songs are seditious, I imprison the sellers and try to find the printers. But these people are like fleas; who can be rid of them? And this song does not even mention the king. Yes, it stirs up the people and I will try to find out the source. But surely you know that the only thing that will stop it is catching the Mynette girl’s killer. And Henri Brion’s killer, because, as you have already implied, Henri Brion is going to be the song’s next verse unless the killer is quickly found. And now, before I look for the would-be monk, who seems to stick to his Capuchins like a leech and is probably the least likely of my suspects to disappear, I am going to visit Monsieur Bizeul the goldsmith.” He smiled ominously. “I regulate the guilds, you know. If he is innocent, he will tell me what he knows rather than provoke me. If not-I will provoke him. As for you, go back to the college by the main streets. And shut your ears to insults. Your soldier’s training will not serve you against a crowd, nor will a reputation for street brawling improve things for the Society of Jesus.”
“That sounds suspiciously like an order.”
“Does it?” La Reynie laughed softly as he bowed. “Then God go with you as you obey it.”
“Wait, mon lieutenant-general-what about Paul Saglio?”
“Saglio?”The lieutenant-general looked momentarily blank. “Yes, Saglio.” He sighed and shook his head. “Do you have any idea how many men I do not have? When I find someone to send to Vaugirard, I will send him.”
On his way back toward the college, no one challenged Charles, but he felt as though accusing eyes watched him from every doorway, as though everyone he passed were about to start singing the tavern song. He walked along the rue des Fosses, looking out at the Faubourg St. Jacques, the suburb that had grown up south of the walls. The Faubourg was thick with recent monastic foundations, built solidly of stone, with ample land around them. Beyond the gray lace of winter trees lay the walled precincts of the Feuillantines, Ursulines, and Daughters of Mary, their frozen gardens bare and empty. The great dome of Val de Grace, the Benedictine house beloved by Louis XIV’s mother, rose above the convent walls like a sugared Christmas cake.
New private houses of gleaming stone were scattered along the road among the religious foundations, but not far beyond them, the countryside still spread itself. Soon, Charles told himself, plowing would start in the barren fields, fruit trees would blossom, the sun would come back. And, please God, his own heaviness of spirit would lighten. In truth, though, he wasn’t sure. He’d chosen clearly and from his heart to remain a Jesuit. But his grief for what he hadn’t chosen had been ripped wide open by Martine Mynette’s murder, by her loss of the future she should have had. Nothing is wasted, the Silence had said-not death, not grief-unless you waste it. Was this renewed grief of his meant to drive him to find her killer? Was that what the Silence had meant?
He waited, very still on the windswept roadway, hoping the Silence would answer him. And caught his breath, wondering if the white horse galloping along a path beside a snowy field, its rider’s black cloak flying, the man’s streaming hair black as a crow’s feather in the gray light, might be a sign. He watched them out of sight, but the Silence held its peace and the horse and rider only left him yearning to ride in the wind’s teeth and leave grief behind.
Charles was nearly at the college when he saw a huddle of beggars in the street ahead of him, outside the church of St. Etienne des Gres. A halting voice came from their midst, and he realized that someone was reading aloud. A man hushed a chattering woman, who hit him and started pushing her way out of the huddle. The reader’s voice grew louder. “Elle etait riche, elle est morte, les Jesuites dansent sur son corps…”
Bursting from the group nearly in Charles’s path, the woman who’d been hushed screeched, “Here’s one, here’s a Jesuit vulture! But he can’t eat us, we’ve no gold for his guts!”
The others turned and Charles saw that the reader was the young man who’d pleaded for the old beggar on Christmas Eve. When he saw Charles, his eyes grew round with fear and he dropped the sheet of paper and backed away. Some of the beggars started singing the words of the tavern song, but the old man who’d attacked the Conde’s reliquary limped close to Charles, thrust his head forward, and squinted at him.
“Shut your mouths,” he yelled over his shoulder. “This death-bird gives good alms, he gave me this coat.”
Charles picked up the broadsheet from the cobbles and smiled reassuringly at the reader.
“Where did you get this, mon ami?”
The young man ran. Seeming to catch his fear, the others ran, too, and the old man limped after them, yelling at them to stop and cursing them for idiots. They rounded the corner of St. Etienne des Gres and Charles followed them, wondering suddenly where they sheltered. But in the scant moments it took him to reach the side street that ran in front of the college of Les Cholets, they disappeared. He turned back to the rue St. Jacques, studying the broadsheet as he went. This sheet, at least, still had only the one verse, which was somewhat reassuring. No printer’s name, of course-no one would put his name to an effort to stir up unrest and disturb the city’s peace.
As Charles neared the postern door, a shop sign on the college facade creaked in a burst of wind. Charles looked up. The sign’s crusty, golden loaf of bread made him smile, thinking of the LeClercs, the family of bakers who rented the shop and its living quarters. Mme LeClerc and her small daughter Marie-Ange had taken him to their hearts when he arrived last summer, helping him when he’d sorely needed it. The family should soon be back in Paris from their Christmas visit to M. LeClerc’s brother in the nearby village of Gonesse.
His spirits lightened a little by that thought, Charles went to the rector’s office, where he found Pere Le Picart sitting by the fireplace, his breviary in his hand.
“I see news in your face, Maitre du Luc,” Le Picart said. “Please, sit.”
Charles took the chair on the other side of the hearth and loosened his cloak. “News indeed, mon pere. Henri Brion is dead. Stabbed to the heart.”
Le Picart crossed himself. “Brion? Dear God. So that is why the poor man never came to see me?”
“I don’t know how long he’s been dead. A beggar found him in a midden ditch near the Place Maubert. Someone came from the Brion house to tell me, and I’m just back from seeing the body.”
“May God receive his soul. This is the last thing I expected! Certainly the last thing we needed. Of course,” he added dryly, “poor Monsieur Brion hardly needed it, either. Were the police there? Is there any thought of who killed him? Or why?”
“Lieutenant-General La Reynie was there. He has gone to question a goldsmith called Bizeul who, according to one of The Procope’s waiters, took Brion forcibly out of the coffeehouse on Thursday night. The waiter and a woman who was begging at the coffeehouse door say that this Bizeul and another man pretended that Brion was drunk, but he wasn’t. And since then, no one seems to have seen Brion alive.”
Le Picart frowned thoughtfully. “A notary may come to know financial secrets, after all.”
“True. Though family secrets are often more deadly.”
“So you don’t suspect this goldsmith?”
“He must be suspected, if it is true that he took Henri Brion forcibly out of the coffeehouse. But I can imagine no reason for him to have killed the girl. I cannot help but think that there is only one killer. Martine Mynette and Brion were both stabbed. Their lives were joined in family friendship as well as in the donation entre vifs transaction. For both to die on the same day is too much coincidence.”
“I agree. So who had reason to kill them both?”
“The most obvious answer is Henri Brion’s son, Gilles,” Charles said reluctantly. “His father was trying to force him into a marriage with the Mynette girl. And if he killed only the girl, his father would surely have tried to force him to court another heiress. But from the little I’ve seen of Gilles Brion, I simply cannot imagine him as a killer.”
“Anyone may be tempted to kill. And until we find the person who has been so tempted,” Le Picart said grimly, “the connections between the two victims mean that Brion’s death will be laid at our door along with Martine Mynette’s.”
They were both quiet under the weight of that certainty. The dim light through the small window’s greenish glass made the rector’s face look even more tired and drawn than it was.
The quiet was broken by a knock at the door. The rector gave permission to enter and a lay brother came in, holding out a folded piece of paper.
“This was left with the porter, mon pere. For Pere Damiot.” He handed the folded paper to Le Picart, bowed, clasped his hands against his apron skirt, and composed himself to wait.
“Please excuse me, Maitre du Luc.” Le Picart opened the letter and scanned the page. Like the older religious orders, the Society of Jesus required that any letter sent to or written by a Jesuit be read by a superior. When he finished reading, he stared open-mouthed at the page in his hand. “Unbelievable,” he breathed. Still looking at the letter, he said to the lay brother, “Mon frere, bring Pere Damiot to me, please.”
