by Judith Rock
“An especially aggrieved novice might be spiteful enough to try to damage the Society and urge others to leave with him. This book could be used for that. Though, as you say, keeping it hidden long enough for that would be difficult.”
“I cannot, of course, read anyone’s mind. But I would say, from past experience, that the second-year novices have been here long enough to be fairly sure of their choice. And the new ones haven’t been here long enough yet to lose their first fervor.”
“I doubt that the guilty person is a novice,” Charles said flatly. “No, I don’t say that to protect Monsieur de Corbet. I say it because this book may have been brought here because someone knew it would be found. Wanted it to be found.”
“But why?”
“The book is already making you look askance at your novices. You say your lay brother looked through it before he brought it to you. If he’s literate enough, he’s probably wondering about what he read.”
“You’re saying that someone wants to destroy trust among the men here? Trust and even vocations?”
“That’s what I’m saying. We also don’t know how long this copy has been here. Monsieur de Corbet’s mattress may be only its most recent hiding place. And we don’t know if this is the only copy.”
Appalled, Guymond stared at Charles. “No. We don’t.”
“May I ask what you’re going to do, mon père?”
“It was found in Monsieur de Corbet’s bed and I will talk to him first. He’s still the most likely culprit. If he’s guilty, I’ll dismiss him. Either way, I will notify the Provincial. And Lieutenant-Général La Reynie, since this trash is illegal to possess or distribute in France.”
“Monsieur La Reynie already knows Le Cabinet jesuitique is circulating in Paris. But he needs to know you found it here.” Charles hesitated. “Mon père, may I be present when you question Monsieur de Corbet? I ask because I have been charged by La Reynie with asking questions in our houses that might help to find Paul Lunel’s killer. In addition to Lunel’s death, a Louis le Grand scholastic has disappeared, as I am sure you know. And I, myself, was attacked. And suddenly, this book is among us. I cannot help but wonder if all this destruction—and effort at destruction—go together.”
“A devilish thought.” Guymond crossed himself. “Yes, you may listen while I question Monsieur de Corbet. But you may not speak unless I give you leave. Agreed?”
“Agreed, mon père.”
“Then I will call him from the refectory.”
The rector and Charles went into the gallery, where Guymond stopped a lay brother.
“Mon frère, be so good as to go to the refectory and send Monsieur Amaury de Corbet to me, in the Chapel of Saint Ignatius.”
“Yes, mon père.”
The brother hurried out into the garden, and Charles and Guymond went along the gallery to a range of rooms bordering the south side of the front courtyard. In the small Chapel of St. Ignatius, Guymond knelt before the painting of the saint above the altar and prayed with his head in his hands. Charles knelt, too, and prayed that Amaury would be able to clear himself of any knowledge of Le Cabinet. He got up as the lay brother who’d been sent for Amaury entered the chapel. He was alone. The brother waited until the rector looked over his shoulder and rose to his feet.
“Mon père, Monsieur de Corbet is not in the refectory. I’m told that he was taken on an errand with the provisioner. I wasn’t told when they would return.”
Swallowing frustration, Guymond thanked the brother and dismissed him to dinner. Then he turned to Charles.
“Talking to Monsieur de Corbet will have to wait until he returns. Shall I send you word when he comes back?”
“Yes. Thank you, mon père.”
The rector returned to his prayers and Charles made his way to the street door.
Out in the rue du Pot-de-Fer, he turned toward the college, but as he passed the narrow cleft beside the Novice House door and the church, his steps slowed. He thought about the running servant boy he’d stopped, Michel Poulard, and wished he’d asked the boy if he knew Mlle Ebrard. Because Charles strongly suspected that she’d been talking to the boy in front of the Novice House on Friday, before she’d ducked down that dead-end lane. And a short while ago, the boy had disappeared down that same lane. But what connection could there be between Rose Ebrard and a thirteen-year-old servant boy? No matter how hard he tried, the only connection Charles could think of was books. And the boy had grown suddenly wary when Charles had mentioned books. Hoping against hope that he was wrong about all that, Charles started walking again.
No matter how much you hope, his pessimist inner voice said, she still has a bookselling aunt who ignores the needles in her neighborhood market and sends her willing niece to buy them at the market near the Novice House. Do they even sell needles at that particular market?
Charles said dismissively back, Of course they sell needles there; everyone needs needles. But he turned around and strode down the rue du Pot-de-Fer in the other direction, toward the market.
The market was near the abbey of St. Germain, where four streets came together. It was was loud with hawkers and bargaining buyers and reeked of fish. Charles gave a wide berth to the fish cart parked at its center and bristling with fins and tails, and started inspecting market booths. But after a few minutes, he realized that even if he didn’t find any needles, there might be a regular needle seller who happened to be absent. He approached a pair of basket-laden maidservants and asked if there were ever needles on offer.
“Oh, no,” the older one said, when she and her friend had finished looking him up and down and giggling. She had a scatter of pockmarks on her cheeks, but her dimples and dancing black eyes made her still comely enough. “Not at this market. Why, do you want to sew your own cassock?”
“We do sew our own cassocks.”
That sent both girls into fresh giggles, especially the other one, whose lush roundness Charles was trying not to notice. “Oooh, I’d sew it for you,” she teased, and let her eyes stray appreciatively over him again. “But you’d have to take it off.”
He nearly choked on the stifled urge to tease back, which pretty girls still roused in him, and bowed slightly. But his twitching mouth belied his attempt at clerical dignity, and he gave up and smiled at them as he moved quickly away. His smile died as the cold prickling that told him he was being watched spread down his spine, and he turned abruptly. No one was behind him. Pretending that something had bitten him and scratching his calf, he let his eyes wander over people and booths and shadows beneath the trees . . . and came to rest on Rose Ebrard.
She was standing on the path between the row of booths. Her back was to him, and he went quickly behind a small booth selling ribbons, where he could see what she did without being noticed, even if she turned. But as he stopped at its corner, the prickling returned. He spun on his heel, but again, no one was behind him. But a short black cloak was swirling out of sight around the booth’s other side and Charles went after it. He saw three men, all wearing short black cloaks, walking quickly toward the city wall. Two were wigless, their own straight hair showing under black hats. Dressed entirely in black—even to their stockings—they looked almost like priests. Dévots, Charles thought, laymen and laywomen who went to all the church’s services, gave selflessly to the poor, and sometimes lived an almost monastic life, though most of them had families, and the men often had businesses. Most of the men were also members of one or another Congregation of the Holy Virgin, the same kind of congregation the Louis le Grand students belonged to. Indeed, all Congregations of the Holy Virgin were directed by Jesuits. So why would a dévot be covertly watching a Jesuit? Charles was uneasily certain that one of them had been watching him. But if he went after them, he’d lose Rose Ebrard, and every instinct was telling him to keep watching her.
He went back to the corner of the ribbon booth. She was still there,
but farther along the path now, looking at something to her left instead of at the booths and their piles of apples and onions. Charles followed her gaze. And found himself looking at Amaury de Corbet, who was carrying a deep basket and standing with lowered eyes behind an older Jesuit. Charles frowned and looked beyond Amaury, thinking that the young woman must be looking at something else. But when Amaury and the other Jesuit—the Novice House provisioner, Charles guessed—went to another booth, she followed them. When they stopped, she stopped. Charles’s thoughts tumbled over each other as he tried to rearrange his assumptions. Until what sounded like a goose hissed at him and he jumped.
It wasn’t a goose, but a woman, the ribbon seller whose booth he was hiding behind. “Who are you spying on, Jesuit?” she spat, leaning over the booth’s side.
“Not spying,” he said vaguely, watching Mlle Ebrard. “Well, actually, yes, but—”
The woman leaned farther toward him. “Get away from here!”
Mlle Ebrard suddenly moved and Charles went after her, absently signing a blessing at the startled ribbon seller.
At the abbey’s wall, the pathway turned sharply right beneath tall, ancient lime trees overhanging a short stretch of the wall. On either side of the path were smaller stalls and goods spread on the ground. Trying to stay in the trees’ shadow, Charles kept the girl and the two Jesuits in sight. Then the provisioner stopped before a woman selling a rainbow of different-colored apples and pears, with Amaury behind him, his eyes still modestly on the ground as befitted a novice. Standing at a tallow chandler’s booth near Charles, Mlle Ebrard watched the novice as intensely as an animal about to spring. Charles moved a little to see more of her face. Its longing abruptly enlightened him and made him catch his breath. He wondered if Amaury could possibly be unaware of her burning gaze. Or if, perhaps, he was all too aware and his stillness was meant to be his armor. Even as other people in the market turned to watch a shouting group of men chasing a fleet-footed pickpocket, Amaury went on staring at the ground, lips moving as he prayed or recited Scripture, just as novices were supposed to do when sent to carry burdens at the market.
Charles didn’t see what more Rose Ebrard could do, unless she was willing to draw the anger of the provisioner and make trouble for Amaury. Whatever was going on here, Charles didn’t want that kind of trouble for either of them. And he had his own grim questions for Mlle Ebrard. But as he started toward her, the provisioner turned to put his purchases into Amaury’s basket and saw Charles, whom he recognized from the Novice House.
“Maître!” The provisioner smiled eagerly and beckoned Charles to him.
Amaury de Corbet, hearing the Jesuit title of maître, looked up. He gave Charles a slight and surprised smile. Then he saw Mlle Ebrard, and his eyes widened to fill half his face. The provisioner saw nothing, too busy asking Charles in discreet Latin about the murder of Paul Lunel. Charles feigned avid response, willing to turn handsprings if it would keep the provisioner from noticing his novice. Because now Amaury was looking at Rose Ebrard the same way she was looking at him.
Charles fell back on what his mother called his talent for talking the horns off a brass goat. In likewise discreet Latin, he spoke in lengthy rhetorical flourishes, all the while shifting his position and forcing the other man to shift with him until the provisioner’s back was turned to Amaury. Still talking, Charles saw out of the corner of his eye that Mlle Ebrard had moved face-to-face with Amaury and was talking even faster than Charles.
Charles realized almost too late that the provisioner was about to take his leave and that when he turned, he would be looking straight at his novice, who was now listening to Rose Ebrard as though she were the only being in the world. Charles twitched his leather satchel off his shoulder, twitched it again as it fell, caught his quill case as it fell out, and closed his hand around it. Everything else spilled onto the ground around the provisioner’s feet.
“Oh, mon père, I am so sorry, forgive me!” Charles cried, exclaiming and fussing and deploring his clumsiness as he bent and tossed the quill case hard at Amaury’s feet. The startled novice bent to pick it up, as Charles knew he would, since novices learned very quickly to retrieve anything that fell to the ground. Amaury picked up the case and carefully dusted it off, and the provisioner anxiously smoothed a wrinkled page in the copy of St. Augustine Charles had forgotten to take out of his satchel. Charles darted quickly aside, as though picking up something else that had fallen, and said under his breath to Mlle Ebrard, “Go! Or he’ll be in trouble. Wait for me beyond the market.”
She vanished into a clutch of passing housewives. Amaury, still seeming like a man in a dream, handed the quill case to Charles and looked back where she’d been. But he found only empty air and turned in bewilderment to Charles. Before the novice could speak, the provisioner bustled up to them and handed Charles the St. Augustine. With a warning look at his friend, Charles stowed the book in his satchel, thanked the provisioner, and said good-bye. He left Amaury standing as though he’d never moved, holding the basket, eyes on the ground, lips moving silently. Whatever the man’s prayers had been before, Charles was sure that now they were wrung from a divided heart. And more trouble was waiting for Amaury at the Novice House. Charles hesitated, torn between going after Rose Ebrard and returning with Amaury to face the rector. But Charles’s feet seemed more decisive than his head and took him purposefully out of the market toward the city wall.
CHAPTER 18
Charles half suspected that Mlle Rose Ebrard wouldn’t wait for him. Not after what he’d seen. And she surely wouldn’t wait if she was responsible for Le Cabinet’s presence in the Novice House. But as he neared the wall, the sun finally emerged from the clouds and poured a stripe of light down the stone, and a woman’s blue scarf blossomed against the gray. Relieved that she’d waited for him, Charles hurried toward her. She watched his approach unsmiling.
“Well?” she challenged him, when he reached her.
“Not well at all, I think, mademoiselle. From what I saw in the market.”
The fight suddenly went out of her. “No. It isn’t.”
Charles looked quickly around for somewhere more private to talk. He should not be standing in the street in talk with a woman. And he didn’t want this conversation overheard, which meant they could not go to the college or The Dog. But if they went anywhere else more private and were seen, that would create worse scandal. It would have to be the street, but at least the street noise would help cover what they said.
“Shall we walk, mademoiselle? As though I’m simply escorting you home? If you could look as though you need escorting, that would help.”
“There’s much I need, but I don’t need that.” But she walked docilely enough at his side and Charles stole covert glances at her set face.
“When Maître Wing and I found you in the lane by the Novice House,” he said, “were you there because of Amaury de Corbet?”
“Yes.”
“And you were talking to Michel, the Novice House servant boy, I think.”
She frowned suspiciously. “I am not obliged to answer you. You have no authority over me.”
“None at all.”
She quickened her pace, but Charles matched it. They walked in a strained silence. Except for Charles’s sharp-tongued inner voice. You have no authority over her, that’s true. But you are certainly obligated to report attempts at secret communication with a novice.
Charles rolled his shoulders uneasily under his cassock. Fifty other people saw them just now. That’s hardly secret communication.
With elaborate weariness, the voice said, Use the brain God gave you.
Charles looked sideways at the young woman. “I think you were asking the boy about Amaury. Perhaps asking him to give Amaury a note from you? And then, when the Novice House door opened, the boy ran to keep the lay brother from seeing him talking to you. And you ran to keep Maître Wing and me from seein
g you.”
The girl sighed. “All right, if you know so much already. I did write a note. But the boy never delivered it. When I saw him again, he said he’d been too afraid of losing his place there and had put the note down the latrine. I’m only telling you this,” she went on, “because Amaury has spoken of you. Many times. I almost told you the day we met at Louis le Grand, when you said your name. And yesterday, your cousin, Monsieur de Vintimille du Luc—the one whose ship Amaury served on—came to see me at The Dog.”
“Yesterday?” Charles said in mingled surprise and dismay. “I thought he’d left Paris.”
“He’d gone to the country, to my father’s house—what used to be my father’s house—to look for me. Someone told him where I was and he came to the shop. He wanted to know if I’d seen Amaury.”
Hoping this didn’t mean that Charles-François would come back to Louis le Grand, Charles said, “I thought that you recognized my name when we met, but I couldn’t imagine why. Mademoiselle, my cousin told me that Amaury had planned to marry but withdrew from the betrothal. Was he betrothed to you?”
“Yes.” She was quiet for a moment, then surprised him by saying, “Until I met you, I hated you. Since it was your being a Jesuit that started Amaury on this mistaken path of his.”
“I knew nothing about that. Until I saw him in the Novice House, I’d seen and heard nothing of him for ten years.”
“But you lived in his mind all that time. He would have gone to be a Jesuit years ago, if his father had died sooner.” Charles started to speak, but she shook her head at him. “Wait. Last Christmas, Amaury got leave from his ship and came home and asked me to marry him. We’d grown up near each other. In the country, between Paris and Vincennes.” Her eyes flashed at him. “If you’re thinking I’m not worthy to match with nobility like the de Corbets, you’re wrong. They have land, but little money, and my father was a well-off and respected merchant. When Amaury asked me to marry him, I thought he’d gotten over wanting to be a religious.” Her voice sank. “Gotten over the things that haunted him.”