The Whispering of Bones (28 page)

Charles was wondering how much longer he could hold out when Richaud finally came downstairs.

“Get up, then,” he said, standing over them. “And don't make noise out there or you'll be dead sooner rather than later.”

Wing managed to get to his feet, but Charles's headache was too blinding and he fell back on the straw. Richaud untied Wing's hands and let him pull Charles up. Then he herded them out a low back door into the wildly overgrown garden.

“You first,” he said to Wing.

Wing started wading through the overgrown garden to its crumbling wall. Though his hands were still tied, Charles launched himself at Richaud, knocking him to the ground and falling on top of him.

“Help me!” Charles yelled, and Wing came at a run. But he was too slow, and Richaud heaved Charles off with surprising strength and pulled a long knife from under his coat.

“Stop! Don't move, he has a knife,” Charles cried, and curled into a ball as Richaud kicked him savagely in the thigh.

“Shut up! Get back inside, crawl if you have to, you scum,” Richaud hissed at Charles. “You, too, Englishman.”

To Charles's surprise, Wing ignored him and helped Charles up. “You have to let him piss, too,” he said sternly to Richaud. “It already smells bad enough in there. And you have to breathe the air just like we do.”

“Get away from him.” Richaud made a feint with the knife at Wing, who ducked and clapped a hand over his mouth, trying not to cry out, his momentary courage gone. With a swing of the knife, Richaud warned Charles not to move. Then he retied Wing's hands and ordered Charles to turn around.

“Go piss,” he said, when Charles's hands were free. “Make any other move, make a sound, and this one's dead.” He went to Wing and stood behind him with the knife at the Englishman's throat.

Charles limped away through the undergrowth, telling himself that he would have a chance to try again. When he was relieved from his body's clamoring, he limped back, breathing deeply because he'd remembered from the army that sometimes breathing was almost as good as eating. He filled his lungs with cold morning air and the faint scents of herbs like rosemary and mint rising from plants long gone wild and crushed underfoot.

Richaud and Wing stood exactly as Charles had left them. Richaud ordered Charles to stop and turn around. Charles turned slowly, eyeing the length of rope dangling from Richaud's free hand.

“Walk backward to me,” Richaud snapped at him. When Charles reached him, Richaud started retying his wrists. Wing started complaining that his rope was too tight and Richaud's hands stilled. Charles felt him turn to look at Wing. “Stand still and shut up,” he muttered at the Englishman.

Charles glanced over his shoulder. Wing was still wriggling and complaining and Richaud was looking at him instead of at what he was doing. Charles pulled one wrist slightly higher than the other and managed to hook a thumb through a loop of rope. He had to bite his cheek to keep from crying out as the rope was tightened on his thumb joint, but he went meekly back inside with the satisfaction of having given himself a small weapon.

Inside, however, more trouble was waiting. Two well-dressed young men whom Charles had never seen before stood beside the fireplace. One had stripped off his gloves and was impatiently slapping the table with them. The other had pulled off his wig and was swearing as he tried to brush a fat brown spider off it.

Richaud flicked a glance over them as he herded his captives back to the straw. “What kept you?”

The man with the gloves ignored the question. “Is all ready for us?”

“Yes, no thanks to you. Since you leave me to see to everything.”

The men glanced indifferently at the scholastics, as though they were chickens trussed for sale in the market.

“Go up.” Richaud waved his hand magisterially at the staircase. The man with the gloves mounted the stairs, but his companion stamped on the spider and then went to the hearth to peer into the jug of wine.

“This should be steaming,
mon cher
Richaud. Heat it and bring it with you.” He shook out his wig, put it on, and took the stairs two at a time after his companion.

Richaud, swearing resentfully under his breath, went to the hearth and poked up the fire to warm the wine. On the floor above, the two men talked in low voices and there was a volley of thuds as something fell to the floor.

Richaud took the wine from the fire and glanced at the Jesuits. “If you move from the straw or make noise to attract attention from the road, I'll kill you now instead of later.” As he stamped upstairs, Charles began straining against the rope around his wrists, softly telling Wing what he'd done outside. The Englishman prayed and Charles patiently twisted the rope, biting blood from his lip to stop himself yelling from the pain in his newly healed stab wound. But the knot refused to slip.

Finally Charles shook his head. “It's not working.”

“Then we should both pray.”

Their prayers were short. As Charles had learned on the battlefield, when death seemed likely, there was surprisingly little to be said, and that little was simple enough. “Oh, God, make haste to help me.” And if one could manage it, “Not my will, but thine be done . . .” Though, more often it was, “Save me, God! And I will do this and that and this other thing for you, I swear it . . .” When their prayers were done, quiet talk and purposeful noises from the upper floor told them that the three men were absorbed in whatever they were doing.

Wing snuffled the air like a forlorn piglet. “You smell like rosemary,” he said softly. “From the garden. That's nice. It smells bad in here.”

Charles smiled at him, wishing that the two of them were likely to live long enough for their friendship to grow. Then feet clattered down the stairs, and the two young men appeared, dressed now in coarse, dirt-colored coats, ragged breeches, and their own tousled hair instead of wigs. They carried tall, conical baskets on their backs. Richaud, carrying the wine jug, was talking at them and wagging a finger.

“Remember, when you've delivered the books to the private customer first, then the bookshops, come straight back. Stop in some working man's tavern for a joke like last time, and you will bitterly regret it.”

The men with the baskets rolled their eyes at each other. “Filthy dyer's brat,” the one who'd had the gloves muttered as they went out, just loud enough for Richaud to hear. Which made Charles wonder again why the two put up with Richaud's assumption of authority as much as they did.

Richaud kicked the door shut so hard that the flimsy walls shook. Then he sat down beside the hearth, poked savagely at the fire, and picked up the wine jug. No one spoke. Charles feigned sleep, trying to ignore his aching head and his hunger. Finally he fell asleep for real, and woke with his head aching less. Beside him, Wing was sitting up, tensely watching Richaud, who was staring drunkenly back at him. From the light, Charles thought it was late afternoon, and was surprised he'd slept so long. Richaud suddenly blundered to his feet and out the front door, and Charles saw from the outdoor light that the day was as far gone as he'd thought. He heard the sound of Richaud's water on the wall and voices passing on the road. Wing got out the start of a shout for help before Charles could shut him up.

“He's going to kill us!” Wing whispered. “He's drunk, and when he's drunk, he's terrible!”

“Hush!” Watching the door, Charles turned on his side and moved his wrists against the rope, trying again to feel if he'd been able to defeat Richaud's tying even a little.

Bewildered and near tears, Wing watched him. “What are you doing?”

Softly, Charles told him. “It could still work. Ah—I think—”

Wing wasn't listening. “He's been drinking all the time you were asleep.” The Englishman's battered face was rigid with fear. “He got more wine from upstairs.”

Richaud came in and slammed the door behind him. “I heard you yell, damn you!” He ran at Wing, and it was a mercy he was so drunk, because the kick he aimed at the Englishman shattered a half-broken chair into firewood. Richaud came at Wing again. Desperately working at the rope, Charles rolled away, got his back against the wall, and drew his feet under him. Richaud rained blows on Wing, but Wing managed to get a leg up and kicked his tormentor savagely in the belly.

Richaud bent double and staggered backward, retching and coughing.

Charles crouched and hurled himself bodily at Richaud. They went down, Charles's weight pinning Richaud to the floor.

“Get up,” Charles yelled at Wing. “Get out of here, find help!”

“Don't bother,” a voice said calmly.

The small round pressure against Charles's backbone made him go limp and absolutely still. Someone kicked him off Richaud, and Charles found himself looking up into the hard eyes of Alexandre Lunel.

C
HAPTER
24

F
or once in his life, Charles had no words. Everything he thought he knew about Richaud and his conspiracy collapsed into confusion as he stared at Alexandre Lunel.

“Richaud's drunk again,” Lunel said to someone else. “I can smell him from here. Take him outside and empty a bucket over him.”

The other man dragged Richaud through the back door, and Lunel pointed at the straw with his pistol. “Get back there.”

Charles rolled back onto the straw beside Wing. He stared in bewilderment at Lunel.

“You're part of this? Surely you don't take Richaud's ravings seriously.”

“His ravings make him eminently usable.”

“But
Le Cabinet
—a man like you must know that it's a libel, a forgery! Educated men have known that since it first appeared.”

“Jesuits have
said
that since it appeared. As of course they would.”

Charles fought hopelessness. Finding a way to escape from Richaud had seemed possible. Alexandre Lunel was another matter altogether. “I begin to understand,” he said. “You're a Gallican like your mother. Neither of you wanted your brother to be a Jesuit.”

“Shut your filthy mouth about my brother!” Lunel raised a menacing hand but let it drop as the other man pushed a soaking wet Richaud back into the room.

Almost past surprise, Charles saw now that the other man was Victor Coriot, the lawyer who'd nearly ridden him down in the Coriot courtyard. And whose family, according to young Jacques, owned a ramshackle house on Talking Flea Street—this ramshackle house, no doubt. Richaud came toward the pile of straw, shivering and whimpering, and Charles braced himself for another attack, but Richaud stumbled past and up the stairs.

Victor Coriot laughed. “That gets rid of him for now, anyway. I could almost thank you for that, du Luc.”

“Don't bother, Monsieur Coriot,” Charles said grimly.

Lunel looked questioningly at them. “I thought I'd told you, Alexandre,” Coriot said. “We met when Jacques was expelled from Louis le Grand. Du Luc brought him home. My young brother is shaping well for us,” he added proudly.

“Shaping well for your Gallican conspiracy, I take you to mean,” Charles said with ironic courtesy.

“Of course,” Coriot made him a mock bow. “We're going to get the Jesuits out of France. And for good, this time. Henri the Fourth got you out years ago, after your student Jean Châtel learned at Louis le Grand to kill kings and tried to kill Henri. But then old Henri let you creep back. This time you won't. And France will finally be free to be French.”

Charles dropped his irony. “Jean Châtel was an insane fanatic. And so is your dupe, poor Richaud.”

“
Poor
Richaud?” Alexandre Lunel reached the straw in two strides, anger radiating from him. “He's a Jesuit. No Jesuit deserves compassion.”

Coriot shook his head at Lunel. “Softly, Alexandre. As for you, Maître du Luc, ‘poor Richaud' has beaten you and probably starved you. Not to mention trying to kill you at your college. Why in God's name feel sorry for the creature? Unless you're just exhibiting your piety.”

“Because he's twisted beyond helping himself,” Charles said doggedly. “And you're using him, like using a simple-wit.”

“Oh, he's very sane about Jesuits,” Coriot laughed. “And he has no scruples, which you must admit is useful in desperate enterprises. But surely an ex-soldier knows that.”

“How do you know I was a soldier?”

“My little brother Jacques told me. He says all the boys at the college admire you for it.”

Lunel made a disgusted sound, and a face like someone about to be sick, and went to the hearth. He crouched down, put his pistol beside him on the floor, and started to rekindle the dead fire. Coriot watched him for a moment and then shrugged and went upstairs, swinging the empty wine jug by its handle. As Lunel got the fire going with flint and tinder, Coriot came back with the jug, now full by the careful way he carried it, and poured it into the small iron pot at the edge of the fire. Lunel pulled bread out of a bag and gave some to Coriot. Twilight was showing now around the shutters, and the fire filled the decrepit room with shadows. Charles and Wing tried not to watch the men eat and drink.

Wing sighed suddenly and murmured, “Is it Friday?”

Charles thought for a moment and nodded.

“I'm so hungry. But it's a fast day,” the Englishman said. “Even if we were at Louis le Grand, we'd still be hungry.”

“Not this hungry.”

The men by the fire looked toward them, and Charles quickly closed his eyes. When nothing happened, he looked at Wing and mouthed,
Need to piss?

“Nothing
to
piss.”

“Pretend.” Charles sat up. “Please,
messieurs
. We need to relieve ourselves.” They would untie his hands for that and that gave some chance where now there was none.

“Do it in the straw,” Lunel said indifferently.

“I'll take them. It stinks enough in here.” Coriot got up and pulled Wing to his feet and kicked at Charles. “Get up.”

Charles hauled himself to his feet. His hands were untied, and he made his way to the garden wall. It was nearly dark and—if Charles remembered right—there would be no moon. Trying to think how to use that to advantage, he looked desperately for a loose stone he could pry from the wall. Not that one small stone would do much against three men and a pistol, but it could add a little weight to the scholastics' side of the scales. If Coriot turned toward Wing, Charles might be able to throw a stone and bring him down silently. But all the stones small enough to throw or hide were solid, and if he bent over to search the ground, Coriot would see him.

Charles started to turn from the wall. Then something rustled on the other side of it and he looked up. A white, staring face glimmered in a gap in the stones and was gone. Charles strangled a cry, unsure if he'd seen a man or simply a phantom conjured from hunger and exhaustion.

Back on the straw, once more securely tied, a wave of despair washed over him. Wing curled up and took refuge in sleep, and Lunel and Coriot took their bag of food and their jug and went upstairs. Charles lay open-eyed, in case one of them came back. His exhausted mind was dark with confusion and fear. No one knew where he and Wing were. Even if the glimmering face at the garden wall had been someone from the nearby houses, the poverty-hardened neighbors wouldn't risk themselves against armed men for strangers. Charles's eyes wandered over the decrepit room, and he thought of the peasants hiding in the cottages outside the Cassel wall. They had died in a place not unlike this. There would be some symmetry to his death, if he died here. More than that, he dared not claim, but the thought comforted him.

He listened for a moment to the low murmur of voices upstairs—mostly Lunel's voice, he realized. It was Lunel he was most afraid of.
Yes, afraid
, he told his oddly quiet inner voice, in case it was about to comment.
As afraid as I was of the soldiers who enjoyed killing at Cassel.
With the arrival of Lunel and Coriot, what had seemed a deluded plot spawned by Richaud's feelings of ill-use had become far more ominous. Charles knew that Coriot was dangerous enough, but Lunel was something else, something more. A Gallican dislike of Jesuits was common. But to the point of conspiracy and murder? And Lunel had hidden his feelings so well when Charles and La Reynie went to his house—to protect the conspiracy, Charles supposed, since La Reynie had already known that copies of
Le Cabinet
were surfacing.

Charles shifted miserably on the straw. It was dark now, no light around the shutters, only the small fire that made the shadows blacker. Feet clattered down the stairs, and Lunel and Coriot went to the fireplace.

“It's freezing up there,” Coriot said, building up the fire and holding his hands to it.

Lunel pulled the only somewhat whole chair nearer the hearth, and Coriot sat down on the stool Richaud had put there. Charles gathered himself for one last effort to buy time.
Time for
what?
his inner voice said dispiritedly.
I don't know
, Charles said.
For God to make up His mind, maybe.

“You both must be very anxious to hang,” he said to the men by the fire.

They ignored him.

“You probably won't hang for bringing
Le Cabinet jesuitique
into France and circulating it. But you will most definitely hang, if you kill Maître Wing and me.”

Coriot drank from the jug and passed it to Lunel. “Oh, we're not going to kill you,” he said airily. “Richaud's going to do that.”

“If we're going to die, then you won't mind what you say to me. Are you still keeping your cache of
Le Cabinet
copies at Notre Dame des Champs? Men must be working in the well chamber by now. What are you doing about that?”

There was no answer. Charles decided that a wild lie couldn't hurt and might help. “I might as well tell you,” he said, “this house is being watched. Lieutenant-Général La Reynie knows where I am.”

“Liar,” Coriot said, but he looked anxiously at Lunel.

“Don't be a little girl,” Lunel said back to him. “If La Reynie knows where he is, why hasn't he come? He knows nothing.”

Beside Charles, Wing stirred and opened his eyes. “Shhhh,” Charles said softly, as another thought came to him. He raised his eyebrows at Wing, who stared back in confusion. Hoping Wing would follow his lead, Charles heaved a mock sigh. “That's always the way with plotters, Monsieur Lunel. You think no one else can plot. So much the worse for you.” He broke off and gasped in terror, staring at the window with the shutter hanging on one hinge. “Oh, Blessed Virgin,” Charles wailed, “it's back, God save us!”

Wing took his cue. He screamed, staring at the window. Coriot spun toward the window on his chair.

“What is it?! What did you see?” He stood up. “Did you see it?” he demanded of Lunel.

“No.” Lunel drank from the wine jug. “Sit down.”

But Coriot strode angrily to the pile of straw. “What do you mean, ‘It's back'?”

“The demon,” Charles quavered. “It was black and had a rope around its neck.”

“What? No! Are you sure?” Coriot's eyes were huge.

“We're clerics, of course we're sure,” Wing said impatiently.

Coriot glanced uncertainly at the window. “I think I did see it, out of the corner of my eye. But I thought it was white.”

Wing rubbed his leg. “It couldn't have been white,” he said pedantically. “And Maître du Luc is mistaken about the rope. But he's right about the color. The demons the devil sends to fetch murderers' souls are always much blacker than the usual ones. You must be very stupid not to know that.” Wing gazed at Coriot with the disdain of a professor for a hopeless student.

Everyone jumped as slow heavy steps sounded on the stairway. Coriot backed slowly away, his face distorted with fear.

“Get back up there, Richaud; you're drunk, you've caused enough trouble,” Lunel bellowed. “I've had enough of your insolence. Come down here and I'll shoot you for a useless lump of dung.” He picked up his pistol and began ramming shot into the long, engraved barrel.

Richaud clumped unsteadily to the foot of the stairs. “What did
I
do? You're not worthy to hand me my shoe, but I've been humble. I've done everything for you: I've gotten the books into Louis le Grand, I've carried them here, I've supervised your young idiots, I've single-handedly taken these two hell-bound Jesuits,
I'm
the one who's been chosen—”

Hardly looking at Richaud, Lunel leveled the pistol and fired. In shot-deafened silence, the four men watched Richaud crumple to the floor and balance for a moment on his knees, as though he would pray. Then he fell onto his side, blood bubbling from his mouth, and was still. Moving only their eyes, Charles, Wing, and Coriot watched Lunel pull a cloth from his pocket and rub at the pistol.