A Plague of Lies (27 page)

Marie-Ange LeClerc, the baker’s daughter from the shop beside the college chapel, came pelting up St. Jacques toward him, skirts flying. Going on ten years old now and as in love with horses as Charles was, she skidded to a halt just around the corner, where Charles had stopped when he caught sight of her. He reached down for her hand and swung her up to sit in front of him.

“
Merci, maître!
Did you have a good ride? Did you see the king? And his horses? I’m sure they’re not as pretty as Flamme. Oh, I wish Flamme were mine, but bakers can’t have horses, can they, they can’t afford them. And my father wouldn’t let me keep him in the back room. Did you see what’s happening at the postern?”

“
Bonjour
, Marie-Ange,” Charles said gravely. “I trust you are well?”

“Oh. Yes, and you? But did you see poor Montmorency? They’re going to beat him and he tried to run away!”

Charles’s heart sank. “Beat him? Why?”

“I don’t know, but they caught him just outside our shop, I saw them! He’s very handsome, I think.”

Charles looked down at the girl’s dark, curly head with its faded green ribbons, thinking that she was fast getting too old for her years. “Stick to horses, Marie-Ange. They’re much more intelligent than Montmorency.”

“How can I stick to horses if I can’t have one? But I can have a husband someday.
Maman
says girls have to marry.”

“Well, don’t marry Montmorency.”

Marie-Ange giggled. “I can’t. I don’t want to, he gets in too much trouble. Anyway, he’s head over heels in love with someone else.”

Charles frowned. “How do you know that?”

“
Maman
says your postern porter told her Montmorency’s in love with some girl at court, but she’s going to marry someone else and go and be a queen. I’d rather be a queen than marry anyone.”

She went on chattering happily, and Charles let her ride with him till they were near the back gate that led to the stable.

“Time to dismount, Your Majesty, so neither of us gets into trouble.”

“Oh, I won’t get in trouble.” She grinned at him over her shoulder. “
Maman
won’t miss me; she’s too busy scolding my father and his brother for going to the tavern every night. I like it when Uncle Paul comes—he’s the one who’s a baker at Gonesse—because
maman
shouts at them so much about the tavern, she doesn’t notice what I do! This time, though, she’s been shouting more than usual. Because she’s going to have a baby. My uncle told me that makes women shout at men more. But at least she’s not sick anymore.”

“I see,” Charles said, straight-faced. “Well, I’ll pray that she
and the baby will be safe. But you must get down now, we’re nearly at the back gate.”

With a sigh, she swung a leg over Flamme’s neck and slid to the ground. She reached up to pull her small white coif straight and dimpled at him. But it was the horse she thanked.
“Merci, Flamme!”
She put her arms as far as she could around the gelding’s neck and kissed him soundly, then gave Agneau a smacking kiss on the nose. “So she won’t feel slighted,” she confided to Charles. “I hope you go riding again soon,
maître
!”

“So do I,” Charles said, with more feeling than she could know.

Marie-Ange backed toward the street, waving and throwing kisses to the horses. Charles smiled and raised a hand in farewell, wondering with sudden sadness if Lulu or Anne-Marie had ever been as blithely happy as the baker’s daughter. He rode into the stable courtyard, feeling as though Versailles had followed him home.

Chapter 14

T
he lay brother working in the stable took charge of the horses and Charles went to report his return to the college rector. But when he reached Père Le Picart’s office, on the main building’s ground floor, the door was open and the college corrector, a large placid blacksmith, was just going in. Charles halted and turned away. But Le Picart caught sight of him and called out, “Maître du Luc, come in.” Reluctantly, Charles followed the corrector.

“Shut the door.” Le Picart was seated behind his desk. The head proctor, Henri Montmorency, and Montmorency’s tutor stood in front of him. Montmorency had a very black eye. “I believe you can throw some light on our difficulties,
maître
,” the rector said to Charles. “Let me state them as they stand. In the scant time since Monsieur Montmorency was sent back from Versailles on Wednesday night, he has twice breached our rules. At three o’clock this morning, he was discovered trying to get back into the college after leaving without permission. He says—” Le Picart gave Montmorency a scathing look. “He
says
that Père Vionnet”—the tutor got an even more scathing look—“gave him permission to go to the chapel to pray after supper. Monsieur Montmorency tells us he left by the street door while the doorkeeper there was showing our chapel to
visitors who came in from the street. He expects us to believe that he merely walked alone around the
quartier
. For eight hours.” The sarcasm in the rector’s voice was harsh enough to take the paint off the plaster walls.

“I confined him to his chamber, except for Mass. And this morning after Mass, he attacked Monsieur Michel Sapieha in the Cour d’honneur. It took three proctors to separate the combatants, and Monsieur Sapieha is in the infirmary with a broken nose. In addition to his black eye, Monsieur Montmorency has a broken tooth. They tell me they fought about the coming marriage of the king’s daughter and the Polish prince.”

Reprehensible though the attack—and its reason—were, Charles couldn’t help looking at Montmorency with new respect for his fighting ability. A broken nose was worse damage than a broken tooth, and Michel Sapieha, the older of the two Polish students, was a young giant who looked capable of besting a squadron of Turks.

“After this second flouting of our rules,” Le Picart said, “I called in Monsieur Genet, our college corrector.”

The blacksmith shuffled his feet in embarrassment and tried to hide the cane behind his gray-stockinged leg.

“He went to Monsieur Montmorency’s chamber—where Monsieur Montmorency’s tutor, Père Vionnet, should have been but inexplicably was not—and Monsieur Montmorency declined to take his caning and instead broke the latch on the postern door in the course of his attempt to leave. He still refuses to explain any of this. Including Père La Chaise’s note to me on Wednesday night, when Monsieur Montmorency was sent back from Versailles. Now I am faced with dismissing him from the college. Before deciding that, I would like to know just what is going on. So what more can you tell us,
maître
?”

Charles had a sudden coughing fit to give himself a moment
to think. There were far too many people here for him to speak freely. His eyes met Le Picart’s and he tilted his head slightly toward the group around Montmorency. “Père La Chaise did not take me into his confidence concerning his note to you,
mon père
.”

Le Picart looked hard at him. “I see.” He transferred his look to Montmorency’s tutor. Vionnet should have looked contrite over his failures, but he only looked bored. All tutors were ecclesiastics, but not all were Jesuits. Charles had heard that Vionnet was a superfluous priest from one of the Montmorency estates.

“Père Vionnet,” the rector said, “I ask you once more, why did you not report your pupil’s absence last night? And why were you not in his chamber when the corrector came?”

Charles thought that if Vionnet had been a Jesuit, the rector’s tone would have made him pray for the sky to fall and hide him.

But Vionnet only looked up from examining a fingernail and shrugged. “Even tutors must sleep,
mon père
. And answer calls of nature.”

“Your duties, Père Vionnet, include knowing where your pupil is at all times and having him under your eye most of the time.”

Vionnet smiled and shrugged. “He finds it distasteful to have a nursemaid. I find it distasteful to play nursemaid to a man of eighteen.”

“Then perhaps other employment would be more to your taste,” the rector snapped. His voice would have frozen hell’s flames.

Vionnet regarded him with the half-closed eyes of a disdainful cat. “Oh, Madame de Montmorency has already found me
new employment, which I’ll begin when this summer term ends.”

“Unless you want to go earlier, you will fulfill your duties here according to my orders. Or both you and your pupil will leave the college in well-publicized disgrace. Is that how you want to return to Madame de Montmorency? And you, Monsieur Montmorency, is that how you want to return to your mother?”

Montmorency seemed to deflate and shook his head.

Vionnet returned to examining his fingernail. “Your word is law here, of course,
mon père
. I only hope nothing happens to make you lose the gift Madame de Montmorency plans to make to the college when Monsieur Montmorency leaves in good order at the end of the term.”

“Plans may change for many reasons.” Le Picart’s voice was as dangerously smooth as an uncoiling snake. “But I sincerely advise you to hope you have nothing to do with any change there may be.”

Vionnet’s head jerked up and his eyes widened. “Yes,
mon père
.”

Charles looked down to hide his smile. The words seemed pulled out of Vionnet without his volition, and from the startled look Montmorency gave him, his pupil thought so, too.

“Monsieur Montmorency.” Le Picart rose. “Unless you wish to return in disgrace to your mother
today
, you will return to your chamber and take your strokes of the
férule
from our corrector. The choice is yours.”

“Come,
monsieur
,” the blacksmith rumbled at Montmorency. “It won’t be so bad, you’ll see. I’m sure your father has given you worse many a time.”

Montmorency, whose mother had always seemed to Charles
far more alarming than any father, bowed slightly and stiffly to the rector and turned to face the blacksmith. The boy’s eyes were hot with misery and his mouth was trembling. Not at the threat of the cane, Charles realized, but at being so shamed before witnesses.

“At your pleasure,
messieurs
.” With more dignity than Charles would have thought he could muster, Montmorency stalked out of the office.

The silent proctor followed on his heels, and the blacksmith made an awkward and rueful bow to the rector and followed. The tutor went, too, but without taking any leave of Le Picart. Wishing he could follow them, Charles waited.

“Now,” Le Picart said. “Say what you would not before the others.”

Charles folded his hands and composed himself to be clear and brief. “Our errand went very well—”

“I already know all that. Père Jouvancy arrived before you and made his report. I sent him to rest. I want to know exactly why Montmorency was sent back here. Père La Chaise’s note said only to keep the boy here in the college and otherwise explained nothing, no doubt because he feared that the wrong person might read it. I assume that whatever happened at Versailles explains why Montmorency has been so unmanageable since he returned. God knows he is not bright, but he has never till now been a rule breaker. The
bon Dieu
permitting, he will soon finish his time with us. And if he can be prevailed upon to conduct himself acceptably in the meanwhile, I would prefer—for practical reasons—to let him finish.”

“Well you know, of course, about the Polish marriage that is being negotiated for the king’s daughter. And clearly you are also aware of Montmorency’s strong feelings about it, given his fight with Sapieha.”

“Yes. What of it?”

“Montmorency fancies himself in love with the girl.”

Le Picart brought a hand down hard on his desk.
“What?”

“He swears that he will prevent Mademoiselle de Rouen from going to Poland. He asked me if I thought the king would let him win her right to stay in single combat.”

The rector stared at Charles, slowly shaking his head. “Dear Blessed Mary.”

“Montmorency is also doing his best to become one of the Prince of Conti’s followers. And Conti encourages him, though I cannot see why, unless for the Montmorency name.”

“Père La Chaise has spoken to me of his doubts concerning Conti’s loyalty,” Le Picart said grimly.