Judith Rock - The Eloquence of Blood

Charles sighed. “At least sit down before you fall.” He pushed Gilles into the chair and picked up the cloak, which had fallen to the floor. “You were seen,” he said, draping the cloak back around Brion’s shoulders. “You were seen leaving the side gate to the Mynette’s garden Friday morning. Why did you go there, Monsieur Brion? And why so early?”

Gilles froze as booted feet walked past the door. As the sound faded, he groaned and shook his head hopelessly. “I went to ask her to help us both out of the coil my father had made. I knew she would be awake. She always woke early to dress and say the early prayers.” Haltingly, he told Charles the same story Isabel Brion had already given him.

“And when Mademoiselle Mynette refused to help you, what did you do?”

“I left. I went back to the Capuchins for Prime and Mass.”

“They can confirm that you were there?”

“Yes.”

Sitting now with his back turned to Charles, Gilles took something from his pocket. It caught the candlelight in a small red flash, and in one stride, Charles was at the table and wrenching open Brion’s hand. But the thing was a rosary with reddish beads, not a red enamel heart.

“Forgive me,” Charles said, laying it carefully on the table. “I thought this was something else. I was mistaken.”

Brion, cowering away from him, snatched up the rosary and began to pray.

“Monsieur Brion, you most certainly need God’s help. But you also need mine. Please listen to me. Your sister says you stayed at the Capuchin monastery on Thursday night. Is that true?”

“Yes,” Brion said resentfully, opening his eyes. He glanced at Charles and ducked his head over the rosary again. “In a-a guest cell. I often stay there.”

Charles watched him thoughtfully for a moment. “So you stayed the night in the monastery. Praying. Solitary. Celibate. Just as a future monk should be. Admirable. And regrettable, since there is no one who can swear you never left your guest chamber on Thursday night and the early hours of Friday morning. No one can swear for you that you were at the Capuchins during the hours when your father must have died.”

Brion, clutching the rosary so tightly that his knuckles were bone white, seemed to stop breathing.

Charles decided to risk everything on one throw. “It is not unknown,” he said, as though to himself, “for young men to decide to enter religious life together. Two heartfast friends sometimes vow to enter the same monastery, to live there chaste, but in each other’s company.”

Brion stared at him as though ensorcelled, his eyes like black pits in his white face.

“Do you have such a friend, Monsieur Brion?”

A silent sob convulsed the young man’s body. He shook his head.

“I think you do, mon ami,” Charles said gently.

Brion leaned his head on his folded arms and wept. “Don’t tell them, I beg you, don’t tell them. We’ve done no wrong. We are chaste, maitre, I swear it!” Then, to Charles’s surprise, he made an effort to pull himself together and took a square of linen from his pocket. He mopped his face and pushed back his lank brown hair. “It is not just for him that I want to be a monk,” he said softly, running his fingers over a roughly formed rose some prisoner before him had carved into the table’s surface. “But I want to spend my life serving and praying where he is. Is that wrong?”

Charles hesitated. The church, the law, and the world harshly condemned that kind of love between men, even when it was chaste. Sodomites were rarely burned alive now, but they could be-even though the king’s brother and more than a few courtiers were notorious for “the Italian vice,” as it was called. A century ago Henri III, who had piously inscribed and laid the cornerstone for Louis le Grand’s chapel, had confounded his ministers by appearing at state functions in jeweled gowns, with purple powder in his hair and beard.

Charles knew that he, too, should condemn this kind of love, especially now, when Brion was frightened and maybe vulnerable enough to renounce his friend. But Charles also knew what it was like to be torn, albeit by the more usual kind of love, and had no taste for condemning.

“I don’t think love itself is wrong,” he said, walking away from the table to the brazier.

Brion twisted in his chair and stared in astonishment.

“Not love that wants the beloved’s good more than it wants fulfillment of its own desires. Though what we choose to do about love is often enough wrong, God knows. And in your case, you would do well to remember the punishment the law can exact for the act of love between men.”

Brion laughed harshly. “As though I could ever forget.”

“Monsieur Brion, there is already strong evidence against you in the Mynette murder. Mademoiselle Mynette was killed early on Friday morning. And it seems that your father was killed very shortly after that. If you cannot-or will not-provide proof of where you were on Thursday night and Friday morning, before you went to the Mynette house, no one will be able to save you from the other charge.”

“What does it matter? I will hang for the girl’s murder, anyway. And I will not put… anyone else… in peril.”

Charles shut his ears to his conscience and used the weapons he had. “It is you who are in peril! How hard do you want your death to be? The penalty for parricide is worse than the penalty for homicide. Too many people know that your father was trying to force you into marriage. And that his death clears your way to the monastery.”

“But it doesn’t! Great-Uncle Callot will still stop me if he can. He wants me to marry and be a notary. And the Capuchin novice master says they prefer the consent of families when they take a novice.”

Charles wondered if perhaps the Capuchins were looking for a graceful way out of coping with Gilles Brion. “Your great-uncle cares more for your happiness than you imagine, Monsieur Brion. Why do you think you were not flung into the filth and danger of the common cell?”

Gilles frowned and glanced around the chamber. “He did this?”

“He did.” Charles let that sink in. Then he said, “Monsieur Brion, did you know of your father’s scheme to smuggle silver in barrels of chocolate seeds?”

A surprised smile appeared fleetingly on Brion’s thin face. “No, I didn’t. My poor father; his schemes for making money never worked. Did one of his angry investors kill him, then? I’ve always thought that was how he would end.”

They both started as someone shot the door’s outer bolt and Lieutenant-General La Reynie came in.

“Bonjour, messieurs.” He inclined his head to Charles. Then, leaning on his silver-headed stick, he gazed for a long moment at Gilles Brion. “I came to give you a little more to think about, Monsieur Brion. In spite of the fears you have confided to Maitre du Luc-yes, I have been listening at the grille-we have determined that your father was not killed by the investors he was last seen with. Which leaves us once again with you as our man for that murder.”

With more dignity than Charles had yet seen in him, Brion rose from his chair and faced La Reynie. “There must be other investors.”

“Perhaps. But I usually find that men are quicker to kill their loved ones than their debtors and creditors. Especially since murderers so often face breaking on the rack instead of merely hanging. And occasionally, of course, there’s burning. If other circumstances demand it.”

Charles and Brion both flinched. La Reynie smiled genially at them.

“If I may have a moment of your time, maitre?” he said to Charles. He gestured toward the door and they went out, leaving Brion crouched over his rosary.

“Will you at least see that he is fed?” Charles said, as they walked away from the cell.