Plague of Lies cdl-3 Read online

  Neuville glanced at his hand and held it out to Charles. “Yes, it’s blood, but it’s the Comte de Fleury’s. I’ve just now come from his autopsy. I and the king’s other physicians opened him together. And before you ask again, this is his room. I wanted to see if there were signs of how ill he’d been before he tried to go downstairs.”

  “I see,” Charles said, wondering why the doctor had waited till now to look for signs of sickness. And thinking that the Duc du Maine had been lucky to leave Fleury’s room when he did. “And what did the autopsy show?”

  “His liver was shriveled and dark. No question about it, the man died of poison.”

  Chapter 6

  THE FEAST OF ST. BARNABÉ, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 1687

  “No, I tell you!” Père Jouvancy flailed an arm at the metal cup Monsieur Neuville was holding out to him, and the physician drew it quickly out of range. “I won’t drink antimoine! I have already been poisoned. You only want my poor body to practice on for your autopsies! Oh, yes, Maître du Luc told us how you cut that poor soul to ribbons in the dead of night. What will happen to him at the resurrection of the body? That will be charged to you, and you’d better think on it!” He turned his fever-bright eyes on Père La Chaise. “Why are you letting this man torment me, mon père? You and Maître du Luc have already refused his cup yourselves!”

  Seething with offense, Neuville looked accusingly from Père La Chaise to Charles, and then at Le Picart and Montville, who stood on the other side of the bed. The doctor’s portly little shadow of an attendant did the same, his double chin quivering with indignation.

  La Chaise, pasty-faced from his bad night, cast his eyes up. “Mon père,” he said, his voice ragged with trying for patience, “I cannot afford to take a purge this morning. The king has commanded our Jesuit presence at the Polish envoys’ arrival this morning. No, no, don’t fret, he knows you are ill and holds you excused. Therefore, since we have been told that the Comte de Fleury was poisoned, and since you were the sickest of us last night, I strongly advise you to do as this good physician counsels you. The most learned doctors at the University of Paris agree that wine steeped in the antimony cup is the surest way to rid your body of unbalanced humors and-anything hurtful and alien.”

  Jouvancy shook his head frantically against the pillow. “But that cup is made of antimoine, don’t you understand? The metal’s very name means anti-monk! It works against the bodily substance of monastics and kills us; that’s been known since time out of mind!”

  Le Picart laid his hand on Jouvancy’s shoulder. “It can’t hurt you just because you’re a Jesuit. Antimoine does not mean anti-moine-anti-monk-that’s an old tale.” Le Picart eyed the doctor. “But it’s dangerous. To people of all conditions, so I’ve heard.”

  “Say no more.” The red-faced Neuville waved a dismissive hand. “If he dies from poisoning, the consequences of your refusal will fall on you, on all of you, not on me.” He handed the antimony cup to his attendant, who received it as though it were a sacred offering. “I tell you Fleury’s liver was as black as a demon after eating at the Duc de La Rochefoucauld’s table. Where all five of you ate yesterday. And three of you were sickened.” He glared at Le Picart and Montville, who had experienced no illness at all. “Sometimes poison works very slowly.”

  “But none of us are dead,” Charles said mildly.

  “Not yet,” Neuville said through his teeth, with, to Charles’s ear, a tinge of regret.

  The three priests leaned over Jouvancy, trying to soothe him. Neuville swept out of the room and the attendant waddled after him, his russet coat skirts swinging like a goose’s tail feathers.

  As the door shut, La Chaise looked up in relief and escaped into his own chamber.

  Le Picart came to join Charles. “Are you well enough to go on seeing to Père Jouvancy?” he asked.

  “Yes, mon père. Only a little tired.”

  Montville pulled the bed curtains shut. “Père Jouvancy has fallen into a doze. Nothing like a nap for putting everything right.” He smiled regretfully at Le Picart. “I would advise a nice preventive nap for all of us this afternoon, if you and I were staying, mon père.”

  “You’re leaving?” Charles said in surprise. “But I thought you wanted to see the Polish ambassadors.”

  “We did,” Le Picart said. “But a messenger arrived from the college when we’d hardly risen. The argument over our water supply that delayed us now calls us back early. If we are to stop our neighbor going to court, we must start back as soon as we can find a carriage.” He beckoned Charles away from the bed. “Père Jouvancy certainly cannot travel yet,” he said softly, “and you must stay with him till he’s better. Only a day or two, I hope. If it begins to be more than that, send me word. Otherwise, I leave him in your care. And a doctor’s, if need be.” He grimaced. “There are certainly other court physicians besides Neuville.”

  “I will do my best, mon père.” Charles sighed inwardly. Staying at Versailles was the last thing he wanted.

  The two priests took their leave and went into La Chaise’s chamber. Charles heard them explaining their departure, and then heard the gallery door open and close as La Chaise took them down to the court to find a coach. Charles settled again on the stool beside Jouvancy’s bed.

  “Is he gone?” Jouvancy whispered, suddenly waking and opening his eyes. “That doctor?”

  “He is. No more need to worry. What you need now is rest. Père Le Picart and Père Montville have gone back to town, but you and I will stay here until you’re ready to travel.”

  “I hate to stay,” Jouvancy said weakly. “We have so much to do before our tragedy and ballet rehearsals begin. But I cannot ride.” His face grew even more worried. “We could hire a carriage, but the motion-though I suppose I could manage it. If I must,” he added plaintively.

  “No need at all. Hush now.”

  Half unconsciously, Charles began to hum an old Provençal song, a lullaby his mother used to sing. It soothed him as well as Jouvancy, and even after the priest was sleeping, Charles went on singing, rocking a little on his stool until he, too, closed his eyes. La Chaise’s soft laughter woke him. He’d slipped sideways from the stool, his head resting on Jouvancy’s covers, and he struggled to his feet, momentarily not quite certain where he was.

  “Oh. Ah. I-forgive me, mon père, I must have-”

  “No need to apologize. He still sleeps?” La Chaise moved nearer the bed and peered at Jouvancy. “Good.” He sighed and looked at Charles. “I have come to remind you that we are to attend the Polish ambassadors’ arrival.”

  “Oh.” Charles’s heart sank. “I had forgotten.”

  “It is nearly time. I will wait in my chamber.”

  Charles untied the towel he’d put around his waist to protect his clothes, went into the anteroom and splashed water on his face, drew his fingers through his thick curling hair, and adjusted his cassock’s sash. Not daring even to look at his bed because he wanted so badly to lie down on it, he presented himself before La Chaise. The king’s confessor took a small, one-handed watch, shaped like a skull, from a pocket under his cassock and peered at it. As he put it back, a shout rose in the gallery and Bouchel scratched at the door, calling hoarsely, “Time, mon père.”

  La Chaise heaved himself to his feet. “The Introducer’s carriage is in sight. We must go.”

  Charles put out a hand. “I don’t think we should leave Père Jouvancy alone. In case these poisoning rumors are true.”

  “In case? If Neuville is right about what he saw in Fleury’s autopsy, the rumors are all too true. Wait here a moment.” La Chaise went into the gallery and returned with Bouchel.

  The footman’s face was drawn and bleached, as though he, too, might have been ill during the night, and Charles started to ask if he had, but La Chaise cut him off.

  “Lock the door of the chamber where Père Jouvancy is,” La Chaise said to Bouchel. “And keep watch in here, but near the door, in case he needs you.”

&nbs
p; Bouchel bowed without speaking, and they left him standing in the middle of the room, rubbing his forehead and staring at the floor.

  As they went out into the gallery, Charles asked, “Who is this Introducer whose carriage is coming?”

  La Chaise was craning his neck to see beyond the mass of courtiers pressed against the gallery windows. “He is the official who leads ambassadorial processions from Paris. These Poles made an official entry into the city yesterday. Normally, they would stay there for some days before coming to Versailles, but the king is anxious to get on with the marriage negotiations.”

  His height letting him see over the crowd, Charles watched a long line of gilded, red-wheeled carriages passing the first of Versailles’s gates and rolling toward the palace.

  “Quickly, so we can get a place.” La Chaise pulled Charles away and they hurried along the route they’d traveled yesterday until they reached a small dark flight of stairs. “We’ll have to find a place at the foot of the Ambassadors’ Staircase,” La Chaise said, starting down. “We’re not grand enough to stand at the top near the throne.”

  “Not even you?”

  La Chaise shook his head. “Not unless there’s a religious statement to be made. When the king receives an envoy from a foreign prince who is not Christian, he might ask me to be there. But Poland is a Catholic country.”

  In the sumptuous entrance hall, where the wide marble staircase rose beneath a painted and gilded coffered ceiling, a large crowd had gathered, talking and laughing excitedly and jockeying for space. The hall bristled with the pikes of the Hundred Swiss, spear points catching and scattering light as the guards stood lined up on each side of the path to the stairs, watching the crowd and the doors. Some made a fence of their pikes to keep back tourists, others stood around the antechamber walls, and more were outside the doors, the clusters of white plumes in their cocked-brim black hats making Charles think of menacing long-legged birds.

  “I’ve heard that Louis is the best-guarded monarch in Europe,” he said, watching them. “It seems true.”

  “Of course it’s true.” La Chaise began worming his way through the crowd, and Charles did his best to stay close behind. La Chaise elbowed ruthlessly until he had them close enough to the first step and the front rank of watchers to see and be seen. Craning his neck to see around La Chaise, Charles counted twelve steps of colored marble leading to a landing where classical figures of gilded bronze reclined beside the sculpture of a fountain. Above the figures, courtiers stood immobile, leaning on balustrades covered with cloth of gold and waiting for the envoys. Charles wondered why such stillness-before the ceremony even began-and then realized with a start that they were only painted. To their right and left, the staircase branched, each side rising to the level of the royal apartments, where the king would receive the Poles in the royal bedchamber.

  La Chaise sighed and righted his bonnet. “I hope this doesn’t take long. I still feel like I could fall on my face.”

  “Don’t,” Charles said gravely, glancing significantly up the stairs. “Fall on your back-isn’t that the protocol? Don’t show royalty your back?”

  That raised the ghost of a laugh. “A timely reminder.”

  Charles hesitated. “Mon père, do you truly believe that we were poisoned yesterday?”

  “I don’t know what to think. But I can easily believe it about Fleury. He was a grasping, arrogant man who liked no one.” La Chaise leaned close to Charles’s ear and said, under the noise of the crowd, “And he was known to be writing a mémoire of the court.”

  “Ah.” Charles nodded thoughtfully. An acid-tongued mémoire of the court could well give someone enough reason to poison Fleury. He thought about his nighttime encounters with Neuville and the Duc du Maine. People had certainly been taking an interest in Fleury’s room. How many souls in this hive of gossip and hard-won position might fear that Fleury had vented his pen on them?

  A blare of trumpets sounded, and every head turned toward the doors. The Swiss soldiers stood at rigid attention, the trumpets settled to a stately march, and the head of the Polish procession appeared. First came the Introducer of ambassadors and the grand master of ceremonies, gravely resplendent in shining black-satin suits. Behind them was a small tight formation of Polish soldiers, fair haired and impressively moustached. Then came the pair of envoys sent by King Jan Sobieski to negotiate his son’s marriage: a stocky elder and a taller, darker man perhaps in his thirties. The watching crowd stared eagerly at their quilted robes of heavy calf-length silk-one robe scarlet and the other blue-with rows of gold tassels across the front. Both men were sweating under small fur-trimmed hats, and their moustaches were even longer and thicker than their soldiers’ luxuriant growths.

  The crowd made its bows and curtsies as the men passed, watched them climb the stairs and take the left-hand branch toward the king’s apartements, and then began murmuring and making ready to move on to somewhere else. La Chaise turned to Charles.

  “There are a few things I must do, maître. Go back and see how Père Jouvancy does. I will return as soon as I can. Do you feel you’ll be able to eat?”

  “Yes, something, at least.”

  “Me, I am not altogether there yet.” La Chaise raised an eyebrow. “I imagine that you do not wish to return to the Duc de La Rochefoucauld’s table.”

  “On the whole, no,” Charles said, somewhat shamefaced. In spite of his reluctance to believe that a poisoner was at work-even after what Monsieur Neuville had said about Fleury’s blackened liver-he kept remembering the doctor’s whisper that he’d seen the duke and Madame de Maintenon in close conference. “But if there is bread and cheese in your chamber, mon père, that will do for me. When you return, if you have no objection, may I leave Père Jouvancy with you and go out into the gardens for a little air? While I work on our ballet livret?”

  “Very well. I will return as quickly as I can.”

  They parted and Charles went slowly back to his and Jouvancy’s room. But before he reached the black-and-white tiled gallery, a clamor of ominously low-pitched barking pulled him up short. He looked around, expecting to see large dogs running toward him, but there were only a few courtiers in sight, and none seemed to notice the noise. Perhaps they were used to it, Charles thought, wondering why someone kept large dogs inside. The noise and crowding of Louis le Grand were beginning to seem positively pastoral by comparison with this place, and he had an overwhelming urge to bundle Jouvancy into a carriage and go home.

  When he reached La Chaise’s chamber, Bouchel told him that the rhetoric master hadn’t stirred. Charles went to Jouvancy’s bed and parted the curtains. The little priest’s flushed face and hot forehead put paid to Charles’s thoughts of leaving. He wrung out a cloth in cold water and sponged the priest’s face, smiling reassuringly and murmuring, “Go on sleeping, all’s well,” when Jouvancy briefly opened his eyes. Then he closed the curtains, glad for the west-facing windows that left the room still dim and cool, and left the chamber.

  Bouchel turned from staring out the courtyard window. “Do you need me anymore, maître?” His eyes were shadowed, and his face was pinched and gray.

  “Are you well?” Charles said, peering at him in concern.

  The footman tensed and darted a sideways glance at Charles. “Well enough, thank you. Are you better?” He jerked his head at the door into the other chamber. “Is he?”

  “We’re all better, thank you.”

  “I was thinking-I don’t mean to step out of my place, maître, but whatever happened to old Fleury, I doubt you three were poisoned.”

  “Why not?” Charles went to the cupboard and opened it, looked for bread and cheese.

  “Well, Père La Chaise set the leftover bouillon back in the cupboard after your breakfast yesterday.” He wrinkled his nose. “I didn’t find it till this morning, and it was high and ripe. Enough that it had to be already going that way yesterday. So it could have been what made you sick.”

  Charles nodded slowly. The b
ouillon! Of course. An unpleasant but ordinary explanation. What could be simpler? “Thank you, I’ll tell Père La Chaise. But you look as though you may be getting Père Jouvancy’s sickness. You should take care of yourself.”

  Bouchel grunted his thanks and left. But when he was gone, the simplicity of spoiled soup began tangling itself into unwelcome subtlety. The soup had not smelled off when they’d had it for breakfast yesterday, but putting poison in bouillon would be easy enough…

  Stop it, he ordered his mind. There is no poisoner. It wasn’t poison. It was spoiled soup. And I’ve heard our infirmarian say that too much drink can blacken a man’s liver. Maybe that’s why Fleury’s liver was black. God knows the man drank enough in the army. Wobbly with tiredness-and some measure of relief-Charles stood up and stretched. Impatient to get out of the palace’s fog of rumor and suspicion and into plain sunshine and air, he hoped La Chaise wouldn’t be long about his errands.

  He wasn’t, and as soon as he returned, Charles told him what Bouchel had said.

  “Oh. I suppose that could explain it. I should have thrown away what was left after dinner. But, do you know, I always find that hard to do, perhaps because my mother would never let the servants throw soup away…” La Chaise smothered a yawn. “For now, I am not going to think about soup or poison or anything else. I am going to sit here in my chair and doze.”

  Glad to get out of the palace, Charles made his way down to the ground-floor corridor and started around it to the south wing’s garden front. He hoped he wouldn’t have to walk too far before he found a shady secluded place to sit and work on the ballet livret he’d retrieved from the saddlebag. But when he was finally outside, he found himself in a wide desert of hot gravel, only to discover that the greenery beyond was an inhospitably formal checkerboard of walkways, plots of grass and shrubs dotted with classical statues, spiral paths to nowhere among carefully placed and manicured trees, and stretches of high hornbeam hedges as impassable as walls. There was solitude enough, but the grass seemed the only place to sit. He walked on, toward a jet of water playing above a balustrade topped with urns, and found two sets of steps leading down to the fountain, the bottom flight shaded by a wall. Surprised at how tired he was by the walk from the palace, Charles settled himself on a lower step, turned so that he could lean against the wall, and opened the ballet livret. The next thing he knew, a flight of cawing crows was passing overhead and the livret was at the bottom of the steps, where it had tumbled from his lap. Blinking, he stretched and went to the fountain’s basin to splash water on his face and wake up. He dried his face with his cassock skirt, picked up the livret, unstoppered his bottle of ink, and got to work.