A Plague of Lies (13 page)

T
HE
F
EAST OF
S
T
. B
ARNABÉ
, W
EDNESDAY
, J
UNE
11, 1687

“N
o, I tell you!” Père Jouvancy flailed an arm at the metal cup Monsieur Neuville was holding out to him, and the physician drew it quickly out of range. “I won’t drink
antimoine
! I have
already
been poisoned. You only want my poor body to practice on for your autopsies! Oh, yes, Maître du Luc told us how you cut that poor soul to ribbons in the dead of night. What will happen to him at the resurrection of the body?
That
will be charged to you, and you’d better think on it!” He turned his fever-bright eyes on Père La Chaise. “Why are you letting this man torment me,
mon père
? You and Maître du Luc have already refused his cup yourselves!”

Seething with offense, Neuville looked accusingly from Père La Chaise to Charles, and then at Le Picart and Montville, who stood on the other side of the bed. The doctor’s portly little shadow of an attendant did the same, his double chin quivering with indignation.

La Chaise, pasty-faced from his bad night, cast his eyes up. “
Mon père
,” he said, his voice ragged with trying for patience, “I cannot afford to take a purge this morning. The king has commanded our Jesuit presence at the Polish envoys’ arrival this
morning. No, no, don’t fret, he knows you are ill and holds you excused. Therefore, since we have been told that the Comte de Fleury was poisoned, and since you were the sickest of us last night, I strongly advise you to do as this good physician counsels you. The most learned doctors at the University of Paris agree that wine steeped in the antimony cup is the surest way to rid your body of unbalanced humors and—anything hurtful and alien.”

Jouvancy shook his head frantically against the pillow. “But that cup is made of
antimoine
, don’t you understand? The metal’s very name means anti-
monk
! It works against the bodily substance of monastics and kills us; that’s been known since time out of mind!”

Le Picart laid his hand on Jouvancy’s shoulder. “It can’t hurt you just because you’re a Jesuit.
Antimoine
does not mean anti-
moine
—anti-monk—that’s an old tale.” Le Picart eyed the doctor. “But it’s dangerous. To people of
all
conditions, so I’ve heard.”

“Say no more.” The red-faced Neuville waved a dismissive hand. “If he dies from poisoning, the consequences of your refusal will fall on you, on all of you, not on me.” He handed the antimony cup to his attendant, who received it as though it were a sacred offering. “I tell you Fleury’s liver was as black as a demon after eating at the Duc de La Rochefoucauld’s table. Where all five of you ate yesterday. And three of you were sickened.” He glared at Le Picart and Montville, who had experienced no illness at all. “Sometimes poison works very slowly.”

“But none of
us
are dead,” Charles said mildly.

“Not yet,” Neuville said through his teeth, with, to Charles’s ear, a tinge of regret.

The three priests leaned over Jouvancy, trying to soothe him. Neuville swept out of the room and the attendant waddled
after him, his russet coat skirts swinging like a goose’s tail feathers.

As the door shut, La Chaise looked up in relief and escaped into his own chamber.

Le Picart came to join Charles. “Are you well enough to go on seeing to Père Jouvancy?” he asked.

“Yes,
mon père
. Only a little tired.”

Montville pulled the bed curtains shut. “Père Jouvancy has fallen into a doze. Nothing like a nap for putting everything right.” He smiled regretfully at Le Picart. “I would advise a nice preventive nap for all of us this afternoon, if you and I were staying,
mon père
.”

“You’re leaving?” Charles said in surprise. “But I thought you wanted to see the Polish ambassadors.”

“We did,” Le Picart said. “But a messenger arrived from the college when we’d hardly risen. The argument over our water supply that delayed us now calls us back early. If we are to stop our neighbor going to court, we must start back as soon as we can find a carriage.” He beckoned Charles away from the bed. “Père Jouvancy certainly cannot travel yet,” he said softly, “and you must stay with him till he’s better. Only a day or two, I hope. If it begins to be more than that, send me word. Otherwise, I leave him in your care. And a doctor’s, if need be.” He grimaced. “There are certainly other court physicians besides Neuville.”

“I will do my best,
mon père
.” Charles sighed inwardly. Staying at Versailles was the last thing he wanted.

The two priests took their leave and went into La Chaise’s chamber. Charles heard them explaining their departure, and then heard the gallery door open and close as La Chaise took them down to the court to find a coach. Charles settled again on the stool beside Jouvancy’s bed.

“Is he gone?” Jouvancy whispered, suddenly waking and opening his eyes. “That doctor?”

“He is. No more need to worry. What you need now is rest. Père Le Picart and Père Montville have gone back to town, but you and I will stay here until you’re ready to travel.”

“I hate to stay,” Jouvancy said weakly. “We have so much to do before our tragedy and ballet rehearsals begin. But I cannot ride.” His face grew even more worried. “We could hire a carriage, but the motion—though I suppose I could manage it. If I must,” he added plaintively.

“No need at all. Hush now.”

Half unconsciously, Charles began to hum an old Provençal song, a lullaby his mother used to sing. It soothed him as well as Jouvancy, and even after the priest was sleeping, Charles went on singing, rocking a little on his stool until he, too, closed his eyes. La Chaise’s soft laughter woke him. He’d slipped sideways from the stool, his head resting on Jouvancy’s covers, and he struggled to his feet, momentarily not quite certain where he was.

“Oh. Ah. I—forgive me,
mon père
, I must have—”

“No need to apologize. He still sleeps?” La Chaise moved nearer the bed and peered at Jouvancy. “Good.” He sighed and looked at Charles. “I have come to remind you that we are to attend the Polish ambassadors’ arrival.”

“Oh.” Charles’s heart sank. “I had forgotten.”

“It is nearly time. I will wait in my chamber.”

Charles untied the towel he’d put around his waist to protect his clothes, went into the anteroom and splashed water on his face, drew his fingers through his thick curling hair, and adjusted his cassock’s sash. Not daring even to look at his bed because he wanted so badly to lie down on it, he presented himself before La Chaise. The king’s confessor took a small, one-handed
watch, shaped like a skull, from a pocket under his cassock and peered at it. As he put it back, a shout rose in the gallery and Bouchel scratched at the door, calling hoarsely, “Time,
mon père
.”

La Chaise heaved himself to his feet. “The Introducer’s carriage is in sight. We must go.”

Charles put out a hand. “I don’t think we should leave Père Jouvancy alone. In case these poisoning rumors are true.”

“In case? If Neuville is right about what he saw in Fleury’s autopsy, the rumors are all too true. Wait here a moment.” La Chaise went into the gallery and returned with Bouchel.

The footman’s face was drawn and bleached, as though he, too, might have been ill during the night, and Charles started to ask if he had, but La Chaise cut him off.

“Lock the door of the chamber where Père Jouvancy is,” La Chaise said to Bouchel. “And keep watch in here, but near the door, in case he needs you.”

Bouchel bowed without speaking, and they left him standing in the middle of the room, rubbing his forehead and staring at the floor.

As they went out into the gallery, Charles asked, “Who is this Introducer whose carriage is coming?”

La Chaise was craning his neck to see beyond the mass of courtiers pressed against the gallery windows. “He is the official who leads ambassadorial processions from Paris. These Poles made an official entry into the city yesterday. Normally, they would stay there for some days before coming to Versailles, but the king is anxious to get on with the marriage negotiations.”

His height letting him see over the crowd, Charles watched a long line of gilded, red-wheeled carriages passing the first of Versailles’s gates and rolling toward the palace.

“Quickly, so we can get a place.” La Chaise pulled Charles away and they hurried along the route they’d traveled yesterday
until they reached a small dark flight of stairs. “We’ll have to find a place at the foot of the Ambassadors’ Staircase,” La Chaise said, starting down. “We’re not grand enough to stand at the top near the throne.”

“Not even you?”

La Chaise shook his head. “Not unless there’s a religious statement to be made. When the king receives an envoy from a foreign prince who is not Christian, he might ask me to be there. But Poland is a Catholic country.”

In the sumptuous entrance hall, where the wide marble staircase rose beneath a painted and gilded coffered ceiling, a large crowd had gathered, talking and laughing excitedly and jockeying for space. The hall bristled with the pikes of the Hundred Swiss, spear points catching and scattering light as the guards stood lined up on each side of the path to the stairs, watching the crowd and the doors. Some made a fence of their pikes to keep back tourists, others stood around the antechamber walls, and more were outside the doors, the clusters of white plumes in their cocked-brim black hats making Charles think of menacing long-legged birds.

“I’ve heard that Louis is the best-guarded monarch in Europe,” he said, watching them. “It seems true.”

“Of course it’s true.” La Chaise began worming his way through the crowd, and Charles did his best to stay close behind. La Chaise elbowed ruthlessly until he had them close enough to the first step and the front rank of watchers to see and be seen. Craning his neck to see around La Chaise, Charles counted twelve steps of colored marble leading to a landing where classical figures of gilded bronze reclined beside the sculpture of a fountain. Above the figures, courtiers stood immobile, leaning on balustrades covered with cloth of gold and waiting for the envoys. Charles wondered why such stillness—before the ceremony
even began—and then realized with a start that they were only painted. To their right and left, the staircase branched, each side rising to the level of the royal apartments, where the king would receive the Poles in the royal bedchamber.

La Chaise sighed and righted his
bonnet
. “I hope this doesn’t take long. I still feel like I could fall on my face.”

“Don’t,” Charles said gravely, glancing significantly up the stairs. “Fall on your back—isn’t that the protocol? Don’t show royalty your back?”

That raised the ghost of a laugh. “A timely reminder.”

Charles hesitated. “
Mon père
, do you truly believe that we were poisoned yesterday?”

“I don’t know what to think. But I can easily believe it about Fleury. He was a grasping, arrogant man who liked no one.” La Chaise leaned close to Charles’s ear and said, under the noise of the crowd, “And he was known to be writing a
mémoire
of the court.”

“Ah.” Charles nodded thoughtfully. An acid-tongued
mémoire
of the court could well give someone enough reason to poison Fleury. He thought about his nighttime encounters with Neuville and the Duc du Maine. People had certainly been taking an interest in Fleury’s room. How many souls in this hive of gossip and hard-won position might fear that Fleury had vented his pen on them?

A blare of trumpets sounded, and every head turned toward the doors. The Swiss soldiers stood at rigid attention, the trumpets settled to a stately march, and the head of the Polish procession appeared. First came the Introducer of ambassadors and the grand master of ceremonies, gravely resplendent in shining black-satin suits. Behind them was a small tight formation of Polish soldiers, fair haired and impressively moustached. Then came the pair of envoys sent by King Jan Sobieski to negotiate
his son’s marriage: a stocky elder and a taller, darker man perhaps in his thirties. The watching crowd stared eagerly at their quilted robes of heavy calf-length silk—one robe scarlet and the other blue—with rows of gold tassels across the front. Both men were sweating under small fur-trimmed hats, and their moustaches were even longer and thicker than their soldiers’ luxuriant growths.

The crowd made its bows and curtsies as the men passed, watched them climb the stairs and take the left-hand branch toward the king’s
apartements
, and then began murmuring and making ready to move on to somewhere else. La Chaise turned to Charles.

“There are a few things I must do,
maître
. Go back and see how Père Jouvancy does. I will return as soon as I can. Do you feel you’ll be able to eat?”

“Yes, something, at least.”

“Me, I am not altogether there yet.” La Chaise raised an eyebrow. “I imagine that you do not wish to return to the Duc de La Rochefoucauld’s table.”

“On the whole, no,” Charles said, somewhat shamefaced. In spite of his reluctance to believe that a poisoner was at work—even after what Monsieur Neuville had said about Fleury’s blackened liver—he kept remembering the doctor’s whisper that he’d seen the duke and Madame de Maintenon in close conference. “But if there is bread and cheese in your chamber,
mon père
, that will do for me. When you return, if you have no objection, may I leave Père Jouvancy with you and go out into the gardens for a little air? While I work on our ballet
livret
?”

“Very well. I will return as quickly as I can.”

They parted and Charles went slowly back to his and Jouvancy’s room. But before he reached the black-and-white tiled gallery, a clamor of ominously low-pitched barking pulled him
up short. He looked around, expecting to see large dogs running toward him, but there were only a few courtiers in sight, and none seemed to notice the noise. Perhaps they were used to it, Charles thought, wondering why someone kept large dogs inside. The noise and crowding of Louis le Grand were beginning to seem positively pastoral by comparison with this place, and he had an overwhelming urge to bundle Jouvancy into a carriage and go home.