by Judith Rock
He took them through the tiny anteroom, into a small study where Bertamelli and five other boys, all in their scholar’s gowns, sat almost cheek by jowl at scarred tables under the low-beamed ceiling. The single window was open and birdsong from the court was louder than the scratch of quills and the shuffle of pages. Bertamelli was the only one neither writing nor reading. He was staring tragically out the window, his brown hands clasped so tightly under his chin that the knuckles showed white. Charles’s skeptical first thought was that the boy was planning how to get through the window. Bertamelli turned around, and his eyes lit when he saw Charles. He stood up eagerly, but Charles quickly held up a hand.
“Softly, Monsieur Bertamelli. Wait.” He gestured Maître Guerand back into the anteroom. “Maître, will you do us the great favor of taking the other boys down to the courtyard? It’s not long till the supper bell, and I know that Monsieur La Reynie wants to speak very privately with Monsieur Bertamelli.”
“Yes, all right. Blessed Saint Roch, I hope their tutor recovers quickly. This day is endless.” Shaking his head, Guerand gathered his charges and herded them downstairs.
Charles went back to the study, where La Reynie and Bertamelli were warily taking each other’s measure. “Lieutenant-Général La Reynie, this is Monsieur Michele Bertamelli. Monsieur La Reynie is the head of our Paris police, Monsieur Bertamelli. He wants to know why you went to the tower this morning and what happened there.”
The whites of Bertamelli’s eyes showed. “Will he put me in his prison?” he whispered.
La Reynie looked at him consideringly. “Only if you lie to me.”
Bertamelli flung himself to his knees in front of Charles, and his long-lashed black eyes filled with tears. “Forgive me, maître, I wasn’t going to the Comédie Italienne. I did lie to you, may my heart be torn out with guilt! But I didn’t mean for you to be hurt!”
“What did you mean?” Charles said sternly.
“Only-only-” The boy sniffed like a small pig. “Only to have a little money.”
“Ah,” La Reynie said, going nearer and looking down at Bertamelli. “The eternal motive. So. You not only break the rules, you get paid to break them?”
Bertamelli dissolved in sobs.
“Look up, mon brave,” Charles sighed. “Who paid you?”
The boy turned his wet face up to Charles. “Monsieur Montmorency. But he couldn’t help it, maître. He is in love, and a man cannot help himself when his heart drives him!”
La Reynie took a large white handkerchief from his coat pocket and thrust it at Bertamelli. “Use this. And tell me how you earned Monsieur Montmorency’s money.”
Bertamelli mopped his face and clutched the wet handkerchief in both hands. “I took his love letter to a man who said he would send it to Versailles.”
“And who was the man?”
“I don’t know, monsieur, I swear it!” The boy shrank into himself and shivered. “I was only told where to go and that a man would be there.”
“The man threatened you,” Charles said flatly, remembering the boy’s sudden fear of the short stocky Châtelet guard as they walked back to the college.
Bertamelli looked wide-eyed at Charles. “He said he would kill me if I told what I’d done or that I’d seen him.” His face was a tragedy mask. “And then he tried to kill you, maître, but I didn’t know he was going to do it, truly I didn’t!” He buried his face in Charles’s cassock skirt.
Charles bent over him. “He wasn’t trying to kill me, only to get out of the tower unseen. And I’m not dead, mon brave. Only bruised. Get up, now, and tell us if you could identify the man if you saw him again.”
Bertamelli got to his feet, wiping his face on his sleeve, and stood as stiffly as a soldier. “Yes. If he knows, he will kill me, but for you I will die!”
“Can we put an end to this?” La Reynie said abruptly. “I have little time.”
But Charles had thought of another question, and he hoped he was wrong about what the answer would be. “Tell me quickly,” he said to Bertamelli. “How did the fight start today between Monsieur Sapieha and Monsieur Montmorency?”
“Oh. They insulted each other about the Polish prince and your French princess.”
“What did Monsieur Sapieha say?”
“I cannot always understand him. But he talked about-I am not sure-something called Marly? I don’t know what that is. He said the princess is marrying there tomorrow. Then he-”
“How did he know that?” Charles demanded.
“He said that a Polish man came yesterday from the court to visit Monsieur Sapieha and his brother. Some relation, I think. The man talked of the wedding. Monsieur Sapieha laughed at Monsieur Montmorency for being in love with the bride. And Monsieur Montmorency hit him.”
Charles’s heart sank. He wasn’t wrong. “My thanks,” he said to Bertamelli, turning toward La Reynie, but the lieutenant-général was already out the door. “Come!” Charles chivied Bertamelli out and down the stairs into the student court, where the boy’s dortoir mates lay talking in the grass under a tree while the cubiculaire watched them like an anxious sheepdog. “Join them, mon brave. Don’t worry and don’t talk about our conversation. And don’t leave the college on your own again!” He leaned close and spoke in the boy’s ear. “Because the next time you do, you will be sent straight home. Instead of going to dance for Maître Beauchamps when the time comes. Don’t spoil that.”
Bertamelli’s eyes widened until they were half his face. “Oh!” he breathed. “Then you know I am going to him, maître!” He grabbed Charles’s hand and kissed it fervently.
La Reynie was calling impatiently from across the court, and Charles reclaimed his hand and ran to join him. They climbed to the brick building’s second floor, but at the top of the stairs, Charles stopped in dismay. There was no proctor guarding Montmorency’s door. They barged into Montmorency’s anteroom.
“Monsieur Montmorency? Père Vionnet?” Charles called, and rushed into the chamber beyond the anteroom. The proctor was sitting on the thick carpet, rubbing his head and groaning.
“Hell’s devils! What is this?” La Reynie pushed Charles aside and stood over the proctor. “What happened to you?”
The proctor, a young, well-set scholastic, shook his head. “I–I hardly know. Père Vionnet called me in. And they rushed me. Both of them. Montmorency drove his ham fist into my jaw, and I went down.” He cast a glance at the fireplace behind him. “I must have hit the hearthstones, because I only just came to myself. They’re gone, aren’t they?”
“I am not,” a voice said weakly. Père Vionnet was standing unsteadily in the study doorway.
“Where is Monsieur Montmorency?” Charles and La Reynie demanded in concert.
“How do I know?” Vionnet went waveringly to the bed and sank onto it, holding his head. A bruise was purpling on his cheek. “How could he do this to me? I ought not to have been left alone with him!” he said indignantly, glaring at Charles and the proctor.
“Speak plainly,” Charles said back. “And quickly. What happened?”
“The boy grew more and more upset. Beside himself over that girl. I called for the proctor to come and help me with him, but Monsieur Montmorency attacked him the moment he came in. I tried to pull him off, but-well, you see I failed. Then the cursed boy-”
“You came at me, too,” the proctor said angrily. “You helped the boy!”
“I did not! You only saw me behind him. I was trying to pull him away from you! After he hit you, he chased me into the study and threw me against the wall with such violence that I knew nothing else, nothing at all, until just now.” Vionnet put a shaking hand to his head. “Please, I need Frère Brunet!”
Charles and La Reynie exchanged a look, and Charles turned a speculative gaze on the tutor. “You say that Monsieur Montmorency was upset about the girl. Did he go after her?”
Vionnet’s shoulders nearly hid his ears as he shrugged. “Perhaps. Wherever she is. If he even knows.”
“Cloaked,” the proctor said, wincing as he talked. “And hatted.” He looked helplessly at Charles. “I’m sorry, maître.”
“It wasn’t your fault. I’ll tell them it wasn’t. Go to Frère Brunet.” He turned to Vionnet. “You. Come with us to Père Donat.”
“No! I am worse hurt than-”
La Reynie took his arm, turned him around, and parted his hair to look at the back of his head. With a glance at Charles, he said, “Not as hurt as you might be, mon père. Come.”
He marched Vionnet down the stairs, across the student court, and toward the main building.
“Through there,” Charles said, when they reached the grand salon. He pointed to a door in the alcove where writing materials were kept.
Donat was sitting behind the desk in his small dark office, apparently doing nothing. Behind his head, Charles could just see the painted head of St. Laurent, eyes meekly raised to heaven as he roasted on his gridiron.
“Monsieur Montmorency is gone from the college, mon père,” Charles said bluntly.
“Gone? But how?” Donat’s face blanched. “He can’t be gone!”
“I don’t know how. We found the proctor guarding his door knocked witless. And Père Vionnet says Montmorency also attacked him before he fled.”
“I was attacked,” Vionnet said shrilly. “I am injured and in pain and this man”-he pointed at La Reynie-“would not let me seek help!”
“Tell Père Donat what Monsieur Montmorency said to you,” Charles said. “Before he attacked you, of course.”
“Said? Only that he was desolate about this daughter of the king. The one marrying the Polish prince. The stupid boy thinks he is in love with her. Women drive men insane. You cannot hold him responsible; he is out of his mind over the little witch. And so I shall tell his noble mother and urge her to forgive him,” Vionnet finished righteously, looking as unconvincingly meek as St. Laurent in the painting behind Donat.
La Reynie advanced on Donat, who was still sitting behind his desk. “You said you were charged with keeping Henri de Montmorency in the college. You have signally failed. He’s almost certainly gone to Marly, where the king-and the girl-are tonight. I am going after Montmorency, and I want Maître du Luc with me. He handles the boy well, and he knows the situation. Knowing what I know of Père Le Picart, I would not advise you to stand in the way of saving whatever can be saved of this situation. Which you have helped to create by your lax supervision. My carriage is in the street,” he said to Charles, and was gone.
Vionnet slipped out behind him, paying no attention to Donat’s sputtering command to stay.
Charles stayed where he was in front of Donat. “Mon père?”
Donat’s color deepened, and he shook his head like someone with a palsy.
“I beg you,” Charles said quietly, “give me leave to go. For yourself. For the college. And for Montmorency. I may be able to help pull him-and us-out of the worst of this tangle.”
“He brought it on himself,” Donat spat at Charles. “Let him take his punishment.”
Charles wanted to follow La Reynie without wasting more words on Donat. But he told himself that Donat was his superior and held himself where he was. “Mon père, the ancients wrote of three Fates, not just one. Do you really think anyone comes to his fate without the doing of others? We were all charged with keeping Montmorency here and safe. We all failed. Do you want to tell the rector that, after that failure, you made no effort to find him? That you did nothing to prevent the damage he may do? Nothing to help his soul, when helping souls is our reason for existing?”
Donat swelled like something gone bad at the market. But he finally got out a single, strangled word. “Go.”
Chapter 20
La Reynie’s carriage was rolling before Charles could pull the door shut.
“I almost left you,” La Reynie snapped.
“I had to make Père Donat tell me to go with you. If he hadn’t, I’d be in nearly as much trouble as Montmorency is.”
“What did you threaten him with?”
“Me, threaten? Only with failing Saint Ignatius. How long will it take to get to the king’s chateau at Marly? Have you sent a message to Père La Chaise about Montmorency?”
“While I waited for you, I sent one of my officers, on horseback. It will take the carriage two hours to get there, perhaps less. It’s very close to Versailles, but the terrain is more hilly near the chateau. Going uphill, the horses will have to walk. Assuming Montmorency is mounted, he will be there long before us. God send that, he-and the girl-will still be there when we arrive.”
“There are half a dozen places near the college to hire a horse,” Charles said over the noise from the street and the rolling of the carriage wheels.
“Let’s hope all of them were out of horses this afternoon.”
They were silent as the coach made its way through the crowded summer evening streets, until Charles said, “I don’t understand why the Grand Duchess of Tuscany would endanger her position by passing letters to Conti, now that the king has let her return from Italy. She’d have to be a fool! And she didn’t strike me as one.”
La Reynie’s mouth quirked. “The duchess is a lady of many sides. And one side is always in debt. I assume she’s doing it for money, just like your Bertamelli.”
“Well, it would explain why Père La Chaise and I found her and Montmorency and Mademoiselle de Rouen together in an alcove at Versailles after the ball for the Polish ambassadors.”
The carriage stopped suddenly and the driver began to shout at someone. La Reynie swore and put his head out the window. “What is it?”
“Accident, mon lieutenant-général. Someone’s cast a wheel and the way’s blocked.”
Charles looked out from his side and saw that they’d reached the square beyond the Sorbonne church and that the narrow way into the rue de la Harpe was full of bellowing men, neighing horses, and a gilded carriage on its side, one of its high back wheels spinning slowly in the air. He craned his neck and looked over his shoulder. Behind La Reynie’s carriage was a solid line of carriages and carts, all the drivers standing on their driving boxes and demanding to be let through.
“I suppose we could walk to Marly,” Charles said, without enthusiasm. “People walk to Versailles.”
“Montmorency could be halfway to the coast with the girl by then.” La Reynie pushed open the door, jumped from the carriage, and strode into the traffic jam, holding his silver-headed stick like a weapon.
Perhaps it would have taken longer without his furious orders, but it still took long enough before they were on their way again. They made good time along the rue des Cordeliers after that, and La Reynie was visibly relaxing into his seat when the driver pulled the horses to a bone-jolting stop.
“Now what?” La Reynie shouted.
“They’re taking down a piece of the old wall, monsieur,” the driver shouted back. “Some of it fell on the street.”
Charles looked out and saw the end of a stretch of city wall straight ahead, beyond a little street that curved to join the rue des Cordeliers. Traffic on the little street was stopped, too, and pedestrians and drivers were gathered where the streets met.
“The stones of the wall are enormous,” La Reynie said, opening the carriage door. “We’ll never shift the damned things.”
He banged his way out of the coach and Charles climbed out after him. A clutch of workmen, stoutly declaiming that it wasn’t their fault, stood leaning on massive hammers as a steady stream of pedestrians picked their way across the huge stones. But the carriages and carts were blocked.
“Turn,” La Reynie told his driver, who had come to stand beside him. “Somehow.” He looked at Charles. “Get in. I’m going to help the driver.”
The driver climbed onto the box, Charles got into the carriage, and La Reynie began working miracles. Standing in the middle of the road, wig flying, he s
cythed the air with his stick, bellowed directions like a war drum, ran and lunged and turned, and had the traffic reversed and his carriage turned within minutes. Sweating, he flung himself back into the carriage and they were off again.
“We’ll have to take rue de l’Enfer past the walls and turn west again when we can,” he said. “Dear God, I wish I had a drink.”
“Rue de l’Enfer? Why do they call it Hell Street?”
“Because of the traffic,” La Reynie growled. “Why else?”
Once outside the line of the walls and heading more or less west again, the driver whipped up the horses and the carriage leaped forward.
“Making up time,” La Reynie said. “Whatever other treachery is afoot, pray we get there in time to at least stop Montmorency running off with the girl. If that happens, hell will be nothing to the consequences.” He swore as the carriage rounded a curve and he slid across the seat into Charles. “My apologies, maître.” He pulled his coat straight. “There’s been no time to tell the relatively good news I have for you. Your Lulu did not poison Bouchel. One of my court spies learned that Bouchel was helping the Prince of Conti get the reports about our border fortifications. I’ve thought for some time-and so has Père La Chaise-that Conti has a spy in Louvois’s entourage inspecting French fortifications along the eastern border. Though Louvois has returned, the inspections continue. And the spy is still with the inspectors. No, I won’t tell you who he is. We’re giving him a long rope so he can hang himself more thoroughly.”
Charles frowned. “I got to know Bouchel a little at Versailles. You know he looked after Père La Chaise. I never saw sign of any hostility toward the king.”
“He would have made sure you didn’t. And maybe he had none, I don’t know; maybe he was only helping Conti for the money. But I do know that Bouchel’s father was a mason at Versailles when the place was first being built. His father fell from a wall and the overseer forced him back to work, though his leg was badly hurt. The leg made him unsteady and he fell again. That time he broke his neck. Not long after, the king came to inspect the building, and the mason’s mother-Bouchel’s grandmother-spit in Louis’s face and called him a murderer. The king had her flogged. I’ve been told that Bouchel grew up hearing the story.”