passage to the cave but didn’t dare take his eyes from Jean.
“He didn’t see that. If he’d seen that, he would have known it was an accident, he only saw her fall down when I cut her. But he ran away. I had to chase him and it made me cough so hard I thought I would die, too.” Jean began to cough again, and blood from his mouth spattered Marin’s chest.
Charles moved almost quicker than sight, circling to come behind Jean and take the knife. But a new scream, one that might have risen from hell, filled the cave and spun him toward the entrance. Reine burst from the darkness, pulling her own small knife from the scarves wound around her waist, and flung herself on Marin’s killer.
“He loved you, he loved you like a son!”
The man who had arrived with her tried to grab her, but he was too late. Jean lurched sideways and Reine’s thrust went over his head, sending her off-balance. Jean sliced upward with his own blade and ripped through her layered clothes as she fell. Then he reared onto his knees, gripping his knife in both hands, ready to stab downward, but Charles and the other man caught his wrists. Charles jerked him backward, away from Reine, who was lying across Marin’s legs, and twisted his arms until the knife dropped from his hand. Charles was pulling at the cincture around his cassock, thinking to restrain Jean with it, when the other man dropped to his knees beside Jean.
“See to Reine,” he cried, “I’ll manage this one.”
Recognizing the man as Richard, the beggar with the fleur de lys branded on his cheek, Charles left Jean to him and went to Reine. She was struggling to sit up, feeling herself for wounds.
He knelt beside her. “Are you hurt, Reine? Can you walk?”
She shook her head. “I am not hurt. Not my body. He only tore my finery.” Her face crumpled and she tenderly folded Marin’s hands across his breast. “My poor Marin, my poor old darling.” She bent and laid her cheek on his veined, dirty hands. “He loved his damned Jean, he called him his angel. God forgive me!” She straightened, crooning and rocking, lost in tears, stroking Marin’s hands and smoothing his hair.
Leaving questions for later-or never-Charles said the prayers for the dead. The other beggars, still hanging back in the safety of the shadows, drew closer and joined him where they could, filling the cave with murmuring echoes. It seemed to Charles that he’d done little else these last days but pray for the dead and those in danger of death. But then, who was not in danger of death? And what was his business, if not to pray? When he finished, he went back to Jean. The beggar Richard was sitting beside him, and the boy was shaking with fever now, coughing and exhausted. Charles took off his cloak and covered him.
Richard said, “He’s had the lung sickness awhile now. I think it won’t be long until he goes where he’s going.”
Charles nodded and watched the other beggars slip away, glad to have them gone before he summoned La Reynie.
Reine wiped her face on her skirts. “Get Nicolas, Richard,” she said, holding something out to him. “Take this, he’ll know it. Bring him here. Only him, do you understand?”
Richard jumped up and took the square of wood she held out. He peered at it and shook his head in wonder. “It’s exactly like Marin. It’s your best, I think.”
“He was my best. My mark is on the back. Give it only to Nicolas.”
“No, Reine, I’ll go,” Charles said. “They won’t let Richard in.” He moved so that he could see what Reine had given the man and caught his breath. The face carved in a few inches of heavily grained wood was Marin to the life. “It’s beautiful,” he said, marveling at her skill.
Reine took a deep, steadying breath. “When they see my mark, they will let Richard in. I want you to stay here, maitre; I have things to say before Nicolas comes.”
Richard took a last look at Jean, who was shivering and murmuring to himself under Charles’s cloak, and put the carving inside his jacket and went. Charles poked at the nearly dead fire with his foot and took refuge for the moment in the mundane.
“Where do you get wood?” he said. “From the workmen’s store?”
Reine pointed to the place where Charles had entered the cave. “There is kindling there, beside the archway from the passage. And a few bigger pieces, too.”
Charles went to the archway and returned with an armload of wood. “All from the workmen?” he said, putting the wood down near the makeshift hearth.
She smiled a little, one hand resting gently on Marin’s still chest. “The workmen leave much that is useful. When things disappear, they accuse the apprentices of taking them to sell. When the apprentices swear that we are the thieves, the masters hit them for lying. But we usually stay here only when the men are not working. With fire, it’s none too bad. They even leave buckets and there is water down at the Saint-Severin fountain.”
“I would guess, too, that there is another way out of here?”
“Of course.”
The fire blazed up, crackling and spitting, and Charles settled beside her on the floor, but where he could see Jean, who seemed to be sleeping now.
“I am so sorry about Marin,” he said. And sorry for thinking he was a killer, he added silently. “This Jean. He is really Tito? Martine Mynette’s servant?” He shook his head, still hardly able to believe it.
Reine nodded.
“You knew who he was all along.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know until I was in the passage and heard him speak that he’d killed Martine. May heaven forgive me, I thought Marin had killed her.” She bent and kissed the old man’s cooling cheek. “I would see Jean when I visited Renee. And I’d seen Martine’s little necklace once or twice-in summer, when she wore her bodices cut lower.” She sighed. “My poor Marin had seen it, too. Marin and I used to beg there often enough, winter and summer, and the girl would bring us out clothes and food. She was very properly brought up. Most of the others who stay with us don’t know whose the heart was. Beggars in Paris come and go, like birds. But Marin knew. At least, when he was himself, he knew.”
“I begin to see,” Charles said. “Jean gave Marin the heart. And this morning Marin remembered whose the heart was and accused him of killing Martine. Only Marin called her Claire and said Jean had taken her ‘Sacred Heart.’ Then Marin started beating Jean with his stick.. and Jean killed him.”
“Martine was so fair, so blond. Marin often confused blond girls with his Claire. Marin frightened Martine, though. Sometimes when we came begging and she brought out her alms, she shrank from him. Which made the poor man call her a demon and accuse her of having stolen his Claire’s beautiful hair.”
“Did Jean come to you in November?”
“Yes, when Martine’s mother turned him out. He said his name was Jean, and I let him be Jean. I thought he would leave when he found a place to work, but he grew attached to Marin and stayed. He was coughing even then, and I saw that he was sicker than he knew. I also saw that he kept Marin safe, safer than Marin was able to keep himself. I never told Renee where he was. Then Martine was killed, and I saw her little heart on its ribbon around Marin’s wrist, and I was terrified that Marin had killed her. I charged Jean to watch him every minute. God forgive me!”
“Did you know that he killed Henri Brion, too?”
Reine’s old face crumpled in dismay. “Jean? Ah, no! But why?”
“It seems Henri Brion was on his way home after an unpleasant encounter with two men he’d involved in a smuggling scheme. I imagine that Brion saw the side door of the Mynette house open and heard a cry and went to see what was wrong. And saw Martine just after Jean had stabbed her. Jean told me he didn’t mean to kill her and I believe him. He meant only to cut the ribbon and take the necklace, but he must have thrust too hard and opened the great vein in her neck. But he was afraid Brion would accuse him to the police, so he chased Brion and killed him and left him in the ditch. Where you found him.”
Reine closed her eyes, twisting her neck as though she were in pain. “Jean was always timid, always afraid of what might happen to him.” A sob rose in her throat and she covered her face. “If only I had asked Marin where the heart came from, if only I hadn’t believed my worst fear, oh, blessed saints, Marin would be alive!”
If only I hadn’t, if only I had… The universal litany of mourning, Charles thought, for which there was no comfort.
Charles got up and searched the cave floor where he and Reine had struggled with Jean. A gleam of red from the fire showed him what he sought, and he leaned down and picked up Martine’s necklace. He held it out to Reine.
