by Judith Rock
Not a dead body, thank God. Charles bent closer and put his hand on the warm face. The boy was breathing, but he was ominously still. His scholar’s gown was torn half off him, and Charles’s hand came away wet with blood from the smooth cheek. He wiped the boy’s face with his cloak, seeing in the slowly growing light that the blood was from a badly broken nose. Probably from snow packed around a stone, which had also knocked its victim out of his wits. As he picked the boy up, another hail of snowballs came at him, along with raucous singing from farther down the lane.
“Le notaire, il etait fort, mais cette notaire est aussi mort! Il est perdue, pour ainsi dire, Les Jesuites pour enrichir!”
The doggerel hammered at Charles as he carried the boy toward the gate. It was the first time he’d actually heard this verse. “The notary was strong, but he is dead, lost to enrich the Jesuits.”Trying to shut his ears, he reached the courtyard, half running. Frere Brunet had set up a temporary infirmary in the lamplit stable. With the help of two other lay brothers, the infirmarian was tending boys injured on both sides of the melee. Pere Montville, just inside the stable door, was grimly questioning two half-grown boys. One was a shame-faced Louis le Grand student, and the other, in a shorter scholar’s gown, was a student from another college. Each had a rapidly blackening eye.
Brunet looked up from sponging blood off another boy’s forehead. “Blessed saints, that one looks bad, bring him over here, maitre.”
Charles put the boy down beside the one Brunet was working on. “Do you need me in here, mon frere?”
Brunet shook his head, absorbed in checking his new patient for broken bones, and Charles hurried back to the lane. The brawl was mostly over, the last apprentices and alien students in rapid retreat, pursued by large lay brothers doing their best to lay hands on them. The more culprits Montville questioned-on both sides, Charles thought wryly, since the Louis le Grand day students were as likely as their adversaries to have started this-the more chance a coherent picture would emerge. Now that the way was clear, Charles went to the end of the lane, where it joined the side street near the old college of Les Cholets. The woman he’d glimpsed was no doubt long gone, but it wouldn’t hurt to make sure.
As he reached the side street, his way was blocked by winter street cleaning-a plodding cart horse pulling a wide, heavy triangular drag that captured garbage and frozen horse and mule droppings, which workmen gathered into the cart alongside it. Waiting for drag and cart to pass, Charles eyed the ill-kept wall around Les Cholets and wondered if the shadow might have used the easy toeholds of missing stones to climb into the courtyard. He grabbed the wall’s uneven top and pulled himself up, then wished he hadn’t as pain shot through the old wound in his left shoulder. The price for striking useful fear into the hearts of the brawling boys he’d held off the ground, he realized ruefully. As far as he could tell in the poor light, Les Cholet’s courtyard was empty, and he let himself carefully down again to the lane’s snowy cobbles.
He hurried around to Louis le Grand’s main doors. Pere Le Picart was there, as Charles had thought he would be, talking to two of La Reynie’s officers. The horse drag was toiling noisily up the rue St. Jacques, and the last day students were streaming into the college. These were the oldest day boys, fifteen to eighteen or so, and the only ones allowed to come and go by the main doors. From the look of the students, the fight here hadn’t been as fierce, or it had at least been more equal. Some had black eyes, cuts, and bruises, but overall they seemed not much damaged.
“… most likely to be last night, our informers told us,” the older officer was saying unhappily to Le Picart. “Either they were in on it, or their informers were wrong.” He smiled bleakly. “These bravos launched their attack just after the night patrol was gone, before we got here. That gap shouldn’t have happened.” With grim anticipation, he added, “And someone’s head will roll for it. In any event, the lieutenant-general has assigned guards here all day, and you’ll have the patrol again tonight.”
Le Picart said, “And that song? What have you discovered?”
“Nothing. But as of today, we’re confiscating all the copies we come across and arresting the sellers for inciting violence. That’s all I know, mon pere.”
Le Picart nodded and dismissed them to their places on either side of the doors. He turned to Charles. “Were any of the boys at the stable gate badly hurt? I have not yet been there.”
“That’s why I came to find you. One boy at least seems badly hurt. I found him unconscious in the lane. Frere Brunet took charge of him.”
“May God forgive our enemies for attacking the youngest ones so savagely, because I am not sure that I can.” The rector turned back through the double doors, toward the back door to the Cour d’honneur.
A carriage came rolling up from the Seine, its occupants leaning out the windows to stare at the police around the college door. Charles stood his ground and gazed back at them, wondering if they thought he was a killer.
Chapter 20
“ One-two-three, one-two-three, sink-and-rise, stepstep.” Banging his stick on the floor, Charles tried to ignore the competing counting from Morel’s corner of the salle des actes, Jouvancy’s shouts at his actors on the stage, and the mess Montmorency was making of the simple pas de bourree Charles was counting in a misguided effort to help the boy. With equal lack of success, he tried to ignore the headache he had from banging the stick. And from the day in general, which had gotten steadily worse as it went on.
Lieutenant-General La Reynie had come to the college to apologize to the rector for the failure of the police to keep the morning’s attackers away, and Le Picart had called Charles to be part of the talk. La Reynie’s mood had been as black as Charles had ever seen it, and the reason was quickly clear. The lieutenant-general had told them that the minister of war, Michel Louvois, had been informed of the attack on Louis le Grand and had come to the Chatelet just after dawn. Outraged by the burgeoning disorder in the city, Louvois had given La Reynie until Tuesday to announce that the murderers of Martine Mynette and Henri Brion were under arrest. Which meant that if new and compelling evidence had not turned up by Monday, Gilles Brion would be put to the question. Tortured into a confession, that meant. Charles had pleaded. La Reynie had been implacable. The rector had been called to the grand salon to talk to the angry parents descending on the school and, left alone, Charles and La Reynie had been reduced to shouting at each other. The end result was that La Reynie had refused to let Charles go to visit Brion.
“Do you think I want this?” he had spat at Charles. “I have no choice. Let me remind you how the power goes in this matter. First, the king. Second, Monsieur Louvois. A poor third-me.”
“You are head of policing, how can you be a poor third?” Charles had spat back.
“If you are that naive,” the response had been, “you are no use to me. If you want to be of some use, go and find this thrice-damned Tito!”
“Before Monday,” Charles had said bitterly.
At that, La Reynie’s misery had shown briefly in his eyes. “Please God, before Monday.”
As the day went on, the students had grown more frightened, angry, and distracted from their studies. The professors were angry and distracted, too. The lay brothers were simply angry, and secretly preparing for war. Charles heard two different groups of them fiercely planning to redeem the college honor, preferably tomorrow morning.
Now, wondering how he was going to get the dancers he was working with-and himself-through the rehearsal, he put a hand to his throbbing head and called a halt to the doomed dance. Montmorency was standing flat footed, scowling at the other two dancers.
“What is the matter, Monsieur Montmorency?”
“This is a stupid step.”
“It’s not the step that’s stupid,” Olivier Thiers said resignedly, but all too audibly.
Fortunately, Andre Chenac began laughing before Thiers finished his sentence and Montmorency did not hear. Charles gripped his time-keeping
stick and prayed for patience.
“It is a simple pas de bourree, Monsieur Montmorency,” Charles said, smiling dangerously. “Or a simple fleuret, whichever you care to call it. Look. I will show you once more.” He put the stick on a windowsill, hitched up his cassock, and spoke the step as he did it. “Bend your left knee as you put your right foot, cocked at the ankle, next to your left ankle. Like this. Then rise onto your left demi-pointe as you step forward onto your right demi-pointe, then step forward on your left demi-pointe, and forward again on your right demi-pointe, like this. Nothing could be simpler!”
“What about his arms?” Andre Chenac said.
“Perhaps,” Charles said sweetly, “you would like to teach him the arm positions, Monsieur Chenac?”
Chenac took an involuntary step backward. “Me? No, maitre!”
“Then shut up!” Thiers hissed in Chenac’s ear.
A new thought made Charles’s eyes light with sudden hope. Refusing to think about Madame Montmorency’s wish to see her son dance at the February show, he said, “Monsieur Montmorency, I am going down to the scenery cave after this rehearsal. To bring up the gold block you will stand on as you direct your soldiers.” He smiled. “I think we will have you in place there at the beginning of the scene. You will be a magnificent statue of a noble soldier, who comes to life to save the Romans from this Christian Nazarius. But, of course, it is really God bringing you to life, so that later Saint Nazarius and Celse can be gloriously martyred for our edification.”
Montmorency looked blank, trying to work that out, but the other two boys nodded enthusiastically.
“That will be even more worthy of you!” Chenac gazed limpidly at Montmorency. “So much more noble!”
“Only a true courtier could bring to life the perfection of an ancient statue,” Thiers said gravely.
“So tomorrow you will have your pedestal,” Charles said. “Here is how you will stand on it, until you come to life.” He took Montmorency into a corner and placed him firmly in a fourth position. “There. Excellent. Do not move even a muscle. I will tell you a very important secret, Monsieur Montmorency.” Charles lowered his voice. “Not moving at all is far more difficult than moving. But I know you can do it.”
With his right foot forward, his left arm raised in a curve, and his right arm curved long at his side, Montmorency went absolutely rigid and gazed with fierce concentration into the middle distance.
“Yes, excellent!” With a sigh of relief, Charles quickly set the rest of the dance on the other two boys, and by the end of the rehearsal their steps were nearly perfect.
The three o’clock bell was ringing, Pere Jouvancy’s actors were coming toward them down the room, and Morel had gathered the other dancers close around him, when a hoarse “maitre?” made Charles turn. The noble statue was tottering but holding his pose like the last soldier defending a breached city gate.
With a pang of conscience, Charles said, “Come out of your pose, mon ami; well and nobly done, indeed!”
Gratefully, Montmorency dropped his quivering left arm to his side and shifted his feet. His big face was suffused with pride as he walked stiffly toward the door with his fellows.
“Mon pere?” Charles stopped Jouvancy on his way to the door. “I need to go down to the scenery cave. Do you want me to look for anything while I’m down there?”
“Ah, yes!” Jouvancy included Morel, who was walking toward them, in his smile. “Find the street scene with houses and the Temple of Mars. It’s there somewhere. See how much retouching it needs. We’ll also need the lakeshore with pine trees; that will be perfect for the near drowning. Even without an overstage for mounting stage effects, we should be able to put you somewhere with a bellows for wind. Don’t bring them up from the cave, just place them at the front of the row of flats. But before you go, tell me how you’re managing with young Montmorency.”
“He looks somewhat happier,” Morel put in.
Charles grinned. “Monsieur Montmorency is going to make an excellent statue of a soldier.”
Jouvancy gave a bark of laughter. “Brilliant, absolutely brilliant! I shall remember that little idea. Wonderful! Come, then, you can go through the rhetoric classroom to the cave.”
“Maitre du Luc,” Morel said diffidently, “if you would like help looking for the scenery, I would be glad to offer assistance.”
Charles was ready to be quiet and alone. “I don’t really need-” he began, but Jouvancy was beaming at the young man.
“Yes, good, very kind of you, Monsieur Morel. Come, both of you!”
Charles sighed inwardly and followed them down the stairs. Unless he was greatly mistaken, Morel wanted to talk about something, and Charles wanted nothing more to worry about.
“Where are the cellars?” Morel asked, as they emerged into the courtyard.
“Hmm?” Charles was looking up at the iron-gray clouds as he walked, hoping that whatever they had in store would hold off until he could put his evening plans into action. “The caves?” He pointed at the east side of the court, opposite the street passage and the rue St. Jacques. “We keep the scenery under the rhetoric classroom there. It’s convenient, since we build the summer tragedy and ballet stage to back onto the rhetoric classroom windows. We have to haul what we use up the stairs, but at least we don’t have to carry it far. I hope the lanterns are still beside the stairs. It’s dark as sin down there, and open candle flames are too dangerous near the wood and canvas.”
The dancers and actors had already taken their seats in the rhetoric room when Jouvancy, Charles, and Morel entered. Pere Martin Pallu, pink and shy and round-faced, with almost comically big hands, had just called the students to order after a short break. When he saw Jouvancy, he stepped down from the master’s dais and went to him for a hurried consultation. Watching Pallu, Charles marveled at the rank and fame the young Jesuit had already attained. Three years younger than Charles, he was through final vows and ordination, and already a rhetoric master. He had been charged with writing the Latin script for the Celsus tragedy because of his growing reputation as a writer.
Jouvancy answered Pallu’s question, patted him encouragingly on the shoulder, and sent him back to the dais, where Pallu took his place behind the lectern and began to set the afternoon’s Cicero translation.
“And when all have finished, each decurion is to hear his men’s translations. All ten in a group will listen to each translation and will be prepared to say why a correction is made, if asked to do so by the decurion. Habes?” Pallu said.
“Yes, mon pere,” the students chorused, and set to work.
The decurions, newly designated each month, earned their rank by outstanding work in their rhetoric studies. Called by the ancient Roman army title for “officer,” each was responsible for ten “soldiers.” Now, before settling to his own work, each “officer” made sure that his “soldiers” were duly settled to theirs. Pallu sat down in the master’s chair on the dais and watched them all closely, ready to offer help if he was needed.
Jouvancy opened the door to the cellar stairs, then went to join Pallu on the dais. Charles saw that the lanterns and the little flint and tinder box were still there on the top step, and set about making light. He handed Morel one softly glowing lantern, took the other, and led the way down the worn stone stairs.
“Close the door,” he said quietly over his shoulder, “or the draft coming up from below will freeze the classroom. I hope we find what we need quickly, before we freeze down here ourselves.”
The stairs ended in the dank lifeless cold of ancient cellars. The lantern light seemed as feeble as a single star in a black night sky, lighting patches of gray stone wall and picking out curved vaulting as Charles led the way toward the scenery, walking quickly to forestall talk. Beside one of the squat round pillars holding up the ceiling, he stopped, lifted his lantern, and hung it on an iron hook so that its light shone along a row of stage flats leaning face outward, against the wall. “Bring your lantern with you,” he
said to Morel, and started walking slowly along the line of flats. “The flats we want should be along here somewhere.”
They quickly found the set of flats for the Roman town scene, with its tile-roofed houses, cedar trees with sharply pointed tops, an imposing Temple of Mars, and a severe-looking Roman family posing in the paved street. Morel set his lantern down and they pulled the flat away from the wall and carried it to the front of the line, so it would be easily found when they were ready to dress the stage. Finding the lake flats turned out to be another matter. They reached the end of the long line of scenery without seeing them, even though they stopped to pull out several flats that had been stacked with their blank sides outward. The clammy frigid air wrapped itself around them like a cloak, and their breath came in white clouds.
“They’re not here,” Charles said. “Well, let’s get my lantern and Montmorency’s box and get out of this underworld. Charon’s river couldn’t possibly be colder than this.”
Squeaks and scufflings sent them hurrying toward the stairs, but not before an enormous rat waddled across their path, glancing at them with mild interest and not in the least afraid.
Morel shuddered as it disappeared beyond their lantern light. “I hate those things! Don’t they eat your scenery?”
“Not the flats. The rest of the things we mostly keep in locked chests a little way beyond the stairs. That’s where the box will be.”
Morel stayed so close he kept treading on Charles’s heels. They passed the foot of the stairs and walked along a line of low wooden chests. Charles knelt, dragged one of the chests aside, and pulled out a stout square box made of gold-painted wood.
“Voila!” Charles stood up and handed Morel his lantern. Then he picked up the box, yelped in pain, and dropped it.
Morel jumped back. “What? Another rat?”