A Plague of Lies by Judith Rock Read Free Book Online Page B

sending someone. I will return as quickly as may be.”
    He strode from the room, leaving Charles and Jouvancy looking at each other. Jouvancy was pale and the shadows beneath his eyes had darkened.
    “Perhaps you could sleep a little in your chair while he’s gone,” Charles said.
    “Yes. Yes, perhaps I could. Forgive me, I am absurdly tired.”
    Jouvancy’s eyes closed and the wineglass tilted in his hand. Charles saved it from falling and set it on the table. Then he went into the adjoining chamber, took a blanket from the larger bed standing there, and put it over Jouvancy’s knees. The rhetoric master did not so much as stir when Charles tucked it in around him. Picking up his own wineglass, Charles went to the window and saw that it looked down into an interior courtyard, where a boy, two girls, and a small black dog were playing some game with a ball. Charles watched with pleasure as they darted after the ball and threw it, laughing and calling to one another, indifferent to the small sprinkling of rain that had started. The dark-haired boy was slower than the two girls, visibly limping as he chased the ball over low bushes bordering the court’s checkerboard of flower beds. He and the older girl, whose tall headdress of red ribbons and lace had fallen off, leaving her curling fair hair to fly in every direction, were in their teens. The other girl was much younger and very small, and Charles was thinkingthat it was kind of the older two to play with her, when he belatedly recognized the limping boy as the young Duc du Maine, the king’s eldest bastard son, who had come to the Louis le Grand pre-Lenten performance back in February. And the older girl was his sister, Mademoiselle de Rouen, who had come with him. The little girl Charles did not know.
    Charles was turning away from the window when a shout from the courtyard drew him back. A man in coat and breeches of rich brown was crossing the courtyard toward the three, one hand on his belly, shaking a fist at the older girl. She stood with hands on her hips, bust thrust out, shouting back at him like a market woman. The cocked front brim of the man’s black hat showed only part of his face, but something about his walk seemed familiar to Charles. The Duc du Maine hobbled toward the man, but the little girl was backing away. To Charles’s astonishment, Mademoiselle de Rouen bent down, scooped up a handful of courtyard gravel, and flung it at the man’s face. His howl of anger was loud enough to make Jouvancy sit up, and Charles went to see how he did, leaving the scene below to play itself out.
    “It was only a noise outside,
mon père
,” Charles said soothingly. “You can sleep a while longer.”
    Jouvancy blinked and mumbled something, and his eyes closed again. Charles went to see if there was more wine in the pitcher. Thanking St. Martin, patron of winemakers and beggars, he poured a little more into his glass and wondered how much longer it would be before he got anything to eat. He was eyeing the cupboard’s closed doors when the gallery door opened and Père La Chaise hurried through the anteroom.
    “All is well,” he said. “I—oh. Sleeping, is he?”
    But Jouvancy had heard him and struggled upright. “Only a little nap,
mon père
, and very welcome.”
    La Chaise settled himself again in his armchair and Charles resumed the stool.
    “So. Here is how tomorrow will go,” La Chaise said. “I want you both to accompany me to the king’s morning Mass at ten o’clock. If the other two are here by then, well and good. If not, no matter. You will not be presented to the king before the Mass, but he will see you.”
    Jouvancy’s eyes widened. “Do you mean that he will be at the presentation of the cross?”
    “No. I have advised him not to be there. You are presenting it to the lady, not to the king, and his presence would only call attention to their—connection.” Jouvancy and Charles both opened their mouths, but La Chaise’s face