The Whispering of Bones (17 page)

“On my grandfather's bones!”

“Your grandfather's bones aren't here to swear on, but we'll trust you.”

Beauclaire led them joyously into the lane. A shabbily dressed woman peered from an open door, and a few ragged children wandered in the dust and mud.

“It looks like a good place for fleas,” Connor said to Beauclaire. “I didn't know you liked fleas so much.”

“I don't like them,” the bass-voiced Austrian said morosely. “They keep me up at night and not because they are talking!”

“Have you told your
cubiculaire
?” Charles said. “The college is always fighting fleas, and the sooner he knows your chamber has them, the sooner he and the lay brothers can do something.”

“He knows. They put down herbs, but the fleas think they're love philtres and have more little fleas. On Saturday, a brother brought in a white fleece so the fleas could jump onto it and get killed. Almost none of them jumped. They are not stupid, your French fleas.”

Everyone laughed at that, and Charles let them, since there were few people around to hear their rowdiness.

“See,
maître
?” Beauclaire pointed triumphantly to a sharp bend ahead of them that turned the lane southeast, the way they needed to go.

Charles started to nod and then jumped back as a long, thin pig raced across the lane in front of him, pursued by a child with a stick. As pig and child galloped through the weed-choked yard at the side of a small, dilapidated house, the pleasantly pungent scent of herbs long gone wild drifted in their wake, reminding Charles of his mother's herb garden. With a sigh for the warmth of Languedoc and the nearness of another Paris winter, he started the boys walking again.

It was only a short way to the Miséricorde. Charles rang the bell at the gate and an Ursuline nun slid the small grille open. Seeing Charles and the gowned students, she opened the gate and came out to meet them. The nun was very young but dignified beyond her years in her short black veil and white habit.

“Bonjour, messieurs.”
She smiled at the suddenly shy group of boys and looked questioningly at Charles.

“
Bonjour, ma soeur.
I am Maître Charles du Luc and I've brought these students from Louis le Grand to offer alms for your orphans.”

He nodded at Connor, who stepped forward and gave her the purse and made his short rehearsed speech on behalf of the Holy Virgin Congregation. Then Honfleur set his basket inside the gate and Beauclaire put the smaller one down beside it. Everyone bowed to the nun, and she curtsied in return.

“We are most grateful. As our girls will be.” Beyond her, several half-grown girls stood under a nearly leafless chestnut tree to whisper and stare at the boys, who were staring in return. “May the
bon Dieu
richly bless you for your charity.” The nun glanced over her shoulder at the girls and, with a knowing smile at Charles, drew the gate closed.

“Well done,” Charles said to his flock. “Except for the staring.”

That brought what he could only call giggles. Swallowing his own laughter, he turned them back toward the college. Just inside the walls, as they were passing the St. Jacques market, they moved aside to let a carriage go past toward the river at a walking pace. The boys spotted a tumbler who'd cleared a space for himself among the market stalls, and Charles, glad to rest for a moment, let them watch. He kept an eye on the street. To his surprise, the slow carriage stopped, its window was lowered, and Lieutenant-Général La Reynie's face appeared, looking back at him. The
lieutenant-général
lifted his chin and Charles went closer.

“I need you,” La Reynie said. He glanced at the huddle of entranced students. “I'll stop at the college.” He put the window up and the carriage moved on. With a frisson of excitement, Charles gathered the reluctant boys and shepherded them toward the college.

C
HAPTER
15

W
hen Charles and the students reached the postern, the carriage was parked a little way up the hill, in front of the church of St. Étienne des Grès. Frère Martin opened the postern wide, and Charles gathered the boys in the street passage for the short prayer that always ended an almsgiving. Replete with fresh air and the city's sights and sounds, they joined heartily in the “amen.”

“That was well done,
messieurs
,” Charles said. “Put the baskets back in the porter's room and then wait here.”

As the baskets were put away, Charles beckoned Martin closer to the postern. “Will you call a
cubiculaire
to see them to their chambers? I have another task,
mon frère
.”

“Ah,” Martin said knowingly. “I saw the carriage waiting when I opened the door. I know whose it is, too. God go with you both!” He lowered his voice. “Some are still saying it was a demon attacked you. Me, I know better. No one's said they smelled sulphur in the chapel, and you always do smell it if a demon's about.”

“So it's said.” Charles smiled at him and hurried to the carriage. As he got in, La Reynie tapped his stick on the ceiling and the pair of black horses moved off toward the river.

“Where are we going?” Charles said.

“To the Lunel house across the river.”

La Reynie and Charles braced themselves as the coach bounced in and out of a pothole. Charles retrieved his hat from the floor.

“Have you been to The Saint's Dog about the book cover?”

“Oh, yes,” the
lieutenant-général
said disgustedly. “We found an interesting selection of Dutch pornography. Including that scurrilous little piece about Madame de Maintenon and the king that keeps cropping up. Such a very upright woman can have had no idea what she was in for when she married King Louis.” He carefully brushed pastry crumbs from the cascade of ivory lace at his neck. “Forgive me,” he said. “No time for a proper dinner.”

Wondering how often La Reynie ever found time for a proper midday dinner, Charles said, “Did you find
Le Cabinet
in the bookshop?”

“We did not. Not so much as a torn page.”

“But the goat can't have brought that scrap from outside. It would already have eaten it.”

“I agree. But damned if we could find it. We went through everything in the cellars, we had floorboards up, we went through the attic and out onto the roof. Not one single little Secret Instruction.”

“What did Madame Cheyne say?”

“She owned to the Dutch trash. What choice did she have? Pleaded her poor widowhood and having to make money any way she could, and on and on. But she swore on the name of every saint and relic she could think of that she didn't have, had never had, had never even heard of
Le Cabinet jesuitique
.”

“And Mademoiselle Ebrard? What did she do?”

La Reynie grinned at him. “She's not exactly pretty—wonderful eyes, though.” He laughed at Charles's chilly expression. “Oh, come, nothing wrong with caring what becomes of the girl. She was upset, of course. And I agree with you, I don't think she knew anything about the books being sold upstairs. Or about
Le Cabinet
.”

“Good. But what will happen to Madame Cheyne now?”

“She is at liberty for the moment. We're giving her a long rope, so she can at least lead us to whoever brings her the Dutch books. And who knows, perhaps she'll slip and do something to prove she lied about
Le Cabinet
. Though if she lied, she must be keeping the copies down her bodice and under her skirts! Not a search I care to undertake.”

The carriage braked suddenly and both men were thrown forward. This time it was La Reynie's hat that fell off—and nearly his wig. He yanked it back into place and leaned out of the window.

“I think someone's carriage has broken down,” he said, craning his neck. “Or maybe it's just traffic.” He shrugged and pulled his head in. “God only knows what we're going to do about Paris traffic. Coachmakers keep selling carriages and there's no more room for the cursed things. Well, I suppose it gives me more time to tell you what I want to do at the Lunel house.”

As he talked, the carriage started moving again, though slowly, toward the turrets of the Petit Châtelet. The squat little fortress had guarded the Petit Pont from the time when the bridge was the only southern way across the Seine and the whole city huddled in the middle of the river on the Île de la Cité. The snarl of carriages, pedestrians, and pack animals crawling toward the Petit Châtelet suddenly unwound itself, and the carriage rolled through the narrow echoing gate and onto the short bridge.

“So,” Charles said, “I gather that the Lunel boy's mother and brother are back from the country now.”

“Just arrived. I had the neighborhood
commissaire
watching for me, and he sent word. I'm going to have out of them why they made no response to the message that Paul Lunel was missing.”

“But”—Charles frowned and shook his head—“surely you don't think the mother or the brother had anything to do with his death?”

“Only if their coming home to try to find him might have prevented it.”

The carriage passed the Louvre and turned into the rue Jean Tison. It stopped in front of a marble façaded
porte cochère
, the high and wide double doors that barred the courtyards of the wealthy. Before Charles and La Reynie could get out, someone started consigning La Reynie's driver to hell or worse.

Charles looked incredulously at the police chief. “Either I'm going mad or that's Maître Beauchamps!” Pierre Beauchamps, dance director of the Paris Opera, was the most eminent dancing master in France, probably in all of Europe. He was also Louis le Grand's dancing master, and Charles had worked on two Louis le Grand ballets with him. Charles climbed quickly out of the carriage and found Beauchamps standing in front of it, threatening the driver with his ebony walking stick.

“What are you trying to
do
?” he shouted at the driver. “My legs are no longer what they were, but there's no need to take them off entirely!”

“Then get out of the way,
mon vieux
,” the coachman said, laughing and eyeing a very pretty and very young woman who stood close to the wall of the Lunel courtyard, biting her plump red lip and bubbling with laughter.

“Old? You call me
old
?” The fifty-six-year-old Beauchamps swelled with insult until Charles thought his midnight blue coat might split at the seams. “Have some respect for your betters, you mud-born lackey! I'll report you! Not that our La Reynie will take any notice of what a carriage driver does; he lets them unpeople Paris with their driving. But if you care to dismount from your seat, I'll show you who's old and who's not!”

“No need for that, Monsieur Beauchamps.” The
lieutenant-général
stepped forward and bowed low to the dancing master. “I assure you that La Reynie is taking notice, even as you speak.”

Beauchamps squinted at him. “What? Who—oh, it's you? You sat there and let this man all but run
over
me? You see?” Beauchamps said triumphantly to the driver. “I told you he'd be utterly indifferent!”

Struggling as hard as the girl to keep his countenance, Charles caught Beauchamps's eye and nodded gravely. Beauchamps was as demanding, and even more autocratic, than La Reynie, and Charles watched gleefully to see who would come out on top in this encounter. It was the young woman who came out on top. She lifted her orange and white striped skirt above the cobbles and came to Beauchamps's side. “Don't upset yourself,
maître
,” she said soothingly, taking his arm and looking up at him with warm brown eyes.

“I'll thank you not to treat me like your grandfather,
mademoiselle
,” he snapped, but Charles saw that he tucked her arm close to his side.

“Come, now,” she cajoled, “you are going to give me a lesson, and I'd rather not be shouted at every moment simply because you do not have this poor coachman to shout at.”

“Hmmph.” Beauchamps glared at La Reynie, who smiled affably back at him. “Well,
mon lieutenant-gènèral
, since you are not hurrying to take the hide off your rogue of a driver, what
are
you doing here?” He raised an eyebrow at Charles, whom he'd hitherto ignored. “And you, Maître du Luc. Are the police already at such a loss over my poor neighbor's murder that you must find their answers for them? Again?”

“Your neighbor?” Charles and La Reynie said, almost in concert.

“Of course, my neighbor. I live just there.” He pointed at the next pair of courtyard doors. Not quite so impressive a pair as the Lunels', but harbingers of a solid and comfortable town house behind them. “And before you ask me, I knew Paul, the dead boy, only slightly, and the brother, Alexandre, and the parents only to bow to in the street. The father, as you no doubt know, is dead.”

La Reynie said, “And how did you know that Paul Lunel is dead?”

Beauchamps cast his eyes up to heaven. “Have you no servants? The Lunel servants told mine, of course. They said you'd been to the house with the news.”

La Reynie nodded. “And what else do you and your servants”—he glanced at the girl—“and your friends, of course, know about this Lunel family, Maître Beauchamps?”

Beauchamps also looked at the girl, who drew herself up and turned her head to look from one eye at La Reynie, like an annoyed bird.

“May I know your name,
mademoiselle
?” the
lieutenant-général
said.

“Forgive me,” Beauchamps said. “Monsieur La Reynie, Maître du Luc, may I present Mademoiselle Marie-Thérèse de Subligny? A heavenly dancer. And a new ornament to the Opera. I am giving her some extra teaching.”

La Reynie eyed her and bowed slightly. “I congratulate you,
mademoiselle
. Few women dance on the professional stage. Did you perhaps know Monsieur Paul Lunel?”

“Paul?” She shrugged slightly. “No.”

La Reynie kept watching her. “You call him by his Christian name. So you know the family?”

The girl managed somehow to draw dignity visibly around herself, which told Charles that she must be a very good stage performer.

“Monsieur Alexandre Lunel comes to see me dance,” she said. Her eyes dared the men to draw the obvious conclusion from that. “But I have not seen him lately. I only knew that his brother was dead because Maître Beauchamps told me.”

“Ah. I am surprised indeed that you have not seen Monsieur Alexandre Lunel lately. How could he stay away?” La Reynie's tone made his assumptions about her relationship with Lunel very clear. Charles wondered if the mostly straightlaced
lieutenant-général
disapproved of her dancing on the Opera stage. Nearly all female courtiers performed in court ballets, but the Opera was another thing altogether.

Her eyes flashed with anger, and Beauchamps, with the air of someone slamming a door before it was too late, said quickly, “Monsieur Lunel is a very busy man with many friends. He is a prominent young lawyer. Soon, no doubt, he'll be a judge, and being busy is part of being a successful man. Like Mademoiselle de Subligny, I also have not seen him lately.”

“How well did you know Monsieur Paul Lunel?” La Reynie asked him.

Beauchamps sighed a little. “When he was small, I caught him climbing my wall to watch a dancing lesson through the windows. After that, I sometimes let him come inside to watch. He had his own dancing master, but the master used his stick freely to correct mistakes, and poor Paul didn't like him much. He learned little from that tyrant.”

“He never saw
you
use your stick?” Charles couldn't resist saying.

“I never used it on him. Paul was a good boy with a good brain. I liked him.” He sighed. “He had the makings of a good dancer.” From Beauchamps, the accolade had the feeling of a eulogy. “But he would never have matched your young Bertamelli,” the dancing master said, smiling suddenly at Charles.