won’t keep him long, but be assured his help will reflect well on the Society of Jesus. The king will certainly hear of it.”

  “Ah. Well.” Donat eyed La Reynie. “I see. Then make him tell whatever he knows.” He looked down his short nose at Charles. “See that you cooperate, maître. Come to me when he finishes with you.”

  “If I may beg your indulgence, mon père,” La Reynie said smoothly, “my orders are that he may not speak with anyone about our conversation. It will be better if he does not come to you. So he won’t be tempted.”

  Donat took a moment to rearrange that to his advantage. “True, he is known to be vulnerable to temptation. Return to your chamber, maître, when you have told Monsieur La Reynie what he wishes to know. Speak of it to no one else, as he has ordered you.”

  “Yes, mon père,” Charles said gravely. “Shall I take him to the library garden? That is likely to be private.”

  “Very well.” Donat inclined his head regally to La Reynie and bustled back to his office. “Dear God,” La Reynie murmured, following Charles toward the archway to the neighboring courtyard. “When does Père Le Picart return?”

  “Not soon enough.” They passed under the arch, and to keep himself from asking about Lulu before they reached the garden, Charles said, “Did you see the king? Is he better?”

  “Much better. Though still a little weak. His doctors say now that it was the illness everyone’s been having, but a mild case of it. I came because I got your message, but I would have come anyway, knowing you had returned. I hope you sent for me to pass on what you learned at Versailles of the Prince of Conti.”

  “I doubt I learned much you don’t already know.” As they walked, Charles quickly recounted what he’d seen and heard about Conti, ending with what La Chaise had said about the man.

  “So he, too, thinks Conti is working against the king,” La Reynie said. “Well, that’s something.”

  They crossed a stretch of turf toward a little garden, walled on two sides and looking toward the new library. When they reached it, they sat down on a stone bench beside the college’s struggling grapevine. Charles turned to face La Reynie.

  “Before I tell you the real reason I sent for you, will you tell me why you were at Versailles?”

  Le Reynie looked at him in surprise. “I was called there because of a death.”

  “
A death?” Charles could barely force his voice through his throat.

  “One of my spies found the body. But you haven’t said-”

  “Oh, no. Blessed Virgin. How did she do it?” Charles pressed his clasped hands to his mouth and steeled himself to hear the answer.

  “She?” La Reynie took Charles’s wrist in a grip like a wrestler’s. His dark eyes were cold with anger. “What do you know about this? You know who killed him? Was it a woman?”

  “Him?” Charles felt some of the tension go out of his body. “I was afraid it was Mademoiselle de Rouen who was dead. The king’s daughter.”

  “Why, in God’s name?”

  “Because she’s-I think she’s in great trouble. I’ve been afraid she might try to kill herself.”

  “Again-why?”

  “I’ll tell you. But first tell me who the dead man is.”

  “A palace footman called Bouchel. He was poisoned. They found him dead in his room in the palace.”

  Charles felt as though he’d been kicked in the belly. “Bouchel?” Bouchel poisoning old Fleury, or pushing him down the stairs-that he could imagine, indeed, had already imagined. But who would poison Bouchel? “But Monsieur La Reynie, he may have been simply ill. People at court have had the same sickness we’ve had here.”

  La Reynie shrugged. “There was an autopsy. The doctors think he was given inheritance powder, judging from how sick he’d been. You know what that is?”

  “Arsenic?”

  “Mixed with aconite, belladonna, and opium. They think the Comte de Fleury, who died when you were there, had been given the same thing.”

  “I know. But Bouchel-it doesn’t make sense!” Unless, Charles thought suddenly, one of Bertin Laville’s relatives suspected that Bouchel had killed Bertin. But poison seemed an unlikely, and expensive, weapon for a gardener’s family. Charles tried to ignore the taunts from his acid inner voice-trying not to think of the most obvious person, aren’t you? Lulu could afford a little poison.

  “Another man died while we there,” Charles said slowly. “As you no doubt know. A gardener, Bertin Laville.”

  “And?”

  “I think Bouchel may have killed him. To protect Mademoiselle de Rouen. Bertin Laville’s family might try for vengeance.”

  La Reynie looked at Charles as though he’d gone mad. “Why would a footman kill a gardener to protect Mademoiselle de Rouen?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Make it a short one. I have little time.”

  Charles told him what had happened at court, what he’d read in Fleury’s mémoire, and what he’d made of it. “So if the Comte de Fleury was telling the truth about seeing Bouchel and Lulu come out of the grotto, and if the gardener who also saw them was Bertin Laville, then Bouchel had plenty of reason to kill Laville.”

  “And Fleury.”

  “I thought of that. But Bouchel might not have known then that Fleury had also seen them. And it’s possible Fleury’s fall was an accident. There really was water running over the floor from a ceiling leak. I looked.”

  “That’s not conclusive.”

  “No. But even if Bouchel killed both Fleury and Laville, he’s dead now himself. His killer is not.”

  La Reynie looked as though he might not mind if someone poisoned Charles. “So you are telling me that the king’s daughter is probably illicitly pregnant.” His voice was dangerously level and full of reason. “By a footman. A footman at whom she was presumably very angry, and who has since been poisoned. Which means, if you are right in your ungodly number of assumptions, that the king’s daughter has quite likely committed murder.”

  “Possibly. Though I still think she’s more likely to kill herself. What are you going to do?”

  La Reynie hurled his silver-headed stick at the ground and turned the color of a ripe strawberry. “Nothing! Are you mad? Bouchel was probably a murderer. The girl is the king’s daughter. And she is on the point of leaving for Poland. Where she will be the Polish court’s problem. The marriage negotiations are finished and there is a grand ball celebrating their completion tomorrow night at the palace of Marly. Do you know it? Very near Versailles, but smaller. The king likes to celebrate family occasions there. On Tuesday morning, she marries her prince there by proxy-the senior ambassador is the stand-in-and sets out for Poland. Thank God and every saint there is.”

  “But if she’s with child,” Charles said doggedly, “what will happen to her? And the child? The Poles might quietly kill her for dishonoring them.”

  “That’s ridiculous. The Polish queen is French!”

  “The Polish king is Polish. Who knows what their customs are? If Lulu murdered Bouchel and dies unconfessed and unabsolved-whenever she dies-she’s damned. And if she takes her life before she goes, she’s doubly damned. If we do nothing, her death will be on your head as well as mine. Do you want that?”

  La Reynie glared balefully at Charles. “So now you’re my confessor? I cannot go to the king with this tale about his daughter and a footman. We don’t even know if it’s true.”

  “Someone was worried enough about it to put the mémoire in my bag. And someone killed Bouchel.”

  La Reynie looked as though he might weep. “Where would the king’s daughter get poison? I heard she’s been watched every minute at Versailles ever since her betrothal.”

  “Well, the court seems to assume that everyone has poison at their fingertips. I also know that when you had the great poison affair here in Paris some years back, you discovered that Lulu’s mother, La Montespan, had poison to hand.”

  La Reynie looked away. “I thought you liked Mademoiselle de Rouen.”

  “I do like her,” Charles said sadly.

  Chapter 16

  THE FEAST OF ST. AURELIAN, MONDAY, JUNE 16

  On Monday morning, Charles and Père Damiot were walking toward Holy Innocents for the funeral of their confraternity member. “Is your father better, mon père?” Charles thought Damiot looked as though he hadn’t slept much.

  “We think so. But I’m worried about him. The physician is being grave. But they always are, aren’t they? Since the more they do, they more they’re paid.”

  “True. Well, I hope this one will earn little from your father. Who has my prayers, such as they are.”

  “My thanks.” Damiot smiled a little and stifled a yawn.

  “And my thanks to you,” Charles said, “for interceding with Père Donat.” Extracting permission from the acting rector for Charles to go to Holy Innocents had been a near thing. “He makes me feel that he’d like to see me sent in chains to Rome and thrown into the arena,” he added, as they turned off the rue St. Denis.

  “I don’t think there’s an arena anymore. And you did bring it on yourself.” He glanced at Charles. “Never wear boots if you’re going on foot to somewhere you’re not supposed to go. No one just goes for a stroll wearing boots.”

  “Do I hear the voice of experience?”

  Damiot smiled complacently.

  “I see. Well. I am indeed fortunate, mon père, to have such a pious example before me. You also handled Père Donat as though you’d done it before.”

  Damiot rolled his eyes. “There’s very little that doesn’t offend His Holiness. I imagine he’s offended every morning that the sun doesn’t ask his leave before rising.”

  “His Holiness?” Charles wasn’t feeling in much mood to laugh, but he laughed at that. Only the pope was called His Holiness.

  “Some of us call him that. But only behind very thick locked doors.”

  The narrow cobbled street, sun-soaked in strong morning light and bordered by high stone walls that held the heat, almost made Charles feel that he was walking on a street in Nîmes, the town near his family’s vineyards. Here the street ran between the beginnings of Les Halles market on the left and Holy Innocents cemetery on the right. Though Charles was basking in the warmth like a lizard as he walked, he was still nearly as worried as he’d been yesterday. La Reynie had agreed to send a messag
e ordering one of his female court spies to watch Lulu, but Charles was uncomforted. His heart was sore over Bouchel’s death, and over Lulu’s possible guilt. And over what she and Anne-Marie and the Duc du Maine must be feeling on this last day before the proxy marriage. And beyond his worry over all of them, too much was unexplained. Or perhaps he himself was only unconvinced. He felt like someone crouching in the dark after thunder, waiting for lightning. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw Versailles’s new lake. Saw the gardener’s body lying beside it, soaked and pathetic. And saw Bouchel in his imagination, saw him dying miserable and terrified and alone in his dark little room. Charles told himself sternly to stop dramatizing his sorrow and fear. But still, just beyond the edge of hearing-some hearing of his spirit or mind-there was thunder.

  “I’m sweating!” Père Damiot wiped a sleeve across his forehead and squinted at the sky. “This much sun is unnatural.”

  “Unnatural?! So you think Eden was gray and cold and wet, like Paris usually is?”

  “I have no information on the weather in Eden. Let’s hope there’s shade to stand in during this burial.”

  Charles looked up at the stone wall on his right. “I don’t see any trees, at least none tall enough to show.”

  “There aren’t any trees. Every morsel of space is used for bodies. I meant shade in the charnel house arcade. Monsieur Delarme’s family has done well in trade and has a tomb in an arcade. It’s the baser people who-”

  Something flew over the wall above their heads, bounced, and rolled to a stop nearly at Damiot’s feet, where a pair of thin dogs fell on it, barking happily.

  A passing rider guffawed. “Looks like someone wants your prayers, mes pères,” the rider called. “Maybe it’s even hotter than this where he’s ended up!”

  Damiot kicked halfheartedly at the dogs and picked up the human skull. “Really!” he exclaimed. “This happens nearly every time I walk along here. You’d think the diggers would learn. I’d swear they do it on purpose. I’ve seen skulls land among parties of women, and the shrieks are enough to open all the graves in the city.”