The Rhetoric of Death (39 page)

“Well, I pray God—” Charles stopped, thinking of the unborn child and M. Doute and Antoine. “I hardly know what to ask of God,
mon père
.”

“Nor do I.” Le Picart crossed himself.

Charles followed suit and made his escape.

He found Pernelle safely in his chamber, gazing pensively out the window. When she had eaten, he pointed to the bed.

“You have that, I'll make a bed in the study. No, don't argue.”

“We'll take turns with the bed.”

He felt himself go hot at the thought of both of them in the same bed, even if not at the same time. “Fine.” He took his cloak and the extra blanket from the chest. “The pot is under the bed. I'll use the latrine downstairs if need be.”

“Good night, Charles.” Her dark eyes gleamed in the shadows falling over the room.

“Good night.”

The Compline bells rang out, Charles said his prayers, and quiet settled over the college. But the prayers didn't bring their usual peace and he lay awake far into the night, listening to Pernelle's soft breathing from his bed.

T
uesday dawned gray and still, the air thick with damp. Charles roused Pernelle at first light and got her safely out to the stage. Père Jouvancy was already there, fiddling with his beloved seven-headed Hydra, and Charles introduced the “boy” as Jean, Mme LeClerc's stage-struck nephew—mute, but with good ears and wits—who wanted to learn to build stage machinery. Well disposed toward anyone who would take an interest in machines like his beautiful Hydra monster, Jouvancy said that since Mme LeClerc would be watching Antoine during tomorrow's festivities, indulging her nephew was the very least they could do. So far, no one had given “Jean,” still enveloped in the flopping hat, a second glance. So far, so good, but Charles was finding the strain unnerving.

By late morning, he was supervising the last stage details, fanning himself with his list of things to do as he watched Frère Moulin crawl out of the Hydra and hand the clanking tool bag to the listless Frère Fabre.

“You did well,” Moulin told him, “I didn't check all the mouths, only the last two you worked on. No offense, but I've been at this stage business longer than you.”

“Good, I thank you both,” Charles said, going to the front of the monster to look at its mouths, forced open wider now, so as to belch more smoke over the audience.

Moulin and Fabre dropped through the trapdoor to the understage. As Charles spotted Pernelle, coiling rope around a capstan, the dinner bell rang out and the rest of the stagehands streamed toward the lay brothers' refectory. When everyone else was gone, Charles went below stage and found her sitting cross-legged against a huge coil of rope.

“All's well?” he asked softly.

“Well enough.” She smiled and flexed her sore arms. “I never knew making theater was so much physical work!”

“I'll bring you some dinner.”

“Good! I could eat a horse.”

“We don't run much to horse, thank the
bon Dieu
—and the bursar—but I'll do my best.”

By the time dinner ended, the humid heat trapped under the huge canvas awning felt like a foretaste of hell. By dress rehearsal time, sweat runnelled the actors' makeup as they took their places and stung the musicians' eyes and made them miss notes in the overture. In the prompt wing, Charles moved a little away from a taut-faced boy in painted canvas armor. If God sent them a breeze tomorrow, he hoped it wouldn't blow the costumes' ripening scent straight up the audience's nose.

The overture ended and Charles and the soldier traded nervous grins as heels clacked on the other side of the curtain. Jacques Douté spoke the prologue, and Frères Moulin and Fabre, hidden from the audience, parted the halves of the curtain to reveal a forest whose green leaves seemed to flutter in the shadows cast by the candles fixed to the side flats. Jacques's blue satin back shimmered in the candlelight as he bowed in the direction of the audience and swept offstage. Charles sent up a prayer that all would go smoothly below stage, where Pernelle would be leaning manfully into the gear wheels that moved the stage machinery.

Clovis conquered his way through the first act and the ballet cast took over. De Lille-Hercules had surprised everyone but Beauchamps by evolving into a thoroughly convincing hero. He slew the Nemean lion with panache, cut through the obstacles of three more entrées, and arrived triumphantly in the Hesperides. Clovis and his minions returned and Charles hissed occasional prompts from the tragedy script and scribbled frantic notes, licking his quill's end when it threatened to dry, spattering ink as he dipped it in the little inkwell on the stool beside him.

As the next ballet entrée began, he thrust his head around the flats to see how Maître Beauchamps was faring. Wigless and bowing a full-sized violin, the ballet master directed his musicians with furious swings of his head, his flying silvery hair making him look like he was playing in a cyclone. Charles drew back into his downstage wing. The music, the dancers' passion burning their movement into the air, the actors' voices rolling Jouvancy's beautiful Latin off their tongues—the beauty of it all wiped everything else from his mind and filled him with a piercing happiness.

When the ballet's last entrée began, everyone was riding high on a wave of success. On cue, the trap opened and the gloriously horrible seven-headed Hydra rose towering from hell. Glistening black and poison green, it rolled downstage toward its foes, red smoke belching from its yawning mouths as the lay brother crouched inside blew mightily up a cluster of long pipes. But only six mouths were belching smoke. Charles frowned and made a note. As he looked up, a pipe poked a hole in the monster's canvas neck and a puff of smoke drifted toward Charles. The dancers didn't notice. Feet flickering like hummingbirds, they bounded around the beast and thrust their spears at it. As Hercules balanced on the ball of one foot, his spear poised for the final blow, a pair of boots fell from the smokeless mouth and landed at his feet.

He ignored them like the professional he was, but Charles dashed onstage, ducked under the spear thrust, and snatched them up. Clutching them to his chest, he retreated to his wing and gaped at them in disbelief. They were the color of burnt sugar. Ungartered, but faint lines in the leather showed where garters had been. Their tops were high and folded. Charles stowed them between his feet and stood over them like a bird with one egg.

The finale ended triumphantly and everyone rushed onstage, applauding and congratulating and whooping. The rector, who had watched from a lone chair in the middle of the court, applauded with them. Notes in one hand and boots in the other, Charles praised and congratulated everyone, and tried to keep an eye on Fabre and Moulin. Armand Beauclaire and two other boys made a three-man pyramid and Beauclaire somersaulted from it, landed in front of the astonished de Lille, and made him a wildly elaborate bow. De Lille blushed with pleasure.

“We'll use that next year, Armand, don't forget how you did it!” Jouvancy called, laughing.

The crew came up from the understage and down from the loft, and the musicians perched on the edge of the stage. Pernelle sat beside the trap in her hat, silent and watchful. Fabre stood with Moulin in the cluster of stagehands. Jouvancy and Beauchamps dispensed praise, followed by fearsome threats should anyone—performers or crew—slack off tomorrow on the strength of today's success. They gave their last-minute notes and corrections and then it was Charles's turn. Charles put the boots down beside him and looked at his notes, but before he could begin, Le Picart, who was standing near the musicians, nodded toward the boots with a questioning look. Charles gave him a small nod and tackled his short critique of the performance.

“And one more thing,” he said, as he finished. “Most of you didn't see that there was a problem with the Hydra. One mouth was blocked and the smoke couldn't get out. The smoke pipe dislodged the blockage.” He held up the boots. “Whose are these?”

Everyone jostled, peered, disclaimed, and shrugged. Frowning at the thought that someone might play fast and loose with his precious Hydra, Jouvancy took the boots and examined them closely.

“Mmm—no,” he said, “not ours. They're good boots, though,” he added wistfully, always covetous of discards for costumes.

“Me, I'll take them, if no one else does,” someone joked.

“Give the rest of us a chance!” Moulin pushed his way to the front. “They look a good fit for me.”

Charles handed him a boot. Moulin took off his shoe, tugged the boot on over his stocking, put his foot down, and winced.

“My poor big toe is folded in half. Oh, well, too bad.” He pulled the boot off. “Just my luck. Anyone else? You, Frère Fabre, you could use some good news and your dainty foot looks the right size!”

Laughing students and brothers pushed Fabre forward. He shook his head and tried to draw back, but Moulin leaned down and picked up the boy's foot, making Fabre grab his shoulder for balance. Moulin pulled off the shoe, shoved on the boot, and set Fabre's foot firmly on the floor.

“There.” He felt Fabre's toes and tugged up the boot's top. “A perfect fit,
mon frère
, this is your very lucky day!”

“They're not mine.” Fabre started to pull the boot off.

Moulin stopped him, laughing. “But they can be yours now.” He made a half bow to Jouvancy. “If no one minds.”

Charles leaned down to feel the boot's fit. “Put this one on, too,
mon frère
,” he said pleasantly. “They really do seem to fit you. Wait here one little moment.”

Looking at his notes, as though he'd just remembered an important question, he hurried to Le Picart and drew him a little distance away, talking low and fast.

“You're sure they're the same boots?” the rector said, gesturing at the scenery, as though that were their subject.

“As sure as I can be, though the spur garters are gone. Frère Fabre worked on the Hydra's mouths this morning. Frère Moulin checked what he'd done, but he only checked two of the mouths.
Mon père
, Frère Fabre tried hard to mislead us about who left the poison for Antoine, and now his sister stands accused. And the boots of the man who attacked Antoine and tried to kill me fit him perfectly.”

“But he can't be the man you chased, not with that hair!” Le Picart looked at Fabre, who was staring miserably at his feet, hardly seeming to hear his confrères' teasing. “But yes, what you say is damning enough. I will question him. And I will have Père Dainville look at him in the passage upstairs. If it was Frère Fabre he saw coming out of Père Guise's chamber, I will send for La Reynie.”

Le Picart and Charles crossed the stage and stood on either side of Fabre. Jouvancy rapped for silence and brought everyone back to the last-minute business of where to be tomorrow before the performance and when. When he finished, Le Picart picked up Fabre's discarded shoes and said something in the boy's ear. Fabre seemed to protest, then subsided and followed him dejectedly across the court.

Hoping against hope that Dainville would say it hadn't been Fabre he'd seen, Charles forced himself back to the job at hand and went below stage to help with the damaged Hydra. Pernelle was holding a glue pot for Jouvancy.

“I suppose an Opera workman did it,” Jouvancy was saying as he brushed glue carefully onto the canvas skin where the patch would be. “Hid someone's boots for a joke.”

“At least,” Charles said, “they fell out today and not tomorrow.”

I
t took another two hours to finish the last-minute stage details. When all that could be done had been, Charles left Pernelle hidden under the stage—getting her back to his rooms was impossible until everyone was at supper—and went to find Père Le Picart. Père Dainville couldn't say, the rector told him, if it was Frère Fabre he'd seen that day. If he'd seen the flaming hair, the old man said, he would be sure, but the passage had been dark and whoever it was had worn the regulation broad-brimmed outdoor hat. Fabre, in tears, had fiercely proclaimed his innocence, but Le Picart had sent for Lieutenant-Général La Reynie. When La Reynie got no further with Fabre, he'd tried to take him to the Châtelet but had finally agreed to Le Picart keeping the boy under the college version of house arrest for now. An agreement reached only after a pitched battle, Charles surmised, reading between the lines of the rector's account. Fabre was shut into a small room, decently provided for, with a large, incurious brother posted at the door.

That was news enough, but Le Picart had saved the real news for last. When La Reynie had come to the college yesterday, the rector had told him, as he'd told Charles, that Père Guise was gone to Versailles. But this afternoon, after questioning Fabre, La Reynie told the rector that he'd sent a man to Versailles to make sure Guise was there. The man had returned to say that Guise was not, and had not been seen there. La Reynie now had two men watching the Hôtel de Guise, which was his best guess as to where Guise might be. La Reynie had also gotten a female spy inside the Guise house as a new kitchen maid, to listen to gossip.

“It may be,” Le Picart said to Charles, “and M. La Reynie obviously thinks so, that Père Guise has helped Mme Douté to escape. I suppose she could have sent a servant to him after Frère Fabre's sister was taken away. And she could have bribed her sister's servants to keep quiet about her disappearance. But even if Père Guise helped her, I think we will find that he is as devastated by what she has done as the rest of us. Remember, he used to be her confessor, it would be like him to try to bring her to penance before she is turned over to the police.”