The Rhetoric of Death (43 page)

“They made their own evil,
mon père
,” La Reynie said brusquely.

“As do we all.” The rector knelt between the bodies and began to pray for his lost “sons.”

Lieutenant-Général La Reynie went down into the courtyard to talk to his men and Charles went to find Pernelle. She was sitting in the dark corner of a wing with her face in her hands.

“Are you all right?” He touched her shoulder. “I'm sorry you had to see this.”

A sob caught in her throat. “I thought you were dead.”

“So did I for a moment.” Charles held on to a side flat, thinking that he might still die from sheer exhaustion. “Can you stay hidden a little while more? La Reynie seems to have forgotten you and I want to keep it that way. I'll get us away as soon as I can.”

A sudden beam of light sent Charles's heart into his throat.

“Emotional, isn't he, your young friend?” La Reynie stood behind Charles, holding the lantern high and looking at Pernelle. “As emotional as a girl. From the south, too, I hear in his voice. An unusual coincidence.”

“I'll see him home shortly.” Charles started back through the narrow passage between the wings and La Reynie had to retreat in front of him. Charles stopped close to the wings, so as not to disturb Le Picart, who was still praying. As a distraction from Pernelle, but also because he wanted to know, Charles asked, “Is it true, Monsieur La Reynie, about the child and Mme Douté? Are they dead?”

“I've sent someone to find out for certain.”

Charles looked at the rector, bent low as though the deaths Guise had caused hung on his own soul, and thought about the other deaths, Huguenot deaths, that Guise had helped to cause. “Monsieur La Reynie,” he said abruptly, “you told me that you protect the Huguenots still in Paris.”

“What of it?” La Reynie said warily.

“You heard what Moulin said about the dragonnades? French dragonnades, I mean.”

“I heard.”

“You can use what you heard to stop them.”

Le Reynie looked pityingly at him. “I cannot.”

“Why not? Do you want more of this?” Charles gestured angrily at the bodies, the priest, the blood.

La Reynie did not respond.

“Oh, I see.” Helplessness rose in Charles's throat like bile. “I beg your pardon. I should have known. After all, I first saw you talking to Guise and Louvois. An unholy trinity, I thought you were then. I had come to think differently, but you are telling me I was right the first time. Death does not trouble you.”

La Reynie's eyes blazed red in the torchlight and he struck Charles a blow on the cheek that sent him crashing into a wing. Two of La Reynie's men, stooping to lift Guise's body onto a board, started toward Charles, but La Reynie shook his head and they held where they were. For a long perilous moment, he and Charles faced each other, both their faces dark with anger.

Then the lieutenant-général shut his eyes and turned his head away. “I watched my first wife die.” His shaking voice was a thread of sound for only Charles to hear. “And three of my children.” He opened his eyes and stepped close to Charles. “You are a celibate, you will never know the pain of any of that! You may be very sure that death bothers me. I see death most days. And of course I have a part in the dragonnades. So do you and every other faithful Catholic, if you choose to look deeply enough. You blind innocent, I will spell it out for you. And if you talk, you may well find yourself dead. Our war minister Louvois has become too powerful for the comfort of many highly placed men. Many of whom not only hate him, they fear him. And his ambition.” La Reynie's softly furious words sounded like grease spitting in a hot pan. “Everyone knows that Louvois keeps the dragonnades going for Louis. But few know that Guise was Louvois's confessor. Which means that Guise knew Louvois's secrets like no one else, and Louvois's secrets are not only legion, but potentially perilous to Louvois. When I learned that he was Guise's penitent, I began to wonder if I might get some hold over Guise and trade with him for some threat I could use to curb Louvois's power. Then someone—and I was sure it was someone in your college—started killing. And I recruited you. Now, thanks in great part to you and your rector, I have this English plot to hold over Louvois's head.”

“What about Lysarde's murder and the Dutchman's—or whoever he was? When you told me those two were dead, I had the strong feeling that you assumed Louvois was responsible.”

“No doubt. But there will be no proving it.”

“What about the dragonnades, then? You can prove those, you can stop them!”

“How can they be stopped when officially they do not occur? The man who makes Louis admit they go on at all is finished.”

Charles shook his head in disgust. Louvois had said exactly that to Guise. “And so we are back where we were,” he flung at La Reynie. “You will not risk your comfortable position.”

“Oh, very comfortable,” La Reynie said wearily. “If you could hear anything other than your own emotion, you might be in better case, Maître du Luc. I have used my power to draw a fragile circle of peace around Paris. And Versailles. I have done what I can do.”

A soft rustle of cloth made Charles realize that Pernelle had crept closer and was listening just out of sight. “Why did you have men watching the LeClercs's bakery?” he said.

The lieutenant-général watched his men carry away Moulin's body. Softly, more to himself than to Charles, he said, “To keep Louvois's men away from her. He has flies in the Louvre, too.”

“To keep Louvois's men away?” Charles said, to be sure he'd heard right. That couldn't mean what it seemed to mean. But if it did . . . As he stared at La Reynie, an insane thought—or a fragile hope—reared itself in Charles's mind. When La Reynie's men were gone, the thought and the hope were still there. Charles began cautiously feeling his way. “Forgive me for insulting you, Monsieur La Reynie.”

La Reynie nodded slightly without looking at him.

“You have said that you are indebted to me,
monsieur
,” Charles said.

Another nod.

“I think you are a man who pays his debts. Even to self-righteous innocents.”

Now La Reynie was looking at him. “I pay my debts.”

Praying that his hunch was right, Charles nodded toward the wings. “My young friend needs to go to Geneva.” He heard Pernelle stifle a gasp. “Will you pay your debt, Lieutenant-Général La Reynie, by helping him on his way?”

It seemed to Charles that all three of them stopped breathing for longer than should have been possible. La Reynie looked into the darkness where Pernelle stood.

“Come here,” the lieutenant-général said.

Pernelle stepped into the lantern's light.

“Take your hat off, boy,” La Reynie said gruffly.

She looked at Charles. He nodded and she slowly removed her hat.

A soft sound escaped La Reynie. “I thought so.” His voice caught in his throat and he swallowed. “When I saw you in the bakery, you ran to the back so quickly, but I thought so. You could almost be my Marguerite's—” He smiled at Pernelle “—brother, shall we say?” To Charles's astonishment, he drew himself up, swept his hat off, and bowed low to her. When he straightened, he was Lieutenant-Général of Paris again. “Be at the college postern before first light, boy. Accept my apology for striking you,” he said stiffly to Charles. Then he went to deal with the dead and the fragment of peace their dying had restored to his city.

A
s Lieutenant-Général La Reynie reached the edge of the stage, the man he'd sent to the Hôtel de Guise came running back across the courtyard, spurs clanking. Charles went closer to hear the man's report. He'd seen the female spy working at the house, the officer told La Reynie, and it was true that a woman had given birth there a few hours ago. In the Guise chapel, he added, with avid relish. Neither the woman nor the child had lived. Gossip in the house had it that the child was full-term.

Charles crossed himself and said quietly, “Her child was due in October, I heard.”

“So M. Douté no doubt believed,” La Reynie returned. “I suppose she would have prepared him to welcome a surprisingly large and healthy early-born babe.”

Behind them, the rector groaned. They turned around as he crossed himself and got to his feet. “May God forgive her,” Le Picart said sadly. “May God forgive us all. Monsieur La Reynie, I must call brothers to take charge of the bodies and prepare them for their graves. Will you wait in my office? We can finish saying what needs to be said there. And you, Maître du Luc, go to your bed. You and I will talk tomorrow. You have done more than enough for us today.”

“Thank you,
mon père
. Will you release Frère Fabre now? Tonight?”

“Immediately. And you will see that boy of Mme LeClerc's home?”

When Le Picart and La Reynie were gone, Charles went to get Pernelle, who had withdrawn again into the stage wings. He wanted to have her gone before the lay brothers came for the bodies.

“Is it really true?” she whispered, grasping his hands. In the torchlight, her face was white with shock. “I thought you had gone deranged. Am I really going, and so easily? Can we trust him?”

“Yes.” Charles wasn't sure he liked La Reynie, but he had misjudged him badly. “We can trust him.”

“I can never thank you for what you've done, Charles.”

“Seeing me through the show was thanks enough.” His effort at lightness was a failure. His insane gamble had succeeded and she was going. He cleared his throat and dropped her hands. “Go back to Mme LeClerc tonight, Pernelle. It's safe. I'll meet you outside the postern before first light.”

She looked almost as though he'd struck her. “Is that what you want?”

“You'll be more—” He couldn't force the lie through his tightening throat. “Please.”

She studied him for a moment. Then she drew his face down and kissed him, spun quickly away, and ran across the stage and jumped to the ground. When Charles heard the porter open and close the postern, he sighed out what started as relief and ended as desolation.

In his rooms, he shed his cassock without bothering to light the candle. He went to the window, opened the casement, and leaned out, remembering his first Paris night. There were fewer candles now in the windows up and down the street. Schools were closing for vacation, as Louis le Grand shortly would. He lifted his face to the damp air and clouded sky and wondered if there would be rain before morning. Think of rain, weather, the tragedy, the ballet, he told himself. Even of the real tragedy, whose final act had played out tonight on the stage. Think of anything but Pernelle.

He felt his way to the prie-dieu, groping like a blind man, but not because of the dark. He sank to his knees and prayed for the Doutés, living and dead, for Lisette's dead child, for her maid Agnes waiting for her trial in the Châtelet, and the porter and the tutor. He even brought himself to pray for Guise and Moulin, because guilty and innocent alike had been brought to ruin by greed and hatred and the love of power. He turned then to giving thanks for the preservation of his own life and for La Reynie's unexpected humanity. Finally, he prayed for Pernelle's safe journey and that she would find her daughter and sister-in-law waiting for her. But those last prayers cost him dearly and his heart overflowed with the pain of her going. These last few days, even with their danger, exhaustion, and worry, had been so full of the happiness he'd always felt in her presence. Just knowing she was there, at Mme LeClerc's, even when he hadn't seen her, had lit a small, bright fire in his heart.
What will I do now
, he asked the Silence. Finish the school term, make my yearly Jesuit retreat, and during it make my decision about the Society? He dropped his head onto his arms. “Tell me,” he begged aloud. “I love her. What do you want of me?” The Silence held its peace. Some quality in the air, or maybe it was only his misery, made Charles feel that It was holding Its breath.

“Charles?” The door closed softly and Pernelle's feet moved lightly across the ancient floorboards.

Charles raised his head. “What's wrong? How did you get here?”

“Shhh.” Her fingers were warm on his lips. “Nothing's wrong. Mme LeClerc found her stairway key; it was in a flour barrel.” She withdrew her hand and he waited, like a man in a trance. “She said spending my last night down there was a terrible waste. She said it wasn't fair. To either of us.”

“And what do you say?” he said in a choked whisper. “What's fair to you?”

“I am here,” she said simply. “David is gone, I am not breaking any vow.”

“But I would be.”

“Not a final vow.”

“That's hair splitting.”

“Well, that thing Jesuits do—casuistry, isn't it called? Don't you teach that the end justifies the means?”

“It's much more complicated than that.” Suddenly he was laughing. And thinking that any man who thought body and mind had no commerce had never loved a brilliant woman. “Is it the custom among Huguenots to discuss theology when considering—um—?”

“Considering bedding together? It has been known,” she said gravely, but he could hear her smile even though he couldn't see it. “But it is not required.”

“What is the end the means might justify, Pernelle?”

“Whole-heartedness.”

“Whose?”

“Ours. But especially yours.”

“Expound, my learned
maîtresse
,” he said laughing softly.