The Eloquence of Blood (43 page)

“Wait,
ma soeur
!
Tito's
mother? But Martine Mynette told her friend that Mademoiselle Anne Mynette had put it on her when she was a baby!”

“Nothing of the kind.” Soeur Mariana gave Charles a shrewd look. “The Mynette woman was desperate with guilt when she came searching for her infant. Guilt for leaving her with the wet nurse, I suppose. Well, she deserved guilt, if a woman has a child, she should feed it with the breasts God gave her. If she told the girl that
she'd
given her the heart, it was no doubt to make herself seem a better mother.”

Charles's head was spinning. “Tito's mother,” he murmured, trying to make sense out of what he was hearing. “So the baby Mademoiselle Anne Mynette took home was a foundling like Tito himself.”

“Yes. Left on the Pont Neuf, if I remember rightly. Du Pont—from the bridge—we would have given her for a surname.”

Charles's heart contracted as he tried to imagine young, desperate mothers, newborn children in their arms, watching to see that they were unobserved, putting their babies down somewhere that seemed safe. And walking away.

“The mothers often leave some trinket,” the nun said. “They think they'll come and claim the baby, but they don't. They're whores, most of them.”

“So you are saying,
ma soeur
, that you took Tito's necklace and put it on the baby who became Martine Mynette.”

“I thought the Mynette woman would be more likely to accept the child as hers, if I said I'd put the little heart on her baby when the wet nurse left her, to be sure she wasn't mixed with the others and lost.” Soeur Mariana smiled complacently. “‘Madame' Mynette made us a very large gift for that.” She rose and laid the sucking child in one of the beds, ignoring its cries when she pulled the rag from its mouth. Then she went to a different bed and busied herself with another infant.

Charles looked at La Reynie. The
lieutenant-général
looked like he was holding himself in the chair and in the room by main force.

Charles said, “What did Tito do,
ma soeur
? When you took his necklace?”

“Do?” Soeur Mariana sat down with the new child and soaked the rag again. “Oh, he cried. He even tried to kick me, but I beat him and he said he was sorry. It's the only way with them.” She frowned, sucking her yellowed teeth. “I thought he would forget, as children do, but when I went to check on him after he was in the Mynette household, ‘Madame' Mynette said she was going to send him back if he didn't stop trying to steal her adopted daughter's necklace. So I talked sharply to him and told him that if he didn't stop, she would throw him out in the street and no one would take care of him. Tito was bright enough, he took to heart what I said, and she kept him.”

Charles swallowed hard. “Yes, she kept him.”

“Is he there still,
maître
?”

“No. Anne Mynette is dead,” Charles said. “And so is the little girl you gave her.”

Soeur Mariana put the rag tit into the new baby's mouth and stared beyond Charles and La Reynie, as though into the past, still saying nothing. Finally, with a faint sigh, she said, “Tito is dead, too, isn't he?”

Charles hesitated. “Yes,” he said, and left it at that, because it seemed the kindest thing to do. “I am sorry.”

“Before I joined the Sisters of Charity, I was a wife,” the nun said, murmuring so that Charles had to lean closer to hear her. “We left Spain and came here. I had two children. They died, and my husband, also. So I became a nun. Little Tito came back to us from his wet nurse, and I had the charge of him at the house for the older children. But sometimes when I came here to work for a day, I brought him with me. He was like my son who died. Very like.” Her voice trailed into silence.

“Was your son's name Tito?”

She shook her head. “They called my little foundling Jean Baptiste, because he was found on St. Jean Baptiste's day. In Spanish that is Juan Bautisto, and I called him that. But he couldn't say it, he could only say Tito, so that became what everyone called him.”

Charles nodded, wondering if Tito had called himself Jean after he left the Mynette house because he wanted to be a man, called by a man's name, and not just little foundling Tito.

The nun was looking down at the child in her lap. “I only wanted to give another child a chance at life. So many die before we can even find them wet nurses.”

“The baby you put Tito's necklace on had time to grow up,
ma soeur
. With a mother who loved her as her natural daughter.”

She gave Charles a bleak smile. “That is something, then.”

A sound from La Reynie made Charles turn to see him emptying his purse onto the table beside the basin of milk. “For the children,” he said through stiff lips, and left the room.

Hurriedly, Charles thanked the nun and gave her the last of the coins from Le Picart's purse, made the sign of the cross over the babies, and caught up with La Reynie in the courtyard. When they reached the carriage, La Reynie dismissed it.

“Walk with me,” he said.

Instead of turning toward the Right Bank and the Châtelet, the
lieutenant-général
walked toward the towers of Notre Dame at the tip of the island. Charles kept pace with him, watching him covertly and thinking about what the nun had told them. In the open square below the cathedral's west face, La Reynie stopped and looked up, past rank upon rank of stone saints wet with snowmelt, past the climbing towers, up at the brilliant blue sky.

“Sometimes,” he said, staring at the soaring stones, “when I cannot face this city or myself any longer, I come here. I tell myself that no matter what happens, no matter the evil and suffering, day and night into day and night, the saints still stand there. So God must still be there, too. Still somewhere.”

Too astonished to speak, Charles stood as motionless as the carvings, until the
lieutenant-général
began to walk again. They went around the side of the cathedral, along its line of buttresses.

“You want to know about Reine,” La Reynie said abruptly. “Because you saved her life, I will tell you. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. But her face and her body were the least of her beauty. Oh, not that I didn't appreciate them, I did, and fully.” He glanced sideways at Charles. “You have known women, you will understand that. Though perhaps not the rest of it. I—I met Reine soon after coming to Paris and this impossible job. I think you know what she was then. A gloriously beautiful, royally expensive courtesan. I spent more and more time with her, time I didn't have, money I didn't have, but she kept me from losing my sanity. I would have married her, even with all I knew about her. But, of course, I could not, I was already married to my second wife. And Reine would not have had me, anyway. And why?” He laughed sadly. “Because she loved Marin. The beggar. Then, a few years later, when I was seeing her rarely, she was in great danger. I cannot tell you more than that, only that I was able to help her. And she has often helped me. For more than twenty years now, my heart has been more than half in her keeping.”

They had reached the eastern tip of the
île
and turned to look at the cathedral again.

“And what of your own love?” La Reynie said roughly. “So far away in Geneva.”

Charles caught his breath. La Reynie knew Pernelle, but this was the first time he had ever called her Charles's “love.”

“As you say, she is in Geneva. I am here. That will not change.”

“I see. And have you accepted your penance and done it?”

“Yes.” Charles was shaken by how good it was to speak about her. “I did willing penance.” He fell quiet, looking up at Notre Dame's great rose window. “I renewed my vows,” he said finally. “God helping me, I will keep them.” He caught La Reynie's glance and held it. “I did not do penance for loving.”

“Is that an overfine Jesuit distinction?”

“I hope not.”

Charles wanted to say something more, something to ease La Reynie's unhappiness, but before he found anything to say, the
lieutenant-général
faced him and held out his hand. Surprised, Charles took it. La Reynie nodded slightly, disengaged himself, and walked rapidly away.

 

T
he early afternoon's blanket of clouds added to the mourning feeling of the Brion house, whose windows were still covered in black. To Charles's surprise, the manservant who answered his knock was wearing black, too, new breeches and a coat whose sleeves covered his wrists. The Sunday Mass and dinner—chicken stew today, to everyone's relief—were over, and Charles was on his way to the church of St. Louis. This stop was unauthorized, but he could not resist the chance to see how the Brions were faring, now that Gilles had been released from the Châtelet.

But when the servant showed him into the dark
salon
, he found only Monsieur Callot, Mademoiselle Brion, and Monsieur Morel. Callot smiled at Charles as he got to his feet, and so did Morel. But Isabel's face was unaccountably anxious as she made her
reverence
.

Charles bowed his greeting. “I came to congratulate you,” he said, “that Monsieur Gilles Brion is with you again—at least, I trust he is?”

“Yes—that is, we've seen him.” Isabel's tired face lit with a brief smile. “I know that it is you we have to thank for his freedom,
maître
. Though how we can ever thank you enough, I cannot imagine.”

“Yes, you have given us more than you know,” Morel said meaningly, and took Isabel's hand in his.

“As you see, though,” Monsieur Callot said, “Gilles is not here.” The words were sour as a lemon. “He deigned to give us a few minutes and then he went to his Capuchins. I have given him my permission, as the new head of the family.” The sourness in his voice gave way to regret. “The best thing for him, perhaps. Though why a man would want to do it, I cannot fathom. I will say, though, that his narrow escape seems to have stiffened his spine a little. Ah, well, I wish the Capuchins joy of him.” He backed closer to the small fire, whose light flickered over the black drapery at the windows. “And what of the real killer, Maître du Luc?”

“The Mynettes' former servant Tito—whose real name was Jean Baptiste—admitted that he'd killed them both, for his own tangled reasons. He was very ill and not altogether right in his wits. He died early this morning. Not alone, I was with him.” Charles sighed, remembering the sudden silence when Jean's tortured breathing finally stilled, remembering Reine's gentle closing of the boy's eyes. “There will be no public execution.”

Isabel said softly, “There have been enough deaths. I am glad there will be no public show of his.” They were all quiet for a moment, and then she said, “Maître du Luc, we have something to show you.” Biting her lip, she turned and took folded papers from a small table. “We found these hidden in my father's bedchamber yesterday. You must read them.”

She held them out. Charles took them and realized immediately what the larger paper must be, with its seals and ribbons. He unfolded it. At the bottom of the page were Mademoiselle Anne Mynette's signature and Henri Brion's, as well as the signatures of witnesses, all to make certain that Martine Mynette would one day have the Mynette
patrimoine
. Slowly, he refolded the
donation entre vifs
.

“You found this hidden?”

Isabel nodded, red with shame. “Beneath his mattress. Read the letter,
maître
, and you will know why. It came the day after he died. An Ursuline returning from their New France mission brought it. But I did not have the heart to open it then. I read it yesterday and soon after, we found the
donation
. And . . .”

Callot growled, “Let him read it, Isabel.”

The letter was from New France. It was about family matters, as Isabel had told Charles letters from there mostly were. This one was about a betrothal. Marc Brion, a young cousin of Henri Brion living in Quebec, wrote jubilantly that all was now concluded for his marriage to one Pauline Mynette.

“Mynette?” Charles shook his head in confusion. “But I thought there were no more Mynettes!”

“So did we all,
maître
,” Callot said. “Keep reading, I beg you.”

The letter went on, “My Pauline's father died soon after she was born, as I told you in an earlier letter, but I now have absolute proof that all is as she says. Her father was the nephew of the lawyer Simon Mynette on the Place Maubert. He was Simon's only remaining blood relative other than Simon's daughter. Who, as you tell me, is now dead. Thank God that this Martine Mynette is only adopted and that the
donation entre vifs
is lost. I trust, my dear cousin, that lost it will remain. I would, of course, love my Pauline without the Mynette
patrimoine
. but who would not love her even more with it?”

Feeling as though someone had knocked the air out of his lungs, Charles looked at the three watching him. “And this is true?” he said, when he could speak.

“I think it must be,” Callot said. “I had heard years ago that Simon Mynette quarreled badly with a nephew who then went to New France. Simon always claimed the boy died soon after arriving there—but it seems he had time to marry and father a child.”

“According to this letter, it appears Monsieur Henri Brion had been getting letters for some time about this proposed betrothal,” Charles said. “Which explains some things.”

Callot nodded ruefully. “It explains the ‘lost'
donation
quite nicely. No, Isabel, hold your peace, there is no other explanation. Your father knew that this betrothal was in progress, and he saw that his effort to get the Mynette money by making Gilles marry Martine was failing. But if Martine's
donation
disappeared, he could still secure the money for the Brion family by way of the New France marriage.” Callot shrugged sadly. “And all his scheming was for nothing. Poor little Martine is gone, and so is he.”