Judith Rock - Plague of Lies

“Sire,” Louvois pleaded, “you are not yourself; you have had a terrible shock! You cannot let this man go-everyone knows La Reynie protects him, and you might do well to discover why!”

“Not myself? I am entirely myself, Monsieur Louvois. But you forget yourself.” The royal words were full of warning. Louvois blanched and bowed.

“Find her,” the king said to La Reynie. “My men are at your service.” He raked the gathered courtiers with his eyes and left the salon , taking the speechless Polish ambassadors and the rest of his shocked entourage with him. When he was gone and everyone rose from their bows and curtsies, the courtiers edged toward the doors in their turn, chattering and staring at La Reynie and Charles as they went. La Chaise came to La Reynie. His face was the color of spoiled dough.

“What do you want me to do?” he said.

“Set whomever you can trust to watch the doors. If Montmorency shows himself, they must take him and hold him until I return.”

Nodding, La Chaise looked at Charles. “We are deeply indebted to you, Maître du Luc.”

Charles shook his head. “I was nearly too late. I failed her, I didn’t see her clearly enough. I wish-” He shrugged, out of words.

“My failure is greater than yours. At least you saw her desperation.”

He turned abruptly and went out the way the king had gone.

As he moved, Charles saw that Anne-Marie de Bourbon was standing near the wall, watching and listening. Before he could go to her, La Reynie said in his ear, “Stay near me,” and called the guard captain, who had been waiting with his men for orders.

La Reynie swiftly assigned half of them to search the chateau and its surrounding buildings for Lulu, and the other half to quarter the grounds. “I was in the balcony,” he told them. “I saw her leave by the north door. She can’t have gone far, on foot and dressed as she is. When you find her, bring her to me.”

Anne-Marie whirled and ran for the north door. Ignoring La Reynie’s order to stay close, Charles went after her. He caught her arm as she started down the terrace stairs, toward the streaming torches that marked where guards were already searching.

Charles shook the child slightly. “Where is Lulu, Your Serene Highness? We both know she left by this door.” He held out the leaf he’d picked up on the terrace earlier. “This dropped from your hair, I think, when we were talking before. I think it came from the place you found for Lulu to hide in. Did you know she planned to poison the king?”

In the light of the torch mounted on the chateau wall, Anne-Marie’s face was as white and pinched as the king’s had been. “No.” She made no effort to free herself from his grip.

“But you helped her escape.”

“Yes.” The rising wind blew her ribbons around her face as she stared unflinchingly back at him, and he realized once more that she was as determined as her grandfather, the Great Condé, had been. But unlike the Condé, she would keep her word, once given, no matter what. And she would scorn a lie.

La Reynie burst through the door. “Maître, I told you to stay near me; what are you-” He broke off, staring at the leaf on Charles’s palm. “What’s that?”

Charles nodded toward Anne-Marie, cautiously letting go of her. La Reynie bowed hastily.

“This leaf fell earlier from Her Serene Highness’s hair,” Charles said. “Like the ones we saw when she was dancing. She admits that she helped Lulu escape. I think the leaves came from the hiding place she prepared for Lulu.”

Frowning, La Reynie took the leaf from Charles and held it up to the light. “It’s hornbeam. Have you hidden her in the berceau , Your Serene Highness?” But he sounded more puzzled than triumphant. “What good will that do her?”

“She is not there,” Anne-Marie said disdainfully.

“The berceau ?” Charles said in confusion. “Cradle? How could she hide in a cradle?”

“The berceau de charmille ,” La Reynie said impatiently. “It’s a hornbeam arbor-more like a tunnel-that follows the Marly wall. She couldn’t hide there, not for long. But we’ll have to go and-”

“Wait,” Charles said. “Your Serene Highness, you say that Lulu isn’t in the berceau de charmille . But you went there. Someone is or was there. Who?”

She stared back at him like a statue. Until a dog began to bark in the distance and she turned toward the sound, her small face creasing with anxiety.

“That’s your Louis barking, isn’t it?” Charles listened for a moment, to be sure of his direction. “Monsieur La Reynie, does the hornbeam hedge circle the whole property?” He pointed northeast, toward the barking. “There, too?”

Catching Charles’s thought, La Reynie said, “It does.”

Charles ran down the steps. La Reynie, shouting for guards to follow them, was on his heels.

The wind drove thin clouds across the sky, but a half moon gave fitful light. The two men pounded across gravel, along paths, and straight across the planted parterres when there weren’t paths. The barking stopped, then grew louder, and Charles nearly fell over Anne-Marie’s little black dog. The dog ran around him and La Reynie in joyous circles and then back the way it had come, ears streaming in the wind. Charles raced after it, a trio of guards close behind, leaving La Reynie bent over and catching his breath. A flood of hurrying clouds quenched the moon, and Charles nearly ran facefirst into the hornbeam hedge. One of the guards held up his torch to show a manicured archway cut in the hedge a little way to their right. The guard cautiously stuck the torch through, low to the ground.

“Can’t see anyone,” he said. “But I hear the dog in there. I can’t take my torch in, the whole tunnel might burn.”

Charles went in. He could hear the dog off to his left, but he could see nothing beyond the reach of the torchlight at the entrance. Then, as the dog came running out of the green-smelling darkness, the torch flared a little in the wind and something small and bright caught Charles’s eye down where the dog had been. He went toward it, brushing his hand along the hornbeam at the level where he’d seen the thing.

Behind him, the shrubbery rustled and La Reynie caught up with him, struggling for breath. “It’s like God’s pocket in here.”

Charles suddenly felt broken branches and then empty space. “We’ve found it; she got out here, the hedge is broken. Is the wall beyond?”

“Yes.”

Charles’s fingers closed suddenly on what felt like a ribbon. From the brief torchlight glimpse he’d had of it, it was the pink-gold color of Lulu’s gown. “I’m sure she went out here. Her ribbon’s caught on the edge of the hole.”

“Anne-Marie couldn’t have made a hole this size,” La Reynie said. “I doubt even both girls could have done it together-they’d scratch themselves too badly to go unnoticed.” He told the guard who’d come in behind him to have men comb the outside of that part of the wall and quarter the ground beyond. The man ran back through the hornbeam tunnel, and Charles and La Reynie squeezed through the broken place. Gritting his teeth against the ache in his shoulder as he pulled himself up, Charles gained the top of the six-foot wall and helped La Reynie up.

Grunting and swearing, the lieutenant-général jumped heavily down into dew-wet grass on the other side. “I want to think she couldn’t get over this by herself, not in skirts. Even at her age. But that may be only my damaged dignity speaking.”

“No.” Trying to ignore what hauling La Reynie up the wall had done to his own aching shoulder, Charles was looking intently across the fields and forest sloping away before them. “She didn’t. Montmorency is here, I’m sure of it.”