The Eloquence of Blood (8 page)

Charles said nothing.

“I think that more than just this girl's murder is wringing your heart. Was she beautiful?”

“I want to see her killer found. Is that wrong?”

“That depends on who is speaking—the bodily man grieved for a beautiful young girl, or the Jesuit caring for a human soul.”

To Charles's dismay, he felt blood rising to his face. He bowed his head, thinking that it might well take him the rest of his life to sort the one from the other.

“Don't bother to dissemble, Maître du Luc, I don't have time for it. Outrage is useful in getting at facts. But if you want to see clearly the facts you find, you will have to call some degree of dispassion to your aid,” Le Picart said. “Our need to find this girl's killer is more urgent than you probably realize. If the man who killed Martine Mynette is not found, the Society of Jesus will be accused of her death.”

Charles's head came up and he suddenly remembered the angry muttering in the crowd outside the Mynette house. “Because now the Mynette money will come to us?”

“Yes. And even more because smoldering hostility to the Society is never very far below the surface in Paris. Parisians never forget anything, and all they need is a small spark to light the past into flame.”

“And Martine Mynette's death is more than a small spark,” Charles said flatly.

Le Picart nodded wearily. “Again yes. And why? Because no one here will ever forget our poor Jean Châtel and his attack on King Henry.” Nearly a hundred years ago, a former Jesuit student named Jean Châtel, a deranged and rabidly fanatical Catholic, had tried to kill King Henry IV, a Huguenot who had converted to Catholicism in order to claim the throne. Châtel had been executed and his family house razed. One of his Jesuit teachers had been hanged and burned at the stake. The Society of Jesus had been banished from the realm for years.

“Feeling against us has grown again.” Anger flashed in the rector's eyes. “Largely because our enemies fan the political flames, twisting all the facts and accusing us of being only the pope's men and not the king's.”

“We are far from innocent of misdeeds,” Charles said soberly, thinking of the Jesuit role in the Huguenots' plight. “But our first loyalty
is
to the pope and the church. Isn't it?”

“Yes. But we are also loyal to the king.” Le Picart picked up a quill from the tray at his elbow and smoothed the feather barbs as though quieting himself. “Why is it that human beings so rarely see that two things can be true at once?” He pointed the quill's nib at Charles. “The world is changing. The pope's power shrinks as the power of kings and states grows. And so those who want us gone—especially the Gallicans in France's
Parlements
, who want no foreign influence in France—whisper that we are plotting to regain power for His Holiness. What the hypocrites really want is our power and property for themselves. So they say we are not Gallican enough, not French enough, for these enlightened times. And if, on top of that, people begin whispering that we killed Mademoiselle Mynette, or had her killed, to get her money, all these angers and hatreds will flare into a conflagration.” He threw the pen down. “And before it ends, people will no doubt believe that we also stole the girl's
donation entre vifs
, and probably poisoned her mother into the bargain. Dear Blessed Virgin, I wish with all my heart the girl had not been killed! For her sake, God knows, but also for ours.”

“What are we going to do? If I may ask,
mon père
.”

“What I should do is tell you to go about your lowly scholastic business.” The rector shook his head, almost angrily. “But you proved last summer that you have some skill in picking apart this sort of coil. So. Let us see if you can put your personal feelings about this girl aside and act not for yourself, but for the Society. Will you do that?”

“With all my heart,
mon père
!” Seeing Le Picart's skeptical expression, Charles added hastily, “I mean—that is—to the best of my ability, I will. God helping me.”

“Good. You have worked a little with Lieutenant-Général La Reynie, and he respects you. I want you to watch the police investigation during these next few days and keep me informed.” Le Picart's eyes narrowed, and there was unmistakable warning in his gaze. “As I did last summer, I give you permission to go and come as you will, unaccompanied. But you will not take advantage of that or neglect your college responsibilities.”

“So I will continue to assist in Père Pallu's morning rhetoric class as well as work with Père Jouvancy on the February performance?”

The rector considered for a moment. “If this task I am giving you lasts beyond the beginning of the rhetoric and grammar classes on Monday, I will tell Père Pallu that you will be absent for a time. But you will continue working on the February performance with Père Jouvancy. If a few assignments take longer in Père Pallu's class, that is a small matter. But the performance date is set and cannot be altered. Père Jouvancy needs you at every rehearsal. Meanwhile, you have today, tomorrow, and Sunday to do what I am asking. I want you to discover and tell me everything possible about what the police uncover. Facts won't stop the mudslinging, but facts will help me decide what actions to take. Or not take. For my part,” he went on grimly, “I am going to get from our idiot notary Monsieur Henri Brion everything he knows about this affair, if I have to go through his sluggish brain with a soup ladle. Before you returned, I sent a lay brother with a message demanding Brion's presence immediately after dinner. With the girl's death, he should at least be more willing to speak to me freely about this
donation
. After I hear what he has to tell, I will send a report to Père La Chaise at Versailles.”

“And he will speak to the king for us?” The Jesuit Père La Chaise was King Louis's confessor.

“If need be, yes.”

A flurry of knocking came suddenly at the door.

Startled, Le Picart called, “Come!”

Two lay brothers entered, the older one holding the younger by the arm. The younger man, wrapped in a snow-spattered cloak, had a swiftly blackening eye. His bloodied hand was pressed to the side of his face. Le Picart rose from his chair and hurried around the desk.

“Frère Guiscard, what has happened to you?”

Charles recognized the older brother as Frère Martin, who often served as postern keeper.

“I would have taken him to Frère Brunet,
mon père
,” Martin said, “but I thought you ought to hear this as soon as might be.”

“I went to the Brion house,
mon père
, as you told me to,” Guiscard said, wincing as he talked. “Monsieur Brion was out and no one seemed to know when he'd be home. So I left your message for him and started back. As I was crossing the Place Maubert, two men came at me. They started throwing fists and yelling about Jesuits and saying I'd killed some girl! Crazy, they seemed,
mon père
!”

“Let me see the side of your face.”

Guiscard let his hand drop and Charles, who had also stood up, saw that the brother's cheek was badly cut and bruised. Le Picart picked up Guiscard's hands and turned them over, revealing equally bloody knuckles.

“I couldn't let them beat me to a
pâté
,
mon père
,” Guiscard said reasonably. “Since I hadn't done any of what they said.”

“Have Frère Brunet see to your hands as well as your face. Did you know the two men?”

Guiscard shook his head. “I think one was an apprentice, but the other was older. I didn't know them.”

“Did anyone else see what happened?”

“I don't know,
mon père
. It was snowing hard and when I got clear, I ran.”

Le Picart nodded. “I am glad your hurts are no worse,
mon frère
. Frère Martin, please see him to the infirmary.”

When the lay brothers were gone, Le Picart sank into his chair again, pressed clasped hands against his lips, and closed his eyes, shaking his head slightly. Charles sat down and waited, not sure whether the rector was praying or simply deploring what had happened.

“So it has started.” Le Picart let his hands drop and looked up. “And as soon as the shorter vacation is over and we have day students coming and going in the streets, it's going to get worse. Much worse.” He glanced at the black, one-handed clock on the side table. “If Henri Brion does not come to me this afternoon, you will have to find him and bring him here.”

“Shall I go to the Châtelet now,
mon père
? He may well be there searching for the
donation
, if he doesn't yet know that Mademoiselle Mynette is dead. He was not at home this morning, and both his daughter and his uncle said they had not seen him yet today.”

“Yes, go there. We will pursue our legal claim to this money, and I must speak with him about how to proceed without further inflaming rumor and gossip. And after he tells me that, he is also going to tell me why he kept knowledge of this
donation
from us.”

Charles stood up, bowed, and went to the door. Then he turned back, frowning. “How did they know?”

“What?”

“The men who attacked Frère Guiscard must have known that we stand to get the Mynette
patrimoine
. Why else would they link a Jesuit to Martine Mynette's murder? So how did they know that the money now comes to us?”

They looked at each other in silence.

Le Picart said slowly, “I have spoken of the bequest to no one outside the Society. No one at all beyond the college except my superior, our Provincial. Have you?”

“Only to you and Père Damiot,
mon père
.”

“Very well. Go now, I want a report from you before midday. Meanwhile, I will discover who has spread our affairs abroad.”

Charles went, glad he had to face only the weather and not Le Picart's inquiry.

H
unched against the snow falling around him, Charles crossed the Petit Pont and most of the Île de la Cité, and then veered right to cross the Pont au Change to the Châtelet. In the old days, money changers had had their
banques
, or benches, on this bridge. And how ironic, Charles found himself thinking, that the money changers' bridge led to a prison and law courts. Where money seemed so often to lead, mortals being unable to do without it, and so often unable to do honestly with it.

In spite of the snow, he slowed as he came to the triangular islet of houses at the north end of the bridge, where the roadway split into a Y. He squinted against the snowflakes, looking up at the larger than life-size bronze statues of the royal family crowning the south-facing point of the triangle, the child Louis XIV standing between his parents, Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. Another family not without its problems, he thought, brushing snow off his eyelashes, and taking the left-hand branch of the Y around the triangle, the way that led into the Place du Châtelet. The looming old Châtelet had been the city's northern gate when all of Paris was contained on the Île de la Cité, just as the Petit Châtelet on the Left Bank had been its southern gate and was still the entrance to the Petit Pont.

Charles had a glimpse of thick walls, round stone towers, and conical blue roofs as he crossed the Place, and then the torch-flaring darkness of an arched passage swallowed him into the ancient fortress. He came out onto the roadway dividing the Châtelet's prison from its law courts. He'd been there once before, but at night, and now, in daylight, he was shocked by how dilapidated the buildings were. Fallen stones and broken roof tiles lay along the road, and a little way ahead was what looked like half a fallen wall. He'd heard Jesuits arguing over whether Julius Caesar had built the Châtelet, which certainly seemed possible, since the Romans had built a town where Paris now stood. But even if it hadn't been Caesar who built it, the crumbling fortress was unimaginably old.

Inside, though, the modern love of litigation pursued its tortuous path. Christmas season though it was, a few clerks came and went in the echoing stone-vaulted anteroom, and two lawyers in voluminous curling wigs and silky black robes with ribbons on their sleeves stood arguing loudly, while their clients glowered at each other. Charles had grown up listening to his father's diatribes about these new men. They had bought their posts from the king, just as notaries like Monsieur Brion had. But notaries occupied the lowest rungs of the legal ladder and ranked only as
bourgeoisie de Paris
. These lawyers and judges, wealthy and with University law degrees, were the modern
noblesse de la robe
—so called because of their long, beribboned gowns—and they considered themselves every bit as noble as the old
noblesse de l'epée
, the nobility of the sword. Which, of course, outraged the old sword families. Mostly, Charles suspected, because the new nobles of the robe were far richer than many of the old nobility, who had lost their money along with their ancient military function. Hereditary nobles could still buy royal military commissions, though, as Charles's father—a very minor noble—had done for him when he'd insisted on soldiering. But even there, there was less and less place for the old ways. The army Charles had fought in had been the minister of war's increasingly reorganized, state-run army, no longer the old motley collection of lords and their men-at-arms, and their shifting allegiances.

Charles spotted a clerk sitting at a table beside a wide archway in the far wall, but as he started toward him, the man sprang up, grabbed a ledger, and turned toward the arch.

“Monsieur,”
Charles called, “one little moment of your time, I beg you.”