they watched you this morning. But I need a fly inside the college, someone to tell me everything there is to know from that vantage point about the murder and the ‘accident.’ What is being said. And not said. Who-if not you-is the favorite for the role of murderer.” He smiled blandly at Charles. “Your good rector is honest as far as his speech goes. But I fear he is telling me only what will not hurt his beloved college and the Society of Jesus. You are not going to have that luxury. There is your choice. Agree to get the information I need, or I will arrest you here and now, on suspicion of that murder and this one and take you to the Chatelet.”
He paused courteously, his head on one side as though eager to answer any questions Charles might have. But Charles’s tongue was as frozen as the rest of him.
“When we reach the Chatelet, I will summon the war minister. M. Louvois is a ruthless questioner, Maitre du Luc. And why? Because his passion is not for morality, but for order. On the whole, a more deadly commitment, I often find. He has few qualms about destroying anyone who brings disorder to the realm. Common criminals, Huguenots, their sympathizers, their co-conspirators. It is all one to Monsieur Louvois. And when you have screamed out your confession of treason in Nimes, I will use it. Against your college, your Society, and your family.”
“Nimes?” Charles just managed to get the word out.
“Nimes,” La Reynie said genially. “Drunken bishops are so often worth their weight in gold.”
Charles closed his eyes and cursed silently. His dear cousin the bishop had never been able to hold his wine. But where in God’s name could La Reynie have seen him?
“You didn’t know he visited Versailles?” La Reynie said, as though reading Charles’s mind. “It was before you came to Paris. Perhaps he was arranging for your new assignment. Or perhaps he was only reminding the king of his existence, since his appointment is still unconfirmed. Thanks to the pope taking his revenge for the church revenue quarrel by refusing to confirm Louis’s episcopal appointments. However that may be, Bishop du Luc grew very merry during an evening of court gambling and poured the whole story of the latest du Luc family scandal into the pretty little ear of one of my court flies. Who poured it into mine.”
“Flies?”
La Reynie laughed. “As in ‘fly on the wall.’ Oh, you will be in good company, I promise you. Indeed, you would be surprised at some of my flies. Where was I? Oh, yes. Bishop du Luc was sober enough not to name you, but it was easy enough to guess who his errant churchman cousin was when a du Luc turned up at Louis le Grand. I am aware that teaching assignments there do not normally go to unknown fledglings from the provinces. No matter how talented, of course.” He bowed ironically. “You should be very grateful to the bishop.” Every trace of amusement was suddenly gone from La Reynie’s face. “Choose, Maitre du Luc.”
Chapter 17
La Reynie’s newest fly leaned on the Pont Neuf’s parapet, staring at the unlovely face of his cowardice. Refusing the lieutenant-general would have been his death warrant, whether sooner in the Chatelet or later in the Place de Greve or a Mediterranean galley. At least, thank every saint there was, Pernelle was out of La Reynie’s reach. Out of M. Louvois’s reach, too, and Louvois terrified Charles even more than La Reynie did. And refusing would have unleashed scandal and retribution on the Society, the college, and on the whole du Luc family. God knew, he didn’t want anyone else to suffer for what he’d done.
Mostly, though, he didn’t want to die. Charles shuddered and closed his eyes, suddenly back at the siege of St. Omer. He heard the din of drums and trumpets and smelled the crazy battle energy, like the air before a storm. He heard the screams of men and horses, saw the blood gleaming on pikes and swords, heard the crack of muskets, and breathed the bitter smell of gunpowder. He’d been as full of battle lust as any man there, secure in the immortality of being eighteen. When the musket ball hit him, he’d thought at first that someone’s horse had kicked him. Then he’d seen the bright flower of blood blooming on the shoulder of his padded doublet. The certainty that he was going to die had wiped away his adolescent fantasy of noble death after thwarted love, and he’d thrown back his head and howled-not from the pain, but in grief for his unlived life. He had even less desire to die now.
He opened his eyes and watched the sky shed its last thin veil of fog, watched hunting swallows skim the slow, olive green river, watched a pair of bargemen sprawled on their canvas-wrapped load passing a leather bottle back and forth, watched as though he were going to paint it all. The words of another ex-soldier rose from the depths of memory. “Let it make no difference to thee,” Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus had written, “whether thou art dying or doing something else.” With a mental salute to the old stoic, Charles straightened. Time to get on with the something else. With being La Reynie’s fly, which he wouldn’t be if he’d obeyed the rector’s order to leave Philippe’s murder and Antoine’s accident alone. But if he started obeying now, he’d die. La Reynie would see to that. If he kept on disobeying and the rector found out, he’d lose his vocation. Which he preferred to lose by choice, if he was going to lose it. But he wasn’t dying, not yet.
He pushed off from the parapet, waved away a man selling cherries from his donkey’s panniers, and walked on. He squeezed around a sedan chair, set down beside the mackerel sellers while the lady inside chose her dinner, and hesitated at the end of the bridge. He’d reached the Pont Neuf from the quay, but cutting through the streets might be a faster way back to the college. Paris, like other towns, had no street signs, and he was too new to have a map in his head. But the sun was out now and the college lay to the southeast. How lost could he get?
He set off along the busy street that continued from the Pont Neuf, beside the wall of the Grand Augustin monastery, looking for a southeast turning. As he walked, he set himself to go over everything he knew about the murders and Antoine’s injury. He wasn’t at all sure of La Reynie’s motives, not completely sure that finding the killer was what La Reynie really wanted. It had crossed his mind that La Reynie might be looking for something else inside the college, something Charles didn’t know about, and be using the search for the killer as an excuse. But finding the killer was what Charles wanted. That and surviving his indenture as a fly, with minimal betrayal to the Society and his vows. All of which was going to depend on concocting reports that were true as far as they went and went only as far as he wanted them to.
Like an orator making his first point, he held up a thumb. One: The fact that La Reynie needed a spy in the college meant that what had happened was part of something that stretched from Paris into Louis le Grand. Or, of course, the other way around. His first finger went up. Two: According to the ex-soldier who’d taken him to the Louvre, the murdered porter had complained that someone was following him. But the man had been killed before he could tell Charles what he knew, so someone had been following both of them. Charles swallowed and looked over his shoulder, suddenly remembering the menacing gravel-voiced porter who’d stopped him from chasing Pierre. Had the man had his own reasons for trying to keep Pierre from talking to Charles?
His middle finger sprang to attention. Three: The mark on the porter’s neck was like the mark on Philippe’s. Who knew how Philippe had died? The Louis le Grand faculty and lay brothers. Probably most of the students by now. La Reynie and some of his men. And, no doubt, Louvois, which meant that all three persons of that unholy trinity-La Reynie, Louvois, and Guise-knew about the braided cord the murderer had used.
Charles turned down a lane lined with old houses faced with stone and straightened his ring finger. Four: Guise was the only other person at the college-as far as Charles knew-who had talked to the street porter Pierre. But surely, Charles told himself, if Guise had followed him yesterday, he would have noticed. And he couldn’t imagine the fastidious Guise slinking through the beggars’ Louvre in the dead of night to murder poor Pierre. But there were the old stairs. If Guise watched his chance in the bakery, he could come and go from his rooms unseen whenever he pleased.
Charles’s little finger jabbed the air. Five: Mme LeClerc had witnessed the accident, and had no qualms about talking, yet no one was trying to silence her. The thought of anyone trying to silence Mme LeClerc, however, made Charles laugh out loud, earning him a wary look from a woman with a basket of squawking chickens. So why had the porter been a danger, but not the baker’s wife?
The little street dead-ended and Charles stopped, waiting for a clutch of Augustinian monks to pass on the cross street. He turned right and his left thumb stood up. Six: The dead porter, Antoine’s story of the note, and the old staircase were all connected, one way or another, to Guise.
Charles’s thoughts suddenly jumped their logical track. Guise seemed not to know what Charles had done in Nimes. Which must mean that La Reynie had not told him. Charles frowned, remembering how La Reynie had
