C. Harris: Why Kings Confess

“The Chevalier d’Armitz, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“You were being very quiet,” said Sebastian. “You weren’t by chance trying to sneak up on me, were you?”

“Now, why would I want to do that?” The Frenchman held his left arm straight down at his side, his hand half-hidden by the folds of his coat. In the deep shadows of the passage, he must have been confident that no man could possibly see the dagger clenched in his fist. “Just thought you ought to know that the church is closed.”

“I see candlelight.”

The Chevalier advanced one step, then another. “It’s a private ceremony.”

“Oh? And what sort of ceremony might that be?”

“A funeral.”

“Yet there is no hearse.”

“The body has already been buried elsewhere.” The rain drummed around them. The Chevalier kept coming, the knife held out of sight, his features composed in an affable expression as if they were engaged in a pleasant conversation. “It’s the practice amongst certain emigre families to preserve a loved one’s heart separate from the body. The urns are kept in a vault here, in the chapel, for the day when they may be returned to France.”

“In this case, to the Val-de-Grace?”

“As it happens, yes.” He drew up perhaps four feet from Sebastian, his smile slowly fading into something intense. “You are a difficult man to kill, Monsieur le Vicomte.”

“Yet you keep trying.”

“The odds are better this time, I think.”

“Oh? Because you have a knife in your hand and I don’t?”

A faint cloud of surprise followed by uncertainty drifted across the Chevalier’s face, then cleared. “I’ve heard you have the eyes and ears of a cat. I never credited it, myself.”

“Your mistake.”

He shook his head. “I think it’s an image you cultivate.”

“I’ve heard you have a fondness for stabbing men in the back. Literally. Yet my back is not turned.”

“I’m adaptable,” said the Chevalier. Still smiling, he lunged forward, the knife flashing up toward Sebastian’s heart.

Sebastian pivoted to grab the Chevalier’s outthrust arm with one hand while grasping his fist with the other. Gritting his teeth, Sebastian twisted the fist hard, the knife handle giving him leverage. He saw the flash of shock in d’Armitz’s face as the Frenchman realized just how badly he had miscalculated.

The knife slid from the Chevalier’s helplessly limp hand into Sebastian’s own. Yanking up the Frenchman’s arm, Sebastian drove the blade straight into his heart.

“But. .,” sputtered the Chevalier, eyes widening as he smacked into a reality he could not finesse, an opponent he could not cheat, a fate he could not elude. Then fury replaced astonishment, an indignant rage made all the more acute by the realization that his luck had finally run out.

“Not quite as adaptable as you thought,” said Sebastian, wrenching the blade free.

The rain poured around them, wetting the Frenchman’s upturned face and mingling with the blood soaking his white waistcoat. The light of comprehension was already fading from his eyes. Yet the rage remained, like a fiery hot coal doomed to extinction in an unforgiving darkness.

• • •

The door to the sacristy opened soundlessly to Sebastian’s touch. The space beyond was small and untidy, the air thick with the smell of dampness and stale incense and a musty odor often associated with old men’s clothes. A narrow band of flickering candlelight spilled into the dark room through the door to the chapel itself, which stood slightly ajar.

Sebastian paused in the shadows. From here, he could see most of the two rows of empty benches and the wooden west gallery built above the main entrance. The church appeared deserted except for the old priest, clothed in his white alb with the gold-embroidered black stole draped around his neck. He stood before one of the wall-mounted monuments, open now to reveal a shallow niche containing a row of urns. He had his hands raised, the low drone of his voice echoing through the stillness.

“Requiem?ternam dona ei, Domine.”

Sebastian heard a rustle of cloth, a light step, and Lady Giselle Edmondson moved into his line of vision. She wore a high-waisted gown of black cashmere scalloped and edged with crepe. A black lace veil draped her head, the delicate folds accentuating the fair luster of her hair without hiding her face. In her hands she held a clear rock crystal urn mounted with two silver handles and a silver lid and base. Within lay a red-brown heart he suspected had once belonged to Damion Pelletan.

“Et lux perpetua luceat ei. .”

She stood with her head bowed, her eyes closed, her beautiful features composed into a study of intense concentration and reverence as the words of the priest washed over her.

“Requiescat in pace. .”

Sebastian shifted so that his view took in the rest of the chapel. He half expected to find Marie-Therese here, as well. But the church was utterly empty except for the aged priest and Lady Giselle.

“Anima ejus, et anim? omnium fidelium defunctorum, per misericordiam. .” The priest’s chanting was reaching a crescendo. Sebastian pushed the door open wider and walked into the chapel.

“Dei requiescant in p-” The priest’s head turned, his voice trailing off into a high-pitched squeak as his eyes widened and his jaw sagged.

At first, Giselle must have assumed Sebastian’s footsteps belonged to her cousin, for she turned slowly, her head coming up as she opened her eyes. Her reaction was more controlled than the priest’s.

She stared at Sebastian for a moment, then said, “I take it that’s my cousin’s blood?”

It was only then that Sebastian became aware of the spurt of dark blood across the front of his coat and waistcoat, and the bloody knife he still clenched in one hand. “It is.”

“He’s dead?”

“He is, yes.”

He saw the flame of emotion in her eyes, fury mingled with careful calculation rather than grief.

“Monsieur!” protested the priest. “You would bring a bloody weapon of murder into the house of the Lord?”

“My apologies, Father.” Keeping his gaze on Lady Giselle, Sebastian carefully laid the knife at his feet, the metal hilt clinking against the stone paving.

She said, “I am aware of what you must think, but you are wrong. The Chevalier did not kill Damion Pelletan.”

“I know.” Sebastian continued walking toward her, his empty hands at his sides. “But you intended to kill him. That’s why you followed his hackney when he left the Gifford Arms that night, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps. Yet in the end, what we intended is immaterial. If all those who wished ill of their fellow beings were held accountable, England would soon be very thin of company.”

“So what did happen that night?”

She shrugged. “When the hackney set Pelletan and the woman down at the entrance to Cat’s Hole, I told my coachman to pull up and sent the Chevalier to follow them on foot.”

“To Hangman’s Court?”

“If that is the name of that foul cesspit, then the answer is yes.”

“And then what?”

“While Armitz waited, he became aware of another man loitering in the shadows-a large, rather crude ruffian with dark curly hair.”

“Sampson Bullock.”

“Yes.”

Sebastian studied her calm, flawlessly composed features. “How did you know his name?”

“Does it matter? The point is, Armitz watched Bullock follow Pelletan as he left Hangman’s Court. At one point, the woman must have heard something because she started to turn. Bullock struck her in the head with a cosh and stabbed Damion Pelletan in the back. Armitz waited until the man left, then came to me.”