by Judith Rock
Charles spread the tonneau neatly over a bench and picked up three long glass vials full of colored water, “poison” from the secret store of three-headed Cerberus, the hell-dog. The ballet would have a poison entrée, he thought with distaste. The entrée’s actualité—its real-life reference—was the poison plots that had rocked Paris and Versailles a decade ago. But for Charles, and Jouvancy, and even more poignantly for Fabre, who had been part of the stage crew today, the poison entrée’s actualité could only be what had happened yesterday. Charles had gone below stage to correct the timing of Cerberus’s emergence through the trap, and found Frère Moulin juggling a chalk ball, an apple, and a knot of rope in an effort to cheer Fabre, who had stared blankly at the flying miscellany without seeming to see it. But it had been a kind thought on Moulin’s part. Praying that Fabre’s misery was only for his sister and not because he had had any part in her act, Charles put the “poison” vials away in their box and picked up a soldier’s helmet.
“Maître du Luc?” A lay brother put his head around the door. “The porter wants you at the postern. There’s a strange boy asking for you.”
The boy was backed defiantly into the street passage’s darkest corner, a folded paper in his fist, and Frère Martin was standing over him.
“Slipped in like an eel and held up that note with your name on it. Won’t say a word.”
The youth, whose dirty face was half hidden by an oversized leather hat, glowered at Charles from under its tired brim.
“Perhaps he’ll talk more easily without an audience. Come on, you.” Charles led the way to the chapel, checked to see that no one was at their devotions, and went to a dark side altar dedicated to France’s heroine, Jeanne d’Arc. He knelt and pulled his charge down beside him. “What happened?” he hissed. “And fold your hands. If we look like we’re praying, we’re less noticeable.” He reached up and pulled off the hat.
Pernelle snatched it back and jammed it over her hair, which had been raggedly shorn. “It hides my face.”
“The dirt hides your face. What happened?”
“The head of the Paris police came back to the bakery this morning and wanted to see me. Madame LeClerc said I’d gone back home—to St. Denis, she said, she has family there—and he left. But we thought I’d better leave for real.”
Charles leaned his elbows on the altar rail and rested his head on his clasped hands. “All right. Help me come up with a story, my wits are far past working. Why you’re here, who you are, why you can stay. And where, God help us.”
When she didn’t answer, Charles raised his head. She was gazing with distaste at the chapel’s pink and gold veined marble, its glowing paintings, the lapis and gold glinting under the altar’s sanctuary lamp. With a slight shudder, she turned from the richness and looked up at the armor-clad statue of the Maid of Orleans, the bon Dieu’s blessed scourge of the English.
“Hmph,” she grunted. “If I believed in your saints—”
“She’s not a saint.”
“Well, she’s dead and she has an altar. Anyway, if I believed in your religion, I’d think she might look kindly on us. She’s not exactly wearing womanly finery, either, is she? Is she supposed to help people with something?”
A grin spread across Charles’s tired face. “Some people think she has a soft spot for those who must go against the church’s authority for a good cause.”
“Amen,” Pernelle returned piously. She stretched up to whisper in his ear. “I’ll stay in your chamber, Charles.”
“You can’t—”
“Are you all right in there, maître?” a voice called from the courtyard door.
“Yes, Frère Martin.” Charles shot to his feet and stood between the brother and Pernelle. “I’ll see the boy out through the chapel’s street door.”
“Ah. Well. All right, then.”
Martin backed out of the courtyard door and trudged toward the neighboring court’s latrine. Charles sped to the small porter’s room off the street passage and grabbed the canvas apron kept there on a peg for the porter’s use. He shoved it under his cassock and went back to the chapel.
“Put this on,” he said, handing it to Pernelle. “And wait here.” Forcing himself to walk unconcernedly, he went to the rhetoric classroom and came back with the gown of one of the ballet’s goddesses. “Hold this in your arms, high, so it froths up and hides your face and stay behind me.”
They crossed the deserted Cour d’honneur, made it to the street passage and into the main building, only to find themselves face-to-face with Frère Moulin. His eyes went from the “boy” carrying the costume to Charles, but Charles kept walking and Moulin passed them without comment and disappeared into the street passage. Before Charles’s heart could stop thumping, Père Montville came out of the grand salon.
“Something wrong with the costume, maître?” he said, stopping.
“Just delivered back from being repaired, mon père,” Charles said easily, willing Pernelle to stay behind him and keep her head down.
“Good, good. Oh—about Frère Fabre, maître, you probably noticed that he’s been reassigned to the stage crew. We thought he should have something new to think about, poor boy. But he won’t be seeing to your rooms the next few days, you’ll have to see to yourself.”
“Good, yes, very thoughtful,” Charles gabbled, thinking that Jeanne d’Arc or someone was surely watching over them. How to deal with Fabre’s morning visits had been the next problem waiting for him.
When they reached his rooms, Charles pushed Pernelle through the door, shut it, and dragged the heavy carved linen chest in front of it. They collapsed onto the chest and wiped their sweating faces.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” he said in her ear. “Listen, this isn’t a busy passage, but you can’t let yourself be heard. When you have to talk, murmur, whisper.”
Pernelle nodded, dropped the costume on the floor and took off her hat with shaking hands.
Charles got wearily to his feet. “If anyone tries to come in—” He measured the bed’s height with his eyes. “I think you can squeeze under the bed. It’s not long till supper. I’ll bring you something. There’s water in the pitcher there.” He picked up the costume. “I’ll take this back to the classroom.”
Pernelle stood up, too. “It will be all right, Charles.” She smiled at him and the knot of fear in his chest suddenly didn’t matter.
When Charles reached the refectory, he saw that Père Guise, who had not been at dinner, was also not at supper. And immediately began to wonder where he was. No, he admonished himself. He had, as the rector had kept warning him, let his dislike of Guise lead him astray. Let La Reynie do his own work now, at least until the show was over. Charles turned his attention resolutely to the beef stew and when he was finished, wrapped bread, cheese, and a peach in his napkin and slipped it into the bosom of his cassock. On his way out of the refectory, Le Picart stopped him. For an anxious moment Charles thought he was going to be questioned about the stolen food.
“Is all well with the show, maître?” Le Picart said loudly, and drew Charles aside to the wall. Without waiting for an answer, he dropped his voice and said, “You saw that Père Guise has not been at meals today. In case you are trying to make too much of that, I want you to know that I had a message from him. He was called to Versailles early this morning. To confess a very ill woman who has been failing for weeks now.”
“Ah.” Charles nodded, remembering Moulin’s acid portrait of Guise galloping off to save the soul of a sick old penitent at court. “Is there any news of Mme Douté?”
“None. M. La Reynie was here this morning to ask if I had heard anything. He is beside himself over her escape.”
“Well, I pray God—” Charles stopped, thinking of the unborn child and M. Doute and Antoine. “I hardly know what to ask of God, mon père.”
“Nor do I.” Le Picart crossed himself.
Charles followed suit and made his escape.
He found Pernelle
safely in his chamber, gazing pensively out the window. When she had eaten, he pointed to the bed.
“You have that, I’ll make a bed in the study. No, don’t argue.”
“We’ll take turns with the bed.”
He felt himself go hot at the thought of both of them in the same bed, even if not at the same time. “Fine.” He took his cloak and the extra blanket from the chest. “The pot is under the bed. I’ll use the latrine downstairs if need be.”
“Good night, Charles.” Her dark eyes gleamed in the shadows falling over the room.
“Good night.”
The Compline bells rang out, Charles said his prayers, and quiet settled over the college. But the prayers didn’t bring their usual peace and he lay awake far into the night, listening to Pernelle’s soft breathing from his bed.
Chapter 32
Tuesday dawned gray and still, the air thick with damp. Charles roused Pernelle at first light and got her safely out to the stage. Père Jouvancy was already there, fiddling with his beloved seven-headed Hydra, and Charles introduced the “boy” as Jean, Mme LeClerc’s stage-struck nephew—mute, but with good ears and wits—who wanted to learn to build stage machinery. Well disposed toward anyone who would take an interest in machines like his beautiful Hydra monster, Jouvancy said that since Mme LeClerc would be watching Antoine during tomorrow’s festivities, indulging her nephew was the very least they could do. So far, no one had given “Jean,” still enveloped in the flopping hat, a second glance. So far, so good, but Charles was finding the strain unnerving.
By late morning, he was supervising the last stage details, fanning himself with his list of things to do as he watched Frère Moulin crawl out of the Hydra and hand the clanking tool bag to the listless Frère Fabre.
“You did well,” Moulin told him, “I didn’t check all the mouths, only the last two you worked on. No offense, but I’ve been at this stage business longer than you.”
“Good, I thank you both,” Charles said, going to the front of the monster to look at its mouths, forced open wider now, so as to belch more smoke over the audience.
Moulin and Fabre dropped through the trapdoor to the understage. As Charles spotted Pernelle, coiling rope around a capstan, the dinner bell rang out and the rest of the stagehands streamed toward the lay brothers’ refectory. When everyone else was gone, Charles went below stage and found her sitting cross-legged against a huge coil of rope.
“All’s well?” he asked softly.
“Well enough.” She smiled and flexed her sore arms. “I never knew making theater was so much physical work!”
“I’ll bring you some dinner.”
“Good! I could eat a horse.”
“We don’t run much to horse, thank the bon Dieu—and the bursar—but I’ll do my best.”
By the time dinner ended, the humid heat trapped under the huge canvas awning felt like a foretaste of hell. By dress rehearsal time, sweat runnelled the actors’ makeup as they took their places and stung the musicians’ eyes and made them miss notes in the overture. In the prompt wing, Charles moved a little away from a taut-faced boy in painted canvas armor. If God sent them a breeze tomorrow, he hoped it wouldn’t blow the costumes’ ripening scent straight up the audience’s nose.
The overture ended and Charles and the soldier traded nervous grins as heels clacked on the other side of the curtain. Jacques Douté spoke the prologue, and Frères Moulin and Fabre, hidden from the audience, parted the halves of the curtain to reveal a forest whose green leaves seemed to flutter in the shadows cast by the candles fixed to the side flats. Jacques’s blue satin back shimmered in the candlelight as he bowed in the direction of the audience and swept offstage. Charles sent up a prayer that all would go smoothly below stage, where Pernelle would be leaning manfully into the gear wheels that moved the stage machinery.
Clovis conquered his way through the first act and the ballet cast took over. De Lille-Hercules had surprised everyone but Beauchamps by evolving into a thoroughly convincing hero. He slew the Nemean lion with panache, cut through the obstacles of three more entrées, and arrived triumphantly in the Hesperides. Clovis and his minions returned and Charles hissed occasional prompts from the tragedy script and scribbled frantic notes, licking his quill’s end when it threatened to dry, spattering ink as he dipped it in the little inkwell on the stool beside him.
As the next ballet entrée began, he thrust his head around the flats to see how Maître Beauchamps was faring. Wigless and bowing a full-sized violin, the ballet master directed his musicians with furious swings of his head, his flying silvery hair making him look like he was playing in a cyclone. Charles drew back into his downstage wing. The music, the dancers’ passion burning their movement into the air, the actors’ voices rolling Jouvancy’s beautiful Latin off their tongues—the beauty of it all wiped everything else from his mind and filled him with a piercing happiness.
When the ballet’s last entrée began, everyone was riding high on a wave of success. On cue, the trap opened and the gloriously horrible seven-headed Hydra rose towering from hell. Glistening black and poison green, it rolled downstage toward its foes, red smoke belching from its yawning mouths as the lay brother crouched inside blew mightily up a cluster of long pipes. But only six mouths were belching smoke. Charles frowned and made a note. As he looked up, a pipe poked a hole in the monster’s canvas neck and a puff of smoke drifted toward Charles. The dancers didn’t notice. Feet flickering like hummingbirds, they bounded around the beast and thrust their spears at it. As Hercules balanced on the ball of one foot, his spear poised for the final blow, a pair of boots fell from the smokeless mouth and landed at his feet.
He ignored them like the professional he was, but Charles dashed onstage, ducked under the spear thrust, and snatched them up. Clutching them to his chest, he retreated to his wing and gaped at them in disbelief. They were the color of burnt sugar. Ungartered, but faint lines in the leather showed where garters had been. Their tops were high and folded. Charles stowed them between his feet and stood over them like a bird with one egg.
The finale ended triumphantly and everyone rushed onstage, applauding and congratulating and whooping. The rector, who had watched from a lone chair in the middle of the court, applauded with them. Notes in one hand and boots in the other, Charles praised and congratulated everyone, and tried to keep an eye on Fabre and Moulin. Armand Beauclaire and two other boys made a three-man pyramid and Beauclaire somersaulted from it, landed in front of the astonished de Lille, and made him a wildly elaborate bow. De Lille blushed with pleasure.
“We’ll use that next year, Armand, don’t forget how you did it!” Jouvancy called, laughing.
The crew came up from the understage and down from the loft, and the musicians perched on the edge of the stage. Pernelle sat beside the trap in her hat, silent and watchful. Fabre stood with Moulin in the cluster of stagehands. Jouvancy and Beauchamps dispensed praise, followed by fearsome threats should anyone—performers or crew—slack off tomorrow on the strength of today’s success. They gave their last-minute notes and corrections and then it was Charles’s turn. Charles put the boots down beside him and looked at his notes, but before he could begin, Le Picart, who was standing near the musicians, nodded toward the boots with a questioning look. Charles gave him a small nod and tackled his short critique of the performance.
“And one more thing,” he said, as he finished. “Most of you didn’t see that there was a problem with the Hydra. One mouth was blocked and the smoke couldn’t get out. The smoke pipe dislodged the blockage.” He held up the boots. “Whose are these?”
Everyone jostled, peered, disclaimed, and shrugged. Frowning at the thought that someone might play fast and loose with his precious Hydra, Jouvancy took the boots and examined them closely.
“Mmm—no,” he said, “not ours. They’re good boots, though,” he added wistfully, always covetous of discards for costumes.
“Me, I’ll take them, if no one else does,” someone joked.
“Give the rest of us a chance!” Moulin pushed his way to the front. “They look a good fit for me.”
Charles handed him a boot. Moulin took off his shoe, tugged the boot on over his stocking, put his foot down, and winced.
“My poor big toe is folded in half. Oh, well, too bad.” He pulled the boot off. “Just my luck. Anyone else? You, Frère Fabre, you could use some good news and your dainty foot looks the right size!”
Laughing students and brothers pushed Fabre forward. He shook his head and tried to draw back, but Moulin leaned down and picked up the boy’s foot, making Fabre grab his shoulder for balance. Moulin pulled off the shoe, shoved on the boot, and set Fabre’s foot firmly on the floor.
“There.” He felt Fabre’s toes and tugged up the boot’s top. “A perfect fit, mon frère, this is your very lucky day!”
“They’re not mine.” Fabre started to pull the boot off.
Moulin stopped him, laughing. “But they can be yours now.” He made a half bow to Jouvancy. “If no one minds.”
Charles leaned down to feel the boot’s fit. “Put this one on, too, mon frère,” he said pleasantly. “They really do seem to fit you. Wait here one little moment.”
Looking at his notes, as though he’d just remembered an important question, he hurried to Le Picart and drew him a little distance away, talking low and fast.
“You’re sure they’re the same boots?” the rector said, gesturing at the scenery, as though that were their subject.
“As sure as I can be, though the spur garters are gone. Frère Fabre worked on the Hydra’s mouths this morning. Frère Moulin checked what he’d done, but he only checked two of the mouths. Mon père, Frère Fabre tried hard to mislead us about who left the poison for Antoine, and now his sister stands accused. And the boots of the man who attacked Antoine and tried to kill me fit him perfectly.”