The Eloquence of Blood cdl-2

by Judith Rock

  “Not a whim, mon pere, I assure you,” Beauchamps said mildly, rearranging the ribbons on the inlaid silver head of his walking stick. “I have a magnificent opportunity to add to my collection of paintings. But I must be on the spot. As always, you make too much of a little difficulty.” He smiled over his shoulder at Charles. “Your good Maitre du Luc here could easily teach and direct the few dances.” He brushed an imaginary speck from his wrist ruffles. “That is all that is required, after all. Since you have seen fit to have the music written by someone else.”

  Ah, Charles thought, now the bone is laid bare. For many years now, Beauchamps had not only created and taught the dances for college productions, he had also written much of the music. He and Jouvancy gazed furiously at each other.

  “You are being childish,” Jouvancy snapped. “After all, though I very often write our tragedies, this one is Pere Pallu’s work.”

  “You are a religious. I am an artist.”

  The air around Jouvancy fairly crackled, and Charles involuntarily shut his eyes.

  Nothing happened, and he opened them in time to see Jouvancy arrange his face in a smile, put his head on one side, and widen his limpid blue eyes.

  “We all know,” the rhetoric master said, “how justly famous is your collection of paintings. It is known all over France.”

  “Europe.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Justly famous all over Europe.”

  “I was coming to that,” Jouvancy snapped. He composed his face again. “But, maitre, could you not give us the benefit of your inestimable skill and go to Rome after the tenth of February? Italy will be warmer then, you know.”

  “Italy is warmer now.” Beauchamps made Jouvancy a flourished bow. “I take my leave, mon pere, and wish you every success with your little show.” With another bow to Charles and the triumphant lift of an eyebrow, he swept down the salle des actes and out the door.

  Mentally girding his loins, Charles joined Jouvancy on the stage. The rhetoric master’s face had gone purple.

  “This is outrageous, maitre. This is beyond anything, this is an unforgivable insult to the college. How dare he leave us like this? He is the ballet master and we have a performance! The man is always impossible, but who would have thought him capable of this? When Pere Le Picart hears of it, that will be the end of Maitre Beauchamps at Louis le Grand, I promise you!”

  Charles doubted that, but had learned in the course of August’s show to hold his tongue and let Jouvancy’s indignation sputter itself out. The courtyard clock chimed and teenaged boys swarmed into the chamber, their cubiculaire escort waiting at the door until they were all inside. The midday recreation hour was supposed to be quiet, but in winter that rule was somewhat relaxed for the sake of warmth. The boys were red-faced and lively from running in the cold and wind, and more than one black scholar’s gown was starred with wet patches, most likely from snowballs.

  Jouvancy shook his head hopelessly and turned his back on the students. “And Monsieur Charpentier has not finished the music. He sent me a note just after dinner. What are we to do?” He dropped his head into his hands.

  Charles gathered the boys with his eyes and, smiling, touched his finger to his lips. The students stood in a silent huddle, their bright eyes fixed on Jouvancy. Charles turned back to the senior rhetoric master and made the suggestion that had just leaped full-blown into his mind.

  “Mon pere, I think we can safely leave Maitre Beauchamps to Pere Le Picart. But allow me to suggest an excellent and honorable young dancing master who I’m sure would be only too glad of the chance to work for us. I have seen the results of his teaching and can wholeheartedly recommend him.” Charles himself would, as usual, be the overall dance director. But since it was improper for a Jesuit to dance in public, even if only teaching, every show that included dancing needed a secular ballet master as well.

  Jouvancy straightened and frowned at Charles. “Where have you seen these results, may I ask?”

  “When I called on a member of our bourgeois Congregation of the Sainte Vierge, mon pere. This young man was in the house, giving a lesson to one of the young people there. I was very impressed with him,” Charles said, happily remembering his first sight of Mlle Isabel Brion, bouncing through her dancing lesson.

  “His name?”

  “Monsieur Germain Morel, mon pere. He is at the beginning of his career and would not require high pay.”

  “That, at least, is to the good. Very well, tell him to be here tomorrow at this time, and I will see what he can do. I will speak to the bursar. He will certainly cost less than Maitre Beauchamps, and we must have someone.” Presenting his best profile, Jouvancy gazed tragically into the middle distance. “How it pains me to see these practitioners of dance act as though they are the center of every performance. How dare a mere practitioner like Maitre Beauchamps treat a learned theoretician such as myself as he has just done? But that is increasingly the way; no one cares why a thing should be done. Or not done! They care only for doing it, as fast and as vulgarly as possible!” He lifted a graceful hand, as though inviting the ancients, those revered makers of art’s eternal rules, to comment.

  They did not, but Charles stood in for them, murmuring ambiguously as he always did when Jouvancy started the theoretician-versus-practitioner argument. The academic notion that theoreticians were superior to practitioners was a familiar one. But as he’d had occasion to think before now, calling the great dancer and dancing master Beauchamps “only a practitioner” was like calling the pope “only a priest.”

  Hearing the boys shifting impatiently behind him, and judging that Jouvancy’s performance of the heroically long-suffering producer-director was nearly over, Charles said deferentially, “Mon pere, today’s rehearsal is not lost, you know.”

  Or wouldn’t be, if they got to work soon. These rehearsals, shorter than those for the summer show, would last only two hours. At three o’clock, the boys would go on to the rhetoric classroom, where the remainder of class time was spent working under Pere Pallu, another of Louis le Grand’s rhetoric masters and author of the Latin script for Celsus, February’s spoken tragedy. Jouvancy would go with them to share the rest of the afternoon’s teaching. Charles, under Pere Le Picart’s order, was excused from assisting in the classroom while he followed the police inquiry into the murders.

  “You have Pere Pallu’s tragedy script,” Charles went on. “And I can look at the dancers’ particular skills to see who ought to be cast in what kind of dance.”

  Jouvancy suddenly abandoned his performance, clapped a hand to his forehead, and drew a folded paper from his cassock. “Forgive me, maitre, this crisis drove everything from my mind. Monsieur Charpentier sent a list of dances.” He handed the paper to Charles.

  “Good. Then we have what we need, do we not?”

  “Yes, of course we do!” As though Charles had been the one delaying him, Jouvancy turned in a whirl of cassock skirts and advanced on the waiting students. “So, messieurs. You already know which of you are in the tragedy and which in the musical intermedes. We will begin. But first, let us pray.”

  Everyone bowed his head.

  “Dear Lord of hosts,” Jouvancy said, more militantly than was usual with him, “bless this work we begin today. Strengthen our voices and our bodies. And make each one know his place. And keep it with humility. Amen.” Having thus further relieved his feelings, he took the actors onto the little stage while Charles gathered the dancers at the far end of the chamber and looked them over.

  There were seven of them. Six were the best dancers in the senior rhetoric class: Armand Beauclaire, from Paris; Walter Connor, from Ireland; Michele Bertamelli, from Milan; Charles Lennox, natural son of the late Charles II of England; Andre Chenac, from Tours; and Olivier Thiers, from Paris. The seventh was Henri Montmorency, the oxlike eighteen-year-old scion of one of France’s most noble families. His mother had “asked” that he be allowed to dance in the February show, which she and other M
ontmorencys would attend. Because they were Montmorencys, it went without saying that the boy would dance. No matter that the boy was one of Maitre Beauchamps’s few failures, having proved himself incapable of dancing. In Jesuit colleges, rank was less the arbiter of everything than it was elsewhere. All students were expected to treat each other courteously, and their success in the classroom depended solely on their own wits and achievements. Nonetheless, boys from great families got the classroom’s best seats and the best chambers in the student living quarters, and nobility was-in Charles’s opinion-too often a consideration in casting plays and ballets. Charles was not pleased at having to find something for M. Montmorency to do in Celse.

  “Maitre?” Armand Beauclaire, a pink, round-faced sixteen, with light brown hair as thick as thatch, was studying Charles. “Are you well?”

  Charles looked up blankly. “What? Oh, yes, certainly!” He pulled himself together and tried not to hope that Montmorency would sprain an ankle. Or both ankles.

  The other boys, though, were very good dancers. Several were good enough for strong solos, and together the six would make an impressive ensemble. He unfolded Charpentier’s list of dances, and the students gathered around him. When Charles reached the end of the list, he was nodding happily. This composer knew what he was about. Of course, Charles knew of Charpentier’s work for the noble Mlle de Guise and her household musicians, called The Guise Music. He had also heard one or two of the composer’s pieces for the Jesuit church of St. Louis and looked forward now to hearing Charpentier’s theatrical music.

  He smiled at the boys. “Monsieur Charpentier has given us a fine list of dances and characters.” His gaze traveled around the small circle. “Who knows the story of our hero, Celse? He is Celsus in Latin, but we will call him Celse, since our musical tragedy lyrics are in French.”

  The Italian boy, thirteen and in his first year in the senior rhetoric class, put up his hand. “He was Milanese, maitre. Like me.” Michele Bertamelli drew himself up, and his enormous black eyes glowed. “God made most of His saints in Italy.”

  Beauclaire retorted flatly, “He was French.”

  “One small moment, messieurs,” Charles said, interrupting Bertamelli’s protest. “Monsieur Bertamelli raises an interesting point. It is correct that many of our earliest saints are from the Italian cities. Why is that, do you suppose?”

  “Because the Roman emperors killed so many Christians,” Walter Connor said impatiently, as though that were obvious. Which it should have been to boys who had studied Latin classics for four or five years.

  “Habes. Yet Monsieur Beauclaire is right that Celse was originally from Gaul.”

  Bertamelli’s small fierce face became a tragedy mask.

  Charles Lennox offered uncertainly, “And his mother was Saint Perpetua?”

  “Close. Saint Perpetua was the mother of Celse’s master, Saint Nazarius. The story goes like this. Nero was emperor-so it is said-when Nazarius was born. Saint Perpetua raised him as a Christian, though his father was a pagan. Nazarius gladly followed his mother’s way and grew to be very devout. When he began his preaching journeys to convert pagans, he went to Milan. But the Roman soldiers there beat him and threw him out of the city. He then went to Gaul, where a woman asked him to take Celse, her nine-year-old son, and give him a Christian upbringing. So the two companions went on together, the little boy helping the man and at the same time learning to be Christian. They made many converts, but in Trier, they angered the Roman officials and were condemned to be drowned in a lake. When they were thrown overboard, a great storm came up and the terrified boatmen rescued them, realizing that God was angry at this attempt to harm them. They were set free and returned to Milan-where the Romans beheaded them. Many years later, Saint Ambrose found their bodies buried in a garden outside Milan. He also found a vial of blood beside the body of Saint Nazarius, and the blood was still bright red and liquid. So their holy remains were kept in honor and treated with the reverence they had earned in life.”

  Montmorency yawned widely, a very rude act in company, which Charles ignored for the deliberate provocation it was. Beauclaire put up his hand.

  “Yes, Monsieur Beauclaire?”

  “Maitre, why was the blood already in a vial? Who put it there if no one had dug Saint Nazarius up before Saint Ambrose?”

  “A very good question. Some tellings of the story say only that Saint Nazarius was bleeding when they dug him up, and that his blood was still liquid and bright red.”

  Beauclaire was shaking his head. “My brother told me dead bodies don’t bleed. He saw a body dissected and it didn’t bleed.”

  “No, no,” Bertamelli cried, shaking a finger at Beauclaire. “They bleed! If they were murdered and the guilty one touches them, they bleed and that is how you know the murderer!”

  “People used to believe that,” Charles said. “But now-”

  “No, no, I saw it, maitre, I saw it myself, my uncle was murdered by his cousin and when his cousin turned the body over, it bled on his hands and made them as red as the devil’s tongue to accuse him!”

  Several of the boys were round-eyed with interest, but Beauclaire and Connor looked at each other and shrugged. Montmorency just looked confused.

  To avoid another international dispute, Charles said firmly, “There are many unexplained things in God’s world. We must go on with our purpose here. Our dancing space today will be from the wall to where I am standing. Mark it out, please.”

  The boys took off their hats and began placing them to indicate a rectangle, deeper than it was wide. Montmorency haughtily handed his hat to little Bertamelli, who bowed ironically and added his own hat and Montmorency’s to the rectangle.

  Charles, watching, nodded thoughtfully. “Now, the first dance is a sarabande for Saint Perpetua.” He let his gaze drift over the waiting dancers and come to rest on Montmorency. “Monsieur Montmorency, let me see your demi-coupe, two pas marches, and a balance.”

  Montmorency stared in horror. “Saint Perpetua? Me?”

  “Why not?”

  “In a gown?”

  “But of course.”

  The rest of the group was convulsed with silent laughter.

  “I want to be a Roman soldier.”

  Charles raised his eyebrows.

  “Please,” Montmorency added grudgingly.

  Charles waited.

  “Please, maitre.”

  Having extracted the required courtesy due a teacher, Charles graciously inclined his head. “Perhaps you are somewhat large for Saint Perpetua.” He turned to the light and wiry Walter Connor. “Monsieur Connor, could you manage Saint Perpetua?”

  Connor grinned all over his face. “With pleasure, maitre. As long as she doesn’t wear a clock.” Charles had saved Connor from having to dance in the summer ballet while wearing a three-foot chiming clock on his head.

  “My thanks, Monsieur Connor,” Charles said, grinning back. “Show us your demi-coupe, two pas marches, and a balance.”

  Connor took the female position for making a reverence, heels together, feet turned out, hands clasped palm up and palm down at his waist, bent both knees and straightened them. Then he stretched one leg back, the toe of his shoe on the floor, arranged his arms in the fourth position, and turned his head slightly toward the upraised arm. Charles drew his time-keeping stick from his cassock and set the tempo, beating a slow triple meter on the floor. Connor executed his steps and ended in an effortless balance on the ball of one foot.

  “Excellent! You are our Saint Perpetua, Monsieur Connor.” Charles looked at his list and then at the remaining six boys. “Monsieur Beauclaire, let me see your pas de bourree, forward, backward, to both sides, and emboite with the heel beat. All at a slow tempo.”

  Again he set the tempo, and Beauclaire went effortlessly and beautifully through his steps. He was perhaps the school’s best dancer, though he had bitter difficulty telling right from left.

  “You are our Saint Nazarius,” Charles said, smiling at
him.

  Beauclaire bowed. “I will write to my mother, maitre, and tell her I have been made a saint,” he said piously, laughter dancing in his eyes. The other boys groaned.

  “Now we need a Celse.” Charles would have liked to give the part to the quiet, anxious Charles Lennox, but Celse had to be small, and the English boy was as tall as Beauclaire. The Italian was the smallest and youngest of the group. Poised on his toes, Bertamelli was watching Charles with the eagerness of a fledgling hoping for a worm. Charles nodded at him. “Monsieur Bertamelli, show us all the hopping, jumping steps you know. I want to see how fast and light you are.”

  “Like the swallow skimming the clouds, like the eagle racing the wind, like-”

  “Just show us, please, Monsieur Bertamelli.”

  The boy leaped to the center of the dancing space and, without waiting for Charles’s stick, launched himself into a blur of aerial steps. His scholar’s gown billowed and rippled through pas de rigaudon, pas de sissonne, pas assemble, and some steps Charles suspected Bertamelli’s feet of inventing on their own.

  Laughing for sheer pleasure at the boy’s exuberance-and raw talent-Charles called, “Thank you, Monsieur Bertamelli, well done.” Bertamelli kept dancing. Charles clapped his hands. “Mon brave, come back to earth!”

  Bertamelli stopped, panting and sweating, and waited anxiously.

  “The part is yours; you will be our Celse, Monsieur Bertamelli.”

  Bertamelli flung out his arms, and for a moment Charles thought the boy was going to rush at him. “I thank you, maitre! My mother will be so proud. All Milan will be so proud!”

  He bowed and marched back to his confreres, a triumphal procession of one.

  Cutting off Montmorency’s scornful laughter with a look, Charles swallowed his own grin and consulted his list. St. Ambrose was to express his joy at finding the holy bodies by dancing a forlane, a fast dance only a little calmer than a gigue. Which Charles thought a little extreme for an elderly saint, but no doubt the miraculous discovery had renewed his youth.