But first, he had to make the long trudge from the palace to the stable. When he finally arrived there, he found himself facing a stone façade worthy of this palace for horses. The large cobbled forecourt was mostly empty, but inside the stables, he found a small army of grooms, ostlers, and saddlers currying horses as glossy as polished parquet, putting fresh straw down in stalls far larger than his bedchamber at Louis le Grand, polishing saddles and harness until the leather gleamed like the king’s mirrors. Somewhere a blacksmith was making the air ring with the blows of hammer on anvil, like bells clanging above a busy city. Wishing he could have spent his days at Versailles here instead of in the palace for courtiers, Charles wandered happily between the stalls, stroking velvet noses and admiring the elegant, long-legged English hunters the king favored for the chase.
“Need something, mon père?” A sandy-haired groom with freckles across his nose came out of a stall.
“Yes, thank you. I have two horses here. They’ve been in your keeping since I arrived on Monday.” With a shock, he realized he’d spent only four nights at Versailles. It seemed like a month.
“What are they called?”
“Flamme and Agneau. From the college of Louis le Grand.”
“Follow me.”
Before they reached Flamme’s stall near the end of the aisle, the gelding put his head over the door and whickered, scenting Charles. Agneau, in the last stall, looked up from her hay rack, saw the saddlebags Charles was carrying, and redoubled her efforts to eat while she could.
The boy went into Agneau’s stall. “Shall I saddle her for you?”
“My thanks-what’s your name?”
“I’m Laurent.”
Charles smiled at the boy and went to saddle Flamme. But first he stroked the horse’s shining neck and laid his cheek against the warm muzzle, contentedly breathing in the welcome smell of clean horse. As he pulled the saddle and its blanket from their long thick wall peg, Flamme butted him in the back, clearly pleased to be going somewhere.
“Be sure you check the mare’s girth,” Charles called to the boy. “She’ll blow up like a bladder to keep it loose.”
The boy laughed. “I know that trick, I always check.”
They worked in silence for a moment and then the boy said, “Mon père?”
“Maître,” Charles said absently, letting the stirrups down to fit him.
“Oh. maître, then. I heard-Jacques Prudhomme said that a young Jesuit prayed over poor Bertin. Was that you?”
“Bertin?” Charles took the bridle from its peg, trying to think who Jacques Prudhomme and Bertin were. Guilt assailed him as he remembered the dead man beside the lake. “Yes,” he said hastily, “I did. Did you know him?”
“Jean Prudhomme is my uncle. Bertin Laville was married to his daughter.”
Charles pushed the bridle between Flamme’s teeth, gave him a pat, and went into the stall where the boy was. “So you knew Bertin, then. Do you have any thought about who killed him?” he asked quietly.
Laurent shook his head and gave Charles a wary sideways look. “I only wanted to thank you for looking after him.” He stepped away from Agneau and turned his back on her. The mare sighed out a great breath and the boy spun around, grabbed the end of the girth strap, and pulled hard. “Ha-ha!” He grinned at Charles, who was laughing, too.
“Well done!” Charles patted the displeased mare’s round rump and waited to see if the boy would say more about the dead man.
Laurent took down Agneau’s bridle from its peg but made no move to put it on her. “My cousin-Bertin’s wife-has just had another child.” He sighed. “She cries all the time. At least she found money he’d hidden in the house. So she has something till she can find another husband.”
Charles’s ears pricked. Money and murder were so often locked in a deadly embrace. “Gardeners are paid well, then?”
The boy’s sneer was too adult for his years. “Who’s ever paid well? And Bertin couldn’t hold on to money any more than he could close his fist on water. No, I think it was gambling money. He diced. Mostly he lost, but every man wins sometime. Maybe he called someone a cheat and was killed for the insult.”
“That could be,” Charles said. Men were often enough killed when gambling quarrels flared. “Do you have any other thoughts about what might have happened?”
The boy’s face flamed and he turned away to bridle the mare, dealing expertly with her efforts to resist the bit.
“Your uncle thought Bertin might have been killed over a woman,” Charles said mildly.
Laurent nodded, still with his back to Charles. “He had a-a woman in the town. And others. I suppose one of them might have killed him.”
“Could a woman have hit him hard enough?” Charles asked skeptically.
Laurent turned, with a look that plainly said Charles must be a simpleton. “My mother can butcher a hog. Swinging a shovel is nothing.”
Charles nodded, thinking that his own mother could probably butcher a hog, too. Though she’d probably talk the poor animal to death instead of using a knife.
“Anyway, maître, thank you for praying over him. He needed it.”
“I’ll go on praying for him.” I imagine he still needs it, Charles thought. He looked into the stable aisle to be sure they weren’t being overheard. “Is the Guard still trying to find his killer?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But probably not. He was-well-only Bertin.” Laurent turned Agneau and led her out of the stall.
That was true and nothing Charles could change. He followed Laurent into the aisle, put both saddlebags on Agneau, and secured them to the saddle. “Can you lend me a leading rein?”
Laurent ran to the end of the aisle, vanished into an adjoining room, and came back with a long sturdy rein that he buckled to the mare’s bridle.
“My thanks. I’ll send it back. If you’ll take her out to the forecourt, I’ll follow with the gelding and we’ll be gone.”
Charles led Flamme after the mare, mounted, and took the leading rein from the boy. “Thank you, mon brave.” He realized that Laurent was waiting for a coin, and at the same moment realized that Jouvancy had the small purse the rector had given them. “My apologies. My companion has gone on in a carriage with our small store of coins.”
The boy’s face fell, but he shrugged philosophically. “Oh, well, you can pay me with prayers for Bertin. A good ride to you.” He lifted a hand and loped back to his work.
Charles rode under the sculptured arch and turned the horses toward Paris. Before he’d gone more than a few yards, a gleaming, red-wheeled carriage hurtled toward him and he drew rein. But Agneau, on her leading rein, plodded into Flamme from behind and the gelding curvetted into the middle of the road. The coachman swerved, shouting angrily at Charles, who was too busy fighting Flamme to a standstill to heed him. Charles quickly got the gelding under control and started to call an apology to the driver, but the carriage’s occupant put his head out a side window, and the sight of him struck Charles mute.
He hadn’t seen Michel Louvois, the king’s minister of war, for nearly a year. And had hoped never to see him again. Louvois, perhaps the second most powerful man in the realm after the king, was not a man to cross. Let alone threaten. And last summer, Charles had threatened him, because he’d seen no other way to try for at least a measure of justice. For months, he’d lived looking over his shoulder, waiting for Louvois’s retaliation, but it hadn’t come. Charles had decided he was too small an enemy to merit the attention of a man with so many enemies. Now, though the malice on Louvois’s heavy-jowled face sent fear rippling through him, he made himself hold the war minister’s gaze until Louvois drew his head back inside the coach and left Charles choking in its dust. Charles pressed Flamme into a trot and put a quick mile between himself and Louvois. And between himself and the palace, and La Chaise, and Lulu, and all the rest. He could hardly remember wanting so much to be gone from a place, wanting so much to be home. As he rode, though, he prayed for Lulu and that good would come to her. He also prayed for the grave and lonely little Condé princess, Anne-Marie de Bourbon.