Judith Rock: The Eloquence of Blood

“Yes, mon pere.”

Charles and La Reynie bowed and turned to leave. Before the door shut behind them, though, the rector called Charles back.

“I say this only to you, but I think you will want to know. It was one of our own from Louis Le Grand who spoke carelessly, outside the college, about the Mynette patrimoine coming to us.”

Charles remembered his first walk to the Place with the dour Maitre Richaud and the gossip Richaud had heard in the chandler’s workshop. “And this Jesuit talked about the patrimoine?”

“Yes. But that is all that needs to be said. The rest is not your business.”

The “rest” meaning consequences, including penance. You should order him to go and see a comedy every day, Charles thought irreverently, remembering Richaud’s dislike of laughter.

“Before you go to the Couche,” Le Picart said briskly, “take food to the cave. And blankets.”

Charles bent his head in acquiescence.

“And Maitre du Luc?”

Charles looked up.

“My thanks to you. You have done well what I ordered you to do.” He gave Charles a small, wintry smile. “When I gave you this task, I said that a Jesuit’s obedience should be his superior’s supporting staff. You have upheld me, and also Louis le Grand.”

Charles felt himself flushing with pleasure at the unexpected thanks. Jesuit obedience-no matter how hard he himself found it-was regarded as simply a given, not an occasion for thanks. “I only wish I could have prevented this morning’s death,” he said.

“I wish so, too. But that death and its sin are not yours to carry.” Le Picart’s smile reached his cool gray eyes this time. “What would be the point of growing in obedience only to fall into overscrupulosity?”

Charles found himself smiling, too, and remembering the Christmas Farce of Monks. If the end of a scholastic was to be kicked, the frequent function of a superior was to douse the scholastic with cold water for the good of his soul. “Point taken, mon pere.”

Charles collected blankets from the central store of bedding, and soup and bread from the kitchen. With some difficulty, he made his way back into the Les Cholets courtyard and down to the cellar. Nothing had changed. Reine still held Marin’s body on her lap, and Jean was still tossing and shivering with fever. Charles gently unwrapped his cloak from the boy and wrapped him instead in layers of blankets. He put another blanket around Reine’s shoulders and set the soup and bread beside her.

“Where is Richard?” Charles asked, seeing that the beggar was gone.

“He went to tell the others not to return tonight.”

“Where will they stay?”

“There are other places.”

The sound of voices and footsteps announced La Reynie, followed by two sergents with a litter. Reine gathered Marin to her and kissed him.

“Good-bye, mon coeur, my heart, my life.” She looked up at La Reynie, her eyes full of pleading. “Treat him gently, Nicolas,” she whispered.

“You know I will.” He called the two men forward with a look. “You will do this as though for your fathers,” he said curtly, and stepped aside.

Obviously bewildered by so much care for a filthy beggar, but just as obviously flinching from the steel in La Reynie’s voice, his men placed Marin on the litter with the care they might have given a marquis. They covered him with the blanket they’d brought, bowed to La Reynie, and bore the litter away to the Chatelet’s mortuary chapel.

As their footsteps died away, Richard emerged from the passage and sat down beside Reine. “I will take care of her, Monsieur La Reynie.”

“For now.” The lieutenant-general strode out of the cave and Charles followed.

When they reached the front of the college, a red-and-black carriage drawn by a pair of black horses, standing in the little rue des Poirees across from Louis le Grand’s main doors, came to meet them. A serving boy jumped down from his place between the high rear wheels and opened the door. Charles began his farewells, but La Reynie motioned him curtly into the carriage and climbed in behind him.

“La Couche,” he barked at the boy, who told the driver, and they were off.

La Reynie crossed his arms on his chest and stared steadfastly out the window. That suited Charles, who settled back on the red cushioned seat, looking eagerly out his own window. He was so rarely in a carriage that the experience was still new. Beyond the window, people, horses, carriages, carts, mules, shops, dogs, courtyard gates flashed past in a flood of color. Watching the wheels throw waves of muddy snow and water against stone walls and swearing pedestrians, Charles realized that the day was steadily warming. Snow dripped from eaves and gargoyles, and people even leaned on the sills of open windows, airing their rooms. On the Petit Pont, a few well-wrapped women sat in west-facing doorways, their faces lifted to shafts of sunlight and long-absent warmth.

On the Ile de la Cite, the carriage wound its way to the rue Neuve Notre Dame and stopped in front of the gate to the long, stone-built Couche. La Reynie and Charles got out, still in silence, and La Reynie rang the bell. Charles waited silently behind him. A young, bright-eyed Sister of Charity hurried across the court and let them in.

“Our thanks, ma soeur,” La Reynie said, lifting his hat, as Charles bowed. “We are seeking one of your sisters.” He gestured to Charles to take over the asking.

“She is called Mariana,” Charles said.

“Oh, you are in luck, come with me.” The girl led them across the muddy court. “Soeur Mariana has been ill, but she is better now, and back with us.” She ushered them through the door and into the anteroom. “Will you wait one little moment, please? I will see if she is busy.” With another curtsy, she hurried away.

The dark, rambling old house smelled of babies. Dirty swaddling, sour milk, and strong soap scented air already rank with the closed-in smells of winter, while wailing cries, hurrying feet on stone floors, and sharply urgent commands smote their ears. The young nun returned, as serene as though they were all in a summer garden.

“Soeur Mariana will see you. Come.”

She took them through the anteroom and along a dark, low-beamed passage to a small plaster-walled room where an elderly nun sat singing under her breath as she fed an eagerly sucking newborn with a rag soaked in milk. It was a common way of feeding babies, especially when there were several to feed at once. Wet nurses were sometimes accused of letting babies die, because the ones who got only the rag and not the breast often starved to death. Watching, Charles hoped this child-and the half dozen others in the cradles ranged around the room-would soon go to wet nurses of their own.

“Ma soeur,” La Reynie said, “I have questions to ask you, if you will be so kind.”

The old woman’s reedy singing stopped and she peered at him, blinking shortsightedly. Her aquiline nose was like a blade, and her starched white headdress stood away from her dark face in wide quivering wings.

“And who are you?”

“I am Nicolas de La Reynie, ma soeur, head of the Paris police. And this is Maitre Charles du Luc, from the college of Louis le Grand.”

Her black eyes flicked from La Reynie to Charles, and she pulled the rag from the infant’s mouth, dipped it in the basin of milk on the table at her elbow, and wrung it out a little. “What do you want?” She gave the baby the rag tit again and resumed her singing.

La Reynie frowned impatiently. “Soeur Mariana, I beg the favor of your attention.”

“You see me here, speak,” the old woman said, and kept singing.

La Reynie shook his head in exasperation and looked at Charles.

Charles knelt beside her. “Ma soeur, did you have a child in your care, perhaps as many as twenty years ago, a boy called Tito? Also perhaps called Jean?”