A Plague of Lies (11 page)

“Dear Blessed Virgin, so ill again?” Le Picart said from the door, and Charles glanced up to see Montville’s equally worried face peering over the rector’s shoulder. “We will help you get him to his bed.”

“Tell the servant to bring a wet cloth, if you will,” Charles said, trying to ignore the weak-kneed feeling Jouvancy’s spewing was giving him.

He pulled Jouvancy gently upright, sat him down on a chair Le Picart pushed forward, and took the cool wet cloth from the arriving servant and wiped the rhetoric master’s face. Jouvancy’s eyes were wide with terror.

“I heard what the Comte de Vannes said to you,” he whispered. “Poison! First that old man and now me!”

“No, no,” Charles said robustly, “this is just your sickness come back because you’ve pushed yourself too far, with the riding yesterday and today’s business. We’ll go to our chamber and you can sleep. You’ll be better after that. And then we’ll—”

“What is it?” La Chaise said, coming into the room behind them. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Poison,
mon père
,” Jouvancy moaned dramatically. “It must be! I felt very well before we sat down to eat, and now I’m poisoned, too. Don’t eat anything else here, I beg you, or we will all—”

“Hush!” La Chaise stood over Jouvancy, his face dark with anger and something else Charles couldn’t name. “You’re raving,
mon père
. In God’s name, be quiet!”

Charles put a hand on Jouvancy’s forehead. “He’s fevered. So he’s most likely not poisoned, only ill again. We must get him back to our chamber.”

Instead of answering, the other three Jesuits conferred for a moment.

“Can you manage alone,
maître
? In courtesy, the rest of us should stay and finish our meal. I will explain that Père Jouvancy has simply had a return of his illness,” La Chaise said, ignoring Jouvancy’s protests. “Go now, the less fuss, the better. Follow the corridor around to your right. We will come when dinner is over.”

With last worried looks at Jouvancy, La Chaise, Le Picart, and Montville went back to the
salon
and the loud, excited buzz of talk around the table.

Swallowing hard and telling himself he was perfectly well, Charles helped Jouvancy stand, put his
bonnet
back on his head, and walked him out of La Rochefoucauld’s rooms into the corridor.
The passage was blessedly empty, since most everyone was at dinner.

“Walk as best you can,
mon père
,” Charles said. “But if it comes to it, I can carry you.” Though he hoped it wouldn’t, for the sake of his own oddly weak knees, as well as to lessen the gossip about Jouvancy’s sudden indisposition in case anyone saw them. Of course, as soon as he’d thought that, two men turned the corner ahead of them, walking in their direction.

“What’s the trouble?” one said, taking in the two Jesuits in surprise.

The other grinned. “Too much indulgence at dinner, I see.”

“He’s ill,” Charles snapped, adding, “It’s contagious, I think,” for the satisfaction of seeing them scuttle away.

Jouvancy was too short to rest an arm over Charles’s shoulder, and by the time they were making their way along the north side of the wing, the rhetoric master was limp, his feet barely shuffling. With a sigh, Charles picked him up in his arms like a child. Jouvancy’s head lolled against Charles’s shoulder and his eyes closed.

Peering anxiously at the rhetoric master’s deathly pale face and closed eyes, Charles muttered anxiously, “Don’t lose consciousness,
mon père
, please!”

“I haven’t,” Jouvancy quavered, opening one eye, “but I would like to.”

With a relieved snort of laughter, Charles turned the corner of the gallery, where their chamber door was finally in sight. He edged through it and across the anteroom and laid Jouvancy carefully on the green-curtained bed. He removed the priest’s
bonnet
, untied the sash of his cassock and pulled off his shoes, and covered him with the green silk coverlet. Then he stood wondering what else to do.

“Do you want a doctor,
mon père
?”

“You’re supposed to take care of me,” Jouvancy said faintly.

“Yes, but my experience is with battle wounds,” Charles replied. “If someone shoots you or runs you through with a sword, I can help you. But they haven’t.”

“Such a pity,” Jouvancy returned, trying to laugh.

Charles saw that he was starting to shiver and pulled a blanket over the coverlet. “Try to sleep a little,
mon père
. I will be here beside you, if you need me.”

Jouvancy sighed and turned his head into the pillow. Charles went into La Chaise’s chamber for the stool. When he came back, Jouvancy was asleep. Charles watched him carefully, trying to remember what he’d looked like the day he’d fallen ill at the end of the rhetoric class. Pale, he remembered that. And weak. And spewing. But he hadn’t been so fevered as he seemed now. Charles went back to La Chaise’s chamber and rummaged in the cupboard for a towel. Then he emptied the old basin of water out the window into the courtyard and refilled it from the copper reservoir. Sitting on the stool with the basin in his lap, he prayed steadily as he wiped Jouvancy’s flushed face every few minutes to cool him. When the others returned, the rhetoric master was still fevered.

“
Mes pères
, I think he needs a doctor,” Charles said, looking up at them from the stool.

“Do you? But he isn’t as ill as he was at the college,” Le Picart said, looking anxiously at Jouvancy. “This was probably brought on by too much exertion, as you said earlier. I blame myself—I should have waited longer before sending him here.”

“He is still very weak,” Charles said. “I realized yesterday as we traveled that he was weaker than I’d thought. That’s why—”

“Oh, rest will probably cure him,” Montville said comfortably.
“We must just let him sleep and feed him nourishing broth when he wakes. Isn’t that what Frère Brunet does?”

“Plus his medicines,” Le Picart said.

“Yes, medicines.” Charles was trying to curb his impatience. “I think Père Jouvancy needs them. Which is why he needs a doctor.”

That got him surprised looks for his flat lack of deference.

“A court doctor will bleed him,” La Chaise said, and Charles realized that till now he’d said nothing. “That will make him weaker.”

Montville turned shocked eyes on La Chaise. “Don’t you believe in bleeding,
mon père
? It’s the soul of medicine! It will rid him of whatever is making him sick.”

“Or whatever has poisoned him,” La Chaise said grimly. “Do you know where the Comte de Fleury ate his dinner yesterday? At the table of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld.”

Le Picart frowned. “Fleury? Oh, yes, the poor man you told us about, who fell downstairs yesterday.” He shook his head at La Chaise. “But what you say is absurd. Who would want to poison Père Jouvancy? He hasn’t been at court since before he joined the Society.”

La Chaise simply looked at his companions one by one. Charles felt himself go cold, because he saw fear in La Chaise’s eyes.

“How do you feel,
mes pères
?” he said softly. “And you, Maître du Luc?”

No one spoke. Charles was sure the others were checking their bodies’ feelings as carefully as he was.

“Père Le Picart, Père Montville, come with me,” La Chaise said. “I will show you where you will stay tonight.” He looked at Charles. “And then I will bring a doctor. Just know that gossip
will spread like fire through the palace, true or not, if a doctor comes.”

The three priests went out through the antechamber, and the gallery door shut heavily behind them. In the quiet they left behind, Charles breathed deeply and tried to get hold of himself. Jouvancy was still sleeping. At least, he looked as though he were sleeping… Charles bent over him, listened to his breathing, and straightened, reassured. But as he straightened, his stomach roiled and sweat broke out on his face. He got up and walked to the window.
Why would anyone poison
me? he thought, feeling his bowels go watery with fear.
I’m no one, I know no one, I just got here. And I’m not ill, it’s just seeing Père Jouvancy like this. And the travel, the strain of being here, the—
he cast about for something for it to be.
The water
, he told himself,
water often causes stomach upset, I’m used to Paris water now
. The familiar acerbic voice in him said back,
So you’re used to water straight out of the Seine, but the water here has undone you?
Charles went to the copper fountain in the anteroom, thinking that a drink would help settle his insides. But he put the glass down untasted. If someone
had
poisoned them, the poison might be in the fountain. He picked up the glass again and held it to the light beginning to stream through the west-facing window.

As he looked into the innocently clear water, his fear conjured the face of Madame de Maintenon, her deceptively madonna-like eyes gazing coolly at him. The king’s wife might dislike Jesuits, but surely not to the point of poisoning them.
Oh, no?
the acid-tongued voice said.
Have you never heard of queens ridding themselves of inconvenient people? Not by their own hands, of course…
The door opened behind him, and he turned so quickly that he dropped the glass, which shattered and sprayed water everywhere.

“
Maître?
Forgive me, I didn’t mean to scare you.” The footman Bouchel stood in the doorway to the antechamber, carrying
two wooden buckets and looking in bewilderment from Charles to the glass shards and water on the parquet.

“I—I was—yes, never mind.” Charles looked over his shoulder and saw, to his relief, that Jouvancy still slept.

“I’ll clean that up,
maître
, after I fill the fountain.”

Bouchel turned back into the antechamber and Charles heard him set down the buckets and take the cover off the copper reservoir. Water gushed as both buckets were emptied into it, and then the cover clanged shut. Bouchel reappeared with a towel over his hand and went toward the bed.

Charles’s body acted without his brain’s cooperation and he launched himself toward the bed and stood at bay between Bouchel and Jouvancy. The footman’s brown eyes opened wide, and he kept one eye on Charles as he picked up glass and put it carefully on the towel. Then Jouvancy roused, retching direly, and for the next few minutes Charles was miserably busy, grateful for the footman’s bringing basins and towels, and even more grateful for his taking them away when they’d been used.

Finally, Jouvancy lay spent, breathless and whiter than the bedsheets, and Bouchel left with the last basin. “Thank you,” the little priest whispered, looking up at Charles. His fingers closed around Charles’s wrist with surprising strength. “It’s poison—I’m sure of it!”

“Of course it’s not poison,” Charles said vehemently, in spite of his doubts. “It’s surely only a return of your sickness. You’ll be better soon,
mon père
.”

Jouvancy shook his head, and his anxious eyes wandered over the room. “Where is Père La Chaise?”

“He went to find a doctor.”

“Good.” Jouvancy’s fingers dug deeper into Charles’s sleeve. “I didn’t think she hated us that much.”

Before Charles could decide what to say to that, La Chaise
came in, followed by a slender, grave-faced man in a long black wig and a black and scarlet coat. A short, round assistant followed, carrying the implements for bleeding a patient: a wide basin, a glittering steel lancet, and a sturdy piece of cord.

“This is Monsieur Neuville, one of the king’s physicians,” La Chaise said, and drew back. The doctor nodded slightly at Charles and went to the bedside. The rhetoric master let go of Charles and reached for the doctor, who drew himself back and out of reach.

“Urine,
mon père
?” he said abruptly to Jouvancy.

Jouvancy eyed him sourly. “I doubt there’s anything left in me to make water with,
monsieur
.”

The doctor grunted and held out his hand to the assistant with the basin. The man handed him the cord, Charles brought a chair from La Chaise’s chamber, and the doctor sat down beside the bed.

“Have you been bled this spring?” Neuville asked, tying the stout cord tightly around Jouvancy’s upper arm. When the rhetoric master shook his head, the doctor said, “Then we’ll hope that’s your trouble.” He picked up the lancet. “Though I doubt it.”

“He’s been very ill,
monsieur
,” Charles put in, “with the sickness we’ve had in Paris these last weeks. I think the effort of riding from town brought on a relapse.”

Neuville ignored that, and Charles turned away as the rhetoric master’s blood spurted from an incision near his elbow into the basin the servant held. Charles wondered if he had caught Jouvancy’s sickness. He was usually unfazed by blood, but now his stomach was climbing toward his throat. Muttering his excuses, he fled toward the privy.

As he returned, weak but eased, the footman passed him in
the antechamber with the basin full of Jouvancy’s blood. Charles held the door for him and then stopped to wipe his face with a wet towel lying on the water reservoir. Neuville and La Chaise were talking in the chamber.

“I doubt this will be enough,” he heard the doctor say.

Charles threw down the towel and hurried into the chamber. “Why not,
monsieur
?”

Both men frowned at his interruption.

“Because this isn’t sickness,” Neuville said. He looked over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “I saw them,” he hissed. “Saw
her
—deep in talk with the Duc de La Rochefoucauld. That was the day before yesterday. Yesterday Monsieur Fleury ate at La Rochefoucauld’s table. And died. Today you Jesuits ate at his table. And at least two of you are ill.”

“Not two,” Charles said, “only Père—”

“No? You just returned from spewing in the privy.”

La Chaise looked at Charles in surprise. “Did you?”

“Yes,
mon père
, but I am not ill. Only a little unsettled. And I learned from the footman Bouchel that the floor outside Fleury’s room was wet from a ceiling leak. Which is probably why he fell.”

“And which has nothing to do with why he was ill to begin with. You should both be bled,” Neuville said grimly. “Now. Before the poison takes more hold. And the other two as well. Where are they?”