A Plague of Lies (14 page)

When he reached La Chaise’s chamber, Bouchel told him that the rhetoric master hadn’t stirred. Charles went to Jouvancy’s bed and parted the curtains. The little priest’s flushed face and hot forehead put paid to Charles’s thoughts of leaving. He wrung out a cloth in cold water and sponged the priest’s face, smiling reassuringly and murmuring, “Go on sleeping, all’s well,” when Jouvancy briefly opened his eyes. Then he closed the curtains, glad for the west-facing windows that left the room still dim and cool, and left the chamber.

Bouchel turned from staring out the courtyard window. “Do you need me anymore,
maître
?” His eyes were shadowed, and his face was pinched and gray.

“Are you well?” Charles said, peering at him in concern.

The footman tensed and darted a sideways glance at Charles. “Well enough, thank you. Are you better?” He jerked his head at the door into the other chamber. “Is he?”

“We’re all better, thank you.”

“I was thinking—I don’t mean to step out of my place,
maître
, but whatever happened to old Fleury, I doubt you three were poisoned.”

“Why not?” Charles went to the cupboard and opened it, looked for bread and cheese.

“Well, Père La Chaise set the leftover
bouillon
back in the cupboard after your breakfast yesterday.” He wrinkled his nose.
“I didn’t find it till this morning, and it was high and ripe. Enough that it had to be already going that way yesterday. So it could have been what made you sick.”

Charles nodded slowly. The
bouillon
! Of course. An unpleasant but ordinary explanation. What could be simpler? “Thank you, I’ll tell Père La Chaise. But you look as though you may be getting Père Jouvancy’s sickness. You should take care of yourself.”

Bouchel grunted his thanks and left. But when he was gone, the simplicity of spoiled soup began tangling itself into unwelcome subtlety. The soup had not smelled off when they’d had it for breakfast yesterday, but putting poison in
bouillon
would be easy enough…

Stop it
, he ordered his mind.
There is no poisoner. It wasn’t poison. It was spoiled soup. And I’ve heard our infirmarian say that too much drink can blacken a man’s liver. Maybe that’s why Fleury’s liver was black. God knows the man drank enough in the army.
Wobbly with tiredness—and some measure of relief—Charles stood up and stretched. Impatient to get out of the palace’s fog of rumor and suspicion and into plain sunshine and air, he hoped La Chaise wouldn’t be long about his errands.

He wasn’t, and as soon as he returned, Charles told him what Bouchel had said.

“Oh. I suppose that could explain it. I should have thrown away what was left after dinner. But, do you know, I always find that hard to do, perhaps because my mother would never let the servants throw soup away…” La Chaise smothered a yawn. “For now, I am not going to think about soup or poison or anything else. I am going to sit here in my chair and doze.”

Glad to get out of the palace, Charles made his way down to the ground-floor corridor and started around it to the south wing’s garden front. He hoped he wouldn’t have to walk too far
before he found a shady secluded place to sit and work on the ballet
livret
he’d retrieved from the saddlebag. But when he was finally outside, he found himself in a wide desert of hot gravel, only to discover that the greenery beyond was an inhospitably formal checkerboard of walkways, plots of grass and shrubs dotted with classical statues, spiral paths to nowhere among carefully placed and manicured trees, and stretches of high hornbeam hedges as impassable as walls. There was solitude enough, but the grass seemed the only place to sit. He walked on, toward a jet of water playing above a balustrade topped with urns, and found two sets of steps leading down to the fountain, the bottom flight shaded by a wall. Surprised at how tired he was by the walk from the palace, Charles settled himself on a lower step, turned so that he could lean against the wall, and opened the ballet
livret
. The next thing he knew, a flight of cawing crows was passing overhead and the
livret
was at the bottom of the steps, where it had tumbled from his lap. Blinking, he stretched and went to the fountain’s basin to splash water on his face and wake up. He dried his face with his cassock skirt, picked up the
livret
, unstoppered his bottle of ink, and got to work.

He finished writing out directions for the comic
entrées
of Scaramouches and Harlequins in Part two of
La France Victorieuse sous Louis le Grand
, turned the page to Part three, and began to read Jouvancy’s most recent editing, done in the college infirmary. Charles had known there would be changes, since this third Part was called
La France Victorieuse de ses Ennemis par les Armes
, and his own version of the French military victories had emphasized celebrations of peace. But Jouvancy had the
livret
’s French Heroes trampling their foes in a manner worthy of Versailles’s painted ceilings, conquering first Spaniards, then Germans, and finally the Dutch. He stared unseeingly at the
livret
in his lap, trying not to remember his own experience of war. He’d seen
too much death and, in the end, had found the death he’d seen—and caused—pointless. And this ballet’s drum-beating for the illusory glory of battle left him feeling as though he were mourning for the not yet dead.

Charles let his quill rest and watched the fountain playing in front of him. The sound of the rising and falling water eased him somewhat, but his sense of calm vanished as he looked more closely at the fountain’s sculptures. On a stone island in the fountain’s center, the goddess Latona was turning angry peasants into frogs to protect her children Apollo and Diana from their wrath. The intended allegory hit Charles between the eyes. The matronly Latona would be Anne of Austria. Which made Apollo into Louis, and Diana, well, it wasn’t hard to understand Diana as Louis’s rouged and beribboned brother Philippe. And that meant the frogs were the eternal poor, always angry—usually with good cause—and perpetually baffled and defeated.
So much for “blessed are the poor,”
Charles thought sourly, closing his eyes.

Someone laughed, a hot tongue licked his hand, and his eyes flew open. A small black dog was standing in front of him, wagging its ragged plume of a tail. A young woman and a little girl stood between the dog and the fountain. Charles recognized Mademoiselle de Rouen—Lulu—the king’s legitimized daughter about to be sent away to Poland, and the girl he’d seen playing ball, one of the Condé’s tiny daughters, a Doll of the Blood.

The chestnut-haired little girl drew the dog away by its red ribbon collar. But Lulu came closer and bent toward him. The smell of tobacco and the sight of an impressive
décolletage
assailed him, but it was her blazing vitality that made him blink. She glittered with it and a warning instinct that he ought to get out of its path brought him to his feet.

“Were you dreaming?” Her smile widened and she looked him up and down. “Of me? You saw me yesterday, you know.”

Charles put the
livret
aside on the step, made his face a social blank, went down the two steps to her level, and removed his
bonnet
.

“Your Highness,” he said tonelessly, inclining his head.

Her blue-gray Bourbon eyes mocked him. “Or perhaps you weren’t dreaming. Only praying. Oh, dear, did I disturb your devotions?”

“And if I said yes?”

Slowly as a stalking cat, she closed the distance between them. The green jewels hanging from her ears and her cream and sea-green satin skirts shimmered in the sunlight. “Then I would say that perhaps you could find something more entertaining to do.” The music of her laughter vied with the fountain’s music, and the ruche of pale pink lace that edged her
décolletage
rose and fell. The Bourbon eyes were full of challenge. And something else that he might have called desperation if he hadn’t been too angry at her rude familiarity to care.

“If you will excuse me, Your Highness?” He replaced his hat. “I have work I must do.” He looked beyond her for her attendants. But except for the child and the dog, she was alone, which no young woman of quality, and especially no king’s daughter, should be. He looked again at the child and saw that she was watching him gravely, her small oval face oddly knowing and resigned.

“It’s all right,” she said. “You may go. I will stay with her. And I am not a child, I am nearly twelve, though I don’t look it.”

“
Mademoiselle
,” he began, but she stopped him.

“I am Anne-Marie de Bourbon. You must call me Your Serene Highness.”

“I beg your pardon, Your Serene Highness.”

Her dignity dissolved into a smile. “Well, I have to say that, don’t I? If I don’t, everyone will treat me like a child, even if I live to be a hundred years old, since I probably won’t grow any more.”

Charles smiled back. “Very well thought, Your Serene Highness. One must keep one’s dignity at all costs. But now I certainly cannot leave, because there are two young ladies to guard.”

“No,” Lulu said sweetly, “you cannot. So you must stay and talk with us. Besides, I know you’re not a priest, you could still decide to be—” She looked up at him through her dark eyelashes. “—a man. So why should you work so hard? You see that I know all about you, Maître du Luc. Don’t you want to know how?” Her eyes sparkled invitingly.

“On the whole, no, Your Highness.” Charles bent to ruffle the dog’s ears.

“Oooh!” Lulu laid a small white hand on his cassock sleeve. “I think you are afraid of me!” Her nails scratched like a cat’s as her fingers moved on his woolen sleeve.

“Lulu!” someone called from behind her, and the dog bounded away, barking joyously. Her Serene Highness Anne-Marie picked up her blue skirts and ran after the dog.

Lulu swore and looked over her shoulder.

“
What
are you doing hiding away with Maître du Luc?” The Prince of Conti, the young man who had mocked the Jesuits’ gift in Madame de Maintenon’s antechamber, strolled lazily around the fountain toward them. “Everyone’s searching for you, my sweet Lulu. You’ll be late for dining with your handsome Poles.” He waggled his fingers at the dog, which was jumping and barking in greeting, and reached out to pull one of Anne-Marie’s brown curls. She slapped hard enough at his hand that he snatched it back and muttered something under his breath.

Lulu’s brightness died like a doused flame, and she looked as
though she might cry. “No. I won’t eat with them today. Soon enough, I’ll have no one else.” She whirled and picked up her skirts as if to run. “Come, let’s go to a
traiteur
in town for our dinner.”

Anne-Marie de Bourbon shook her head in alarm. “No, Lulu, you mustn’t!” The little girl turned to Conti. “Don’t let her go.”

Conti ignored them both and gazed limpidly at Charles.

“So sorry to interrupt your pleasures,
maître
.”

“Not pleasure, Your Serene Highness, work.” Charles doffed his
bonnet
to Conti with an inward sigh and every outward appearance of respect. Conti’s arrival was a chance to try to learn something for Lieutenant-Général La Reynie. Charles admitted to himself that the more he saw of Conti, the less he minded causing trouble for this arrogant young Bourbon. “I had the pleasure of seeing you yesterday in Madame de Maintenon’s antechamber,
mon prince
.”

“Yes. I am surprised to see you still here. But court life always does agree with Jesuits, I believe.”

“Does it?” Charles showed his teeth in what the prince might possibly mistake for a smile. “And does it always agree with you, Your Serene Highness?”

Conti’s eyebrows lifted, and he seemed to really see Charles for the first time. “How could it not, when I am near my kinsman the king?”

“How not, indeed? Royal kinsmen, of course, feel nothing but brotherly love for one another.”

At that, Lulu burst into laughter so deep and loud that Charles thought it would have doubled her over, had her bodice not been so boned and laced. Anne-Marie only looked gravely from one speaker to the next, like someone watching a game of
jeu de paume
.

But this conversational game felt to Charles more like a skirmish on the edge of battle. “You disagree?” he asked Lulu.

Still burbling with mirth, she waved a beringed hand at Conti. “My royal father hates this dear Bourbon prince! And this dear prince is only waiting—”

“Shut
up
, Lulu.” It was Conti’s turn to bare his teeth in a dangerous smile. He caught her hand. “You are shocking our good cleric. No one hates anyone here.”

The girl winced and pulled her hand away, and to Charles’s surprise, her lip trembled. “You hate
me
,” she said.

Conti shrugged at Charles. “Sometimes I think I will become a monk of some sort. To get away from women. They’re utterly incomprehensible. My darling Lulu, what does hating or not hating matter? You are going to Poland. I am desolate, but what can I do about it?”

“Much, if you only would!” She gathered her skirts and fled, like some rare silvery green bird taking flight, and disappeared beyond the fountain.

Anne-Marie and the dog followed her, and Conti rolled his eyes at Charles and strolled after the three of them. Charles replaced his hat; picked up his
livret
, ink, and quill; and went quickly up the steps in the other direction, with an irrational feeling—half irritation and half fear—that more Bourbons would appear in his path, no matter what direction he chose. He turned aside along a dark green hornbeam hedge, wanting to be out of sight of the fountain, and kept walking. Turning repeatedly and at random among hedges and rosy brick walls surrounding a myriad of small gardens, he kept walking until dizziness reminded him that he was still recovering from last night’s sickness. He slowed as he turned yet another corner and saw an enormous expanse of water ahead of him. It was half surrounded by piles of dirt, and two workmen were doing something
at the water’s near edge. As Charles’s footsteps crunched along the gravel walk, one of them straightened and waved his arms.