child in one of the beds, ignoring its cries when she pulled the rag from its mouth. Then she went to a different bed and busied herself with another infant.
Charles looked at La Reynie. The lieutenant-general looked like he was holding himself in the chair and in the room by main force.
Charles said, “What did Tito do, ma soeur? When you took his necklace?”
“Do?” Soeur Mariana sat down with the new child and soaked the rag again. “Oh, he cried. He even tried to kick me, but I beat him and he said he was sorry. It’s the only way with them.” She frowned, sucking her yellowed teeth. “I thought he would forget, as children do, but when I went to check on him after he was in the Mynette household, ‘Madame’ Mynette said she was going to send him back if he didn’t stop trying to steal her adopted daughter’s necklace. So I talked sharply to him and told him that if he didn’t stop, she would throw him out in the street and no one would take care of him. Tito was bright enough, he took to heart what I said, and she kept him.”
Charles swallowed hard. “Yes, she kept him.”
“Is he there still, maitre?”
“No. Anne Mynette is dead,” Charles said. “And so is the little girl you gave her.”
Soeur Mariana put the rag tit into the new baby’s mouth and stared beyond Charles and La Reynie, as though into the past, still saying nothing. Finally, with a faint sigh, she said, “Tito is dead, too, isn’t he?”
Charles hesitated. “Yes,” he said, and left it at that, because it seemed the kindest thing to do. “I am sorry.”
“Before I joined the Sisters of Charity, I was a wife,” the nun said, murmuring so that Charles had to lean closer to hear her. “We left Spain and came here. I had two children. They died, and my husband, also. So I became a nun. Little Tito came back to us from his wet nurse, and I had the charge of him at the house for the older children. But sometimes when I came here to work for a day, I brought him with me. He was like my son who died. Very like.” Her voice trailed into silence.
“Was your son’s name Tito?”
She shook her head. “They called my little foundling Jean Baptiste, because he was found on St. Jean Baptiste’s day. In Spanish that is Juan Bautisto, and I called him that. But he couldn’t say it, he could only say Tito, so that became what everyone called him.”
Charles nodded, wondering if Tito had called himself Jean after he left the Mynette house because he wanted to be a man, called by a man’s name, and not just little foundling Tito.
The nun was looking down at the child in her lap. “I only wanted to give another child a chance at life. So many die before we can even find them wet nurses.”
“The baby you put Tito’s necklace on had time to grow up, ma soeur. With a mother who loved her as her natural daughter.”
She gave Charles a bleak smile. “That is something, then.”
A sound from La Reynie made Charles turn to see him emptying his purse onto the table beside the basin of milk. “For the children,” he said through stiff lips, and left the room.
Hurriedly, Charles thanked the nun and gave her the last of the coins from Le Picart’s purse, made the sign of the cross over the babies, and caught up with La Reynie in the courtyard. When they reached the carriage, La Reynie dismissed it.
“Walk with me,” he said.
Instead of turning toward the Right Bank and the Chatelet, the lieutenant-general walked toward the towers of Notre Dame at the tip of the island. Charles kept pace with him, watching him covertly and thinking about what the nun had told them. In the open square below the cathedral’s west face, La Reynie stopped and looked up, past rank upon rank of stone saints wet with snowmelt, past the climbing towers, up at the brilliant blue sky.
“Sometimes,” he said, staring at the soaring stones, “when I cannot face this city or myself any longer, I come here. I tell myself that no matter what happens, no matter the evil and suffering, day and night into day and night, the saints still stand there. So God must still be there, too. Still somewhere.”
Too astonished to speak, Charles stood as motionless as the carvings, until the lieutenant-general began to walk again. They went around the side of the cathedral, along its line of buttresses.
“You want to know about Reine,” La Reynie said abruptly. “Because you saved her life, I will tell you. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. But her face and her body were the least of her beauty. Oh, not that I didn’t appreciate them, I did, and fully.” He glanced sideways at Charles. “You have known women, you will understand that. Though perhaps not the rest of it. I–I met Reine soon after coming to Paris and this impossible job. I think you know what she was then. A gloriously beautiful, royally expensive courtesan. I spent more and more time with her, time I didn’t have, money I didn’t have, but she kept me from losing my sanity. I would have married her, even with all I knew about her. But, of course, I could not, I was already married to my second wife. And Reine would not have had me, anyway. And why?” He laughed sadly. “Because she loved Marin. The beggar. Then, a few years later, when I was seeing her rarely, she was in great danger. I cannot tell you more than that, only that I was able to help her. And she has often helped me. For more than twenty years now, my heart has been more than half in her keeping.”
They had reached the eastern tip of the ile and turned to look at the cathedral again.
“And what of your own love?” La Reynie said roughly. “So far away in Geneva.”
Charles caught his breath. La Reynie knew Pernelle, but this was the first time he had ever called her Charles’s “love.”
“As you say, she is in Geneva. I am here. That will not change.”
“I see. And have you accepted your penance and done it?”
“Yes.” Charles was shaken by how good it was to speak about her. “I did willing penance.” He fell quiet, looking up at Notre Dame’s great rose window. “I renewed my vows,” he said finally. “God helping me, I will keep them.” He caught La Reynie’s glance and held it. “I did not do penance for loving.”
“Is that an overfine Jesuit distinction?”
“I hope not.”
Charles wanted to say something more, something to ease La Reynie’s unhappiness, but before he found anything to say, the lieutenant-general faced him and held out his hand. Surprised, Charles took it. La Reynie nodded slightly, disengaged himself, and walked rapidly away.
Chapter 28
ST. SIMEON THE PILLAR SITTER’S DAY, SUNDAY, JANUARY 5
The early afternoon’s blanket of clouds added to the mourning feeling of the Brion house, whose windows were still covered in black. To Charles’s surprise, the manservant who answered his knock was wearing black, too, new breeches and a coat whose sleeves covered his wrists. The Sunday Mass and dinner-chicken stew today, to everyone’s relief-were over, and Charles was on his way to the church of St. Louis. This stop was unauthorized, but he could not resist the chance to see how the Brions were faring, now that Gilles had been released from the Chatelet.
But when the servant showed him into the dark salon, he found only Monsieur Callot, Mademoiselle Brion, and Monsieur Morel. Callot smiled at Charles as he got to his feet, and so did Morel. But Isabel’s face was unaccountably anxious as she made her reverence.
Charles bowed his greeting. “I came to congratulate you,” he said, “that Monsieur Gilles Brion is with you again-at least, I trust he is?”
“Yes-that is, we’ve seen him.” Isabel’s tired face lit with a brief smile. “I know that it is you we have to thank for his freedom, maitre. Though how we can ever thank you enough, I cannot imagine.”
“Yes, you have given us more than you know,” Morel said meaningly, and took Isabel’s hand in his.
“As you see, though,” Monsieur Callot said, “Gilles is not here.” The words were sour as a lemon. “He deigned to give us a few minutes and then he went to his Capuchins. I have given him my permission, as the new head of the family.” The sourness in his voice gave way to regret. “The best thing for him, perhaps. Though why a man would want to do it, I cannot fathom. I will say, though, that his narrow escape seems to have stiffened his
