Free A Plague of Lies by Judith Rock Page A

glass for Jouvancy, who took it with a satisfied sigh and sank into the chair Charles offered him.
    “You feel better, then?” Charles said, watching Jouvancy narrowly.
    “Much better, I was only tired.” Jouvancy settled stiffly on the seat’s thin cushion and smiled up at Charles. “Don’t fuss over me—go and help our host.”
    La Chaise straightened from stirring the pot. “No need, we have a few minutes yet to wait. What you can do, though, isshow me the gift we’re giving to Madame de Maintenon tomorrow. I would like to see it.”
    “With pleasure,
mon père
.”
    Charles brought the well-wrapped reliquary from the connecting chamber and held it out to Jouvancy.
    “No, please—you unwrap it,
maître
.”
    When the heavy canvas and the soft silk wrappings beneath were peeled away, the cross stood glowing among the supper preparations, the bread and the wine, so that for a moment, Charles saw the table as an altar.
    “Very beautiful,” La Chaise said, coming closer to examine the shining gold and the deep blue inlay of the stone called lapis lazuli.
    “Show him the relic,” Jouvancy said.
    Charles picked up the cross, turned it facedown across his hand, and pressed a tiny flange in its back. The cross’s back opened like a door to reveal a little compartment an inch wide and three inches long that held a thin bundle of tightly wrapped and yellowing old silk.
    “Saint Ursula’s finger bone,” Charles said.
    “Her little finger,” Jouvancy added. “The silk has always seemed too fragile to unwrap.”
    “Very nice. A well-thought gift, indeed. And perfect for Saint Cyr, as Saint Ursula is also a patron of students.” La Chaise nodded at Charles to reclose the reliquary and went to peer again into the soup pot. He laughed softly. “We must hope, though, that Madame de Maintenon does not know how uncertain Saint Ursula’s legend is.”
    Jouvancy bridled, frowning. “What do you mean, ‘uncertain’?”
    An unholy glee showed briefly in La Chaise’s dark eyes. “As uncertain, you might say, as Madame de Maintenon’s ‘legend’is in our own time—her ‘uncertain’ marriage to the king, I mean.”
    “Oh, dear Blessed Virgin!” Dismay furrowed Jouvancy’s pale face. “The lady won’t think—she
can’t
think—but that isn’t at all what we mean by it. I’ve never believed that Saint Ursula’s story was other than truth!”
    Charles bit his tongue for courtesy’s sake and hoped that Madame de Maintenon was as credulous as Jouvancy. He supposed that St. Ursula and her martyrdom might be real enough. But many people—including him—found her eleven thousand martyred virgin companions a bit much to swallow.
    “Of course,” La Chaise said soothingly. “I’m sure nothing of the kind will occur to her. And even if it did, she wouldn’t think of any connection to her marriage. Her mind doesn’t work like that, especially about holy things.” With a disconcerting glance at Charles, he added, “But you must admit, it’s amusing, if your mind does work like that.”
    Charles’s mind definitely worked like that. Trying and failing to keep the laughter out of his voice, he said, “There’s something else we didn’t think of. Or I didn’t, anyway. When Ursula was martyred by the Huns, eleven thousand other virgins were martyred with her. So it’s said, at least. That’s a lot of virgin bones.”
    “This isn’t just one of those other virgins, it’s Ursula herself—her own finger!” Jouvancy was sitting militantly upright now. “My grandfather brought it back from Cologne when he visited the Basilica of Saint Ursula. It cost him a
fabulous
sum.”
    “Yes,
mon père
, I’m sure it must have,” Charles murmured, not daring to look at La Chaise.
    “Beyond price, surely,” the king’s confessor said gravely.“And you can be sure that Madame de Maintenon will value the gift accordingly.”
    Jouvancy sat back in relief. La Chaise gave a final stir to the
bouillon
,