The Whispering of Bones

by Judith Rock

  Charles sighed inwardly and tried again. “In her last letter, Maman said your ship was in the Mediterranean. Why are you in Paris?”

  Charles-François’s long nose was pinched with anger. “I came to see Amaury de Corbet.”

  Charles stared at his cousin. He hadn’t heard that name in ten years. Amaury de Corbet was a young nobleman who had been with them at the Battle of Cassel, and who had later kept Charles from bleeding to death when he was wounded at St. Omer.

  “I didn’t know Amaury was from Paris,” Charles said, trying not to let Charles-François see how hard the name had hit him. “I haven’t seen him since I left the army. But that’s hardly surprising. I barely knew him.”

  “Oh, he isn’t from Paris. So you really don’t know that after you used your little graze”—he glanced disdainfully at Charles’s shoulder—“as an excuse to quit fighting, Amaury followed me into the Royal Marine? He was under my command these last ten years. Most of the time—except when he got drunk and talked about you and how nobly selfless and penitent you were to join your Society, damn you—he was the best officer on my ship.”

  “How did he know I had become a Jesuit?”

  “That, I admit, is my fault. When he learned I’m your cousin, he asked about you and I told him,” Charles-François said sourly. “Amaury might have talked now and again about leaving, but put a sword or a musket in his hands and he forgot all that soon enough. Until two years ago, when his father died. Monsieur de Corbet was a good military man, he’d been a commander in the Dutch war and after. And he’d told Amaury that if he went on about his damned guilt and left the military, he’d disinherit him. Not that he had so much, but without it, Amaury had nothing.” Charles-François sighed in disgust. “But when Monsieur de Corbet died, Amaury started talking about you and sin and God so much it made me sick. But losing a father hits a man hard, and I tried to think it was just that. Until one fine morning a few weeks ago, when Amaury showed me an official letter granting him permission to leave the navy.” Charles-François came so close that Charles could smell the reek of tobacco on his breath. “He left because of you. Because of you and what you did at Cassel.”

  Charles gazed blindly at the floor, seeing the horror of that sunlit noon outside Cassel’s walls. The king’s army had the Netherlands city under siege. Charles-François and Amaury de Corbet, each an officer with a small squadron of men, were near the front line of the siege encampment that day. Charles, sometimes sent out as a scout, had been passing on information to Amaury. Things were quiet and most of the soldiers were eating their midday bread and cheese. Two of Amaury’s men started toward a pair of dilapidated cottages in a nearby muddy field, wondering loudly to each other if anything edible had been left in them. Musket fire burst from a cottage doorway. One of the soldiers was killed and the other wounded. The rest of their squadron charged the cottages, ignoring Amaury’s orders when he tried to stop them. Charles’s cousin and his squad joined the charge. Charles saw that Amaury—who was even younger and more inexperienced than the nineteen-year-old Charles—couldn’t control his men. Trying to help, Charles grabbed his cousin, thinking that if Charles-François was stopped, his soldiers would stop, too. But as Charles tackled his cousin, another shot from the cottages hit Charles-François in the arm. After that, the world turned red and stinking. The cottages were full of refugees and one of the women had a musket. All of them were slaughtered—several women, a half dozen children, and one old man. Charles and Amaury had been able to do nothing.

  Or were you too afraid to do anything? Charles’s inner voice said, as it had said more times than he could count. Wrenching himself away from the memories, he realized that his cousin was talking to him again.

  “—so I’m telling you, if you know what’s good for you, you’re going to help me get Amaury out of your Novice House!”

  Charles squinted in bewilderment at his cousin. “What does the Novice House have to do with this?”

  “Have you lost your ears as well as your balls? I tell you, Amaury has gone mad enough to think he wants to be a Jesuit. He’s in your Paris Novice House!” Charles-François rocked forward onto his toes, his round dark eyes bulging with anger. “And if you don’t help me get him out, I will personally see to it that every Jesuit on earth knows what a slinking”—he pushed Charles lightly in the chest—“damned”—he pushed him again, and Charles stumbled backward—“coward you are!”

  It was as though Charles’s life as a Jesuit had never been. He shoved his cousin roughly away and reached for the sword that hadn’t been at his side since he walked through the door of the Avignon Novice House eight years ago. The du Lucs were minor nobles, and in the code of nobility, only blood could wipe away Charles-François’s insult. Then the moment of rage passed and Charles stood rigid and silent.

  But Charles-François read his face all too well. “Shall I lend you a sword so you can invite me into the street? No? You really did leave your manhood at Cassel, didn’t you? Too bad it wasn’t you the peasant woman killed. Before you tried to make Amaury stop his men from killing the king’s enemies.”

  “Enemies? Those were terrified peasants you helped Amaury’s men murder. Starving women and children trying to hide from war, for God’s sake!”

  “Anyone who shoots at the king’s soldiers is an enemy and deserves everything he—or she—gets! But Amaury didn’t deserve the guilt you left him with. You ruined him. Now you’ve taken him from his rightful place as a fighting man. Just like you took my arm and half my fighting skill!”

  “God calls whom He calls,” Charles said. “And in His own good time.” He suddenly almost pitied his cousin. “However you judge what I did at Cassel, if Amaury has offered himself to the Society, that’s the opposite of cowardice. Though I don’t expect you to understand that.”

  Charles-François shook the stump of his arm at Charles, the pinned sleeve flapping like a small pennant. “What I understand is that if you hadn’t pulled me in front of you to save yourself from that damned woman’s shot, I’d still have two good arms to fight with!”

  “If you hadn’t urged on Amaury’s men and your own to slaughter her and the rest of them, you’d still have two good arms. They were miserable refugees, Charlot, and I pulled you back to stop you trying to kill them—why can’t you understand that? God knows I’ve always been desperately sorry the shot hit you.”

  “You hid behind me, you were too rabbit-scared to fight peasants, even after they killed one of Amaury’s soldiers and wounded another. If you’d had the balls to help us like you should have, Amaury wouldn’t have slowly rotted inside all these years. He wouldn’t be trying to hide in your damned Society now!” Charles-François was shouting and spraying spit. “His men and mine only did their duty! He’s guilty of nothing but listening to you. But you—you’re guilty as hell itself!”

  Charles folded his hands so tightly that he felt the small bones being pulled out of place. A door opened at the end of the salon and Père Montville, the Prefect of Studies in charge of day students, put his head out of his office. His round, normally pleasant face was dark with displeasure and he frowned from Charles to his cousin. “What is the meaning of this uproar, maître?”

  Charles tried to keep his voice neutral. “Mon père, please forgive the disturbance.”

  “Please remind your guest that this is a religious house.”

  “Yes, mon père.”

  Montville withdrew into his office and shut the door.

  Grinning, knowing that Charles would bite his tongue off now rather than react, Charles-François flicked a finger against Charles’s chest. “Yes, mon père. No, mon père. Just a handsome little automaton carrying out orders, aren’t you? And that’s what your Society will make of Amaury.” The grin vanished and the man’s mouth twisted with hatred. “You make me sick! I meant what I said; I’ll see that every Jesuit on earth knows what you are and what you did. Your Society�
�s a military order, what use do they have for cowards?”

  Charles shook his head wearily. “No, we aren’t a military order.”

  But Charlot wasn’t listening. “I’ll go to your Superior General in Rome, if I have to. You’ve only taken first vows. They’ll throw you out fast enough. You won’t be able to hide your gutlessness any longer in your safe Jesuit nest, where you obey and don’t have to think.”

  Charles lifted his gaze and looked at his cousin. “Most men carry out someone’s orders. I decided not to carry out any more orders to kill. As Amaury apparently has also decided. God go with you, Charles-François.”

  Charles walked out the rear door of the salon, ignoring his cousin’s shouted demand to come back, and walked straight into Père Le Picart.

  “Forgive me, mon père—”

  The rector was looking beyond him into the salon. “Who is shouting?”

  “My cousin. He’s angry.”

  “So I gather. Angry at you?”

  Before Charles could answer, Charles-François was at his heels, pushing him aside.

  “You don’t know what a coward my dear cousin Charles is, do you?” he challenged the rector. “You have a coward in the pope’s army. That’s what you Jesuits are, aren’t you?”

  “No,” Le Picart said quietly. “Not his army.”

  Momentarily silenced, Charles-François gaped at him. Charles said nothing. He was more than willing to let the rector face his cousin down, and he didn’t care whether that was obedience or cowardice. Whichever it was, he wanted his cousin to go and take his fury with him.

  “We were established to help souls, monsieur,” Le Picart said with deceptive mildness. “To teach and counsel, to help the poor, and work in the world in all its variety. How can we help you?”

  “You can give up Amaury de Corbet, who’s in your Novice House! Because my cowardly cousin enticed him there. He—”

  Le Picart took a step toward Charles-François and held up a sinewy hand. To Charles’s surprise, his cousin’s mouth snapped shut.

  “Enticed him?” The rector looked questioningly at Charles.

  “I haven’t seen Amaury de Corbet since I left the army, mon père.”

  “Monsieur de Vintimille du Luc, I have nothing to do with the Novice House. But you may certainly go there and speak with its rector. I wish you a blessed evening and a peaceful night. You may go out the way you came in.”

  The rector and Charles-François stared at each other until, incandescent with fury, Charles-François strode back into the salon. Charles and Le Picart stayed where they were until they heard the street passage door open and slam shut.

  “Well.” The rector looked thoughtfully at Charles. “Why do I have a feeling he’ll be back?”

  Charles sighed. “Because he will, when he doesn’t get what he wants at the Novice House.”

  “Come and tell me what all that was about. I think I should be armed with the facts when he returns.”

  Suddenly so tired he was weaving as he walked, Charles followed the rector to his office. “How is Père Dainville?” he asked, as Le Picart lit a small tallow candle and waved away its pungent smoke.

  “There’s no change yet.” Le Picart settled himself behind his desk. “Frère Brunet thinks God may be about to take him. It will be very hard to let him go.” He gazed sadly at the candle’s small yellow flame. “Père Dainville has been a Jesuit as long as I’ve been alive. And a member of this house most of those years. I’ve rarely known a man so able to see into the souls of others. I doubt there’s a better confessor in the Society.”

  Charles nodded, wondering whether Le Picart knew about Dainville’s turbulent youth. “I’m grateful that he’s been my confessor.”

  The rector nodded. “Now tell me about your cousin and his accusations.”

  Something close to panic swept through Charles. He couldn’t tell the whole truth. He’d never told even Père Dainville about that terrible noon outside Cassel.

  Le Picart was watching Charles in alarm. “Sit down, maître. You’ve gone as white as your shirt.”

  Charles put an involuntary hand to the edge of white linen showing above his cassock collar, as though the touch of something so ordinary might help him, and sank into the chair in front of the desk. “My cousin and I have disliked each other since we were children,” he said carefully. “Some part of his anger means no more than that.”

  Le Picart waited.

  “As you saw,” Charles went on reluctantly, “he has lost an arm. We were both wounded in the Spanish Netherlands. He at Cassel, and I at Saint Omer a few days later. He’s always blamed me for the loss of his arm.”

  “Why?”

  Charles folded his hands together and fixed his eyes on the small, plain crucifix on the wall beyond Le Picart. “There was musket fire from some ruined cottages near the Cassel wall. A soldier was killed and another wounded. Their comrades ignored their very young captain’s order to stand off—the captain was the man my cousin was talking about, Amaury de Corbet. The soldiers attacked the cottages. A peasant woman had fired the shots. A little group of peasants, refugees from some village, had found a musket somewhere and hidden in the cottages. I tried to help de Corbet stop his men, but my cousin and his own men joined the attack. I was trying to hold my cousin back when another shot from the cottages hit his arm. He thinks I tried to hide behind him and that’s why he was wounded.” Charles fell silent.

  The rector sighed and crossed himself. Charles was afraid that if he moved, his control would shatter. He had never told this story to anyone. And he’d still kept back the worst part.

  “Is there more?” the rector said gently.

  “A few days later, I was shot at the battle of Saint Omer and de Corbet saved my life. But I didn’t see him again after that.” He finally allowed himself to look at Le Picart. “Do you think I might be able to see him in the Novice House? When I go there to study with Père Quellier?”

  The rector’s cool gray eyes searched Charles’s face. “Given that Monsieur de Corbet saved your life, I imagine that Père Guymond—the Novice House rector—would allow you to see him briefly. Are you going to tell Monsieur de Corbet that your cousin is searching for him?”

  “No. And if my cousin comes here again, I won’t tell him I’ve seen Amaury.”

  Le Picart nodded. “Good. If Monsieur de Vintimille du Luc goes to the Novice House as angry as he left us, it’s certain that he’ll be turned away in short order. Even if he masters himself, it’s unlikely that de Corbet will be allowed to see a layman this early in his novitiate. So don’t worry about him.” The rector’s eyes were still on Charles, and full of concern. “This has been an afternoon of shocks for you and I know that you missed supper. Go to the kitchen and get something before you return to your chamber.”

  “Thank you, mon père.” Charles stood up. “But Père Dainville—will you—”

  “I will let you know if there is a change.” The rector stood, too, and came around the desk to put a hand on Charles’s sleeve. “I’m going back to sit with him. I think that whatever happens, he will be at peace. It is your own peace that should concern you now.”

  Nearly undone by the compassion on his superior’s face, Charles made his escape, his secret coiled like a little snake in his heart.

  CHAPTER 4

  TUESDAY EVENING INTO THE FEAST OF ST. HILARION,

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1687

  Charles forced down the bread and warmed-over mutton stew the kitchen brothers gave him and went to his chamber. The city’s bells were ringing Compline, the last of the day’s hours of prayer, and when he opened his chamber window, the bells’ clamor beat in his body as though the sound struck his ribs as well as his ears. The wind had died, leaving the city chilled, but he stayed at the window and shut his eyes, murmuring the first few Compline prayers.

  “God, come to
my assistance . . . make speed to save me . . .” But Père Dainville’s stroke-twisted face and the smooth young face of the murdered man in the Carmelites’ well chamber kept coming between him and the words. He prayed for his confessor’s recovery, for the murdered man’s soul, and that the killer would be found. But it seemed to him that his prayers refused to “rise.” Not that he really thought God was “up,” but often when he prayed, he felt that what he offered or asked broke free of himself and went—somewhere. Help me, he begged silently. And then, forgive me.

  But those prayers, too, went nowhere. The image of Dainville and the murdered young man were pushed out by older memories. Cassel’s walls rose again in his mind, and he heard the peasants’ shots, saw Amaury de Corbet’s soldiers fall, saw their enraged comrades charging the war-ruined cottages. He saw the woman with the musket, wide-eyed with fury and terror in the first cottage’s doorway, felt his cousin fall against him as her shot hit home. He saw himself finally reach the cottage door where Amaury stood, ashen and sick. The woman who’d wounded Charles-François, all the children but one, and an old man lay dead in their blood. The earthen floor was slick with it. Charles shouted at the soldier who had his musket trained on the little boy, but the soldier fired. The jubilant men moved on to the next house. Sick with horror, Charles leveled his musket at their backs. And then let the barrel drop. The men were his fellow soldiers. If he shot them, he would die. Either there and then, or soon after by hanging. So he stood still, listening helplessly to women screaming in the second cottage. He hadn’t hidden behind Charles-François, or caused his cousin the loss of his arm. But Charles-François’s assessment was right—he was a coward.

  Except for the partial account he’d given Le Picart, he’d never told anyone about that day at Cassel, not even his confessors. His mother knew, but only because she’d pieced together things he’d said during the fever that came after his wound. She’d reassured him over and over that he hadn’t fired his musket because the men were the king’s soldiers and he was loyal. But she was wrong. He hadn’t fired his musket because he’d been afraid. When he began to recover, he’d prayed constantly for forgiveness. Just before he’d entered the Jesuit Novice House in Avignon, his mother had told him flatly that he’d never hear God’s forgiveness until he stopped shouting accusations at himself.