Judith Rock: Plague of Lies

Most of the previous month had been blessedly warm after the hard winter, and the physick garden in the infirmary courtyard was already blooming. The afternoon’s rain had left the blossoms somewhat bedraggled, but the air was drenched in fresh sweet scents. Charles filled his lungs eagerly. Which was a good thing, because the fathers’ infirmary, below the student infirmary and beside the ground-floor room for making medicines, smelled pungently of sickness. Frère Brunet, the lay brother infirmarian, turned from a bed at the room’s far end as Le Picart and Charles entered and bustled toward them, his soft shoes whispering along the rush matting between the two short rows of beds. All but two beds were empty. Before he reached them, Père Jouvancy called out, “Ah, mon père, maître , welcome, come in, come in!”

His bed was in the left-hand row, between two windows, and he was sitting up among his gray blankets, the fitful sunshine warming the new color in his face.

“I would ask you how he is, Frère Brunet,” Le Picart said to the infirmarian, “but I see for myself that he really is better.” He smiled affectionately at Jouvancy. “You’ve had a hard time of it, mon père . But if you feel as much improved as you look, you will soon be back among us.”

“Oh, he will, certainly he will,” Brunet said, surveying his patient with satisfaction.

“And Père Pallu?” Le Picart asked, looking toward the other bed.

Brunet shook his head. “Poor man, he seems to be in for the same hard time. Oh, he will no doubt do well enough, but for now he is suffering fever, chills, aches in his body, sore throat.” Brunet glanced ruefully over his shoulder. “And he can keep nothing down.”

“Sit, mon père , if you have the time,” Jouvancy said hopefully, and Le Picart pulled the only stool nearer and sat down. As befitted a lowly scholastic, Charles remained standing at the foot of the bed.

“Visit, then,” Brunet said, laying a hand on Jouvancy’s forehead and nodding approvingly. “But see you don’t tire him.” Behind him, the sound of retching began and he hurried away to Père Pallu.

Charles swallowed hard. In several years as a soldier, he’d helped care for bloody wounds without turning a hair. But spewing-his own or anyone else’s-turned him weak-kneed.

Jouvancy beamed at Le Picart and Charles. “Thank you for coming, both of you! I only need to get my strength back now.” He shook a finger at Charles. “So do not become too fond of your independence, maître , I will be back before you know it.”

“ Mon père ,” Charles said fervently, “I will give thanks on my knees when you are back! I fear I am a poor substitute.”

Jouvancy eyed him shrewdly. “Greek today, was it?”

“Greek indeed.”

“Yes, on Greek days, I often find myself moved to volunteer for the missions.” His blue eyes grew dreamy. “Less use for Greek in the missions. And I understand they do theatrical pieces, operas, even.”

Le Picart laughed. “That is as good an opening as any for what I have come to say. Because I do want you to go somewhere.”

“I will, of course, go wherever you bid me, mon père . To Tibet, if you say so!”

“Somewhere much closer to home. As soon as you’re well enough to travel, I want you to go to Versailles.”

Jouvancy blinked. “And what might a lowly rhetoric professor do at court?”

“You are a connection of the d’Aubigné family, I believe.”

“D’Aubigné?” Charles looked in surprise at Jouvancy. That was Madame de Maintenon’s name, the king’s second wife, who was born Françoise d’Aubigné. “That makes you nearly a relation of King Louis, mon père !”

“Yes, I suppose it does. My father’s mother was a cousin of the d’Aubignés. But that makes me as distant as China from the trunk of the family tree,” Jouvancy said. “For which I am thankful when I think of how worthless Madame de Maintenon’s father was. He was in prison when she was born, did you know that? For conspiring against Cardinal Richelieu-which at least made a change, since he was more often jailed for debt and dueling. His daughter, though, seems to be a pattern of uprightness. I have met her only once, you know, when she came here a few summers back, to see the tragedy and ballet. And our family connection was not mentioned.”

“Still, that you have met her is to the good. And what Maître du Luc has said is true. Consider, mon père ,” Le Picart said, leaning forward in his chair. “You are a distant relation of the king’s wife, which, as Maître du Luc has said, makes you a relation by marriage to Louis himself, and that is going to be useful. I am just returned from Versailles, where the Comtesse de Rosaire asked me to come and talk to her about Louis le Grand. She wants to send her twin sons to us next autumn. Because she is recently widowed-and a comtesse-I went.” He shrugged sheepishly. “Afterward, I knocked at Père La Chaise’s door on the chance that he was there rather than at the Professed House.” The Jesuit Père François La Chaise, the king’s confessor, lived at the Jesuit Professed House in Paris when he was not with the king. “He was not, and as I turned from the door, I met Madame de Maintenon and her ladies in the corridor. I uncovered my head and made my reverence . She glared-at Père La Chaise’s door and at me. She did acknowledge me with a ‘ mon père ,’ though just audibly and between her teeth, before she and her entourage swept on.”

“Oh, dear,” Jouvancy said. “I thought that after Père La Chaise made no objection to her marrying the king, she would think better of us Jesuits.” He looked questioningly at the rector. “I’ve heard that Père La Chaise was even present at the ceremony that made her Louis’s wife.”

“Wife, yes,” Le Picart said, ignoring the curiosity about Père La Chaise’s role. “But not queen, because she’s too lowly born. And even as a wife, she is unacknowledged. Rumors even deny the marriage. She is very angry at Père La Chaise over that. He has encouraged the king to keep the marriage secret because of her rank. He and others fear the outcry there would be if the marriage were publicly proclaimed. Glory must shimmer around everything connected to the king of France, and an aging lady of besmirched minor nobility is far from glorious.”

Jouvancy’s eyes danced with sudden laughter. “Well, at least she didn’t mention the nickname when she saw you outside Père La Chaise’s door.”

Le Picart grinned. “No. But I’m sure she was thinking it.”

“What nickname?” Charles said.

Jouvancy looked at Charles in momentary surprise. “Oh. Of course. I doubt it ever went as far as Languedoc. Long before the king married Madame de Maintenon, she was also very angry at Père La Chaise for his refusal to force the king to part with his mistress, Madame de Montespan. La Montespan and the king did part, finally-and Père La Chaise had a hand in that-but then she came back to court, and the result was two more children. Madame de Maintenon was furious. She had been governess to their first set of children, which was how she met the king. But she refused to have anything to do with the second set of royal bastards. And she began calling our Père La Chaise Père La Chaise de Commodité for not stopping the liaison. As though he could have stopped it. But the nickname was the delight of the gossips, and all Versailles and Paris laughed themselves silly.”

“She really called him that?” Charles was fighting laughter himself. The name La Chaise of course meant chair, so Père La Chaise de Commodité , to put it plainly and rudely, meant Père Toilet. “Is she gutter-mouthed?”