Judith Rock - Plague of Lies

But on Monday morning, Père Le Picart and Père Montville found themselves embroiled in a dispute over the college water pipe and could not leave Paris.

“No help for it, Père Montville and I will have to hire a carriage early tomorrow morning. That will get us there in time for the presentation. But I want you and Père Jouvancy to go this morning, as planned,” Le Picart told Charles. “A slow ride in the good air will be better for him than a lurching gallop in a carriage. And he can rest well overnight-I understand from Père La Chaise that we will be expected to make an appearance at several court events tomorrow.”

So with Le Picart’s blessing, Charles and Jouvancy rode away from Louis le Grand into a day that was early summer perfection. The climbing sun promised warmth and the air was sweet. As sweet as it got in Paris, anyway. The sky’s soft blue looked newly washed, and courtyard trees were bright clouds of green above the stone walls. The people in the streets seemed as glad of it all as Charles was.

Père Jouvancy, expansive in the little rebirth of convalescence, was smiling on everyone and everything and letting the dappled mare Agneau, “Lamb,” choose her pace. Charles held his own horse, the restive black gelding called Flamme, to the same sedate walk. The gelding, named for his fiery spirits, tossed his head and danced, trying to change Charles’s mind about their speed until the crowded street forced him to give in and pick his way.

As he rode, Charles finally admitted to himself that he was more curious about this visit than he’d anticipated. His parents had met at court, after all. Not at the palace of Versailles, of course, which had not existed in their young days, but at the old Louvre palace across the Seine. And if he didn’t enjoy it, well, at least the visit would be short. The Jesuits would be presenting the gift, then returning to Paris on Wednesday, or Thursday at the latest, if Jouvancy needed an extra day to rest after all his exertion. Meanwhile, Charles told himself, it was a perfect day, he was on horseback, and there was no Greek to teach.

Though the sun was not far above the Left Bank’s blue-gray roof slates and thrusting spires, Paris was already hard at its selling and buying. As Charles and Jouvancy reached the rue de la Harpe, a water seller’s eerie, quavering cry of “ A-a-a-a-l’eau! ” rose from a narrow lane like the wail of a damned soul. A girl ran suddenly in front of Flamme and Agneau, holding out a bunch of late jonquils, yellow as the ribbons in her black hair, to a young professor in a clerical gown. Smiling and making suggestions Charles tried not to hear, the cleric told her he had no coins and tried to take a kiss instead of the flowers. She snatched back the jonquils and held them up to Charles, who also had to confess to a lack of money.

The girl smiled at him. “You’re better to look on than that other one. A kiss from you, then?” She hung for a moment on his stirrup, her red lips forming a kiss.

Jouvancy chose that moment to turn toward Charles. “Begone, girl,” he shouted, flicking a hand at her as if she were an errant chicken. “Go, out of his way!”

The girl let go of the stirrup and shrieked with laughter, pointing at Charles’s flaming face. Charles, grateful that the street din made it impossible for Jouvancy to say much to him, mustered what dignity he could and rode on. Street sellers shouted themselves hoarse, vying with one another like competing opera singers. “Asparagus! Leeks! New brooms!” rose above a rumbling chorus proclaiming old pots, lottery tickets, rosaries, and spring salad greens. A clutch of miaowing cats added their voices as they followed a woman balancing a two-handled pot on her head, gesturing with a ladle and singing the freshness of her milk.

“ Bonjour , Maître du Luc!” a familiar deep voice called over the cacophony.

Charles reined in his horse and turned in the saddle to see Lieutenant-Général Nicolas de La Reynie, head of the Paris police and one of the king’s most influential officeholders, doffing his wide-brimmed, gray-plumed hat and smiling slightly. Behind him, a burly sergeant in the plain brown coat and breeches of La Reynie’s men kept his eyes stolidly on the swirling crowd.

“A very good day to you, also, mon lieutenant-général ,” Charles called back, bowing slightly in the saddle. “I am glad to see you.” He’d occasionally helped La Reynie in the past, and though at first his help had been unwilling, he’d come to respect the man, and even like him.

La Reynie pushed his way past a leek seller to Charles’s side and said, with a half smile and a raised eyebrow, “Do you know, I think that’s the first time you’ve ever said that.”

Lifting his hat again, he bowed to Père Jouvancy. Charles introduced them, and Jouvancy smiled absently at La Reynie, then went back to watching a loud quarrel over the right of way between a vinegar seller and an impatient Benedictine on a mule.

“Is it well with you, Monsieur La Reynie?” Charles asked.

“Well enough,” the police chief returned, but his eyes were following something across the street.

Knowing that look, Charles turned his head to see who was unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of it. A pair of men, short capes rakishly draped on their shoulders and swords at their sides, turned into a shop doorway beneath a sign with a golden quill.

Charles looked down at the lieutenant-général . “Are you thinking of visiting that bookshop?”

“I am. And inquiring about what they’re selling upstairs.”

“Ah,” Charles said, knowing-as anyone in Paris would know-that La Reynie meant books from Holland. “Dutch pornography or Dutch politics?”

“There’s a difference?” La Reynie said ironically, his black gaze still on the shop.

Holland was a perpetual source of pornography and of books and pamphlets attacking everything French, especially the king and his policies. Louis had made finding the illicit imports, and their sellers and buyers, part of La Reynie’s job.

“A new spate of tracts has turned up,” the lieutenant-général said, turning his attention back to Charles. “Vile things that look like pornography at first glance, but are in fact libels on the king and Madame de Maintenon.”

Charles tried not to imagine what such tracts might look like. “Well, I wish you good hunting.”

La Reynie grunted. “Where are you and Père Jouvancy riding to?”

“Interestingly enough, to Versailles,” Charles said. “To present a gift to Madame de Maintenon.”

“Well, don’t mention the tracts. As far as I know, she hasn’t heard about them, and God send she never does.” La Reynie eyed Charles. “You don’t look eager to arrive at court.”

“I’m not.” Charles glanced at Jouvancy to make sure he wasn’t listening. But the rhetoric master was absorbed in watching a hatter shaping the brim of a shiny black beaver hat just inside the open window of his shop.

“Maître du Luc.” La Reynie put a lace-cuffed hand on Charles’s bridle. “Do me the favor of keeping your eyes open while you are there.”

“Open for what? Don’t you have mouches at Versailles?” La Reynie, like everyone with power, had “flies”-spies-in high places, listening and reporting.

“Swarms of them. And everyone, no doubt, can identify them on sight. Do you know who the Prince of Conti is?”

“I know he’s a Prince of the Blood. Close kin to the king.”

“Yes.” La Reynie studied the cobbles, as though debating what to say. “Questions are being raised-again-about Conti and his intentions toward the king. I would like you to store up anything you hear. Gossip, who Conti talks to, everything. It would be a great favor to me if you would do this.”