The cold stone and stooping shadows of the Chatelet did nothing to quell Agnes La Salle’s fury. She stood at bay in a small chamber lit only by a lantern that the watch officer, M. Servier, had set on a scarred table. Servier stood at the table’s end and Lieutenant-General La Reynie, Pere Le Picart, Frere Fabre, and Charles all sat behind it on a bench, watching her. Like judges, Charles thought uncomfortably. La Reynie had sent a carriage for the rector, and ordered Servier to stay for Agnes’s questioning. When it was over, La Reynie and Servier would take what they’d learned back to the Place Royale to question Mme Doute.
“It’s not my fault,” Agnes insisted sullenly. “Mme Doute told me to deliver the package.” She looked at them from under her lashes. “Because of what M. Louis told her.”
“Who is M. Louis?” La Reynie asked sternly.
“Her astrologer. He told her the first wife’s brats would kill hers to get all of old Doute’s money.”
The three Jesuits crossed themselves. La Reynie’s face was rigid with anger. In the anteroom, the rector had told Charles that La Reynie was still haunted by the notorious poison trials ten years ago, when it seemed that half Versailles and Paris had poisoned someone or had been some poisoner’s target. And that now he was merciless toward mountebanks who preyed on the ignorant.
“Where did she go to meet with this man?” La Reynie demanded.
Agnes smiled slyly at the Jesuits. “He calls himself Louis in honor of your St. Louis church. He lives by the old city wall that runs behind it.”
“Describe him,” La Reynie said.
“I’ll tell you if you let me go.”
“Oh, you’ll tell me, mademoiselle.” La Reynie sighed. “One way or another. For your own good, I suggest you tell me here rather than in the chamber beyond that door.”
The whites of her eyes showed as she glanced at the heavy planked door. “Young,” Agnes said sullenly. “Not tall.” Slowly, her lips curved and her eyes took on a faraway look. “Blue eyes and a voice you could listen to forever. He always wore his hood up, I never saw his hair. He wore a beautiful blue robe-I always wondered what he had on underneath.” Her dreaming tone grew venomous. “He’s the one should be here, not me! It was his idea, his and Mme Doute’s, never mine!”
“When did she first consult him?”
Agnes thrust her lower lip out and turned her head away. Servier started toward her. “The end of June,” she spat, before he could touch her. “And twice after that.”
“But why, Agnes?” Fabre burst out. “Why would you help her poison a child?”
She held out a fistful of her plain skirt and shook it at him. “I am a servant. Like you. I do what I am told, I didn’t know what was in the package, how could I?”
“You knew,” Charles said. “You knew what the astrologer had said. You bought the poison. And you disguised yourself in the veil. Your mistress’s mourning veil, wasn’t it?” His voice hammered at her. “You left the gaufres at the college and said they were for Antoine. What did your mistress promise you that was worth his life, and your own damnation?”
“Nothing you would understand, you bloodless Jesuit!”
“You said it was your way out of the tannery, Agnes,” Fabre said, begging her to show them they were wrong. “But you’ve been gone from it four years, you’re in good service, what could you need so badly?”
“You always were an idiot, Denis. Do you think I am content to be a mealymouthed servant all my life, like you? Do you think I am content to be talked at, ordered around from morning to night, hit if anyone feels like it? I won’t be beaten, ever again! And don’t tell me you don’t remember the beatings, I know you do!”
“I remember,” Fabre whispered. “When he tried to make you marry Jules. But-”
“Yes, damn your father’s ugly soul! He beat me till I couldn’t stand and when you tried to make him stop, he beat you, too.”
Fabre looked at Charles. “There was an old tanner-my father tried to make Agnes marry him, to get control of the tannery when the old man died.”
“I was fifteen, even still a virgin, if you’ll believe that.” Agnes rushed to the table and leaned across it, staring into her brother’s eyes. “What do I need, Denis? I need a rich husband, I want a soft living, just like you do. And that’s what she promised me! Don’t look at me like that, you’re no better than me, you damned little hypocrite!” She grabbed up the lantern and swung it at his head. Fire spilled onto the table and kindled the papers in front of La Reynie. The men jumped to their feet, and Charles smothered the flames with his cassock skirt, as Servier wrenched the lantern away from Agnes.
The rest of them fled the cell. Fabre’s cheek was livid where the hot edge of the lantern had caught it, but he seemed to feel nothing. Charles sat him on a bench and asked a guard for water while La Reynie and the rector talked hurriedly. Servier came out of the cell and La Reynie spoke quietly to him.
“Yes, mon lieutenant-general,” Servier said smartly, and clattered away down the echoing stone stairs.
La Reynie went into Agnes’s cell, and Le Picart sat down on the other side of Charles and dropped his face into his hands.
“God help us all,” he muttered. “Lisette Doute? I can hardly make myself believe it.”
“Nor can I, mon pere,” Charles said.
The rector sat up, shaking his head. “She’s seemed to me barely capable of tying her own hair ribbons. Dear God, poor M. Doute.”
The guard brought a cup of water and Charles dipped the edge of Fabre’s cassock in it and held the wet fabric against the burn. The boy heaved a shuddering sigh. After what seemed a long time, La Reynie came out of the cell and locked the door on Agnes’s sobbing.
“Pere Le Picart,” he said, “one of my men will see the lay brother back to Louis le Grand. I would like you and Maitre du Luc to come to the Place Royale. I think you should be there while we question Mme Doute.”
Grimly, the rector agreed, and the three of them went downstairs and through the arcade that separated the prison side of the Chatelet from the law courts, to La Reynie’s waiting carriage. But when they reached the Place Royale, they found Servier taking the Montfort house apart, room by room. Lisette Doute was gone.