Judith Rock - The Eloquence of Blood

Horrified, Charles looked at Marin, who seemed not to be paying any attention to the story. “He told you this?”

“He did. Our Marin’s old, and his ass hurts and his wits wander, but he’s no fool. He got away before they cut him. Hid in the woods and walked all the way back to Paris.”

Charles was speechless, thinking of the college’s approaching celebration for the king’s return to health. Pulling himself back to the need to preserve his own health, he said, “Were the three archers actually fighting outside the tavern?”

“They came down the street behind you, slow like, and they were in the beginning of it; that’s why we came out after them. But then they disappeared and it was just the ones from of the tavern.”

“Again, I am in your debt.”

Old Marin grunted in satisfaction at Charles’s words. Then he planted his stick and climbed slowly to his feet. “We thank you for our supper, maitre.”

His keeper, Jean, jumped up to help him and the others got up, too. On his way to the door, Marin stopped in front of Charles. He reached up and touched Charles’s thickly curling blond hair.

“Almost like my Claire’s,” he murmured. “Kind, too, like her.” He limped out into the courtyard, muttering to himself.

Jean wound Reine’s velvet rag around his throat and smiled at her. “Don’t worry,” he said hoarsely, “I’ll see to him.” He followed the old man out.

The rest filed out, too, and Charles looked questioningly at Reine, who hadn’t moved from her bale of straw.

“One more little moment of your time, if you please, maitre.”

Charles nodded. “Certainly, but first I must bar the gate after them.”

He let the beggars out into the lane behind the college, rebarred the gate, and went back to the stable, wondering why Reine had stayed and how he was going to explain her presence if anyone discovered her.

“Madame?” he said to Reine as he pulled the stable doors closed again.

She looked up from the piece of wood she had taken from somewhere in her garments and was busily carving. “How pleasant to be addressed so.”

“It is obviously your right.”

She put her head back and laughed until the stable seemed filled with bells. “You are a most courteous young chevalier,” she said, wiping her eyes. “And a most innocent one.”

“Innocent?”

Her eyes warmed disconcertingly in their net of lines and her mouth curved in the most sensual smile Charles had ever seen. “The things I could tell you-but don’t worry, I won’t. Tell me, are you any nearer to finding Martine Mynette’s killer?”

“Why ask me? I am not the police.”

She bent over her carving again. “You came with Nicolas to The Procope. I saw that he trusts you.”

Charles raised a skeptical eyebrow. Le Picart had said the same thing. But his own impression was that La Reynie trusted no one but himself. “Monsieur La Reynie has arrested Gilles Brion, Henri Brion’s son, for both murders.”

Reine made a dismissive sound. “That is unworthy of Nicolas.”

“You don’t think Monsieur Brion guilty?”

She held her piece of wood a little away and studied it in silence. A squarish shape was emerging, but Charles couldn’t tell what it was meant to be.

Impatient with her silence, he said, “Did your daughter tell you that Mademoiselle Mynette’s necklace was missing when she and Mademoiselle Brion undressed and washed the body? It was a little red enamel heart on an embroidered ribbon, not valuable, but I’m told that she always wore it. Now it’s gone.”

Reine gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Are you saying my daughter took it?”

“Did she?”

The old woman shrugged ruefully, rubbing the carving with her thumb. “Who knows, maitre? Renee is weak.” Taking the knife to the wood again, she said, “Renee told you a little about the servants who left the Mynette household. But she told you too little about Paul Saglio. The one who made indecent advances to Martine not long before her mother died. I was there when Martine turned him out, and I tell you, the man was savage with fury! Thank the Blessed Virgin he went, because he’s dangerous. What Martine did not know is that Paul Saglio-Paolo as he was then-killed a man in Italy before he came to France.”

“How do you know that?”

“His brother visited him one day when I was visiting Renee. I heard them talking.” She smiled. “It’s very easy to listen to people. Who pays attention to an old bundle of rags and the old woman dozing inside the bundle? So I heard everything. The two of them together had robbed a man on the road. He’d tried to fight back, and Saglio killed him. Knifed him. Find Paul Saglio, maitre.”

“Why did you not warn Mademoiselle Mynette about him?”

Reine shrugged in a wave of shifting colors. “Why would Mademoiselle Mynette listen to someone like me? I charged my daughter to tell her. But Renee was much taken with Saglio, and I doubt she did. She was sure he had long repented, and she wouldn’t hear a word against him. She only grew spiteful toward him when she saw that he preferred Martine.”

“Is Saglio in Vaugirard? Was Renee telling the truth about that?”

“Oh, yes,” Reine said dryly. “He has not come to see her, and she is very angry. Vaugirard is a small place, you should have no trouble finding him.” She tucked the carving and the knife away under her skirts and pushed herself up from the straw bale. Her eyes slid sideways to Charles. “If, of course, he has not come back to Paris for his own reasons.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing certain. I already told you he is handy with a knife.”

“As are you, Reine,” Charles said, on impulse. And watched her closely, waiting to see what she would say.

“Handier than you know. But it was not a bundle of rags that came at you in the street, was it?”

“No. Forgive me.”

“Maitre, a man tried to knife you tonight. You, who are looking for Martine Mynette’s killer.”

Taken aback, Charles stared at her, trying to tell if she was talking for her own reasons or giving him something he needed to know. “Do you mean that it was Saglio with the knife? I assumed the man tried to kill me only because I am a Jesuit.”

She shrugged. “Perhaps. But the man was thin and agile like Paul Saglio. Even if you did not see him clearly, I did. And now I must go, maitre.”

Still unsure what to think, Charles went to the stable door and listened for a moment. He heard nothing outside, but before he opened the door, he said, “Tell me about Marin.”

Reine’s green eyes opened wide in surprise. Turning away, she went to the gray mare’s stall and began to stroke the velvet nose. “My poor Marin,” she said softly. “Are you asking because of what he did on Christmas Eve?”

“Partly that.”

“Marin is sometimes as sane as anyone, sometimes insane with rage and sorrow.”

Charles hazarded, “Was he a soldier? Is that why he hates the old Conde?”

“No. He hates him because of how the man treated his wife, Claire Clemence, the Princess of Conde. Marin was a servant in her household.” From somewhere in her layers of clothing, Reine took out a small piece of bread and fed it to the mare. “Claire Clemence lived mostly alone in Paris.” She turned to face Charles. “The Conde despised her from the first, though the poor girl did everything she could for him. She brought him money when they married; she raised more money and saved him at least once during the Fronde wars; she gave him children, including a son. But he rarely acknowledged her existence, God rot him. And why? Because he had wanted to marry elsewhere, but his father-and Richelieu, who was Claire Clemence’s uncle-forced her on him. No one said ‘no’ to Richelieu.” Reine smiled bitterly. “It is too long a story for now, and you are wondering what it can be to me. That much I will tell you. Claire Clemence was only twelve years old when she married. Tiny as a dwarf but not one-she was very prettily shaped-and blond.” She smiled a little. “As blond as you, that’s what Marin meant just now when he touched your hair. He was fourteen, two years older than she, and he fell in love with her, beyond reason and deeper than the sea. He is in love with her yet. And I, great fool that I am, fell in love with Marin many years ago. Also beyond reason and deeper than the sea.”