new excuse to grow even more adamant in his quarrel with Louis over church revenue and bishops. And the Augsburg alliance will grow even more determined to contain French power! And in England, James will have revolution on his hands and we will lose our Catholic ally there. Which is exactly what this Dutch Winters wants! Dutch, Pere Guise! Could you not hear the accent under his appalling French? The man doesn’t want dragonnades, he wants destabilizing rumors to help his master William of Orange to the English throne!”
“Calm yourself, mon fils, he is not-”
“If we do this, King Louis will have only two choices! To admit that he lied to the pope about stopping the dragonnades-which he will never admit-or to take the only other way out. To quickly “discover” that you and I have, as Winters so elegantly put it, poached the king’s authority. Louis will cover himself by accusing us of usurping his sovereignty. He will swear that anything to do with dragonnades is against his will and without his knowledge, and he will charge us with treason. Us.” Louvois spit the word out like a piece of bad meat. “Even your name will not save you, Pere Guise.”
“You dare threaten me?” Guise thundered.
“For the good God’s sake, I am trying-”
Wood grated over stone. Charles reacted a heartbeat too late as a hand was clamped over his mouth, an arm tightened around his throat, and someone dragged him backward.
Chapter 22
Charles fought as though his last battle had been yesterday. But his assailant, with two good shoulders, surprise on his side, and no cassock skirts, had him through the open door and belly down on the terrace in the space of a few breaths. Straddling him, the man pulled Charles’s head up sharply to expose his throat. A dagger gleamed in front of Charles’s eyes and the man laughed. Charles twisted, threw the man onto his dagger hand, and rolled free. He got his feet under him, but the man was up and rushing him, thrusting for his heart. Charles threw himself sideways and backward over the terrace balustrade. The man kept coming and landed half on top of him. Charles grabbed his assailant’s dagger wrist, brought his other elbow up under the man’s chin, and hurled him aside.
Then he was on his feet and running. As he ran, some detached part of him wondered what had seemed wrong about his pursuer’s face. He needed to see the man in the light, but without dying for the privilege. The man fell behind as Charles’s long legs ate up the ground. Charles was running now through a formal garden, jumping low hedges and flower borders in fitful moonlight. The garden was long and narrow, bounded by stone balustrades like those around the terrace, but beyond them on his left, trees showed against the night sky. Leaping over a gravel path and its betraying crunch, he vaulted the railing. And fell farther than he’d wanted to, onto tree roots. Swallowing a grunt of pain, Charles kilted his entangling skirts with his cincture and made his way deeper into the trees, thankful for soft, tended turf underfoot instead of last year’s crackling leaves.
He stopped and listened. Running feet slowed and he saw his pursuer outlined against the sky, standing halfway down the garden and slowly turning his head as he searched for his quarry. Feeling his way among the trees, Charles followed the line of the balustrade toward the far end of the garden, where a massive chestnut tree filled the angle of the balustrade’s turn across the garden’s end. With the chestnut’s trunk between himself and the man, Charles climbed silently back into the garden and stood invisible in the tree’s inky shadows.
A little more moonlight filtered through the clouds and showed him his pursuer walking toward the tree. The man was middling tall and hatless, and his head was curiously smooth. Bald, perhaps, or shaven, Charles thought. Then moonlight poured through a rip in the clouds and he saw what had seemed wrong about the face. Its upper half was masked, not with an ordinary half mask, but with a mask that covered the top and back of the head, almost like the mask executioners wore. Which was fitting enough, Charles thought grimly. The silvery light shone on the knife in the man’s hand, splashed into the high folded tops of his boots, and then dimmed before Charles could tell the color. But Charles would have bet his life-maybe was about to bet his life-that the boots were the color of burnt sugar. And that under a hat pulled low, the mask would look like the half mask Mme LeClerc had insisted Antoine’s attacker had worn.
The man was nearly at the tree. Charles crouched and gathered himself, waiting for his moment. A night bird called, a gust of wind flurried the branches, and he used the sounds for cover as he launched himself low at his quarry and knocked him off his feet. He brought his fist down like a hammer on the man’s knife wrist, and the numbed fingers relaxed and dropped the knife. Charles meant to gag the man, tie him, take him to La Reynie. But certainty that this was not only his own would-be killer, but Philippe’s and the porter’s, certainty that this was Antoine’s attacker, boiled into rage. His hands reached for the man’s throat, trying to find skin under the padded doublet’s high collar.
The moon hid its face. The two men thrashed together like desperate lovers, rolling over and over in the grass. Through the bloodlust singing in him, Charles felt his enemy’s life going. Then the heavens intervened. Laughing, talking men surged out of the house, and their noise and the light of their approaching lanterns cut through Charles’s rage. His grip loosened and his victim rolled away retching, staggered up, and was gone. Charles struggled to his feet. The oblivious newcomers at the garden’s entrance were pointing upward, too engrossed in the sky and their chattering to notice him, a black shadow among shadows. Muffling his panting breath, he slipped over the balustrade again.
“Ah, there’s one!” he heard someone say. “And another!”
“Magnificent! How often do the astronomers say these showers happen, did you say?”
Charles looked up through the trees and saw a shooting star streak across the sky. Giving thanks for this bright deliverance from the murder he’d nearly committed, he stumbled toward the stables. The grooms and men at arms had taken their dice elsewhere and the stable was quiet. As far as he could tell, only the boy who looked sleepily over the loft’s edge saw him lead his horse out of the stable and ride away.
Now that he wished the moon would stay hidden, it shone steadily. He kept glancing over his shoulder, expecting to see the killer behind him, but the road stayed empty. Charles rode as quickly as he dared, but the tree shadows were deep as pools and his horse was unsure on the rutted surface. He tried to make sense of the attack. The man must have jumped him because he’d found him listening outside the door. But why had he been allowed to listen so long? Guards needed to piss like anyone else, the explanation might be that simple. When the attack came, it had been in earnest. And with what he’d heard, he doubted he’d be left alone just because the first attack had failed. He had to get to Pere Le Picart, and quickly.
He reached the St. Antoine gate with no sign of pursuit. But there would be tracks through woods and fields a horseman could follow to the city. He decided that the Petit Pont was his best way to the college, rather than the way he’d come. Crossing the river, with no side streets and nowhere to take cover, would be his most vulnerable point, and the Petit Pont was short. After it, he’d have only a brief ride up the rue St. Jacques to Louis le Grand.
Half of Paris seemed to be out enjoying the fitfully bright night, going from tavern to tavern or just strolling in the small streets and lanes. His horse stepped over snoring drunks, and a pair of loud prostitutes emerged from a doorway to grab at his cassock. A few streets over, he heard the night watch making its noisy passage north, away from the river. He was nearly at the Hotel de Ville and beginning to relax when galloping hooves sounded behind him. He jerked his horse through an opening between houses, a gap so narrow his toes grazed the walls. Cornering like a madman, he rode for the Petit Pont, trying to keep a course that paralleled the river. A shot cracked past him and slammed into a wall. Charles kicked the horse harder and flattened himself on its neck. Praying that the pistol had only one barrel and that the man would have to fall back to reload, he kept on through the lanes. His horse skidded on rubbish and as it regained its feet, another shot ripped through the night. Pain seared Charles’s ribs. Behind him, a horse screamed and a human cry turned into curses. Lying along his horse’s neck, Charles made for a church tower gleaming above house roofs. He thought the other horse might have gone down, but he wasn’t sure, and another accurate shot would be the end of him. If he could find grass, it would muffle his horse’s hooves and let him put silent distance between himself and the shooter.
Luck was with him. The churchyard gate was open and the ground was uneven but soft going under old trees as he picked his way around the edge of the little enclosure. There was no sound behind him now. He reached back cautiously to feel his left side and tried to gauge how bad his wound was. Gritting his teeth, he pulled his cassock
