by Judith Rock
Callot growled, “Let him read it, Isabel.”
The letter was from New France. It was about family matters, as Isabel had told Charles letters from there mostly were. This one was about a betrothal. Marc Brion, a young cousin of Henri Brion living in Quebec, wrote jubilantly that all was now concluded for his marriage to one Pauline Mynette.
“Mynette?” Charles shook his head in confusion. “But I thought there were no more Mynettes!”
“So did we all, maître,” Callot said. “Keep reading, I beg you.”
The letter went on, “My Pauline’s father died soon after she was born, as I told you in an earlier letter, but I now have absolute proof that all is as she says. Her father was the nephew of the lawyer Simon Mynette on the Place Maubert. He was Simon’s only remaining blood relative other than Simon’s daughter. Who, as you tell me, is now dead. Thank God that this Martine Mynette is only adopted and that the donation entre vifs is lost. I trust, my dear cousin, that lost it will remain. I would, of course, love my Pauline without the Mynette patrimoine. but who would not love her even more with it?”
Feeling as though someone had knocked the air out of his lungs, Charles looked at the three watching him. “And this is true?” he said, when he could speak.
“I think it must be,” Callot said. “I had heard years ago that Simon Mynette quarreled badly with a nephew who then went to New France. Simon always claimed the boy died soon after arriving there—but it seems he had time to marry and father a child.”
“According to this letter, it appears Monsieur Henri Brion had been getting letters for some time about this proposed betrothal,” Charles said. “Which explains some things.”
Callot nodded ruefully. “It explains the ‘lost’ donation quite nicely. No, Isabel, hold your peace, there is no other explanation. Your father knew that this betrothal was in progress, and he saw that his effort to get the Mynette money by making Gilles marry Martine was failing. But if Martine’s donation disappeared, he could still secure the money for the Brion family by way of the New France marriage.” Callot shrugged sadly. “And all his scheming was for nothing. Poor little Martine is gone, and so is he.”
Charles let the hand holding the letter fall to his side and stood thinking about Père Le Picart’s coming disappointment.
Isabel said diffidently, “Do you mind very much about the money?”
“Of course. The college needs money.” He managed a smile for her. “But while a family lasts, no patrimoine should go elsewhere. This one goes where by law and right it should go. But I must confess I was hoping to be done with the eternal bean pottage in the refectory!”
That made them all laugh, as he’d meant it to.
“May I take the donation and the letter to my rector? He should see them, but I will make sure that you have them back.”
Callot started to speak, but Isabel hushed him. “Maître, will my father’s hiding the donation be made public? Please, I don’t want his name blackened!”
“I don’t see any need for it to be public, mademoiselle.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Yes,” Callot said, with an oddly amused glance at Charles. “We are grateful that his name will not be blackened.” He hesitated, as though making up his mind about something. “Before you go, maître, will you come upstairs for a little moment?”
Curiosity got the best of Charles’s knowing he should go if he meant to be at St. Louis on time. “By all means, monsieur.”
Callot led him out onto the landing and up the stairs to what was obviously the old man’s bedchamber. He held the door open for Charles and shut it carefully behind him. Then he went to the ruelle, the narrow space between the green-curtained bed and the wall, and took a key from his pocket. He opened the long heavy chest that stood in the ruelle and beckoned Charles to come and look.
The room’s small window was shuttered, but even so, the chest was full of a silvery light. Dumbfounded, Charles picked up a small bar of silver. He looked up at Callot. Slow grins spread over both their faces and they began to laugh.
“I suppose I should have asked how you feel about taxes before I showed you this,” Callot said.
“If you had, I would have told you that we in Languedoc are as French as anyone when it comes to paying taxes.” Charles hefted the solid little bar of silver in his hand. “Was the smuggling your idea all along?”
“No, no. My good-for-nothing nephew, God keep his soul, did sometimes have a sound idea. I was merely an investor. And it was only this last shipment that was discovered, you know.”
“I see. And do you also keep the chocolate?”
“Yes, of course. I enjoy a tall pot of it every morning. So does Isabel.”
“She knows the—um—source of your wealth?”
“Oh, no. She does not need to know. When I am better acquainted with Monsieur Morel, perhaps I will tell him. Perhaps not. But if all goes as I think it will go and he asks me for her hand when the mourning for her father is over, they and their children will be provided for, no matter how well or otherwise our young dancing master does in his profession.”
“So you support the match.”
“His father was a fine craftsman. Her father was a smuggler.” Callot’s brows and shoulders climbed in the most Gallic of shrugs.
“Good,” Charles said. “I like the match, too. And it means that you are provided with loving care in your old age.”
“The bon Dieu orders all things.”
As they went back down the stairs, the bells from the nearby Bernardins monastery began to ring for Nones. Charles went to the salon door and made his farewells.
“I am glad from my heart that Monsieur Gilles Brion is free and under no suspicion. I hope that more good news will come to you with the spring.” He glanced at the ceiling and then at M. Callot. “And do not trouble about the money. No doubt the bean pottage is good for our souls.”
Callot crowed with laughter. “You are invited for chocolate at any time, maître.”
Charles bowed. “My thanks, monsieur. And I will see you Tuesday at our rehearsal, Monsieur Morel, tomorrow being the Feast of the Epiphany. May it be a blessed one for you.”
Outside, Charles looked back at the Sign of Three Ducks over the house door, thinking that the fortunes of that house were changing for the better. And hoping that the fortunes of the college soon would. Entertaining himself by imagining a chest nicely full of silver bars hidden in the rector’s austere chamber, he turned east to walk along the Quay de la Tournelle and across its bridge. The blanket of clouds had warmed the day somewhat and brought half the city out to enjoy the softer air. Wishing he had more time to enjoy this illusion of spring, he made his way to the rue St. Antoine and the Jesuit church to take up his ordinary Jesuit life again. One of his tasks from now till April would be fetching and carrying for Père Jouvancy and the great Jesuit creator of spectacle Père Menestrier, as they planned the decor for the interment of the Condé’s heart in the church wall. The ceremony would be an elaborate funeral Mass, and Père Bourdaloue, the most famous Jesuit preacher, would preach. The new Condé had commissioned a new musical setting of the Mass and was paying for the sumptuous decor Jouvancy and Menestrier were beginning to plan today.
As Charles approached the church, he thought about Christmas Eve and his first sight of Marin and Jean-Tito. Only twelve days ago, but it seemed much longer. Inside, the church was chill, silent, and empty. Charles went past the gated altar where the Condé’s jeweled box rested and knelt at the Virgin’s altar. He prayed for Martine Mynette, and Henri Brion, and Marin, all violently cut off from life without a chance to make their last confessions. And for Jean, who had not come back to himself enough to make his final confession to a priest and also needed all the prayers he could get.
Charles also prayed for Reine and for La Reynie. When La Reynie came for Jean’s body, Reine had refused all his offers of help, consenting only to go in his carriage to her daughter at Procope’s.
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nbsp; Charles’s prayers poured out like a silent river, flowing over the dead, over wounds, secrets, and revelations, over the fear and grief of these past holy days, even over the long-past tragedy of Claire Clemence, Princess of Condé, and her coldhearted husband. He prayed, too, for Pernelle and himself, for the healing of that grief and loneliness. When he had prayed himself dry, he stayed on his knees. The Silence closed around him and he felt, for once, no need to argue with It. Nothing is wasted, the Silence had said, that snowy day in a narrow alley. Unless you waste it.
The church door opened, bringing mild air and a burst of noise from the street. Charles rose stiffly from his knees and went to meet Père Jouvancy and the stately, white-haired Jesuit with him. Jouvancy made the introductions and Charles bowed deeply to Père Claude François Menestrier, who lived now in the Jesuit Professed House here beside the church. Menestrier was famous all over Europe for the glittering celebrations, ballets, and royal entries he created. Taking a key from his cassock, Menestrier led the way to the side altar where the Condé’s heart rested and unlocked the gate. Giving silent thanks, because this was what he’d hoped for, Charles followed the two priests inside. Menestrier picked up the box, and he and Jouvancy discussed its colors, holding it up and turning it in their hands, while Charles stood back and waited.
“No, not black,” Menestrier said judiciously. “Look at the sapphires. This is the church of St. Louis. His color is blue, and the Condé counted him an ancestor.” He replaced the box back on the altar. “Blue, Père Jouvancy! We will start with blue velvet. Come.”
The two priests went briskly to the high altar, the initially skeptical look on Jouvancy’s face already flaming into enthusiasm. Knowing that, for the moment, anyway, they wouldn’t miss him, Charles stayed behind and picked up the box. He thought at first that it had been resealed since Christmas Eve, but the lid was only tight. He got it open and stared at the Condé’s heart, resting on the blue velvet cushion in its swaddling of gold silk. Then he set the box on the altar and took Jean-Tito’s necklace from his cassock. The red enamel heart glowed like a tiny flame as it rested in his palm. He thought of Tito’s passion for this trinket that meant all he knew of love, of the unknown woman who had put it around her newborn son’s neck in the hope of finding him again, of the nun putting it on another infant to give her a chance at life. He put the little heart on the cushion and coiled its frayed ribbon around it. Then he nudged it farther under the shadow of the Condé’s heart so it was less likely to be seen if someone else opened the box.
Let both hearts rest here, he thought, replacing the jeweled lid. Both had brought suffering. But one, at least, had been given in love.
He put the box back on the altar and went to do his small part in surrounding its interment with beauty.
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Epilogue
STE.-SCHOLASTIQUE’S DAY, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 10
With less than a half hour to go before the performance, Charles was in one of the small anterooms flanking the stage, overseeing the dancers and actors whose first entrance was from that side. Charles Lennox—St. Ambrose in the musical tragedy Celse—stood before him, wide-eyed and pale with stage fright. As Charles picked up the saint’s mask and rubbed a smear of dirt off its faintly pink cheek, he half feared that the mask, too, would blanch when the boy put it on. But Lennox looked superb. The black-and-gold coat and breeches fit him perfectly, the coat’s short stiff skirts standing well out from the breeches, and the heavy gold braid around the coat’s edge matched the stockings and the gold plumes of the headdress. Wondering again at Jouvancy’s ability to cajole college parents into paying for new costumes, Charles patted St. Ambrose reassuringly on the shoulder and turned his attention to the rest of the room. Michele Bertamelli, beside himself with excitement over his Louis le Grand debut as Celse’s star, was talking incessantly to anyone who would listen—in Italian, which he insisted was only more beautiful Latin.
From the anteroom on the other side of the stage, where Jouvancy and the rest of both casts waited with the singers, Charles heard the singers’ last-minute limbering of their voices. But only faintly, because the hum of talk in the salle des actes had swelled to a polite roar as the invited audience settled itself for the show’s two o’clock beginning. From the courtyard, the tower clock struck the quarter before two. As though the chime were his cue, Bertamelli shot into the air between one of the Latin tragedy’s Roman soldiers and the dancing master, Monsieur Germain Morel, and executed a jumping passage from his solo. Morel’s startled oath made Charles grateful for the roar of talk in the salle. He grabbed the back of Bertamelli’s shimmering green satin coat.
“Doucement, Monsieur Bertamelli! Softly, and still your tongue. This is the time for gathering yourself together.”
“But I am gathered, maître, I am bursting, I am—”
Charles lifted an eyebrow at the actors glowering at Bertamelli and bent down till he was face-to-face with the boy. “Still your tongue, signor, or your confrères may cut it out. And I may help them.”
“Oh, no!” Morel said despairingly, from somewhere behind Charles. “Not now, there’s not time!”
Laughing, Charles turned around. “I was only joking—”
But Morel was peering anxiously through the slightly open door onto the stage.
“What is it?” Charles went to look over the dancing master’s shoulder.
“Three candles have fallen out of the chandelier, the big one over the middle of the stage!”
“Never mind,” Charles soothed, “one of the brothers will pick them up.”
The small stage had no curtain and Charles could see the rector and Père Montville in the front row of the audience, seated on either side of Mme de Montmorency. Before coming backstage, Charles had met Henri de Montmorency’s redoubtable mother. Short, double-chinned, and solid in sea-green satin and a king’s ransom of ice-white lace, she had eyed him severely.
“I trust that you have given my son a part worthy of his lineage,” she’d said warningly.
“Ah, madame, be assured that he is a golden image of martial virtue on our stage, to whom all the others look up and whose commands direct his men,” Charles had answered fulsomely, bowing—and earned himself a quelling frown from Père Le Picart. Now, watching the rector and Père Montville inclining their heads courteously toward Mme de Montmorency and her flow of talk, Charles grinned to himself. He could almost see them counting the coins of the gift she might give them if she was pleased with the show. The Mynette fortune being irretrievably lost to the college, a Montmorency gift would be very welcome, and he sent up a fervent prayer that she wouldn’t realize why he’d cast her large, bumbling son as a magical statue and put him safely out of the way on a golden plinth.
He was about to tell Monsieur Morel to close the door when he saw Mademoiselle Isabel Brion sitting with her great-uncle Callot about halfway back. The mourning black they both wore did nothing to dim their obvious happiness. Callot was beaming. And Isabel, smiling at the stage, glowed like an earthbound star. Morel leaned farther out the door.
“I will tell the brothers about the candles, mon ami,” Charles said, pulling him back and closing the door. “I, too, glimpsed Mademoiselle Brion,” he said more softly. “She looks very lovely today.”
“Ah, Maître du Luc, she is—I am—we—the first forty days of mourning for Monsieur Brion are over, you know,” he finally managed, in a rush of words, and clasped his hands rapturously on his breast. “It still cannot be public, but—we are betrothed!”
Charles laughed for pleasure at the news. “I congratulate you both with all my heart!”
Wondering if Morel had been let into the secret of the contraband silver yet, Charles threaded his way through the crowded anteroom toward its other door, which led directly to a tiny backstage area where two lay brothers waited to change the minimal scenery.
“Done already, maître,” a brother said, when Charles put his head around the door. �
�We picked up the candles. No time to replace them now, but the chandelier will do well enough.”
As Charles turned away, the clock struck two. He braced himself for the beginning of the musical overture by Monsieur Charpentier and his musicians, positioned in the salle at the side of the stage. But nothing happened. Shrugging, Charles started to gather the boys for the customary prayer. Delays and theatre production were nearly synonymous, after all.
Then Père Montville hurried into the anteroom, hissing “Maître, messieurs, before you begin, a word!” His small dark eyes were bright with excitement. “We are unexpectedly honored with the presence of two Legitimés of France! A son and daughter of the king and Madame de Montespan have arrived, the Duc du Maine and Mademoiselle de Rouen.” He eyed the performers sternly. “When you go out onto the stage, they will be directly in front of you. Do our college all the honor in your power by your dancing and acting today, messieurs. Let your eloquent voices and bodies speak feelingly of the teaching you have received in this college named for our king.”
Charles seized the moment of quiet for the prayer. “And that we may do as Père Montville has bidden us, let us pray, messieurs.” The quiet in the little room deepened. Even Bertamelli was utterly still, his head so bowed on his clasped hands that the boy next to him reached out and steadied his slipping headdress of flowers and small birds.
“Our Father in heaven,” Charles prayed, “let what we do today be a means of grace to those who watch and those who perform. Let us tell the story of your saints with reverence and joy. Grant us, we pray, a blessed Lenten season”—he hesitated, visited by the remembered taste of Lent’s endless salt fish—“but first, grant us a happy Fat Tuesday tomorrow!”
That got a rousing “amen,” everyone crossed himself, and the delayed musical overture sounded from the salle. Charles and Morel lined up their troops in order of appearance, eased open the stage door into the wings, and Charles walked between the flats to take a last look at the audience before the ordered mayhem of performance began.