Charles studied him. The king’s confessor had fine dark hair that curled a little around his skullcap, a high forehead, a long straight nose, and a doubling chin. The lines around his mouth were good humored and the look in his eyes was at once wise, weary, and tolerant. Charles supposed that after eleven years confessing King Louis XIV, a man would have to either look like that or be a crabbed, bitter cynic. La Chaise refolded the letter introducing Charles and looked up, smiling.
“You are most welcome, Maitre du Luc. To Louis le Grand and to this house.” He lowered his voice and spoke just on the edge of hearing. “If I can help you, you have only to ask. We must make sure that these sad events at the college damage us as little as may be.”
“And we must make sure that the guilty are found, mon pere.”
“That goes without saying. What do you need here this evening?”
“I was told to meet whoever is representing the Prince of Conde’s household, mon pere.”
“Ah. Unfortunately, I have been told that the Hotel de Conde’s chaplain, who usually comes, has sent his regrets. I trust you will still be able to make good use of your presence, maitre.”
“I trust so, mon pere,” Charles said, thinking that now he was free to concentrate on Guise.
La Chaise reached under his cassock, drew something out, and peered at it. He opened his hand and showed Charles a tiny clock in the shape of a skull. “My timekeeper. Spiritually as well as temporally useful, as you see. I must seek someone else now, if you will excuse me. Come to me for whatever you need.”
Charles bowed his thanks and waited courteously for La Chaise to walk away first. Then he went to find the circulating drinks. Sipping the disappointing but thoroughly Jesuit vintage, he scanned the room for Guise and listened to the conversation around him. A few feet away, a bantam-sized young man in lushly purple velvet was holding forth on the philosopher Spinoza.
“-and I assure you, gentlemen,” he was saying, “I have the very best authority for my opinion: my illustrious confessor, the devout and learned Pere Guise.”
Charles moved closer, gratified to see that the name made some of the listeners look as though they’d swallowed vinegar. This looked like his cue to start talking the horns off a brass goat. He surveyed his goat a moment longer, assumed an expression of polite interest, and joined the little circle.
“I say it again, this Jew’s god has no divine plan,” the goat pronounced, as the circle made room for Charles. “The god of Spinoza feels nothing, judges nothing, he is as cold and useless to the soul as a triangle.” The young man looked around the circle, preening himself.
“Earnestly argued, monsieur,” Charles said, with a smile and a bow. “But-cold as a triangle? I find your argument flawed.”
“Indeed, mon pere?” The goat blinked. “I am surprised to hear a Jesuit say so.”
“Please, I am a mere maitre, monsieur. Not pere, not yet. Maitre Charles du Luc, newly at Louis le Grand. As for your surprise, this Spinoza sometimes echoes Jesuit teaching.”
An older man eyed Charles with respect and nodded, but the rest looked puzzled.
“Allow me to quote from our gentle Jew’s Ethics.” Charles assumed ballet’s fourth position, the rhetorician’s stance. “ ‘ There cannot be too much merriment.’ And ‘Nothing save gloomy superstition prohibits laughter.’ And again, ‘To make use of things, and take delight in them… is the part of a wise man.’ The Society of Jesus teaches that we must make learning pleasurable. And that whatever is good and innocent of itself is worthy of Christian attention and delight and can be used to the glory of God.”
The young man swelled with offense. Teetering on his very high heels, he tried to make himself seem taller as he faced Charles. “How can you possibly compare infidel maunderings with pious Catholic teaching?”
“Oh, dear. Do you mean that we are to reject all Jewish writing?” Charles frowned and looked around the circle as though for help. “But, monsieur, the Jews gave us the Old Testament, which speaks of a Savior.” He threw out his hands in supplication. “And, think, I beg you-if we got rid of the Old Testament, Holy Scripture would lose fully three-quarters of its volume. Would that be wise? If Holy Writ weighed so little, ordinary people might want to carry it around. Even read it and interpret it for themselves! Like the Huguenots,” Charles said in a shocked whisper. “And then where would good Catholics be?” Besides better educated and less credulous, he added silently, as several of his listeners snorted with laughter.
“I am not speaking of Holy Scripture,” the young man said stiffly. “Spinoza was a Christ killer trying to lead good Christians astray. I trust you do not allow his work at Louis le Grand.”
“Oh no,” Charles said in a horrified tone. “Pere Guise would never stand for that.”
“Certainly not! A more ardent and orthodox Christian does not exist.”
Charles looked vaguely around. “Where is Pere Guise? I have not yet seen him.”
“He is here. On important business.” The disciple glanced over his shoulder and beckoned the circle closer. “Business that will bring glory to Holy Church.” He put a hand on his chest, as though to still his bounding heart. “I must go now, messieurs, to play my own small role.” He bowed and withdrew.
Into the silence he left behind, someone said thoughtfully, “His grandfather was a butcher in Rouen.”
“Ah, yes,” someone else purred. “He is a little like Madame of the Moment, then.”
Everyone laughed. Mme de Maintenon, the king’s new wife, had also risen from the lower orders. Because her surname sounded like “maintenant” or “right this minute,” her enemies never tired of calling her Madame of the Moment and hoping that her pious influence at court would last no longer than that. Charles laughed with them, but his eyes followed his goat. As the circle’s talk wound itself somehow from Mme de Maintenon to England and what James II’s open Catholicism meant for English religion, the goat stopped beside the man who had been standing with La Chaise when Charles arrived. The two of them moved purposefully across the room, and Charles bowed to the circle and followed them.
At the salon’s far wall, the goat looked around furtively, failed to see Charles watching him, and hurried his companion through a door. Charles drifted toward the wall. With his back to the door, he set his glass on a side table and benignly surveyed the company as he felt behind him for the latch. When, as far as he could tell, no one was noticing him, he lifted the latch and stepped backward.
Chapter 21
All Charles could tell at first was that he had walked into near darkness. He stretched out his arms and his fingers touched plaster on both sides. A passage, then. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that light leaked thinly under the door he’d just closed and that a line of light showed under another door on his left. He moved closer. Someone was talking, but the voice was too muffled for him to make out words. He put his ear to the door. The voice came more clearly; not a French voice, though its French was passable.
“You already know something of my purpose,” the voice said. “But now that M. Lysarde here has made us known to each other, I will put my plea before you in my own heartfelt words. I truly believe that God led M. Lysarde to visit King James’s court. We met at Mass, as he has told you, and later I had the pleasure of presenting him to His Majesty. I met M. Lysarde often after that to talk of our devotion to Holy Church. As you know from Pere La Chaise, I am one of King James’s Catholic advisors. Unofficial-he will deny knowledge of me, if necessary-but close to him. It is in that capacity that I have accompanied our young friend here to France. To ask your help on King James’s behalf in ridding England of heresy, as you have so efficiently rid your own realm of it.”
Charles went rigid against the door.
“Our king desires to emulate your great Louis and wipe away England’s Protestant stain,” the man went on in his accented French. “The moment is ripe, if only you will help us seize it.”
“Eloquent, mon cher Monsieur Winters,” Charles’s goat said fervently.
“You are too kind, Monsieur Lysarde,” the voice murmured.
“Exactly what do you mean, Monsieur Winters?” The unpleasantly familiar voice was that of Michel Louvois, the war minister.
“Why, I mean dragoons, Monsieur Louvois. The dragoons that you deploy so successfully here, to teach our English troops the methods of conversion you have perfected.”
Charles bit blood from his tongue to keep his silence and told himself that it would be suicide to burst into the room.
“Then your errand is in vain,” Louvois replied stiffly. “Do you not know in England that King Louis has officially
