by Judith Rock
“Hah! I told him!”
Charles jumped and turned around, nearly dropping Le Cabinet. An elderly Jesuit sitting behind him with an enormous book was grinning broadly. He slapped a hand down on the table.
“That settles the Manicheans!” the old man crowed. “I knew I was right.” He shut the book with a bang, earning himself more reproving looks from the other readers and the librarian, and shuffled out.
Trying to remember which heretics the Manicheans had been, Charles turned back to the window and found his place again in the Cabinet. Disconsolately, he turned the page. This book was libel, not heresy. But its effects were as destructive and even harder to counter, since so many people over the years had taken it for Gospel truth. He started reading the next “directive,” about how the Society should creep into the affections—and purses—of rich widows, but it was so disheartening that he quit reading and stared out at the garden in front of the library.
The college’s ancient grapevine hugged the stone wall as though it might be shivering in the chilly sunlight. The vine made him think of Père Dainville, who’d loved unearthing the school’s history. Dainville had told him that the Cour d’honneur had once been an enormous garden with vineyards stretching to each side, a remnant of the vineyards that had covered the Left Bank for centuries. Thinking about that made Charles recall the illuminated manuscript page he’d stopped to look at downstairs. The brightly colored old drawing showed King Louis IX—later St. Louis—riding along a Paris street as someone emptied a chamber pot over his head. Charles wondered what had happened to the figure at the window upending the pot—and how long it had taken to get the smell out of the king’s thick fur-trimmed robes. Now, after reading Le Cabinet, he wondered if the stink of lies this little book had poured over the Society of Jesus could ever be washed away.
From the Cour d’honneur, the bell clanged for the end of recreation. For Charles, it was the signal to go to the street passage to meet students from the older boarders’ Congregation of the Holy Virgin who were this week’s almsgivers. The Congregation was a social and spiritual organization, active in all Jesuit schools and in many parishes, and one of its functions was regular charity. He picked up his outdoor hat and his cloak and took his book to the librarian, who would lock it away again in a sturdy cupboard. Then he went down the library’s new grand staircase and out into the mercifully windless day. Instead of going through the fathers’ garden, he went the quicker way through the day students’ court. Though there were nearly three times as many day students as boarding students, Charles had little contact with them, since they didn’t live in the college or eat there. Now, as they flooded into the court after dinner at home or in lodgings, Charles watched them curiously. Their courtyard, like the others, had its proctors to enforce discipline, but strict discipline was harder here because of the day boys’ sheer numbers. The proctors called for silence as the boys lined up at classroom doors but sensibly settled for a muted murmur of talk.
Like the boarding students, the day students wore long black scholar’s gowns, many green with age and some—on the youngest boys of nine or ten—nearly trailing on the ground. Unlike the boarders, these were mostly the sons of the middle and lower bourgeoisie. There were some scholarship boys from poor families, but most of these boys’ fathers were respected guild members, middling merchants, or legal men on the lower rungs of the law’s hierarchy.
When Charles reached the covered passage between the day court and the Cour d’honneur, he found a huddle of day students standing with their heads together, their black hats and gowns making them look like some exotic tree. They were talking eagerly and looking at something in their midst. They didn’t hear him at first, but when they did, they gasped audibly, turned like duellers at bay, and then bowed and made speed into their own court. Charles judged their ages at seventeen or eighteen, just the age when the college’s hold was thinning to the breaking point. He wondered what they’d been looking at, considered stopping them to find out, and then didn’t. He well remembered being a seventeen-year-old schoolboy, more than ready to cut the strings holding him to his teachers and their endless discipline.
When Charles reached the street passage, the half dozen boarders who’d gathered there to help distribute alms greeted him eagerly. Several were the same age as the day boys, and he wondered whether they, too, were chafing under school discipline. The cubiculaire waiting with them nodded at the baskets on the passage floor. “The clothes are there, maître. Père Damiot entrusted Monsieur Connor with the alms purse. A good walk and a blessed afternoon to you.”
As Charles thanked and dismissed him, laughter rose beside the postern, where some of the boys were listening to Frère Martin.
“So maybe you can choose yourselves brides this afternoon,” Charles heard Martin say, his bass voice shaking with laughter.
“But they’re orphans,” a spotty-faced boy from Normandy said, indignant and offended. “My father would never let me marry a girl without a name.”
“They have names,” Walter Connor retorted. “Their parents are not unknown, just dead. The girls at the Miséricorde live there because they no longer have any family to take care of them.”
“So you’ll be glad to marry one of them, I suppose?” The Norman boy, Jacques Honfleur, shrugged disdainfully at Connor. “Not surprising from an Irishman.”
Anger turned Connor even paler than he normally was, and Charles put a hand on his shoulder.
“Enough, Monsieur Honfleur,” he said, eyeing the Norman. “It’s unwise and unkind to be disdainful of bereavement. As these alms we’re giving should remind you.” He pointed at the biggest basket. “You may carry that to help you remember. Monsieur Beauclaire, you may carry the small one.”
Redly furious, Honfleur picked up his basket.
Beauclaire hefted his and said, “What’s in them, maître?”
“Clothing. The twin daughters of a man from one of our men’s Congregations of the Holy Virgin died of a fever a few weeks ago. Their father has given their clothes for the orphans at the Miséricorde, so we’re taking them along with the purse your student Congregation has filled.”
Connor looked at Charles. “Does the father have other children?”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“Ah, the poor man!” Connor crossed himself and moved toward the postern. The others, chastened, made way for him to go first.
Frère Martin opened the door, looking ruefully at Charles. “Sorry, maître. I made too much of a joke about them going to a house of girls.”
Charles nodded his agreement, but leavened it with a friendly clap on Martin’s shoulder. He chivied his flock into the street and took his place at the front of the group.
“Remember now,” he said, “we are to go quietly through the streets. Little talking, and no shouting or gawking or making a spectacle of ourselves. Habes?”
“Yes, maître, we have it.” The chorus of adolescent voices sounded a little like an unmusical choir, some treble, some wandering up and down the scale, and one—an Austrian boy’s voice—that was nearly as deep as Frère Martin’s and seemed to startle its owner every time he opened his mouth.
They set off southward, climbing the slope of the rue St. Jacques toward the city wall, As they passed The Dog, Charles looked for Rose Ebrard and wondered if La Reynie had been to the shop yet. And how long he would have to wait before La Reynie next wanted his help. As he led his group through the St. Jacques gate market, he wondered anew, as he passed the needle seller’s booth, what Mlle Ebrard had really been doing on Friday outside the Novice House.
Beyond the old gate, they turned to their left on a footpath that followed the outside of the lichened wall. Connor, walking beside Charles, reached up and plucked a yellow flower growing out of the gray stones. Sensing Charles’s eyes on him, he looked up.
“I like yellow, maître. Do you? It was my sister Mary’s favorite
color. My older sister. She and my younger sister died two years ago. Mary was always my favorite—people said we were like twins.” He put the flower in the buttonhole of his coat, beneath his black gown.
Charles asked Connor more about his sister, letting the other boys draw ahead. Then Connor fell silent, the path turned south, and he and Charles caught up with the rest. Beauclaire was arguing with Honfleur, rebutting Honfleur’s argument that Normans were superior to other Frenchmen. Since they were being reasonably quiet and not warring with anything but words, Charles left them to it. He was half Norman himself, but he had no desire to weigh in on the unpleasant Honfleur’s side.
Beauclaire suddenly stopped arguing and looked at the narrow lane they were passing. “Maître, may we go down this way? I know it doesn’t look like it goes in the right direction, but it turns.”
Charles peered into the unprepossessing lane, little more than a dirt-and-grass path and lined with small badly kept houses, ragged gardens, and crumbling garden walls. “Why do you want to go this way, Monsieur Beauclaire?”
“Because I like its name.” Beauclaire’s eyes were dancing with a glee Charles had learned to distrust in the year he’d taught him. “Do you know what it’s called?”
Everyone, including Charles, shook their heads.
“It’s called Talking Flea Street! So may we, maître?”
“How do you know that? And how do you know it turns in the right direction?” the skeptical Connor said.
“Maître Richaud told me.”
Charles was glad to see that the mention of Richaud’s name provoked no reaction from any of the boys. So far, then, the scholastic’s increasingly ominous disappearance had been kept from the students. He fixed Beauclaire with a warning eye. “Do you swear it goes in the right direction?”
“On my grandfather’s bones!”
“Your grandfather’s bones aren’t here to swear on, but we’ll trust you.”
Beauclaire led them joyously into the lane. A shabbily dressed woman peered from an open door, and a few ragged children wandered in the dust and mud.
“It looks like a good place for fleas,” Connor said to Beauclaire. “I didn’t know you liked fleas so much.”
“I don’t like them,” the bass-voiced Austrian said morosely. “They keep me up at night and not because they are talking!”
“Have you told your cubiculaire?” Charles said. “The college is always fighting fleas, and the sooner he knows your chamber has them, the sooner he and the lay brothers can do something.”
“He knows. They put down herbs, but the fleas think they’re love philtres and have more little fleas. On Saturday, a brother brought in a white fleece so the fleas could jump onto it and get killed. Almost none of them jumped. They are not stupid, your French fleas.”
Everyone laughed at that, and Charles let them, since there were few people around to hear their rowdiness.
“See, maître?” Beauclaire pointed triumphantly to a sharp bend ahead of them that turned the lane southeast, the way they needed to go.
Charles started to nod and then jumped back as a long, thin pig raced across the lane in front of him, pursued by a child with a stick. As pig and child galloped through the weed-choked yard at the side of a small, dilapidated house, the pleasantly pungent scent of herbs long gone wild drifted in their wake, reminding Charles of his mother’s herb garden. With a sigh for the warmth of Languedoc and the nearness of another Paris winter, he started the boys walking again.
It was only a short way to the Miséricorde. Charles rang the bell at the gate and an Ursuline nun slid the small grille open. Seeing Charles and the gowned students, she opened the gate and came out to meet them. The nun was very young but dignified beyond her years in her short black veil and white habit.
“Bonjour, messieurs.” She smiled at the suddenly shy group of boys and looked questioningly at Charles.
“Bonjour, ma soeur. I am Maître Charles du Luc and I’ve brought these students from Louis le Grand to offer alms for your orphans.”
He nodded at Connor, who stepped forward and gave her the purse and made his short rehearsed speech on behalf of the Holy Virgin Congregation. Then Honfleur set his basket inside the gate and Beauclaire put the smaller one down beside it. Everyone bowed to the nun, and she curtsied in return.
“We are most grateful. As our girls will be.” Beyond her, several half-grown girls stood under a nearly leafless chestnut tree to whisper and stare at the boys, who were staring in return. “May the bon Dieu richly bless you for your charity.” The nun glanced over her shoulder at the girls and, with a knowing smile at Charles, drew the gate closed.
“Well done,” Charles said to his flock. “Except for the staring.”
That brought what he could only call giggles. Swallowing his own laughter, he turned them back toward the college. Just inside the walls, as they were passing the St. Jacques market, they moved aside to let a carriage go past toward the river at a walking pace. The boys spotted a tumbler who’d cleared a space for himself among the market stalls, and Charles, glad to rest for a moment, let them watch. He kept an eye on the street. To his surprise, the slow carriage stopped, its window was lowered, and Lieutenant-Général La Reynie’s face appeared, looking back at him. The lieutenant-général lifted his chin and Charles went closer.
“I need you,” La Reynie said. He glanced at the huddle of entranced students. “I’ll stop at the college.” He put the window up and the carriage moved on. With a frisson of excitement, Charles gathered the reluctant boys and shepherded them toward the college.
CHAPTER 15
When Charles and the students reached the postern, the carriage was parked a little way up the hill, in front of the church of St. Étienne des Grès. Frère Martin opened the postern wide, and Charles gathered the boys in the street passage for the short prayer that always ended an almsgiving. Replete with fresh air and the city’s sights and sounds, they joined heartily in the “amen.”
“That was well done, messieurs,” Charles said. “Put the baskets back in the porter’s room and then wait here.”
As the baskets were put away, Charles beckoned Martin closer to the postern. “Will you call a cubiculaire to see them to their chambers? I have another task, mon frère.”
“Ah,” Martin said knowingly. “I saw the carriage waiting when I opened the door. I know whose it is, too. God go with you both!” He lowered his voice. “Some are still saying it was a demon attacked you. Me, I know better. No one’s said they smelled sulphur in the chapel, and you always do smell it if a demon’s about.”
“So it’s said.” Charles smiled at him and hurried to the carriage. As he got in, La Reynie tapped his stick on the ceiling and the pair of black horses moved off toward the river.
“Where are we going?” Charles said.
“To the Lunel house across the river.”
La Reynie and Charles braced themselves as the coach bounced in and out of a pothole. Charles retrieved his hat from the floor.
“Have you been to The Saint’s Dog about the book cover?”
“Oh, yes,” the lieutenant-général said disgustedly. “We found an interesting selection of Dutch pornography. Including that scurrilous little piece about Madame de Maintenon and the king that keeps cropping up. Such a very upright woman can have had no idea what she was in for when she married King Louis.” He carefully brushed pastry crumbs from the cascade of ivory lace at his neck. “Forgive me,” he said. “No time for a proper dinner.”
Wondering how often La Reynie ever found time for a proper midday dinner, Charles said, “Did you find Le Cabinet in the bookshop?”
“We did not. Not so much as a torn page.”
“But the goat can’t have brought that scrap from outside. It would already have eaten it.”
“I agree. But damned if we could find it. We went through everything in the cellars,
we had floorboards up, we went through the attic and out onto the roof. Not one single little Secret Instruction.”
“What did Madame Cheyne say?”
“She owned to the Dutch trash. What choice did she have? Pleaded her poor widowhood and having to make money any way she could, and on and on. But she swore on the name of every saint and relic she could think of that she didn’t have, had never had, had never even heard of Le Cabinet jesuitique.”
“And Mademoiselle Ebrard? What did she do?”
La Reynie grinned at him. “She’s not exactly pretty—wonderful eyes, though.” He laughed at Charles’s chilly expression. “Oh, come, nothing wrong with caring what becomes of the girl. She was upset, of course. And I agree with you, I don’t think she knew anything about the books being sold upstairs. Or about Le Cabinet.”
“Good. But what will happen to Madame Cheyne now?”
“She is at liberty for the moment. We’re giving her a long rope, so she can at least lead us to whoever brings her the Dutch books. And who knows, perhaps she’ll slip and do something to prove she lied about Le Cabinet. Though if she lied, she must be keeping the copies down her bodice and under her skirts! Not a search I care to undertake.”
The carriage braked suddenly and both men were thrown forward. This time it was La Reynie’s hat that fell off—and nearly his wig. He yanked it back into place and leaned out of the window.
“I think someone’s carriage has broken down,” he said, craning his neck. “Or maybe it’s just traffic.” He shrugged and pulled his head in. “God only knows what we’re going to do about Paris traffic. Coachmakers keep selling carriages and there’s no more room for the cursed things. Well, I suppose it gives me more time to tell you what I want to do at the Lunel house.”