A Plague of Lies (24 page)

As though reading his thoughts, his companion said, “The king always goes immediately to the tables and has something, so that we aren’t kept from refreshing ourselves.” He raised an eyebrow. “I believe that tonight it was your Père La Chaise who served him.”

Charles gaped at the man. “Are you accusing Père La Chaise? That’s absurd!” Giving up the effort to identify the man and preserve the courtesies, he said bluntly, “Who are you?”

His companion seemed equally uninterested in the courtesies. “I am not accusing him at all. I am simply saying it would have been possible. Someone else may well have brought the king more to eat a little later. I was only briefly in this room before I went to the gambling.” He smiled slightly at Charles. “I am the Duc de La Rochefoucauld. And you are Maître Charles du Luc. You and Père Jouvancy and your companions ate at my table the day Père Jouvancy became so ill. You may just as well say that I poisoned
him
. Though I didn’t.” He made Charles a small ironic bow. “Nor did I poison the Comte de Fleury, who ate at my table the day he died. Though I am well aware of what is being said.”

“I am glad to hear it.” Charles folded his hands at his waist. “Forgive me,
monsieur
, but it seems to me that everyone at court is obsessed with poison. We have had a very bad stomach sickness and fever going the rounds in Paris. Père Jouvancy had been ill with it before we came, and I feel sure he has only had a relapse. So why not assume that the illness has reached Versailles? And that the Comte de Fleury had it, and now so has the king.”

“Logical, I grant you. And if some kind, innocuous man had
broken his neck on the way to the privy, I might think as you do. But the Comte de Fleury was not innocuous, as I think you know. I was there in the gallery when he fell. I saw you recognize him. Oh, yes, it showed.”

“I was a soldier under his command.”

“Ah. Then you do know how well hated he was. Half the court would trade its palace lodgings for a look at Fleury’s reputed journal, to be sure they are not included. But the thing seems to have disappeared.”

“So I’ve heard. I grant you that more than a few might have willingly killed Fleury. Are you saying that the king is also well hated?”

“What king is not?” La Rochefoucauld replied.

“Then the question becomes, who hates him most?” Charles stared at the rapidly shifting groups of men and women telling each other that the king had been poisoned, that the king could not possibly have been poisoned, that their aunt had had that same sickness last week in Paris, that they knew for certain who had poisoned the king, that no one would ever know who had poisoned the king.

“And who would your choice be for that position?”

“The Prince of Conti.”

La Rochefoucauld’s eyebrows rose, and he half bowed. “The Society of Jesus’ reputation for quickness of observation continues to be well deserved.”

“Does that mean you agree with me?”

“I am not naive enough to answer that, Maître du Luc. But I have long observed the Prince of Conti gathering a devoted coterie of men around him.”

“Around him or around the Dauphin?”

“Conti pretends that they have gathered around the Dauphin.
The king would give a great deal to be rid of Conti, but it is not easy to be rid of a Prince of the Blood.”

“Louis the Thirteenth rid himself of his brother Gaston.”

“After extreme provocation. Conti is, so far, too wise to offer provocation quite so extreme.”

“Poisoning would seem about as extreme as provocation gets.”

“You can be sure that if the king was poisoned tonight, it was not by Conti’s own hand, whatever his mind had to do with it. If the king were to die, the Dauphin would be king. And Conti would be safe, because I doubt the poor Dauphin has the guts to rid himself of a mouse in his chamber. So where’s the risk?”

“Assuming the king dies.”

“Assuming that.
Bonne nuit, maître.
”

Chapter 12

T
HE
F
EAST OF
S
T
. A
NTOINE
, F
RIDAY
, J
UNE
13, 1687

T
he sun was barely up and, though Jouvancy had announced that he was well enough to travel, the day was already not going well. La Chaise had returned from the night’s vigil by the king’s bed. He was hardly through the door before he asked Charles where Lulu had gone from the gambling the night before. On hearing she’d gone to Bouchel’s room, he’d poured himself watered wine in a grim silence.

When his glass was empty, he said, “Well, it could be worse. Thank God she chose Bouchel. He’s good-hearted and absolutely trustworthy. He would never do anything to anger the king, no matter how much the girl offered him. But now that we know she’s done that, she must be watched every moment so that she doesn’t try it again—with him or anyone else. You will have to stay, Maître du Luc, and finish what you’ve begun.”

And that had landed La Chaise in a furiously polite argument with Père Jouvancy. Charles, the prize in the argument, stood at the window eating bread and cheese, and praying hard that the battle would not make Jouvancy relapse again, at least not before he won.

“I cannot return without him,
mon père
.” Jouvancy’s words were courteous, but his face was red with anger. “If you need a Jesuit to help you, you must send to the Professed House.”

La Chaise, whose eyes were hollow with exhaustion after a night at the king’s bedside, looked as though he’d like to make Jouvancy walk on his knees to Jerusalem. “But
mon père
, Maître du Luc knows the situation, and he has won the girl’s trust.” Ignoring Charles’s protest at that, he went on: “What’s more, she seems to like him. Could you not leave him here until Sunday afternoon?”

“I strongly object. You need an older man for this. You told me yourself how this girl behaves. And Maître du Luc is not only young and well favored, he is a mere scholastic. He should not be tangled in these matters.”

Charles chewed his bread and tried to look as mere as possible.

“He’s helped me all the while you’ve been ill,” La Chaise said, obviously clinging to his patience, “and has come to no harm. On the contrary, I imagine he has learned quite a bit that will one day be useful to him. I need him, I tell you. It is essential to prevent the girl doing anything to upset the Polish ambassadors and the marriage negotiations. The fear that the king has been poisoned already has them talking of withdrawing. I can see in their faces that they’re wondering if Poland wants a princess from a court that would poison its own king! Louis needs the marriage agreement to be quickly concluded and the marriage made.”

Jouvancy softened a little. “Is he very ill?”

“Very ill, during the night. He is a little better this morning.”

“And his doctors truly think he’s been poisoned?”

“Yes.” La Chaise leaned both hands on the table, which
brought him eye to eye with the little priest. “Everyone who was anywhere near the buffet last evening has spent the night being interrogated. Even I was questioned, because I served him from the buffet table before anyone else ate. I tell you again, we simply cannot afford more scandal here.”

“
You
were questioned?” Jouvancy’s smooth forehead creased with worry, and he glanced at Charles. “I did not realize—then perhaps—”

“But,
mon père
—” Ignoring his better judgment’s warnings, Charles swallowed the last mouthful of bread and waded into the fray. “If one so much as turns pale here, everyone cries poison. Last night the king looked precisely as you did weeks ago when you were taken ill in the rhetoric classroom, and his symptoms were exactly like yours. You know that no one poisoned you at Louis le Grand. Why should we not think that Louis was merely ill with this contagion so many have had?”

Jouvancy and La Chaise, suddenly a united front in the face of this insubordinate outburst, hushed him.

“And I think that Mademoiselle de Rouen may be growing more reconciled to the marriage,” Charles said anyway.

The two priests glared at him, and La Chaise refilled his wineglass and sat turning it in his hands. “She was at the king’s bedside last night,” he said thoughtfully. “Until Madame de Maintenon sent her to get some rest. That she was there speaks well for her, I admit.”

“And she’s been praying in front of our reliquary, which Madame de Maintenon has put on a side altar in the chapel for her benefit,” Charles put in doggedly.

To Charles’s surprise, no one hushed him a second time. Père Jouvancy looked pleased at the news of the reliquary, and La Chaise looked thoughtful.

“That seems a good sign,” the king’s confessor said consideringly, “that she’s praying. A young girl asking the help of a holy virgin is very appropriate. Last night, she joined me in praying for the king.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Very well. You two can return to Paris. I will arrange for one of the Franciscans who cares for the chapel to keep a watch on the girl there. And Bouchel can—” He looked at Charles. “No, perhaps not Bouchel, after what you told me. Not that the boy would step out of his place. But Lulu has obviously stepped out of hers in asking him for help, and I’ll give her no more chances to take that further. The oldest of her ladies can be persuaded to extra vigilance.” He sighed. “I will take it on myself to help keep Lulu away from the Duchess of Tuscany at the evening entertainments tonight and tomorrow.”

Charles’s heart lifted, and he took an involuntary step toward the door.

But La Chaise shook his head. “I only ask one thing,” he said to Jouvancy. “That you,
mon père
, take your ease for the remainder of the morning. You have never yet seen the gardens, and I propose that you and I spend the morning there. While you, Maître du Luc, pay a farewell visit to Mademoiselle de Rouen and perhaps have a last consoling talk with her. After you see her, we three will dine together. And after that, Bouchel will find you a carriage,
mon père
. You say you can manage both horses, Maître du Luc?”

“I can.”

“Then go and find Mademoiselle de Rouen. She is likely with her mother, Madame de Montespan, this morning.”

Telling himself that a morning was not long, and that there would be a leisurely and solitary ride at the end of it, Charles went to Madame de Montespan’s door. He’d learned that one
never knocked on a palace door, but instead scratched lightly at the glossy white paint with a fingernail. The composure of the manservant who opened the door was almost as glossy as the paint, but when Charles said that Père La Chaise had sent him, the man’s eyes widened.

“The king?” he whispered. “Is he—”

“A little better, I’m told.”

The servant admitted Charles inside and went to announce him. Left alone in the anteroom, Charles turned in a slow circle, frankly gaping. Between classical pillars, the thickly carved paneling was a riot of fat, naked baby angels hovering like butterflies among botanically impossible leaves and flowers. The walls’ flat spaces gleamed with polished marble and on the ceiling, a mostly naked Venus lay on a rosy cloud. Swans paddled in the air around the goddess, and doves fluttered as well, though Venus had eyes only for the hulking Adonis with Louis’s face.

When Charles was ushered into the next room, he found Madame de Montespan, Lulu, and Margot sitting together.
So much for keeping Mademoiselle de Rouen away from the Duchess of Tuscany,
Charles thought. Lulu’s mother was dressed in loose blue silk and sitting decorously on a sturdy chair, a cloud being unlikely now to support her weight. In spite of her size and her aging, she was beautiful. The lines of silver in her curling blond hair only made it shine more, and her fat lent a spurious smoothness to her dazzling skin. Her eyes were the bluest Charles had ever seen…

“Were you looking for me, Maître du Luc?” Lulu’s voice was small and sad, and Charles saw that she was bent over a lacy pile of sewing in her lap.

“Forgive me,
mesdames
.” Charles inclined his head to Madame de Montespan, hoping she hadn’t noticed his staring. “I’ve come to say that the king, God be thanked, is better.”

Margot laughed. “Good for my cousin. And even better to have the news from such a handsome courier.”