A Plague of Lies Read Online Free PDF

balancing a two-handled pot on her head, gesturing with a ladle and singing the freshness of her milk.
    “
Bonjour
, Maître du Luc!” a familiar deep voice called over the cacophony.
    Charles reined in his horse and turned in the saddle to see Lieutenant-Général Nicolas de La Reynie, head of the Paris police and one of the king’s most influential officeholders, doffing his wide-brimmed, gray-plumed hat and smiling slightly. Behind him, a burly sergeant in the plain brown coat and breeches of La Reynie’s men kept his eyes stolidly on the swirling crowd.
    “A very good day to you, also,
mon lieutenant-général
,” Charles called back, bowing slightly in the saddle. “I am glad to see you.” He’d occasionally helped La Reynie in the past, and though at first his help had been unwilling, he’d come to respect the man, and even like him.
    La Reynie pushed his way past a leek seller to Charles’s side and said, with a half smile and a raised eyebrow, “Do you know, I think that’s the first time you’ve ever said that.”
    Lifting his hat again, he bowed to Père Jouvancy. Charles introduced them, and Jouvancy smiled absently at La Reynie, then went back to watching a loud quarrel over the right of way between a vinegar seller and an impatient Benedictine on a mule.
    “Is it well with you, Monsieur La Reynie?” Charles asked.
    “Well enough,” the police chief returned, but his eyes were following something across the street.
    Knowing that look, Charles turned his head to see who was unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of it. A pair of men, short capes rakishly draped on their shoulders and swords at their sides, turned into a shop doorway beneath a sign with a golden quill.
    Charles looked down at the
lieutenant-général
. “Are you thinking of visiting that bookshop?”
    “I am. And inquiring about what they’re selling upstairs.”
    “Ah,” Charles said, knowing—as anyone in Paris would know—thatLa Reynie meant books from Holland. “Dutch pornography or Dutch politics?”
    “There’s a difference?” La Reynie said ironically, his black gaze still on the shop.
    Holland was a perpetual source of pornography and of books and pamphlets attacking everything French, especially the king and his policies. Louis had made finding the illicit imports, and their sellers and buyers, part of La Reynie’s job.
    “A new spate of tracts has turned up,” the
lieutenant-général
said, turning his attention back to Charles. “Vile things that look like pornography at first glance, but are in fact libels on the king and Madame de Maintenon.”
    Charles tried not to imagine what such tracts might look like. “Well, I wish you good hunting.”
    La Reynie grunted. “Where are you and Père Jouvancy riding to?”
    “Interestingly enough, to Versailles,” Charles said. “To present a gift to Madame de Maintenon.”
    “Well, don’t mention the tracts. As far as I know, she hasn’t heard about them, and God send she never does.” La Reynie eyed Charles. “You don’t look eager to arrive at court.”
    “I’m not.” Charles glanced at Jouvancy to make sure he wasn’t listening. But the rhetoric master was absorbed in watching a hatter shaping the brim of a shiny black beaver hat just inside the open window of his shop.
    “Maître du Luc.” La Reynie put a lace-cuffed hand on Charles’s bridle. “Do me the favor of keeping your eyes open while you are there.”
    “Open for what? Don’t you have
mouches
at Versailles?” La Reynie, like everyone with power, had “flies”—spies—in high places, listening and reporting.
    “Swarms of them. And everyone, no doubt, can identify them on sight. Do you know who the Prince of Conti is?”
    “I know he’s a Prince of the Blood. Close kin to the king.”
    “Yes.” La Reynie studied the cobbles, as though debating what to say. “Questions are being raised—again—about Conti and his intentions toward the king. I would like you to store up