The Whispering of Bones

by Judith Rock

  “Père Le Picart sends his permission through me.”

  Charles eyed him skeptically.

  “For God’s sake, maître, even I know not to lie about a Jesuit rector.” La Reynie grinned. “Except in exceptional circumstances. No, no,” he said, laughing at Charles’s look, “he really did say that. I’m not noble, but my word is still good.”

  “It had better be,” Charles said back. “I doubt talking to Amaury at the Châtelet would be any use to you. If he says he didn’t bring in the book, he didn’t. What might be of more use is talking to Michel Poulard, your maid’s son who’s a servant at the Novice House. I think he knows a good deal about everything that goes in and out of that house.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  Charles didn’t want to tell La Reynie about Rose Ebrard and Amaury. He smiled blandly. “Just a thought.”

  La Reynie sighed. “Someone needs to have a useful thought about all this. Because I seem to have none. Your missing Englishman—would he go off on his own? Would he run away from the Society?”

  “He might go off on his own for some reason that seemed good to him, but not for long. I can’t imagine him running away.”

  “Is he a bold man?”

  “Far from it,” Charles said. “He told me straight out that he’s a coward. Can you imagine a man actually saying that? And the night I was attacked in the chapel, he fainted.”

  La Reynie frowned in disbelief. “What use do you have for someone like that?”

  “Jesuits don’t do much hand-to-hand fighting,” Charles said lightly, not wanting to talk about courage.

  “Yourself always excluded. Well,” the lieutenant-général said, “when you return from the country tomorrow, come to my office and tell me what de Corbet said. And anything else you learn.” He sketched a bow and went to the postern. “Oh,” he said, as he waited for the porter to open the door. “I nearly forgot—Père Le Picart says you needn’t go to his office. He tells you to go to your books. A bonne nuit to you.”

  The thought of trying to digest St. Thomas reminded Charles of his interrupted supper and how hungry he still was. Thinking that even if he couldn’t face martyrdom in some mission, he ought to be able to at least manage a little fasting, he started toward the stairs to his chamber. Then he turned back and went outside and across the court to the chapel. The nave was in darkness, the only light from the sanctuary lamp and a pair of candles on the altar. A lay brother sat beside the street door, and a few neighborhood people were kneeling among the benches. Charles knelt at the main altar. St. Ignatius’s altar. The long day had seemed as clamorous as a battle, and the chapel’s silence and the darkness washed over Charles like a baptism of peace.

  But the silence didn’t last long.

  “Maître?”

  He turned and saw Mlle Ebrard standing behind him.

  “I heard that the Englishman is missing,” she said very softly. “I came to light a candle for him.”

  Charles rose and crossed himself, and they moved away from the altar. “Did you see Maître Wing today, after you returned to The Dog?” he asked her.

  “No. And I’m worried about Amaury. If someone is taking Jesuits . . .”

  “Amaury is never out alone. I’m sure he’s safe. I’ll see him tomorrow.” He told her briefly about walking to the house at Montrouge to ask Amaury about Le Cabinet.

  “Oh, I’m glad! And will you talk to him about—other things?”

  “If I can.”

  “Where is this Montrouge? How can I see you when you return, and hear what he said?”

  “It’s south from the Novice House, thirty or forty minutes’ slow walking,” Charles said, remembering the somewhat indirect route. “But when I return after dinner—they eat early—I’ll be coming straight up the rue Saint Jacques to the college. I’ll stop in The Dog around noon or so, and we can talk a little as though you’re helping me find a book. Yes?”

  “Yes. Thank you,” she breathed, and withdrew into the dark nave.

  With a sigh, Charles left the chapel, thinking about how much penance he was going to owe when all this was over. He had permission to help La Reynie, but he didn’t have permission to talk repeatedly in private with women. And he certainly didn’t have permission to persuade a novice out of the Society. But he had a vocation to help souls. And what did one do when what souls needed was not what rules demanded? Which led him to such a tangle that he went gratefully to his chamber and the relative simplicity of St. Thomas Aquinas.

  CHAPTER 22

  THE FEAST OF ST. LÉONARD, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1687

  By morning, the wind had died, leaving Paris sunlit and cold. The college clock was striking eight as Charles huddled into his cloak and started up the rue St. Jacques. Then he turned back and pushed open the bakery door. The air was heady with the smell of fresh bread, but Marie-Ange was alone at the counter with her head on her arms.

  “Ma petite?” Charles said anxiously, going in. “How is your mother?”

  She lifted her head. “Oh, maître, she had a terrible night.” Her small face was gray with exhaustion. “She has pains and more pains, but the baby doesn’t come. The midwife came last night just after you left and she’s still here.”

  A long groan came from beyond the closed door into the other room. Wincing, Charles went to Marie-Ange and smoothed back her tangled, uncoifed hair. “I am praying for her, I promise you. For all of you. I’ll come back later to see how things are.”

  She wiped away tears and gave him a watery smile, and he went back out to the street with a heavy heart, remembering his mother’s sufferings in childbed with her last child, who hadn’t lived. When he turned the corner by The Dog, Mlle Ebrard was standing in the bookshop doorway. She smiled at him and he nodded, but neither spoke. He could feel her eyes on him as he passed the shop, but when he looked back, she was gone.

  At the Novice House, he was taken to the Hall of St. Joseph, where the novices were waiting to set out for Montrouge. Cloaked, hatted, and carrying their small leather satchels, they stood quietly, waiting for the rector, Père Guymond, to give them the signal for leaving. When Amaury de Corbet saw Charles, he smiled uneasily but made no move to approach him. The rector immediately began assigning companions. These were mostly groupings of three, but there were a few pairings of an older Jesuit and a novice, including Charles and de Corbet.

  The long line of groupings followed the rector from the hall and along the gallery to the street door. Charles and Amaury were last. Out in the rue du Pot-de-Fer, everyone lowered his eyes and lifted his long, heavy cloak to keep it from the street dirt and from tangling with his companions’ cloaks, and the line set out slowly and in absolute silence. Amaury’s lips were moving in silent prayer—one of the prescribed things to do while walking—and he didn’t notice the gurgle of laughter behind them. Charles looked over his shoulder and saw the young and fleet-footed servant Michel Poulard pacing in their wake. Holding a bundle of kindling on his shoulder with one hand, he mimed holding his cloak away from the dirt with the other. He saw Charles watching him, returned his grin, and vanished down the passage beside the chapel.

  Still smiling, Charles returned to the business at hand. There would be no talking at all, he knew, until they passed the tax barrière beyond the city. Not that the silence had anything to do with the toll for bringing goods into Paris, but by the time the barrière—a small manned booth—was reached, there would be fewer people on the road to be edified by the novices’ strictly disciplined behavior. It had been much the same in his own novitiate in Avignon and, he supposed, was much the same in all Jesuit Novice Houses. But he wanted urgently to talk to Amaury and could hardly contain himself as they made their dignified way along the rue de Vaugirard. But even when they reached the barrière and turned left to skirt the walled gardens of the Luxembourg palace, silence was kept until the paving gave out and the road became
a dirt track. Then the rector raised his hand and his flock stopped.

  “You may speak quietly to each other. Remember, however, the rules of behavior you have learned.”

  The group moved off again, and quiet conversation began.

  Amaury said, without looking at Charles, “So are you here to question me about the book?”

  “I am.”

  “I told him the truth,” the novice said curtly. “I will not rub my honor in the dust, begging to be believed.” The way he shut his mouth made Charles think of a helmet’s visor falling.

  “I believe you,” Charles said. “I told him that. And I understand why you’re insulted at being told to prove that you speak truth. Listen, Amaury—I’m sorry, I should call you Monsieur de Corbet now—the rector wants to believe you. Otherwise, he would not have asked me to speak with you. Do you know what Le Cabinet jesuitique is?”

  “I know it’s a forgery, a libel on the Society.”

  “It’s also illegal to possess or distribute in France. The head of the police is determined to find out where it’s coming from this time—it shows up periodically—and stop it. He’s threatening to take you in to the Châtelet for what he calls ‘a little talk.’”

  “He wouldn’t!” Amaury’s face, already ruddy from the cold, flamed with outrage.

  “He would. So think of the dishonor of that. You’re noble, yes. So am I. But other things matter more in the world now. It’s 1687 and the great knight Roland and the rest of them are dead. Long dead.”

  “My father would kill you if he heard you say that!”

  “So would mine, probably. But they’re both dead, too. So tell me about the book.” He held the novice’s eyes. “And then tell me about Mademoiselle Ebrard.”

  Amaury de Corbet went as white as altar linen and then as red as a maple leaf. “She’s none of your business!”

  “Shhh. She’s none of your fellow novices’ business, either. But she thinks you are still her business. The book first, though.” Charles smiled dangerously. “Unless you’re going to disobey your rector and refuse to talk to me. Which will mean making the acquaintance of Lieutenant-Général La Reynie.”

  Amaury turned a cold stare on Charles. “How dare you threaten me! What’s happened to you? You don’t even sound like a Jesuit!”

  “Nor do you,” Charles said. “But you have some excuse, since being a novice is only the beginning of being a Jesuit. Do you really not understand that by putting yourself in the Novice House, you’ve made yourself a Jesuit first and a noble second?”

  Frowning blackly, Amaury watched his sturdy shoes appear and vanish beneath his cassock on the dusty track. “What do you want to know?”

  “You say you didn’t hide the book in your mattress, that you’d never seen it until the rector showed it to you. So tell me how it could have come there. The rector and La Reynie need another track to follow.”

  Amaury shook his head helplessly. “How can I know? I make my bed every morning and have never felt anything in the mattress but straw. But I’m out of my chamber most of the day, so I suppose anyone could have come in and unpicked the stitching and put the book there.” He looked sideways at Charles. “The rector also accused me of stealing a needle and thread to stitch the end of the mattress cover after I’d put the book in.”

  “Does someone in the house dislike you enough to do this?”

  “If someone does, I don’t know it. I can’t think why they would. Whether you believe it or not, I’ve done my best to behave as we’re told. And I barely know anyone in the house.”

  Charles thought about that and they went a little way without speaking. The rector led the group to the right, onto another unpaved track that led straight south, through harvested and autumn brown fields. Pleased to be in the countryside in spite of the cold, Charles watched a wide-winged hawk soar above them as he tried to imagine a novice waiting for Amaury’s chamber to be empty, leaving whatever thing he was supposed to be doing in the strictly scheduled day, finding needle and thread, unpicking the mattress cover’s stitching, thrusting the book into the mattress straw, stitching the cover closed, and leaving the chamber before anyone discovered him. And getting the book out again would be just as tricky. Putting the thing in and getting it out repeatedly beggared belief. Chosen as a hiding place by anyone but Amaury, the mattress cover simply made no sense.

  But beyond that certainty, Charles found he couldn’t go. Well, he told himself, leave it for now. Let it settle. There’s still the other thing to say. He looked at the pair of men ahead of him, a very young novice listening respectfully to a gray-haired senior. To lessen the chance of being overheard, Charles bent down and made an unnecessary adjustment to his shoe, which forced Amaury to stop and wait politely.

  “There,” Charles said, straightening and seeing that the pair in front was far enough away. “Now, what about your former betrothed?”

  Amaury tensed as though Charles were suddenly holding a weapon. Which in a way, Charles thought ruefully, he was.

  “Mademoiselle Ebrard is a fine—a devout—young woman,” Amaury said stiffly. “She is guilty of nothing. You have no right to even speak of her.”

  “You didn’t know until the day at the market that she was in Paris, did you?”

  “No.”

  “When you saw her standing in front of you, what did you think?”

  “What do you want? Why are you tormenting me? Go away!” Amaury veered angrily out of the line toward the front and the rector.

  Charles caught a fold of his cloak. “Wait. Please. I beg you.”

  Reluctantly and staring straight ahead, he dropped back into place beside Charles.

  Offering up a quick plea for the right words, Charles said, “What I am going to say to you, I say as a man who owes you his life. And as the man who shares the memory and the guilt of that terrible day at Cassel.” With a sense of stepping off the edge of something, he finished, “And as one longer in the Society who is concerned about your vocation. And about you.”

  Emotion moved across Amaury’s face like wind over water, but he said nothing. Ahead of them, Charles saw rooflines coming into view and knew that his time was nearly up.

  “If I’m wrong, I’m wrong and you will tell me later. Amaury, I ask you to think hard about why you’re here. About the possibility that you’re hiding in the Novice House.” Charles winced at the echo of what his cousin had said to him. But he made himself go on. “I think you’re haunted beyond bearing by that day in the army. I think you’re confusing your need for forgiveness with having a religious vocation. I think you’re turning away from Mademoiselle Ebrard for all those wrong reasons.”

  “And what about you? You just said you carry that day and its horrors, too. If my vocation is tainted, so is yours, and it has been for years now!”

  “I didn’t enter the Society because of that day at Cassel. I entered because I wanted to come as close to God as a man can—whether God forgives me for that day or not. And that’s something I’ve rarely told anyone, in the Society or out of it. But yes, I’ve carried that day, and those deaths, for all these years. And with them my certainty that I am a coward. I was a coward that day. If I hadn’t been, I’d probably be dead. But we’re never allowed to know what would have happened. Only what we can choose now.” Charles had stopped in the road, and the passion of his words held Amaury motionless, listening. “Here’s what I’ve learned,” Charles said. “Nothing is wasted. Not even death. You don’t have to go on sacrificing yourself now because you didn’t sacrifice yourself then.”

  A tremor swept the long length of Amaury’s body, but he said nothing.

  “Rose Ebrard loves you,” Charles said softly. “I saw your face in the market and I know that you love her. She knows and I know—and I suspect your superiors in the Novice House will soon know—that you have come here to do lifelong penance. What good is that to God?
Or those peasants at Cassel, long dead and at peace? What good is that to the Society? God is love, not guilt. And not pride.”

  “Pride?” Amaury said bitterly. “I haven’t the pride of a worm.”

  “Wrong. You’ve been too proud for ten years to let anything—not God, not Mademoiselle Ebrard—come between you and your guilt. You and your soiled honor.”

  “Damn you to hell!” Amaury said distinctly, not bothering to keep his voice down. He strode away toward the rest of the line, which was far ahead of them now.

  Charles stayed where he was, watching the novice’s heels raising small storm clouds from the dusty track. Then he hurried to catch up with the others. He ached for Amaury’s unhappiness. But he didn’t regret what he’d done.

  Within its walls, the rambling stone country house was surrounded by gardens, small groves of nearly leafless trees, and a few gnarled grapevines dropping their broad leaves. Wide stubbled fields where hay and wheat had been harvested stretched beyond the walls, and sheep and cows grazed under the brilliant sky. The Montrouge house was a beloved place of recreation and rest for the novices and the older Jesuits who taught and supervised them. But days there began with a quarter of an hour’s spiritual reading, and the novices took the books they’d brought out of their satchels. Some found places on the grass and under the trees and others walked, holding their open books. Charles saw Amaury go hurriedly to the far side of the stretch of grass. After the reading there would be the silent morning examination of conscience, and when that was done, dinner at a quarter to eleven.

  When the novices had settled to their reading, Père Guymond summoned Charles to a small room where sunlight fell through a new, large window and gleamed on the floor’s polished oak.

  “Why was Monsieur de Corbet cursing you as we arrived here?” Guymond said, without asking Charles to sit.

  “I goaded him,” Charles said frankly.

  “He was very stiff when I admonished him for it. I do not like this determination to take offense that I am suddenly seeing in him.”