“Lulu! Montmorency! Stop!” Charles’s feet pounded over the planking, which narrowed suddenly to nothing in front of him. The first of the guards was closing on him and he turned furiously. “No,” he roared, “stay back! Let me bring them in.”
It was his old battlefield voice, and it worked. The last-come guards skidded into their fellows, and they all stopped where they were. Knowing he had only moments before they followed him, Charles gathered his cassock and jumped to the lower level. Ahead of him, Lulu and Montmorency clambered over a low wooden barrier and ran to a rail where the Machine thrust farthest into the river. They stopped beside an opening that led lower still and looked over the rail. Lulu shook her head at Montmorency and darted to her right and out of Charles’s sight.
“Wait!” Charles bellowed, leaping the barrier.
Montmorency was still leaning over the rail, looking up and down the river and wailing, “There’s no boat, Lulu, you said there was a boat!” He turned, saw Charles nearly on him, and flung himself to the right, blocking the way Lulu had gone. His sword was out and leveled at Charles. “Stay back,” he shouted over the Machine’s roar. “Let us go.”
“Not into the river, you fool!”
“We’ll find another boat, stay back!” The boy’s face was grim and hard. Not a boy’s face any longer.
The guards were at Charles’s back now, their torches blotting out the moonlight. Someone tried to push him out of the way and he whirled and shoved back savagely, sending the man to the floor and only then realizing it was La Reynie.
“If they try to swim for it, they’ll drown in the currents,” Charles shouted at the lieutenant-général and the rest. “Let me talk to them.”
The guards started past him, but La Reynie yelled, “Hold where you are, give him a chance!”
Montmorency had disappeared now, too, and Charles, hands open and visible, went to the right, the way Lulu had gone, and found the pair standing together on a small piece of decking at the side of the Machine.
“Come back with me,” he pleaded over the noise. “The king will be merciful. Please, come back with me.”
“Merciful?” Lulu’s laughter was as silvery as the moonlight on the heavy ropes of pearls around her shoulders.
Montmorency had an arm around her, his sword still pointed at Charles. “We’ll marry, we’ll go somewhere else. England. Italy. Somewhere. Let us be.”
“Think! You have no boat, no horse. The king’s guards are here behind me. You cannot go anywhere from here. Come back with me and retrieve what you can for yourselves.” Charles was remembering Louis’s gray stunned face. He’d seen shock and disbelief and anger there, but not the rage that drives revenge. There’d been too much pain for that. The rage might come later, but it was a chance worth taking. “I think you won’t get worse than exile. Even you, Lulu. In exile, you’d still be alive.”
Lulu looked out over the racing water and shook her head.
“Lulu,” Charles said, “I know your secret. I’ll help you. I’ll-”
She looked over her shoulder. Her slight smile was piercingly sweet. “I’ve lived in my father’s prisons long enough. And you don’t know all my secrets.”
She stood on tiptoe, one hand resting on Montmorency’s shoulder, and kissed him. Charles took advantage of the moment to step closer. As Montmorency bristled and warned him off with his sword, Lulu pushed herself up onto the rail. Before Charles could cry out, she seemed to spread satin wings in the moonlit air, and the Machine’s roar swallowed the splash of her fall.
“Lulu!” Montmorency flung a leg over the barrier, fumbling to throw off his cloak.
Charles lunged, got both arms around him, and pulled him backward. “No! She’s gone. There’s nothing you can do!”
Montmorency struggled fiercely. “Then I’ll die with her, that’s all I want, let me go!”
They shouted the same words at each other, like responses in a hellish liturgy, until Montmorency finally stopped struggling and they wept together, huddled in the roar of the water wheels.
“Charles.” A hand gripped Charles’s shoulder. “Charles. Get up now. Come, I’ll help you.”
Blinded by tears and wondering dimly at La Reynie’s calling him by his Christian name, Charles let the lieutenant-général help him to his feet. The two of them lifted Montmorency and steadied him, one on either side.
Numbly, Charles wiped his face on his cassock skirt and, half carrying Montmorency, they made their way back to the path along the river, the guards following. Down on the bank, a huddle of men were shaking their heads and gesticulating, and looking out at the place where Lulu had gone into the water.
La Reynie saw Charles looking and said, “Those are the men who run the Machine. Can you manage Montmorency? I’ll go and see what they’re saying.”
Charles walked Montmorency slowly to the riverside path and spoke to one of the torch-carrying guards, who went for horses. La Reynie came back from talking to the Machine operators. He shook his head.
“They say the currents where she went in are too treacherous for any hope of finding her. And too strong. She’s probably been carried downriver, but she went in so close to the Machine that she could be-” He swallowed and sighed. “Come, let’s get Montmorency back to the chateau.”
The guard had brought horses for all of them. They helped Montmorency mount, but he slumped dangerously in the saddle.
“You’ll have to get up behind and steady him,” La Reynie said to Charles. “I don’t think he can ride alone.”
The guard, also mounted, led them up the slope. Charles rode with an arm around Montmorency’s waist, listening to the fading noise of the water wheels moving the river from where God had put it to where the king wanted it. The wind had died and the clouds had passed by. Charles let his head fall back and looked up at the moonlit sky powdered with faint stars, but for once, the stars failed to comfort him. His mind circled around and around a single question: Where had she gotten the poison?
Chapter 23
When they reached Marly’s entrance court and dismounted, Montmorency was better able to walk. The three of them, followed by the guard, made their slow way in without speaking.
As an elderly footman hovered, the guard took charge of Montmorency, and La Reynie said quietly to Charles, “I will tell the king what happened. But he will want to question you, too. And him.” He jerked his head grimly at Montmorency, who was staring indifferently at the vestibule floor.
Charles nodded in silence.
La Reynie looked at him worriedly. “Are you-can you see him now? Do you need something to drink?”
“I’m all right.”
The footman conducted them to the anteroom of the king’s apartments, where the Duc du Maine and Anne-Marie de Bourbon, both with pale faces and reddened eyes, stood close together against the red damask wall. They watched solemnly as the dirty, sweat-soaked men came in behind the footman, who stopped short when he saw them.
“Your Highness, shouldn’t the child at least go to her bed?”
Maine lifted his chin. “Madame de Maintenon gave us permission to stay. To find out what has happened to my sister.”
“As you wish, Your Highness.” The footman bowed to Maine. He went to the inner door, spoke to the footman who answered, and withdrew.
Anne-Marie launched herself at Charles and fastened both fists in his cassock. “Where is Lulu?”