The Eloquence of Blood

by Judith Rock

  Charles left the lectern and opened one of the long windows, letting in a rush of chilly air the storm had brought. The rain had stopped, leaving behind the music of water dripping from the blue slate roofs and splashing into the courtyard gravel. He’d come to Louis le Grand from the south of France less than a year ago, but he’d quickly learned to love this sprawl of ill-matched buildings grouped around graveled courtyards. Some buildings were five stories of weather-blackened stone, the oldest were two stories and half-timbered, and a few were bright new stone with corners and windows trimmed in rosy brick. All the roofs bristled with chimneys and towers. Some of the courtyards had shade trees and benches, two had gardens, one had an old well, and one boasted an ancient grapevine on a sunny wall. Rounded stone arches led to passages between the courts and from the enormous main courtyard, called the Cour d’honneur, out to the rue St. Jacques.

  It was in the Cour d’honneur, outside the rhetoric classroom windows, that the outdoor stage for the summer ballet and tragedy was built each year. As Charles stood at the window, he began imagining scenery to go with the final section of his ballet livret, called La France Victorieuse sous Louis le Grand. The title, like this school’s name, honored King Louis XIV. The original France Victorious Under Louis the Great had been performed at the school in 1680, and Charles was only rewriting and updating it. Less work, to be sure, than creating an entirely new livret. But hard work still, and no easier because he so disliked Louis XIV—his passion for glory and his indifference to his people’s suffering under the draconian taxes that paid for the glory-bringing wars. He particularly loathed the Most Christian King of France, as Louis styled himself, for hunting and slaughtering France’s Protestants, called Huguenots, in God’s name. Charles was a loyal son of Holy Mother Church, but he was utterly certain that God was Love. Demanding, relentless, even terrifying, but Love nonetheless. Which meant that cruelty in God’s name was blasphemy, pure and simple. Which amounted to calling the king a blasphemer. Which was treason, pure and simple.

  Even as he thought that, King Louis XIV was staring blindly back at him from the top of the Cour d’honneur’s north wall. The recently installed bust was a copy of one shattered by a stormfelled tree the year before, and Charles had developed a teeth-gritting dislike of those sightless eyes overseeing his daily comings and goings. He turned away from Louis and watched dripping water dig a small pool in the gravel under the window. Small persistent forces often won in the end. He had the sudden thought that maybe he could slip something into the ballet livret that didn’t praise Louis, some small piece of a different truth to raise disquiet in those with ears to hear . . . Treason again, the cool-eyed critic in him said sharply. Kings are divinely anointed. Kings preserve order. Order allows good to flourish. Just as sharply, Charles thought back on it—Whose good?—and turned from the window to his work.

  The ending bell finally rang. The students filed out and were met by a cubiculaire, a Jesuit scholastic whose work was supervising students. As the cubiculaire chivied the boys toward their living quarters in the student courtyard, Charles went gratefully out into the watery, late-afternoon sunshine. But before he was halfway across the court, someone called his name, and he looked back to see the college rector, Père Jacques Le Picart, the head of Louis le Grand.

  Bowing, Charles greeted him, noting his muddy riding boots and spattered cloak. “You’ve had a wet ride, mon père.”

  “Wet enough, maître. The storm caught me on the way back from Versailles.”

  They walked together to the rear door of the main building where their rooms were, Le Picart asking Charles about his own afternoon and nodding in sympathy at his worry over the approaching rehearsals. But the rector seemed preoccupied and before they reached the door, he said, “Have you visited Père Jouvancy today, maître?”

  Charles shook his head. “I’ve had no chance today, mon père. But Père Montville told me as we were leaving the student refectory after dinner that he’s much better and able to eat now.”

  “Good. Will you come with me to the infirmary? I must speak with him, and the matter may concern you, as well.”

  “Of course, mon père.” Wondering uneasily what “the matter” was, Charles turned with Le Picart toward the infirmary court.

  Most of May had been blessedly warm after the hard winter, and the physick garden in the infirmary courtyard was already blooming. The afternoon’s rain had left the blossoms somewhat bedraggled, but the air was drenched in fresh sweet scents. Charles filled his lungs eagerly. Which was a good thing, because the fathers’ infirmary, below the student infirmary and beside the ground-floor room for making medicines, smelled pungently of sickness. Frère Brunet, the lay brother infirmarian, turned from a bed at the room’s far end and bustled toward them, his soft shoes whispering along the rush matting between the two short rows of beds. All but two beds were empty. Before he reached them, Père Jouvancy called out, “Ah, mon père, maître, welcome, come in, come in!”

  His bed was in the left-hand row, between two windows, and he was sitting up among his gray blankets, the fitful sunshine warming the new color in his face.

  “I would ask you how he is, Frère Brunet,” Le Picart said to the infirmarian, “but I see for myself that he really is better.” He smiled affectionately at Jouvancy. “You’ve had a hard time of it, mon père. But if you feel as much better as you look, you will soon be back among us.”

  “Oh, he will, certainly he will,” Brunet said, surveying his patient with satisfaction.

  “And Père Pallu?” Le Picart asked, looking toward the other bed.

  Brunet shook his head. “Poor man, he seems to be in for the same hard time. Oh, he will no doubt do well enough, but for now he is suffering fever, chills, aches in his body, sore throat.” Brunet glanced ruefully over his shoulder. “And he can keep nothing down.”

  Retching from the far end of the right-hand line of beds confirmed his words, and Charles swallowed hard. In his two years as a soldier, he’d helped care for bloody wounds without turning a hair. But spewing—his own or anyone else’s—turned him weak-kneed.

  “Sit, mon père, if you have the time,” Jouvancy said hopefully, and Le Picart pulled a stool near the bed, gesturing Charles to bring a stool for himself.

  “Visit then,” Brunet said, laying a hand on Jouvancy’s forehead and nodding approvingly. “But see you don’t tire him.” Behind him, the retching began again and he hurried away to Père Pallu.

  Jouvancy beamed at Le Picart and Charles. “Thank you for coming, both of you! I only need to get my strength back now.” He shook a finger at Charles. “So do not become too fond of your independence, maître, I will be back before you know it.”

  “Mon père,” Charles said fervently, “I will give thanks on my knees when you are back! I fear I am a poor substitute.”

  Jouvancy eyed him shrewdly. “Greek today, was it?”

  “Greek indeed.”

  “Yes, on Greek days, I often find myself moved to volunteer for the missions.” His blue eyes grew dreamy. “Less use for Greek in the missions. And I understand they do theatrical pieces, operas, even.”

  Le Picart laughed. “That is as good an opening as any for what I have come to say. Because I do want to send you somewhere.”

  “I will, of course, go wherever you bid me, mon père. To Tibet, if you say so!”

  “Somewhere much closer to home. As soon as you are well enough to travel, I want you to go to Versailles.”

  Jouvancy blinked. “What might a lowly rhetoric professor do at court?”

  “You are a connection of the d’Aubigné family, I believe.”

  “D’Aubigné?” Charles looked in surprise at Jouvancy. That was Madame de Maintenon’s name, the king’s second wife, who was born Françoise d’Aubigné. “That makes you nearly a relation of King Louis, mon père!”

  “Yes, I suppose it does. My father was a d’Aubigné connection, but a distant one, as distant as China from the trunk of the family tree,”
Jouvancy said. “For which I am thankful when I think of how worthless poor Madame de Maintenon’s father was. She was born in prison, did you know that? Her poor mother had nowhere else to be, after the father was arrested for debt and dueling. Monsieur d’Aubigné was a charming scoundrel and no good to anyone. Though his daughter seems to be a pattern of uprightness. I have met her only once, you know, when she came here a few summers back, to see the tragedy and ballet. And the family connection was not mentioned.”

  “Still, that you have already met her is to the good. And what Maître du Luc has said is true. Consider, mon père,” Le Picart said, leaning forward on his stool. “You are a distant relation of the king’s wife, which, as Maître du Luc has said, makes you some sort of relation by marriage to Louis himself, and that is going to be useful. I am just returned from Versailles. The Comtesse de Rosaire asked me to come and talk to her about Louis le Grand. She wants to send her twin sons to us next autumn. Because she is recently widowed—and a comtesse—I went.” He shrugged sheepishly. “And after, I knocked at Père La Chaise’s door on the chance that he was there.” The Jesuit Père François La Chaise was the king’s confessor. “He was not, and as I turned from the door, I met Madame de Maintenon and her ladies in the corridor. I uncovered and made my reverence. She glared. At Père La Chaise’s door and at me. Though she did acknowledge me with a ‘mon père,’ just audibly and between her teeth, before she and her entourage swept on.”

  “Oh, dear,” Jouvancy said. “I thought that after Père La Chaise made no objection to her marrying the king, she would think better of Jesuits.” He looked questioningly at the rector. “I’ve even heard that our Père La Chaise conducted the ceremony that made her Louis’s wife.”

  “Wife, yes,” Le Picart said, ignoring the curiosity about Père La Chaise’s role, “but not queen, because she’s too lowly born. And even as a wife, she is unacknowledged, which I suspect is part of her anger at Père La Chaise, who wants the marriage kept secret. Because of her rank, he fears the outcry there would be if the marriage were publicly proclaimed. Frenchmen expect glory to shimmer around everything connected to their king, and an aging lady of besmirched minor nobility is far from glorious.”

  Jouvancy’s eyes danced with sudden laughter. “Well, at least she didn’t mention the nickname when she saw you outside Père La Chaise’s door.”

  Le Picart grinned. “No. But she was thinking it.”

  “What nickname?” Charles said.

  “Forgive us, of course you wouldn’t know,” Jouvancy said. “I doubt it ever went as far as Languedoc. Long before the king married Madame de Maintenon, she was very angry at Père La Chaise’s refusal to force the king to put away his mistress, Madame de Montespan. La Montespan and the king did part, finally—Père La Chaise had a hand in that—but then she came back to court, and the result was two more children. Madame de Maintenon was furious. She had been governess to their first set of children, which was how she met the king. But she refused to have anything to do with the second set of royal bastards. And she began calling our Père La Chaise Père La Chaise de Commodité for not stopping the liaison. As though he could have stopped it. But the nickname was the delight of the gossips, and all Versailles and Paris laughed themselves silly.”

  “She really called him that?” Charles was fighting laughter himself. The name La Chaise, of course, meant chair, so Père La Chaise de Commodité, to put it plainly and rudely, meant Père Toilet.

  “Yes,” Le Picart said. “Not that I think she’d call him that now—it would be below her new dignity. But I was alarmed by the ice in her manner this morning. I’m told the king does listen to her opinions, especially about the state of his soul. And anything that threatens Père La Chaise’s tenure as royal confessor threatens the Society of Jesus. He is our Jesuit presence there, our conduit of knowledge about court affairs. Beyond that, I think he’s a good director of the king’s conscience because he knows how to influence without demanding. Who can demand anything of Louis and keep his position? It would only harm the king to lose a confessor who knows how to work for good within that constraint. So, Père Jouvancy, I want you to go to Versailles and sweeten your good cousin Madame de Maintenon.”

  “Cousin she is not. But I will do whatever you require and with a good will, mon père.” Jouvancy drew himself up higher on his pillows and tugged his long white linen shirt straight, as though preparing to set out immediately. “But what exactly do you want me to do?”

  “I thought we’d start with bribery.”

  The two priests exchanged a wryly knowing look.

  “A time-honored method,” Jouvancy said. “What are we bribing her with?”

  “Saint Ursula’s little finger. Given to us by your family and therefore, by extension, hers.”

  “If one makes a very long extension. But, yes, well thought.” The rhetoric master’s face lit slowly with enthusiasm as he pondered what the rector had said. “I do remember how much she admired Saint Ursula’s reliquary when she came here.”

  “The lapis and gold cross in the chapel?” Charles said in disbelief. “You’re giving that away?”

  Le Picart gave him an admonishing look. “Why not? It is ours to give. Père Jouvancy’s family gave it to us when he came here to teach. And as you have heard, Madame de Maintenon admired it when she brought some of the royal children to a summer performance here and afterward visited the chapel.” The rector lifted a bushy gray eyebrow. “Though I don’t think she admired the ballet.” He turned back to Jouvancy. “So I want you to take the reliquary personally to Versailles, mon père. The gift will mean that much more, coming from the hands of a family connection.”

  “But why now?” Charles said. The other two frowned questioningly at him and he stammered, “I mean—do we have—um—a pretext, if I may put it that way—for giving it now?”

  The rector’s frown deepened. “Oh. No, we don’t.”

  “I know!” Jouvancy said. “We can say it’s because of the honor the Duc du Maine and his sister Mademoiselle de Rouen—Madame de Maintenon raised them both—did us in coming to our February performance and praising Monsieur Charpentier’s little opera. We can say we are showing our gratitude to a fellow educator, the lady who brought them up to be such examples of kindness and piety.”

  Le Picart snorted. “Isn’t that laying it on a bit thick? Considering Mademoiselle de Rouen’s—um—reputation?”

  “Is there any such thing as ‘too thick’ when speaking of Children of France?” Jouvancy shot back. And added acerbically, “Even Bastards of France?”

  “Too true,” Le Picart said. “Very well, then, we have our reason for the gift. We must contrive the presentation to take place in the presence of Père La Chaise—I will ask—”

  “And in the king’s presence?” Jouvancy asked eagerly.

  “That may be too much to hope for. But I will ask Père La Chaise to see that as many courtiers as possible are there. The more witnesses, the better. It won’t change her mind about us, but it should—for a while, at least—make her guard her tongue. Which will give Père La Chaise a breathing space to make Louis less vulnerable to her whispering in his ear about acknowledging the marriage.” He looked down the room and called softly to the infirmarian. “Frère Brunet, a moment, please.”

  Brunet turned from bending over Père Pallu and hurried down the line of beds. “Yes, mon père?”

  “When can Père Jouvancy travel safely? For a short distance?”

  “How short?”

  “To Versailles.”

  Brunet frowned at Jouvancy. “Riding?”

  “Yes.”

  The infirmarian tsked disapprovingly. “Not for another week or two, if I had my way.” He eyed Le Picart. “But since I am obviously not going to have my way, I suppose he could ride three or four days from now. If the weather is dry and warm. And if someone is with him. And when he gets there, he will go straight to bed and rest until the morrow. And no late nights, mind you,” he said with mock s
everity to Jouvancy. “No court revels!”

  “You are a terrible spoilsport, mon frère,” Jouvancy said, with an aggrieved sigh. “I was only going for the revels!”

  Le Picart nodded and turned to Charles. “Maître du Luc, you will go with Père Jouvancy. You will be his caretaker and companion, and you will save him from as much effort as possible. You have some medical knowledge from your soldiering and can help look after him, if need be.” He paused thoughtfully. “You will also be able to go freely about the court. Some people will ignore you as beneath their notice, but some will be curious about a new young face and will talk to you. You will be an affable clerical courtier and listen to all the talk that comes your way and repeat it to Père Jouvancy and Père La Chaise.” There was warning in his shrewd gray eyes as he watched Charles’s increasingly dismayed face. “You will do all that for the good of the Society.”

  “That is sound sense,” Jouvancy agreed.

  “But who will teach the senior rhetoric class?” Charles tried, knowing it was useless. “And our rehearsals begin so soon—”

  The rector raised a silencing hand. “You will be gone only a few days. Père Bretonneau has taught rhetoric in the past and could take the class.”

  “Père Bretonneau will do very well,” Jouvancy said with satisfaction. “And so will Maître du Luc. The two of us can also work on the August performance while we are gone.” He smiled happily at Charles. “Have you ever been at court, maître?”

  “No, mon père.” And never wanted to be, Charles didn’t say, looking down to hide his face. He certainly saw the importance of supporting Père La Chaise, whom he’d met and liked. But the thought of playing the courtier, even briefly, to a king he detested, made him feel far from obedient. He looked up and saw that Le Picart’s eyes were still on him, at once ironic and knowing. As usual, the rector saw more than Charles wanted seen. Charles forced the words his vows required across his tongue.

  “I will do my best, mon père,” he said. And added mulishly, “For Père Jouvancy.”