A Plague of Lies (36 page)

Jouvancy made a wry face and lifted his hands helplessly. “Now I must go to Père Donat and tell him what has happened. I’d best get it over. Will you clean up in here?”

He left, muttering disconsolately to himself, and Charles sighed and picked up the broken sword to see if it could be mended. He saw that it couldn’t, put it aside, and put the rest of the swords back in the chest. Then he checked to be sure all the old hats were back on their hooks and picked up the ballet
livret
. In the time before supper, he wanted to find out from Alexandre Sapieha what he’d said to Montmorency. And he wanted to find Bertamelli. He thought the little Italian might tell him now what he’d been doing at the tower. He reached to close an open window and stopped, listening to a dove cooing mournfully in the mellowing light. Tomorrow morning, Charles
thought, Mademoiselle de Rouen would go to Poland, in spite of whatever secrets she carried with her. With a sigh, he latched the window and started across the Cour d’honneur to the student court.

But his steps dragged and his shoulder hurt, and he sat down on a bench beside the courtyard wall. Montmorency’s door was guarded by a proctor, and Bertamelli was in the charge of the anxiously watchful
cubiculaire
. A few minutes’ rest would not hurt. Charles leaned back against the warm stones. The mid-June sun was still above the city roofs, and he was glad for the shade of the lime tree that grew beside the bench. Birds came and went in the branches, and he thought he glimpsed a nest high above his head. His eyes followed a songbird’s flight and came to rest on the king’s profile, above him on top of the wall. The sculptor had caught the long, slightly curved Bourbon nose perfectly, and it seemed to test the outer air as Louis le Grand gazed over the college that bore his name. Charles’s brief encounters with the king went through his mind. Louis majestic at the head of the daily procession to Mass; a distant glimpse of Louis walking in the gardens with his gentlemen; the plume of Louis’s hat waving above his massive armchair at the ball; Louis’s assessing blue-gray gaze as he silently acknowledged Charles’s attention to Lulu. Louis had seemed always quiet, always merely passing, or in the distance, or seen from behind. He’d spoken to Charles only once, in few words and hardly pausing. But his presence beat down on Versailles like the sun on the earth. Except that, for those at court, the sun never set and there was little shade.

The door to the main building banged shut, startling Charles from his reverie. Lieutenant-Général La Reynie was coming toward him across the courtyard, followed by a red-faced Père Donat. Jouvancy hurried behind them.

“Maître du Luc, stay where you are,” Donat called imperiously, as though Charles were about to run.

Wondering what had happened now, Charles stood up and the trio halted in front of him.

In a hissing whisper, as though the whole college were trying to listen, Donat said, “Monsieur La Reynie has asked to speak with you. I have given my permission. The matter concerns Monsieur Montmorency.”

Charles looked questioningly at La Reynie, who slightly shook his head.

Clearly trying to keep a rein on his temper, La Reynie smiled at the acting rector. “I thank you for your help,
mon père
. I will speak privately with Maître du Luc, and then he will go with me to Monsieur Montmorency.” He bowed. “I will not trespass further on your time.”

Donat bridled. “But you may not speak privately. Maître du Luc is merely a scholastic, and I am in charge here while our rector is away. It is my duty and my right to know all that goes on concerning Monsieur Montmorency, because Père Le Picart expressly charged me with watching him closely and seeing he keeps to the rules.” He looked down his snub nose at Charles and Jouvancy. “Which he has not, because others failed to watch him closely enough this afternoon.”

“Then it will be well for you,” La Reynie said curtly, “that Maître du Luc and I go quickly to speak with him. Before worse happens. Maître du Luc knows the background to my matter. I need him with me—and only him—while I talk with Monsieur Montmorency.”

“No.” Donat glared and drew in his chin, tripling the rolls of fat above his Jesuit collar.

“This matter concerns the king,
mon père
,” La Reynie said, steel in his voice. “The college cannot invoke the old liberties
and their immunity. I can and will overrule you if you force me to it.” Most of the city’s liberties, places whose ancient authority could exclude the law, were long gone.

Donat began to sputter, but Jouvancy put a hand on his arm.

“
Mon père
, we all know that you only want to serve our rector and our king.” Jouvancy’s actor’s voice was warm with spurious understanding. “But there are times when the better tool must be laid aside so that the lesser—and more disposable—may be used. Père Le Picart will be very grateful to you. As will the king himself.
Very
grateful…”

La Reynie nodded. “He will, indeed.”

“Oh. Yes.” Donat preened visibly as the unctuous words flowed over him. “Yes, go with him, Maître du Luc. Do exactly as he tells you. Exactly, do you hear me? And then report to me.”

“Go!” Jouvancy mouthed behind Donat, and made urgent little shooing gestures.

La Reynie’s glance flickered from Jouvancy to Donat. “As I said yesterday, Père Donat, Maître du Luc will not be able to speak about this matter. But I will see you before I leave.”

He bowed briefly and followed Charles, who was already moving toward the archway between the courtyards.

“Blessed Virgin,” La Reynie said, when they were safely in the student court. “Your Père Jouvancy deserves a thousand fewer years in Purgatory for that.”

“He’s a fine actor. Especially offstage.” Charles stopped under a lime tree in front of an old stone house and pointed across the court. “Montmorency lives in the brick building there. Tell me quickly why you’re here.”

La Reynie halted reluctantly. “I’ve had two of my men watching the Saint Pierre convent in Montmartre. Where the Grand Duchess of Tuscany lives. I think she’s passing letters to Conti from his spy on the eastern border. I haven’t known how
she was getting them. But on Thursday night, nearly midnight, two of my men were watching the convent. And your Montmorency rode up and passed in a letter. And the duchess came to the grille to speak to him.”

“So that’s where he went. I knew he’d left the school Thursday night, but he refused to say where he’d been. How did your men recognize Montmorency?”

“They saw his face by the portress’s lantern when the duchess opened the grille, but they didn’t know him. One of them followed the boy back here to see where he lived. But he—my officer—had been feeling ill, and by the time he reached Louis le Grand, he was fevered and could hardly keep upright. He went home, thinking to tell me the next morning, but by morning he was too fevered to talk sense. It wasn’t until this afternoon that his wife sent a message telling me he’d tracked the letter bearer to the college. That, along with the description, told me it was Montmorency.”

“If he’s passing letters from the spy, he may not realize it. He’s not bright.”

“Bright or not, he’ll have to prove he didn’t know what he was doing. Or someone will have to prove it. Otherwise, he’s guilty of treason.”

“We need to talk to Michele Bertamelli.” Charles jerked his head at the stone house behind them. “He lives there. I’m certain he knows something about Montmorency’s letters. Your presence may scare the truth out of him, and you’ll have more to work with when you confront Montmorency.”

“Bertamelli?” La Reynie said in surprise. “The astonishing little dancer?” The
lieutenant-général
had seen the school’s February performance. “What makes you think he’s involved?”

“I think he’s been carrying letters for Montmorency.”

“But Montmorency took his own letter to the convent.”

“But now he can’t. He’s been guarded since Friday morning and can’t get out of the college. And his guard is heavier after his fight during this afternoon’s rehearsal. He nearly crippled one of the Polish boys over this marriage. And I’m not just guessing about Bertamelli.” Charles told La Reynie about following Bertamelli into the tower. “Someone—not Bertamelli—threw a piece of masonry down the tower stairs at me, shoved me flat, and got away. But I saw his back, and I’m nearly certain it was a servant of the duchess’s—a squat, barrel-like man I saw with her at Versailles. Then, in the rehearsal today, before the fight, Bertamelli kept trying to talk to Montmorency. He never breaks rules during a rehearsal. But today I think he was trying to tell Montmorency that he’d been followed to the tower.”

“But you didn’t see Bertamelli give anything to this servant?”

“No. But your men saw Montmorency at the Montmartre convent. And even Montmorency would know he couldn’t rely on getting out of the college and going there again. I think he and the duchess arranged for him to send his letters to the tower.” Charles laughed a little in spite of himself. “If any student can get out of our college without being discovered, it’s Bertamelli. And if it was Margot’s—the duchess’s—servant he met at the tower, well, it’s hard to draw any other conclusion.”

La Reynie grunted. “Let’s find out.”

They went into the stone house and up three flights of stairs to Bertamelli’s
dortoir
. The harassed
cubiculaire
Charles had seen at dinner answered his knock.

“Monsieur La Reynie, this is Maître Guerand,” Charles said, hoping he had the thin, sandy-haired scholastic’s name right. “May we speak with Monsieur Bertamelli?”

“I suppose so.” Guerand sighed in exasperation. “He’s in the study. Sitting there looking like a dying martyr. Italians! No wonder Italian opera is what it is.”

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—”