by Judith Rock
“We must imagine our stage, messieurs.” He smiled at the trio of waiting boys. “The front of the stage and your audience are here, where I am standing. The back of the stage is there.” He pointed to the wall. “There will be scenery, but no stage machines. Where the singers will be placed is, of course, up to Monsieur Charpentier. But we will worry about that later. Monsieur Montmorency, you are the captain of soldiers and will begin there, upstage near the wall and in the center.”
Montmorency strutted to his place, assumed a dancer’s fourth position, and expanded his not inconsiderable chest.
“Monsieur Chenac, on his left, please. Monsieur Thiers, on his right. Good.” Charles counted the measures of music. “The melody goes like this.” He sang the music’s first two lines. “You begin with a pas de bourree. Monsieur Thiers, yours goes to the left, and yours to the right, Monsieur Chenac. Yours moves straight forward, Monsieur Montmorency.”
Chenac and Thiers quickly went through the step, then did it again in tandem, adjusting their spacing to leave room for Montmorency to move between them down the middle. But Montmorency didn’t move.
“Like this, Monsieur Montmorency.” Charles hitched up his cassock and demonstrated the step. “Now, the three of you together, just that step.”
Ignoring Montmorency’s stumbling, Charles nodded. “Now, the same step again. For you, it still travels forward, Monsieur Montmorency. For you others, it reverses to the opposite side.”
Thiers and Chenac smoothly reversed their pas de bourrees. Montmorency’s effort was at least in the right direction.
“Good,” Charles said brightly. “Back to the beginning and do that much while I keep time.” He picked up his time-keeping baton from the windowsill and took them through the short sequence three times. Montmorency was still stumbling. “Now, Monsieur Montmorency, when you reach the end of this sequence of steps, you will mount a small platform placed for you exactly center stage.”
Montmorency looked interested for the first time. And, Charles thought, relieved.
“From there, you will use your gold baton of office to direct your soldiers through their steps. At the end of the dance, you will lead them away to capture Saint Nazarius and drive him out of Milan.”
Thiers and Chenac, also relieved to have Montmorency safely confined, grinned at Charles and saluted their captain. Who tried so hard to look down his nose at them that his eyes nearly crossed.
The rest of the rehearsal went more smoothly. By the time three o’clock rang, the beginning of all the dances had been set. Morel gave the dancers a firm command to return on Thursday-tomorrow being the New Year’s holiday-with their steps perfected. Jouvancy shepherded his actors down the room, the dancers put on their scholar’s gowns and retrieved their hats, and all of them gathered at the door. Jouvancy joined Charles and Morel.
“Did all go well, Monsieur Morel?” he asked.
“Very well indeed, mon pere. I congratulate you on your students.”
“Do not compliment the rascals in their hearing,” he said loudly, making sure they heard him. The boys swallowed grins and bowed to Morel.
Charles asked Jouvancy, “How is the play coming, mon pere?”
“Well enough. I think it will all march together, now that we have the pieces in our hands.”
He smiled happily at his subordinates and took the boys away to the rhetoric classroom. Charles turned to Morel.
“That was well done,” Charles said, “Giving them something to practice between now and Thursday.”
Morel laughed. “I confess, I feared that if I did not give the little Italian something to practice, he would be bouncing off the walls and ceilings.” But as they left the salle, Morel sighed and his steps grew heavy. “It has been a relief to have something to think of these hours besides the Brion family’s trouble. If working for the college were not such an honor, I would have stayed with Monsieur Callot and Mademoiselle Brion today.”
“Forgive me,” Charles said contritely, “I never asked you about Monsieur Brion’s funeral this morning. Please believe me, I have been praying for all of them, and especially for Mademoiselle Brion.”
“The funeral was well enough. They decided not to wait for elaborate decorations and so forth. They-well-they wanted to have it over, given how he died. Still, it was very decently done by Monsieur Callot and according to Monsieur Brion’s station. But Mademoiselle Brion is nearly at the end of her strength. And now, with her brother arrested for the murders-how is she to support that?”
Charles let them out into the courtyard, where blue shadows were starting to gather on the snow. In spite of the cold, Charles stopped and glanced around the empty court.
“Monsieur Morel,” he said quietly, “there is something I must ask you. How long have you known Mademoiselle Brion’s brother?”
Morel eyed Charles warily. “A year, perhaps a little more. Why do you ask?”
“What do you think of him?”
“He is devout. Even overscrupulous. And easily upset. But he is not a murderer.”
“What do you know of his friends? His male friends.”
Morel drew back and shook his head vigorously. “I hope-someday-to marry Mademoiselle Brion. Though she is above me, I have hopes. I can say nothing more about her brother.”
“Because what you could say would further hurt her?”
“No! It’s just that-there is nothing to tell.”
“I agree that he is not a murderer. But I think he is at heart a sodomite.”
“No!” Morel’s face flamed with embarrassment.
“I will tell you something,” Charles said, “and, never fear, I will also tell my confessor. I do not care if Brion is a sodomite. Just now, other things matter more. I think he was with someone the night his father was killed, and if he will tell me who, it may save him.”
Hugging himself against the cold, Morel looked anywhere but at Charles. Then, carefully studying the heaped snow beside the path, he said, “I only once saw him with a man who might-who-” He gulped and started over, speaking at a gallop as though to get his words out without hearing them. “One day last autumn I arrived at the house for Mademoiselle Brion’s dancing lesson. I went upstairs and was crossing the landing to the salon, when I saw that Gilles was there with a man I didn’t know, a young man. They were talking very softly, handfast and looking into each other’s eyes. It was unmistakable.”
“Did you hear what they said?”
“Only a little before they saw me.” Morel frowned, trying to remember. “Gilles said, ‘Thank God you are so close. If we could not meet there-’ Then he stopped talking, because he saw me. They jumped apart and I pretended I’d noticed nothing.”
“What did the other young man look like?”
“I hardly looked at him, I was so confused and embarrassed. He was ordinary enough. Lighter hair than Gilles. And only a little taller.”
“Did you speak with him? Do you know his name?”
Morel shook his head. “We only had time to bow to each other before Gilles made an excuse and hurried him away.”
“Does Mademoiselle Brion know what you saw?”
“Of course not!”
“Thank you for telling me, monsieur. Your frankness may go some way toward saving him.”
They continued in silence to the street passage.
“I will be here at one o’clock on Thursday, maitre,” Morel said, as the porter opened the door. “I truly hope you can save Gilles. For his sister’s sake.”
After Morel had taken his leave, but before the porter could shut the door, a treble voice called out, “Maitre, we are back! And look!”
Nine-year-old Marie-Ange LeClerc, daughter of the baker and his wife, whose shop was in the college facade, skidded to a stop in front of the postern, carrying what looked like a hairy melon. Her brown eyes sparkled as she peered into the dark street passage. The red hood of her oversize cloak had fallen back on her shoulders and Charles saw that cherry-colored ribbons were tied in he
r dark curls, on either side of her small coif.
Grinning, he went out into the street. “Welcome home, mademoiselle! We have missed you.” He nodded toward the bakery. “Are your parents well?”
“They are very well, maitre, thank you.” Marie-Ange curtsied prettily. Then, social duties done, she thrust out the hairy melon. “Guess what this is!”
Charles bent to take a closer look. “Um-an ostrich egg with straw growing out of it?” There was an ostrich egg, though it wasn’t growing straw, in the college’s cabinet of curiosities.
Marie-Ange giggled. “You are not even close! Guess again.”
“Mmm-let’s see. A wig stand? With part of the wig still on it?”
She shrieked with laughter and shook her head so hard that her little white coif slipped sideways. “Only one more guess.”
“Well, it looks a little like my uncle Edouard. But I hope it’s not!”
This time her laughter brought Mme LeClerc hurrying from the shop. “Marie-Ange, hush, what will people-ah, Maitre du Luc!” She started to embrace Charles, caught herself, and settled for beaming at him. “As you see, we are back. But are you well, maitre? You are thinner. Surely they are not trying so hard to save money that they are making you fast through the holidays!” she said indignantly. “But there, the church has its own ways, and fortunately they are not those of the world,” she added ambiguously. “Your mother, is she well? So far away there in the south, she must miss you terribly at Christmas. Though family is not always restful, is it?” She rolled her eyes and glanced over her shoulder at the bakery. “We had a very nice time in Gonesse, so many bakeries there, one end of the village to the other, but I assure you, Roger’s brother does not make better bread than we do, even though he has the oh-so-famous Gonesse water! Our Seine water is just as good and better-What, Marie-Ange?”
The little girl was pulling at her mother’s gray woolen sleeve. “Maman, I was trying to tell him about my coconut!”
“Is that what it is?” Charles said with real interest. He poked a tentative finger at the thing, which felt as rough as it looked. “Where did you get it?”
“That’s the very best part, maitre! A sailor brought it to me, just a little while ago. Antoine sent it!” Her eyes shone like brown stars. “He sent it to me all the way from Martinique!”
“Did he! What a magnificent present,” Charles said, smiling. “Did the sailor who brought it give you news of Antoine and his father?”
Antoine Doute, the same age as Marie-Ange, had been a beginning student at Louis le Grand the year before and the two had become friends, in spite of the college rules.
“The sailor said he left them well,” the little girl said. Her radiance dimmed a little. “He said that they are staying longer in Martinique. I wish they would come home. Because when they do, I am going to marry Antoine!”
Mme LeClerc shooed her daughter toward the bakery door. “Stop talking nonsense, Marie-Ange. You have shown your treasure, go in from the cold now. Go!” Marie-Ange huffed her way back to the bakery, cuddling her coconut, and Mme LeClerc wrapped her shawl more closely around her shoulders and moved nearer to Charles. “But, maitre, what is this I hear about your college and a young girl dead? And her guardian dead, too? We heard such a terrible song on the way through the streets this morning. Young girls, now-and notaries, too, heaven knows-can cause anyone trouble enough, but why should Jesuits kill anyone, surely that cannot be!”
Notaries? Charles bit back an urge to swear. So now the song included Henri Brion. He started to ask Mme LeClerc what the song had said, but a familiar roaring voice rose over the noise of passersby, horses, carriages, and street criers.
“Dear blessed saints,” Mme LeClerc cried, “what is that?”
Charles looked over her head, squinting at what looked like a procession coming down the slope of the street, and sighed. “That is old Marin, the beggar.”
Marin was limping behind a string of mules being driven toward the river. The old man stumbled through their dung, his seamed face lifted to the sky, brandishing his stick and shouting, “Claire, blessed Claire, forgive me!”
“Ah, ma foi, it’s that old man of Reine’s,” Mme LeClerc said. “The poor thing grows worse and worse; he should be shut up somewhere. Because you never know what they’ll do, maitre, when they get like that; why, it could have been someone like him who killed the Mynette girl!”
“You knew Martine Mynette? And you know Reine?”
“Everyone knows Reine. I didn’t know the Mynette girl personally, of course, but I’ve seen her when I’ve gone visiting my friend Sybille, a baker’s wife in the Place Maubert. Little Martine Mynette was so pretty, blond as an angel.”
In silence, they watched Marin out of sight.
Mme LeClerc sighed. “His story is very sad, do you know it? But no, how could you, so new in Paris? I’ll tell you, maitre, but come into the shop, it’s growing colder out here than the devil’s-” She bit her lip, blushing, and hurried Charles through the door.
Shivering in the thinner cloak he’d been given to replace the good one snatched off his back in the street attack, Charles was glad enough to go. To his disappointment, though, the bakery’s chill was only a little less than the street’s, the oven having gone unlit while the family was away. Thumps from the workroom behind the shop, and Marie-Ange’s steady stream of chatter, told him that M. LeClerc was there, building a new fire.
“Well,” Mme LeClerc said, resting a hand on an empty counter, “the woman called Reine used to come around selling old clothes, and sometimes I gave her something to eat and we talked. Though I haven’t seen her lately.”
“I think she mostly begs now.”
“Ah, so you know her, maitre?”
“I’ve met her. And her daughter, Renee.”
“That one I do not know. But Reine, well, she has a past one does not talk about-especially not to you-but that’s men, isn’t it? Anyway, one day she told me that many years ago she fell truly in love with that mad old man who just passed!” Mme LeClerc’s plump shoulders climbed to her ears. “Who knows why women fall in love?” Her eyes grew vague for a moment and she glanced toward the back room and her husband’s noise. “Dear Saint Anne, who knows indeed?” Seeing the expression on Charles’s face, she laughed and said, “No, no, I am not regretting my Roger, not most of the time, but, dear God, how the man snores! I have been putting candle wax in my ears at night, but last night, in Gonesse, it fell too far in and it took three of us to get it out.” She frowned. “Where was I? Yes, Reine. So she fell in love with-now what is his name, I have forgotten-”
“He’s called Marin.”
“Marin, then. Well, old Marin was not always so old. He was about forty, still very much a man, when Claire Clemence’s tragedy happened. She was the Princess of Conde, and Marin was a servant in her house. Princess-how magnificent that sounds, but for her it was only sorrow. She lived alone with her servants in the Conde house here in Paris. Why alone? Because her ice-hearted husband hated her, poor thing. Well, one night, two men had a fight in her chamber. She tried to stop them, and Marin heard the shouting and ran in and threw himself between Claire Clemence and the men. He thought the two men were trying to kill her, but they were only trying to kill each other. I never learned what the fight was about, but it was certainly not about poor Claire Clemence, no matter what the thrice-damned Conde said after. She was more than forty by then, after all. And, so it was said, not quite right in her wits. What woman would be, treated as she was by the Conde! But the Conde used the fight as an excuse to accuse her of adultery. Almost overnight, she was gone from Paris, never to return. He shut her up in one of his chateaus, leagues from anywhere. With hardly the necessities of life, so they say. And never, not once, maitre, did her husband ever visit her, nor does her son. So they say.”
“She’s still alive?”
“Oh, yes, the poor creature.”
A gust of wind rattled the street door’s latch and blew the door slightly open,
but Mme LeClerc was shaking her head sadly over her story and didn’t notice. Charles shuddered, as much from the story as from the chill.
“Marin’s madness lies at the Conde’s door, too,” Mme LeClerc said. “Marin had been in love with Claire Clemence since he was a boy, though Reine said there was never anything improper between them, and she would know, because no man keeps a secret from Reine, they say! When they took Claire Clemence away, Marin tried to follow, he tried to hold on to her carriage, but the footmen pushed him off. The fall broke his foot badly, that’s why he limps. He followed on his broken foot until he couldn’t go farther, and finally a carter found him and brought him back to Paris. Well, when the Conde heard that Marin had tried to find her, he was furious and spread terrible rumors about Marin and Claire Clemence. He made sure Marin would never get another place in anyone’s house, and he never did. By the time he got back to Paris, he was skin and bones, Reine said. They almost had to cut off his foot. The worst was that his sorrow over Claire Clemence being so reviled and taken away sent him mad.” Mme LeClerc hunched her shoulders and shivered a little. “He’s fearsome now, when the fit’s on him. He used to go to doors asking alms, and people gave him what he needed. He was often around the Place Maubert, my friend Sybille said, but he doesn’t go there now, they’re afraid of him and drive him out. And who can blame them, the way he raves and shakes that stick of his when he doesn’t get what he asks.”
Charles was silent, thinking that Marin had very rarely gotten what he asked. And understanding now what blasphemy it must seem to the old man for the heart of the Prince of Conde to rest in a jeweled box, on an altar draped with cloth of gold. After hearing the story, Charles felt ready enough to call it blasphemy himself.