“Oooh!” Lulu laid a small white hand on his cassock sleeve. “I think you are afraid of me!” Her nails scratched like a cat’s as her fingers moved on his woolen sleeve.
“Lulu!” someone called from behind her, and the dog bounded away, barking joyously. Her Serene Highness Anne-Marie picked up her blue skirts and ran after the dog.
Lulu swore and looked over her shoulder.
“What are you doing hiding away with Maître du Luc?” The Prince of Conti, the young man who had mocked the Jesuits’ gift in Madame de Maintenon’s antechamber, strolled lazily around the fountain toward them. “Everyone’s searching for you, my sweet Lulu. You’ll be late for dining with your handsome Poles.” He waggled his fingers at the dog, which was jumping and barking in greeting, and reached out to pull one of Anne-Marie’s brown curls. She slapped hard enough at his hand that he snatched it back and muttered something under his breath.
Lulu’s brightness died like a doused flame, and she looked as though she might cry. “No. I won’t eat with them today. Soon enough, I’ll have no one else.” She whirled and picked up her skirts as if to run. “Come, let’s go to a traiteur in town for our dinner.”
Anne-Marie de Bourbon shook her head in alarm. “No, Lulu, you mustn’t!” The little girl turned to Conti. “Don’t let her go.”
Conti ignored them both and gazed limpidly at Charles.
“So sorry to interrupt your pleasures, maître.”
“Not pleasure, Your Serene Highness, work.” Charles doffed his bonnet to Conti with an inward sigh and every outward appearance of respect. Conti’s arrival was a chance to try to learn something for Lieutenant-Général La Reynie. Charles admitted to himself that the more he saw of Conti, the less he minded causing trouble for this arrogant young Bourbon. “I had the pleasure of seeing you yesterday in Madame de Maintenon’s antechamber, mon prince.”
“Yes. I am surprised to see you still here. But court life always does agree with Jesuits, I believe.”
“Does it?” Charles showed his teeth in what the prince might possibly mistake for a smile. “And does it always agree with you, Your Serene Highness?”
Conti’s eyebrows lifted, and he seemed to really see Charles for the first time. “How could it not, when I am near my kinsman the king?”
“How not, indeed? Royal kinsmen, of course, feel nothing but brotherly love for one another.”
At that, Lulu burst into laughter so deep and loud that Charles thought it would have doubled her over, had her bodice not been so boned and laced. Anne-Marie only looked gravely from one speaker to the next, like someone watching a game of jeu de paume.
But this conversational game felt to Charles more like a skirmish on the edge of battle. “You disagree?” he asked Lulu.
Still burbling with mirth, she waved a beringed hand at Conti. “My royal father hates this dear Bourbon prince! And this dear prince is only waiting-”
“Shut up, Lulu.” It was Conti’s turn to bare his teeth in a dangerous smile. He caught her hand. “You are shocking our good cleric. No one hates anyone here.”
The girl winced and pulled her hand away, and to Charles’s surprise, her lip trembled. “You hate me,” she said.
Conti shrugged at Charles. “Sometimes I think I will become a monk of some sort. To get away from women. They’re utterly incomprehensible. My darling Lulu, what does hating or not hating matter? You are going to Poland. I am desolate, but what can I do about it?”
“Much, if you only would!” She gathered her skirts and fled, like some rare silvery green bird taking flight, and disappeared beyond the fountain.
Anne-Marie and the dog followed her, and Conti rolled his eyes at Charles and strolled after the three of them. Charles replaced his hat; picked up his livret, ink, and quill; and went quickly up the steps in the other direction, with an irrational feeling-half irritation and half fear-that more Bourbons would appear in his path, no matter what direction he chose. He turned aside along a dark green hornbeam hedge, wanting to be out of sight of the fountain, and kept walking. Turning repeatedly and at random among hedges and rosy brick walls surrounding a myriad of small gardens, he kept walking until dizziness reminded him that he was still recovering from last night’s sickness. He slowed as he turned yet another corner and saw an enormous expanse of water ahead of him. It was half surrounded by piles of dirt, and two workmen were doing something at the water’s near edge. As Charles’s footsteps crunched along the gravel walk, one of them straightened and waved his arms.
“Mon père! Come quickly-he’s dead, poor sod, and you’re needed!”
Chapter 7
The workman met Charles halfway, squelching water from his shoes, wiping his hands dry on his stained brown-linen coat, and still talking. “Your prayers will be worth more than mine, that’s sure!” He dropped his voice. “He looks like he drowned, but he didn’t. You’ll see what I mean. Will you stay with him, so me and my boy can go for the Guard?”
“You’re sure the man is dead?” Charles was reluctant to encounter a second man, in just three days, dead practically at his own feet. “Who is he?”
“Bertin. Bertin Laville.” He shook his head sadly. “My daughter’s husband. He works-worked-in the kitchen garden. Over there.” He gestured vaguely toward the palace.
They reached the edge of the lake, where a white-faced teenage boy knelt beside a man’s prone body. The boy got up awkwardly and bowed to Charles. Charles squatted on his heels and put a hand on Bertin Laville’s sodden chest, though it was plain enough that the breath had long gone from this man. Squinting in the glare of the sun off the white gravel, he ran his eye carefully over the body and then gently turned Laville’s head to one side. Charles took off his bonnet, held it to block some of the sun’s glare, and parted the man’s dripping dark hair at the crown.
“So. You see,” the elder workman said.
Charles winced as his fingers found the jagged-edged circle of bone and felt lightly at the sickening hollow inside the circle. Dropping his hat beside the body, he cupped the ruined skull in his hands as though he could still protect it and said a quick silent prayer. When he crossed himself and stood up, the workmen hastily crossed themselves, too.
“Shall we go for the Guard now, mon père?” the older one said.
“In a moment. When did you last see your son-in-law?”
“Me? Not since yesterday. Sometimes he helped in this part of the gardens, but I didn’t see him today.” The speaker jerked his head at the boy. “Nor did my son.”
“May I know your names?” Charles said. “I am Maître Charles du Luc.”
“Me, I’m Jean Prudhomme. Gardener. My boy is Jacques.”
“Who might have wanted to kill your son-in-law, Monsieur Prudhomme?”
The father gave his son a warning look, and they both shrugged.
Charles opened his mouth to say he would pray for the dead man. Instead, he heard himself say, “Was there any talk about Bertin? Did he dice? Run after women?”
The boy looked up, but his father’s heavy hand descended on his shoulder and he looked down again.
Prudhomme eyed Charles. “Why are you asking? He’s the Guard’s business now.”
“Not that they’ll do much,” the boy muttered at the ground.
Why do I want to know? Charles asked himself wearily. The obvious answer was that he was religious and the man had a soul about which he had to care. And did care. In truth, though, he would rather not care about this unknown peasant beyond a few prayers. He wanted no more barriers in the way of his going home. Though if this turned out to be no more than a peasants’ quarrel over money or women, the Guard would do less than if a man of quality had been found dead in the royal precincts.