The Eloquence of Blood (46 page)

“Is it really demons,
maître
? If the demons of the air cause thunderstorms, why do the storms always end? Why don't the demons win sometimes?”

“An excellent question,
monsieur
.” But not one Charles was going to discuss there and then. Though he mostly doubted the demon theory, many people—including many of the Jesuits at Louis le Grand—didn't. And he had to get the class through many more pages of Greek before the afternoon ended. He smiled at Beauclaire. “Perhaps the demons always lose because good is stronger than evil,” he said. And hoped that his belief in the second half of his sentence was enough to justify his evasion. “But now, back to rhetoric!”

Though nearly eight years a member of the Society of Jesus, Charles was still in the “scholastic” phase of his long Jesuit training, with final vows and ordination as a priest still to come. His work assignment was as a teacher of rhetoric, the art of communication in both Latin and Greek, Greek being by far the most difficult. Now, as the storm receded outside, and he tried to find his place in the book open on the oak lectern in front of him, he wondered if he looked as unconfident as he felt. Behind the professor's dais where he stood was a tapestry showing the unfortunate philosopher Socrates drinking his fatal cup of hemlock. Its graphic showing of an unpopular academic's fate made an uncomfortable teaching backdrop, he'd always thought. But, no help for it, there were still two hours of class before the afternoon ended. He smoothed the book's pages open, pushed his black skullcap down on his curling, straw-blond hair, and twitched at his cassock sleeves. The long linen shirt under the black woolen cassock showed correctly as narrow bands of white at wrists and high-collared neck, and the cassock hung sleekly on his six feet and more of wide-shouldered height. With a deep breath and a prayer to St. Chrysostom, the only Greek saint he could think of at the moment, Charles tackled the Greek rules of rhetoric, sometimes reading from the book, sometimes explaining what he read.

But under all that, he was feeling overwhelmed by his responsibilities. He was assistant to Père Joseph Jouvancy, senior rhetoric master and famous for his teaching and writing, but Jouvancy was in the infirmary recovering from sickness, and the second senior master, Père Martin Pallu, had just fallen ill with the same unpleasant malady. Which left Charles in sole charge of the thirty senior rhetoric students.

He paused, giving the class time to write down what he'd said, and let his eyes wander over the benches. The boys bent over small boards braced on their laps, feathered quills scratching across their paper, and all he could see of them were the tops of their flat-crowned hats above their black scholar's gowns. Louis le Grand's students ranged in age from about ten to twenty. The youngest in this class was thirteen, a little Milanese named Michele Bertamelli, with a mass of curls as black as his hat. Most of the bent heads were French and every shade of brown, apparently God's favorite color for hair. But there were also boys from England, Ireland, and Poland—one with hair flaming like copper, others as blond as Charles himself was, thanks to his Norman mother's Viking forbears.

Charles glanced out at the courtyard and saw that the rain had nearly stopped. The storm was south of the city now, and the bell ringers of Paris were letting their ropes go slack. Relieved at no longer having to shout over the noise, he went back to feeding his fledgling scholars Aristotle's rules for rhetoric. But even as he tried to make his dry morsels of knowledge tempting, his thoughts kept circling around all that he should have finished and hadn't. His biggest worry was the summer ballet and tragedy performance on August sixth. In Jesuit schools, both voice and body were trained for eloquence, which meant that part of Charles's job was directing the ballets that went with the school's grand tragedy performance every summer. This year, under Jouvancy's watchful eye, Charles was responsible for writing the ballet's
livret
, as well as directing the ballet itself. But because of Jouvancy's illness, the
livret
wasn't finished, and rehearsals were late starting. And what if Jouvancy's illness returned and worsened, as illness so often did? If that happened, Charles knew that he might end up directing the tragedy as well as the ballet, and the threat of having to direct both was almost enough to make him volunteer for the New World missions. But only almost.

He finished his lecture and told the class's three
decurions
—class leaders named for Roman army officers commanding ten men each—to collect the afternoon's written work and bring it to the dais. Then he set them to hear each of their “men” recite the assigned memory passage. Today it was from St. Basil's writings. Greek recitation was never popular. When the
decurions
delivered the bad news of recitation, thirteen-year-old Bertamelli sprang from his seat and flung his arms wide.

“But,
maître
,” he wailed, “I cannot speak Greek, it hurts my tongue!”

Snorts of laughter erupted along the benches, Charles bit his lip to keep from laughing himself. Henri de Montmorency, the dull-witted scion of a noble house, turned on his bench and gaped at Bertamelli.

“You're mad. Words can't hurt anything!”

Charles called the class back to order, fixed Bertamelli with his eye, and schooled his face to stern disapproval. The boy's scholar's gown had slipped off one shoulder to reveal his crumpled and grayed linen shirt, and his huge black eyes were tragic with pleading. He was one of the most gifted dancers Charles had ever seen. He was also proving nearly impossible to contain within Louis le Grand's rules—and probably its walls, though Charles preferred not to think about that. He suspected that the little Italian would not be with them long, though who would crack first, Bertamelli or the Jesuits, he wouldn't have cared to predict.

“To put Monsieur de Montmorency's puzzlement more politely,” Charles said, with a sideways frown at Montmorency, “how does Greek hurt your tongue, Monsieur Bertamelli?”

“It has hard edges, sharp edges,
cruel
edges, it bites me! My tongue is a tender Italian tongue!” To be sure Charles understood, he stuck the sensitive member in question out as far as it would go.

“No need for scientific demonstration, Monsieur Bertamelli, and please pull your gown closed over your shirt. And if at all possible, compose yourself.”

Bertamelli yanked his gown onto his shoulder, pulled it straight, and clasped his thin brown hands together under his chin. His eyes grew even larger. “My tongue—”

“Let your tongue rest,
monsieur
, and make your ears work. Hear three things that I am going to tell you.” Charles held up his thumb. “Number one: Learning Greek will strengthen the sinews of your tender Italian tongue.” His first finger joined his thumb. “Two: Every educated man must learn Greek. While Latin is our international language of scholarship, what the Romans wrote in Latin is rooted in what the Greeks wrote first.” Charles's second finger uncurled and his eyes swept the classroom and came to rest on Montmorency. “Three—and this is for each of you: You will observe the rules of classroom behavior. If you want to speak, put up your hand. As you very well know. Now, Monsieur Bertamelli, sit down and prepare yourself for your Greek recitation.”

Bertamelli sat. Two tears spilled from his wounded black eyes. He wiped them with the edge of his gown, gazing at Charles like a martyr forgiving his tormentors. The room filled slowly with a quiet, dogged murmuring that Aristotle surely would not have recognized as Greek.

Charles left the lectern and opened one of the long windows, letting in a rush of chilly air the storm had brought. The rain had stopped, leaving behind the music of water dripping from the blue slate roofs and splashing into the courtyard gravel. He'd come to Louis le Grand from the south of France less than a year ago, but he'd quickly learned to love this sprawl of ill-matched buildings grouped around graveled courtyards. Some buildings were five stories of weather-blackened stone, the oldest were two stories and half-timbered, and a few were bright new stone with corners and windows trimmed in rosy brick. All the roofs bristled with chimneys and towers. Some of the courtyards had shade trees and benches, two had gardens, one had an old well, and one boasted an ancient grapevine on a sunny wall. Rounded stone arches led to passages between the courts and from the enormous main courtyard, called the Cour d'honneur, out to the rue St. Jacques.

It was in the Cour d'honneur, outside the rhetoric classroom windows, that the outdoor stage for the summer ballet and tragedy was built each year. As Charles stood at the window, he began imagining scenery to go with the final section of his ballet
livret
, called
La France Victorieuse sous Louis le Grand
. The title, like this school's name, honored King Louis XIV. The original
France Victorious Under Louis the Great
had been performed at the school in 1680, and Charles was only rewriting and updating it. Less work, to be sure, than creating an entirely new
livret
. But hard work still, and no easier because he so disliked Louis XIV—his passion for glory and his indifference to his people's suffering under the draconian taxes that paid for the glory-bringing wars. He particularly loathed the Most Christian King of France, as Louis styled himself, for hunting and slaughtering France's Protestants, called Huguenots, in God's name. Charles was a loyal son of Holy Mother Church, but he was utterly certain that God was Love. Demanding, relentless, even terrifying, but Love nonetheless. Which meant that cruelty in God's name was blasphemy, pure and simple. Which amounted to calling the king a blasphemer. Which was treason, pure and simple.

Even as he thought that, King Louis XIV was staring blindly back at him from the top of the Cour d'honneur's north wall. The recently installed bust was a copy of one shattered by a stormfelled tree the year before, and Charles had developed a teeth-gritting dislike of those sightless eyes overseeing his daily comings and goings. He turned away from Louis and watched dripping water dig a small pool in the gravel under the window. Small persistent forces often won in the end. He had the sudden thought that maybe he could slip something into the ballet
livret
that didn't praise Louis, some small piece of a different truth to raise disquiet in those with ears to hear . . .
Treason
again, the cool-eyed critic in him said sharply.
Kings are divinely anointed. Kings preserve order. Order allows good to flourish
. Just as sharply, Charles thought back on it—
Whose good?
—and turned from the window to his work.

The ending bell finally rang. The students filed out and were met by a
cubiculaire
, a Jesuit scholastic whose work was supervising students. As the
cubiculaire
chivied the boys toward their living quarters in the student courtyard, Charles went gratefully out into the watery, late-afternoon sunshine. But before he was halfway across the court, someone called his name, and he looked back to see the college rector, Père Jacques Le Picart, the head of Louis le Grand.

Bowing, Charles greeted him, noting his muddy riding boots and spattered cloak. “You've had a wet ride,
mon père
.”

“Wet enough,
maître
. The storm caught me on the way back from Versailles.”

They walked together to the rear door of the main building where their rooms were, Le Picart asking Charles about his own afternoon and nodding in sympathy at his worry over the approaching rehearsals. But the rector seemed preoccupied and before they reached the door, he said, “Have you visited Père Jouvancy today,
maître
?”

Charles shook his head. “I've had no chance today,
mon père
. But Père Montville told me as we were leaving the student refectory after dinner that he's much better and able to eat now.”

“Good. Will you come with me to the infirmary? I must speak with him, and the matter may concern you, as well.”

“Of course,
mon père
.” Wondering uneasily what “the matter” was, Charles turned with Le Picart toward the infirmary court.

Most of May had been blessedly warm after the hard winter, and the physick garden in the infirmary courtyard was already blooming. The afternoon's rain had left the blossoms somewhat bedraggled, but the air was drenched in fresh sweet scents. Charles filled his lungs eagerly. Which was a good thing, because the fathers' infirmary, below the student infirmary and beside the ground-floor room for making medicines, smelled pungently of sickness. Frère Brunet, the lay brother infirmarian, turned from a bed at the room's far end and bustled toward them, his soft shoes whispering along the rush matting between the two short rows of beds. All but two beds were empty. Before he reached them, Père Jouvancy called out, “Ah,
mon père
,
maître
, welcome, come in, come in!”

His bed was in the left-hand row, between two windows, and he was sitting up among his gray blankets, the fitful sunshine warming the new color in his face.

“I would ask you how he is, Frère Brunet,” Le Picart said to the infirmarian, “but I see for myself that he really is better.” He smiled affectionately at Jouvancy. “You've had a hard time of it,
mon père
. But if you feel as much better as you look, you will soon be back among us.”

“Oh, he will, certainly he will,” Brunet said, surveying his patient with satisfaction.

“And Père Pallu?” Le Picart asked, looking toward the other bed.

Brunet shook his head. “Poor man, he seems to be in for the same hard time. Oh, he will no doubt do well enough, but for now he is suffering fever, chills, aches in his body, sore throat.” Brunet glanced ruefully over his shoulder. “And he can keep nothing down.”