Judith Rock - The Rhetoric of Death

“He is here. On important business.” The disciple glanced over his shoulder and beckoned the circle closer. “Business that will bring glory to Holy Church.” He put a hand on his chest, as though to still his bounding heart. “I must go now, messieurs, to play my own small role.” He bowed and withdrew.

Into the silence he left behind, someone said thoughtfully, “His grandfather was a butcher in Rouen.”

“Ah, yes,” someone else purred. “He is a little like Madame of the Moment, then.”

Everyone laughed. Mme de Maintenon, the king’s new wife, had also risen from the lower orders. Because her surname sounded like “maintenant” or “right this minute,” her enemies never tired of calling her Madame of the Moment and hoping that her pious influence at court would last no longer than that. Charles laughed with them, but his eyes followed his goat. As the circle’s talk wound itself somehow from Mme de Maintenon to England and what James II’s open Catholicism meant for English religion, the goat stopped beside the man who had been standing with La Chaise when Charles arrived. The two of them moved purposefully across the room, and Charles bowed to the circle and followed them.

At the salon’s far wall, the goat looked around furtively, failed to see Charles watching him, and hurried his companion through a door. Charles drifted toward the wall. With his back to the door, he set his glass on a side table and benignly surveyed the company as he felt behind him for the latch. When, as far as he could tell, no one was noticing him, he lifted the latch and stepped backward.

All Charles could tell at first was that he had walked into near darkness. He stretched out his arms and his fingers touched plaster on both sides. A passage, then. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that light leaked thinly under the door he’d just closed and that a line of light showed under another door on his left. He moved closer. Someone was talking, but the voice was too muffled for him to make out words. He put his ear to the door. The voice came more clearly; not a French voice, though its French was passable.

“You already know something of my purpose,” the voice said. “But now that M. Lysarde here has made us known to each other, I will put my plea before you in my own heartfelt words. I truly believe that God led M. Lysarde to visit King James’s court. We met at Mass, as he has told you, and later I had the pleasure of presenting him to His Majesty. I met M. Lysarde often after that to talk of our devotion to Holy Church. As you know from Pere La Chaise, I am one of King James’s Catholic advisors. Unofficial-he will deny knowledge of me, if necessary-but close to him. It is in that capacity that I have accompanied our young friend here to France. To ask your help on King James’s behalf in ridding England of heresy, as you have so efficiently rid your own realm of it.”

Charles went rigid against the door.

“Our king desires to emulate your great Louis and wipe away England’s Protestant stain,” the man went on in his accented French. “The moment is ripe, if only you will help us seize it.”

“Eloquent, mon cher Monsieur Winters,” Charles’s goat said fervently.

“You are too kind, Monsieur Lysarde,” the voice murmured.

“Exactly what do you mean, Monsieur Winters?” The unpleasantly familiar voice was that of Michel Louvois, the war minister.

“Why, I mean dragoons, Monsieur Louvois. The dragoons that you deploy so successfully here, to teach our English troops the methods of conversion you have perfected.”

Charles bit blood from his tongue to keep his silence and told himself that it would be suicide to burst into the room.

“Then your errand is in vain,” Louvois replied stiffly. “Do you not know in England that King Louis has officially forbidden dragonnades?”

“Of course. And like everyone else, we know that he was only placating our too tender-hearted pope. Rulers so often cannot afford to let their right hand know what their left hand does. Let me congratulate you, monsieur. As minister of war, you have been a most effective left hand.”

The room was suddenly full of a silence whose discomfort Charles felt even through the door.

“Monsieur Louvois? How shall I interpret this silence?” Winters hesitated. “You are his left hand, are you not? Or-dear God, dare I say it-has someone continued these dragonnades without your king’s knowledge? But who values his life so little as to poach on King Louis’s vaunted authority? No, no, that is beyond belief.”

“You continue to puzzle me.” Louvois’s words were silky with danger. “Your King James seems bent on toleration for all-Anglicans, Anabaptists, Quakers. Even Jews, I hear. Just last spring, he released twelve hundred Quakers from your jails. Why would he suddenly want dragoons?”

“This ‘tolerance’ is but a mask, the face James shows to England in order to secure the throne and forestall rebellion.”

“Of course it is,” a new voice said reprovingly.

Guise. Charles pressed his ear closer to the door and held his breath.

“Since the hell-bound Henry destroyed the true Church in England, its throne has been a precarious seat for a Catholic monarch,” Guise declaimed. “As you well know, Monsieur Louvois.”

Louvois ignored him. “Why do you not carry some token from King James, Monsieur Winters?”

“Is it not enough that I am here, in this sacred Jesuit house, vouched for by your king’s confessor? And by M. Lysarde, of course. Safety lies in anonymity.” Winters’s voice grew hard. “I am, of course, wholly dispensable, but King James cannot risk his plans becoming known. I will tell you, though, that even now he has fourteen thousand soldiers gathered at Hounslow. Soldiers led by Catholic officers, who hear Mass in a chapel the king has built for them.”

“These soldiers,” Guise said eagerly, “are they ready to move?”

“They wait only for your dragoons.”

“Then they will wait until hell freezes, monsieur,” Louvois said flatly. “There will be no dragoons.”

“I–I am shocked, Monsieur Louvois,” Winters said over Guise’s recriminations. “My king is guided by his Jesuit confessor, Pere Edward Petre, as your king is guided by our noble host. Pere Petre and Pere La Chaise have prayed-and more-for years to restore the true Church in England. Are you prepared to take the eternal consequences of flying in the face of such holy hopes? King James looks to the king of France as to a father, he pleads with him for aid. The moment he knows that you will send soldiers, the restoration of Holy Church will begin in our long-suffering island.”

“You move me inexpressibly, Monsieur Winters.” Guise’s voice vibrated with fervor. “God and His saints are truly calling us to this. We will lay this request before King Louis at the first opportunity. As soon as-”

“You forget yourself, Pere Guise.” Louvois sounded like he was choking on swallowed fury. “Dragonnades are forbidden. And your Anglicans and Quakers and such are not swarming across the Channel to attack us, Monsieur Winters, but the Holy Roman Emperor and this new Augsburg alliance are very likely to do so. French troops will go east and north and nowhere else.”

“All our troops need not be sent there,” Guise snapped.

“I am minister of war and I say they will be. Even setting aside other objections, who would pay for dragoons in England? The English king indeed relies on King Louis as a father when it comes to money.”

“Money? Is that what really concerns you? Why, Monsieur Louvois”-Winters laughed-“you sound more like a Dutch merchant than France’s war minister and a true son of Holy Church.”

“I will pay, messieurs!” Lysarde, the goat, cried. “With my last sou, if necessary!”