The Eloquence of Blood (22 page)

They all—including Montmorency—nodded somberly, and even with a certain eagerness, Charles was moved to see. He never stopped being surprised at the depth to be found in the souls of teenage boys. When he wasn't wanting to throttle them, he was often brought near tears by their innocent fervor. As he started to tell the boys what to do next, a lay brother opened the door.

“Maître du Luc? The rector asks you to pardon this interruption, but he needs you in the
grand salon
.”

“Thank you,
mon frère
, I am coming.” Wondering what had happened now, Charles told the dancers to wait and hurried to the stage, where Jouvancy was deep in excited planning with his actors. When a break came in the talk, Charles told Jouvancy that the rector had summoned him.

Jouvancy made an exasperated sound. “Very well, you must go, of course. Send your dancers up here. Each group should know something about what the other is doing.”

With a stern command to avoid upsetting the rhetoric master, Charles sent his dancers to Jouvancy and hurried apprehensively downstairs.

When he reached the main building's grand salon, where outsiders were received, he found Père Le Picart waiting with M. Edmé Callot and M. Germain Morel. Callot was the color of old paper and looked ten years older than he had two days earlier. Morel looked not much better. Charles turned questioningly to the rector, but Morel, who seemed to have assumed the responsibilities of a son of the house, spoke first.

“They arrested Gilles an hour ago. He is in the Châtelet.”

Charles's heart sank. “For Martine Mynette's murder?”

“And for his father's.”

“Gilles is an idiot,” Callot burst out, wringing his hands, “but he is not a killer. And,
mon Dieu
, he is not a parricide!” His voice shook. “My poor Isabel has cried herself sick.”

Callot turned his head away and wiped furiously at his eyes. The rector guided him to an armchair by the wall and bade him sit.

“The worst thing,” Morel said, “is that now they have arrested Gilles, the police think they have done their work.”

Charles didn't know what new evidence La Reynie had found, but Isabel Brion would certainly blame Charles himself for Gilles's arrest, thinking he'd told La Reynie about her brother's visit to Martine on Friday morning. He sighed. “Why are the police so sure he killed them, Monsieur Morel?”

“As for his father's murder, we don't know. But some bedeviled woman has sworn to our
commissaire
that she was looking out her window before dawn on Friday morning and saw Gilles leaving the Mynette garden gate.”

“She's probably half blind,” Callot muttered. “Anyway, how could she tell who it was, before dawn in a side street, with the lanterns long out?”

“She claims there was light from the side door of the Mynette house, which, she says, was open,” Morel answered unhappily. “She may be lying, but—”

“She isn't lying,” Charles said reluctantly. “Monsieur Gilles Brion was there. Mademoiselle Brion told me herself this morning, when I saw her home after the funeral. Her brother confessed to her that he had gone to talk to Mademoiselle Mynette before it was light. She came down and spoke with him in the garden. He said that he left by the garden gate. And, of course, that he left Mademoiselle Mynette alive.”

“The idiot!” M. Callot slapped his thin, veined hands on the arms of his chair. “Dear sweet Jesu, the turnip-balled idiot! I hope the Châtelet scares some sense into him. If being there doesn't kill him before he's even hanged. Or worse.”

The Châtelet might well kill him, Charles thought. Jail fever raged in prisons and few, guilty or innocent, escaped it if they stayed long enough. “Is he in a common cell, Monsieur Callot?”

“Of course not,” Callot growled. “Would I let him be thrown in with all the rabble of Paris?”

In the silence that fell, Charles saw that Morel was glancing furtively at the rector. The rector paid him no attention, standing serenely, hands folded at his waist, eyes cast down like a modest nun.

With the air of a man betting everything on a throw of the dice, Morel said, “Maître du Luc, you have followed the police inquiry since Mademoiselle Martine Mynette's death. You know Lieutenant-Général La Reynie. We want you to help us. If your rector permits. We want you to look for the real killer of both Martine Mynette and Henri Brion. The police think they have no more need to look, and if the matter is left there, Gilles will certainly die.”

On the whole, Charles agreed. He looked at Le Picart. Le Picart raised his head, and his gaze hit Charles like gray lightning. Then he turned to study his guests. Neither they nor Charles moved a muscle.

“More than a man's life is at stake here,” Le Picart said slowly. “Maître du Luc, I think you should go and see Monsieur Gilles Brion. Whether he is guilty or innocent, visiting the prisoner is certainly within our purview. And speak to Monsieur La Reynie, if you can. But first, come to my office.” He turned to Callot and Morel. “
Messieurs
, I ask you to go to Mademoiselle Brion, who surely needs you, and wait patiently. I must think on what you have asked. We will send you a message saying what is decided. God go with you.” He sketched a blessing in the air and withdrew.

“I will see Monsieur Gilles Brion and do everything I can for him,” Charles said to Callot and Morel. “You can trust what Père Le Picart says. He will send you a message telling you what I learned in my visit, and very soon.”

Accepting that they had no choice but to wait, the two men thanked him and started to take their leave.

“One moment, Monsieur Morel,” Charles said, remembering other, lesser concerns. “Forgive me for intruding a very different matter, but we are in need of a dancing master for our Lenten show. Maître Beauchamps is unavailable. If you are free and will come tomorrow at one o'clock, Père Jouvancy would like to speak with you about replacing Monsieur Beauchamps for these weeks.”

Morel gaped as though the sun had risen in black midnight. “I am—I would be—more honored than I can say,
maître.
Certainly I will be here.”

“Excellent.” Charles smiled at him. “And, please, tell Mademoiselle Brion that she must not despair. The
bon Dieu
has her in His hand. And her brother, too.”

As Charles went to the rector's office, though, he wondered if that was the happiest thing he could have said. It was the conventional thing to say and he believed it. But he'd rarely found God's hand a comfortable place to be.

When he opened Le Picart's office door in response to the command to enter, he found his superior rising from his prie-dieu. Charles was expecting a lengthy discussion, but Le Picart did not even ask him to sit down. Straight and unmoving, one hand still on the prie-dieu, he said, “Do you believe this young man is innocent of these murders?”

“On the whole, I do.”

“Then I want you to do what our guests have asked, Maître du Luc.”

“Yes,
mon père
, I will go to Monsieur Gilles Brion as soon as our rehearsal ends.”

“No, not just that. You are already watching the police inquiry and keeping me informed. Now I want you to do more. I want you to help Monsieur La Reynie find the killers of Martine Mynette and Henri Brion.”

Charles took a literal and metaphorical step backward and eyed his rector warily. Le Picart was ordering him to do what he wanted to do—what he had, in fact, already started to do. But . . . “Why,
mon père
? Why me?”

He flinched inwardly as Le Picart's eyebrows rose. The rector was all too familiar with Charles's struggles over obedience.

“In part, Maître du Luc, because the correct answer to my order is ‘Yes,
mon père
,' but your answer is ‘Why,
mon père
?' Even though I have told you to do what your heart is already driving you to do.”

“ ‘Why' is not ‘No.' ”

“True. I want you do to this because you have done it before and you did it well. Lieutenant-Général La Reynie knows you. I think he somewhat trusts you. And he is desperately understaffed. He cannot find these killers as quickly as we need them found. He does not have enough men. And as our friends have just said, he may have stopped looking. That is the plain truth, which I think he will acknowledge himself.”

“
Mon père
, of course I want to do what you ask. But—just to take one doubt I have of my ability to do this—I know nothing about commerce or finance. And this silver scheme likely has a bearing on Henri Brion's death, at least.”

“Père Damiot will help you there.”

“And if I fail? To find either killer?”

“The Society of Jesus is being publicly accused of murder for wealth. That calumny has been painted on our doors. You—and we, and Lieutenant-Général La Reynie—have no choice but to make our best effort to find the real killers. If we fail, we fail, and God will have a reason for it. Will you do this?”

“I will,
mon père
.” Charles returned Le Picart's level gaze. “For the dead as much as for the Society.”

“And that is the most important reason why I ask you and not another to do this. Your heart is in it. So,” Le Picart said briskly, “I will tell my own superior what I have set you to do. If he tells me I am wrong, then I will call you back. If any . . . difficulty arises from your task, I will take it wholly on myself. You are acting on my orders and you are acting as Ignatius said a Jesuit should: as the strong stick supporting your feeble superior.”

“Feeble?” Charles snorted with unapologetic laughter.

Le Picart smiled slightly. “Our founder's words, not mine.”

“
Mon père
, am I to tell the
lieutenant-général
what you have asked me to do?”

“Yes. As I said before, I have told Père Pallu that you will not, after all, be assisting in his morning classes for now. Also, I caution you again not to neglect your duties to Père Jouvancy and the February performance, unless—God and His saints forbid—a dire emergency arises. Furthermore, hear me well—you will use violence to no one.”

“No,
mon père
. Unless—”

“No ‘unless.' You have taken first vows—which you have renewed—and you are a Jesuit, if only a scholastic. But you have also been a soldier. And what you did and saw and learned as a soldier are not far under your skin. That is very clear to me and is another reason you are suited for what I have asked you to do. But you belong to the Society of Jesus now, you are one of ours, not the army's. Use what you know, but use violence to no one.”

“And if it is a question of life or death? Mine or someone's whom I must protect?”

“Our Savior told us to turn the other cheek.”

“My own cheek is my own to turn. Allowing someone else to die seems to me another thing altogether.”

Le Picart looked long at Charles, who felt as though the man were seeing through his flesh and bone to his soul.

“That will have to be between you and God,” Le Picart said.

G
illes Brion sat hugging himself at his cell's battered table. He wore a black cloak over the same brownish-black coat and breeches Charles had seen him in before, and his elegant linen was still crisp and white. A single candle lit the small chamber and a tall brazier had been brought in for heat, but it did little to dispel the cold of the ancient stone walls. Still, it showed that M. Callot had laid out more than a little money to the jailor. Brion had started up when the thick-planked, iron-bound door opened, but slumped again into his chair when he saw Charles.

“What do you want?” he said listlessly.

“To know whether you've killed anyone.”

“Don't mock me.”

“I am not, I assure you. Did you kill Mademoiselle Mynette? Did you kill your father?”

“What does it matter? I am a dead man, anyway.”

Charles turned abruptly and pounded on the cell door. “Jailor, I am through here,” he shouted through the open grille.

Behind him, the chair scraped on the stones and Brion cried, “No, wait, please!”

Praying for patience, Charles turned around.

“Wait for what?” If harshness was the only thing that could penetrate this idiot's posturing, then harshness he would have.

“I didn't kill either of them. I own I wanted sometimes to kill my father. But I didn't. And I would never have killed Mademoiselle Mynette. I swear by all the saints, by my hope of heaven!”

“But you went to her house before dawn on Friday morning. The morning she died.”

Gilles gasped and clutched the back of the chair. “Isabel betrayed me! Dear God, women are of the devil! Their tongues forge the chains of hell, they—”

Charles turned back to the door and raised a fist to pound on it.

“Don't go!” Gilles clutched Charles's arm. “Women are weak, I know that, Isabel surely didn't mean—forgive me—”

Charles shook off Brion's hand. The young man was swaying where he stood, his face was colorless.

“Have they fed you?”

“I don't want anything.”

Charles sighed. “At least sit down before you fall.” He pushed Gilles into the chair and picked up the cloak, which had fallen to the floor. “You were seen,” he said, draping the cloak back around Brion's shoulders. “You were seen leaving the side gate to the Mynette's garden Friday morning. Why did you go there, Monsieur Brion? And why so early?”

Gilles froze as booted feet walked past the door. As the sound faded, he groaned and shook his head hopelessly. “I went to ask her to help us both out of the coil my father had made. I knew she would be awake. She always woke early to dress and say the early prayers.” Haltingly, he told Charles the same story Isabel Brion had already given him.