The Whispering of Bones

PRAISE FOR

A Plague of Lies

“In Rock's fine third seventeenth-century historical featuring Paris rhetoric teacher Charles du Luc . . . diligent research allows Rock to seamlessly blend her fictional additions to the time of the Sun King with the historical record.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“A great mix of mystery, excitement and intrigue . . . a truly excellent series.”

—Derek Gunn,
The Big Thrill

The Eloquence of Blood

“Rock's second novel featuring Charles du Luc is every bit the equal of her impressive historical thriller debut,
The Rhetoric of Death
 . . . Readers will hope this energetic and engrossing sequel will be the first of many.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“Rock's historical accuracy resonates here, transporting you to 1686 Paris. Her intriguing plot and protagonists with whom readers are becoming good friends make this a necessary read for all who enjoy historical mysteries, especially those by Ariana Franklin.”

—
Library Journal
(starred review)

“Thrilling . . . engaging.”

—
Sarasota Magazine

“Rock provides meticulous details of everyday life across various social classes with an engaging style . . . touches of humor and insight. . . . In du Luc, Rock has created a highly likeable scholar-detective. I hope that his adventures will play out for many books to come.”

—
Historical Novels Review

“Rock nails everything about characters, dialogue, setting, historical research, pacing and story development . . . fascinating . . . all of this detail is woven so seamlessly into the story that the reader never falters . . . Rock has the start to an excellent historical detective series.”

—
Bookgasm

“Not only satisfies the taste of historical mystery lovers but anyone who likes complex plots, twists, and elaborate mysteries. . . . Judith Rock's research is as impeccable as her writing style. . . . a great read.”

—
Mystery Tribune

The Rhetoric of Death

2011 BARRY AWARD NOMINEE FOR BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

ONE OF
DEADLY PLEASURES
MAGAZINE'S BEST BOOKS OF 2010

“Amazing . . . Ms. Rock takes you back to fascinating and dangerous seventeenth-century Paris so well that I suspect her of being a time-traveler who's been there.”

—Ariana Franklin, national bestselling author of
A Murderous Procession

“Rich with telling detail and a deep feeling for time and place.”

—Margaret Frazer, national bestselling author of
The Apostate's Tale

“Rock skillfully builds her suspense plot, all the while incorporating splendid detail of seventeenth-century Parisian monastic and street life and the relationship between church and Crown. . . . She proves herself a promising new talent by creating this powerful, absorbing, complex, and thoroughly satisfying novel.”

—
Historical Novels Review
(editor's choice)

“[A] superb historical debut . . . With an experienced writer's ease, Rock incorporates details of the political issues of the day into a suspenseful story line.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“Rock brings firsthand knowledge of dance, choreography, acting, police investigation, and teaching to what is hopefully the beginning of a mystery series . . . [A] fascinating historical mystery . . . Plenty of derring-do and boyish mischief sprinkled into the plot make this a fun read, and Charles's thought-provoking struggles as he questions his vocation lend added depth. . . . sure to satisfy those eager for a great new historical mystery.”

—
Booklist
(starred review)

“Rich with historical detail . . . meticulously researched. [Rock] captures a city and time that is lively, dangerous and politically charged, and makes it sing . . . [Her] fine eye for historic detail and well-drawn characters will continue to engage readers.”

—
Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)

“Rock is an exciting new discovery. Her plotting holds your interest, her characters are real, and her attention to details of the time period is extraordinary. Highly recommended for fans of historical thrillers and readers who enjoy Ellis Peters, Edward Marston, and Ariana Franklin.”

—
Library Journal
(starred review)

“Rock balances perfectly the differing claims of detection, romance, suspense, and historical detail. As a mystery, as a kind of coming-of-age novel, or as a docudrama on early Jesuit pedagogy,
The Rhetoric of Death
works remarkably well. . . . Very entertaining.”

—
Commonweal
magazine

Berkley titles by Judith Rock

THE RHETORIC OF DEATH

THE ELOQUENCE OF BLOOD

A PLAGUE OF LIES

THE WHISPERING OF BONES

Specials

PERNELLE'S ESCAPE: A RHETORIC OF DEATH NOVELLA

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

Copyright © 2013 by Judith Rock.

“Readers Guide” copyright © 2013 by Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

BERKLEY
^®
is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-62314-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rock, Judith.

The whispering of bones / Judith Rock. — Berkley trade paperback edition.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-425-25366-3

1. Collège Louis-le-Grand (Paris, France)—Fiction.

2. Jesuits—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction.

4. France—History—17th century—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3618.o3543w57 2013

13'.6—dc23

2013003498

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley trade paperback edition / November 2013

Cover art:
A View of Paris from the Point de la Cité
by Theodor Matham / Private

Collection © The Bridgeman Art Library;
The Great Siege Tunnels
© Eric James / Alamy;

Priest
© Yolande de Kort / Trevillion Images.

Cover design by Danielle Abbiate.

Interior text design by Tiffany Estreicher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For Shannon Jamieson Vazquez, editor, who sees deeply, corrects unsparingly, and gives new books to the world with excitement, love, and commitment.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There's always more to know, always more mistakes to catch, and more possibilities to see. John Padberg, S.J., Patricia Ranum, and Catherine Turocy have patiently and enthusiastically helped me make the Charles du Luc books historically accurate and revealing. I am especially indebted to Patricia Ranum's new book,
Beginning to Be a Jesuit
, about the Jesuit Novice House in Paris in the 1680s. Heartfelt thanks also go to Caroline Jacquier at the Mazarine Library in Paris, for her tireless help as I researched this book. As always, the eagle-eyed team of early readers has corrected, suggested, and encouraged. And the art people at Berkley Books have once again outdone themselves creating the beautiful cover.

C
HAPTER
1

THE FEAST OF ST. URSULA AND HER COMPANIONS,

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1687

T
wo Jesuits leaned into the wind, black cloaks streaming behind them. As they passed beyond the city wall and made their way south on the rue St. Jacques, the wind caught the wide brim of the older man's hat and sent it flapping through the brilliant light like a wakeful bat. His young companion loped after it along the cobbled road.

“My thanks,
maître
.” Père Auguste Dainville, thin and long-legged as a heron, pulled the returned hat down over his feathery white hair. “That's three times now,” he said. “My hat is seeing to it that you get your exercise.”

Maître Charles du Luc, a twenty-nine-year-old former soldier still undergoing the long Jesuit training for priesthood, smiled affectionately. “It's a good day for running,
mon père
.”

He offered his arm again and Dainville took it gratefully. The new school term had recently begun at Louis le Grand, the Jesuit school in Paris where they both lived and worked, and Dainville had just returned from his summer stay in the school's country house at Gentilly. Charles was dismayed at how much more fragile the old priest seemed. Dainville was his confessor. Soon after Charles had come to Paris, something over a year ago now, the old man had seen him through a bleak time of decision and penance, and Charles had grown very fond of him. When Dainville had asked him at breakfast to be his prop on this short pilgrimage to the Carmelite church's ancient crypt, Charles had gladly said yes. But now, as the old man stumbled on a loose cobble and Charles steadied him, he wondered whether they should be taking this walk at all.

“According to Saint Ignatius,” Dainville said, “true Jesuit obedience is like becoming a staff in an old man's hand.” He gave Charles a sideways smile. “When the staff is also young, and able to run and fetch things for the old man, surely the obedience is even more complete.”

Charles's smile was somewhat wry. “My thanks,
mon père
. As you know, I've rarely been praised for obedience.”

“With God all things are possible. Tell me, how are you finding your latest stage of training, your theology study?”

Charles tried and failed to suppress a sigh. “It has begun well enough,
mon père
.”

“Well enough,” Dainville repeated musingly, watching Charles from the corner of his eye. “But I think you are not pleased enough.”

“I'm trying to be.”

“Many Jesuit scholastics starting theology feel as you do, you know.” Dainville was silent for a moment. “But it's very hard. Until now, you've been active and engaged with the world, teaching, working on our theatre productions, helping with the students' almsgiving. And suddenly you must sit down and listen to lectures. Not to mention keeping yourself up at night wondering what in God's name Saint Thomas and Saint Augustine—but especially Saint Thomas—are talking about. Ours is indeed a hard discipline.”

“I know these studies are essential if I'm to be a priest,
mon père
. But . . . I feel exiled from the world.”

“Of course you do.” Dainville eyed Charles again and then shook his head dolefully. “And, of course, you don't even have directing the summer ballet to look forward to.”

Charles felt himself flush. “Well, the rector did say I'll be directing the ballet next summer. For which I'm very grateful. But it's—” Hearing how very ungrateful he sounded, Charles clamped his mouth shut.

“But,” Dainville murmured, “it's only October.”

“Yes. And I keep dreading the months between.”

“Who would not? You won't have even the
slightest
reprieve until then. Week after week shut up in the college, no reviving variety . . .”

Charles, suddenly suspicious, bent a little in an effort to see Dainville's face beneath the hat brim. “Actually, I
will
go out occasionally. I'll still be helping Père Damiot with the students' weekly almsgiving for the congregation of the Holy Virgin.”

“Oh! Will you?” Dainville looked up at Charles, his eyes wide with pleasure. “That's very good news. So you will get out occasionally.”

Charles began to laugh. “And I'll be going twice a week to read Saint Augustine's
Confessions
with Père Quellier at the Novice House. So I'll hardly be exiled from the world. You've well and truly caught me,
mon père
.”

“It's so pleasant to cast oneself as the star of one's touching inner drama,” Dainville murmured, his eyes on the dusty road. “You do it very well—perhaps that's why you're so good at producing our ballets.”

Charles's face was burning. “
Mea culpa
. I suppose I not only keep feeling like a sullen schoolboy, I've been acting like one.”

Dainville laughed softly and squinted against the light at a range of tile roofs visible above the wall on their right. “You'll think I'm changing the subject, but I'm not. Our Saint Ignatius arrived from Spain on this road, you know. It's the pilgrim road to Saint Jacques of Compostela, and in his time those buildings were a pilgrim hospice. It would be just along here that he had his first sight of the roofs of Paris in the distance.”

“I suppose it would be,” Charles agreed.

“Tell me,
maître
,” Dainville said in his teacher's voice, “why did our beloved founder come to Paris?”

“To enroll in one of the Paris colleges—Montaigu, wasn't it?”

“Correct. And why did he enroll?”

“To learn. He'd been a soldier and a courtier and was little schooled.”

“Just so. And what class did he put himself in when he arrived?”

“In the basic grammar class.”

“
Habes
,” Dainville said triumphantly. “You have it, indeed! He needed to learn Latin for what he felt God was calling him to do. So, at nearly forty years old, that dignified Spanish nobleman sat on a bench with mere boys and learned his Latin.” Dainville looked expectantly at Charles.

“And if Saint Ignatius could so humble himself with ignorant boys, surely I can give myself to further learning with my fellow scholastics,” Charles said, answering the unasked question, and added, “Perhaps I can even do it with a good grace.”

“Very well reasoned,” Dainville said innocently, as though Charles had come to that conclusion on his own.

Charles bowed ironic thanks. He did some arithmetic in his head. “What do you suppose Paris was like when Ignatius came?”

Dainville cocked an eyebrow at him. “Even I cannot remember back a hundred and sixty years. But I remember clearly how different it was when I was young. It was a good deal smaller. And far more dangerous. For instance—”

Hooves thundered over the cobbles and Charles pulled Dainville to the side of the road as a red-wheeled carriage flew past them.

“There was far
less
danger from carriages then,” the old man said, waving away dust. “But some things have changed for the better. As I've said, Paris is certainly safer now.” He shook his head. “When I was young, people hardly dared go out at night. Even in broad daylight, there were murders in the streets!” His expression darkened. “Just fifteen years ago, a nephew of mine, a Jesuit, disappeared in broad daylight. He was never found. He and I weren't close; somehow I never took to him. But still, he was my sister's son. Of course, when he disappeared—murdered, we all assumed—Lieutenant-Général La Reynie had not been in charge of policing all that long. Before him, we had no police worthy of the name. I tell you, that man deserves an assured place in the heavenly city for what he's done for Paris!”

Charles smiled, relishing the thought of telling that to La Reynie. He knew Paris's police chief better than he sometimes wished he did. But on the whole, he agreed with Dainville's assessment of the man.

“Were you born in Paris,
mon père
?”

Dainville nodded and was quiet for a moment. “My family was Robe nobility—all the men were in the legal professions. My father was a very successful Paris notary who had bought his notarial position and made it pay extremely well. He meant for me to be a lawyer and later a judge in the
Parlement
. But when he set me to studying the law, I rebelled.”

“
You?
You rebelled against your father?”

“I wasn't always eighty,” Dainville replied tartly. “Yes, I rebelled.”

“What did you do?”

Dainville eyed him. “If I didn't know something about your own youth, I wouldn't tell you. But you're no innocent to be corrupted.” They both burst into laughter. When they had mastered themselves, Dainville said, “What did I do? Most things rebellious sons do, including several duels. Finally, the third time I was caught dueling, my father decided not to help me, but let me take my chances at the courts in the Châtelet. Fortunately for me, my dueling opponent's shot and mine both missed, so no one had died, and the judge at the Châtelet who heard the case knew and respected my father, and let me go with only a heavy fine. Which my father set me to earn by clerking for a year there in the Châtelet courts.”

“And then?”

“And then, when the fine was paid, I refused to go back to my law studies and my father disowned me. Left me with what I stood up in and nothing in my purse. So I presented myself at the Paris Novice House.”

Charles eyed him dubiously. “You had discovered a religious vocation?”

“I had discovered what it was to be very hungry.” The old man grinned at Charles. “And I knew nothing about the rigors of a Jesuit novitiate. All of which the Novice House rector quickly realized. He told me to go home to my father. Which I could not do. So I spent a while living by my wits.”

Charles gaped at him.

“And do you know what happened?” Dainville's face shone with remembered delight. “I discovered that having nowhere to lay my head was very unpleasant for my body, but very clarifying for my soul. I began to find room for God. When I presented myself again at the Novice House, they had to shave my head to rid me of fleas and lice, but they let me in.”

“That is a humbling story,
mon père
.” Charles regarded his confessor with a mixture of love and awe, trying to imagine the gangling young novice Dainville must have been, with a shaved head and reeking of the herbal mixture used on lice. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Don't take my young self too seriously,” the old priest said, laughing a little. “
I
did enough of that.”

Ahead of them, the long gray north wall and crow-studded tower of the Carmelite church came into view. Ready to be out of the wind, Charles and Dainville quickened their steps to the north door, the only one that opened outside the convent walls. After the dazzling autumn light, they stood for a moment, blinking in the dim nave. Though Notre Dame des Champs had once been part of a very old Benedictine priory, it had been redecorated for modern taste, and marble and gold gleamed in the shadows. The walls were hung with paintings whose colors were sharp and vibrant beneath the softly glowing glass of the old windows.

Charles and Dainville went up the side aisle, up a few steps, and then to the left around the altar, where a small door stood open on steps plunging into near darkness. Charles went first, Dainville gripping his shoulder for safety. Even Charles had to keep a hand on each wall for balance, the stairs being worn and polished smooth from centuries of devout climbing up and down.

When the two Jesuits reached the single candle flickering in its sconce outside the blue and gold Lady chapel beneath the nave, they stopped for a brief prayer and a rest for Dainville. Then they started the forty-foot descent to the crypt. The first flight of stairs had been straight, but now they wound like the inside of a shell. As on his one previous visit to the crypt, Charles found himself fighting rising unease as the walls seemed to close behind them and the air grew dead and chill. He was almost glad to hear someone climbing toward them as they reached the stairs' final twist.