The Eloquence of Blood (39 page)

Charles stopped at the end of the little room, in front of his favorite thing in the
cabinet
, and ran his fingers along it. The long, ornately twisted, ivory horn glimmered in a pool of sunlight. The fabulous unicorn's horn, some insisted, though Charles thought it was more likely the horn from a great fish sailors claimed to see—and sometimes catch—far out of sight of land. In truth, he didn't much care what it was; he loved it for its beauty. And for the way it drew to itself the human longing for miracles and wonders, for something good and beautiful beyond the everyday world. He rested his hand on the warmly glowing ivory, thinking unhappily about Marin.

The raving old man saw his lost Claire in every pretty, fairhaired girl. But some girls turned out to be demons, he'd said. They refused him alms, they laughed at him. Marin begged all over the
quartier
. What if he'd gone to the Mynette house for alms and Martine Mynette had been frightened by him, refused him, even tried to push him away? Marin had matter-of-factly told Charles that he'd tried to kill the Prince of Condé. And Charles had seen him strike down his would-be assassin outside the tavern. Even more disturbingly, Marin had suddenly taken to muttering about the Sacred Heart. Charles, like everyone else, heard it in capitals, Jesus' Sacred Heart of growing popular devotion. But what if Marin didn't mean it like that? What if he meant Martine Mynette's little red enamel heart on its embroidered ribbon? Involuntarily, Charles shook his head. He didn't want that to be true. But who else was there? So far, there was only the shadowy Tito, as hard to lay hands on as a unicorn. And there was Gilles Brion. Charles and Monsieur Fiennes could be wrong. Brion had had reason to kill both Martine and his father, better reasons, as sane men reckoned, than either of the others. But Charles simply could not imagine him doing it.

Loud whispers made Charles turn. A small boy, surely one of the college's youngest students, had come in with his tutor. Perhaps nine or ten years old, dressed in brown velvet under his scholar's gown, the boy stared wide-eyed around the
cabinet
.

“Where is it,
maître
?” he whispered hoarsely to his tutor, who smiled at Charles and led the child to the shelf with the horn.

But the boy was too short to examine what was on the shelf. Charles brought a stool for the child to stand on from the end of another set of shelves, and the tutor thanked him and helped his charge up onto it.

“Oooh.”The boy touched the horn as though it might dissolve under his hand. “It really is here,” he breathed, turning shining eyes on his tutor and then on Charles. “There really are unicorns, then,” he said, with a great sigh of relief. “I was afraid there wouldn't be. Not here.”

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 Père 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 Père 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 Châtelet, 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.

“Maître 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-Général 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 père
. Père 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 Pietà 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 Pietà. 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 Pietà 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 Pietà, 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.

 

T
he 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 . . .