The Eloquence of Blood (17 page)

“That sounds suspiciously like an order.”

“Does it?” La Reynie laughed softly as he bowed. “Then God go with you as you obey it.”

“Wait,
mon lieutenant-général
—what about Paul Saglio?”

“Saglio?”The
lieutenant-général
looked momentarily blank. “Yes, Saglio.” He sighed and shook his head. “Do you have any idea how many men I do not have? When I find someone to send to Vaugirard, I will send him.”

On his way back toward the college, no one challenged Charles, but he felt as though accusing eyes watched him from every doorway, as though everyone he passed were about to start singing the tavern song. He walked along the rue des Fossés, looking out at the Faubourg St. Jacques, the suburb that had grown up south of the walls. The Faubourg was thick with recent monastic foundations, built solidly of stone, with ample land around them. Beyond the gray lace of winter trees lay the walled precincts of the Feuillantines, Ursulines, and Daughters of Mary, their frozen gardens bare and empty. The great dome of Val de Grace, the Benedictine house beloved by Louis XIV's mother, rose above the convent walls like a sugared Christmas cake.

New private houses of gleaming stone were scattered along the road among the religious foundations, but not far beyond them, the countryside still spread itself. Soon, Charles told himself, plowing would start in the barren fields, fruit trees would blossom, the sun would come back. And, please God, his own heaviness of spirit would lighten. In truth, though, he wasn't sure. He'd chosen clearly and from his heart to remain a Jesuit. But his grief for what he hadn't chosen had been ripped wide open by Martine Mynette's murder, by her loss of the future she should have had.
Nothing is wasted
, the Silence had said—not death, not grief—
unless you waste it
. Was this renewed grief of his meant to drive him to find her killer? Was that what the Silence had meant?

He waited, very still on the windswept roadway, hoping the Silence would answer him. And caught his breath, wondering if the white horse galloping along a path beside a snowy field, its rider's black cloak flying, the man's streaming hair black as a crow's feather in the gray light, might be a sign. He watched them out of sight, but the Silence held its peace and the horse and rider only left him yearning to ride in the wind's teeth and leave grief behind.

Charles was nearly at the college when he saw a huddle of beggars in the street ahead of him, outside the church of St. Étienne des Grès. A halting voice came from their midst, and he realized that someone was reading aloud. A man hushed a chattering woman, who hit him and started pushing her way out of the huddle. The reader's voice grew louder.
“Elle était riche, elle est morte, les Jésuites dansent sur son corps . . .”

Bursting from the group nearly in Charles's path, the woman who'd been hushed screeched, “Here's one, here's a Jesuit vulture! But he can't eat us, we've no gold for his guts!”

The others turned and Charles saw that the reader was the young man who'd pleaded for the old beggar on Christmas Eve. When he saw Charles, his eyes grew round with fear and he dropped the sheet of paper and backed away. Some of the beggars started singing the words of the tavern song, but the old man who'd attacked the Condé's reliquary limped close to Charles, thrust his head forward, and squinted at him.

“Shut your mouths,” he yelled over his shoulder. “This death-bird gives good alms, he gave me this coat.”

Charles picked up the broadsheet from the cobbles and smiled reassuringly at the reader.

“Where did you get this,
mon ami
?”

The young man ran. Seeming to catch his fear, the others ran, too, and the old man limped after them, yelling at them to stop and cursing them for idiots. They rounded the corner of St. Étienne des Grès and Charles followed them, wondering suddenly where they sheltered. But in the scant moments it took him to reach the side street that ran in front of the college of Les Cholets, they disappeared. He turned back to the rue St. Jacques, studying the broadsheet as he went. This sheet, at least, still had only the one verse, which was somewhat reassuring. No printer's name, of course—no one would put his name to an effort to stir up unrest and disturb the city's peace.

As Charles neared the postern door, a shop sign on the college façade creaked in a burst of wind. Charles looked up. The sign's crusty, golden loaf of bread made him smile, thinking of the LeClercs, the family of bakers who rented the shop and its living quarters. Mme LeClerc and her small daughter Marie-Ange had taken him to their hearts when he arrived last summer, helping him when he'd sorely needed it. The family should soon be back in Paris from their Christmas visit to M. LeClerc's brother in the nearby village of Gonesse.

His spirits lightened a little by that thought, Charles went to the rector's office, where he found Père Le Picart sitting by the fireplace, his breviary in his hand.

“I see news in your face, Maître du Luc,” Le Picart said. “Please, sit.”

Charles took the chair on the other side of the hearth and loosened his cloak. “News indeed,
mon père
. Henri Brion is dead. Stabbed to the heart.”

Le Picart crossed himself. “Brion? Dear God. So that is why the poor man never came to see me?”

“I don't know how long he's been dead. A beggar found him in a midden ditch near the Place Maubert. Someone came from the Brion house to tell me, and I'm just back from seeing the body.”

“May God receive his soul. This is the last thing I expected! Certainly the last thing we needed. Of course,” he added dryly, “poor Monsieur Brion hardly needed it, either. Were the police there? Is there any thought of who killed him? Or why?”

“Lieutenant-Général La Reynie was there. He has gone to question a goldsmith called Bizeul who, according to one of The Procope's waiters, took Brion forcibly out of the coffeehouse on Thursday night. The waiter and a woman who was begging at the coffeehouse door say that this Bizeul and another man pretended that Brion was drunk, but he wasn't. And since then, no one seems to have seen Brion alive.”

Le Picart frowned thoughtfully. “A notary may come to know financial secrets, after all.”

“True. Though family secrets are often more deadly.”

“So you don't suspect this goldsmith?”

“He must be suspected, if it is true that he took Henri Brion forcibly out of the coffeehouse. But I can imagine no reason for him to have killed the girl. I cannot help but think that there is only one killer. Martine Mynette and Brion were both stabbed. Their lives were joined in family friendship as well as in the
donation entre vifs
transaction. For both to die on the same day is too much coincidence.”

“I agree. So who had reason to kill them both?”

“The most obvious answer is Henri Brion's son, Gilles,” Charles said reluctantly. “His father was trying to force him into a marriage with the Mynette girl. And if he killed only the girl, his father would surely have tried to force him to court another heiress. But from the little I've seen of Gilles Brion, I simply cannot imagine him as a killer.”

“Anyone may be tempted to kill. And until we find the person who
has
been so tempted,” Le Picart said grimly, “the connections between the two victims mean that Brion's death will be laid at our door along with Martine Mynette's.”

They were both quiet under the weight of that certainty. The dim light through the small window's greenish glass made the rector's face look even more tired and drawn than it was.

The quiet was broken by a knock at the door. The rector gave permission to enter and a lay brother came in, holding out a folded piece of paper.

“This was left with the porter,
mon père
. For Père Damiot.” He handed the folded paper to Le Picart, bowed, clasped his hands against his apron skirt, and composed himself to wait.

“Please excuse me, Maître du Luc.” Le Picart opened the letter and scanned the page. Like the older religious orders, the Society of Jesus required that any letter sent to or written by a Jesuit be read by a superior. When he finished reading, he stared open-mouthed at the page in his hand. “Unbelievable,” he breathed. Still looking at the letter, he said to the lay brother, “
Mon frère
, bring Père Damiot to me, please.”

The brother bowed and went out.

“Well,” Le Picart said, looking up. He seemed more at a loss for words than Charles had ever seen him. “Well. This suggests that your initial impression of Gilles Brion may be correct,
maître
. But we must wait until Père Damiot has read this, since it is written to him.”

“Of course,
mon père
.”

“A goldsmith,” Le Picart murmured to himself, thoughtfully tapping a finger on the letter in his lap. “Very likely.”

Charles folded his hands tightly in his lap to keep himself from snatching the letter and devouring it.

“Mon père,”
he said after a moment, both to take his mind off the letter and also because he needed to relieve his conscience, “after Monsieur La Reynie finished examining Brion's body, he asked me to go with him to talk to the people at Procope's. I went. I sat with him and drank coffee. I felt it was part of doing the task you've set me. But—well—it is a coffeehouse.”

The rector sighed. “Maître du Luc.” He sounded as though he were talking to a sixteen-year-old novice. “I am not aware that Rome has condemned coffee.” He smiled at Charles. “Rather the contrary, if gossip serves.”

“Oh, yes?” Charles was momentarily diverted by the thought of His Holiness in papal tiara, sipping coffee in some Roman Procope's.

“You are pursuing these questions at my express order,
maître
. Where the questions take you, you will go. I charge you only to remember that Monsieur La Reynie pursues his own interests first and last.”

A flurry of knocking came at the door, and Père Damiot was inside almost before Le Picart could bid him enter. His thin, olive-skinned face was alight with curiosity.

“Yes,
mon père
? A letter for me?”

The rector waited serenely until Damiot remembered the required
reverence
to his superior. Then Charles rose and offered his chair to Damiot who, as a priest, was his superior.

“Bonjour, maître,”
Damiot said hurriedly. “Thank you. With your permission,
mon père
?”

Le Picart nodded and Damiot sat. Charles's mouth twitched. Damiot was looking at the letter in Le Picart's hand the way Charles's boyhood beagle had watched meat roasting in the kitchen fireplace.

“From your esteemed father,
mon père
,” the rector said, holding the letter out. “Read it here, please; it touches on what Maître du Luc and I were discussing.”

“Yes,
mon père
.” Damiot glanced at Charles and then was absorbed in reading. Fortunately, the letter was short. Incomprehensibly, before Damiot reached the end of it, he was laughing. Eyes dancing with mirth, he looked at Le Picart. “Incredible! Have you ever heard anything to match this,
mon père
?”

“Certainly nothing financial,” the rector said dryly. He turned to Charles, who was utterly at sea. “We will tell you shortly what is entertaining Père Damiot,
maître
, but first you need to know that his esteemed father is a merchant goldsmith and a member of the Six Corps.”

“I do know from Père Damiot that his father is a goldsmith,
mon père
—but, what is the Six Corps?”

Damiot looked at Charles in disbelief.

The rector said kindly, “The association of Paris's six most influential guilds.”

“My father is head of the goldsmiths' guild.” Damiot looked questioningly at Le Picart, who nodded at him to continue. “It is like this,
maître
. This morning, my father heard something that closely concerns Monsieur Henri Brion. He had already heard about the Mynette bequest coming to us—I think everyone in Paris has heard of it by now.” Damiot looked apologetically at Le Picart. “I hope I did not speak out of turn,
mon père
, but when my father visited me yesterday, he asked me if we had sure proof of Monsieur Simon Mynette's intention, and I told him we had Simon Mynette's letter, notarized by Monsieur Henri Brion.”

“Continue,” Le Picart said noncommittally.

“Well, now my father has written to me because he is worried that news that has just reached him about Monsieur Brion may somehow touch us—because of the Mynette property, you understand. Are you with me, Maître du Luc?”

“Barely.”

He leaned almost gleefully toward Charles. “What has come to light is a scheme for smuggling silver through customs. It was just uncovered at the port in Brest. This scheme has been traced to Paris, and rumor has it that our Monsieur Henri Brion is its creator.”

Le Picart lifted his hand slightly to pause Damiot. “What you do not know, Père Damiot, is that Henri Brion left Procope's coffeehouse on Thursday evening with a goldsmith named Bizeul and another man. Those who saw him go say he didn't go willingly. And this morning Henri Brion was found dead.”

“No!” Damiot looked incredulously from the rector to Charles. “Is this certain?”

Charles nodded. “I saw his body.”

“Well, I can easily imagine,” Damiot said, hastily crossing himself, “that Brion's investors may have been tempted to kill him over losing so much money because this smuggling scheme has failed. But I know Monsieur Bizeul and I cannot imagine he would do murder.”

“Why not?” the rector said sharply.