All Charles could tell at first was that he had walked into near darkness. He stretched out his arms and his fingers touched plaster on both sides. A passage, then. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that light leaked thinly under the door he’d just closed and that a line of light showed under another door on his left. He moved closer. Someone was talking, but the voice was too muffled for him to make out words. He put his ear to the door. The voice came more clearly; not a French voice, though its French was passable.
“You already know something of my purpose,” the voice said. “But now that M. Lysarde here has made us known to each other, I will put my plea before you in my own heartfelt words. I truly believe that God led M. Lysarde to visit King James’s court. We met at Mass, as he has told you, and later I had the pleasure of presenting him to His Majesty. I met M. Lysarde often after that to talk of our devotion to Holy Church. As you know from Pere La Chaise, I am one of King James’s Catholic advisors. Unofficial-he will deny knowledge of me, if necessary-but close to him. It is in that capacity that I have accompanied our young friend here to France. To ask your help on King James’s behalf in ridding England of heresy, as you have so efficiently rid your own realm of it.”
Charles went rigid against the door.
“Our king desires to emulate your great Louis and wipe away England’s Protestant stain,” the man went on in his accented French. “The moment is ripe, if only you will help us seize it.”
“Eloquent, mon cher Monsieur Winters,” Charles’s goat said fervently.
“You are too kind, Monsieur Lysarde,” the voice murmured.
“Exactly what do you mean, Monsieur Winters?” The unpleasantly familiar voice was that of Michel Louvois, the war minister.
“Why, I mean dragoons, Monsieur Louvois. The dragoons that you deploy so successfully here, to teach our English troops the methods of conversion you have perfected.”
Charles bit blood from his tongue to keep his silence and told himself that it would be suicide to burst into the room.
“Then your errand is in vain,” Louvois replied stiffly. “Do you not know in England that King Louis has officially forbidden dragonnades?”
“Of course. And like everyone else, we know that he was only placating our too tender-hearted pope. Rulers so often cannot afford to let their right hand know what their left hand does. Let me congratulate you, monsieur. As minister of war, you have been a most effective left hand.”
The room was suddenly full of a silence whose discomfort Charles felt even through the door.
“Monsieur Louvois? How shall I interpret this silence?” Winters hesitated. “You are his left hand, are you not? Or-dear God, dare I say it-has someone continued these dragonnades without your king’s knowledge? But who values his life so little as to poach on King Louis’s vaunted authority? No, no, that is beyond belief.”
“You continue to puzzle me.” Louvois’s words were silky with danger. “Your King James seems bent on toleration for all-Anglicans, Anabaptists, Quakers. Even Jews, I hear. Just last spring, he released twelve hundred Quakers from your jails. Why would he suddenly want dragoons?”
“This ‘tolerance’ is but a mask, the face James shows to England in order to secure the throne and forestall rebellion.”
“Of course it is,” a new voice said reprovingly.
Guise. Charles pressed his ear closer to the door and held his breath.
“Since the hell-bound Henry destroyed the true Church in England, its throne has been a precarious seat for a Catholic monarch,” Guise declaimed. “As you well know, Monsieur Louvois.”
Louvois ignored him. “Why do you not carry some token from King James, Monsieur Winters?”
“Is it not enough that I am here, in this sacred Jesuit house, vouched for by your king’s confessor? And by M. Lysarde, of course. Safety lies in anonymity.” Winters’s voice grew hard. “I am, of course, wholly dispensable, but King James cannot risk his plans becoming known. I will tell you, though, that even now he has fourteen thousand soldiers gathered at Hounslow. Soldiers led by Catholic officers, who hear Mass in a chapel the king has built for them.”
“These soldiers,” Guise said eagerly, “are they ready to move?”
“They wait only for your dragoons.”
“Then they will wait until hell freezes, monsieur,” Louvois said flatly. “There will be no dragoons.”
“I–I am shocked, Monsieur Louvois,” Winters said over Guise’s recriminations. “My king is guided by his Jesuit confessor, Pere Edward Petre, as your king is guided by our noble host. Pere Petre and Pere La Chaise have prayed-and more-for years to restore the true Church in England. Are you prepared to take the eternal consequences of flying in the face of such holy hopes? King James looks to the king of France as to a father, he pleads with him for aid. The moment he knows that you will send soldiers, the restoration of Holy Church will begin in our long-suffering island.”
“You move me inexpressibly, Monsieur Winters.” Guise’s voice vibrated with fervor. “God and His saints are truly calling us to this. We will lay this request before King Louis at the first opportunity. As soon as-”
“You forget yourself, Pere Guise.” Louvois sounded like he was choking on swallowed fury. “Dragonnades are forbidden. And your Anglicans and Quakers and such are not swarming across the Channel to attack us, Monsieur Winters, but the Holy Roman Emperor and this new Augsburg alliance are very likely to do so. French troops will go east and north and nowhere else.”
“All our troops need not be sent there,” Guise snapped.
“I am minister of war and I say they will be. Even setting aside other objections, who would pay for dragoons in England? The English king indeed relies on King Louis as a father when it comes to money.”
“Money? Is that what really concerns you? Why, Monsieur Louvois”-Winters laughed-“you sound more like a Dutch merchant than France’s war minister and a true son of Holy Church.”
“I will pay, messieurs!” Lysarde, the goat, cried. “With my last sou, if necessary!”
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.