Judith Rock - The Eloquence of Blood

She breathed in slowly, her nostrils white and pinched. “Perhaps I remember them slightly. The dead man was here often and so is Monsieur Bizeul. The third, the younger one, I had not seen before. That is the truth, as the Virgin sees me. They argued, but not so I could hear what they said. In his anger, Monsieur Brion spilled his coffee onto the floor. Monsieur Bizeul said to me that Monsieur Brion was drunk. The two pulled Monsieur Brion to his feet, apologized to me for his discourtesy, and the three of them left. That is all.”

A small hissing sound made Charles look toward the fireplace. The waiter who had served them earlier rolled his eyes at the woman and shook his head. As though bored with waiting for La Reynie, Charles wandered toward the street door. The waiter grabbed a broom and energetically swept his way to the door.

“I heard your talk with her, mon pere, I cannot help it. She is lying.” He glanced at the woman behind the counter and pulled a towel from the waist of his breeches. Flourishing it across the seat of a chair, he said, “The little notary did not spill the coffee. The young companion, the one she did not name, he pushed it off the table, and they blamed the notary to make him leave. You understand?”

Charles nodded. “Who was the young companion, mon ami?”

“Alas, I do not know him. But the notary, he did not want to go! He pulled from them, he cursed them, but they forced him. They repeated that he was drunk and apologized for him.” The waiter’s eyes were as round as the coffee bowls, and his jet eyebrows were halfway up his pockmarked forehead. “But they were very angry with him. And now Reine says he is dead.”

“Luigi!” The woman’s voice was furious. “To your work!”

The waiter made an eloquent face at Charles and scurried away. Charles smiled vaguely at several men who had watched the exchange and went casually into the street. When La Reynie joined him, Charles told him what the waiter had said.

“So the spilled coffee was an excuse for taking Brion out of here,” the lieutenant-general said grimly. “And he has not been seen, so far as we know, by anyone else since he was taken out of here. Why a respectable goldsmith would have a hand in killing him is hard to imagine. But I am going to the barriere for the sergent, and he and I are going to call on Monsieur Bizeul and see what story he cares to tell.”

“And me? Am I dismissed?”

Le Reynie’s mouth twitched. “I am only lieutenant-general of Paris. If memory serves, I have not been entirely successful at telling you what to do.”

Before Charles could answer that, a loud and untuneful voice made them turn toward the end of the street. A street vendor, the frayed and wilting brim of his plumed hat at a rakish angle, his arms full of printed sheets, was walking toward them, singing:

“Elle etait riche, elle est morte Les Jesuites dansent sur son corps. Elle est perdue, pour ainsi dire, Les Jesuites pour enrichir!”

Charles started toward the singer, but La Reynie put out a hand and stopped him. The singer, seeing Charles, grinned and redoubled his efforts, flourishing his song sheets at house windows as he bellowed out the words. An upper casement opened, and a woman shouted down that he should leave a sheet on her doorstep. As she tossed him a coin, two grinning men came out of a shop to buy copies. Charles seethed but held where he was. La Reynie leaned on his walking stick and watched. The singer kept coming. Then he saw La Reynie, shut his mouth abruptly, and disappeared into an opening between houses. Charles hurried to the place where he’d turned and found a tiny alley snaking into shadows.

“Don’t be an idiot,” La Reynie said behind him. “Anyone could be waiting for you down there. Or for me. I am even more unpopular than you are.”

“The man is inciting violence! Men have already-” Charles swallowed the end of his words, belatedly remembering the rector’s order not to talk about the attack on Louis le Grand.

La Reynie cocked an interested eyebrow, but contented himself with saying, “When one broadside seller is peddling a scurrilous song, you may be sure that two dozen others are doing the same across the city. You look like you’ve heard that song before.”

“Last night. As I passed a tavern called The Horse’s Tail, near the Place Maubert. If you let them go on singing the thing all over Paris, Jesuits will not be able to go out into the streets! Nor will our students, and most of our classes for day students are about to start.”

“Maitre.” La Reynie sighed. “Even in Provence and Languedoc, you must have had broadside sellers. If the songs are seditious, I imprison the sellers and try to find the printers. But these people are like fleas; who can be rid of them? And this song does not even mention the king. Yes, it stirs up the people and I will try to find out the source. But surely you know that the only thing that will stop it is catching the Mynette girl’s killer. And Henri Brion’s killer, because, as you have already implied, Henri Brion is going to be the song’s next verse unless the killer is quickly found. And now, before I look for the would-be monk, who seems to stick to his Capuchins like a leech and is probably the least likely of my suspects to disappear, I am going to visit Monsieur Bizeul the goldsmith.” He smiled ominously. “I regulate the guilds, you know. If he is innocent, he will tell me what he knows rather than provoke me. If not-I will provoke him. As for you, go back to the college by the main streets. And shut your ears to insults. Your soldier’s training will not serve you against a crowd, nor will a reputation for street brawling improve things for the Society of Jesus.”

“That sounds suspiciously like an order.”

“Does it?” La Reynie laughed softly as he bowed. “Then God go with you as you obey it.”

“Wait, mon lieutenant-general-what about Paul Saglio?”

“Saglio?”The lieutenant-general looked momentarily blank. “Yes, Saglio.” He sighed and shook his head. “Do you have any idea how many men I do not have? When I find someone to send to Vaugirard, I will send him.”

On his way back toward the college, no one challenged Charles, but he felt as though accusing eyes watched him from every doorway, as though everyone he passed were about to start singing the tavern song. He walked along the rue des Fosses, looking out at the Faubourg St. Jacques, the suburb that had grown up south of the walls. The Faubourg was thick with recent monastic foundations, built solidly of stone, with ample land around them. Beyond the gray lace of winter trees lay the walled precincts of the Feuillantines, Ursulines, and Daughters of Mary, their frozen gardens bare and empty. The great dome of Val de Grace, the Benedictine house beloved by Louis XIV’s mother, rose above the convent walls like a sugared Christmas cake.

New private houses of gleaming stone were scattered along the road among the religious foundations, but not far beyond them, the countryside still spread itself. Soon, Charles told himself, plowing would start in the barren fields, fruit trees would blossom, the sun would come back. And, please God, his own heaviness of spirit would lighten. In truth, though, he wasn’t sure. He’d chosen clearly and from his heart to remain a Jesuit. But his grief for what he hadn’t chosen had been ripped wide open by Martine Mynette’s murder, by her loss of the future she should have had. Nothing is wasted, the Silence had said-not death, not grief-unless you waste it. Was this renewed grief of his meant to drive him to find her killer? Was that what the Silence had meant?

He waited, very still on the windswept roadway, hoping the Silence would answer him. And caught his breath, wondering if the white horse galloping along a path beside a snowy field, its rider’s black cloak flying, the man’s streaming hair black as a crow’s feather in the gray light, might be a sign. He watched them out of sight, but the Silence held its peace and the horse and rider only left him yearning to ride in the wind’s teeth and leave grief behind.