Pernelle's Escape : A Rhetoric of Death Novella (9781101585832)

by Rock, Judith

  Bertamelli sat. Two tears spilled from his wounded black eyes and he wiped them with the edge of his gown, gazing at Charles like a martyr forgiving his tormentors. The room filled slowly with a quiet, dogged murmuring that Aristotle surely would not have recognized as his native language.

  Charles left the lectern and opened one of the long windows, letting in a rush of the unseasonably cool air the storm had brought. The rain had stopped, leaving behind the music of water dripping from the blue slate roofs and splashing onto the courtyard gravel. Charles had come to the school from the south of France less than a year ago, but he’d quickly learned to love Louis le Grand’s 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 brick with corners and windows trimmed in stone. 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. This year’s ballet was called La France Victorieuse sous Louis le Grand. The title, like the school’s name, was in honor of King Louis XIV. Charles knew that one reason for the trouble he was having with the livret was his dislike of Louis XIV’s passion for glory, which the ballet would so grandly praise. Charles especially deplored the king’s indifference to his people’s suffering under the draconian taxes that paid for the glory-bringing wars. And he particularly loathed the Most Christian King of France, as Louis styled himself, for outlawing and hunting France’s Protestants—called Huguenots—in God’s name. Part of his own family was Protestant, and he knew their suffering all too well.

  But Holy Mother Church—the Catholic Church—had nurtured Charles all his life, and he loved her. He was certain that God was Love. Demanding, relentless, even terrifying Love, but Love nonetheless. Which meant that cruelty in God’s name was blasphemy. Which amounted to calling the king a blasphemer. Which was treason, pure and simple.

  Even as Charles grappled with that thought, King Louis XIV himself stared blindly 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 storm-felled 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 the dripping water dig a small pool in the gravel under the window. The tiny but deepening pool comforted him a little. 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 . . . But even as he thought it, he knew it was impossible. Père Jouvancy would never let it pass. Of course he wouldn’t, it would be treason on the college stage, the cool-eyed critic in him said acidly. The king is the divinely anointed body of France. Kings preserve order. Order allows good to flourish. Charles shook his head. But whose good? he thought back at it. Not waiting for its predictable answer, he 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 who shepherded groups of boarding students to and from classes and saw that their chambers had sheets, candles, braziers, and the like.

  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 Le Picart’s 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, mon père. But Père Montville told me as we were leaving the refectory after dinner that he’s much better and able to eat now.”

  “Good.” The rector studied Charles for a moment in silence. “Will you come with me to the infirmary? I must speak with him. 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 the previous month 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 as Le Picart and Charles entered 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 improved 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.”

  “Sit, mon père, if you have the time,” Jouvancy said hopefully, and Le Picart pulled the only stool nearer and sat down. As befitted a lowly scholastic, Charles remained standing at the foot of the bed.

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

  Charles swallowed hard. In several 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.

  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, opera
s, even.”

  Le Picart laughed. “That is as good an opening as any for what I have come to say. Because I do want you to go 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’re well enough to travel, I want you to go to Versailles.”

  Jouvancy blinked. “And 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’s mother was a cousin of the d’Aubignés. But that makes me as distant as China from the trunk of the family tree,” Jouvancy said. “For which I am thankful when I think of how worthless Madame de Maintenon’s father was. He was in prison when she was born, did you know that? For conspiring against Cardinal Richelieu—which at least made a change, since he was more often jailed for debt and dueling. His daughter, though, 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 our family connection was not mentioned.”

  “Still, that you have met her is to the good. And what Maître du Luc has said is true. Consider, mon père,” Le Picart said, leaning forward in his chair. “You are a distant relation of the king’s wife, which, as Maître du Luc has said, makes you a relation by marriage to Louis himself, and that is going to be useful. I am just returned from Versailles, where 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. “Afterward, I knocked at Père La Chaise’s door on the chance that he was there rather than at the Professed House.” The Jesuit Père François La Chaise, the king’s confessor, lived at the Jesuit Professed House in Paris when he was not with the king. “He was not, and as I turned from the door, I met Madame de Maintenon and her ladies in the corridor. I uncovered my head and made my reverence. She glared—at Père La Chaise’s door and at me. She did acknowledge me with a ‘mon père,’ though 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 us Jesuits.” He looked questioningly at the rector. “I’ve heard that Père La Chaise was even present at 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. Rumors even deny the marriage. She is very angry at Père La Chaise over that. He has encouraged the king to keep the marriage secret because of her rank. He and others fear the outcry there would be if the marriage were publicly proclaimed. Glory must shimmer around everything connected to the king of France, 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 I’m sure she was thinking it.”

  “What nickname?” Charles said.

  Jouvancy looked at Charles in momentary surprise. “Oh. Of course. I doubt it ever went as far as Languedoc. Long before the king married Madame de Maintenon, she was also very angry at Père La Chaise for his refusal to force the king to part with his mistress, Madame de Montespan. La Montespan and the king did part, finally—and 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. “Is she gutter-mouthed?”

  “Yes, she did. And no, she isn’t,” Le Picart said. “She’s not low born—just not noble. And she’s normally very uprightly righteous. I don’t think she’d call him that now; it would be below her new dignity. But it’s common knowledge that she would love to see Père La Chaise replaced. With a confessor of a severer piety like her own. And,” he added dryly, “of a more pliant nature. Unfortunately, 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, because he is our Jesuit presence there, our conduit of knowledge about and influence on court affairs. Beyond that, I believe that Père La Chaise is a good director of the king’s conscience. He knows how to influence without demanding, since who could 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 flattery and 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 looked in surprise from one to the other. “You’d give that away?”

  “Why not?” Le Picart was frowning at his interruption. “It is ours to give. Père Jouvancy’s family gave it to us when he came here to teach. And all the better if Madame de Maintenon admired it when she visited the chapel during the summer performance.” 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 to Versailles, mon père. The gift will mean that much more, coming from the hands of a family connection.”

  So this was why Le Picart had brought him on this visit, Charles thought in dismay. He was going to be left even longer in charge of the rhetoric class and the approaching rehearsals. In spite of himself, Charles said, “But why now? I mean—is this the best time?”

  The two priests gazed expressionlessly at him. Le Picart said dangerously, “Have you a better plan, Maître du Luc? Since you often do have what you consider a better plan.”

  “No, no, mon père. I only wondered—I mean—” Charles rummaged through his mind for something to say that didn’t reek of self-interest. “Do we have a—a pretext, if I may put it that way—for giving the relic now?”

  “Since you are so selflessly concerned,” the rector said, “I will tell you that in fact, we do.” He turned to Jouvancy. “It is now nearly a year since Madame de Maintenon founded her beloved school for impoverished noble daughters. Saint Cyr opened last July. So we are sending her this relic of
Saint Ursula as a compliment to a fellow educator. What better gift and protection for a girls’ school than a relic of Saint Ursula and her ten thousand—or is it eleven thousand?—sister virgins? We must contrive the presentation to take place in the presence of Père La Chaise—”

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

  “That may be too much to hope for. The king is only recently back from inspecting his border fortresses and may have too much business in hand. 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 Madame de Maintenon’s mind about Jesuits, of course. But it will give the king more reason to ignore her complaints, and will give Père La Chaise a little more ammunition for countering them.” He looked down the room and called softly to the infirmarian. “Frère Brunet, a moment, please?”

  Brunet turned from bending over the unhappy 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 eyed Jouvancy. “Riding?”

  “Yes.”

  The infirmarian tsked disapprovingly. “Not for another two weeks, 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 by the end of this week. If the weather is dry and warm. And if someone is with him. And if when he arrives, he goes straight to bed and rests until the morrow. And no late nights, mind you,” he said, with mock severity, 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. “He will not go alone, mon frère.” He smiled at Jouvancy. “I will go, as will our assistant rector, Père Montville.” He turned to Charles. “Maître du Luc, you will go, also.”