The Rhetoric of Death (40 page)

Charles listened, but kept his thoughts to himself—admonishing himself the while for lack of charity—and agreed with Le Picart that whatever the truth was, the college's priority now had to be tomorrow's performance. The rest could wait on God's good time.

On his way back to the stage, Charles found Père Jouvancy supervising brothers who were setting up rows of benches in the courtyard. Seizing his chance, he made a show of being on his last legs, not needing to put much acting into it.

“
Mon père
, do you think the kitchen might send me bread and cheese or something in my chamber? Enough for tonight and the morning, too?”

“Of course, Maître du Luc, of course,” Jouvancy said apologetically. “I am so sorry, I forget that you are still recovering from your wound. You have been working like a Trojan.”

When the supper bell emptied the courtyard, Charles walked Pernelle into the street passage, as though seeing “Jean” out. They slipped through the main building's side door and made it to Charles's rooms without meeting anyone. As he closed the door and dragged the heavy chest across it, his sigh of relief became a groan because Pernelle demanded washing water. The eccentric desire to wash ran in the family.

A lay brother brought a bucket of hot water, Charles filled his shaving basin, and Pernelle emerged from the study and made for the water like a peasant making for a side of beef.

“Out, Charles, go and pray, or whatever you do!” She untied the neck of her shirt.

Schooling his eyes like a novice nun, he retreated to the study. “Leave some for me. While it's still warm!”

“Soap?”

“Under the towel beside my shaving mirror.”

Trying to ignore the blissful sighs from his bedchamber, he began to say Vespers. But his head was soon on his arms and he was nearly asleep when Pernelle dashed into the room, holding her shirt around her and clutching a dripping towel.

“Quick,” she hissed in his ear, “get wet.”

As he gaped at her, she wrung the towel out over his hair and face.

“Where do you want this,
mon père
?” a voice called from the bedroom.

Supper,
Pernelle mouthed.

Charles waved her behind the door and grabbed the towel. “Coming,
mon frère
!” He went into the chamber, mopping his head and face.

“Thank you,” he said, as the elderly man squeezed the laden tray in next to the basin. “This is most appreciated.”

“Why are you keeping that chest in the middle of the floor like that? Someone will break a leg.” The brother eyed the basin and bucket. “Ill, are you?” He backed away.

“No, no, just tired and dirty.”

“St. Firmin preserve you,” the brother muttered as he fled, invoking a saint known to be effective against plague.

Charles dragged the chest back across the door, dipped the towel in the warm water, and scrubbed at his face, sniffing hungrily at the savory steam rising from the dishes.

“Wait your turn!” Pernelle whispered from the doorway.

He threw her the towel and went back to his desk. Watching dusk fall outside the window, he tried not to think about how much he was enjoying the camaraderie they'd settled into in their close and illicit quarters.

“Charles?” Pernelle came in, dressed in the LeClerc apprentice's oversized breeches and one of Charles's clean shirts, which hung to her knees. Her skin glowed from its scrubbing and her wet hair was a mass of short curls. “Why did those boots matter? Are they to do with the murders?”

He told her about Philippe and Antoine and Lisette Douté.

“Those poor children!” Her eyes glistened with tears. “How could she, standing in the place of a mother to them? She must be mad!”

“For her sake, I hope so.”

Pernelle hugged herself. “Sometimes I think that if I don't find Lucie again—if anything happens to her—I will go mad.”

Charles clasped his hands tightly to keep from taking her in his arms. “You'll find her. It will all turn out, you'll see.”

“Turn out, yes,” she said shakily. “Everything ‘turns out,' idiot, one way or another. But
how
will it turn out?”

“When this show is over, we will get you on your way to Geneva again. Where Lucie will grow up and you will grow old in blessedly dull safety.” He pushed himself to his feet.

Pernelle summoned a smile and took a book from the top of the leaning pile. “Nothing more exciting than Tacitus?”

“The banned books are under the bed,” he said, straight-faced, and went into the chamber. The water wasn't very warm anymore, but it ran over his tired body like a blessing. Even his wound felt better. He put on his last clean shirt and the same dirty breeches, his only pair, and called Pernelle to eat. What Jouvancy had sent was more than enough for two: lentil stew, bread, cheese, half a roasted chicken, salad, and a pitcher of wine. They saved the bread and cheese for morning and made short work of the rest. Then Charles dragged himself to his feet and went to the chest for his extra blanket.

“No,” Pernelle said firmly, plucking it out of his hands. “You sleep in the bed.” She pushed him gently toward it and he saw that she had already turned down its covers. “Get in. You look half dead. And you have to shine tomorrow.” She added his cloak and her own to the blanket and hefted them under her arm. “Good night, dear Charles.” She went into the study.

Charles lowered himself, groaning, onto the bed and plummeted into sleep. He woke long before the morning lightened, feeling more human than he had for days. Blessing Pernelle for giving him the bed, he stretched, rose, and made his way to the indoor latrine downstairs. On his way back, he stopped at one of the small salon's windows and looked down into the courtyard. The stage, rows of benches, and shield-sized allegorical drawings and poems about heroes that hung around the courtyard were invisible in the darkness. Below him, a door thudded and feet hurried over the gravel. He opened the casement and leaned out. Père Jouvancy, carrying a lantern and followed by two boys in their long sleeping shirts with buckets and brushes, was making for the stage. Going to repaint the patched Hydra, at something like four in the morning, Charles realized. Unaccountably moved, he shut the window and went back to his rooms.

The air was fragrant with Pernelle's sweet scent. He stood in the study doorway, listening to her breathing, facing the fact that he had to get her out of his rooms. And out of his life. Either that or go with her.

“Pernelle. Wake up.”

“Mmmmph. Still dark.”

“Barely, and we have to get you to the stage and say you've come early to help. I won't be able to get you downstairs later. Up.”

She roused, grumbling, and he set out the bread and cheese and the mouthful each they'd saved of last night's wine. Pernelle came in yawning and running her hands through her hair. She took a piece of bread from the tray and they ate standing.

She was fully dressed, but Charles had to gaze out at the slowly graying street to avoid devouring her with his eyes. “Are things going all right below stage?” he said, around a mouthful of cheese.

“I think so. I play mute and do what they tell me. When something's too heavy, I act stupid and they shove me aside and lift whatever it is. But every muscle I have is screaming.”

“If you'd slept in the bed—”

“Hush! It did you good, you look like a different person this morning.”

“Tonight the bed is yours.”

“I'll take it gladly!” She swallowed a mouthful of cheese and said, “Tell me about the brother called Moulin.”

Charles looked around in surprise. “He's amusing. He can juggle, of all things. And he's bright. I think he's like poor Fabre, bitter over what life has offered him.”

“Yes.” She poured her share of the wine. “The thing is, he flirts with me.”

“What?” Charles's heart sank. “He knows you're a woman?”

“If he doesn't, then he likes boys.”

“Moulin definitely likes women. This is all we need. Stay away from him. As much as you can, anyway. Pick your nose, spit, scratch, make yourself disgusting.”

“I can do that.”

“I doubt it,” he said under his breath, and turned back toward the window. Outside, August the seventh's sun was gilding the Sorbonne roofs. “Come on, boy, the day of reckoning is upon us.”

T
he clock chimed the quarter before midday. Uncomfortably aware of dinner swallowed too fast, Charles was alone in his rooms, wiping a linen towel over his face and hands and doing what he could to tame his hair, which curled like young vines in the humid warmth.

The morning had been all too short. Ignoring the courtyard chaos of students and faculty practicing for the Siamese reception ceremony, Charles and Père Jouvancy had checked and rechecked props, costumes, and the slowly drying paint on the Hydra's patch. As Charles went back and forth from stage to understage, he'd seen that Pernelle was holding her own acting the awkward boy quick to learn in spite of his muteness. To his relief, Frère Moulin had been nowhere in sight.

The only news from Lieutenant-Général La Reynie was that his kitchen maid spy at the Hôtel de Guise had heard a woman screaming somewhere in the house. And that Fabre, still held at the college in close confinement, was now refusing to speak to anyone.

Charles pulled his wrinkled shirt down smoothly over his black
caleçons
, his knee-length underpants. Today he wouldn't be teaching and demonstrating, so he had no reason to wear breeches. Just as well in the heat, he thought, taking the tight-across-the-shoulders cassock the clothing master had given him from the hanging rail. He pulled it on, tied the cincture, made sure his rosary hung straight down, and put on the three-pronged formal hat. His mouth was as dry as an over-roasted turkey, the way it used to be when he performed as a student.
Terpsichore, St. Genesius, St. Vitus,
he prayed,
give wings to the dancers' feet. Make the actors' words stick to their memories like Paris mud. Don't let the giants fall off the ladder. Whisper “right” and “left” in Armand Beauclaire's ear.
The clock chimed twelve. At a quarter past, the Siamese were coming. Charles hastened downstairs.

It was a little cooler than yesterday and less humid, and the awning made a pleasant shade. A breeze fluttered around its edges and rippled the stage curtain into a blue velvet lake. Lay brothers were making a last check of the benches and straightening the rows. Nearly all the windows below the awning and with views of the stage were open. The women in the audience would sit there, as though in box seats. Straight across from the stage, the third-floor windows of the little salon, where Charles had stood before daylight, were hung with swags of red drapery and three high-backed armchairs were drawn close to the sills. The Siamese would sit there, with a perfect view of the stage and high enough above the crowd to satisfy their notions of honor. In Siam, Jouvancy had said, honor meant being placed well above the ground and social inferiors. The ambassadors' letter from King Narai to King Louis, treated as if it were Narai himself, had apparently created endless confusion on the journey from the coast to Paris, since no one could be housed higher than the room where the letter lay in its elaborate casket.

In the center aisle between the benches, the student linguists were gathering to welcome the ambassadors in twenty-four languages. Their scholars' gowns had been brushed, their hair was unnaturally neat, and their hands had been scrubbed. The inseparable pair of twelve-year-old Chinese boys stood a little apart, black eyes flashing as they talked excitedly and pointed at the red-draped windows. Père Montville, the ceremony's director, burst out of the main building, slammed the door behind him, and was nearly flattened as an allegorical emblem the size of a small table crashed to the ground.

“Help!” he yelled to the lay brothers. “You have ten minutes to get that back in place.” He rolled his eyes at Charles, who had come running. “We'll get through it. We always do. And tomorrow we'll be looking forward to next year. That's because we're insane, and you seem to fit right in,
Maître
.
Bonne chance
this afternoon!”

The clock chimed a quarter past twelve.

“Ah,
mon Dieu
,” Montville implored, casting his eyes up at the canvas awning. He bore down on the linguists. “Form up in your line and stay there!”

He hurtled back through the rear door, Charles on his heels. When they reached the grand salon, Montville made his way through the crowd of excited Jesuits to stand on the rector's left, under the archway between the salon and the antechamber. The king's confessor, Père La Chaise, stood on the rector's other side. Charles slid along the salon wall and worked his way to a vantage point behind La Chaise's right shoulder. A strip of thick carpet patterned in red and gold ran from the rector's feet across the antechamber's patterned stone floor to the street doors. The college's most noble students, dressed in satin and lace under their scholar's gowns, were ranged along both sides of the carpet, fidgeting and whispering. The five boys nearest the double doors—the natural son of the late Charles II of England, and the sons of the Grand Générals of Poland and Lithuania—had lent their personal carriages to bring the Siamese from Berny, two leagues south of Paris, and would escort the ambassadors into the college. Le Picart clapped his hands to call everyone's attention.

“Remember,” he said sternly, “this visit is supposed to be incognito, since the ambassadors have not yet made their formal entry into the city. We do not want to draw a crowd, so you must get them out of the carriages and inside as quickly as courtesy allows. Do not let them stand in the street and look at everything. The music should help to draw them. I hope.”