Judith Rock - Plague of Lies

Shouts made them look back along the wall. Guards with torches were running toward them.

“A horse,” the nearest one called breathlessly. “A horse was tethered a little way along there.” He jerked a thumb behind him. “Left its droppings.”

Charles and La Reynie looked at each other.

“Can you tell which way it went?” La Reynie called back.

“Toward the river, looks like.” The guard arrived, panting, his fellows at his back. “Started that way, at least.”

The guards’ faces showed avid in the torchlight, and Charles thought that this was likely more excitement than any of them had ever seen. Not only an attempt on the king, but an attempt by a royal daughter, a legitimée of France.

“Get horses,” La Reynie said curtly. “Go both ways around the Machine, down to the water.”

“Are there boats?” Charles said. “Could they find a boat there?”

“They could,” another guard said. “There’s a boat or two for inspecting the Machine. They couldn’t go downstream, there’s a dam, but they could get across to the other bank.”

“The machine that brings water from the river?” Charles said.

“That’s right. Huge thing,” the guard said, “fourteen paddle wheels pushing water up the Louveciennes hill to the aqueduct. For the fountains here at Marly, and at Versailles, too, it’s so close.”

Charles was running before the man finished talking. The moon came and went, usually going just as he needed it. The ground began to slope downhill as he entered a belt of trees and velvet darkness. He smelled the horse before he saw it and swerved at the last minute, frightening both of them.

“Lulu? Montmorency?” There was no sound but the horse’s blowing and snorting. Charles bent close and saw that it stood with its off foreleg lifted. He tried to lead it a few steps, and it nearly fell. Lamed and abandoned. Which meant that the fugitives were on foot now, too. He started running again, trying to stay upright as he slithered down an even steeper slope. Away on his right, he heard hooves and saw torches, as the mounted guards approached the river.

Charles could hear rushing water now and ran toward the sound, caroming from tree to tree in renewed moonlight, using the trunks as handholds to keep himself from plunging headlong. A great roar smote his ears as he came abruptly out of the trees and saw gleaming water ahead of him. The noise was heart-stopping. The Machine, he realized, and started downhill beside a long wooden construction higher than his head. The horsemen and torches were at the bottom of the slope on a wider pathway beside the water.

Someone reined in his horse and pointed, shouting, “There, look, there they go!”

Holding their torches high, the guards looked out at the dark mass of platforms and throbbing machinery that thrust itself like a square peninsula into the water. Charles reached the bottom of the hill and pelted across the riverside path, past the dismounting guards, who were tethering their horses and looking for a way onto the vast, multileveled Machine.

He plunged through a small door and came out on wooden planking. From its live throbbing, he guessed that it was built over churning gears and wheels. To his left, what sounded like the groaning rumble of all the mill wheels in France smote his ears. Other feet were pounding behind him now and he redoubled his speed, feeling as though his heart were about to burst out of his chest. Below him, on his right, was a long, lower level of flooring and at its end, the river, racing westward under the moon like a fat silver snake. He could see them clearly now. Montmorency jumped down to the lower wooden level, held up his arms, and caught Lulu as she jumped. They ran hand in hand along the boards toward the river end of the Machine.

“Lulu! Montmorency! Stop!” Charles’s feet pounded over the planking, which narrowed suddenly to nothing in front of him. The first of the guards was closing on him and he turned furiously. “No,” he roared, “stay back! Let me bring them in.”

It was his old battlefield voice, and it worked. The last-come guards skidded into their fellows, and they all stopped where they were. Knowing he had only moments before they followed him, Charles gathered his cassock and jumped to the lower level. Ahead of him, Lulu and Montmorency clambered over a low wooden barrier and ran to a rail where the Machine thrust farthest into the river. They stopped beside an opening that led lower still and looked over the rail. Lulu shook her head at Montmorency and darted to her right and out of Charles’s sight.

“Wait!” Charles bellowed, leaping the barrier.

Montmorency was still leaning over the rail, looking up and down the river and wailing, “There’s no boat, Lulu, you said there was a boat!” He turned, saw Charles nearly on him, and flung himself to the right, blocking the way Lulu had gone. His sword was out and leveled at Charles. “Stay back,” he shouted over the Machine’s roar. “Let us go.”

“Not into the river, you fool!”

“We’ll find another boat, stay back!” The boy’s face was grim and hard. Not a boy’s face any longer.

The guards were at Charles’s back now, their torches blotting out the moonlight. Someone tried to push him out of the way and he whirled and shoved back savagely, sending the man to the floor and only then realizing it was La Reynie.

“If they try to swim for it, they’ll drown in the currents,” Charles shouted at the lieutenant-général and the rest. “Let me talk to them.”

The guards started past him, but La Reynie yelled, “Hold where you are, give him a chance!”

Montmorency had disappeared now, too, and Charles, hands open and visible, went to the right, the way Lulu had gone, and found the pair standing together on a small piece of decking at the side of the Machine.

“Come back with me,” he pleaded over the noise. “The king will be merciful. Please, come back with me.”

“Merciful?” Lulu’s laughter was as silvery as the moonlight on the heavy ropes of pearls around her shoulders.

Montmorency had an arm around her, his sword still pointed at Charles. “We’ll marry, we’ll go somewhere else. England. Italy. Somewhere. Let us be.”

“Think! You have no boat, no horse. The king’s guards are here behind me. You cannot go anywhere from here. Come back with me and retrieve what you can for yourselves.” Charles was remembering Louis’s gray stunned face. He’d seen shock and disbelief and anger there, but not the rage that drives revenge. There’d been too much pain for that. The rage might come later, but it was a chance worth taking. “I think you won’t get worse than exile. Even you, Lulu. In exile, you’d still be alive.”

Lulu looked out over the racing water and shook her head.

“Lulu,” Charles said, “I know your secret. I’ll help you. I’ll-”

She looked over her shoulder. Her slight smile was piercingly sweet. “I’ve lived in my father’s prisons long enough. And you don’t know all my secrets.”

She stood on tiptoe, one hand resting on Montmorency’s shoulder, and kissed him. Charles took advantage of the moment to step closer. As Montmorency bristled and warned him off with his sword, Lulu pushed herself up onto the rail. Before Charles could cry out, she seemed to spread satin wings in the moonlit air, and the Machine’s roar swallowed the splash of her fall.

“Lulu!” Montmorency flung a leg over the barrier, fumbling to throw off his cloak.

Charles lunged, got both arms around him, and pulled him backward. “No! She’s gone. There’s nothing you can do!”

Montmorency struggled fiercely. “Then I’ll die with her, that’s all I want, let me go!”

They shouted the same words at each other, like responses in a hellish liturgy, until Montmorency finally stopped struggling and they wept together, huddled in the roar of the water wheels.