The Eloquence of Blood

by Judith Rock

  He smiled at the boys. “Monsieur Charpentier has given us a fine list of dances and characters.” His gaze traveled around the small circle. “Who knows the story of our hero, Celse? He is Celsus in Latin, but we will call him Celse, since our musical tragedy lyrics are in French.”

  The Italian boy, thirteen and in his first year in the senior rhetoric class, put up his hand. “He was Milanese, maître. Like me.” Michele Bertamelli drew himself up, and his enormous black eyes glowed. “God made most of His saints in Italy.”

  Beauclaire retorted flatly, “He was French.”

  “One small moment, messieurs,” Charles said, interrupting Bertamelli’s protest. “Monsieur Bertamelli raises an interesting point. It is correct that many of our earliest saints are from the Italian cities. Why is that, do you suppose?”

  “Because the Roman emperors killed so many Christians,” Walter Connor said impatiently, as though that were obvious. Which it should have been to boys who had studied Latin classics for four or five years.

  “Habes. Yet Monsieur Beauclaire is right that Celse was originally from Gaul.”

  Bertamelli’s small fierce face became a tragedy mask.

  Charles Lennox offered uncertainly, “And his mother was Saint Perpetua?”

  “Close. Saint Perpetua was the mother of Celse’s master, Saint Nazarius. The story goes like this. Nero was emperor—so it is said—when Nazarius was born. Saint Perpetua raised him as a Christian, though his father was a pagan. Nazarius gladly followed his mother’s way and grew to be very devout. When he began his preaching journeys to convert pagans, he went to Milan. But the Roman soldiers there beat him and threw him out of the city. He then went to Gaul, where a woman asked him to take Celse, her nine-year-old son, and give him a Christian upbringing. So the two companions went on together, the little boy helping the man and at the same time learning to be Christian. They made many converts, but in Trier, they angered the Roman officials and were condemned to be drowned in a lake. When they were thrown overboard, a great storm came up and the terrified boatmen rescued them, realizing that God was angry at this attempt to harm them. They were set free and returned to Milan—where the Romans beheaded them. Many years later, Saint Ambrose found their bodies buried in a garden outside Milan. He also found a vial of blood beside the body of Saint Nazarius, and the blood was still bright red and liquid. So their holy remains were kept in honor and treated with the reverence they had earned in life.”

  Montmorency yawned widely, a very rude act in company, which Charles ignored for the deliberate provocation it was. Beauclaire put up his hand.

  “Yes, Monsieur Beauclaire?”

  “Maître, why was the blood already in a vial? Who put it there if no one had dug Saint Nazarius up before Saint Ambrose?”

  “A very good question. Some tellings of the story say only that Saint Nazarius was bleeding when they dug him up, and that his blood was still liquid and bright red.”

  Beauclaire was shaking his head. “My brother told me dead bodies don’t bleed. He saw a body dissected and it didn’t bleed.”

  “No, no,” Bertamelli cried, shaking a finger at Beauclaire. “They bleed! If they were murdered and the guilty one touches them, they bleed and that is how you know the murderer!”

  “People used to believe that,” Charles said. “But now—”

  “No, no, I saw it, maître, I saw it myself, my uncle was murdered by his cousin and when his cousin turned the body over, it bled on his hands and made them as red as the devil’s tongue to accuse him!”

  Several of the boys were round-eyed with interest, but Beauclaire and Connor looked at each other and shrugged. Montmorency just looked confused.

  To avoid another international dispute, Charles said firmly, “There are many unexplained things in God’s world. We must go on with our purpose here. Our dancing space today will be from the wall to where I am standing. Mark it out, please.”

  The boys took off their hats and began placing them to indicate a rectangle, deeper than it was wide. Montmorency haughtily handed his hat to little Bertamelli, who bowed ironically and added his own hat and Montmorency’s to the rectangle.

  Charles, watching, nodded thoughtfully. “Now, the first dance is a sarabande for Saint Perpetua.” He let his gaze drift over the waiting dancers and come to rest on Montmorency. “Monsieur Montmorency, let me see your demi-coupé, two pas marchés, and a balance.”

  Montmorency stared in horror. “Saint Perpetua? Me?”

  “Why not?”

  “In a gown?”

  “But of course.”

  The rest of the group was convulsed with silent laughter.

  “I want to be a Roman soldier.”

  Charles raised his eyebrows.

  “Please,” Montmorency added grudgingly.

  Charles waited.

  “Please, maître.”

  Having extracted the required courtesy due a teacher, Charles graciously inclined his head. “Perhaps you are somewhat large for Saint Perpetua.” He turned to the light and wiry Walter Connor. “Monsieur Connor, could you manage Saint Perpetua?”

  Connor grinned all over his face. “With pleasure, maître. As long as she doesn’t wear a clock.” Charles had saved Connor from having to dance in the summer ballet while wearing a three-foot chiming clock on his head.

  “My thanks, Monsieur Connor,” Charles said, grinning back. “Show us your demi-coupé, two pas marchés, and a balance.”

  Connor took the female position for making a reverence, heels together, feet turned out, hands clasped palm up and palm down at his waist, bent both knees and straightened them. Then he stretched one leg back, the toe of his shoe on the floor, arranged his arms in the fourth position, and turned his head slightly toward the upraised arm. Charles drew his time-keeping stick from his cassock and set the tempo, beating a slow triple meter on the floor. Connor executed his steps and ended in an effortless balance on the ball of one foot.

  “Excellent! You are our Saint Perpetua, Monsieur Connor.” Charles looked at his list and then at the remaining six boys. “Monsieur Beauclaire, let me see your pas de bourrée, forward, backward, to both sides, and emboité with the heel beat. All at a slow tempo.”

  Again he set the tempo, and Beauclaire went effortlessly and beautifully through his steps. He was perhaps the school’s best dancer, though he had bitter difficulty telling right from left.

  “You are our Saint Nazarius,” Charles said, smiling at him.

  Beauclaire bowed. “I will write to my mother, maître, and tell her I have been made a saint,” he said piously, laughter dancing in his eyes. The other boys groaned.

  “Now we need a Celse.” Charles would have liked to give the part to the quiet, anxious Charles Lennox, but Celse had to be small, and the English boy was as tall as Beauclaire. The Italian was the smallest and youngest of the group. Poised on his toes, Bertamelli was watching Charles with the eagerness of a fledgling hoping for a worm. Charles nodded at him. “Monsieur Bertamelli, show us all the hopping, jumping steps you know. I want to see how fast and light you are.”

  “Like the swallow skimming the clouds, like the eagle racing the wind, like—”

  “Just show us, please, Monsieur Bertamelli.”

  The boy leaped to the center of the dancing space and, without waiting for Charles’s stick, launched himself into a blur of aerial steps. His scholar’s gown billowed and rippled through pas de rigaudon, pas de sissonne, pas assemblé, and some steps Charles suspected Bertamelli’s feet of inventing on their own.

  Laughing for sheer pleasure at the boy’s exuberance—and raw talent—Charles called, “Thank you, Monsieur Bertamelli, well done.” Bertamelli kept dancing. Charles clapped his hands. “Mon brave, come back to earth!”

  Bertamelli stopped, panting and sweating, and waited anxiously.

  “The part is yours; you will be our Celse, Monsieur Bertamelli.”

  Bertamelli flung out his arms, and for a moment Charles thought the boy was going to
rush at him. “I thank you, maître! My mother will be so proud. All Milan will be so proud!”

  He bowed and marched back to his confrères, a triumphal procession of one.

  Cutting off Montmorency’s scornful laughter with a look, Charles swallowed his own grin and consulted his list. St. Ambrose was to express his joy at finding the holy bodies by dancing a forlane, a fast dance only a little calmer than a gigue. Which Charles thought a little extreme for an elderly saint, but no doubt the miraculous discovery had renewed his youth.

  “Monsieur Lennox.”

  The English boy flinched a little, his blue eyes anxiously fixed on Charles. He was of middle height, not as dark as his royal father and seemingly with none of Charles II’s legendary selfassurance.

  “I would like you to be our Saint Ambrose, Monsieur Lennox. If I remember correctly, you do not yet know the forlane steps, but your dancing is clean and clear, and you can learn it. I think you will do it well.”

  “Oh. Thank you, maître. No, I don’t know that dance. I will try, but—I mean, I hope I can. If—” He broke off, red-faced and sweating in the cold room, though he’d only been standing still.

  “You will do it admirably, I am sure, monsieur.”

  Which left André Chenac and Olivier Thiers. And Henri Montmorency.

  “The rest of you,” Charles said briskly, “will play a variety of roles as Roman soldiers, sailors, and so on. Everyone will dance in the final chaconne.” He swept the group with a sober glance. “Now, hear me. Remember that this is our pre-Lenten show and its intent is to direct the thoughts of the audience toward keeping a holy Lent. The action of this lyrical tragedy is much the same as the action of the Latin tragedy. But lyrical tragedy is not simply action, it is also spiritual tragedy. You must make your characters’ emotions—not only their good and devout feelings, but their other feelings, too—clear to your audience through your bodies. Do you understand?”

  They all—including Montmorency—nodded somberly, and even with a certain eagerness, Charles was moved to see. He never stopped being surprised at the depth to be found in the souls of teenage boys. When he wasn’t wanting to throttle them, he was often brought near tears by their innocent fervor. As he started to tell the boys what to do next, a lay brother opened the door.

  “Maître du Luc? The rector asks you to pardon this interruption, but he needs you in the grand salon.”

  “Thank you, mon frère, I am coming.” Wondering what had happened now, Charles told the dancers to wait and hurried to the stage, where Jouvancy was deep in excited planning with his actors. When a break came in the talk, Charles told Jouvancy that the rector had summoned him.

  Jouvancy made an exasperated sound. “Very well, you must go, of course. Send your dancers up here. Each group should know something about what the other is doing.”

  With a stern command to avoid upsetting the rhetoric master, Charles sent his dancers to Jouvancy and hurried apprehensively downstairs.

  When he reached the main building’s grand salon, where outsiders were received, he found Père Le Picart waiting with M. Edmé Callot and M. Germain Morel. Callot was the color of old paper and looked ten years older than he had two days earlier. Morel looked not much better. Charles turned questioningly to the rector, but Morel, who seemed to have assumed the responsibilities of a son of the house, spoke first.

  “They arrested Gilles an hour ago. He is in the Châtelet.”

  Charles’s heart sank. “For Martine Mynette’s murder?”

  “And for his father’s.”

  “Gilles is an idiot,” Callot burst out, wringing his hands, “but he is not a killer. And, mon Dieu, he is not a parricide!” His voice shook. “My poor Isabel has cried herself sick.”

  Callot turned his head away and wiped furiously at his eyes. The rector guided him to an armchair by the wall and bade him sit.

  “The worst thing,” Morel said, “is that now they have arrested Gilles, the police think they have done their work.”

  Charles didn’t know what new evidence La Reynie had found, but Isabel Brion would certainly blame Charles himself for Gilles’s arrest, thinking he’d told La Reynie about her brother’s visit to Martine on Friday morning. He sighed. “Why are the police so sure he killed them, Monsieur Morel?”

  “As for his father’s murder, we don’t know. But some bedeviled woman has sworn to our commissaire that she was looking out her window before dawn on Friday morning and saw Gilles leaving the Mynette garden gate.”

  “She’s probably half blind,” Callot muttered. “Anyway, how could she tell who it was, before dawn in a side street, with the lanterns long out?”

  “She claims there was light from the side door of the Mynette house, which, she says, was open,” Morel answered unhappily. “She may be lying, but—”

  “She isn’t lying,” Charles said reluctantly. “Monsieur Gilles Brion was there. Mademoiselle Brion told me herself this morning, when I saw her home after the funeral. Her brother confessed to her that he had gone to talk to Mademoiselle Mynette before it was light. She came down and spoke with him in the garden. He said that he left by the garden gate. And, of course, that he left Mademoiselle Mynette alive.”

  “The idiot!” M. Callot slapped his thin, veined hands on the arms of his chair. “Dear sweet Jesu, the turnip-balled idiot! I hope the Châtelet scares some sense into him. If being there doesn’t kill him before he’s even hanged. Or worse.”

  The Châtelet might well kill him, Charles thought. Jail fever raged in prisons and few, guilty or innocent, escaped it if they stayed long enough. “Is he in a common cell, Monsieur Callot?”

  “Of course not,” Callot growled. “Would I let him be thrown in with all the rabble of Paris?”

  In the silence that fell, Charles saw that Morel was glancing furtively at the rector. The rector paid him no attention, standing serenely, hands folded at his waist, eyes cast down like a modest nun.

  With the air of a man betting everything on a throw of the dice, Morel said, “Maître du Luc, you have followed the police inquiry since Mademoiselle Martine Mynette’s death. You know Lieutenant-Général La Reynie. We want you to help us. If your rector permits. We want you to look for the real killer of both Martine Mynette and Henri Brion. The police think they have no more need to look, and if the matter is left there, Gilles will certainly die.”

  On the whole, Charles agreed. He looked at Le Picart. Le Picart raised his head, and his gaze hit Charles like gray lightning. Then he turned to study his guests. Neither they nor Charles moved a muscle.

  “More than a man’s life is at stake here,” Le Picart said slowly. “Maître du Luc, I think you should go and see Monsieur Gilles Brion. Whether he is guilty or innocent, visiting the prisoner is certainly within our purview. And speak to Monsieur La Reynie, if you can. But first, come to my office.” He turned to Callot and Morel. “Messieurs, I ask you to go to Mademoiselle Brion, who surely needs you, and wait patiently. I must think on what you have asked. We will send you a message saying what is decided. God go with you.” He sketched a blessing in the air and withdrew.

  “I will see Monsieur Gilles Brion and do everything I can for him,” Charles said to Callot and Morel. “You can trust what Père Le Picart says. He will send you a message telling you what I learned in my visit, and very soon.”

  Accepting that they had no choice but to wait, the two men thanked him and started to take their leave.

  “One moment, Monsieur Morel,” Charles said, remembering other, lesser concerns. “Forgive me for intruding a very different matter, but we are in need of a dancing master for our Lenten show. Maître Beauchamps is unavailable. If you are free and will come tomorrow at one o’clock, Père Jouvancy would like to speak with you about replacing Monsieur Beauchamps for these weeks.”

  Morel gaped as though the sun had risen in black midnight. “I am—I would be—more honored than I can say, maître. Certainly I will be here.”

  “Excellent.” Charles smiled at him. �
�And, please, tell Mademoiselle Brion that she must not despair. The bon Dieu has her in His hand. And her brother, too.”

  As Charles went to the rector’s office, though, he wondered if that was the happiest thing he could have said. It was the conventional thing to say and he believed it. But he’d rarely found God’s hand a comfortable place to be.

  When he opened Le Picart’s office door in response to the command to enter, he found his superior rising from his prie-dieu. Charles was expecting a lengthy discussion, but Le Picart did not even ask him to sit down. Straight and unmoving, one hand still on the prie-dieu, he said, “Do you believe this young man is innocent of these murders?”

  “On the whole, I do.”

  “Then I want you to do what our guests have asked, Maître du Luc.”

  “Yes, mon père, I will go to Monsieur Gilles Brion as soon as our rehearsal ends.”

  “No, not just that. You are already watching the police inquiry and keeping me informed. Now I want you to do more. I want you to help Monsieur La Reynie find the killers of Martine Mynette and Henri Brion.”

  Charles took a literal and metaphorical step backward and eyed his rector warily. Le Picart was ordering him to do what he wanted to do—what he had, in fact, already started to do. But . . . “Why, mon père? Why me?”

  He flinched inwardly as Le Picart’s eyebrows rose. The rector was all too familiar with Charles’s struggles over obedience.

  “In part, Maître du Luc, because the correct answer to my order is ‘Yes, mon père,’ but your answer is ‘Why, mon père?’ Even though I have told you to do what your heart is already driving you to do.”

  “ ‘Why’ is not ‘No.’ ”

  “True. I want you do to this because you have done it before and you did it well. Lieutenant-Général La Reynie knows you. I think he somewhat trusts you. And he is desperately understaffed. He cannot find these killers as quickly as we need them found. He does not have enough men. And as our friends have just said, he may have stopped looking. That is the plain truth, which I think he will acknowledge himself.”