Plague of Lies cdl-3 Read online

  As he looked into the innocently clear water, his fear conjured the face of Madame de Maintenon, her deceptively madonna-like eyes gazing coolly at him. The king’s wife might dislike Jesuits, but surely not to the point of poisoning them. Oh, no? the acid-tongued voice said. Have you never heard of queens ridding themselves of inconvenient people? Not by their own hands, of course… The door opened behind him, and he turned so quickly that he dropped the glass, which shattered and sprayed water everywhere.

  “Maître? Forgive me, I didn’t mean to scare you.” The footman Bouchel stood in the doorway to the antechamber, carrying two wooden buckets and looking in bewilderment from Charles to the glass shards and water on the parquet.

  “I–I was-yes, never mind.” Charles looked over his shoulder and saw, to his relief, that Jouvancy still slept.

  “I’ll clean that up, maître, after I fill the fountain.”

  Bouchel turned back into the antechamber and Charles heard him set down the buckets and take the cover off the copper reservoir. Water gushed as both buckets were emptied into it, and then the cover clanged shut. Bouchel reappeared with a towel over his hand and went toward the bed.

  Charles’s body acted without his brain’s cooperation and he launched himself toward the bed and stood at bay between Bouchel and Jouvancy. The footman’s brown eyes opened wide, and he kept one eye on Charles as he picked up glass and put it carefully on the towel. Then Jouvancy roused, retching direly, and for the next few minutes Charles was miserably busy, grateful for the footman’s bringing basins and towels, and even more grateful for his taking them away when they’d been used.

  Finally, Jouvancy lay spent, breathless and whiter than the bedsheets, and Bouchel left with the last basin. “Thank you,” the little priest whispered, looking up at Charles. His fingers closed around Charles’s wrist with surprising strength. “It’s poison-I’m sure of it!”

  “Of course it’s not poison,” Charles said vehemently, in spite of his doubts. “It’s surely only a return of your sickness. You’ll be better soon, mon père.”

  Jouvancy shook his head, and his anxious eyes wandered over the room. “Where is Père La Chaise?”

  “He went to find a doctor.”

  “Good.” Jouvancy’s fingers dug deeper into Charles’s sleeve. “I didn’t think she hated us that much.”

  Before Charles could decide what to say to that, La Chaise came in, followed by a slender, grave-faced man in a long black wig and a black and scarlet coat. A short, round assistant followed, carrying the implements for bleeding a patient: a wide basin, a glittering steel lancet, and a sturdy piece of cord.

  “This is Monsieur Neuville, one of the king’s physicians,” La Chaise said, and drew back. The doctor nodded slightly at Charles and went to the bedside. The rhetoric master let go of Charles and reached for the doctor, who drew himself back and out of reach.

  “Urine, mon père?” he said abruptly to Jouvancy.

  Jouvancy eyed him sourly. “I doubt there’s anything left in me to make water with, monsieur.”

  The doctor grunted and held out his hand to the assistant with the basin. The man handed him the cord, Charles brought a chair from La Chaise’s chamber, and the doctor sat down beside the bed.

  “Have you been bled this spring?” Neuville asked, tying the stout cord tightly around Jouvancy’s upper arm. When the rhetoric master shook his head, the doctor said, “Then we’ll hope that’s your trouble.” He picked up the lancet. “Though I doubt it.”

  “He’s been very ill, monsieur,” Charles put in, “with the sickness we’ve had in Paris these last weeks. I think the effort of riding from town brought on a relapse.”

  Neuville ignored that, and Charles turned away as the rhetoric master’s blood spurted from an incision near his elbow into the basin the servant held. Charles wondered if he had caught Jouvancy’s sickness. He was usually unfazed by blood, but now his stomach was climbing toward his throat. Muttering his excuses, he fled toward the privy.

  As he returned, weak but eased, the footman passed him in the antechamber with the basin full of Jouvancy’s blood. Charles held the door for him and then stopped to wipe his face with a wet towel lying on the water reservoir. Neuville and La Chaise were talking in the chamber.

  “I doubt this will be enough,” he heard the doctor say.

  Charles threw down the towel and hurried into the chamber. “Why not, monsieur?”

  Both men frowned at his interruption.

  “Because this isn’t sickness,” Neuville said. He looked over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “I saw them,” he hissed. “Saw her-deep in talk with the Duc de La Rochefoucauld. That was the day before yesterday. Yesterday Monsieur Fleury ate at La Rochefoucauld’s table. And died. Today you Jesuits ate at his table. And at least two of you are ill.”

  “Not two,” Charles said, “only Père-”

  “No? You just returned from spewing in the privy.”

  La Chaise looked at Charles in surprise. “Did you?”

  “Yes, mon père, but I am not ill. Only a little unsettled. And I learned from the footman Bouchel that the floor outside Fleury’s room was wet from a ceiling leak. Which is probably why he fell.”

  “And which has nothing to do with why he was ill to begin with. You should both be bled,” Neuville said grimly. “Now. Before the poison takes more hold. And the other two as well. Where are they?”

  “I am not in the least ill, and neither are our other companions,” La Chaise snapped. “You overreach yourself, monsieur.”

  “Then why did you come for me? You know it is poison, and you know you will be ill.” Charles heard more than a little satisfaction in the doctor’s tone. “And then perhaps you’ll come to your senses and let me bleed you before it’s too late.” Neuville’s scarlet embroidery rippled and glowed in the afternoon sunlight as he bowed to La Chaise. “Because she really does hate you.”

  Neuville withdrew, the assistant marching behind him, and left La Chaise and Charles staring in horror at each other.

  “He’s obsessed with poison. Like everyone else here,” La Chaise said, seeming to have forgotten his own earlier fears.

  “But you thought it might be poison, too, mon père.”

  La Chaise sighed gustily. “I did. It’s the normal thing to fear here. But fear clouds reason, and aside from where we ate, there’s no connection at all between us and the Comte de Fleury. Why poison any of us?” But La Chaise’s worried face belied his words. “I am going to pray that the man was only ill with this stomach sickness Jouvancy and so many have had, and that he met with an unfortunate-unrelated-accident.” La Chaise crossed his arms and stared at Charles as though daring him to contradict. “But until we know what the truth is, we’ll eat only what the footman brings and what we cook at my fire.”

  Moans from the curtained bed put an urgent end to their talk. The hours that followed had the evil tinge of nightmare, as the doctor’s predictions that the bleeding wasn’t enough began coming all too true. La Chaise sent for extra chamber pots, and for Le Picart and Montville, who helped lift and sponge Jouvancy. By the time the rhetoric master slept again, it was nearly dark. La Chaise’s face had gone from pale to green-tinged, but he insisted that he and Charles could manage and sent Le Picart and Montville to supper in one of the Grand Commons refectories across the road. Almost as soon as they left, La Chaise clapped his hand over his mouth and vanished into the gallery.

  By midnight, La Chaise had been sick half a dozen times, as had Charles, who was vying with him for the privy’s use. Between sprints down the gallery, Charles asked if they should send for Neuville again.

  “He’d probably give us the antimony cup, and our purging is already hellishly efficient. At least mine is. And he’d bleed us. Is your stomach up to watching your own blood run? Mine is most certainly not.” He pushed hastily past Charles to the chamber’s outer door.

  “At least there would be a basin handy,” Charles muttered, and tottered to the other chamber
to collapse on his bed in the narrow alcove.

  He woke, feeling better, what seemed like hours later. A single candle flickered somewhere in the room. Holding his breath, he listened, but there was no sound from Jouvancy or from La Chaise next door. A candle was burning on the table near Jouvancy’s bed, and the bed curtains were drawn. Charles got weakly to his feet and parted the bed curtains, holding the candle so he could see the rhetoric master’s face. Jouvancy was deeply asleep, pale, but no more so than he had been. With a relieved prayer of thanks, Charles let the curtains fall closed. His nose wrinkled at the stench of sickness hanging in the air and he longed to open the window, but everyone knew that night air was dangerous for the sick. Carrying the candle, he padded to the outer door and was pushing it open to let a little air in, when a light flared to his left and startled him. The corridor’s only permanent light was a single sconce beside the privy, but this light was growing brighter as someone came down the stairs, too bright for a candle.

  Charles saw the unsteady flame of a small wax torch, then the hand that held it and the arm, and then the Duc du Maine came quietly onto the staircase landing from the floor above, his limp making the torch jump and waver in his hand. Charles slid back out of sight but kept the door open a crack, wondering why the king’s son was creeping around the palace, and apparently alone, in the dead of night. And what he’d been doing upstairs, where the dead Comte de Fleury’s chamber was. As Maine passed him, Charles saw that he had something in his free hand that gleamed when the torchlight caught it. Charles stretched his neck to see what it was, tipped his candle, and grunted in pain as hot wax splashed onto his hand. The Duc du Maine spun toward him.

  “Who’s there?” the boy demanded harshly. But his face showed fright, not anger, in the wavering torchlight, and he put the hand holding the gleaming thing behind his back.

  Charles stepped forward into the gallery. “I beg your pardon, Your Highness. I was opening the door for a little air. Forgive me for startling you.”

  Maine peered uncertainly at him. “Oh. It’s you-you carried the reliquary today. Or yesterday, now, I suppose.”

  “Yes, I am Maître Charles du Luc, from the College of Louis le Grand. You did us the honor of coming to our performance back in the winter.”

  Maine’s smile transformed his thin, tense face, but his carefully rigid stance didn’t soften. “It was very good. I liked the singing and the dancing more than the Latin tragedy. But don’t tell Madame de Maintenon! And your little Italian boy is an astonishing dancer. I wish we had him here and could have ballets like the king had when he was young.”

  “You don’t have many ballets now, it seems.”

  The boy shook his head regretfully. “Not that I could dance in them, even if we did.” He gestured shyly at his lame leg. “But I love to watch dancing. My father no longer cares so much for ballets. Nor does Madame de Maintenon. And I doubt there will be much dancing when Louis-the Dauphin, I mean-becomes king in his turn. Though he’s the legitimately born son, he has nothing of our father’s talent for dancing.” He sighed. “It must be terrible to be old.”

  Charles couldn’t help laughing. “I hope not, since, with God’s help, we will both be old someday.”

  Maine laughed a little, but his face was pale and sweat stood on his forehead.

  “Are you feeling ill, Your Highness?”

  “Oh. No. That is-perhaps a little.”

  “I hope you will not take this sickness we’re having.”

  “Oh. No. I’m never ill. Just lame.”

  “That is surely enough to bear.” Charles smiled sympathetically. “I have heard that Madame de Maintenon tried everything to cure you when you were little.”

  “Oh, she did, she’s the very best woman in the world! She’s been more than a mother to me. To my brother and sisters, too, but especially to me. I owe her everything.”

  Smiling mechanically, Charles asked himself what he’d expected to hear. Of course the boy wouldn’t say that his beloved governess poisoned people. He nodded toward the staircase. “Did you know the man who fell down those stairs yesterday?”

  The boy’s head whipped around and he looked at the stairs as though he’d never seen them before. “I-yes-of course, everyone knew Fleury.”

  “Had he been ill?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, he wasn’t earlier in the day.”

  Charles smiled. “Ah, yes, I remember now that I did hear that. Were there signs of sickness in his room?”

  “Yes, it was-” The boy froze, seeing the trap too late.

  Charles nodded amiably at Maine’s right arm and the hand behind his back. “Whatever you went to his room to get, I see that you found it.”

  The boy’s slender shoulders rose and fell, but even as he sighed, his carriage remained as upright as that of the dancers he envied. “I’m a terrible liar. I told her she should send someone else.”

  Her? Madame de Maintenon? However bad a liar Maine was, Charles guessed that he would not name whoever had sent him to Fleury’s room. “Being a bad liar is an admirable trait,” Charles said mildly. Which you yourself unfortunately do not have, his inner voice murmured. “Forgive me if I seem curious,” Charles went on. “I asked about Fleury’s room because my superior has fallen ill, and I am wondering if the unfortunate Comte de Fleury might suddenly have taken the sickness we’ve been having in Paris. I hear it’s very catching.” Which was at least within sight of the truth.

  Maine grimaced. “Yes, well, his room stinks of sickness. I could hardly make myself stay long enough to find this. Since you already know I was there, I should tell you why. So you won’t think me a thief.” He took his hand from behind his back and held out a small, elaborately chased silver box. “Finding it took time, because it was under a loose piece of the floor. It’s my sister’s. Lulu’s, her tobacco box. She threw it at the Comte de Fleury one day when he found her smoking her little pipe in the garden. The old wretch kept it.”

  Which might explain what Charles had seen in the courtyard, the girl so angry at Fleury and flinging gravel in his face on the afternoon he’d died. Keeping the box certainly sounded like Fleury. In the army, no way to squeeze an extra penny out of some miserable soul and enrich himself had been too petty for the man. But-smoking? The king’s daughter? The more Charles heard about Lulu, the more he understood why the king was sending her so far away.

  “Well, it’s good that Fleury’s chamber was unlocked so you could get her box. I assume it was unlocked?”

  Maine nodded, not really listening now, and looked over his shoulder. “I’ve been a long time about my errand, maître. She’s waiting for me, I must go. A bonne nuit to you.”

  Charles gave Maine a respectful nod. As he watched the boy limp hurriedly toward the royal heart of the palace, he wondered why Maine could not simply have said the box was his and he’d lent it-or some such story to protect his sister-and sent a servant to fetch it in the light of day. Charles turned his gaze thoughtfully to the stairs.

  When Maine’s footsteps had faded beyond hearing, Charles left La Chaise’s rooms and went soundlessly along the gallery and up to the top floor. Not even a wall sconce lit that corridor. He stopped at the top of the stairs and looked toward the sound of water dripping. Then he bent and held his candle near the floor. The black-and-white tiles glistened wetly. A tiny trickle of water was running from the big iron pot set to catch the ceiling drip. Stepping carefully, he went farther from the stairs and held his candle up, peering in both directions and hoping that Maine had left Fleury’s door ajar. Charles turned to his right, studying the doors as he passed them until one opened nearly in his face and the physician Neuville came out.

  “What are you doing here, Maître du Luc?”

  “Is this your chamber?” Charles returned, rummaging through his mind for a reason to be where he was.

  “No. What are you doing up here?”

  “I was hoping to find the-um-convenience on this floor. The one below is occupied. Has someone els
e fallen ill?”

  “No. And there isn’t a convenience up here. Not any longer. So you’ve fallen ill, as I predicted.”

  “As you predicted, but I’m feeling better.”

  “And the others? Is Père La Chaise ill now, as well?”

  “He was, but not as ill as Père Jouvancy. They’re both sleeping now, and I’m sure it’s just the common illness people have been having lately.”

  Neuville shook his head sadly. “The stubborn often die from their refusal to take medical advice. Surely you know that poison affects different people very differently.”

  “So does illness.”

  “Of course it does. The courses of illness and poisoning go according to the balance of men’s humors.”

  Charles couldn’t resist saying, “And according to the stars?” He found it impossible to believe that the stars had any interest in the state of his stomach. But Neuville didn’t seem to hear his mockery.

  “Of course. To some extent.” The physician preened himself a little, lifting a hand to flip the long curls of his black wig over his shoulder. The candlelight showed that his hand was covered with dark stains.

  Startled, Charles said, “Is that blood? Have you hurt yourself?”