“When you speak with the king,” Charles said, “answer his questions truthfully. Don’t defend yourself. Don’t accuse him of anything. Do you understand?”
“I didn’t know about the poison.” Montmorency’s eyes filled again with tears. “I loved her.”
“I know you did.”
The door to the royal reception room opened. “Maître du Luc.”
Charles’s heart missed a beat. He stood up and followed the expressionless footman into the king’s reception room, whose damask walls and hangings were of an even deeper red than the anteroom’s. In the candles’ dim glow, they made Charles think uncomfortably of blood. The king sat behind a small desk. La Chaise stood beside him and La Reynie stood in front of him. Charles stopped short of the desk and bowed. La Reynie stepped slightly aside and nodded at Charles to take his place.
The king’s eyes were hooded, as though what he wanted to say were written on the ebony inlaid surface of his desk. “I am told that my daughter took her own life.”
Unsure of what to say, Charles was slow to respond. Louis looked up, and Charles saw that the blue-gray Bourbon eyes were looking into deep darkness, the darkness of his daughter’s hatred and self-murder and damnation.
“She jumped into the river, Sire, but she may have meant to swim; she may not have known how strong the current was.”
“She knew. She saw the Machine built. She knew how the current ran.”
Charles bowed his head. There was nothing to say to that.
“Did she speak to you before she jumped?”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Tell me what she said.”
Charles felt as though he, too, were about to jump fatally. “She said that she did not want to live in-in a prison.”
The king frowned. “Prison? She thought I would imprison her?”
Charles hesitated. “Yes, Sire.”
“What else? You are not telling me everything. Speak!”
The last word was so loud in the lushly padded room that Charles jumped. Drawing himself up, he returned the king’s hard stare. “She said that she had lived in her father’s prisons long enough.”
Not a muscle moved in Louis’s face. But someone unseen moved in the room’s shadows behind Charles, and La Chaise’s eyes flicked toward the sound.
“I thank you,” the king said through stiff lips. “Leave us now.”
Charles inclined his head, started to turn away, and then stopped, unsure whether he was allowed to turn his back to Louis.
The king suddenly lifted a hand and gestured him back to the desk. “I am remiss,” he said. “You saved my life, and I thank you. But I command you never to speak of anything that happened tonight, except to your religious superior. The Society of Jesus will receive a suitable gift. That it is given because of your action will not be said.” He nodded another dismissal, but Charles didn’t go. Both La Chaise and La Reynie looked meaningly at the door, but Charles ignored them.
“Sire, if I may speak?”
The king nodded.
“Henri de Montmorency, who is waiting in your anteroom, has been my student, and I know him. I think that his only crime was to love your daughter too well. I also know that there is-concern about the Prince de Conti. I would stake my life that Monsieur Montmorency has nothing to do with that concern.”
“Very well. I shall see.”
Louis’s aging face seemed grayer and more fallen by the moment with fatigue and sorrow, a sorrow Charles was sure he would never admit and for which he would never ask comfort. Without warning, and even though he believed Louis had brought much of his sorrow on himself, Charles felt a terrible rush of pity for him. Not for the king, but for the man.
“I will pray for you both, Sire, you and Lulu,” he said. And for your unborn grandchild, he added silently. “God is better at forgiving than-than men are.”
A sigh came from somewhere in the shadows, and Charles got himself out the door. In the anteroom, the Duc du Maine and Anne-Marie were both asleep on their footstools, Anne-Marie with her head in Maine’s lap, looking for once like the child she was. The footman called Montmorency’s name, but the boy didn’t move, and the guard had to nudge him to his feet and through the door. Charles, shaking now from his royal encounter, sank onto a footstool. And shot to his feet as Mme de Maintenon emerged from the reception room.
She woke Maine and the sleeping Anne-Marie. “Go to your beds now. Yes, go,” she said, when the little girl started to resist. “Your Louis will be whimpering for you.” She walked them to the door. “Say your prayers for Lulu and then leave her to God.” She stood for a moment, watching after them, and then returned to Charles. “What you said to His Majesty was bold, Maître du Luc.”
Charles swallowed. “I meant no harm, madame.”
“I know you did not. You spoke to the sorrowing man, not to the king. I came to thank you for it.”
She nodded her black-veiled head very slightly and returned to her husband. Swaying on his feet with exhaustion and drained of feeling, Charles sat down again, his legs refusing to hold him any longer. He leaned against the wall and felt himself falling toward sleep. The Silence briefly held him back. You begin to know who you are, It said. Then It let him sleep.
Charles opened his eyes to see La Reynie bending over him. At first, he wasn’t sure where he was. Then a bright yellow wig appeared over La Reynie’s shoulder.
“I knew you were going to be bad luck,” Margot hissed at Charles. “People who can’t enjoy themselves always are.” Her eyes were frightened, and her lined face had shed most of its powder. “Stick to your prayers and stay out of what doesn’t concern you!” She rustled away out of the anteroom.
Charles struggled to sit up and rubbed his face. “What happened in there? Did she confess to helping Conti?”
“No. Conti’s still there. The king called the two of them in while you slept.” La Reynie sat down heavily beside Charles. “They’re going to get away with it. She swears, and her servant swears, that she was only helping Montmorency keep his love letters secret, and that his love letters were the only letters she sent on to Versailles. All out of the goodness of her heart, of course. Conti professes to be bewildered by the whole thing. He’s had no letters from anyone. And, of course, we won’t find any, because he’s far too careful to keep even a scrap of paper. So Conti and Margot will both walk carefully for a while, and it will take us longer to get them. If, in the end, there’s anything tangible enough to get. Dear God, I wish I were home in bed.” The lieutenant-général yawned cavernously.
Charles frowned suddenly as a memory came back to him. “I think I saw Lulu pass Conti a letter,” he said.
“What? Where?”
“At a gambling night at Versailles. She sat down next to him, and I thought they were holding hands under the table. But she could have been putting something small into his hand. Which he could have put in his coat pocket without anyone seeing.”
“Ah.” La Reynie’s eyes closed again. “I wondered about that while I listened in there. Margot helps the lovelorn young man, puts the spy’s letters inside the love letters, sends or takes them to Lulu, and Lulu gives the spy’s letter to Conti. With whom she was half in love, so I hear, so who would suspect anything she gave him to be more than a billet-doux? Because what besides a love note could a closely watched sixteen-year-old girl possibly give him?”
“And now you’ll never prove it.”
“No. But if it was done that way, Lulu knew what she was doing. It would have been one more way to ingratiate herself with Conti and also get back at her father. You know, I think one reason the king disliked the girl was because they were too much alike.”