The Rhetoric of Death

by Judith Rock

  “Ah, there’s one!” he heard someone say. “And another!”

  “Magnificent! How often do the astronomers say these showers happen, did you say?”

  Charles looked up through the trees and saw a shooting star streak across the sky. Giving thanks for this bright deliverance from the murder he’d nearly committed, he stumbled toward the stables. The grooms and men at arms had taken their dice elsewhere and the stable was quiet. As far as he could tell, only the boy who looked sleepily over the loft’s edge saw him lead his horse out of the stable and ride away.

  Now that he wished the moon would stay hidden, it shone steadily. He kept glancing over his shoulder, expecting to see the killer behind him, but the road stayed empty. Charles rode as quickly as he dared, but the tree shadows were deep as pools and his horse was unsure on the rutted surface. He tried to make sense of the attack. The man must have jumped him because he’d found him listening outside the door. But why had he been allowed to listen so long? Guards needed to piss like anyone else, the explanation might be that simple. When the attack came, it had been in earnest. And with what he’d heard, he doubted he’d be left alone just because the first attack had failed. He had to get to Père Le Picart, and quickly.

  He reached the St. Antoine gate with no sign of pursuit. But there would be tracks through woods and fields a horseman could follow to the city. He decided that the Petit Pont was his best way to the college, rather than the way he’d come. Crossing the river, with no side streets and nowhere to take cover, would be his most vulnerable point, and the Petit Pont was short. After it, he’d have only a brief ride up the rue St. Jacques to Louis le Grand.

  Half of Paris seemed to be out enjoying the fitfully bright night, going from tavern to tavern or just strolling in the small streets and lanes. His horse stepped over snoring drunks, and a pair of loud prostitutes emerged from a doorway to grab at his cassock. A few streets over, he heard the night watch making its noisy passage north, away from the river. He was nearly at the Hôtel de Ville and beginning to relax when galloping hooves sounded behind him. He jerked his horse through an opening between houses, a gap so narrow his toes grazed the walls. Cornering like a madman, he rode for the Petit Pont, trying to keep a course that paralleled the river. A shot cracked past him and slammed into a wall. Charles kicked the horse harder and flattened himself on its neck. Praying that the pistol had only one barrel and that the man would have to fall back to reload, he kept on through the lanes. His horse skidded on rubbish and as it regained its feet, another shot ripped through the night. Pain seared Charles’s ribs. Behind him, a horse screamed and a human cry turned into curses. Lying along his horse’s neck, Charles made for a church tower gleaming above house roofs. He thought the other horse might have gone down, but he wasn’t sure, and another accurate shot would be the end of him. If he could find grass, it would muffle his horse’s hooves and let him put silent distance between himself and the shooter.

  Luck was with him. The churchyard gate was open and the ground was uneven but soft going under old trees as he picked his way around the edge of the little enclosure. There was no sound behind him now. He reached back cautiously to feel his left side and tried to gauge how bad his wound was. Gritting his teeth, he pulled his cassock tight and was twisting it into a knot against the bleeding when something white flashed between his horse’s hooves. A cat yowled and the horse jumped sideways and broke into a frenzied gallop.

  Charles hauled uselessly on the reins and quickly decided that his only hope was to hang on. The terrified horse plunged out of the churchyard and along a winding street. Then it was running over rough ground, slowing and stumbling. Fighting weakness, Charles hugged the horse’s neck. His hip was wet with blood now. A man ran toward him through the moon shadows and he tried desperately to turn the horse before the man could take aim. Then he was falling, trying to pray before he died, and then there was nothing.

  “Morbleu, mon père, wake up, you have to walk, come on, now!”

  The face looming over Charles disappeared. Strong hands gripped his armpits and hauled him to his feet, and an arm went around him. He groaned as it brushed against his wound.

  “I know, I can feel it,” the man gabbled, “you’re bleeding, but we’ll both do worse than bleed if you don’t walk! I heard the shot, and the devil that fired it can’t be far away, that’s right, keep walking now . . .”

  “My horse,” Charles mumbled.

  “I’m leading your horse, never mind, just keep putting one foot, then the other, that’s it. We’re not far.”

  The voice and the hillocked, rubble-strewn ground seemed familiar, but Charles couldn’t remember why. His side felt like someone had sharpened a dagger on it. After what felt like days, he was allowed to collapse facedown on straw.

  “I can’t see your side,” the man said. “We have to get your priest gown off. It’s either rip it, which you surely don’t want, or it’s flip you and untie your belt.”

  There was an unpleasant interval in flickering candlelight before the voice faded into dark and painful dreams. Then the thin light of early morning was seeping into the room and someone had an arm around his shoulders and was holding a cup to his mouth. He opened his eyes, gasped at the face looking down at him, and choked on the sour wine.

  He was dead and this was an angel. A dirty, bedraggled angel whose eyes glittered like wet onyx with unshed tears. Greasy black curls hung over her tired face and she was beautiful beyond words. His bewildered gaze strayed around the ramshackle room. Heaven couldn’t be this filthy. Though hell might be. But hell had no angels. Especially not Provençal-speaking ones.

  “Softly, now, softly, slowly. The wound is not deep, but you bled like a pig and you’re weak.” The angel settled herself beside him on the floor and gently stroked his hair back from his forehead. “I was just as surprised to see you, believe me.”

  Charles stared, wine dribbling down his chin. “Pernelle?”

  Chapter 23

  Hello, Charles,” Pernelle said gravely, easing him back onto the thin pallet.

  He groped for her hand, feeling with dismay how thin it was. “In God’s name, Pernelle, what—how did you come here?” Wherever here was. A baby began to cry and she withdrew her hand and turned quickly toward the wailing.

  “Lucie?” he croaked, realizing as he said it that the baby sounded too young.

  The crying stopped abruptly and she turned back, shaking her head. The slowly growing light glazed her jutting cheekbones and showed him the gray shadows under her eyes.

  “Where is she?” he said, speaking Provençal to her and realizing how much he’d missed it.

  “Safe, I pray God every moment. Oh, Charles, I thought we’d never get anywhere, at the rate the widow’s coach traveled. We were weeks on the road and when we reached her house, we had to stay a little because Julie was unwell. Then a soldier caught me as we were fording a stream in sight of Switzerland. Julie and Lucie were on the horse and they got across and away.” Her mouth trembled. “I pray they are in Geneva.” She looked down, smoothing the skirt of her stained blue gown and trying to steady her lips.

  “I pray so, too. But how did you get here?” He looked around at the dirty floor, the makeshift brazier, the thin partitions and half-boarded window and realized that “here” was the murdered porter’s room in the beggars’ Louvre and he was lying on the dead man’s pallet.

  “I will tell you, Charles—but then it will be your turn to explain what you are doing here! Me, I was packed into a coach with seven other women and sent here. To a penitential convent over the river. I escaped two nights ago.”

  “How, in the name of God’s holy angels?”

  “Out a third-floor window, along a ledge, down a tree, and over a wall. Thank God men always underestimate women. The back garden was unguarded.”

  “Male stupidity is good for something, then,” he tried to joke. But the risk she had taken turned him sick. “And you ended up here.”

  “Barbe brou
ght me.”

  “Who is Barbe?”

  “The mother of the crying baby.” Pernelle nodded toward the partition. “When I saw you last night, I thought I had finally gone mad with worry and was seeing things. I still half believe I’m seeing things.” She fixed her black gaze on him and waited.

  “I was reassigned to the Society’s college here.”

  “Yes? And you gave so much Latin translation that your students chased you here and shot you?”

  Pernelle’s tartness could have cured olives, and Charles felt himself smiling foolishly. It was one of the things he’d always loved about her. “The perils of teaching,” he quipped back. “Some robber took a shot at me as I was riding back to the school. Who brought me in here last night?”

  “Henri. A porter. He said he’d brought you here once before. At least I think that’s what he said—understanding these people is far harder than reading my French Bible! If he did say that, your new teaching assignment must be very unusual, Charles.” Her moth-wing eyebrows rose and she waited for an explanation.

  A little more fog cleared from Charles’s brain. Henri must be the ex-soldier who’d brought him to see Pierre yesterday—no, the day before yesterday it must be now. “Where did he find me?”

  Pernelle smiled slightly. “He was on his way here last night to sleep—he says his wife found him with a girl and won’t let him into their rooms—and he saw you fall from your horse and recognized you. By the time he got you inside, you’d lost so much blood, you were only half conscious.”

  Suddenly Charles remembered his nameless hired horse. It would be worth a fortune to anyone here. “Do you know what happened to my horse?”

  “I saw Henri nearly throttle a man who tried to steal it. He’s put out the word that if the horse isn’t bothered, you’ll buy free drinks for everyone at the tavern. The women have it tied out by the garden to get the good of the dung. And they’re all armed with hoes.” She studied him gravely. “Charles, were you sent north because of what you did for me?”

  He sighed. Another thing he’d always loved about Pernelle was that she was impossible to fool.

  “The Society doesn’t know about it. But you know how our family gossips. Our pious cousin the bishop found out.”

  Pernelle’s eyes widened in horror and her hand flew to her mouth.

  “It’s all right, he’s also pious about family. And you were always his favorite heretic. He settled for calling in favors and getting me reassigned as far as possible from his new diocese.”

  Charles tried to raise himself to reach for the wine cup and grunted with pain. Pernelle tsked at him and held the cup to his lips.

  “So now,” he said, trying to smile as he eased himself down again, “we have to start again with getting you to Geneva.” He grinned suddenly. “Those nuns’ habits got you and Julie out of Nîmes. I could borrow another one and be Sister Charlotte and escort you the rest of the way.” He hoped the joking hid his surge of longing to go with her.

  Her full lips thinned with reproach. “Is there nothing you can’t jest about, Charles? Even if you were serious,” she said, softening, “I wouldn’t let you risk everything again.”

  “Listen, Pernelle—”

  She wasn’t listening. “Charles, there are—we call them Huguenot highways, people who help us get out of France. There are one or two in Paris, but I don’t know their names. All I know is that one of them is a Jew. If I could find him—”

  “A Jew? There are no Jews in Paris, hardly any Jews in France, not for hundreds of years! All right, a few, but—”

  Her eyes were suddenly black ice. “Is that what Jesuits teach? No more Jews, just like there are no Huguenots left in France?”

  He felt himself flush. “No. I mean—but even if this Jew is here, why would he help you?”

  He reached out a hand to try to close the distance that had opened between them, but she clasped her hands tightly in her lap.

  “Why would he help me?” Her expression was incredulous. “I cannot imagine what it must be like to be you, so secure, so—think about it, Charles! Who knows better than a Jew what it is to be hated and pursued and tormented? And who would know better how to hide and escape? Don’t you realize that my life is far more like theirs than like yours?” She looked around the sordid room. “I’m even starting to feel a little at home here.” She sighed. “And people like these are starting to feel at home with me. Barbe has taught me how to beg. Do you know what else she does to live, Charles? Besides showing her baby and begging? She and her mother and another old woman are paper chewers. For papier-mâché. The two older ones are so fuddled with wine most of the time, poor things, they’re hardly there. Dear God, it terrifies me what poor women have to do to live!”

  “I saw them—three women chewing paper—the other time I was here,” Charles said. “I couldn’t tell if they were only fuddled, or simple.”

  “Barbe is far from simple,” Pernelle said. “There’s nothing wrong with her except hunger and living like this. And the poor will put on any act to keep people like us—well, not me, now—from paying real attention to them. Except for getting alms, being noticed usually means trouble.” Her eyes flashed. “And I’ve learnt that lesson from being a Huguenot. The less you notice us, the less we suffer.”

  Charles flinched at the “you” and the “us.” She was right, but the words made him feel as battered inside as he was outside. He wanted to turn over on the moldy straw, lose himself in oblivion, and wake up in a less brutal world. A movement at the edge of the partition made them both look up.

  “Come in, Barbe,” Pernelle said in careful French, and held out her hand.

  The girl moved a few steps into the room, her eyes darting between Pernelle and Charles. Her ragged bodice—a man’s ancient doublet—was open, and she held a baby who had fallen asleep at her breast. Her eyes finally came to rest on Charles.

  “I saw you before,” she said hoarsely. “After he got killed. There, where you’re lying.”

  Pernelle’s eyes widened. “Who got killed?”

  “I remember you, Barbe,” Charles said. “Did you know the porter? Pierre?”

  Barbe squatted down beside the pallet. Charles tried not to draw back from her smell and felt ashamed when Pernelle reached out and took the swaddled baby, who was giving off more than its share of the stench. Pernelle bent over the infant, her lips moving, and Charles knew she was praying for Lucie.

  Barbe stretched her thin arms and sat on the floor. “Pierre was that one’s father.”

  Charles stared. “Oh. Well. I—I’m sorry,” he stammered.

  The girl shrugged. “He was all right. He gave me food. That man that killed him was an idiot, though, he left all Pierre’s things. I sold the boots. I would have sold the jerkin, except some bastard stole it first. The idiot that killed Pierre had his own boots,” Barbe said, sticking to what mattered in the story. “Good ones. But he could have taken Pierre’s and sold them. Awful to be that stupid.”

  Charles picked the jewel out of the midden of Barbe’s words. “You saw who killed Pierre?”

  She bent sideways and scratched under her skirt. Over her head, Charles and Pernelle traded glances.

  “What did the idiot who left the boots look like, Barbe?” Pernelle said casually, picking up her cue.

  “Big hat. No feather.” She shrugged. “I only saw his back.”

  “It was night,” Charles said, watching her closely. “How could you see him at all?”

  “Had a lantern, didn’t he? The light woke me when he went by. You sleep too sound in here, you maybe don’t wake up. Something—I don’t know—made me crawl over to the partition and see what he was up to. I watched him.”

  “You watched him kill the baby’s father?” Pernelle said, aghast.

  Barbe looked from her to Charles. Her eyes were the cloudy green of Charles’s shaving mirror. “I know what you’re thinking. But what was I going to do? Get killed, too?” She glanced at the baby. “Then who’d feed
him?”

  Charles lurched painfully onto his elbow. “Barbe, how did the man kill Pierre?”

  She shrugged, scratching again.

  He struggled to keep his voice level. “Please. Tell me everything the man did.”

  She sighed like someone who had long ago stopped expecting other people’s wants to make sense. “He walked in here, went to Pierre’s pallet. He put down the lantern and got something out of his pocket and leaned over. Lately, Pierre went to bed drunk most nights, so he didn’t hear anything. Then he yelled out—Pierre, I mean—and kicked, but the man kept on bending over him till he quit.”

  “Then what, Barbe?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What did the man do then, I mean?”

  “He sat on the floor and did something to his boots. I couldn’t see. Like I said, his back was to me. Then he got up and I curled up like I was dead asleep and he left.”

  Absently watching a cockroach busy in a corner’s rubbish heap, Charles thought about what she’d said. The man had taken something from his pocket and strangled the porter. Then he’d sat down, done something to his boots . . . By all hell’s devils! So that was what he had used! Charles struggled to get up.

  “Charles, no!” Holding the baby in one arm, Pernelle tried to keep him on the pallet. “Lie down!”

  “Help me, Pernelle,” he said through his gritted teeth. “I have to get back to the college. Where’s my cassock?”

  “Are you crazy? You’ve bled too much, you can’t go riding across Paris!”

  His eyes fell on the pallet’s small pillow and he saw that it was his rolled-up cassock. “Hand me that. Please. I need the horse. I have to get to my rector.”