Judith Rock - Plague of Lies

La Reynie’s face was noncommittal as he watched Maine. “Why would Fleury have put poison in the silver box?”

“Lulu and I read some of the mémoire together. Fleury hated his rich nephew. He thought the nephew’s money should by right have come to him. He wrote that the omens told him it would very soon be his. And poison is called inheritance powder , isn’t it? Fleury was always horribly in debt.”

“So when Bouchel died,” La Reynie said, “she knew what she had and decided to use it on her father.”

And I thought I was helping her , Charles thought bitterly, helping her accept her marriage. I encouraged her so earnestly to trust that God would not abandon her, even if her father had. She saw the use of the role I offered and played it, seeming to be what I wanted her to be. And I was eager to be deceived.

The door to the king’s reception room opened and La Reynie was summoned.

“He’ll want to see you in a moment,” La Reynie said hurriedly to Charles. “Say as little as you can. Answer his questions. Nothing more.”

He disappeared into the inner apartment, leaving Charles with the grieving children. Anne-Marie sat down on the floor beside Montmorency, and the Duc du Maine kept a wary eye on them both. The guard, who had tried to keep the little girl away from his captive, caught Charles’s eye and shrugged. Coping with Anne-Marie de Bourbon, Charles thought, was going to be beyond most men.

Seeing that there was an untasted glass of wine beside Montmorency, Charles got up and put it into his hand. “Drink, monsieur .”

The young man obediently swallowed the wine. “If you hadn’t come after us, she wouldn’t have died.”

“Others also came after you. You had no hope of getting away.” Charles pulled Anne-Marie to her feet. “Your Serene Highness,” he said gently, “please leave us for a little.” She studied him for a moment and went to sit on a footstool beside Maine. Charles turned his gaze on the guard. “If you will be so good as to stand in the doorway?”

The guard hesitated and then withdrew to the passage door. Charles knelt on the blue-and-gold carpet beside Montmorency. “Listen,” he said softly and urgently. “There’s not much time. The king is going to call us in, and before I have to face him, I must know whether you’ve been helping the Prince of Conti get letters from the eastern border.”

“Letters?” Montmorency looked at him blankly. “I wrote letters to Lulu. The Duchess of Tuscany gave them to her.”

“No other letters passed through your hands?”

“No. Why should there be other letters?”

“Did you know that Lulu had the poison?”

“What poison?”

Charles realized with a shock that Montmorency had not been in the salon . “Haven’t you heard what we’ve been saying here?”

Montmorency shook his head, staring again at the floor.

Charles shook him by the arm. “Listen to me. Lulu tried to poison the king before she ran tonight. That’s why you were followed so quickly. Did you know she was going to do that?”

Horror washed the grief from Montmorency’s eyes. “Poisoned the king?”

“Tried to. She failed.”

“No! I didn’t-I would never-no, she wouldn’t! He’s her father.” He looked at Charles incredulously. “He’s the king!”

Charles sighed with relief. This poor dull knight seemed to have forgotten his own loud denunciations of Louis. His only treason had been to fall in love with the king’s daughter and try to rescue her from the king’s will. Stupid. Beyond stupid. But Charles hoped the king would not require Montmorency’s death for it.

“When you speak with the king,” Charles said, “answer his questions truthfully. Don’t defend yourself. Don’t accuse him of anything. Do you understand?”

“I didn’t know about the poison.” Montmorency’s eyes filled again with tears. “I loved her.”

“I know you did.”

The door to the royal reception room opened. “Maître du Luc.”

Charles’s heart missed a beat. He stood up and followed the expressionless footman into the king’s reception room, whose damask walls and hangings were of an even deeper red than the anteroom’s. In the candles’ dim glow, they made Charles think uncomfortably of blood. The king sat behind a small desk. La Chaise stood beside him and La Reynie stood in front of him. Charles stopped short of the desk and bowed. La Reynie stepped slightly aside and nodded at Charles to take his place.

The king’s eyes were hooded, as though what he wanted to say were written on the ebony inlaid surface of his desk. “I am told that my daughter took her own life.”

Unsure of what to say, Charles was slow to respond. Louis looked up, and Charles saw that the blue-gray Bourbon eyes were looking into deep darkness, the darkness of his daughter’s hatred and self-murder and damnation.

“She jumped into the river, Sire, but she may have meant to swim; she may not have known how strong the current was.”

“She knew. She saw the Machine built. She knew how the current ran.”

Charles bowed his head. There was nothing to say to that.

“Did she speak to you before she jumped?”

“Yes, Sire.”

“Tell me what she said.”

Charles felt as though he, too, were about to jump fatally. “She said that she did not want to live in-in a prison.”

The king frowned. “Prison? She thought I would imprison her?”

Charles hesitated. “Yes, Sire.”

“What else? You are not telling me everything. Speak!”

The last word was so loud in the lushly padded room that Charles jumped. Drawing himself up, he returned the king’s hard stare. “She said that she had lived in her father’s prisons long enough.”

Not a muscle moved in Louis’s face. But someone unseen moved in the room’s shadows behind Charles, and La Chaise’s eyes flicked toward the sound.

“I thank you,” the king said through stiff lips. “Leave us now.”

Charles inclined his head, started to turn away, and then stopped, unsure whether he was allowed to turn his back to Louis.

The king suddenly lifted a hand and gestured him back to the desk. “I am remiss,” he said. “You saved my life, and I thank you. But I command you never to speak of anything that happened tonight, except to your religious superior. The Society of Jesus will receive a suitable gift. That it is given because of your action will not be said.” He nodded another dismissal, but Charles didn’t go. Both La Chaise and La Reynie looked meaningly at the door, but Charles ignored them.

“Sire, if I may speak?”

The king nodded.

“Henri de Montmorency, who is waiting in your anteroom, has been my student, and I know him. I think that his only crime was to love your daughter too well. I also know that there is-concern about the Prince de Conti. I would stake my life that Monsieur Montmorency has nothing to do with that concern.”

“Very well. I shall see.”

Louis’s aging face seemed grayer and more fallen by the moment with fatigue and sorrow, a sorrow Charles was sure he would never admit and for which he would never ask comfort. Without warning, and even though he believed Louis had brought much of his sorrow on himself, Charles felt a terrible rush of pity for him. Not for the king, but for the man.

“I will pray for you both, Sire, you and Lulu,” he said. And for your unborn grandchild , he added silently. “God is better at forgiving than-than men are.”

A sigh came from somewhere in the shadows, and Charles got himself out the door. In the anteroom, the Duc du Maine and Anne-Marie were both asleep on their footstools, Anne-Marie with her head in Maine’s lap, looking for once like the child she was. The footman called Montmorency’s name, but the boy didn’t move, and the guard had to nudge him to his feet and through the door. Charles, shaking now from his royal encounter, sank onto a footstool. And shot to his feet as Mme de Maintenon emerged from the reception room.