“Fabre winces when he crushes fleas,” Moulin scoffed. “Guise couldn’t risk the street porter saying he’d been paid to keep quiet about seeing the knife in my hand, could he? And I couldn’t risk it, either, could I!”
“How did you know I’d found the porter?” Charles slid his feet another few inches aside.
“You tripped over me on the quay, you clumsy piece of shit! But you’re wrong about Philippe. I did Philippe for me, not Guise. The little cock saw my box of souvenirs and was going to be the lily-white boy and get me thrown out for thieving. Or womanizing, he couldn’t quite make up his mind which. Insufferable little shit, even mealymouthed Fabre scolded him once for the way he talked to me! Pride goeth before a fall, they say, don’t they? His went.”
“Souvenirs?” Charles gained another half an inch. “The box Antoine and Marie-Ange found in the stable loft?”
“The same. Mementoes of my dead sister.”
“But—surely no one would blame you for keeping those!”
Moulin chortled. “My very dead sister. And much too dear, most people would say. Oh, no, that killing’s still remembered. I couldn’t risk my treasures being seen, so—exit Philippe. Told him that if he’d meet me by the latrine, I’d explain where I got the things in the box and he could do as he thought best.” He shrugged a shoulder. “You could say my past is even more checkered than the pasts of most noble younger sons. And Guise knew where the bodies were buried. Literally, I’m afraid, and held what he knew over my head. That’s why he gave me a new name, sponsored me as a lay brother, and in turn got himself a humble servant for his little projects. In exchange, I got entertainment, money, and a new identity. Speaking of bodies, you never would have found Philippe’s if the shit collectors I paid to take it away and dump it hadn’t gotten cold feet.” Moulin’s voice turned sullen. “Killing Philippe should have made Guise grateful, since he’d planned to do it anyway, but did it? No, I was just the servant, never anything more, no matter if I’d brought the bastard the Holy Grail!”
“Why should he have been grateful?” As Charles risked a lightning glance at the stage edge, measuring the distance, he thought he saw shadows moving slowly along the right-hand wall of the courtyard. But he couldn’t be sure in the light and dared not take his eyes from Moulin long enough to look again.
“Don’t you listen? Guise was planning all along to get rid of the Douté brats, and when Philippe turned up missing, Guise took it as a sign from God. Had me go ahead and try for the other one. But the little snot-nose was too fast and I missed him.” Moulin caressed his knife as though to comfort it. “Then Guise had Lisette try, but Doissin ruined that. I told Guise the poison scheme was trouble. When he listened to me, his projects turned out, but when he didn’t—see where it got him?”
They looked at Guise’s body. The reek of blood from the priest’s throat hung over the stage. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Charles saw a brief flash of torchlight on metal where he thought he’d seen shadows moving.
“I’ll tell you about one of his projects, knowing how much you’ll hate it.” Moulin’s eyes gleamed in a windy flare of torchlight and he leaned closer, smiling wolfishly. “Dragonnades! Not the silly English plot. The ones Guise and Louvois have been running for our saintly king. I’ve been their messenger to the very well-paid military couriers who pass orders to provincial officials. Want to know where the next one is? Metz.” Moulin lunged playfully at Charles and pricked the end of the knife through his cassock and shirt. “Don’t worry, however—you won’t grieve when it happens, because you’ll be dead.”
“Why go on killing?” Slowly, Charles bent his knees to leap for the edge of the stage. “You could still confess and do penance, instead of damning your soul—”
“You think God cares about any of this? If he did, would the world be such a shithole? No theologian’s ever explained that one and some of them are almost as smart as I am. Sorry. But I am leaving Paris.” Moulin jerked his head toward Guise’s body. “Tidying up before I go. Too bad you saw my pretty shirt.”
He sprang with part of the sentence still in his mouth. As he knocked Charles to the floor, flipped him onto his belly, and straddled him, gunfire echoed off the courtyard walls.
Chapter 36
Charles lay rigid, not knowing who had fired the shot or which of them had been its target.
“Charles, oh, dear God, Charles, don’t be dead!” Pernelle fell to her knees beside him. And jumped up with a smothered sob as someone vaulted onto the stage.
The light from a swinging lantern made Charles blink. Shoes crossed his line of vision and Moulin’s weight was rolled off his back. A large hand framed in lace reached down.
“Are you hurt?” Lieutenant-Général La Reynie pulled Charles up and holstered a pistol with his other hand.
Feeling at his wound to see if it was bleeding again, Charles shook his head. Pernelle had withdrawn to the edge of a wing, a hand pressed to her mouth, her eyes enormous in her white face.
A man with a bloodied bandage around his arm held the lantern over Moulin’s body.
“That’s him.” The words were full of grim satisfaction.
La Reynie nodded. “Go back to the Châtelet, let them see to you,” he said to the man.
Charles stared at what had been Moulin, trying to pray for the man’s twisted, violently dispatched soul and failing utterly. He looked up. “I owe you my life, M. La Reynie.”
“It was one of my men who shot him.”
“How did you know to come here?”
“When Guise left the Hôtel de Guise, two of my men followed him. This Moulin must have been watching the Guise house, too, because he followed my men. One of my officers realized he was there and doubled back to question him. Moulin killed him for his trouble and wounded the one who just left, but that one got word back to me at the Châtelet. I guessed Guise would come here and thank God I guessed right.” La Reynie gave Charles an appreciative nod. “You did well to keep Moulin talking. Did you know we were in the courtyard?”
“I knew someone was. You heard what Moulin said?”
“Most of it. Enough.”
Hurrying footsteps made them turn.
“Maître! Thank God!” Père Le Picart rested trembling hands on Charles’s shoulders. “You are not hurt?”
Charles shook his head. “It’s finished, mon père,” he said gently. “It’s over.” He nodded toward the bodies. “Frère Moulin was behind it all, not Frère Fabre. But he was working for Père Guise, as was Mme Douté.”
Briefly, Charles and La Reynie told the rector what had happened and what they’d learned.
“It is not finished,” Le Picart said into the quiet that fell then. “Not for their souls.” He looked from Moulin’s splayed body to Guise’s, lying in a glistening pool of blood. “I failed them. I was their superior, I stood as their father in religion. I should have known, I should have seen . . .”
“They made their own evil, mon père,” La Reynie said brusquely.
“As do we all.” The rector knelt between the bodies and began to pray for his lost “sons.”
Lieutenant-Général La Reynie went down into the courtyard to talk to his men and Charles went to find Pernelle. She was sitting in the dark corner of a wing with her face in her hands.
“Are you all right?” He touched her shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to see this.”