Judith Rock - The Rhetoric of Death

In spite of his horror, Charles wanted to laugh. Lysarde sounded like a student actor playing doomed Roland refusing to surrender.

“Dutch?” Louvois said, ignoring the would-be hero. The war minister’s voice was heavy with irony. “A Dutch merchant? A very interesting choice of comparisons, Monsieur Winters.”

“A common enough turn of phrase, I believe,” Winters said lightly. “But forgive my jest, if it offends you. Well, messieurs. I can see that you need time to consider what I have put before you. I beg you to think-and pray-long and well about King James’s request. Discuss it, of course, with those you most trust. And when you put it to your king, lose no time in letting me know his answer. Sadly, the English court swarms with heretic spies who have deep pockets for bribing royal couriers. It will be safest to send letters through the two men whose names are written here.” There was a rustle of paper. “They are both known to King James and will protect our correspondence with their lives. Now, I thank you from my heart for this audience and bid you adieu, in the hope of hearing very soon that the great King Louis will aid us in the service of Holy Church.”

Charles reached the deeper darkness at the passage’s far end just in time. Light spilled across the floor. As Winters and Lysarde hurried down the passage and slipped back into the salon, Charles realized that Winters was the man he’d seen standing with Pere La Chaise when he arrived. Someone inside the room the men had left pulled its door shut and Charles crept back to his listening post.

“How dare you, Monsieur Louvois? I am ashamed of you.” Guise was spluttering with fury. “You will feel it in penance. If I had not heard you with my own ears, I would not believe it! After your education at Louis le Grand, after all my own guidance, to see you spit on God’s chosen time and the true faith as you have just done breaks my heart.”

So Louis le Grand had not only educated the war minister, Guise was his confessor. Charles remembered Le Picart’s warning that the college, the court, and the government hung in the same web.

“Mon pere, when you first mentioned this meeting to me in M. Doute’s garden during the birthday fete, I feared that Winters was a fraud,” Louvois said. “I said so, but no, you were bent on receiving him. And now that I have seen him, I am certain he is a fraud. I will take my oath that he lied from start to finish. That was a direct threat, his wondering so innocently if someone has usurped the king’s authority to run dragonnades. And why come to us? Why not go straight to Versailles, if he really comes from James? Official or unofficial, Louis would have received him.” “You heard him, James must do this as quietly as possible so that no rumor leaks out and lets the enemy prepare!” “I heard him. And if we don’t take Winters’s heart-rending “plea” to Louis, the cur will make good on his threat.” “Threat?! It is certainly not-” “Threat, Pere Guise! If we don’t do what Winters asks, he will send a storm of rumor and gossip about our dragonnades straight at Louis’s head. Half of the court will pretend to be unbearably surprised that dragonnades go on and will whisper that Louis’s absolute authority is no longer absolute. It will be as though we’ve cuckolded him! He would probably mind less if we had truly cuckolded him. Meanwhile, the other half of the court will titter that of course we haven’t cuckolded the king’s authority, because everyone knows he never meant the dragonnades to stop. And Louis will then be very publicly caught. Because he swore to the pope he’d stopped the dragonnades. I tell you, Louis will be caught, but he will see that the vise closes on us!”

Charles tried to take in what he was hearing. His eyes widened. Dragons. Dragons in England. Antoine had told him and he’d thought the child was just being a child. From his perch in the tree, Antoine had heard Louvois and Guise talking not just about dragonnades in France, as Charles had thought, but, God forbid, about these proposed dragonnades in England. No wonder that when Antoine asked to hear more about “dragons in England,” he had been sent to bed. His questions would have told Guise that he and Louvois had been overheard, which was a much more believable reason for murder than witnessing an illicit kiss. Antoine had told Philippe about that kiss. Had he also told him about the “dragons?” Had Philippe died because he’d understood what that meant?

“I warn you,” Guise hissed. “If you reject this chance to restore the Church in England, you will walk to Rome on your knees.”

“We are caught, I tell you! Do you really want to go to Louis and make him talk about dragonnades? Not dragonnades in Huguenot rat holes so far away that he and the pope can fail to notice, but blazingly public dragonnades across the Channel that would scandalize all Europe! Including Rome and the Protestant Augsburg states!”

“Holy Church-”

“I tell you, we are caught! If we go to the king and the slightest whisper leaks out of the audience chamber-as you know it will, the court’s very air gossips-it will start a fire trail of rumor that will flash from Versailles to London to Rome. ‘Have you heard? King Louis is about to unleash French dragonnades on Anglicans.’ ‘What?’ the pope will say. ‘The same King Louis who solemnly forbade dragonnades five years ago?’ His Holiness will seize this new excuse to grow even more adamant in his quarrel with Louis over church revenue and bishops. And the Augsburg alliance will grow even more determined to contain French power! And in England, James will have revolution on his hands and we will lose our Catholic ally there. Which is exactly what this Dutch Winters wants! Dutch, Pere Guise! Could you not hear the accent under his appalling French? The man doesn’t want dragonnades, he wants destabilizing rumors to help his master William of Orange to the English throne!”

“Calm yourself, mon fils, he is not-”

“If we do this, King Louis will have only two choices! To admit that he lied to the pope about stopping the dragonnades-which he will never admit-or to take the only other way out. To quickly “discover” that you and I have, as Winters so elegantly put it, poached the king’s authority. Louis will cover himself by accusing us of usurping his sovereignty. He will swear that anything to do with dragonnades is against his will and without his knowledge, and he will charge us with treason. Us.” Louvois spit the word out like a piece of bad meat. “Even your name will not save you, Pere Guise.”

“You dare threaten me?” Guise thundered.

“For the good God’s sake, I am trying-”

Wood grated over stone. Charles reacted a heartbeat too late as a hand was clamped over his mouth, an arm tightened around his throat, and someone dragged him backward.

Charles fought as though his last battle had been yesterday. But his assailant, with two good shoulders, surprise on his side, and no cassock skirts, had him through the open door and belly down on the terrace in the space of a few breaths. Straddling him, the man pulled Charles’s head up sharply to expose his throat. A dagger gleamed in front of Charles’s eyes and the man laughed. Charles twisted, threw the man onto his dagger hand, and rolled free. He got his feet under him, but the man was up and rushing him, thrusting for his heart. Charles threw himself sideways and backward over the terrace balustrade. The man kept coming and landed half on top of him. Charles grabbed his assailant’s dagger wrist, brought his other elbow up under the man’s chin, and hurled him aside.

Then he was on his feet and running. As he ran, some detached part of him wondered what had seemed wrong about his pursuer’s face. He needed to see the man in the light, but without dying for the privilege. The man fell behind as Charles’s long legs ate up the ground. Charles was running now through a formal garden, jumping low hedges and flower borders in fitful moonlight. The garden was long and narrow, bounded by stone balustrades like those around the terrace, but beyond them on his left, trees showed against the night sky. Leaping over a gravel path and its betraying crunch, he vaulted the railing. And fell farther than he’d wanted to, onto tree roots. Swallowing a grunt of pain, Charles kilted his entangling skirts with his cincture and made his way deeper into the trees, thankful for soft, tended turf underfoot instead of last year’s crackling leaves.