Judith Rock - The Rhetoric of Death

When they were well into the north court, Antoine pulled away. “That showed them!” he said, looking up defiantly.

“Yes,” Charles said, caught between laughter and bewilderment. “I think it did. My very sincere thanks, M. Doute. But why such a valiant rescue? We’ve hardly even met. Except when you-ah-sleepwalked, of course.”

“And you knew I wasn’t, but you didn’t tell on me. And I hate old Louvois, he always tells on me and bullies me just like he was bullying you!”

“How do you know him, mon petit?”

Antoine scowled. “He comes to our house. And at my stepmother’s birthday fete I asked him and Pere Guise something and they said I was being rude and telling lies, and my father made me apologize and sent me to bed. And I missed the cakes!”

Charles made a sympathetic face and glanced at the group of boys and tutors talking and reading under a tree on the other side of the court. They seemed to be paying no attention to Antoine or to him. Charles said quietly, “Antoine, why were you in Pere Guise’s study that night?”

The boy’s face closed like a shutter. “I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.” Antoine looked around uneasily, his bravado suddenly gone. “Maitre-could we speak in my chamber? It’s just there.” He pointed to the tall stone house on the east side of the court, a venerable survivor of one of the older colleges Louis le Grand had swallowed up, Charles guessed. He hesitated, trying to think of some other place to talk, since teachers were not supposed to go to students’ chambers. But this was his chance to ask about the note Frere Brunet had mentioned.

“Is your tutor in your chamber?” Every well-born student had a private tutor-often a Jesuit scholastic like Charles-who supervised him, communicated his progress, or lack of it, to his parents, and oversaw the boy’s daily life.

Antoine shrugged. “I don’t know where he is.”

“All right, then.” It was the perfect excuse, since someone needed to keep an eye on the child until the errant tutor returned.

Antoine led him inside and up a staircase. The building was surprisingly quiet; classes had been suspended because of the funeral and some students had gone out with their families.

Though more lowly boarders shared small dormitories, six or eight to a room, Antoine’s large chamber was private, as Philippe’s no doubt had been. Its casement stood open and a tall lime tree reached companionably toward the stone sill. The bed looked deep and soft under its red wool coverlet, and there was a sturdy oak table, two chairs upholstered and fringed in rich brown, a flat-topped chest with a decorated lock, and a large carved cupboard. A brazier for heat in cold weather stood in a corner, and a small but good painting of the young John the Baptist playing with the infant Jesus hung at the foot of the bed. The tutor’s more austere bed stood in a small alcove between the chamber and a half-open door revealing a study with several desks. Politely gesturing Charles to a chair, Antoine sat down on his bed. Charles turned the chair toward the bed and opened his mouth to ask about the note, but Antoine forestalled him.

“I wanted to go with them.” The boy smoothed the bed’s thick cover as though comforting an animal. “With my father. With Philippe.” He looked up, his eyes suddenly blazing, and Charles had an uncanny sense of the older brother looking out of Antoine’s black, long-lashed eyes. “My father wanted me to, but she said I couldn’t and Pere Guise made my father do what she wanted. Did you know Pere Guise is my godfather? I wish he wasn’t. My father argued, but she started crying about her baby and he gave in. He always gives in. I hate her! She said-” His eyes filled with tears, real tears this time. “She said I had to stay here and pray for Philippe, because he’s probably in hell. Is he, maitre?”

Choking on what he wanted to say about Lisette Doute, Charles took a slow, deep breath. “No, Antoine, he is not,” he said flatly.

“But he didn’t make his confession before he died.”

“That was not his fault. God still loves him, just as He loves you.”

The boy looked up from bunching the cover into small red hills. “But Philippe ran away-that was his fault.”

Charles stopped himself from saying that Philippe probably hadn’t gone farther than the latrine. “Listen, Antoine. People do not go to hell just for being angry. Or scared.”

“They don’t?”

“They don’t.”

“They don’t.”

“Then, if God still loves Philippe, why did He let him get killed?”

Charles sighed. Why, indeed? “That is a very hard question, mon brave. Everyone asks it when someone they love dies. But if God reached down and stopped people from doing bad things, even very bad things like killing, then we would just be puppets. Like the marionettes at fairs. God makes us able to choose good or bad. Puppets can’t choose anything.”

But so many people couldn’t choose much about their lives, Charles thought, remembering Frere Fabre. Charles and Antoine were two of the lucky ones. Antoine, who had stopped pulling at the coverlet and listened without moving, suddenly flung himself facedown in a storm of relieved weeping. In spite of the college rules, Charles went to sit beside him.

“I will tell you something else I think, Antoine. Everyone dies, but love never does. Philippe still loves you.” He patted the heaving little back. “Just as much as you love him. He’s safe with God now. Nothing else bad will ever happen to him. You don’t have to worry.”

He murmured and patted until Antoine gave a great, shuddering sigh and sat up. Charles handed him a crumpled linen towel from the table and went back to his chair. Antoine mopped his tears, blew his nose, and slid off the bed to kneel at Charles’s feet.

“Forgive me, Father,” he said, looking pleadingly at Charles. “For I have sinned.”

Charles exclaimed in alarm and tried to raise the child to his feet. “I am not your confessor, I am not a priest yet. You cannot-”

“Please, I have to tell someone, maitre!” the boy said desperately. “It’s all my fault Philippe died. And nobody knows and everyone’s being kind to me and I don’t deserve it!”

For a horrible moment, Charles wondered if Antoine had killed his brother. But that was absurd and probably physically impossible. “Get up, Antoine. I will listen, but not as a confessor. If something needs to be told in that way, you will have to tell it twice, understood?”

The boy nodded and sat down again on his rumpled bed. Further breaking the rules, Charles closed the chamber doors, though the study door refused to latch properly. Wondering what on earth was coming, he resumed his seat.

“Now. What do you want to tell me?”

“After Philippe ran away, he sent me a note,” the boy said miserably.

“How?”

“I found it in my Latin dictionary after dinner. It said he needed help and to come to where the rue des Poirees turns and he’d be there. I went, but the accident happened and I woke up in the infirmary. I tried to go and find him again, but you found me instead.” He leaned toward Charles, begging him to understand. “Mostly, Philippe thought I was too little to do anything. But this time he trusted me and I failed him and someone killed him! I meant to go, I tried to-oh, Maitre du Luc, I’m so sorry, please don’t let God send me to hell, because then I’ll never see Philippe again!”

Antoine buried his head on his knees and tried to muffle his sobs. Charles opened his mouth, closed it, and gathered the distraught little boy into his arms, rocking him like a baby. But Charles’s face was hard with anger. Someone had lured Antoine out of the college to what was surely meant to be his death. Someone had wanted this boy dead, too.