Hello, Charles,” Pernelle said gravely, easing him back onto the thin pallet.
He groped for her hand, feeling with dismay how thin it was. “In God’s name, Pernelle, what-how did you come here?” Wherever here was. A baby began to cry and she withdrew her hand and turned quickly toward the wailing.
“Lucie?” he croaked, realizing as he said it that the baby sounded too young.
The crying stopped abruptly and she turned back, shaking her head. The slowly growing light glazed her jutting cheekbones and showed him the gray shadows under her eyes.
“Where is she?” he said, speaking Provencal to her and realizing how much he’d missed it.
“Safe, I pray God every moment. Oh, Charles, I thought we’d never get anywhere, at the rate the widow’s coach traveled. We were weeks on the road and when we reached her house, we had to stay a little because Julie was unwell. Then a soldier caught me as we were fording a stream in sight of Switzerland. Julie and Lucie were on the horse and they got across and away.” Her mouth trembled. “I pray they are in Geneva.” She looked down, smoothing the skirt of her stained blue gown and trying to steady her lips.
“I pray so, too. But how did you get here?” He looked around at the dirty floor, the makeshift brazier, the thin partitions and half-boarded window and realized that “here” was the murdered porter’s room in the beggars’ Louvre and he was lying on the dead man’s pallet.
“I will tell you, Charles-but then it will be your turn to explain what you are doing here! Me, I was packed into a coach with seven other women and sent here. To a penitential convent over the river. I escaped two nights ago.”
“How, in the name of God’s holy angels?”
“Out a third-floor window, along a ledge, down a tree, and over a wall. Thank God men always underestimate women. The back garden was unguarded.”
“Male stupidity is good for something, then,” he tried to joke. But the risk she had taken turned him sick. “And you ended up here.”
“Barbe brought me.”
“Who is Barbe?”
“The mother of the crying baby.” Pernelle nodded toward the partition. “When I saw you last night, I thought I had finally gone mad with worry and was seeing things. I still half believe I’m seeing things.” She fixed her black gaze on him and waited.
“I was reassigned to the Society’s college here.”
“Yes? And you gave so much Latin translation that your students chased you here and shot you?”
Pernelle’s tartness could have cured olives, and Charles felt himself smiling foolishly. It was one of the things he’d always loved about her. “The perils of teaching,” he quipped back. “Some robber took a shot at me as I was riding back to the school. Who brought me in here last night?”
“Henri. A porter. He said he’d brought you here once before. At least I think that’s what he said-understanding these people is far harder than reading my French Bible! If he did say that, your new teaching assignment must be very unusual, Charles.” Her moth-wing eyebrows rose and she waited for an explanation.
A little more fog cleared from Charles’s brain. Henri must be the ex-soldier who’d brought him to see Pierre yesterday-no, the day before yesterday it must be now. “Where did he find me?”
Pernelle smiled slightly. “He was on his way here last night to sleep-he says his wife found him with a girl and won’t let him into their rooms-and he saw you fall from your horse and recognized you. By the time he got you inside, you’d lost so much blood, you were only half conscious.”
Suddenly Charles remembered his nameless hired horse. It would be worth a fortune to anyone here. “Do you know what happened to my horse?”
“I saw Henri nearly throttle a man who tried to steal it. He’s put out the word that if the horse isn’t bothered, you’ll buy free drinks for everyone at the tavern. The women have it tied out by the garden to get the good of the dung. And they’re all armed with hoes.” She studied him gravely. “Charles, were you sent north because of what you did for me?”
He sighed. Another thing he’d always loved about Pernelle was that she was impossible to fool.
“The Society doesn’t know about it. But you know how our family gossips. Our pious cousin the bishop found out.”
Pernelle’s eyes widened in horror and her hand flew to her mouth.
“It’s all right, he’s also pious about family. And you were always his favorite heretic. He settled for calling in favors and getting me reassigned as far as possible from his new diocese.”
Charles tried to raise himself to reach for the wine cup and grunted with pain. Pernelle tsked at him and held the cup to his lips.
“So now,” he said, trying to smile as he eased himself down again, “we have to start again with getting you to Geneva.” He grinned suddenly. “Those nuns’ habits got you and Julie out of Nimes. I could borrow another one and be Sister Charlotte and escort you the rest of the way.” He hoped the joking hid his surge of longing to go with her.
Her full lips thinned with reproach. “Is there nothing you can’t jest about, Charles? Even if you were serious,” she said, softening, “I wouldn’t let you risk everything again.”
“Listen, Pernelle-”
She wasn’t listening. “Charles, there are-we call them Huguenot highways, people who help us get out of France. There are one or two in Paris, but I don’t know their names. All I know is that one of them is a Jew. If I could find him-”
“A Jew? There are no Jews in Paris, hardly any Jews in France, not for hundreds of years! All right, a few, but-”
Her eyes were suddenly black ice. “Is that what Jesuits teach? No more Jews, just like there are no Huguenots left in France?”
He felt himself flush. “No. I mean-but even if this Jew is here, why would he help you?”
He reached out a hand to try to close the distance that had opened between them, but she clasped her hands tightly in her lap.
“Why would he help me?” Her expression was incredulous. “I cannot imagine what it must be like to be you, so secure, so-think about it, Charles! Who knows better than a Jew what it is to be hated and pursued and tormented? And who would know better how to hide and escape? Don’t you realize that my life is far more like theirs than like yours?” She looked around the sordid room. “I’m even starting to feel a little at home here.” She sighed. “And people like these are starting to feel at home with me. Barbe has taught me how to beg. Do you know what else she does to live, Charles? Besides showing her baby and begging? She and her mother and another old woman are paper chewers. For papier-mache. The two older ones are so fuddled with wine most of the time, poor things, they’re hardly there. Dear God, it terrifies me what poor women have to do to live!”
“I saw them-three women chewing paper-the other time I was here,” Charles said. “I couldn’t tell if they were only fuddled, or simple.”
“Barbe is far from simple,” Pernelle said. “There’s nothing wrong with her except hunger and living like this. And the poor will put on any act to keep people like us-well, not me, now-from paying real attention to them. Except for getting alms, being noticed usually means trouble.” Her eyes flashed. “And I’ve learnt that lesson from being a Huguenot. The less you notice us, the less we suffer.”
Charles flinched at the “you” and the “us.” She was right, but the words made him feel as battered inside as he was outside. He wanted to turn over on the moldy straw, lose himself in oblivion, and wake up in a less brutal world. A movement at the edge of the partition made them both look up.
“Come in, Barbe,” Pernelle said in careful French, and held out her hand.
The girl moved a few steps into the room, her eyes darting between Pernelle and Charles. Her ragged bodice-a man’s ancient doublet-was open, and she held a baby who had fallen asleep at her breast. Her eyes finally came to rest on Charles.
“I saw you before,” she said hoarsely. “After he got killed. There, where you’re lying.”
Pernelle’s eyes widened. “Who got killed?”
“I remember you, Barbe,” Charles said. “Did you know the porter? Pierre?”
Barbe squatted down beside the pallet. Charles tried not to draw back from her smell and felt ashamed when Pernelle reached out and took the swaddled baby, who was giving off more than its share of the stench. Pernelle bent over the infant, her lips moving, and Charles knew she was praying for Lucie.
Barbe stretched her thin arms and sat on the floor. “Pierre was that one’s father.”
Charles stared. “Oh. Well. I–I’m sorry,” he stammered.
The girl shrugged. “He was all right. He gave me food. That man that killed him was an idiot, though, he left all Pierre’s things. I sold the boots. I would have sold the jerkin, except some bastard stole it first. The idiot that killed Pierre had his own boots,” Barbe said, sticking to what mattered in the story. “Good ones. But he could have taken Pierre’s and sold them. Awful to be that stupid.”
Charles picked the jewel out of the midden of Barbe’s words. “You saw who killed Pierre?”
She bent sideways and scratched under her skirt. Over her head, Charles and Pernelle traded glances.
“What did the idiot who left the boots look like, Barbe?” Pernelle said casually, picking up her cue.
“Big hat. No feather.” She shrugged. “I only saw his back.”
“It was night,” Charles said, watching her closely. “How could you see him at all?”
“Had a lantern, didn’t he? The light woke me when he went by. You sleep too sound in here, you maybe don’t wake up. Something-I don’t know-made me crawl over to the partition and see what he was up to. I watched him.”
“You watched him kill the baby’s father?” Pernelle said, aghast.
Barbe looked from her to Charles. Her eyes were the cloudy green of Charles’s shaving mirror. “I know what you’re thinking. But what was I going to do? Get killed, too?” She glanced at the baby. “Then who’d feed him?”
Charles lurched painfully onto his elbow. “Barbe, how did the man kill Pierre?”
She shrugged, scratching again.
He struggled to keep his voice level. “Please. Tell me everything the man did.”
She sighed like someone who had long ago stopped expecting other people’s wants to make sense. “He walked in here, went to Pierre’s pallet. He put down the lantern and got something out of his pocket and leaned over. Lately, Pierre went to bed drunk most nights, so he didn’t hear anything. Then he yelled out-Pierre, I mean-and kicked, but the man kept on bending over him till he quit.”
“Then what, Barbe?”
“Nothing.”
“What did the man do then, I mean?”
“He sat on the floor and did something to his boots. I couldn’t see. Like I said, his back was to me. Then he got up and I curled up like I was dead asleep and he left.”
Absently watching a cockroach busy in a corner’s rubbish heap, Charles thought about what she’d said. The man had taken something from his pocket and strangled the porter. Then he’d sat down, done something to his boots… By all hell’s devils! So that was what he had used! Charles struggled to get up.
“Charles, no!” Holding the baby in one arm, Pernelle tried to keep him on the pallet. “Lie down!”
“Help me, Pernelle,” he said through his gritted teeth. “I have to get back to the college. Where’s my cassock?”
“Are you crazy? You’ve bled too much, you can’t go riding across Paris!”
His eyes fell on the pallet’s small pillow and he saw that it was his rolled-up cassock. “Hand me that. Please. I need the horse. I have to get to my rector.”
In eloquently disapproving silence, Pernelle gave Barbe the baby and held the cassock out to Charles. “And I stay here?” Her words were angry, but her eyes were full of fear.
“Of course you can’t stay in this-” He saw Barbe looking at him and dropped his voice. “If the police raid this place, they’ll be looking for you.”
But where Pernelle could stay, he had no idea. If he didn’t wear his cassock, she could ride behind him back to Louis le Grand. What to do after that escaped him, but at least he could get them both that far. He pulled the rector’s purse out of his breeches pocket.
“For you and the baby, Barbe,” he said, holding out a handful of sous. “For what you’ve told me.”
A smile lit her face as she took the coins and, for a moment, Charles saw beneath the dirt and bitter difficulty of her life. He took out more coins.
“Two more for you if you’ll bring my horse to the door. And the rest for Henri and those drinks in the tavern. Will you see that he gets his share?”
She scowled, then shrugged and laughed. “He’ll get them.” Holding the baby close, she hurried away, light-footed with her good fortune.
The ride across Paris was a nightmare for Charles. The morning was already hot, and his head throbbed. His side burned and ached, even though Pernelle tried to hold herself steady behind him without touching it. The tired horse walked at a snail’s pace, not pleased at carrying two people. As they went, Charles tried to think of what to do with Pernelle, but he’d come up with nothing when the horse stopped at the college postern. Mme LeClerc was standing at the bakery door surveying the street. When she saw Charles, she let out a shriek and hurried to take hold of the horse’s bridle.
“Dear Blessed Virgin, maitre, what on earth has come to you? And where have you been? Poor Frere Martin says you never came back last night, he’s been sticking his head out the door looking for you every minute!”
Staring round-eyed at Pernelle, she steadied Charles as he dismounted. Pernelle slid down and stood beside him.
“Robbers, eh? That lieutenant-general of police is good for nothing!” She tsked at Charles’s blood-stained shirt. “You look terrible! And you, mademoiselle, are you hurt? No, well, thank the Virgin for that. No, no, I ask no questions, we’re only young once and he’s not even pere yet, and if we did as the church says all the time, there would be no children, if not worse, look at all the days, seasons, even, when you can’t even think about it! Well, take the famine with the feast, that’s what Roger always says. Roger’s my husband, mademoiselle, and now, would you like to come with me? Because you certainly can’t go with Maitre du Luc. I can give you a place to lie down and something to eat. You look as tired as he does, poor thing. We live plainly, we’re bakers, but our bread is the best, you’ll see. Now, maitre, why are you still standing there, go in before you fall down, and what Pere Le Picart will say-”
Charles caught Pernelle’s eye and saw that she was on the edge of hysterical laughter.
“Madame LeClerc,” he said, “this lady is Madame Pernelle. She is-” He stopped himself from saying she was his cousin. Better no one knew that. Though the moment Pernelle opened her mouth… But he was too exhausted to think his way through that problem yet. “May she stay with you for a day or two? I can pay you for her lodging.”
“But of course she can stay! How you two will manage, though, I don’t know. Now go and look after yourself, I’ll see to your young lady. And this horse, too, the apprentice will take it around to your stable.” She shooed him toward the postern and bustled Pernelle ahead of her into the bakery.
Charles dragged his torn and stained cassock from the saddlebow, rang for the doorkeeper, and leaned against the wall to keep himself upright. A street fool, in motley with a mirror strung around his neck, danced by. Juggling a half dozen bright colored balls, he called out, “Not all the fools are in the streets, come out and see the fool!” Charles’s eyes followed the fountaining balls-blue, crimson, green, gold, rose-until the postern opened and a horrified Frere Martin pulled him inside.
The brother was trying to take him to the infirmary when Frere Moulin came into the passage, hurried to help Martin hold Charles up, and added his voice to the urging. But Charles insisted on going first to Le Picart. The disapproving brothers helped him to the office and left him there. Charles told Le Picart almost everything about what had happened at Pere La Chaise’s and after, only leaving out that he’d nearly murdered his attacker. And of course leaving out that he’d encountered Pernelle and brought her back with him.
“The man who attacked me at Pere La Chaise’s gathering is our killer and Antoine’s attacker, I am sure of it. Last night he wore a mask like the one Mme LeClerc said the horseman wore. His boots were like the horseman’s and like the ones on the man who came up the old stairs. And, mon pere, someone in the beggars’ Louvre saw the porter killed. From what she said, it seems almost certain that the man was strangled with a long spur garter.” Spur garters were lengths of leather or chain, wrapped either once or twice around the wide ankle of a man’s boot, to which spurs could be attached. “And a braided leather garter could certainly have made the kind of marks that were on the porter’s neck. And on Philippe’s.”
“Did the boots you saw last night have such garters?”
“They were gartered, but I couldn’t see the garters clearly.”
“Do you think the man who attacked you at Pere La Chaise’s house is the same man who shot you?”
“Unless Pere Guise and Louvois have more than one killer working for them.”
“Of Louvois I would believe anything. But can we be sure of Pere Guise’s part? There is still nothing that absolutely proves his involvement in the murders and the attack on Antoine. Circumstance, suggestion, yes. Proof, no.”
“We have proof that he is deep in the dragonnades and this hellish English plot. We have proof that the man in the boots walked fearlessly up the old stairs and through Pere Guise’s rooms as though he’d done it often. And last night, mon pere, it was Pere Guise urging Louvois on, not the other way around.”
The rector’s face was ashen. “You realize that this English plot could be the end of the Society of Jesus in France. Blessed Jesu, dragonnades in England are the last thing King Louis wants! He needs a Catholic king there, with the northern Protestant alliance growing against him. And James is his cousin! If this thing happened, James would not keep his throne a week. If this plot becomes known, whether or not it is carried out, even his illustrious name will not save Pere Guise. And nothing will save us.”
“What will you do?”
“For now, I can find pretexts for confining him to the college. Then I will have to see Pere La Chaise and the head of our Paris Province for advice. You say that Louvois, thank God, is digging in his heels about England. So there is at least a little time. I will take extra measures for Antoine’s safety and you must be vigilant on your own behalf, maitre. Though I don’t think Pere Guise would risk anything-anything more, God help us-here in the college.”
“And Louvois? What will you do about him?”
“Nothing. No one but the king can do anything about M. Louvois.”