The Whispering of Bones (2 page)

“Wait,” he called to the unseen climber. “There's no room to pass. Can you go back down?”

The steps halted abruptly and then retreated. When Charles and Dainville rounded the curve, a man was waiting patiently at the bottom. Blackly silhouetted against the antechamber's only candle, which was mounted on the wall behind him, the man's slender outline showed a plain brimmed hat but lacked a wig's long curls or the lace of shirt cuffs. An artisan, perhaps, Charles thought, as the man bowed his head deferentially and turned sideways pressing himself against the closed door to the left of the stairs to let them pass. They murmured their thanks. As they ducked under the low archway that led to the crypt chapel, his steps receded briskly above them.

The chapel was a bare and stony place, long and narrow and swathed in shadows under its arched stone ceiling. By the light of the few candles burning in wall niches, Charles helped Dainville to the single prie-dieu snugged against the wall, halfway to the small main altar. When the old man was settled, kneeling on the prayer desk's thin cushion, Charles went farther forward and knelt on the stone floor. He bowed his head and began the prayers belonging to the Hours of Our Lady.

“Mary who never forsakes us, look on us with the eye of pity . . .” He was immediately distracted by his knees complaining at the Carmelites' failure to put another cushioned prie-dieu in the chapel. Having learned that if he waited quietly his body would probably stop wanting what it couldn't have, Charles opened his eyes and gazed at the altar and its small wooden statue of St. Geneviève, patron saint of Paris. Her painted colors were faded and there were gouged places in the hem of her gown where gems had been ripped out. She'd lost an arm, and she stood a little hip-shot, as though easing her slight weight off a tired foot. But she was smiling. Charles smiled back, noticed that his knees had gone quiet, and reapplied himself to his prayers.

He didn't go as far into prayer as he sometimes did, and the deep, luminous Silence that sometimes visited him didn't come. Still, he rose from his knees with satisfaction enough, bowed to St. Geneviève, and turned toward the prie-dieu. But Dainville wasn't there. Charles looked blankly around the empty crypt.

“Mon père?”

His voice echoed unanswered. Surely the frail old man had not started up the stairs alone. Charles hurried down the crypt, pulled the heavy door open, and stumbled into near blackness instead of flickering candlelight.

“Père Dainville, where are you?”

Fearing that Dainville had found the candle burned out and fallen, and was lying somewhere hurt on the floor, Charles began feeling his way around the antechamber. The stone walls suddenly disappeared beneath his hands and he fell through the half-open door on the chamber's far side and caught himself on his hands. He got up and called out to Dainville again, but there was only silence. Cautiously, he went farther into the dark room. Then he heard a thin thread of breath from somewhere beyond the door. He started toward the sound, but something rolled beneath his foot and he tripped over what felt like blocks of stone, nearly falling again. Reason finally made itself heard—if he injured himself he'd be no good to Dainville when he found him—and he felt his way back to the chapel and took a candle from a wall niche. With a sinking heart, Charles carried the candle back to the other chamber. The light showed him Dainville lying on his back near the wall, half cushioned on a pile of rags.

“Oh, no,” Charles groaned, and knelt beside him. The left side of the old man's face drooped like a tragedy mask, his mouth twisted and his eyelid half open. “
Mon père
, can you hear me?”

Dainville didn't move, except for the small rising and sinking of his chest. Charles put a hand on the withered neck, searching for the beat of blood. He found it, but it was weak. Fighting panic, desperately afraid that the old man would die here and now under his hand, Charles got to his feet and set the candle on a fallen block of stone, so that he could lift Dainville into his arms. Then he realized that the stairs were too narrow for carrying him like that.

“What were you doing in here? Couldn't you have waited for me?” he asked Dainville pointlessly, as he took off his cloak and tucked it as tightly as he could around the thin body. When Charles straightened, he saw that part of Dainville's cloak still lay fanned out along the floor. He tried to gather it closer, but it caught on something. When he jerked it free, he cried out, in spite of his years as a soldier. A hand and part of a black sleeve showed at the edge of the pile of rags. The hand lay palm upward, seeming to reach toward him in silent appeal.

C
HAPTER
2

M
astering himself, Charles leaned to touch the hand. The flesh was cool, but perhaps that was only because it lay on stone that held the cold of endless winters. As quickly as he could, Charles moved Dainville to the lower edge of the rag pile. Then he pushed the rags aside, uncovering the body of a young man, hardly older than his students at Louis le Grand. The man lay on his back, unmoving. Charles felt for breath and the beat of blood, but expected none; the way the man's head was twisted and angled on his shoulders showed that the neck was almost certainly broken. A broken neck might happen by accident, especially on the crypt stairs. But no one breaks his neck and then hides himself under a pile of rags.

Charles signed a cross over the body and turned toward the antechamber. He could do nothing for the dead, but there was still hope for Dainville. Leaving the candle where it was—he didn't want the old man to wake in darkness, if he woke—Charles took the worn stairs three at a time. Holding his side and wet with sweat, he burst from the top of the stairs into the church. A small slender nun in the black and white Carmelite habit, busy with candles at the altar, turned serene gray eyes on him. Charles mopped his face with his sleeve and fought for enough breath to speak.

“What is it?” the nun said anxiously. “Please, sit down here on the altar step.”

Charles shook his head. “I need help,” he panted. “My companion—very ill—stairs—” He gulped air and tried again. “I can't carry him up alone. The stairs are too narrow.”

“Our priest is in the sacristy. I'll get him.”

Before Charles could say what else was needed, she was gone, and he let her go. Speed couldn't help the dead man, but it might help Dainville. She was back almost at once, a burly friar with a face like an amiable bull close behind her.

“I'll help you bring your man up,” the friar said, and strode toward the stairs.

“Thank you. I'm coming.” Charles turned to the nun. “One more thing. There's a dead man, a young layman, down there, in the room across from the chapel. Your abbess needs to know.” He decided to leave the news that the man had likely been murdered for the abbess's ears.

The nun's eyes widened, but she said calmly, “Yes. I'll go for her.” She crossed herself, reverenced the altar, and hurried toward the cloister door.

The friar's slapping sandals had stopped in the doorway to the stairs, and he was staring at Charles. “A
dead
man?! In the well chamber? Are you sure?”

“If the well chamber is across from the chapel, yes, I'm very sure.” Charles urged him down the stairs. “If he's someone who comes here regularly, you may recognize him. Let's go.”

The friar went, still talking over his shoulder. “So many people come, I doubt I'll know him. What killed him?”

“His neck's broken.”

“Oh, dear. He must have fallen over something.” The friar turned to watching his feet and the steps. “That chamber's full of rubble, workmen have been in there. I tell the abbess the room should be locked, but who can tell an abbess anything?” He shook his head. “She's not going to like this. Not one little bit.”

Charles bit back saying that the dead man hadn't liked it, either, and they descended the rest of the way in silence. When they reached the well chamber, Charles saw that Dainville hadn't moved. He pointed to the dead man, and the friar bent over him and then straightened, shaking his head.

“Poor young man. Never seen him that I know of.” He sighed and signed a cross over the body. “Well, let's get the live one up. Prayers over this one will have to wait.”

Charles lifted Dainville by his shoulders, the friar gripped him around his knees, and they made their slow way up the narrow stairs, Charles ascending backward. When they struggled through the door at the top, the abbess was waiting for them. She swept a glittering black glance over Charles and Dainville and nodded crisply at the nave's front bench. “Put him there.” She watched them lay Dainville gently on the bench and then nodded at Charles. “I must speak with you before you go. And you,
mon frère
,” she said to the friar, “please go down and stay with the dead man until I come.”

“First I must get Père Dainville home,” Charles said, positioning himself to lift Dainville into his arms. “After that, I will return, but—”

The friar, looking askance at Charles's refusal of the abbess's order, gathered his skirts and fled to the crypt.

The abbess made a small impatient noise at Charles. “Do you really wish to create a spectacle—and make Père Dainville's condition worse—by carrying him through the streets like an armful of hay? We have an old sedan chair that will probably hold together long enough to get him to Louis le Grand. Our gardener and his helper are bringing it as quickly as they can. Sit for a moment and cushion his head, while you tell me about the dead man.”

Seeing the wisdom of waiting for the chair, Charles sat and drew Dainville's head onto his lap. “My thanks for the chair,” he said, stroking the old man's hair off his forehead. He looked up at her. “You know Père Dainville?”

Her lined square face softened. “Yes, he comes often to pray, and also to look at what remains of some very old paintings on the well chamber wall. There's a lovely one of Our Lady. I've grown very fond of him. I'm very sorry to see him like this.” She smiled slightly. “Forgive me, I have not even told you my name. I am Mère Catherine Vinoy.”

Charles bowed as well as he could from the bench. “And I am Maître Charles du Luc. I wondered what Père Dainville could have been doing in that chamber.” He was quiet for a moment, wondering sadly if Dainville might have meant to show him the paintings before they climbed the stairs. Then, pulling himself back to what was needed, he said, “So. The dead man. What I didn't tell the sister or the friar is that I suspect he's been murdered.”

The abbess drew back and crossed herself. “Dear Blessed Virgin, are you sure?”

“No dead man hides himself under a pile of rags. Only his hand and a few inches of sleeve were showing. I think Père Dainville saw it and the shock brought this apoplexy on him.”

“As it well might,” she said grimly. “Is he long dead?”

Charles shook his head. “Cool, but not very.” Forestalling her next question, he said, “No one else entered the crypt chapel when we were there, but there was a man waiting to climb up as we reached the bottom of the stairs. I assumed he was coming from the chapel. He waited calmly enough for us to pass.”

“Could you recognize him again?”

“No. He was outlined against the candlelight. I think he was youngish, by the way he moved. And by the outline of his clothes, not a man of quality—no wig or lace or long coat skirts. And he didn't speak.” Charles frowned. “If he had come out of the well chamber, surely I would have heard that old door open and close. Because it was closed when the man was standing in the antechamber.”

“Unfortunately,” the abbess said wryly, “you would not have heard it. Extensive repairs are about to start in that chamber. I've just had the door well oiled to prevent annoyance to those in the crypt chapel when the work starts.”

“So I wouldn't have heard anyone going in or out of that chamber while I was praying.”

“No. Well, there's no point in regretting my efficiency,” she said, with a fleeting smile. “I will send for the police
commissaire
.”

They both turned as the north door opened and a man in coarse brown breeches and jacket came in, pulling off his wide, battered hat. From where he stood, he made the abbess a rough bow.

“We've brought the chair, Mère Catherine,” he called. “Do you need us to carry the father to it?”

“No,” Charles said, “I'll bring him.”

He gently lowered Dainville's head to the bench, rose, and lifted him in his arms. The old man's bones were sharp and his weight was alarmingly slight. Charles looked bleakly at the abbess.

“If Père Dainville—if he—” Charles found that he couldn't say the words. “When the police find the killer,” he said grimly, “I pray he will not go to the scaffold with
two
deaths to his account.”

Outside, the faded red sedan chair, probably new about the time Louis XIV's father was born nearly ninety years ago, waited like a once-handsome man caught in unforgiving daylight. The thing looked like a good gust of wind might be the end of it. Charles hoped its brittle wood and cracked leather would indeed hold together until they reached Louis le Grand. The gardener and his fellow who were going to be the “baptized mules,” as chair carriers were called, ran their eyes unhappily over Charles's bulk and length.

“Will you have to go inside, too?” the gardener asked.

“Yes. To hold him. Can the chair—and the two of you—carry us both?”

“I suppose
we
can carry you both. Whether the chair can, only God knows.”

The gardener held Dainville while Charles folded himself into the leather box built around the chair's two facing seats. Then they settled Dainville on blankets piled on the chair's floor, with his head and shoulders resting against Charles's knees. The gardener shut the door. “Up!” he called, and the grunting “mules” hefted the chair by its wooden poles and wobbled with it to the road. Charles disengaged one hand from supporting Dainville and closed the box's moulting velvet curtains to keep out prying eyes.

Holding Dainville tightly against the chair's swaying and bouncing, Charles prayed that the apoplexy would pass and leave him unmarked—or at least not badly marked. His praying ended abruptly as the back of the chair thudded onto its short rear supports and left the rest tilted upward like a sinking ship. The rear “mule” was groaning and cursing.

“Ah,
merde
! Aaaaah,
non
!”

Charles shoved the curtains aside as the front carrier set down his poles and the chair leveled out. “What's happened?”

No one answered him, and he stuck his head as far out as he could without dislodging Dainville. They were just inside the city wall, stopped in front of the Dominican monastery among the St. Jacques gate market stalls. The gardener was helping his fellow hobble to the steps of a house, and market sellers, customers, and passing pedestrians were calling out the usual Parisian mixture of advice and commentary while carriages and carts made their way around the chair. A little girl in a dark blue skirt under a stained white apron pinned to her bodice stopped to stare.

“
Maître!
Maître du Luc!” She ran to the chair's window, her thick curling brown hair tumbling from her white coif, and dropped her empty bread basket unceremoniously on the cobbles. Marie-Ange LeClerc was just turned ten, the daughter of bakers who rented one of Louis le Grand's few remaining shop fronts. “What are you doing in a chair,
maître
?” She gripped the window's edge to peer inside. “Your ‘mule' stepped in a hole and twisted his ankle and—” She broke off, suddenly seeing Dainville. “Oh, no, what happened? Poor Père Dainville, is he dead?”

“No, but he's very ill.” Charles looked again at the two carriers arguing beside the road. “Marie-Ange, are you finished delivering bread?”

She tilted her head at the gate of the Dominican monastery behind her. “The monks were the last.”

“I need your help. I want you to sit here where I'm sitting and keep Père Dainville from falling sideways—you can do it, he's very light. Then I can help carry the chair and we can get him home.”

She nodded eagerly and Charles eased himself out of the chair, keeping one hand under Dainville's head. Then he helped Marie-Ange inside, and resettled the old man against her knees.

“Hold his shoulders as tight as you can.” He started to close the door.

“Wait, my basket,
Maman
will kill me if I leave it!”