A Plague of Lies (20 page)

Montmorency started after him, but Charles stepped into his path. “If you defy Père La Chaise any more tonight, who knows what might happen? You wouldn’t want to find yourself
as beheaded as your kinsman,
monsieur
. Then you could truly do nothing to help Mademoiselle de Rouen.”

“No one’s going to behead me.” Montmorency’s eyes shifted uneasily.

“Beheading is very bloody,” Charles went on conversationally. “Very painful, I imagine, unless you have an experienced headsman. And there are fewer beheadings these days, so”—he shrugged—“you can imagine the lack of practice.”

Montmorency stared, wide-eyed.

Fortunately, La Chaise swept back through the anteroom and into the chamber, the footman Bouchel at his heels.

“This time you will arrive at Louis le Grand,
monsieur
, because our good Bouchel is going with you. He will get you a carriage in the courtyard, and he will not leave you until you are inside the college. He will also deliver the note I have written to Père Le Picart, telling him why you have been sent back. And that you are to be kept there. Unless you want heavier penance than you ever imagined possible, you will make no trouble over this or anything else. And you will keep your tongue behind your teeth concerning the king or his daughter Mademoiselle de Rouen. Whom you will not, under any circumstances, see again. Go.”

Though he was a head shorter and built altogether on a smaller scale, Bouchel had Montmorency out of the room before he could splutter out a protest. Charles and La Chaise listened to their steps receding along the gallery, and then La Chaise flung himself back into his chair.

“Dear God, the boy is a menace! At the worst possible age for fancying himself a hero and even stupider than the other Henri de Montmorency. If he eludes Père Le Picart’s surveillance and comes back here before Lulu’s gone, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

Charles was suddenly too tired to care much about hell, or anything else but sleep. “If I may excuse myself,
mon père
, I will wish you a
bonne nuit
and a blessed rest.”

“You may not.” The king’s confessor was looking at him as though he were something on a buffet table that might or might not be worth trying. “I saw the way the girl looked at you tonight.”

“What girl?”

“Lulu. Mademoiselle de Rouen. Who else are we talking about? You could make yourself very useful while we wait for Père Jouvancy to improve. I want you to talk to her. Counsel her. Amuse her; keep her away from Margot and Conti.”

Charles couldn’t believe his ears. “I cannot play the attentive courtier to the king’s sixteen-year-old daughter! I’m a Jesuit!”

“Precisely. You are a Jesuit. And I am the king’s Jesuit confessor, and I need your help.” He eyed Charles. “I presume you anticipate ordination at some time in the future.”

Startled, Charles nodded.

“Well, let me tell you, when—if—you become a priest, you will face situations that require you to counsel women. So what if they flirt with you? Lulu flirts with every handsome man of quality she sees—and some neither handsome nor of quality. No one will pay any attention. Tell her that you want to help her find some peace in accepting this marriage. For the good of her soul. Spend some time with her, gain her confidence, counsel her to be dutiful.”

“Why not set one of her women to watch her? I think Père Jouvancy may be well enough tomorrow to take a carriage back to Paris. And I will take both horses back.”

“Even if he should be well enough to travel tomorrow, he will no doubt be willing to extend his recovery a little while you do what is in the king’s best interest.”

With a sudden pang of sympathy for the flailing Lulu, Charles folded his hands and stared down at his hard clasped knuckles.

La Chaise said softly, “Are you afraid of your own response if she flirts with you?”

Charles’s head came up. “No! But I do feel sorry for her, because of all the ways people are manipulating her. Now you are telling me to manipulate her. For your own ends.”

“For the Society’s ends. And how is that different from what you did just now to Henri Montmorency?”

“I did not—”

“Oh, but you did. You are young Montmorency’s superior, his professor. You used your knowledge of him and your authority over him to make him behave appropriately and do what was necessary. What I am asking of you is even more necessary.”

Stinging from the lash of unwelcome truth, Charles stared at the darkness beyond the window. He felt pushed into a spinning whirlpool. The coolly ruthless part of himself he so disliked suddenly spoke.
You might at least be honest
, it said.
You’re noble. Now you’re a Jesuit. Your kind is always near the heart of power. And when you’re a priest, you’ll be even nearer.

Chapter 10

T
HE
F
EAST OF
S
T
. G
UY
, T
HURSDAY
, J
UNE
12, 1687

C
harles woke to a dark day and a darker mood. The only bright thing was that he felt much better, and Père Jouvancy seemed better, too. When Charles had him sitting up and hungrily eating the fresh bread and rich broth Bouchel had brought from the town, he left him in the footman’s care and took himself to the chapel. Père La Chaise was already out and about his own business, and Charles was relieved to avoid more talk about last night. Facing his assignment for today was enough.

The chapel was empty of people and full of early morning quiet. Charles knelt at the Virgin’s side altar. He prayed for Jouvancy’s quick recovery and then gazed disconsolately at the large gilt-framed painting of the Madonna and Child hanging above the altar. She and the baby in her arms had none of the homely peace of the little painting in Charles’s bedchamber at the college. This Virgin’s robes billowed around her, as though a strong wind blew from the world into her frame. The stern-faced baby looked as though he were already judging that world as irredeemable. Charles bowed his head onto his clasped hands. It was so easy to believe that this world of Versailles had fallen
further from grace than the rest of the world he knew. Maybe he himself was the one judging too harshly. Maybe doing as Père La Chaise had asked, helping Lulu reconcile herself to her duty and go peacefully to Poland, might be a means of grace to her. Except that the king’s sending her there had nothing to do with wanting good for her. Just as La Chaise’s concern was for the king, for France, not for the girl herself. Unless, of course, you granted that doing one’s duty helped one’s soul. Which Charles usually did at least
try
to grant. Except…

Heels echoed on the chapel floor, and Charles turned from his unsuccessful praying to see who had come in. It was the Prince of Conti, and Charles watched him go briskly to a side altar where, instead of kneeling, Conti went up the two small steps and bent over the altar. Something about the man’s intent stillness brought Charles to his feet. Most courtiers were said to be up to their ears in gambling debts, and a wild suspicion that Conti was stealing the gold and jeweled candlesticks went through his mind. Telling himself that he was growing as insane as the rest of Versailles, Charles went quietly across the chapel. But Conti’s hearing was as good as his own.

“Bonjour, maître.”
The young man turned and came quickly down the altar steps. “You see how our good Madame de Maintenon has honored your gift.” He gestured gracefully at the altar, and Charles saw that Jouvancy’s gold-and-lapis reliquary stood between the candlesticks.

“She wants it to be seen here before she takes it to Saint Cyr,” Conti said, smiling.

Chiding himself for labeling everything the man said as mockery, Charles said, “I am glad to see it here, Your Serene Highness. Our college is indeed honored. Have you come to pray to Saint Ursula?”

“Of course! I assure you, I have a great devotion to Saint Ursula and her companions, the eleven thousand pious virgins.” Conti grinned at Charles.

“Commendable,” Charles replied, who couldn’t help but think that the handsome young prince might indeed be devoted to virgins, but probably not in the way presently under discussion.

“I was perhaps not listening closely at the presentation—but I do remember the priest saying that the bone inside the cross is a finger.”

Charles nodded.

“So one might pray here for—direction, shall we say? That the holy saint will point the way? To the speeding of one’s purposes?”

“Depending on the purposes you wish to speed, Your Serene Highness.”

“But of course.” Conti laughed and put a hand on Charles’s sleeve. “Are you always so righteous?” He squeezed Charles’s arm. “What a shame,” Conti sighed. “You might be very—ah—entertaining if you were a little more—unrighteous, shall we say?” He sauntered away, giving Charles a regretful glance over his shoulder as he went through the chapel door.

Charles’s hands twitched, and he had an unholy urge to throttle the man.

“Point him toward something he’ll trip over, Holy Virgin,” he suggested to St. Ursula, and went in search of Lulu.

He didn’t find her until the late-morning Mass, when he saw her in the train of courtiers gathering in the Hall of Mirrors to follow the king to the chapel. The gray day had taken the magic out of the Hall of Mirrors’ light, but the crowd had brought its own glitter in its bright, shimmering clothes and gold-set jewels.
Lulu, dressed in gray silk and straw-yellow lace, seeming as quenched as the day’s light, stood beside a silver-potted orange tree, twisting one leaf after another from its branches. The king came from his counsel room, accompanied by the Polish ambassadors, and paced toward the chapel, everyone making a deep
reverence
to the royal presence and moving slowly after him. Louis glanced at Charles as he passed and gave him a slight nod of acknowledgment. Dismayed at being singled out, Charles belatedly whipped off his formal
bonnet
and bowed his head. And remained staring at the carpet. Had the king’s look meant that he knew of the plan to quiet Lulu, and approved? Among the many things Charles did not want, the attention of Louis XIV was high on the list.

He looked up just in time to step into the flood of courtiers behind Lulu and her women. When the king and his retinue, including La Chaise, turned aside to go up into the royal gallery facing the altar, Charles crowded into the nave with the rest and found an unobtrusive place to stand near a wall. The Mass began, but he was too taken up with deciding how to approach Lulu to do any better with his devotions than he had earlier. When the service ended, he jockeyed for position in the moving crowd, trying to keep the king’s daughter in sight. As he passed through the chapel door, fortune—or perhaps St. Ursula—smiled on him and Lulu dropped her prayer book, which slid on the shining marble floor and came to rest at his feet. Charles swooped on it, pretending not to notice that one of her women had bent to retrieve it, and straightened with it in his hand.

“Your Highness?” He stepped around the affronted attendant and bowed, holding out the prayer book. “Allow me to restore this to you.”

The girl’s pale, somber face lightened. “Oh, it’s you.” She
nodded at the listening woman, who took the book from Charles. “Thank you,
maître
.” She hesitated and then said, “Will you walk with me?”

Surprised by the invitation, and even more surprised that it was given without coquetry, Charles nodded. As she gestured her women to make room for him to walk at her side, Charles saw that Anne-Marie, the Condé child, was among them, cuddling her little black dog. He smiled at her, somehow reassured by her presence, and fell into step with Lulu.

“Are you going to your dinner, Your Highness?” he asked.

“Not yet.” She sighed. “Shall we walk outside? The rain has stopped.”

“As you please.”

She led him to a door opening onto the gravel that led to the gardens. As he opened the door for her, she dismissed her women with a wave of her hand. The one carrying the prayer book started to object, but Lulu talked over her.

“Surely you can trust me with a cleric! Leave us. Not you, Anne-Marie, you may come.”