Charles turned over and punched his pillow into a better shape. But if Bertin Laville saw Bouchel and Lulu come out of the grotto in April, why wait till June to blackmail Bouchel?
The college clock chimed midnight. Charles went over what the little Condé girl had told him about the argument overheard between Bouchel and Lulu. Anne-Marie had said that Lulu told the footman that he had to help her. And that Bouchel had pleaded-near tears, the child had said-that he’d already done what he could and that he had no money. And that Lulu had run weeping into the corridor, threatening to kill herself. With a sinking heart, Charles stared up into the darkness, seeing Lulu’s pale face and darkly shadowed eyes, and thinking about her frenetic and changeable moods. He sat up in bed. Women shout more at men when they’re expecting babies, Marie-Ange had confided just hours ago, when she told him her mother was pregnant. And Anne-Marie had told him not to make Lulu run, because Lulu had been feeling ill. Charles got out of bed and went to the open window.
Two and half months since Lulu and Bouchel were seen leaving the grotto. And Bertin Laville would know the signs of pregnancy, Charles realized suddenly. The stable boy at Versailles had said that Laville’s wife had just had a child. A gardener might easily see a girl hiding in the garden to be sick without witnesses. Seeing unmistakable signs of a princess’s secret pregnancy was a blackmailer’s dream. And if Lulu were pregnant, she had every reason to feel desperate over going to Poland. She could not possibly attribute a baby to a ten-year-old husband.
Charles’s mind stopped short and backed up. If this was all true, then what about Fleury’s death? Bouchel had been there when the old man fell downstairs. Had Bouchel pushed him, then, in the hope of being rid of the other witness at the grotto? Bouchel had said that Fleury slipped in water, and Charles had seen the wet patch on the floor when he went up to find Fleury’s room. And Lulu hadn’t had Fleury’s journal till later that night. So when the Comte fell, Bouchel might not even have known that he and Lulu had been seen leaving the grotto back in April.
Marching feet echoed along the rue St. Jacques and Charles saw that the night watch was returning from the river, a formidable phalanx of striding men, their swinging lantern striking flares of silver and gold from the stars and fleur de lys on the shoulder straps that held their swords. They passed by and went on up the hill, leaving the city drowned again in quiet and nearly invisible in the dark. In summer, the street lanterns stayed unlit, but even if they’d been lit, their candles would be nearly burned out by now. A breeze came up from the Seine and cooled Charles’s face. He looked up at the sky and its thickly burning stars. Was Lulu really desperate enough to kill herself? The thought made Charles half sick. If he did nothing with what he suspected, and if she committed suicide, part of the guilt would be his. For her death and the child’s. If there was a child.
He could tell the rector what he’d read and Le Picart could send word to La Chaise. Or he could tell La Reynie. But would they agree with his deductions? If they did, how long would it take them to move from talking to acting? It took only a moment to die. Charles suddenly wanted to ride to Versailles and take Lulu somewhere safe, out of the king’s reach. Someplace where she would have a chance to simply live. He lost himself in a moment’s fantasy of taking her to Languedoc, to his mother, where she could be just a girl and wade in the Gard River as she’d waded in the palace fountain, and harvest olives. A girl with a new name. And perhaps a baby. But free…
A pretty fable, the coldly logical part of him said. It rivals the fables of Monsieur de La Fontaine. Lulu harvesting olives? She would cling to her royal living like a leech. Shrugging off the probable truth of that, Charles said back, I’m afraid for her life. And you’re heartless; shut up. The voice didn’t. Besides, it said, who is free?
Charles leaned on the windowsill. “What am I to do?” he whispered.
The stars shifted a little, the breeze from the Seine died, and the darkness wrapped itself around him like black velvet. The air itself seemed to tense and quiver. He waited, every sense quivering. Slowly, breath by breath, the quiet deepened into the Silence that sometimes visited him. He didn’t dare to name it. But it spoke to him from the deepest place in his love of God. Charles, it said, and it was the first time it had called him by name. Who are you? And that was all.
Charles finally slept, but when he woke, the Silence’s question still echoed in him like soft thunder. After the early morning Mass, he went looking for Père Le Picart, only to learn that the rector had gone to the Jesuit house at Gentilly, along with the rectors of the Novice House and the Professed House, to meet with the Paris Provincial, the Society’s chief official in the Île de France, and would not return until Monday morning. Père Montville, the college’s second in command, had gone with him, leaving only Père Donat, the third-ranking administrator. Donat disliked and distrusted Charles and was unlikely to listen to anything he had to say, let alone act on it. He would probably order him to do nothing, which would make whatever Charles ended up doing worse disobedience than it was already likely to be.
All Saturday morning as he assisted in his assigned grammar class and then helped oversee dinner in the senior student refectory, he tried to make up his mind. He was hoping to ask advice from his friend Père Damiot, but Damiot wasn’t at dinner. The meal ended, Charles made sure that Henri de Montmorency’s tutor took his charge back to their chamber, and then he went to Damiot’s room, across the passage from his own. But Damiot wasn’t there, either. Charles went down to the postern to ask the porter if Damiot had gone out. Frère Martin, an elderly lay brother settled comfortably on a stool beside the door, nodded portentously.
“He did, maître. His father’s ill again and Madame Damiot sent for him early this morning. To the Pont Notre Dame, that’s where they live. No knowing when he’ll be back.”
“Is it this sickness everyone’s been having?”
“No, and better if it were, poor man. Pains in the heart, Père Damiot said.” Martin clapped a meaty hand over his own chest and held up his rosary. “So I’m saying my beads and calling on the Sacred Heart for him.”
Charles sighed. “I will pray for Monsieur Damiot, too.”
The sense of urgency snapping at his heels drove him to the alcove in the grand salon, where paper, ink, and quills were kept. No scholastic was authorized to send notes on his own, but Charles wrote to La Chaise at the Professed House and went in search of a lay brother to carry what he’d written. If trouble came of it, he would make sure it fell only on himself. He gave the note to a brother who was too new to question him and saw him off, praying that La Chaise was in fact back at the Professed House. He wouldn’t be, if the king was still ill, but sending a lay brother all the way to Versailles was out of the question.
Feeling that he’d at least done something, Charles went back to his rooms to finish the ballet livret, writing with half his mind and one ear cocked toward the door. When the knock came, the brother who’d taken the message told him that La Chaise was still at Versailles. But the Professed House rector, Père Pinette, had agreed to send the note on the next time he sent something to Versailles. Charles thanked the brother, shut the door, and felt his sense of urgency becoming panic. It took so little time to let the life out of a body. He’d been a soldier, a scout, a spy in enemy camps, he knew exactly how little. One moment a man was breathing. The next moment he was not.