A Plague of Lies (42 page)

Chapter 23

W
hen they reached Marly’s entrance court and dismounted, Montmorency was better able to walk. The three of them, followed by the guard, made their slow way in without speaking.

As an elderly footman hovered, the guard took charge of Montmorency, and La Reynie said quietly to Charles, “I will tell the king what happened. But he will want to question you, too. And him.” He jerked his head grimly at Montmorency, who was staring indifferently at the vestibule floor.

Charles nodded in silence.

La Reynie looked at him worriedly. “Are you—can you see him now? Do you need something to drink?”

“I’m all right.”

The footman conducted them to the anteroom of the king’s apartments, where the Duc du Maine and Anne-Marie de Bourbon, both with pale faces and reddened eyes, stood close together against the red damask wall. They watched solemnly as the dirty, sweat-soaked men came in behind the footman, who stopped short when he saw them.

“Your Highness, shouldn’t the child at least go to her bed?”

Maine lifted his chin. “Madame de Maintenon gave us permission to stay. To find out what has happened to my sister.”

“As you wish, Your Highness.” The footman bowed to Maine. He went to the inner door, spoke to the footman who answered, and withdrew.

Anne-Marie launched herself at Charles and fastened both fists in his cassock. “Where is Lulu?”

Charles looked helplessly down at her and shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

Maine burst into tears. Anne-Marie’s lips quivered and she bit them hard. “She’s dead?”

He nodded, and she let her hands fall and drew in a shuddering breath. She went to Montmorency, who still stood blankly in the middle of the room, and took his hand.

“I am sorry,
monsieur
,” she whispered, looking up at him with full eyes. “You were her true knight.”

Montmorency seemed not to hear her. He sank onto a footstool and put his head in his hands.

Another footman came with wine. Charles drank deeply. When some of his wits had returned, he said to Anne-Marie, “I know you loved her.”

“You tried to stop her going! You tried to bring her back,” Anne-Marie lashed out at him, still standing beside Montmorency. “Why couldn’t you just let them go?”

“Lulu tried to kill the king.”

The little girl’s dark eyes flashed. “The king drove her to it. She pleaded and begged for weeks, for months, and he cared nothing for her suffering, nothing!” She glanced at the door that led deeper into the royal apartments. “And I don’t care if he hears me. I hate him, I hate fathers!” She began to sob. The horrified Duc du Maine led her to a chair by the wall, patting her back and trying to hush her.

The
lieutenant-général
drained his wineglass and sat down gratefully. “Your Highness,” he said to Maine, when the little
girl had quieted, “some questions, if you please. And forgive my not getting up, if you will. I am three times your age and very tired.”

“Of course,
monsieur
,” Maine said, becoming his usual politely anxious self. “Don’t trouble.”

“Was it you who took the Comte de Fleury’s
mémoire
from his rooms?”

“Yes. My sister—Lulu—” he swallowed hard. “She wanted to know what was in it about her. And I took her silver box. But Fleury’s book is gone.”

“Yes, we know where the book is. Don’t worry about that.”

At the mention of the box, Anne-Marie had raised her tear-drenched face and was looking warily at La Reynie.

Charles watched her thoughtfully. “What I am wondering,” he said, to no one in particular, “is where Lulu got the poison. Which I assume she’d had for several days, at least. Because I also assume she used it on the footman Bouchel. For refusing to help her out of the trouble that was partly his doing.”

Anne-Marie and Maine froze, but La Reynie’s head snapped around. Charles said nothing and waited.

“The poison was in her silver box when I brought it back from Fleury’s room,” Maine said dully.

“But she thought it was only a love philtre, I swear it! We all did,
maître
.” Anne-Marie got up from her chair and came across the room to Charles. “Everyone knew that old Fleury used love charms. He even wrote about it in his
mémoire
.” Sudden color came and went in her face. “He said he had a love philtre to make some court woman give in to him. We thought that was what the little packet in the box was—his love philtre. Lulu wanted to keep it, but she was afraid someone would find it in her room. So she put it—” She looked quickly at Charles and away. “Where she could get it when she wanted it.”

Suddenly, Charles understood. “And then she started praying in front of Madame de Maintenon’s reliquary,” he said softly.

Anne-Marie said nothing. Charles was silent, too, remembering the night Lulu had quarreled with Bouchel and run to the dark chapel. He’d stood in the chapel doorway and heard a small metallic sound. He’d found Lulu bent over the altar where the reliquary stood, and she’d shown him a supposedly dropped earring to explain the sound he hadn’t asked about. The sound that must have been the reliquary chamber in the cross snapping shut.

“What do you mean?” La Reynie said brusquely.

“I think she hid the little packet there,” Charles said. “In the reliquary. And when Bouchel said he’d done all he could to help her, she went to get her ‘love philtre.’”

Anne-Marie nodded. Her hazel-gold eyes were wide and pleading. “She thought it would make Bouchel do more to help her.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “She cared about him. She never meant to kill him.”

The Duc de Maine sighed. “When she realized what she’d done, something changed in her.” He bit his lip, trying to find the words he wanted. “I think she felt already damned because Bouchel died—so it didn’t matter anymore what she did.”

La Reynie’s face was noncommittal as he watched Maine. “Why would Fleury have put poison in the silver box?”

“Lulu and I read some of the
mémoire
together. Fleury hated his rich nephew. He thought the nephew’s money should by right have come to him. He wrote that the omens told him it would very soon be his. And poison is called
inheritance powder
, isn’t it? Fleury was always horribly in debt.”

“So when Bouchel died,” La Reynie said, “she knew what she had and decided to use it on her father.”

And I thought I was helping her
, Charles thought bitterly,
helping her accept her marriage. I encouraged her so earnestly to trust that God would not abandon her, even if her father had. She saw the use of the role I offered and played it, seeming to be what I wanted her to be. And I was eager to be deceived.

The door to the king’s reception room opened and La Reynie was summoned.

“He’ll want to see you in a moment,” La Reynie said hurriedly to Charles. “Say as little as you can. Answer his questions. Nothing more.”

He disappeared into the inner apartment, leaving Charles with the grieving children. Anne-Marie sat down on the floor beside Montmorency, and the Duc du Maine kept a wary eye on them both. The guard, who had tried to keep the little girl away from his captive, caught Charles’s eye and shrugged. Coping with Anne-Marie de Bourbon, Charles thought, was going to be beyond most men.

Seeing that there was an untasted glass of wine beside Montmorency, Charles got up and put it into his hand. “Drink,
monsieur
.”

The young man obediently swallowed the wine. “If you hadn’t come after us, she wouldn’t have died.”

“Others also came after you. You had no hope of getting away.” Charles pulled Anne-Marie to her feet. “Your Serene Highness,” he said gently, “please leave us for a little.” She studied him for a moment and went to sit on a footstool beside Maine. Charles turned his gaze on the guard. “If you will be so good as to stand in the doorway?”

The guard hesitated and then withdrew to the passage door. Charles knelt on the blue-and-gold carpet beside Montmorency. “Listen,” he said softly and urgently. “There’s not much time. The king is going to call us in, and before I have to face him, I
must know whether you’ve been helping the Prince of Conti get letters from the eastern border.”

“Letters?” Montmorency looked at him blankly. “I wrote letters to Lulu. The Duchess of Tuscany gave them to her.”

“No other letters passed through your hands?”

“No. Why should there be other letters?”

“Did you know that Lulu had the poison?”

“What poison?”

Charles realized with a shock that Montmorency had not been in the
salon
. “Haven’t you heard what we’ve been saying here?”

Montmorency shook his head, staring again at the floor.

Charles shook him by the arm. “Listen to me. Lulu tried to poison the king before she ran tonight. That’s why you were followed so quickly. Did you know she was going to do that?”

Horror washed the grief from Montmorency’s eyes. “Poisoned the king?”

“Tried to. She failed.”

“No! I didn’t—I would never—no, she wouldn’t! He’s her father.” He looked at Charles incredulously. “He’s the king!”

Charles sighed with relief. This poor dull knight seemed to have forgotten his own loud denunciations of Louis. His only treason had been to fall in love with the king’s daughter and try to rescue her from the king’s will. Stupid. Beyond stupid. But Charles hoped the king would not require Montmorency’s death for it.

“When you speak with the king,” Charles said, “answer his questions truthfully. Don’t defend yourself. Don’t accuse him of anything. Do you understand?”

“I didn’t know about the poison.” Montmorency’s eyes filled again with tears. “I loved her.”

“I know you did.”

The door to the royal reception room opened. “Maître du Luc.”

Charles’s heart missed a beat. He stood up and followed the expressionless footman into the king’s reception room, whose damask walls and hangings were of an even deeper red than the anteroom’s. In the candles’ dim glow, they made Charles think uncomfortably of blood. The king sat behind a small desk. La Chaise stood beside him and La Reynie stood in front of him. Charles stopped short of the desk and bowed. La Reynie stepped slightly aside and nodded at Charles to take his place.

The king’s eyes were hooded, as though what he wanted to say were written on the ebony inlaid surface of his desk. “I am told that my daughter took her own life.”

Unsure of what to say, Charles was slow to respond. Louis looked up, and Charles saw that the blue-gray Bourbon eyes were looking into deep darkness, the darkness of his daughter’s hatred and self-murder and damnation.

“She jumped into the river, Sire, but she may have meant to swim; she may not have known how strong the current was.”

“She knew. She saw the Machine built. She knew how the current ran.”

Charles bowed his head. There was nothing to say to that.

“Did she speak to you before she jumped?”

“Yes, Sire.”

“Tell me what she said.”

Charles felt as though he, too, were about to jump fatally. “She said that she did not want to live in—in a prison.”

The king frowned. “Prison? She thought I would imprison her?”

Charles hesitated. “Yes, Sire.”

“What else? You are not telling me everything. Speak!”

The last word was so loud in the lushly padded room that Charles jumped. Drawing himself up, he returned the king’s hard stare. “She said that she had lived in her father’s prisons long enough.”

Not a muscle moved in Louis’s face. But someone unseen moved in the room’s shadows behind Charles, and La Chaise’s eyes flicked toward the sound.

“I thank you,” the king said through stiff lips. “Leave us now.”

Charles inclined his head, started to turn away, and then stopped, unsure whether he was allowed to turn his back to Louis.

The king suddenly lifted a hand and gestured him back to the desk. “I am remiss,” he said. “You saved my life, and I thank you. But I command you never to speak of anything that happened tonight, except to your religious superior. The Society of Jesus will receive a suitable gift. That it is given because of your action will not be said.” He nodded another dismissal, but Charles didn’t go. Both La Chaise and La Reynie looked meaningly at the door, but Charles ignored them.