The Rhetoric of Death

by Judith Rock

  Cesare Ripa’s book of characters and costume designs had guided ballet producers for nearly a century, and Charles knew it almost by heart. As Beauchamps certainly did, also.

  Beauchamps blinked very slowly. “Really?”

  “Yes, our headdress was a wheel.” Charles could hear his desperation making the story sound more like a fabrication with every word. “Fortune tried to wear the wheel, but he couldn’t manage it—not with the skirt and everything. Well, the headdress crashed to the floor and the audience laughed. And threw bottles, maître!” Well, one bottle, and the thrower, when sober, had apologized abjectly and made a handsome contribution to the ballet expenses. But Charles didn’t see the need to say that. “So, you see, from my experience at Carpentras—”

  “Pardon me. Your . . . experience, you call it?” Beauchamps made the word sound like someone’s dirty laundry. “A mere few years, Père Jouvancy told me. In his Ancient and Modern Ballets, your own Père Menestrier directs us to force dancers—force them, do you hear?—to wear the headdress that goes with the costume! My chiming clock goes with Time’s costume and Time will wear it.”

  “But, maître, Time does not even appear as a character in Père Jouvancy’s livret—and, you must admit, the minuet he wants for the four seasons would be an easier way for student dancers to show the passing of time—”

  “Spare me, Maître du Luc. You well know that we’ve seen those same damn four seasons a hundred damn times in as many damn ballets! My clock will strike fear into the audience’s hearts. With their own ears they will hear time running out for heretics.” Beauchamps glared at Charles. “Time. Running out, Maître du Luc. And not only for heretics.” He turned on his heel. “Here, you! Time!”

  A slender Irish boy named Walter Connor, resting with the others on the floor, jumped to his feet. Beauchamps flung open a three-foot wooden chest his servant had brought and took out a long, bulky parcel swathed in coarse cloth. He unwrapped a perfect imitation of the sort of clock a rich man might have in his salon. Black and gold, solidly made of wire and papier-mâché and fixed to a small leather cap, it was as tall as Charles’s forearm was long. Beauchamps placed it tenderly on Time’s dark curly head, tied the cap’s linen straps tightly under the boy’s spotty chin, and stepped back. “Now, M. Connor, as you dance your sarabande, you will tilt your head in perfect time on the first beat of each measure. Like this. A little right, a little left, a little right—you see?—so that the clock chimes. Do you have it? Good. Now.”

  Connor clutched at the towering headdress. “No, maître, wait—”

  Beauchamps seized his violin, yelled Time’s suite into position, and called the cue. For the first eight measures and their slow, simple steps, it worked. Apart from the look of terror on the boy’s face, the effect was impressive. The headdress chimed like the knell of doom. But when the sarabande’s steps grew more complex, doom fell on M. Connor. Trying to balance on one foot and wobbling with the weight of the slipping clock, he clutched it with both hands and shoved it upright. Beauchamps growled and kept playing. Charles nodded encouragingly over Beauchamps’s shoulder and winked. Connor stared back. Then, with a fleeting grin and a convincing stumble, he clutched at the clock again and one of its straps broke. With an anguished yelp, Beauchamps stopped playing. Feeling that he’d planted a good healthy seed of discord likely to bear the fruit Jouvancy wanted, Charles winked again and left them to it.

  At the tragedy end of the room, the Montmorency boy playing Clovis, king of the Franks, was drawing his sword and advancing on his hapless foe and kinsman Ragnacaire.

  “Why have you permitted our noble blood to be humiliated?” Clovis thundered. “It were better you should die!”

  Whereupon—rather basely, Charles thought, considering that Ragnacaire was shackled—Clovis slew him with a mighty sword swipe. Ragnacaire, played by a languidly handsome son of the Grand Général of Lithuania, sank very carefully to the floor, as though testing an uninviting bed.

  “Not like that, you willow wand! Die like a man!” Clovis threw down the wooden sword, clutched his chest, staggered, rolled his eyes, and thudded to the floor like a felled cow.

  Ragnacaire sighed and propped himself on one elbow. “Excess is so unworthy of a man of taste, Monsieur Montmorency.”

  Montmorency scowled and swelled, and Charles quickly went to demonstrate stage dying. After several convincing deaths, he picked himself up, told them to do the scene again, and stood back to watch. Clovis thundered his line with true conviction. Ragnacaire died a little more convincingly. Charles nodded to them to keep going.

  Though Jouvancy’s Latin was a delight to the ear, Charles was finding that he disliked the tragedy’s story even more than the ballet’s livret. Clovis/Louis waged war everywhere, killing and looting, regardless of treaties or anything else except his own will and craving for glory. Then Clovis married a Christian, who was, of course, an allegory for Louis’s devout second wife, Mme de Maintenon. On the brink of defeat in battle, Clovis—here recalling the emperor Constantine—prayed to the Christian God for victory, got it, and was baptized, along with three thousand of his pagan warriors. Thus uniting his realm in “the most perfect religious and patriotic harmony,” as Louis had supposedly done in revoking the Edict of Nantes.

  Charles called a break. The actors broke into small, chattering groups, flinging themselves to the floor to rest or helping themselves from the pitchers of water standing ready on a table. Charles answered a few questions, gave suggestions and corrections, and withdrew to the windows. For a miracle, it was another warm day and the courtyard was bathed in sunshine. He leaned out and, squinting up at the cluster of sundials engraved on the south-facing observatory tower, figured that the rehearsal had three-quarters of an hour yet to go. When he looked back at the courtyard, Père Jouvancy was hurrying across it. Charles went to the classroom door to meet him.

  “Welcome back, mon père! Did you have any luck at the college house in Gentilly?”

  “None. I have just been with the rector, who has called in Lieutenant-Général La Reynie. He is the head of our police.” A brief smile lit Jouvancy’s tired face. “I have also seen Antoine. Who is ravenously hungry, his usual state, and the best of signs, thank God.”

  “Thank God indeed!”

  “Now. Tell me what you and M. Beauchamps have done here and I will take over. Père Le Picart wants to see you.”

  “Me? Now?”

  “Yes, and you must not keep him waiting.”

  Charles gave a brief report, ending with the chiming clock situation and leaving Jouvancy stifling laughter. Charles crunched across the gravel’s white glare, hoping that this summons didn’t mean that last night’s eavesdropping had been found out. As he entered the grand salon, off which the rector’s study opened, a tall, powerfully built man, no longer young but still an imposing presence, emerged from the study and shut the door behind him. He nodded to Charles and strode across the salon toward the street passage. Charles tapped on the rector’s door.

  “Come,” Père Le Picart called, and Charles stepped into a cool, east-facing room with a high-beamed ceiling and a silky carpet in faded reds and greens on the worn wide-boarded floor. The one small casement of old, green-tinged glass stood open to the courtyard, letting in the sounds of passing feet, an occasional burst of chatter, and the faint noise of street traffic.

  Charles bowed. Le Picart rose from the chair behind his desk and gestured Charles to one of a pair of chairs beside the empty fireplace.

  “A little wine, Maître du Luc?” He picked up the pottery pitcher on the table between the chairs, poured pale red wine into the waiting cone-shaped glasses, and sat down facing Charles.

  “Thank you, mon père.”

  Though watered as usual, the wine was welcome on a hot afternoon. As they sipped, Charles studied the rector. Le Picart’s lean face was lined and strongly boned, his short thick hair was gray, and traces of peasant Normandy lingered in his voice.

  As though he’d hea
rd what Charles was thinking, he smiled over his glass and said, “This time of year at home, we’re starting to think of cider. My village is on the edge of Normandy, and my father had an orchard with good Norman apple trees.”

  “I am fond of cider, too, mon père. My mother comes from Normandy.”

  “Ah. I wondered. Most from the south are dark, but you have the true look of the old North raiders. How did your parents meet?”

  “They met at court, at Fontainebleau. My mother was one of the Dowager Queen’s ladies and my father was making his brief and only effort to improve his fortunes by gaining the court’s notice. When I was little”—Charles laughed—“she used to tease my father, who was shorter and darker, and say that no one would believe I was his child. And he would tease her back, and say, ‘whose, then, wench?’ And we would all fall down laughing.”

  “They must have been close, your father and mother! Not many men will be teased in that way.”

  “Yes, they were close. We all were.”

  “You were a happy child, then.” Le Picart smiled a little sadly. “Children. They should all be happy. Well, at least our Antoine is recovering. But you probably know that Philippe is still missing. The man who left just before you arrived is Nicolas de La Reynie, our Lieutenant-Général of police. I have asked him to search for Philippe. Which is why I have taken you away from your rehearsal.” The rector stared into the empty fireplace for a moment and then fixed Charles with a measuring look. “Mme LeClerc has been to see me, Maître du Luc. It seems you left Père Guise out of your story.”

  Charles sipped his wine to give himself a moment to think. “Yes, mon père, I did.”

  “Why?”

  “She obviously dislikes him and—it seemed better to say nothing.”

  “Describe for me exactly what you saw Père Guise do.”

  “I saw him talking to a street porter. Mme LeClerc was watching them when I arrived. The porter seemed uneasy. I did not see Père Guise give the man money. Though I was not there all the time they talked.”

  “Did you speak with the porter yourself ?”

  “He was gone before I could.”

  “And what do you think now of Mme LeClerc’s story?”

  Gazing into his glass, Charles searched his impressions of the baker’s wife. “On the whole, I believe her.” He lifted his gaze to the rector. “Her anger at the horseman and her concern for Antoine were very convincing. And her bluntness. As I said in the infirmary, I wondered about the mask, though. And about her dislike of Père Guise.” Charles smiled ruefully. “Many people are rude about priests, but usually not to the priest’s face.”

  “True. You should know that Père Guise has sometimes taken it on himself to chastise the few shopkeepers who still rent space in our building’s frontage for what he considers infractions of our rules. He has also clashed with Mme LeClerc over her small daughter, who has once or twice been found in our stable.”

  “Ah,” Charles said, suddenly remembering the little girl in front of the baker’s shop the day Antoine was hurt.

  For a moment Le Picart’s eyes had what Charles could only call a wicked gleam. “Mme LeClerc is one of the few people who has ever bested Père Guise, at least in volume.” He lifted an eyebrow at Charles. “The college is not Eden, Maître du Luc. Though some of us might think so, if we had only the one serpent.”

  Charles laughed outright, liking this rector more and more.

  “So,” Le Picart said. “I called you here because you are obviously taking an interest in what has happened to Antoine and Philippe, and I want you to understand some things. I am going somewhat beyond my writ in what I am about to say. Which you are to treat in the strictest confidence.”

  “Of course, mon père.”

  “Père Guise has already been to see me about you. About your heretical views.”

  Charles went cold. He opened his mouth to defend himself but nothing came out. The rector held up a hand.

  “Hear me out. The point—my point here, at least—is not your views, but Père Guise’s. He is a brilliant man and a fiercely devoted priest. He is also a bad enemy. His fervor outruns his charity.” Le Picart sighed. “The Guise fire from the Wars of Religion still burns hot in him. You know, of course, that his great-grandfather more or less started the wars. And led the Catholic League, paid for its army, and nearly put a Guise on the throne of France. They are themselves royal in a minor way, springing as they do from the House of Lorraine. Sadly—or not, depending on your views—Père Guise is the last male of his house. He pines for the lost Guise glory and seems to offer God a service of white-hot anger. I confess that I often do not know what to make of it. What God makes of it, I cannot imagine.”

  Charles sipped wine to wet his dry mouth. “And did he convince you my views are heretical?”

  The rector eyed Charles. “He convinced me that your views are compassionate. Compassionate to a fault and dangerous. Are there Huguenots in your own family?”

  Charles nodded warily.

  “That must cause you great pain.”

  “For many reasons, mon père.”

  Le Picart got up and went to the open window. “We must never forget that we are Jesuits,” he said quietly, gazing into the court. “But I have learned to be very wary of any man who is sure that he is as right as God.”

  “For my part, mon père, I am sure that cruelty in God’s name is wrong.”

  In the silence that followed, feet ran across the gravel and boys’ voices rose in shouts and laughter.

  Le Picart turned to face him. “Many devout churchmen would argue passionately against that. And some would argue passionately for it. I do not expect us to settle that question. I do expect you to remember your vow of obedience.”

  “Yes, mon père.” Charles began to breathe again.

  Le Picart seemed to relax, too, and leaned back against the stone sill. “There is more I want you to understand about this college. Père Guise has no doubt told you that he is confessor to courtiers—I fear he tells everyone at the first opportunity. Although the king shuns Paris, we are only a few leagues from Versailles. This college’s links to men—and women—close to the king are, to say the least, intricate. M. Louvois, perhaps the most powerful man in the realm after the king, was educated here. As was the father of Philippe and Antoine, who is now secretary to the Prince of Condé. Condé is a Bourbon, a Prince of the Blood, close kin to King Louis. Now. In himself, M. Douté seems an innocuous man. Well-meaning. A careful secretary, no doubt, but not, I fear, particularly discerning. Witness his choice of a second wife. Nevertheless, he has been close to the old Condé for many years. Though the Prince of Condé appears not to take an active role in the world anymore, his influence has been nearly that of a king. Indeed, it would be a mistake to underestimate it even now. Even though he has long been pardoned, he was one of King Louis’s most powerful enemies forty years ago in the nobles’ Fronde revolution, as you no doubt know. I say all this, because what has happened to the boys may—just possibly—mean that someone is using them to get at their father—and, through him, at the Condé. M. Douté says that is not so. But I think he would say that, if he were caught in that kind of coil. I have begun to fear that Philippe may have been lured out of the college to be taken and held somewhere. And that Antoine’s accident may not have been an accident. Which is why I have called in the head of the police. And why I am telling you to leave these matters strictly alone.”

  “But, mon père—”

  The rector stopped him with a look. “When you came to the infirmary after Antoine was hurt, I saw that you are a man who wants to understand events. And you confirm that impression every moment. You are one of those who cannot resist the thread that leads into the maze. But under your vow of obedience, Maître du Luc, let the thread lie. Others will follow it. Others with more understanding of this particular maze than you can possibly have.”

  “But—”

  The rector’s eyes turned cold. “I have given you
an order, maître.”

  Charles bowed his head and forced the words across his tongue. “Yes, mon père.”

  “Good.” Le Picart got to his feet and Charles rose with him. “I look forward to seeing your first Louis le Grand production,” he said genially.

  “Thank you for your good wishes, mon père.” Charles made himself smile politely. “And for all that you have explained to me.”

  He walked slowly back to the classroom, turning the conversation over in his mind and simmering with frustration. It was true that he didn’t have Le Picart’s knowledge of the tangled history and connections that might bear on what had happened. But he could put facts together and how could that come amiss to Lieutenant-Général La Reynie, who had the whole city to keep? And whether it came amiss or not, Charles told himself, he was already involved. Philippe was in the ballet and Charles had been sent to find him. And the cut on Antoine’s head was still unexplained, and no matter how Charles looked at Guise’s and Mme LeClerc’s tellings of the accident, they did not match and he wanted to know why. Two such happenings to two brothers, in as many days, was too much coincidence; he wanted to know the truth. But he was a Jesuit and his superior had given him an order.

  Partly to give his frustration time to settle, he passed the rhetoric classroom and went through the little archway to the outside latrine. The warmth was opening new blossoms on the thick hedge of old rosebushes, giving a faint sweetness to the air. But the stench inside the latrine nearly made him retch. Holding his breath and wondering when the dung cart had last carried away the waste, he went to the far end of the long bench, lifted his cassock, and started to unlace his breeches. Then he froze, staring into the hole’s noisome murk. Something pale was growing there. Something like a five-petaled flower. Only, of course, it couldn’t be. Flowers didn’t grow in privy muck. Like someone in an evil dream, Charles reached down to pluck at whatever the thing was.

  Chapter 10

  Charles stumbled out of the latrine and wiped his fouled hand on the grass. Swallowing hard and trying to force his stomach back where it belonged, he relaced his breeches and went to the classroom. Père Jouvancy was rearranging the placement of actors in a scene and Charles let him finish, because what difference could haste make now? When the boys were placed to the rhetoric master’s satisfaction, Charles took him aside. The color drained from the older man’s face as he listened, and Charles reached for his arm, afraid he was going to faint. Jouvancy shook him off and blundered headlong toward the door, like a badly worked marionette. Hastily, Charles told the oblivious Beauchamps to oversee both rehearsals and ran after Jouvancy.