The Rhetoric of Death (31 page)

“I was reassigned to the Society's college here.”

“Yes? And you gave so much Latin translation that your students chased you here and shot you?”

Pernelle's tartness could have cured olives, and Charles felt himself smiling foolishly. It was one of the things he'd always loved about her. “The perils of teaching,” he quipped back. “Some robber took a shot at me as I was riding back to the school. Who brought me in here last night?”

“Henri. A porter. He said he'd brought you here once before. At least I think that's what he said—understanding these people is far harder than reading my French Bible! If he did say that, your new teaching assignment must be very unusual, Charles.” Her moth-wing eyebrows rose and she waited for an explanation.

A little more fog cleared from Charles's brain. Henri must be the ex-soldier who'd brought him to see Pierre yesterday—no, the day before yesterday it must be now. “Where did he find me?”

Pernelle smiled slightly. “He was on his way here last night to sleep—he says his wife found him with a girl and won't let him into their rooms—and he saw you fall from your horse and recognized you. By the time he got you inside, you'd lost so much blood, you were only half conscious.”

Suddenly Charles remembered his nameless hired horse. It would be worth a fortune to anyone here. “Do you know what happened to my horse?”

“I saw Henri nearly throttle a man who tried to steal it. He's put out the word that if the horse isn't bothered, you'll buy free drinks for everyone at the tavern. The women have it tied out by the garden to get the good of the dung. And they're all armed with hoes.” She studied him gravely. “Charles, were you sent north because of what you did for me?”

He sighed. Another thing he'd always loved about Pernelle was that she was impossible to fool.

“The Society doesn't know about it. But you know how our family gossips. Our pious cousin the bishop found out.”

Pernelle's eyes widened in horror and her hand flew to her mouth.

“It's all right, he's also pious about family. And you were always his favorite heretic. He settled for calling in favors and getting me reassigned as far as possible from his new diocese.”

Charles tried to raise himself to reach for the wine cup and grunted with pain. Pernelle tsked at him and held the cup to his lips.

“So now,” he said, trying to smile as he eased himself down again, “we have to start again with getting you to Geneva.” He grinned suddenly. “Those nuns' habits got you and Julie out of Nîmes. I could borrow another one and be Sister Charlotte and escort you the rest of the way.” He hoped the joking hid his surge of longing to go with her.

Her full lips thinned with reproach. “Is there nothing you can't jest about, Charles? Even if you were serious,” she said, softening, “I wouldn't let you risk everything again.”

“Listen, Pernelle—”

She wasn't listening. “Charles, there are—we call them Huguenot highways, people who help us get out of France. There are one or two in Paris, but I don't know their names. All I know is that one of them is a Jew. If I could find him—”

“A Jew? There are no Jews in Paris, hardly any Jews in France, not for hundreds of years! All right, a few, but—”

Her eyes were suddenly black ice. “Is that what Jesuits teach? No more Jews, just like there are no Huguenots left in France?”

He felt himself flush. “No. I mean—but even if this Jew is here, why would he help you?”

He reached out a hand to try to close the distance that had opened between them, but she clasped her hands tightly in her lap.

“Why would he help me?” Her expression was incredulous. “I cannot imagine what it must be like to be you, so secure, so—think about it, Charles! Who knows better than a Jew what it is to be hated and pursued and tormented? And who would know better how to hide and escape? Don't you realize that my life is far more like theirs than like yours?” She looked around the sordid room. “I'm even starting to feel a little at home here.” She sighed. “And people like these are starting to feel at home with me. Barbe has taught me how to beg. Do you know what else she does to live, Charles? Besides showing her baby and begging? She and her mother and another old woman are paper chewers. For papier-mâché. The two older ones are so fuddled with wine most of the time, poor things, they're hardly there. Dear God, it terrifies me what poor women have to do to live!”

“I saw them—three women chewing paper—the other time I was here,” Charles said. “I couldn't tell if they were only fuddled, or simple.”

“Barbe is far from simple,” Pernelle said. “There's nothing wrong with her except hunger and living like this. And the poor will put on any act to keep people like us—well, not me, now—from paying real attention to them. Except for getting alms, being noticed usually means trouble.” Her eyes flashed. “And I've learnt
that
lesson from being a Huguenot. The less you notice us, the less we suffer.”

Charles flinched at the “you” and the “us.” She was right, but the words made him feel as battered inside as he was outside. He wanted to turn over on the moldy straw, lose himself in oblivion, and wake up in a less brutal world. A movement at the edge of the partition made them both look up.

“Come in, Barbe,” Pernelle said in careful French, and held out her hand.

The girl moved a few steps into the room, her eyes darting between Pernelle and Charles. Her ragged bodice—a man's ancient doublet—was open, and she held a baby who had fallen asleep at her breast. Her eyes finally came to rest on Charles.

“I saw you before,” she said hoarsely. “After he got killed. There, where you're lying.”

Pernelle's eyes widened. “Who got killed?”

“I remember you, Barbe,” Charles said. “Did you know the porter? Pierre?”

Barbe squatted down beside the pallet. Charles tried not to draw back from her smell and felt ashamed when Pernelle reached out and took the swaddled baby, who was giving off more than its share of the stench. Pernelle bent over the infant, her lips moving, and Charles knew she was praying for Lucie.

Barbe stretched her thin arms and sat on the floor. “Pierre was that one's father.”

Charles stared. “Oh. Well. I—I'm sorry,” he stammered.

The girl shrugged. “He was all right. He gave me food. That man that killed him was an idiot, though, he left all Pierre's things. I sold the boots. I would have sold the jerkin, except some bastard stole it first. The idiot that killed Pierre had his own boots,” Barbe said, sticking to what mattered in the story. “Good ones. But he could have taken Pierre's and sold them. Awful to be that stupid.”

Charles picked the jewel out of the midden of Barbe's words. “You saw who killed Pierre?”

She bent sideways and scratched under her skirt. Over her head, Charles and Pernelle traded glances.

“What did the idiot who left the boots look like, Barbe?” Pernelle said casually, picking up her cue.

“Big hat. No feather.” She shrugged. “I only saw his back.”

“It was night,” Charles said, watching her closely. “How could you see him at all?”

“Had a lantern, didn't he? The light woke me when he went by. You sleep too sound in here, you maybe don't wake up. Something—I don't know—made me crawl over to the partition and see what he was up to. I watched him.”

“You watched him kill the baby's father?” Pernelle said, aghast.

Barbe looked from her to Charles. Her eyes were the cloudy green of Charles's shaving mirror. “I know what you're thinking. But what was I going to do? Get killed, too?” She glanced at the baby. “Then who'd feed him?”

Charles lurched painfully onto his elbow. “Barbe, how did the man kill Pierre?”

She shrugged, scratching again.

He struggled to keep his voice level. “Please. Tell me everything the man did.”

She sighed like someone who had long ago stopped expecting other people's wants to make sense. “He walked in here, went to Pierre's pallet. He put down the lantern and got something out of his pocket and leaned over. Lately, Pierre went to bed drunk most nights, so he didn't hear anything. Then he yelled out—Pierre, I mean—and kicked, but the man kept on bending over him till he quit.”

“Then what, Barbe?”

“Nothing.”

“What did the man do then, I mean?”

“He sat on the floor and did something to his boots. I couldn't see. Like I said, his back was to me. Then he got up and I curled up like I was dead asleep and he left.”

Absently watching a cockroach busy in a corner's rubbish heap, Charles thought about what she'd said. The man had taken something from his pocket and strangled the porter. Then he'd sat down, done something to his boots . . .
By all hell's devils! So
that
was what he had used!
Charles struggled to get up.

“Charles, no!” Holding the baby in one arm, Pernelle tried to keep him on the pallet. “Lie down!”

“Help me, Pernelle,” he said through his gritted teeth. “I have to get back to the college. Where's my cassock?”

“Are you crazy? You've bled too much, you can't go riding across Paris!”

His eyes fell on the pallet's small pillow and he saw that it was his rolled-up cassock. “Hand me that. Please. I need the horse. I have to get to my rector.”

In eloquently disapproving silence, Pernelle gave Barbe the baby and held the cassock out to Charles. “And I stay here?” Her words were angry, but her eyes were full of fear.

“Of course you can't stay in this—” He saw Barbe looking at him and dropped his voice. “If the police raid this place, they'll be looking for you.”

But where Pernelle could stay, he had no idea. If he didn't wear his cassock, she could ride behind him back to Louis le Grand. What to do after that escaped him, but at least he could get them both that far. He pulled the rector's purse out of his breeches pocket.

“For you and the baby, Barbe,” he said, holding out a handful of sous. “For what you've told me.”

A smile lit her face as she took the coins and, for a moment, Charles saw beneath the dirt and bitter difficulty of her life. He took out more coins.

“Two more for you if you'll bring my horse to the door. And the rest for Henri and those drinks in the tavern. Will you see that he gets his share?”

She scowled, then shrugged and laughed. “He'll get them.” Holding the baby close, she hurried away, light-footed with her good fortune.

The ride across Paris was a nightmare for Charles. The morning was already hot, and his head throbbed. His side burned and ached, even though Pernelle tried to hold herself steady behind him without touching it. The tired horse walked at a snail's pace, not pleased at carrying two people. As they went, Charles tried to think of what to do with Pernelle, but he'd come up with nothing when the horse stopped at the college postern. Mme LeClerc was standing at the bakery door surveying the street. When she saw Charles, she let out a shriek and hurried to take hold of the horse's bridle.

“Dear Blessed Virgin,
maître
, what on earth has come to you? And where have you been? Poor Frère Martin says you never came back last night, he's been sticking his head out the door looking for you every minute!”

Staring round-eyed at Pernelle, she steadied Charles as he dismounted. Pernelle slid down and stood beside him.

“Robbers, eh? That lieutenant-général of police is good for nothing!” She tsked at Charles's blood-stained shirt. “You look terrible! And you,
mademoiselle,
are you hurt? No, well, thank the Virgin for that. No, no, I ask no questions, we're only young once and he's not even
père
yet, and if we did as the church says all the time, there would be no children, if not worse, look at all the days, seasons, even, when you can't even think about it! Well, take the famine with the feast, that's what Roger always says. Roger's my husband,
mademoiselle,
and now, would you like to come with me? Because you certainly can't go with Maître du Luc. I can give you a place to lie down and something to eat. You look as tired as he does, poor thing. We live plainly, we're bakers, but our bread is the best, you'll see. Now,
maître
, why are you still standing there, go in before you fall down, and what Père Le Picart will say—”

Charles caught Pernelle's eye and saw that she was on the edge of hysterical laughter.

“Madame LeClerc,” he said, “this lady is Madame Pernelle. She is—” He stopped himself from saying she was his cousin. Better no one knew that. Though the moment Pernelle opened her mouth . . . But he was too exhausted to think his way through that problem yet. “May she stay with you for a day or two? I can pay you for her lodging.”

“But of course she can stay! How you two will manage, though, I don't know. Now go and look after yourself, I'll see to your young lady. And this horse, too, the apprentice will take it around to your stable.” She shooed him toward the postern and bustled Pernelle ahead of her into the bakery.

Charles dragged his torn and stained cassock from the saddlebow, rang for the doorkeeper, and leaned against the wall to keep himself upright. A street fool, in motley with a mirror strung around his neck, danced by. Juggling a half dozen bright colored balls, he called out, “Not all the fools are in the streets, come out and see the fool!” Charles's eyes followed the fountaining balls—blue, crimson, green, gold, rose—until the postern opened and a horrified Frère Martin pulled him inside.