“Do you want a doctor, mon père?”
“You’re supposed to take care of me,” Jouvancy said faintly.
“Yes, but my experience is with battle wounds,” Charles replied. “If someone shoots you or runs you through with a sword, I can help you. But they haven’t.”
“Such a pity,” Jouvancy returned, trying to laugh.
Charles saw that he was starting to shiver and pulled a blanket over the coverlet. “Try to sleep a little, mon père. I will be here beside you, if you need me.”
Jouvancy sighed and turned his head into the pillow. Charles went into La Chaise’s chamber for the stool. When he came back, Jouvancy was asleep. Charles watched him carefully, trying to remember what he’d looked like the day he’d fallen ill at the end of the rhetoric class. Pale, he remembered that. And weak. And spewing. But he hadn’t been so fevered as he seemed now. Charles went back to La Chaise’s chamber and rummaged in the cupboard for a towel. Then he emptied the old basin of water out the window into the courtyard and refilled it from the copper reservoir. Sitting on the stool with the basin in his lap, he prayed steadily as he wiped Jouvancy’s flushed face every few minutes to cool him. When the others returned, the rhetoric master was still fevered.
“Mes pères, I think he needs a doctor,” Charles said, looking up at them from the stool.
“Do you? But he isn’t as ill as he was at the college,” Le Picart said, looking anxiously at Jouvancy. “This was probably brought on by too much exertion, as you said earlier. I blame myself-I should have waited longer before sending him here.”
“He is still very weak,” Charles said. “I realized yesterday as we traveled that he was weaker than I’d thought. That’s why-”
“Oh, rest will probably cure him,” Montville said comfortably. “We must just let him sleep and feed him nourishing broth when he wakes. Isn’t that what Frère Brunet does?”
“Plus his medicines,” Le Picart said.
“Yes, medicines.” Charles was trying to curb his impatience. “I think Père Jouvancy needs them. Which is why he needs a doctor.”
That got him surprised looks for his flat lack of deference.
“A court doctor will bleed him,” La Chaise said, and Charles realized that till now he’d said nothing. “That will make him weaker.”
Montville turned shocked eyes on La Chaise. “Don’t you believe in bleeding, mon père? It’s the soul of medicine! It will rid him of whatever is making him sick.”
“Or whatever has poisoned him,” La Chaise said grimly. “Do you know where the Comte de Fleury ate his dinner yesterday? At the table of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld.”
Le Picart frowned. “Fleury? Oh, yes, the poor man you told us about, who fell downstairs yesterday.” He shook his head at La Chaise. “But what you say is absurd. Who would want to poison Père Jouvancy? He hasn’t been at court since before he joined the Society.”
La Chaise simply looked at his companions one by one. Charles felt himself go cold, because he saw fear in La Chaise’s eyes.
“How do you feel, mes pères?” he said softly. “And you, Maître du Luc?”
No one spoke. Charles was sure the others were checking their bodies’ feelings as carefully as he was.
“Père Le Picart, Père Montville, come with me,” La Chaise said. “I will show you where you will stay tonight.” He looked at Charles. “And then I will bring a doctor. Just know that gossip will spread like fire through the palace, true or not, if a doctor comes.”
The three priests went out through the antechamber, and the gallery door shut heavily behind them. In the quiet they left behind, Charles breathed deeply and tried to get hold of himself. Jouvancy was still sleeping. At least, he looked as though he were sleeping… Charles bent over him, listened to his breathing, and straightened, reassured. But as he straightened, his stomach roiled and sweat broke out on his face. He got up and walked to the window. Why would anyone poison me? he thought, feeling his bowels go watery with fear. I’m no one, I know no one, I just got here. And I’m not ill, it’s just seeing Père Jouvancy like this. And the travel, the strain of being here, the-he cast about for something for it to be. The water, he told himself, water often causes stomach upset, I’m used to Paris water now. The familiar acerbic voice in him said back, So you’re used to water straight out of the Seine, but the water here has undone you? Charles went to the copper fountain in the anteroom, thinking that a drink would help settle his insides. But he put the glass down untasted. If someone had poisoned them, the poison might be in the fountain. He picked up the glass again and held it to the light beginning to stream through the west-facing window.
As he looked into the innocently clear water, his fear conjured the face of Madame de Maintenon, her deceptively madonna-like eyes gazing coolly at him. The king’s wife might dislike Jesuits, but surely not to the point of poisoning them. Oh, no? the acid-tongued voice said. Have you never heard of queens ridding themselves of inconvenient people? Not by their own hands, of course… The door opened behind him, and he turned so quickly that he dropped the glass, which shattered and sprayed water everywhere.
“Maître? Forgive me, I didn’t mean to scare you.” The footman Bouchel stood in the doorway to the antechamber, carrying two wooden buckets and looking in bewilderment from Charles to the glass shards and water on the parquet.
“I–I was-yes, never mind.” Charles looked over his shoulder and saw, to his relief, that Jouvancy still slept.
“I’ll clean that up, maître, after I fill the fountain.”
Bouchel turned back into the antechamber and Charles heard him set down the buckets and take the cover off the copper reservoir. Water gushed as both buckets were emptied into it, and then the cover clanged shut. Bouchel reappeared with a towel over his hand and went toward the bed.
Charles’s body acted without his brain’s cooperation and he launched himself toward the bed and stood at bay between Bouchel and Jouvancy. The footman’s brown eyes opened wide, and he kept one eye on Charles as he picked up glass and put it carefully on the towel. Then Jouvancy roused, retching direly, and for the next few minutes Charles was miserably busy, grateful for the footman’s bringing basins and towels, and even more grateful for his taking them away when they’d been used.
Finally, Jouvancy lay spent, breathless and whiter than the bedsheets, and Bouchel left with the last basin. “Thank you,” the little priest whispered, looking up at Charles. His fingers closed around Charles’s wrist with surprising strength. “It’s poison-I’m sure of it!”
“Of course it’s not poison,” Charles said vehemently, in spite of his doubts. “It’s surely only a return of your sickness. You’ll be better soon, mon père.”
Jouvancy shook his head, and his anxious eyes wandered over the room. “Where is Père La Chaise?”
“He went to find a doctor.”
“Good.” Jouvancy’s fingers dug deeper into Charles’s sleeve. “I didn’t think she hated us that much.”
Before Charles could decide what to say to that, La Chaise came in, followed by a slender, grave-faced man in a long black wig and a black and scarlet coat. A short, round assistant followed, carrying the implements for bleeding a patient: a wide basin, a glittering steel lancet, and a sturdy piece of cord.