The Whispering of Bones

by Judith Rock

  “But did you hear her this morning?” one of them said, loudly aggrieved, as he climbed. The irreverence!”

  “Shhh. I think everyone in the chapel must have heard her,” his companion replied, and Charles realized they were talking about the two women who had argued after Mass.

  “Why on earth her husband left her the business, I cannot fathom,” the first man said, shaking his white head. “I tell you, a self-respecting cleric can hardly go into the shop now, she’s selling such blasphemy!”

  “Oh?” His companion leaned closer. “More obscene books from Holland?”

  “Those, no doubt, but even worse, she’s got Descartes displayed downstairs—not to mention that poor, bitter-tempered Pascal! How that man could be so blind to God’s good gifts I cannot fathom. And we taught Descartes—how he could—”

  “Well, Pascal and the Jansenists are at least Catholics . . .”

  The two men made their way through the door, and Charles closed it thankfully as the college clock chimed the half hour. As he went briskly down the stairs, Damiot caught up with him. “Where do you go now?” he said.

  “I go to Père Remy, here in the fathers’ courtyard, for the Saint Thomas Aquinas class.”

  “How do you like the class? And how many of you are there?”

  “There are eight of us starting theology. As for the class, it’s all right. Except that because of my height, I’m assigned to the back bench, and Père Remy is hard to hear. Which is not going to make Saint Thomas any clearer.”

  Damiot grimaced in commiseration. “Yes, Thomas can be obscure enough without that. And after Thomas, what do you do?”

  “I have my first session on Saint Augustine at the Novice House. With Père Quellier. The eight of us go in pairs on different days. I go with Maître Richaud,” Charles finished ruefully.

  “You’re fortunate. He’s a great authority.”

  “Oh? Maître Richaud is?” Charles said innocently.

  “That doesn’t deserve an answer. So far as I know, Maître Richaud is an authority on nothing but sheets.” Until now, Richaud had been a cubiculaire, overseeing student chambers and shepherding boarding students through their daily schedules. “Well, keep your heart up, maître, Père Quellier is worth a little suffering.”

  “I hope so,” Charles said with a sigh. “May all your students be bright today.”

  “Hmmph. That is tantamount to hoping that our Lord will come back to earth before dinner. Which one may hope for without expecting it.” But Damiot strode eagerly toward the Cour d’honneur and his first Latin grammar class of the day.

  As Charles crossed the court to an old timbered house where the scholastics’ classes were held, the frost was melting on the courtyard’s north wall, and the sun was finally high enough to chase shadows. Glad to be going inside, he pushed open the ancient house’s weathered oak door. The smell of old wool met him, from generations of cassocks perpetually damp in Parisian weather, and under it the smells of tansy and rue, evidence of diligent lay brothers fighting a century and more of fleas.

  Charles was the last to arrive in the classroom. As he took his seat on the last of the four short benches, the class bell began to ring and Père Valère Remy moved from his chair to the lectern.

  “Please stand,” Remy said, his soft voice nearly inaudible and his hunched shoulders rising and falling in what looked to Charles like a sigh of resignation.

  The eight scholastics rose to their feet, Remy offered up a not very hopeful prayer for the grace of learning, and the scholastics sat down again.

  Remy surveyed them. His angular face was pale and lined, and his large brown eyes looked oddly vulnerable. “I begin,” he said, “by reminding you once more that you studied philosophy earlier in your scholastic years because philosophy is the beginning of theology, the foundation of the thirst for a systematic knowledge of God. Never forget that, because you will need all the philosophy you learned in order to grasp what Saint Thomas and I attempt to teach you now.” That dire reminder given, he swept a doubtful gaze over the class. “As I said at our last meeting, Saint Thomas lived for several years at the Dominican monastery just up the hill from us and was a revered teacher at the University. Not, of course, revered by everyone, since rivalry at the University four hundred fifty years ago was much what it is now. Thomas had a gift of divine clarity. He made for us a very useful system for understanding God, nature, and humanity. He is called the Angelic Doctor for good reason.” Remy cocked an eyebrow at his students, and the ghost of a smile came and went on his face. “You would think his Dominican brothers, who still live just up the hill beside the wall, might enjoy some of that same clear thinking. But apparently not, since they are on the point of taking us to court over our brotherly request that they stop siphoning more than their share of water from our common springwater pipe.”

  The students smiled and nodded dutifully, the water dispute having begun back in June and being common knowledge.

  “But we should have patience with them for failing to measure up to Saint Thomas, since most of us are lesser beings than our own Saint Ignatius was. So. In the first article of the Summa Theologia, we find . . .” Remy’s voice dropped into its usual learned murmur.

  Charles checked the point of his quill, rearranged his paper and the square of board under it, and tried to be grateful that they were studying only selected parts of Thomas’s Summa Theologia, which was the saint’s four-thousand-page “summary” of theology. Straining to hear the lecture, Charles began making notes and trying not to look out the window every few sentences to see from the sun how much time had passed, and how soon he could go to the Novice House and ask to see Amaury de Corbet.

  CHAPTER 5

  Charles was first out of the room when the class was dismissed. But he had to wait for Maître Richaud, who was last out, his measured pace and bowed head proclaiming—as it was meant to—his great humility.

  “Shall we go, maître?” Charles forced a smile and started toward the Cour d’honneur and the street passage.

  “I have to go and get another pen.”

  “Why?” Charles turned around.

  “My quill broke just now.”

  “Please be quick,” Charles said as mildly as he could, “or we’ll be late. I’ll be at the postern.”

  Richaud bowed his head and paced slowly away. Charles sighed and went on to the stone street passage that ran beneath the main building to the postern door. Frère Martin, the doorkeeper, was enthroned on a stool at the street end of the passage.

  “A fine morning, maître!” he said. “I always love the bite of autumn air. Makes the brain work better, don’t you think? I even guessed the riddle Marie-Ange brought me this morning when she came to ask after Père Dainville. Poor little maid, I didn’t have any good news for her, they say he’s just the same. But then she told me the September riddle from the Mercure—oh, not that the baker can afford to buy it,” he said, seeing Charles’s surprise. “But its riddles are always passed around the quartier, you know. And I solved this one! Got a little cake for my trouble, too; she always brings me something.”

  “Well done,” Charles said, smiling. The Mercure Galant, the news publication that reviewed the college theatre productions, was printed as a small, calf-bound book at the end of every month, and always included new riddles. “What was the answer?”

  “Queen of Hungary water!” The lay brother’s canvas-aproned bulk shook as he laughed. “And hard enough it was to follow the clues, I can tell you. But then maybe I had an advantage, because Frère Brunet uses Hungary water on my rheumatics, rubs it on my knees when I can hardly stand up. And it works, maître; remember that when you’re as old as me! You can drink it, too, which is just as good for you, since it’s mostly brandy!” He winked at Charles and glanced toward the courtyard. “Waiting for someone?”

  “Maître Richaud and I are going to the Novice House
.”

  “Ah. Him. I’ll tell you in confidence that the lay brothers who look after the boarding students’ lodgings are glad to see the back of him. And we’re about to see the front of him,” Martin finished, as footsteps echoed behind Charles.

  “Fortunate us. A blessed day to you, Frère Martin.”

  The lay brother opened the postern and Charles was out the door like an arrow. Only to stop again and wait for Richaud to catch up.

  “We have something of a walk, maître,” Charles said. “Can you go a little faster?”

  Richaud’s flat black gaze under the slightly drooping brim of his black hat grew a shade more disapproving. “Jesuits are not supposed to make a spectacle of themselves in the streets.”

  “True. Jesuits are also supposed to be on time for their obligations.” The clock in the college tower began to chime. “We have exactly a quarter of an hour to arrive at the rue du Pot-de-Fer and find out where we are to meet our teacher. It would be rude indeed to be late on our first day.”

  Richaud grudgingly admitted that and walked a little faster, though still not fast enough to suit Charles. But since surging ahead of one’s companion in the street actually did count as making something of a spectacle, he shortened his stride to match Richaud’s. As they walked up the hill toward the rue des Cordeliers, Charles heard someone singing in the corner house, and his own steps lagged. It was the same song about the pleasure and danger of love, and the same singer. He looked up at the window where he’d seen the woman singing the night before, but no one was there.

  “Le plaisir de vous voir est un plaisir extrême,

  mais il est dangereux . . .”

  An exasperated cry from within the house cut off the words. “Stop your noise! Customers are waiting!”

  Richaud walked on, but Charles was looking at the long sign hung above the house door. At the feet of a saint with halo and staff, a black dog with a red ball in his mouth was pawing at the saint’s robe, inviting him to play. Beneath the sign was a table piled with books, and the customers coming out of the shop had books under their arms. Richaud stopped and turned around.

  “You said we were going to be late,” he called disapprovingly. “And you shouldn’t be listening to a woman singing,” he added, when Charles caught up with him.

  “I should put my fingers in my ears? And she’s not singing now.”

  As they walked along the rue des Cordeliers and past the Sorbonne church, Charles wasn’t thinking about the woman singing, but about a book he’d seen on the table beside the shop door. It was called Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, by someone named de Fontenelle, and piqued his curiosity. He wished they were going to spend the rest of the morning talking about it instead of St. Augustine’s Confessions. As they passed through the old St. Michel gate and out into the St. Germain suburb, Charles stopped and picked up a handful of turnips for a pretty street vendor who’d spilled them from her basket. Which, of course, earned him a frown from Richaud. But Charles saw out of the corner of his eye that Richaud’s head swiveled in a near half circle to watch the girl’s hip-swaying retreat along the road. Charles started to comment in retaliation for Richaud’s chiding about the singer, but then he realized that it was the first time he’d seen Richaud show appreciation of anything, and he kept quiet. They walked in silence until they turned right onto the rue du Pot-de-Fer.

  “There it is,” Charles said. He pointed to the cross on the stone bell tower of the Novice House church, which showed above the neighboring roofs. Tall trees bright with autumn leaves leaned over garden walls along the street and gave the place almost the feel of country. They passed the church and stopped at arched double doors just beyond. Charles pulled the bell rope and a middle-aged lay brother opened the door, swept shrewd eyes over them, and stepped aside to let them in.

  “I was told you’d be coming,” the brother said. “Père Quellier will see you in his antechamber.”

  He led them along a gallery whose windows looked into a garden. At the gallery’s end, a novice, wearing cloth slippers and a loose black robe to protect his cassock from dust, was industriously sweeping the floor at the bottom of a staircase. For a moment, Charles wondered if he was Amaury de Corbet, then saw that he was the age Amaury had been when Charles last saw him—Amaury, like Charles, would be ten years older now, of course. The young man stepped aside, eyes modestly lowered, and the lay brother led Charles and Richaud up to the next floor, which had been the “noble floor” when the building was the private townhouse of the Mèzieres family. He tapped at an oak door halfway along the corridor.

  “Entrez.”

  A lean, youngish priest was seated at a table in the center of a small anteroom. It was much like any other Jesuit room, with plain white walls, bare floor, beamed ceiling, and a wooden crucifix hung opposite the door. The priest’s narrow, light eyes darted between his new students.

  “Maître Richaud?”

  As Richaud bowed, his satchel swung forward and hit the table, making it slide a little on the floor. The priest sighed audibly, pushed the table back into alignment, and turned to Charles.

  “And you must be Maître du Luc.”

  Charles clamped his satchel between his arm and his side and bowed.

  Something between approval and relief showed on the priest’s face. “I am Père Quellier. Sit. Take out your quills and paper.”

  They sat, took what they needed from their satchels, put the satchels on the floor, and waited.

  “You are here to learn something of Saint Augustine. So let us begin.” He pointed at the thick volume before him. “The saint’s Confessions were written in the fourth century after Christ. They are the extraordinary record of a man’s search for God. Saint Augustine is far more forthcoming than most men about his longings and failings. In fact, you probably already know at least one thing he said.” With what might have been the beginning of a smile on his thin lips, he eyed them. “Do you?”

  Charles felt Richaud stiffen beside him and heard him give a disdainful little sniff.

  “Maître Richaud?” Quellier said blandly, but watching him like a hawk hovering above a rabbit. “I think that you do know what the saint said. Tell us, please.”

  Charles turned politely toward his companion and tried to keep his face appropriately straight. He was fairly sure of what was coming. Richaud gave the teacher a sweet, sad smile.

  “Yes, mon père, I do know something.”

  “Speak.”

  “The saint prayed—as, of course, we all must—for the gift of chastity.” Richaud shuddered delicately. “But then he succumbed to the Enemy’s urging and begged the bon Dieu not to give him that gift yet.” He bowed his head. “He even had a child,” he whispered. But the whispering was eager, almost hissing. “Saint Augustine fathered a bastard!”

  The hawk struck, but very gently. “And the fact that the saint was imperfect in this way troubles you?”

  The rabbit looked up in surprise. “Of course, mon père. Must it not trouble any Jesuit?”

  “Perhaps. But other things should trouble him more, Maître Richaud. Like pride.”

  Richaud gaped at him. Charles, whose past gave him a great deal of sympathy for this part of Augustine’s life, fixed his eyes on his paper. Quellier opened the Confessions and got down to business. He turned out to be a mesmerizing teacher, and Charles was startled when, at the ring of a small bell from somewhere in the house, he shut his book.

  “That is all for now. Learn the passages I have given you and we will discuss them when you return. In the meantime, take these words of Saint Augustine with you: ‘The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance.’”

  Richaud gathered up his things. But Charles sat without moving, staring at the far wall and thinking how dismally his own mind had failed to stop him from thinking about the memories he shared with Amaury. />
  Quellier raised his thin eyebrows. “Maître du Luc? Have you something to say?”

  “Oh. No. Forgive me, mon père.” Charles quickly put his paper and quill into his satchel and stood up.

  But Quellier wasn’t through with him.” Something about those two sentences has struck you.”

  “Yes, mon père. I have all too much reason to understand them. Thank you for giving them to us.”

  The priest nodded. “Until next time, then.”

  Charles waited for Richaud to reach the door and then said quietly, “Mon père, may I ask something?” Quellier nodded and Charles hurried on. “I have my rector’s permission to request a short visit with one of your new novices. His name is Amaury de Corbet and I have just learned that he is here. He saved my life ten years ago in the army, and I have never properly thanked him.”

  Quellier stood up from the table. “Our new novices have been here less than a fortnight and are allowed few visitors. I must ask our rector. Wait here.” He looked at Richaud. “Perhaps you would like to spend a little time in front of the Holy Sacrament, maître. Your companion will come to you there.”

  Jesuits frequently prayed before the reserved communion host in its small tabernacle in church or chapel and, to Charles’s relief, Richaud accepted, though he looked suspiciously at Charles.

  “The novices use the church gallery for prayer and it’s best if no stranger—even a Jesuit stranger—disturbs them. I will send you the longer way into the nave.”