His fingers twisted in the old sign to ward off evil and he tore himself out of Charles’s grip and ran, the empty frame bouncing on his long back. Charles started after him, but someone jerked him back by his cassock and spun him around.
“Leave him alone, priest!” His captor had a voice like gravel caught in a sieve, and the face that went with the voice was as expressionless as a wall. He was big in every direction and his four confrères were built like the squat, sturdy pillars in a Norman church. The five men closed around Charles.
“I swear by the Virgin, messieurs, I mean him no harm,” Charles said. “I only want—”
“Are you deaf?” Gravel Voice said, shaking him. “I said leave off. If we cut away the flapping part of your ears, maybe you’d hear better. But there’s no sport with your kind. No fight.”
The others laughed and Charles breathed onion, garlic, and the stink of sweat. “No, not now,” he said evenly, “I swore off fighting a long time ago.”
“What would you know of fighting?”
“Enough, after two years in the king’s army.”
“Where?” the shortest man said skeptically.
“The Spanish Netherlands in ’77, for one place. St. Omer.”
“You, too?” The short man’s eyes lit with interest and he stepped closer and peered up at Charles. “Me, I was there, too, I carried a pike.”
“I was a mousquetaire,” Charles said.
Gravel Voice spat close to Charles’s feet. “Why the skirt, then?”
“I was wounded. I had a lot of time to think and decided I didn’t like killing people.”
“Me, I was wounded, too.” The ex-soldier pulled up his patched jacket and showed a jagged scar running the length of his forearm. “But I never thought of being a cleric.”
“That randy woman of yours would beat you into a pâté if you did,” someone laughed.
“What do you want with Pierre, then, mon père?” the ex-soldier said.
“I teach at the college of Louis le Grand, and a few days ago, he saw a little boy from our school ridden down on the rue des Poirées. I just want to hear from him what happened. Only that. He was in no way to blame, he is in no trouble. I would be very grateful and will certainly reward him for telling me what he saw.”
The man’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why?”
“The boy’s father is anxious to know all he can about what happened.”
Most of the men grunted, understanding that.
“Would you tell your friend Pierre what I say? And tell him, too”—Charles hesitated, unsure how to put it—“tell him I am not a friend of the other priest who talked to him.”
“Good enough for me,” the ex-soldier said, ignoring Gravel Voice’s protest. “Come back here first thing tomorrow.” He pointed across the Seine at the Louvre palace. “You sound foreign, there’s your landmark, if you need it. If Pierre wants to talk, he’ll be here.”
“Thank you, mon camarade. Until tomorrow, then.”
Slowly, the men stepped back and let Charles through. He spoiled his attempt at a dignified exit by tripping over the bare feet of a fisherman who was sitting against a barrel beside his pole, so sound asleep beneath his hat that he never stirred. Charles was too excited at having found his man to mind the porters’ jibes and laughter.
On the way back to the college, he barely noticed the raucous street life going on around him. If Pierre had seen a knife in the rider’s hand as he reached toward Antoine, then the accident was indeed no accident. And if the man confirmed that Guise had paid him for silence, then Charles had a weapon against Guise and his cronies, and Guise had an unpleasant amount of explaining to do.
Charles was reaching for the bell rope beside the college postern when furious female voices reached him from beyond the chapel’s west door. Marie-Ange ran out of the bakery with her mother on her heels.
“You will never go up there again!” Mme LeClerc shouted. “Never, do you hear me? Do you want to get us turned out? Now be off with you. And come back the moment you’ve finished. Not like yesterday. I know how long delivering bread should take, Marie-Ange.”
“But, Maman! It wasn’t me that—”
“Go!”
Marie-Ange hefted her loaded basket and her mother went back into the shop. When the little girl was past the chapel, she set the basket down and wiped her wet face on her skirt.
“My lady Jeanne?” Charles squatted down on his heels in front of her. “What has happened, ma petite? Are the English winning again?”
Marie-Ange hiccupped indignantly. “I was only trying to help. But grown-ups never think of that, do they, the pigs?”
Charles considered gravely. “No, sometimes we don’t.”
“Well, it’s not fair!”
“I agree. How were you trying to help?”
“We were just—”
“Marie-Ange, go! Now!”
Mme LeClerc was coming toward them, brandishing a bread paddle that could have flattened a horse. With an expressive look at Charles, Marie-Ange picked up her basket and went. Her mother raised the bread paddle to heaven.
“Some days, maître, she makes me wish I’d been a nun!”
“Celibacy has its rewards, madame,” Charles said dryly. Though lately, he was finding them hard to remember.
“Come in here for a little moment, maître, if you please.”
She retreated into the shop and Charles followed her. The scent of baking wafted from the ovens and he took a deep, hungry breath.
“Your shop smells so good, madame, a man could eat the air.”
“A man may have to, if Roger lets that omelette brain of an apprentice burn my brioches.” She bit her lip and her rosy face grew pinched with apology. “Maître, this morning Marie-Ange went up your stairs. I am so sorry! I would never have allowed it, but what could I do, I didn’t know!”
“What stairs, madame?”
“There.” She pointed to a low, arched door in the shop’s side wall. “They lead to two rooms above us. In Roger’s father’s day, the family lived up there. But when Roger inherited the bakery, the college took back the rooms. Since then, we live down here and that door has always been locked. I have not seen the key in an eternity. Now Marie-Ange swears she found it open. Mon Dieu, I only hope no one saw her up there!”
“Calm yourself, madame, if someone had seen her, believe me, you would know by now.”
“You really think so? Well, that is a relief, but—”
“Beatrice,” a male voice boomed from the back of the shop. “I need you!”
Someone else yelped and the voice rumbled angrily. The air was suddenly tinged with the smell of burning.
“Roger! Ah, Sainte Vierge, Roger, use your nose if you can’t use your ears! He is deaf as a baguette, maître. And I wish I were, the way he snores! I tell you, sometimes—Guy, you cabbage head, save the brioches!” Brandishing the bread paddle, Mme LeClerc clattered away, her wooden sabots loud on the stone floor. “Roger, I have told you and told you—”
Hoping that Guy and Roger were fast on their feet, Charles went quickly to the little door and opened it. Narrow, deeply worn stone stairs rose into darkness. He hesitated, then pulled the door shut behind him, abruptly cutting off both light and sound, and began to climb. He felt his way up two switch-back flights, to the level of his own rooms as far as he could tell, and found himself facing another low-arched door. No light showed around its edge. He pinned an ear to the door’s planks, heard nothing, and with infinite caution lifted the latch. The door opened soundlessly and then balked, and an eddy of dust made him clap a hand over his nose to stop a sneeze. A length of thick wool hung over the inside of the door. Charles edged it aside enough to see into the room beyond it. He stared at a sliver of a book-littered desk. If he was right about the floor he’d reached, this could well be Guise’s study. And he had found Antoine standing in front of a tapestry. He remembered the boy’s words: “I tried to go and find him, but you found me, instead.” If these stairs led to Guise’s rooms, then Antoine’s words made sense. He must have been trying to use the stairs to get out of the college and look for Philippe.