The Eloquence of Blood cdl-2

by Judith Rock

  Charles left the two in possession of the cabinet. As he went out onto the gallery, he realized that he’d seen the child before, that he was the youngest of the three boys who’d gone to see if the holy water was frozen in the chapel on Christmas Eve. Smiling with pleasure at the boy’s delight in the horn, Charles walked under the grand painted ceiling of the ground floor, past the paintings of St. Ignatius and Francis Xavier, and out into the frozen garden. Under the winter sunset’s intense orange and red, he went slowly toward supper, thinking about the child’s easy trust that the horn was what he wanted it to be. Charles told himself that he could do that; he could simply keep on believing that Marin would not have killed Martine Mynette, no matter what, and keep his mouth shut. But Marin did not just look wistfully at every pretty girl, hoping that she was his beloved Claire. He saw hateful demons when he failed to find her. And I am not nine years old, Charles sighed to himself as the supper bell began to ring.

  Charles, whose table assignments paralleled Pere Jouvancy’s, was once again eating his meals in the older pensionnaires’ refectory. The huge room was at least warmer with more students present, now that most classes had begun again. Charles took his place at the end of the faculty table on the dais, looking out over the vast room. Jouvancy sat a few places to his left, toward the center, and Pere Damiot was beside Charles. Supper was beans again, but at least there was mutton in the pottage. Even so, Damiot was eyeing his bowl with distaste.

  “Salt it,” Charles recommended. “It’s not bad with more salt.”

  “What’s that?” Damiot lifted up a whitish chunk of something on his spoon. “Blessed Virgin, is that a-a potato? Or whatever they’re called? Those things are cattle feed; surely we’re not that badly off yet!”

  “Whatever possessed a gourmet like you to become a Jesuit? It’s not a potato, it’s mutton fat.” Charles passed Damiot the salt.

  Outside the refectory windows, iron-grilled for protection against balls and flying shuttlecocks during courtyard recreation, dark had come. The refectory was lit with the bare minimum of tallow candles, and Charles supposed that Damiot could be forgiven for thinking that someone had put potatoes in the pottage. The feeble light picked out an occasional gleam of gold on the ceiling, but for once, the ceiling painted with the Virgin’s stars failed to comfort him. He kept imagining Marin helpless in the Chatelet, a useless beggar whom no one cared for, the perfect scapegoat. But if Marin had killed Martine Mynette, there had to be two murderers. There was no reason for him to have killed Henri Brion. At least, no reason Charles could think of.

  “Maitre du Luc,” Damiot said loudly, “have you heard anything I’ve said?”

  “What?”

  “Do you want to know what I’ve learned about the smuggling scheme or not?”

  “Certainly,” Charles said, pushing his fears away.

  “Here is what I learned from my father this afternoon,” Damiot said, pitching his voice under the beehive sound of talk in the refectory. “I’ve already told our rector. So far as my father has been able to find out, there were only three other investors in the smuggling scheme besides Monsieur Bizeul the goldsmith and his friend Cantel.”

  “Yes, Monsieur La Reynie already told me as much.”

  “Well, I don’t think he’s told you this! Cantel, according to his furious wife, left Paris-probably with his mistress-just before midnight on that same Thursday when Monsieur Henri Brion was last seen. Madame Cantel says he’s fled his creditors, and my father thinks the same. Madame Cantel also told my father that it was she who found Henri Brion in a courtyard outbuilding, just before light on Friday morning, and let him out. So,” Damiot finished brightly, “there were only five investors in all. Monsieur Brion kept the number small, you see, so that each could make more money out of the scheme. And very sound policy that is, remember that.”

  “Oh, I will,” Charles said gravely. Beyond teasing his friend, he felt grave in truth. Madame Cantel had been much more forthcoming with Monsieur Damiot than with Lieutenant-General La Reynie. Her evidence-if she was telling the truth-put Cantel out of the running as Henri Brion’s killer. Which would only turn La Reynie’s attention more determinedly to Gilles Brion.

  The rector rose from his chair as the signal for the final grace, and all talk stopped. Then, as the Jesuits at the faculty table were filing out, the rector drew Charles aside.

  “Have you learned anything more today?” Le Picart asked, nodding at Damiot to keep going.

  Charles shook his head. He was not ready to tell anyone of his growing suspicion of Marin. “Nothing, mon pere. Pere Damiot has just told me what his father learned about the senior Brion’s investors, but he said that he has told you, as well.”

  “Yes, he came to me before supper. So nothing has changed. We have nothing more to use to quiet the rumors. Or the song.” His eyes ranged over the students leaving the refectory in the required silence. “If nothing has changed by Monday, I am going to order a general day of prayer and fasting.” Humor sparkled briefly in his eyes. “Though, given our supper, perhaps that would not be such an unwelcome order. Meanwhile, I must tell you that you have an extra duty tomorrow after the rising bell and prayers. I began this morning having all our entrances guarded as the day students come and go, to prevent any repeat of Thursday morning’s brawl. You will take your turn tomorrow morning at the stable gate, as the younger boys come in by the lane.” The rector sighed and stifled a yawn. “Let us leave this day behind and hope for better tomorrow.”

  Dismissed, Charles crossed the court to the main building’s back door, then went through the salon and up the front staircase to his chambers. He was suddenly so tired he could have sat down on the stairs and slept there. When he reached his sleeping chamber, he felt his way to his candle, took it to the passage lantern and lit it, and carried it back to his room. Hugging his cloak tightly around his body-there was still only canvas in his window frame-he looked at the candlelight dancing on the little black stone Pieta in its wall niche. Though his mother had sent it as his New Year’s present, he would keep it only briefly, and then it would be placed where everyone could see it. At first, he hadn’t much liked the carving’s dark stone. But the longer he lived with it, the more its color moved him, as though the mourning Virgin and her Son’s tortured body were dark with all the world’s death and suffering since Adam.

  Charles set his candle firmly in its holder beside the prie-dieu and knelt. Outside, bells began to ring, from the Carmelites, the Visitandines, the Jacobins, St. Germain des Pres, Port Royal, Cluny, calling the devout to end the day with prayer. When he finished his prayers, he stayed where he was-partly because he was almost too tired to get up, but also because his mind was still on the dark Pieta. In contrast, the little painting of the Virgin and Child hanging in front of his prie-dieu was full of light and soft, clear colors. The Virgin was young and round cheeked; the plump child was squirming and laughing. Well, that’s how beginnings are, Charles thought. That’s how youth is.

  He pushed himself to his feet and took the Pieta from its niche. He brought it to the prie-dieu and knelt again, balancing the carving on the wooden ledge. His eyes went from the painting to the little statue, from the statue to the painting. Beginning and ending, the brightness of birth and the darkness of death. But that was hardly profound. Dead children had lain on their weeping mother’s breasts since the Creation. Nonetheless, he found himself staring hungrily at the way the baby in the painting and the dead man of the statue both nestled against Mary’s heart. Then, for an instant, he saw it, saw what was arcing back and forth between the painting and the statue like lightning. Truth, he thought, at first. No, not truth, only love. He shook his head. “Only” love? Whatever he glimpsed was too bright to look at. And when it was gone, he was still unable to find words for what it had been.

  All the weight of his body came suddenly back to him, and he stumbled as he got up from his knees and put the black statue back in its place. His eyes closing with exhaustion, he blew
out the candle, clumsily kicked off his shoes, and got into bed, still wearing his cassock for warmth, and was asleep before he got his blankets drawn up.

  He dreamed of a nun. He seemed to be standing in her cell, watching her as she slept. With a sigh, she turned over and was suddenly resting her head on a luminous figure he couldn’t quite see-a man’s figure, he thought uncomfortably. Then, in the way of dreams, her black habit became the black of the little Pieta, and then the nun was gone and the empty bed was glowing like a star. Slowly, inevitably, the light took the form of Pernelle’s naked body, shining through her veil of black hair, and the bed she lay in was his. She opened her arms to him. With a great cry, he sank onto the bed, naked now himself, holding her warmth and fragrance, stroking her silken flesh, resting his head on her breast, listening to the beating of her heart. Then the chamber was full of people. A nun held out the Sacred Heart of Jesus to him, with cherubs fluttering around it like the natural history cabinet’s butterflies restored to life. Martine Mynette took the nun’s place, holding out her wounded heart and weeping. Then Charles, alone in his bed, was holding his own heart in his hands and seeing that it was full of tiny black swords buried to the hilt in his living flesh.

  He woke with tears on his face and was still awake when the rising bell sounded.

  Chapter 25

  ST. ODILON’S DAY, SATURDAY, JANUARY 4

  The night’s darkness had thinned a little by the time the youngest day boys were pouring through the stable gate under Charles’s watchful eye. At the ends of the lane, lanterns swung as the lay brothers there walked back and forth. So far there had been no trouble at all. But muted talk ran along the file of black-gowned boys, and they looked anxiously over their shoulders, still fearful that Thursday’s attack would happen again.

  “All is well,” Charles said quietly. “And silence now, if you please, messieurs,” the rule being that talk ceased at the gate. He held up his lantern and looked along the lane to see how many more boys were still to come. When all the students were inside the college, he would go out and look for Reine. Lying awake after his dreams, he’d settled with himself that before he took his suspicions of Marin to La Reynie, he had to talk with Reine.

  Seeing that the line of boys was still long, he went back to thinking about his dreams. The nun had been the least disturbing of his phantoms. Perhaps Marin’s talk of the Sacred Heart had summoned her, Soeur Marguerite Marie, the Visitandine who had revived the old Sacred Heart devotion after her vision of resting her head on Jesus’ heart. It was Pernelle’s visitation that had disturbed him, and profoundly. His famished sinking onto the bed, onto her body, his cheek on her warm naked breast…

  “No!” he said desperately, loudly, shaking his head. The last boys in the line jumped and looked wide-eyed at him, and he managed a reassuring smile and waved them through the gate. Then he raised his lantern and signaled to the brothers at the ends of the lane that all the boys were safely inside the college. The brothers signaled back and went to report to the officers at the front doors, as Pere Le Picart’s plan for the morning demanded.

  Charles was shutting the gate when the sound of quick footsteps at the end of the lane made him open it again and go out to see who was there. A woman, just visible in the slowly lightening morning, was passing the lane’s end, walking toward the rue St. Jacques. By her shape, she was the same woman he’d seen yesterday morning. But this time he realized that what he recognized about her were the heavy braids coiled around her head. She was one of Reine’s companions, one of the beggars in the stable the night he’d fed them. He called to a lay brother to lock the gate and ran down the lane, hoping that the woman could tell him where to find Reine.

  When he reached the end of the lane, the woman wasn’t in sight. Charles started down toward the rue St. Jacques, thinking he’d see her going in one direction or the other. But as he passed the old building that had belonged to the college of Les Cholets and was now part of Louis le Grand and undergoing renovation, the light of the lantern he still carried fell on the snow drifted and piled against the wall. Charles stopped, gazing at the little slope of snow. From the top of the old wall stones had fallen, and under the well-trampled snow they made a rough ramp to the top of the wall. Charles wondered if the woman in the lane had disappeared so quickly because she had gone over the wall. Looking, perhaps, for leavings from the workmen to steal and sell? Cautiously, Charles mounted the frozen slope and held up his lantern to light the court of the old building. The courtyard was empty, but its carpet of snow was full of crossing footprints. Not workmen’s prints, because he knew that no work had been done on the building since Christmas Eve.

  Charles jumped down into the court and followed the prints to the low, iron-bound door. The wood around the door’s old lock was broken and the lock useless. Warily, holding his lantern high, he pushed the door open. When he was sure that the anteroom beyond was empty, he went in and promptly stumbled over a workman’s bucket. The anteroom was cluttered with debris from the repair work, and a line of planks leaned against a wall. A strong draft was blowing from behind the planks. Curious, Charles shifted two of them where the current of air was strongest, put out a hand to feel the wall behind, and felt only emptiness. He let his lantern shine into the emptiness. Worn stone stairs opened at his feet. Caves, he thought. Cellars. Like Louis le Grand, Les Cholets would have cellars beneath it, cellars probably much older than the buildings themselves. Pere Damiot had once told him that the city was honeycombed with caves built before anyone’s memory, many of them connected, some leading all the way to the river. Rat squeaking echoed up the stairs, and Charles backed away. If the woman he’d seen was down in that rat-infested place, she could stay there. There were other ways to find Reine.

  He was replacing the plank he’d moved when someone screamed in the cave, a harsh, guttural scream that shaded into the high pitch of terror and stopped abruptly. Dear God, Charles thought, the woman from the lane! He flung the plank to the floor, grabbed the lantern, and started down the stairs, telling himself how stupid he was being. He was alone, he was unarmed, he knew nothing at all about the cause of the scream. Except that it came from a human throat. Someone down in that ancient darkness was terrified of more than rats, terrified beyond reason, maybe beyond hope. With every step, he expected the scream to come again. It didn’t, but when he reached the bottom of the stairs, he heard voices-distant, arguing, he thought, though he couldn’t hear the words. The sounds whispered off the stone of the walls and ceiling, making him unsure which way to go. But if he went any way at all, how would he find his way back? He moved the lantern slowly, close to the floor, until he saw a loose fragment of stone. Marks on the wall would show him the way back-if the lantern’s candle lasted that long.

  Straining to make out words, he went slowly and quietly, giving himself at least those small protections. Only a fool would burst in on an argument after hearing a scream like the one still echoing in his head. Time seemed to melt into the darkness. Charles turned a corner. Now he could hear words. And he recognized one of the voices.

  “You killed her,” Marin was shouting. “My blessed Claire! You murdered all her sweetness and took her sacred heart, God damn you to the lowest hell!”

  “No, I didn’t. I didn’t mean to. Not her! And it was for you, don’t you-”

  Marin howled with rage, the other voice cried out in pain, and then there was silence.

  Charles froze, listening. Nothing. Only the rats. And then a sound that wasn’t rats threaded its way toward him, a steady calm sound. He crept forward a few steps. A high, sweet voice was singing very softly. Charles felt his way around another corner and saw a faint glow, like fire. With the glow came the song’s words.

  “Little white Paternoster, sent by God from paradise… now I lie down-”

  Coughing stopped the voice, and the angle of another corner cut off the glow. At nearly the same moment, the candle flame in Charles’s lantern guttered and died, leaving him in darkness thick as Pa
ris mud. The darkness seemed to pull at him and hold him back. A desire not to see, not to know who or what was singing beside the hidden fire, assailed him. The voice began again, crooning the garbled, ancient prayer every peasant knew, less prayer than magic.

  “Now I lie down on my bed, an angel at the foot, two angels at the head…”

  Charles forced himself forward and the cellar opened out. Beyond a fire built on the stone floor, the singer leaned over someone resting in his lap. Charles’s breath caught in his throat, and he put a hand on the cave wall to steady himself. Marin was sprawled across the singer’s lap-the singer was Jean, his keeper. Blood streamed from the old man’s chest and ran across the floor into the fire. Smiling, carefully turning aside the long-bladed knife he held, Jean gathered Marin more closely to him and began singing again. Charles felt the hair rise on his scalp.

  “The Virgin Mary sweetly says, lie down now, do not be afraid. The good God is my father, the good Virgin is my mother, the three apostles are my brothers.”

  A whimper began from the deep shadows veiling the cave walls and was abruptly hushed. There were other people there, Charles realized, motionless against the stone. Jean went on singing.

  “The Virgin Mary walked in the meadows, Madame the Virgin met Saint John. Where is God, she begged to know. On the cross tree, I tell you so, His feet hang down, His hands are nailed, a little white thorn cap on his head. Who says this prayer, both morn and night, shall surely go to Paradise.”

  Jean fell silent, stroking Marin’s shaggy hair. A shuddering sob from one of the women huddled against the wall made Jean look up, and he saw Charles.

  “Don’t worry, maitre,” he said hoarsely. “Marin has ridden my Little White Paternoster straight to paradise; he is already walking in the meadows with the Blessed Virgin.”

  Charles moved slowly out under the stone-ribbed roof. “Give me the knife, Jean,” he said quietly. If he could get the knife, at least there would be no more deaths. Not here, anyway. “You don’t need it anymore.”