FORTY-TWO
Again and again the mass of women surged into the main street of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. “Witches, witches, cannibals, baby thieves!” they cried. “Kill them; kill them all!” There was the sound of shattering glass, of stone against stone, the screams of people trampled by the crowd. A lone avocat, his clothes nearly torn from him, emerged near the police barricade, the rioting women screaming in hot pursuit.
“Back, back!” cried the sergeant, pulling in his sweat-stained bay mare. Raising his arm, he again ordered the mounted archers to charge the swarming, maddened women, who retreated shouting curses and dragging their injured with them.
“How goes it, Sergeant?” La Reynie himself, immaculate in high boots, a gold-braided jacket, and wide plumed hat, had ridden his big gray up to the barricade. “I want this whole quarter under control by nightfall,” he added.
“I think this is the last of them,” the sergeant replied, as they trotted the length of the street amidst the rubble that is always left by a riot: wood and junk from the pried-up barricades, loose stones, odd wooden shoes, and here and there a crumpled apron or an old kerchief torn loose from its owner in the struggle. And there was red in the dust. “We’re just lucky they set no fires.”
“How many dead?” asked La Reynie.
“Of them, we don’t know. But they have killed a midwife, a shoemaker, and severely battered an avocat whom we have taken into custody under suspicion.”
“I’ll be wanting a full report when you have suppressed this disturbance. What, in your opinion, set them off this time, Sergeant?”
“You know the common people, Monsieur de La Reynie. It’s another witchcraft scare. These women claim that babies are being stolen for resale as sacrifices in the Black Mass. Right off the street, in some instances. They claim the going price is two écus these days, and that’s a temptation to just about everyone. And now, every stranger that’s seen in the district is taken for a baby-thief.”
“Insane superstition. Would that education could cure them of it. But the common mind, Sergeant—it’s peasant thinking, and beyond the reach of rationality.”
“Quite so, Monsieur de La Reynie,” agreed the sergeant, who wore a charm against the evil eye under his shirt.
In the dark quiet of the nave, two Jesuits opened the poor box to count the daily offering. Among the coins was a sheet of folded paper. The first Jesuit unfolded the sheet and read it by the light of the hundreds of flickering candles set at the feet of a statue of the Virgin. His face froze in shock.
“What is it?” asked the second Jesuit.
“The denunciation of a conspiracy to poison the King and the Dauphin. It gives names, places. It seems there is a massive trade in poisons in Paris.” Within the hour, the two Jesuits were waiting in the antechamber of the Lieutenant General of the Paris Criminal Police.
The records clerk had left La Reynie alone at his desk, where he sat silently, thinking, making notes to himself in his little red notebook. Paris was awash in conspiracies and foreign intrigues against the King. Everywhere in Europe, His Majesty’s glorious conquests had made enemies who sent their agents to his chief city to plot and organize cabals. La Reynie’s agents discovered them, rooted them out, and he sent them to their deaths without a qualm. But this new conspiracy that the Jesuits had reported was different. It indicated that Paris was the center of a vast web of professional poisoners far greater than anything they had suspected before. Even more dangerous, the conspiracy involved the principal nobility of the King’s own court. Everything was tied to it: mysterious deaths, the recent riots. Could it be a fantasy? If the great aristocrats discovered he was gathering evidence against them, they could convince the King to have him destroyed. His career, even his own liberty were at risk. Fouquet had been a powerful minister in his day, far greater than La Reynie, but he would never see the light again. And yet, if the conspiracy were real, La Reynie knew his duty was to inform the King. Unless the King, too, were involved…La Reynie frowned and wrote out a list of the logical possibilities in his notebook, indicating the necessary course of action in each case. The affair would have to be handled with the greatest delicacy, with incontrovertible evidence gathered from the smallest conspirators, before he moved against the great ones. He leafed through the list on his desk. It was a job for a man of the greatest discretion. He summoned Desgrez.
“Desgrez, I have here a list of all the alchemists, fortune-tellers, and perfume dealers in the city. I want your people to pay every one of them an inconspicuous visit. Keep your eyes open for anything suspicious. It seems we have not spread our net wide enough in times past.” La Reynie passed a sheaf of papers with hundreds of names to his associate. Captain Desgrez shook his head.
“This is a considerable list. It may take a while.”
“Start with the ones you consider most suspicious,” suggested La Reynie, returning to the report he was finishing for the King on the suppression of the most recent riots in the city.
Desgrez leafed through the list. At the top of the third page, he saw “Marquise de Morville. Rue Chariot.” He smiled. He knew exactly what would please La Reynie most.