The Eloquence of Blood (42 page)

“Be assured that it will, in time. I will go on confiscating copies until the sellers and singers turn their attention to the next
scandale
in Paris.”

“I trust,” Le Picart said dryly, “that the Society of Jesus actually receiving the Mynette money will not be the next
scandale
.”

La Reynie said grimly, “The closer we get to the end of January, and the king's visit to the city and grand dinner at the Hôtel de Ville, the faster disturbers of the city's peace for any reason will find themselves unpleasantly housed in the Châtelet.”

Charles stepped forward. “
Mon père
, will you give me permission to watch tonight with the beggar woman and the dying boy? In the morning, if he dies as she predicts, I will see that . . . that all is attended to, and that the
cave
is empty.” Charles glanced at La Reynie. “Monsieur La Reynie has offered to bury the young man, as well as the old beggar he killed.”

Le Picart looked at La Reynie in surprise but said to Charles, “You have my permission,
maître
. See also that this dying boy and the beggar woman have what they need for their comfort.”

“Thank you,
mon père
. I will see to it.”

“When they are gone from the
cave
, I will send lay brothers to block the entrance.” Le Picart's tapping fingers stilled. “Now that we will have money enough, repairs to the Les Cholets building can go forward, including a stout locked door where you say the beggars have been getting in.”

Charles nodded, remembering what Reine had told him. It was none so bad down there, she'd said. Not bad at all, with fire at hand and water nearby, especially when Paris was freezing or drowning in rain. What she hadn't told him was where the other entrance was, and how could he tell the rector what he didn't know?

La Reynie said, “If you will excuse me,
mon père
, I must send for men to take the beggar's body away.” He rose from his chair.

Charles took another step forward. “Before I return to the
cave
, will you give me permission to go to the Couche,
mon père
? There is an old nun there who may know something about the killer.”

“What does that matter now?” Le Picart and La Reynie said it nearly in concert, and Charles struggled to find an answer.

“I would like to know more about who he is.”

“Curiosity is not a virtue in a Jesuit,” Le Picart said mildly, eyeing him.

The silence stretched and Charles realized belatedly that the rector was waiting for a response to what he'd said.

“
Mon père
, it seems to me that the idle curiosity of distraction, which leads to meddling, is one thing. But the desire to know truth in order to see justice done and compassion given is another. It seems only right to know whom we are burying.”

Le Picart still said nothing, his eyes boring into Charles.

“And to know why he killed,” Charles made bold to say. “If we do not know why souls grow desperate, how can we help them?”

La Reynie was staring at him in open amazement. But the rector had relaxed into his chair and was regarding Charles with more than a little satisfaction.

“You may go to the Couche. But”—the satisfied look was replaced by one of unmistakable warning—“when you have asked your questions, whether or not you have your answers, the task I set you will be ended. You will then give your full and undivided attention to your duties here.”

“Yes,
mon père
.”

Charles and La Reynie bowed and turned to leave. Before the door shut behind them, though, the rector called Charles back.

“I say this only to you, but I think you will want to know. It was one of our own from Louis Le Grand who spoke carelessly, outside the college, about the Mynette
patrimoine
coming to us.”

Charles remembered his first walk to the Place with the dour Maître Richaud and the gossip Richaud had heard in the chandler's workshop. “And this Jesuit talked about the
patrimoine
?”

“Yes. But that is all that needs to be said. The rest is not your business.”

The “rest” meaning consequences, including penance.
You should order him to go and see a comedy every day
, Charles thought irreverently, remembering Richaud's dislike of laughter.

“Before you go to the Couche,” Le Picart said briskly, “take food to the
cave
. And blankets.”

Charles bent his head in acquiescence.

“And Maître du Luc?”

Charles looked up.

“My thanks to you. You have done well what I ordered you to do.” He gave Charles a small, wintry smile. “When I gave you this task, I said that a Jesuit's obedience should be his superior's supporting staff. You have upheld me, and also Louis le Grand.”

Charles felt himself flushing with pleasure at the unexpected thanks. Jesuit obedience—no matter how hard he himself found it—was regarded as simply a given, not an occasion for thanks. “I only wish I could have prevented this morning's death,” he said.

“I wish so, too. But that death and its sin are not yours to carry.” Le Picart's smile reached his cool gray eyes this time. “What would be the point of growing in obedience only to fall into overscrupulosity?”

Charles found himself smiling, too, and remembering the Christmas
Farce of Monks
. If the end of a scholastic was to be kicked, the frequent function of a superior was to douse the scholastic with cold water for the good of his soul. “Point taken,
mon père
.”

Charles collected blankets from the central store of bedding, and soup and bread from the kitchen. With some difficulty, he made his way back into the Les Cholets courtyard and down to the cellar. Nothing had changed. Reine still held Marin's body on her lap, and Jean was still tossing and shivering with fever. Charles gently unwrapped his cloak from the boy and wrapped him instead in layers of blankets. He put another blanket around Reine's shoulders and set the soup and bread beside her.

“Where is Richard?” Charles asked, seeing that the beggar was gone.

“He went to tell the others not to return tonight.”

“Where will they stay?”

“There are other places.”

The sound of voices and footsteps announced La Reynie, followed by two
sergents
with a litter. Reine gathered Marin to her and kissed him.

“Good-bye,
mon coeur
, my heart, my life.” She looked up at La Reynie, her eyes full of pleading. “Treat him gently, Nicolas,” she whispered.

“You know I will.” He called the two men forward with a look. “You will do this as though for your fathers,” he said curtly, and stepped aside.

Obviously bewildered by so much care for a filthy beggar, but just as obviously flinching from the steel in La Reynie's voice, his men placed Marin on the litter with the care they might have given a marquis. They covered him with the blanket they'd brought, bowed to La Reynie, and bore the litter away to the Châtelet's mortuary chapel.

As their footsteps died away, Richard emerged from the passage and sat down beside Reine. “I will take care of her, Monsieur La Reynie.”

“For now.” The
lieutenant-général
strode out of the
cave
and Charles followed.

When they reached the front of the college, a red-and-black carriage drawn by a pair of black horses, standing in the little rue des Poirees across from Louis le Grand's main doors, came to meet them. A serving boy jumped down from his place between the high rear wheels and opened the door. Charles began his farewells, but La Reynie motioned him curtly into the carriage and climbed in behind him.

“La Couche,”
he barked at the boy, who told the driver, and they were off.

La Reynie crossed his arms on his chest and stared steadfastly out the window. That suited Charles, who settled back on the red cushioned seat, looking eagerly out his own window. He was so rarely in a carriage that the experience was still new. Beyond the window, people, horses, carriages, carts, mules, shops, dogs, courtyard gates flashed past in a flood of color. Watching the wheels throw waves of muddy snow and water against stone walls and swearing pedestrians, Charles realized that the day was steadily warming. Snow dripped from eaves and gargoyles, and people even leaned on the sills of open windows, airing their rooms. On the Petit Pont, a few well-wrapped women sat in west-facing doorways, their faces lifted to shafts of sunlight and long-absent warmth.

On the Île de la Cité, the carriage wound its way to the rue Neuve Notre Dame and stopped in front of the gate to the long, stone-built Couche. La Reynie and Charles got out, still in silence, and La Reynie rang the bell. Charles waited silently behind him. A young, bright-eyed Sister of Charity hurried across the court and let them in.

“Our thanks,
ma soeur
,” La Reynie said, lifting his hat, as Charles bowed. “We are seeking one of your sisters.” He gestured to Charles to take over the asking.

“She is called Mariana,” Charles said.

“Oh, you are in luck, come with me.” The girl led them across the muddy court. “Soeur Mariana has been ill, but she is better now, and back with us.” She ushered them through the door and into the anteroom. “Will you wait one little moment, please? I will see if she is busy.” With another curtsy, she hurried away.

The dark, rambling old house smelled of babies. Dirty swaddling, sour milk, and strong soap scented air already rank with the closed-in smells of winter, while wailing cries, hurrying feet on stone floors, and sharply urgent commands smote their ears. The young nun returned, as serene as though they were all in a summer garden.

“Soeur Mariana will see you. Come.”

She took them through the anteroom and along a dark, low-beamed passage to a small plaster-walled room where an elderly nun sat singing under her breath as she fed an eagerly sucking newborn with a rag soaked in milk. It was a common way of feeding babies, especially when there were several to feed at once. Wet nurses were sometimes accused of letting babies die, because the ones who got only the rag and not the breast often starved to death. Watching, Charles hoped this child—and the half dozen others in the cradles ranged around the room—would soon go to wet nurses of their own.

“Ma soeur,”
La Reynie said, “I have questions to ask you, if you will be so kind.”

The old woman's reedy singing stopped and she peered at him, blinking shortsightedly. Her aquiline nose was like a blade, and her starched white headdress stood away from her dark face in wide quivering wings.

“And who are you?”

“I am Nicolas de La Reynie,
ma soeur
, head of the Paris police. And this is Maître Charles du Luc, from the college of Louis le Grand.”

Her black eyes flicked from La Reynie to Charles, and she pulled the rag from the infant's mouth, dipped it in the basin of milk on the table at her elbow, and wrung it out a little. “What do you want?” She gave the baby the rag tit again and resumed her singing.

La Reynie frowned impatiently. “Soeur Mariana, I beg the favor of your attention.”

“You see me here, speak,” the old woman said, and kept singing.

La Reynie shook his head in exasperation and looked at Charles.

Charles knelt beside her. “
Ma soeur
, did you have a child in your care, perhaps as many as twenty years ago, a boy called Tito? Also perhaps called Jean?”

“Tito?” She drew in a quick breath and looked up, seeming to see La Reynie and Charles for the first time. “My Tito? Where is he?”

Charles said softly, “When did you last see Tito?”

“Thirteen years ago. Only once. Soon after he went to be a servant, I was sent to see how he did. He was eight years old then.” She sighed. “I missed him sorely. But it was best for him; it was a place and a way into the world.” The nun stared into the distance, her pale lips moving in prayer or memory, Charles couldn't tell. The child in her lap had sucked the rag dry and began to wail before she sighed and said, “Thirteen years ago he went to Madame Anne Mynette. Such a long time.”

“
Madame
Anne Mynette?” Charles said mildly.

“So she called herself four years before, when she came looking for her own child. I doubted then she had a right to the title,” the nun said acidly. “Women who come here to retrieve their babies—not that many ever come—hardly ever have a right to it.”

La Reynie raised an eyebrow at Charles. “It seems a long time for you to remember the woman's name,” he said skeptically, watching her soak the rag again and quiet the baby.

“Oh, no, when she came in search of a little servant, I remembered her. Why would I not, when I'd already given her one of our babies?”

Charles frowned in confusion. “But you just said that when she came earlier, it was to get her own child.”

“Her own child had died.”

“Died? But—”

Soeur Mariana bridled. “I remember quite well how it was. A wet nurse left the child, because her own children had fallen ill, and she feared the infant would too. The infant she brought to us did sicken, and when ‘Madame' Mynette came, it had just died. But I saw a chance for another child.” She made a derisive little sound. “Babies look much the same when they're very young. And ‘Madame' Mynette had told me that she hadn't seen her child for some weeks. So I found a baby girl about the same age and with the same color eyes, though lighter hair. I wrapped her in a clean blanket, but then I was afraid the Mynette woman would see the difference and I would be in grave trouble. But God used little Tito to show me what to do. Tito was with me that day—I often kept him with me, though he lived in the older children's house by then. Well, that day he was playing with the little trinket he had, a heart on an old ribbon. He'd always had it. It was around his neck when he was found in Notre Dame.” The nun's face softened and she shook her head sadly. “His mother no doubt put it on him when she left him in the stone cradle that's been there time out of mind for leaving babies in. So I—”