A Plague of Lies by Judith Rock Page B

was miserably busy, grateful for the footman’s bringing basins and towels, and even more grateful for his taking them away when they’d been used.
    Finally, Jouvancy lay spent, breathless and whiter than the bedsheets, and Bouchel left with the last basin. “Thank you,” the little priest whispered, looking up at Charles. His fingers closed around Charles’s wrist with surprising strength. “It’s poison—I’m sure of it!”
    “Of course it’s not poison,” Charles said vehemently, in spite of his doubts. “It’s surely only a return of your sickness. You’ll be better soon,
mon père
.”
    Jouvancy shook his head, and his anxious eyes wandered over the room. “Where is Père La Chaise?”
    “He went to find a doctor.”
    “Good.” Jouvancy’s fingers dug deeper into Charles’s sleeve. “I didn’t think she hated us that much.”
    Before Charles could decide what to say to that, La Chaisecame in, followed by a slender, grave-faced man in a long black wig and a black and scarlet coat. A short, round assistant followed, carrying the implements for bleeding a patient: a wide basin, a glittering steel lancet, and a sturdy piece of cord.
    “This is Monsieur Neuville, one of the king’s physicians,” La Chaise said, and drew back. The doctor nodded slightly at Charles and went to the bedside. The rhetoric master let go of Charles and reached for the doctor, who drew himself back and out of reach.
    “Urine,
mon père
?” he said abruptly to Jouvancy.
    Jouvancy eyed him sourly. “I doubt there’s anything left in me to make water with,
monsieur
.”
    The doctor grunted and held out his hand to the assistant with the basin. The man handed him the cord, Charles brought a chair from La Chaise’s chamber, and the doctor sat down beside the bed.
    “Have you been bled this spring?” Neuville asked, tying the stout cord tightly around Jouvancy’s upper arm. When the rhetoric master shook his head, the doctor said, “Then we’ll hope that’s your trouble.” He picked up the lancet. “Though I doubt it.”
    “He’s been very ill,
monsieur
,” Charles put in, “with the sickness we’ve had in Paris these last weeks. I think the effort of riding from town brought on a relapse.”
    Neuville ignored that, and Charles turned away as the rhetoric master’s blood spurted from an incision near his elbow into the basin the servant held. Charles wondered if he had caught Jouvancy’s sickness. He was usually unfazed by blood, but now his stomach was climbing toward his throat. Muttering his excuses, he fled toward the privy.
    As he returned, weak but eased, the footman passed him inthe antechamber with the basin full of Jouvancy’s blood. Charles held the door for him and then stopped to wipe his face with a wet towel lying on the water reservoir. Neuville and La Chaise were talking in the chamber.
    “I doubt this will be enough,” he heard the doctor say.
    Charles threw down the towel and hurried into the chamber. “Why not,
monsieur
?”
    Both men frowned at his interruption.
    “Because this isn’t sickness,” Neuville said. He looked over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “I saw them,” he hissed. “Saw
her
—deep in talk with the Duc de La Rochefoucauld. That was the day before yesterday. Yesterday Monsieur Fleury ate at La Rochefoucauld’s table. And died. Today you Jesuits ate at his table. And at least two of you are ill.”
    “Not two,” Charles said, “only Père—”
    “No? You just returned from spewing in the privy.”
    La Chaise looked at Charles in surprise. “Did you?”
    “Yes,
mon père
, but I am not ill. Only a little unsettled. And I learned from the footman Bouchel that the floor outside Fleury’s room was wet from a ceiling leak. Which is probably why he fell.”
    “And which has nothing to do with why he was ill to begin with. You should both be bled,” Neuville said grimly. “Now. Before the poison takes more hold. And the other two as well. Where are