Plague of Lies cdl-3

by Judith Rock

  “This Queen of Acre,” Jouvancy was saying. “I am still not altogether happy about female roles. But the story calls for them, so what can I do?”

  Beauchamps pursed his lips. “Was there a real Queen of Acre called Erixane? I’ve never seen a Jesuit play about crusaders.”

  “Nor have I. I don’t know of any others. I suppose playing female roles is good practice for the boys. Knowing how to play a woman does make a court actor or dancer more versatile. And Queen Erixane hardly appears. Her daughter, though, has a large role-she even dresses up like a boy and fights for her mother’s honor.”

  “Well,” Beauchamps said, laughing, “she is a boy. Here, anyway.”

  Charles, who had been standing quietly, listening, laughed with him.

  “True,” Jouvancy said reluctantly. “And I suppose they have to learn about girls sometime.”

  “Some of them have already learned,” Charles said dryly, thinking of Montmorency.

  “Oh, do you think so?” Jouvancy’s blue eyes rounded with worry.

  Beauchamps snorted with laughter, and Charles intervened before Jouvancy could retaliate. “Mon père, maître, may I offer a thought for a small addition to our ballet’s livret?”

  “What is it?” Jouvancy looked wary.

  But Beauchamps looked interested, and Charles plunged ahead. “The ballet’s third Part concerns war and the hope for triumph in war. But being mortals, we cannot know what will happen. Which makes the courage of our soldiers all the more admirable.” He smiled guilelessly. “I propose that, during the third Part’s musical prologue, we show the three Fates seated on a cloud above the stage where the soldiers will fight. As the prologue is played, we see the Fates spinning the thread of man’s life, measuring the length of the thread that determines the length of his life, and cutting the thread at his death. Seeing that would remind our audience of our classical roots. But more, it would remind them that humanity never knows its future. And that we are always dependent on God. Whom, of course, we cannot show onstage.”

  The rhetoric master and the ballet master looked at each other, brows raised consideringly. Jouvancy looked up, as though looking into the overstage where the cloud would be hung. Or possibly to consult heaven.

  “That might be an admirable addition,” he said judiciously. “How large would the cloud be? And in what colors would we paint it? Grays might be suitable.”

  “Yes,” Beauchamps said. “And the somber grays could be carried through in the Fates’ costumes. That would be interesting.” He frowned at the floor. “And they should be masked, I think. The Fates. Not grotesquely, but very simply and serenely. The impassive face of Fortune, as it were.”

  Charles hardly knew whether to laugh or cry at this easy reception of his wickedly subversive comment on the king’s wars. Before he could respond at all, pandemonium broke out at the far end of the room.

  Chapter 19

  Charles reached the shouting ballet cast first. Alexandre Sapieha was swiping at Montmorency with a wooden sword and roaring in Polish so furious that its meaning was clear. Montmorency stood like a rock, staring at the Pole and seeming not to feel the blows. Bertamelli leaped forward and hung on Sapieha’s sword arm, but Sapieha shook him off. The other boys backed away, a few cheering for one hero or the other.

  “Stop it! Both of you! Now!” Charles was bellowing the way he had on the battlefield, but he might as well have been talking to the wall as far as the two principals were concerned. Jouvancy and Beauchamps were also shouting outraged orders, and Montmorency finally moved. He swung his long arm back and scythed Sapieha down at the knees with his wooden sword. Bone cracked, the sword broke, and Sapieha fell, yelling in pain. Montmorency dropped what was left of his weapon and made for the door. Charles got in front of him.

  “Stop, Monsieur Montmorency. You have felled your enemy. Stop.”

  The boy seemed to look through him and kept coming. Knowing that he was breaking the college rules, knowing how sore his shoulder already was, knowing he probably didn’t remember enough to do this right, Charles tackled him. His shoulder screamed louder than Sapieha had been, but he got Montmorency facedown on the floor. The boy lay still as a corpse, and except for Sapieha’s moaning, the watchers fell silent.

  “Get the proctors,” Charles said through his teeth, from where he lay across Montmorency’s back.

  “I’ll go,” Jouvancy said. He nodded toward Sapieha. “I’ll bring lay brothers to take him to the infirmary.”

  As Jouvancy left, Charles said to the students, “Carry Monsieur Sapieha outside. No need for more people than necessary to come in.”

  Murmuring comfort, four boys gathered up the crying Pole and carried him out of the room, to the building’s courtyard door. Beauchamps drew to one side, his hand on Bertamelli’s shoulder. Charles sat up cautiously, keeping a hand on Montmorency’s neck.

  “No more, monsieur,” Charles said. “Do you hear me?”

  Montmorency nodded and Charles removed his hand, poised to move quickly if he had to, but thinking he wouldn’t. Montmorency sat up.

  “What began this, monsieur?”

  Montmorency looked at him blankly and shook his head. He was rubbing one hand over the other, and Charles saw that he was caressing the ring with Lulu’s hair in it.

  “The fight was about this marriage?”

  Montmorency cradled the hand with the ring against his chest, his brown eyes pools of misery. His broad, smooth face showed several of the inflamed pustules young people often had. And something about that-the ugly spots, his misery, his awkwardly budding manhood-made Charles’s heart contract. Suddenly and to his shame, he knew why this furious grieving boy irritated him so, why he mostly just wanted him gone from Louis le Grand. It was himself Charles saw looking out of Montmorency’s eyes, himself at Montmorency’s age, himself when he’d known beyond hope that his beloved Pernelle would be married to someone else. His raw grief had opened hell itself. Literally opened hell, in fact, because it was what had sent him fleeing into the army.

  “Monsieur-” Charles reached impulsively for the boy’s hand and searched for words, something to keep Montmorency from making a hell of his grief. But before he found anything to say, Jouvancy came in with three large proctors.

  Charles got to his feet. “No need for force,” he told them. “He’ll go with you to his chamber. Do we have your word that you will do that, Monsieur Montmorency?”

  “Yes.”

  Without taking his eyes from the boy, Charles spoke quietly in Jouvancy’s ear. “Even if his tutor is there, I think it would be wise for a proctor to stay outside the chamber door. If you’ll allow it, mon père.”

  Jouvancy nodded and gave the order to the proctors. Montmorency got to his feet like a shambling bear and the proctors closed in on him, one on each side and one behind. Jouvancy saw them out. He came back to Charles, shaking his head, and Charles braced himself for admonishment for physically tackling a student.

  But Jouvancy said fervently, “Thank you. The boy seems-almost possessed. At least out of his wits.” Louder, to Beauchamps and the students, he said, “We will all pray privately for Monsieur Sapieha and Monsieur Montmorency. That they will both amend. And that Monsieur Sapieha will mend. But for now, this rehearsal will continue.”

  The rhetoric master kept them at it until the clock chimed four, then oversaw the replacement of the benches, gathered them for an extra prayer for the two miscreants, and dismissed them. Bertamelli lingered as long as he could, looking pleadingly at Charles. But when Charles started across the room to speak with him, Jouvancy called him back sharply to the argument over how to alter the ballet with two fewer dancers. Sapieha would be unable to walk for a while, and Montmorency would not be allowed back. He would probably be dismissed from the college.

  “Well,” Beauchamps said finally, “I only hope no one else decides to air their differences during rehearsals. I don’t have enough professionals free to replace them. And you couldn’t afford them, even if
I did.”

  He and Jouvancy gave each other the slightest of bows, and Beauchamps stalked from the room. His long-faced servant shouldered the violin box as though it were a small coffin and trailed after him.

  Jouvancy made a wry face and lifted his hands helplessly. “Now I must go to Père Donat and tell him what has happened. I’d best get it over. Will you clean up in here?”

  He left, muttering disconsolately to himself, and Charles sighed and picked up the broken sword to see if it could be mended. He saw that it couldn’t, put it aside, and put the rest of the swords back in the chest. Then he checked to be sure all the old hats were back on their hooks and picked up the ballet livret. In the time before supper, he wanted to find out from Alexandre Sapieha what he’d said to Montmorency. And he wanted to find Bertamelli. He thought the little Italian might tell him now what he’d been doing at the tower. He reached to close an open window and stopped, listening to a dove cooing mournfully in the mellowing light. Tomorrow morning, Charles thought, Mademoiselle de Rouen would go to Poland, in spite of whatever secrets she carried with her. With a sigh, he latched the window and started across the Cour d’honneur to the student court.

  But his steps dragged and his shoulder hurt, and he sat down on a bench beside the courtyard wall. Montmorency’s door was guarded by a proctor, and Bertamelli was in the charge of the anxiously watchful cubiculaire. A few minutes’ rest would not hurt. Charles leaned back against the warm stones. The mid-June sun was still above the city roofs, and he was glad for the shade of the lime tree that grew beside the bench. Birds came and went in the branches, and he thought he glimpsed a nest high above his head. His eyes followed a songbird’s flight and came to rest on the king’s profile, above him on top of the wall. The sculptor had caught the long, slightly curved Bourbon nose perfectly, and it seemed to test the outer air as Louis le Grand gazed over the college that bore his name. Charles’s brief encounters with the king went through his mind. Louis majestic at the head of the daily procession to Mass; a distant glimpse of Louis walking in the gardens with his gentlemen; the plume of Louis’s hat waving above his massive armchair at the ball; Louis’s assessing blue-gray gaze as he silently acknowledged Charles’s attention to Lulu. Louis had seemed always quiet, always merely passing, or in the distance, or seen from behind. He’d spoken to Charles only once, in few words and hardly pausing. But his presence beat down on Versailles like the sun on the earth. Except that, for those at court, the sun never set and there was little shade.

  The door to the main building banged shut, startling Charles from his reverie. Lieutenant-Général La Reynie was coming toward him across the courtyard, followed by a red-faced Père Donat. Jouvancy hurried behind them.

  “Maître du Luc, stay where you are,” Donat called imperiously, as though Charles were about to run.

  Wondering what had happened now, Charles stood up and the trio halted in front of him.

  In a hissing whisper, as though the whole college were trying to listen, Donat said, “Monsieur La Reynie has asked to speak with you. I have given my permission. The matter concerns Monsieur Montmorency.”

  Charles looked questioningly at La Reynie, who slightly shook his head.

  Clearly trying to keep a rein on his temper, La Reynie smiled at the acting rector. “I thank you for your help, mon père. I will speak privately with Maître du Luc, and then he will go with me to Monsieur Montmorency.” He bowed. “I will not trespass further on your time.”

  Donat bridled. “But you may not speak privately. Maître du Luc is merely a scholastic, and I am in charge here while our rector is away. It is my duty and my right to know all that goes on concerning Monsieur Montmorency, because Père Le Picart expressly charged me with watching him closely and seeing he keeps to the rules.” He looked down his snub nose at Charles and Jouvancy. “Which he has not, because others failed to watch him closely enough this afternoon.”

  “Then it will be well for you,” La Reynie said curtly, “that Maître du Luc and I go quickly to speak with him. Before worse happens. Maître du Luc knows the background to my matter. I need him with me-and only him-while I talk with Monsieur Montmorency.”

  “No.” Donat glared and drew in his chin, tripling the rolls of fat above his Jesuit collar.

  “This matter concerns the king, mon père,” La Reynie said, steel in his voice. “The college cannot invoke the old liberties and their immunity. I can and will overrule you if you force me to it.” Most of the city’s liberties, places whose ancient authority could exclude the law, were long gone.

  Donat began to sputter, but Jouvancy put a hand on his arm.

  “Mon père, we all know that you only want to serve our rector and our king.” Jouvancy’s actor’s voice was warm with spurious understanding. “But there are times when the better tool must be laid aside so that the lesser-and more disposable-may be used. Père Le Picart will be very grateful to you. As will the king himself. Very grateful…”

  La Reynie nodded. “He will, indeed.”

  “Oh. Yes.” Donat preened visibly as the unctuous words flowed over him. “Yes, go with him, Maître du Luc. Do exactly as he tells you. Exactly, do you hear me? And then report to me.”

  “Go!” Jouvancy mouthed behind Donat, and made urgent little shooing gestures.

  La Reynie’s glance flickered from Jouvancy to Donat. “As I said yesterday, Père Donat, Maître du Luc will not be able to speak about this matter. But I will see you before I leave.”

  He bowed briefly and followed Charles, who was already moving toward the archway between the courtyards.

  “Blessed Virgin,” La Reynie said, when they were safely in the student court. “Your Père Jouvancy deserves a thousand fewer years in Purgatory for that.”

  “He’s a fine actor. Especially offstage.” Charles stopped under a lime tree in front of an old stone house and pointed across the court. “Montmorency lives in the brick building there. Tell me quickly why you’re here.”

  La Reynie halted reluctantly. “I’ve had two of my men watching the Saint Pierre convent in Montmartre. Where the Grand Duchess of Tuscany lives. I think she’s passing letters to Conti from his spy on the eastern border. I haven’t known how she was getting them. But on Thursday night, nearly midnight, two of my men were watching the convent. And your Montmorency rode up and passed in a letter. And the duchess came to the grille to speak to him.”

  “So that’s where he went. I knew he’d left the school Thursday night, but he refused to say where he’d been. How did your men recognize Montmorency?”

  “They saw his face by the portress’s lantern when the duchess opened the grille, but they didn’t know him. One of them followed the boy back here to see where he lived. But he-my officer-had been feeling ill, and by the time he reached Louis le Grand, he was fevered and could hardly keep upright. He went home, thinking to tell me the next morning, but by morning he was too fevered to talk sense. It wasn’t until this afternoon that his wife sent a message telling me he’d tracked the letter bearer to the college. That, along with the description, told me it was Montmorency.”

  “If he’s passing letters from the spy, he may not realize it. He’s not bright.”

  “Bright or not, he’ll have to prove he didn’t know what he was doing. Or someone will have to prove it. Otherwise, he’s guilty of treason.”

  “We need to talk to Michele Bertamelli.” Charles jerked his head at the stone house behind them. “He lives there. I’m certain he knows something about Montmorency’s letters. Your presence may scare the truth out of him, and you’ll have more to work with when you confront Montmorency.”

  “Bertamelli?” La Reynie said in surprise. “The astonishing little dancer?” The lieutenant-général had seen the school’s February performance. “What makes you think he’s involved?”

  “I think he’s been carrying letters for Montmorency.”

  “But Montmorency took his own letter to the convent.”

  “But now he can’t. He’
s been guarded since Friday morning and can’t get out of the college. And his guard is heavier after his fight during this afternoon’s rehearsal. He nearly crippled one of the Polish boys over this marriage. And I’m not just guessing about Bertamelli.” Charles told La Reynie about following Bertamelli into the tower. “Someone-not Bertamelli-threw a piece of masonry down the tower stairs at me, shoved me flat, and got away. But I saw his back, and I’m nearly certain it was a servant of the duchess’s-a squat, barrel-like man I saw with her at Versailles. Then, in the rehearsal today, before the fight, Bertamelli kept trying to talk to Montmorency. He never breaks rules during a rehearsal. But today I think he was trying to tell Montmorency that he’d been followed to the tower.”

  “But you didn’t see Bertamelli give anything to this servant?”

  “No. But your men saw Montmorency at the Montmartre convent. And even Montmorency would know he couldn’t rely on getting out of the college and going there again. I think he and the duchess arranged for him to send his letters to the tower.” Charles laughed a little in spite of himself. “If any student can get out of our college without being discovered, it’s Bertamelli. And if it was Margot’s-the duchess’s-servant he met at the tower, well, it’s hard to draw any other conclusion.”

  La Reynie grunted. “Let’s find out.”

  They went into the stone house and up three flights of stairs to Bertamelli’s dortoir. The harassed cubiculaire Charles had seen at dinner answered his knock.

  “Monsieur La Reynie, this is Maître Guerand,” Charles said, hoping he had the thin, sandy-haired scholastic’s name right. “May we speak with Monsieur Bertamelli?”

  “I suppose so.” Guerand sighed in exasperation. “He’s in the study. Sitting there looking like a dying martyr. Italians! No wonder Italian opera is what it is.”