Chapter 15 - The Son Who Didn't Die
Mathurin sat down hard on the jailer's chair.
"Pierre died in the river," he whispered.
I pointed to the register. "Not according to this."
The transfer date was three months after my arrest.
Vautrin household.
Age seventeen.
Elise looked toward the guard standing beside us.
"Who keeps old staff records?"
"The palace labor office."
We searched until midnight.
The answer was worse than any of us expected.
Pierre Mathurin had not drowned.
He had been given another name.
Renard.
Captain Renard.
The man who had pointed a sword at the king.
Mathurin read the paper three times.
"No."
I remembered Renard's face in the throne room. The age fit. The shape of the jaw fit too.
"Vautrin took him," I said. "Raised him. Used him."
Mathurin's eyes filled with rage. "And told me he was dead so I would keep working in the palace."
Elise was already moving toward the door.
"Where are you going?"
"To tell him."
"Elise, he tried to arrest you."
"And if he's Mathurin's son, he deserves to know who made him into that man."
We found Renard locked in a guard room beneath the west wing.
He laughed when Mathurin entered.
Then Mathurin said his childhood name.
"Pierrot."
Renard stopped breathing.
Mathurin pulled a tiny wooden horse from his pocket, worn smooth from thirty years of handling.
"You carved the left leg too short," he said. "You cried because it wouldn't stand."
Renard stared at the toy.
His face collapsed.
"Father?"
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Then Renard looked at me.
"Vautrin told me you ordered my mother killed."
"Your mother died of fever."
He shook his head.
May you like
"No. She didn't."
Then he told us who had actually been in the room when Queen Aveline died.
