The Eloquence of Blood (38 page)

“
Bonjour
, Monsieur Morel,” Charles said. “I need to finish some business here and will be somewhat late to the rehearsal. Will you please tell Père Jouvancy I am detained on the rector's business?”

“Of course,
maître
.”

Morel bowed, glanced curiously at Marin, and went into the college. Charles turned to Marin, but he was interrupted again.

“Maître du Luc, look!” Marie-Ange LeClerc, in an old red cloak trailing on the snow, burst out of the bakery and stopped breathlessly in front of Charles. “
Maman
made them!”

She held something wrapped in a white napkin out to Charles.

A strange sweet fragrance spread in the cold air. He bent closer, unwrapped the napkin, and peered at the two small golden cakes it held.

“What is it that smells so good,
ma petite
? I don't recognize the scent.”

“Taste one and see if you can guess.” She was almost quivering with excitement.

Charles obediently took a cake. Marie-Ange looked doubtfully at the old beggar, moved a little closer to Charles's side, and politely held out the napkin to Marin as well.

To Charles's surprise, Marin made her the ghost of a bow and held up the proffered cake in a kind of toast.

Charles bit into the cake's rich sweetness and his eyes widened in surprise. “It's wonderful! A taste I've never had before.”

Marin nodded and muttered something around his mouthful.

“It's the inside of my coconut!
Maman
chopped it up and sprinkled it on the cakes.”

“Tell her if she makes more, they will be the rage of all Paris! Thank you,
mademoiselle
, and our thanks to your mother.”

Marie-Ange dimpled and curtsied. “I am going to Martinique,
maître
,” she confided, “the very first minute I am old enough. I will marry Antoine and we will send
Maman
all the coconuts she wants and she will be rich from her cakes.” With a confident smile that surprised Charles with a glimpse of the young woman she would be one day, Marie-Ange hauled up the tail of her cloak and went back to the bakery.

Marin, licking his fingers, watched her go. “That one is very pretty, but she is not Claire. I can tell by how brown her hair is. She is very kind. But not Claire. Sometimes I still find Claire.” He frowned suddenly and shook his head. “But sometimes demons steal her golden hair and when I ask for alms, they laugh at me.”

Charles waited, baffled by the way the old man's mind twisted and turned among its phantasms.

“Fair as the moon. Sad like the moon.” Marin sighed out a miasma of rotten teeth and garlic and clutched at Charles's cassock. “More fair than you,” he said, looking hard at Charles's hair. “Do you know what they did to her? Do you?”

“No.” Charles gently released himself from the clutching fingers.

“Twelve years old.” Marin had turned half away and seemed to be watching the blue shadows creep across the snow in the street. “She was little, like a doll. Dwarf, some called her, but she wasn't; she was made as prettily as any girl. Her hair was like curled moonlight and they dressed her in jewels and satin for her betrothal. To that pig Condé. He was embarrassed because she was so little. He made them put heels on her like stilts. She could hardly walk. When all the show was over and it was time for her to dance with him, the actors wheeled a little bridge up to where she sat, raised up in a wooden stand with the rest of the nobility. She had to manage her skirts and walk across it to meet her bastard bridegroom. She did, and they started to dance, with everyone watching. My Claire did the best she could, but those devil's heels pitched her onto her face. Everyone laughed at her. The Condé was seventeen, he was nearly a man, but did he feel any pity, did he help her up? Not he; he turned red as a dog's behind and refused to look at her.” Marin's eyes came back to Charles. “I tried to kill him,” he said matter-of-factly.

“You—how?”
And how are you still alive if you tried
, Charles didn't say.

“I was a Condé page. They dressed us up and gave us boys' swords and placed us around the dancing floor. The swords were sharp, and when she fell and he didn't help her, I ran at him, trying to draw, but my sword stuck in its scabbard. They only thought I was running to Claire's rescue. So they sent me to her household. So golden, so pretty . . .” His lucidity vanished in a long-drawn wail. “Claire, forgive me, Sacred Heart, forgive me . . .”

He lunged away from Charles and flailed his way through the tumbled snow up St. Geneviève's hill. With a sick sense of pity for the little princess and the boy the old man had been, Charles watched him go. Then, thinking uneasily about Marin's demons and the sword story, and remembering that Marin had struck down and probably killed the man who had tried to stab him in the tavern fight, Charles rang the postern bell.

I
n the
salle des actes
, the familiar lunacy of rehearsal came as a relief. Germain Morel was shouting at Henri Montmorency, who was mounted on his golden plinth and pointing his baton at his two-soldier brigade with utter disregard for music, choreography, or the dancing master's exasperation. At the other end of the room, Jouvancy stalked back and forth in front of the stage like a displeased crow, listening to a scene from the Latin tragedy.

“No!” Jouvancy jumped onto the stage and grabbed the fledgling St. Nazarius by the back of his coat. “You are a saint! Have you never heard of humility? Dear God, are you
trying
to look like a fat merchant addressing his guild?” With both hands, he pushed the boy's shoulders forward, shoved his head lower, and stepped back. “Better.”

St. Nazarius, looking now like a wild-eyed hunchback, quavered. “Yes,
mon père
. Shall I go on?”

“Yes. No! You're still not right.”

“But,
mon père
,” St. Nazarius ventured from his crouch, “the saints seem proud to be saints. At least, their statues do. I mean, not like this—”

“They're not proud till they're dead.” Jouvancy glowered at his actor as though offering him that opportunity, then seemed to think better of it. “Watch.” In a silken transformation, the rhetoric master softened his spine, bent his neck just enough, opened his hands, and became the perfect humble saint. “Like this, do you see?”

The other actors, recognizing the start of a long ordeal for the unfortunate Nazarius, faded silently into the background. Keeping his face carefully straight, Charles moved so that Jouvancy would see that he'd arrived. The rhetoric master gave him a vague glance, as though he'd forgotten quite who Charles was, and turned his attention back to his saint.

At the dance end of the room, Morel was now standing on Montmorency's plinth, directing the two soldiers through the steps of their
Air Animé
with authoritative grace and singing the music.

“Do I have to sing?” Montmorency asked in horror when he finished.

“No, Monsieur Montmorency,” Charles cut in smoothly, to keep Morel from saying what he was all too obviously about to say. “No one is asking you to sing. Monsieur Morel, shall I work with the other dancers?”

“If you would be so kind,
maître
,” Morel said through his teeth. “Now, Monsieur Montmorency, let me see you direct your soldiers.” With the light of battle in his eye, he took up his small violin from a bench against the wall.

Smiling with satisfaction that Montmorency had met his match, Charles went to the other dancers. Most were going silently through their steps, though without the full execution the steps would have in performance. Marking the steps, dancers called it. Michele Bertamelli, though, was doing what he'd learned of his
canarie
as though the world were watching.
Canaries
were full of springing steps, and as Charles watched, Bertamelli nearly propelled himself through one of the south-facing windows.

“
Doucement
, Monsieur Bertamelli,” Charles cried, running across the floor and pulling the boy to a halt. “You are a magnificent jumper, but that is not all you must be to perform this dance!”

“But, Maître du Luc, it only jumps, it jumps everywhere, what else does it do?” Bertamelli's shoulders were around his ears. “So what else can I do?”

“For your jumps to be as beautiful as they can be, you must also know how to go slow, Monsieur Bertamelli. Remember, dancing is not the same as doing tricks.”

The little Italian stared at Charles in frank bewilderment.

“And jumping is like pulling a rabbit out of a hole,” Charles improvised, miming his words. “If I only reach down a little way and pull out my rabbit, well, it's nice to see a rabbit, but it's not all that exciting. But if I pull my rabbit out of a very deep hole, it is another thing entirely.” Charles extracted his imaginary rabbit.

Bertamelli's eyes widened. “I see, I see!” He clapped his hands. Then his face fell. “If my jumps are the rabbit,
maître
, where is the hole?”

“The hole is only a verbal figure, the kind you learn in the rhetoric classroom. You make your jumps more astonishing by being able to go slow as well as fast. So I am giving you a very very difficult exercise,
mon brave
,” Charles said gravely. If Bertamelli thought the exercise was so difficult that doing it well enhanced his honor, he would give his life's blood to it.

“Watch now.” Charles walked across the
salle
and faced the boy. He drew himself up and began to walk. With utter concentration, so slowly, so intentionally, that every smallest movement, every lightest touch of a part of his foot on the floor was a physical revelation. Hardly breathing, Bertamelli watched, his wide black eyes seeming to take up most of his face. Before Charles reached him, Bertamelli's body was moving as Charles was moving.

“You see, then,” Charles said.

“Oh, I do,
maître
.” The boy wiped his sweating face. “It is very hard indeed. How can that be?”

“Keep on doing it and you will understand. After you practice like that, you will understand much more where your jumps come from. You will pull astonishing and beautiful rabbits out of the very deepest holes,
mon brave
.”

Thinking that this child's “rabbits” were going to be very astonishing and very beautiful indeed, Charles left him to it and called the shy Charles Lennox aside. They went to work on the majestic, but short, measured, and relatively simple
entrée grave
he'd persuaded Monsieur Charpentier to include for Lennox's St. Ambrose.

When the bell rang for three o'clock, Charles was sure it could not be so late. Lennox had turned out to be surprisingly good at making himself into a grave old man and putting the dignity of age into his steps.

“Well done, indeed, Monsieur Lennox,” he said, as the boy made him a
reverence
.

“Thank you. I like dancing, Maître du Luc.” Lennox's barely audible voice was presently wandering painfully up and down the scale. “I wish I could dance all the time. Or play cricket.”

“Cricket? What is that?”

“It's just a game,
maître
. But I like it.” Lennox's blue eyes lit with a rare smile and he bowed to Charles, picked up his hat, and moved with the other boys to the door.

Holding Montmorency's flaking gold baton and shaking it as he talked, Morel escorted the hapless noble soldier to join them. Jouvancy chivied his actors down the room, still talking intently to poor St. Nazarius, whose eyes looked as glazed as sugared figs. When Jouvancy saw Charles, he paused and Nazarius escaped.

“Ah, Maître du Luc, you are with us, good, good, it is all going very well. I think we must make these French operas a yearly thing, they are very good practice for the boys. Very beautiful. And you, Monsieur Morel, are heaven sent. Perhaps I will write to our usual dancing master—Maître Beauchamps, you know—that he may stay in Italy and buy pictures, for all we care! On, now, go on,” he called to the students, “quickly, I am following. The ancients await us!”

With a bow to Charles, Morel moved toward the door also.

“Monsieur Morel,” Charles said, “before you go, please, how is it with Mademoiselle Brion and Monsieur Callot?”

Morel shook his head. “Nearly as bad as it could be. She can think of nothing but her brother. Monsieur Callot tried to see him, but Lieutenant-Général La Reynie would not allow it. And he would not tell Monsieur Callot if he is going to charge Gilles with the murders. As for my own affairs, I fear more each day that Mademoiselle Brion will join the Ursulines. I must go back to them now. I try to keep them company in the evening.”

Charles wanted quiet for thinking. When Morel's footsteps had faded on the stairs, he went out through the snow-covered courtyards, across the fathers' garden, and into the main college library. Built only a few years ago, the library was one of the quietest places in the crowded school. He would have liked to settle on a bench under Louis le Grand's ancient grapevine, said to be a relic from the Romans who had once settled St. Geneviève's hill, calling it Lutetia. But the vine was only bare sticks now and the library was relatively warm. Inside, he went quickly up to the second floor and along a gallery to the little chamber called the
cabinet
of natural history.

He'd often found it deserted and a good place to think. Though small, it had two large windows to throw ample light on the treasures ranged along its shelves and in its cupboards. Charles wandered past heaps of sparkling pink and purple quartz, nuggets of gold, ancient gold and silver coins, bronze and gold brooches for fastening cloaks, huge outlandish seashells, a stone head of Julius Caesar with a badly chipped eye (discovered when the foundations for the college chapel were dug), shelves of brilliant butterflies on boards, a tiny pair of embroidered Chinese shoes, and a grayish, uninviting bezoar stone from a Near Eastern goat's belly. There was also a waist-high globe, leather-surfaced and brightly painted, for those who wanted to see where all these things had come from.