Judith Rock - The Rhetoric of Death

When Antoine had cried himself out and slid off Charles’s lap to wipe his face on the already soaked towel, Charles said gently, “Are you sure it was Philippe’s writing on the note?”

Antoine nodded and then frowned. “Well-the writing was sloppy. Big and sort of wobbly, but-it would be, wouldn’t it? Because something was wrong, that’s why he needed me.”

“Do you still have this note?”

“It was in my pocket, but Pere Guise took it when I got hurt, Marie-Ange saw him, and he won’t give it back!”

Charles tried to keep his tone reassuringly conversational. “How would Pere Guise know you had the note? And how do you know she saw him take it?”

“I don’t know how he knew. But when I woke up in the infirmary, I made Frere Brunet give me my breeches and the note wasn’t there. Today, when we came out from the funeral, Marie-Ange told me she saw Pere Guise take something out of my pocket after I was hurt. So he must have it!”

“Could it have fallen out of your pocket?”

“No! I tucked it deep down. It’s the last thing Philippe gave me, Maitre du Luc, the last thing he’ll ever give me! Please make Pere Guise give it back!”

Charles had to take several breaths before he could trust his voice. The note had been the bait. If Guise had known about it, then he had set-or helped to set-the trap. “I can’t make him do anything, Antoine. But,” Charles said, trying to make his voice bright so Antoine wouldn’t see his worry, “you can do something for me, if you will. Something very important.”

“Something important? What?” Antoine’s eyes lit with hope.

“Promise me that you will not talk about this note. Not even to Marie-Ange. Let everyone think you have forgotten about it. Promise me that, Antoine.”

Antoine’s face fell. “But why?”

“What are you doing here, Maitre du Luc?”

Antoine and Charles whipped around to see Pere Guise standing in the study doorway. His black eyes glittered and his face was the color of parchment.

“Get out,” he said, “you know you are not supposed to be here.”

“Antoine’s brother is dead, mon pere,” Charles said evenly. “He is grieving. He doesn’t know where his tutor is and he needed company.”

“My godson is not in your charge.”

Antoine, glowering at Guise with his arms folded tightly across his chest, was about to speak. Charles stood quickly and with his back to Guise formed his mouth into a silent warning. “Sshhhh.”

“I will be checking on Antoine, mon pere,” Charles said mildly as he turned around. “To see how he does, you understand.”

“The rector will hear of your arrogance in exceeding your rank and duties.” Guise’s lips barely moved. “And of your being here alone with him.”

Charles ignored that for the red herring it was. “I know you heard us speaking of Philippe’s note, Pere Guise. It would be a kindness to return it to Antoine, don’t you think?”

“I know nothing about a note.”

“Oh?” Charles frowned in apparent confusion. “Then why did you search his clothing after the accident?”

“I did no such thing.”

“So many curious contradictions in accounts of the accident. What do you make of that?”

As they stared at each other, Antoine’s tutor walked in. Oblivious of the atmosphere in the room, Maitre Doissin greeted everyone, then looked more closely at Antoine and put an arm around him.

“Good news on a very sad day, Monsieur Antoine,” he said, smiling down at the boy. “I hear there’s custard for supper. Your favorite.”

Antoine smiled a little and Charles’s opinion of Doissin rose. At least he felt some warmth and kindness for the child. Charles reached out to ruffle Antoine’s hair.

“I will see you tomorrow, mon brave.” He nodded to Guise and Doissin, and forced himself to walk sedately out of the chamber. But he felt as though Guise’s furious stare were a dagger traveling toward his back.

The next day was even hotter than the funeral day had been. Charles stood on a ladder, wiping his face on his damply clinging shirtsleeve. Hot air rose, so they said, and it was definitely doing that in the rhetoric classroom. Though he and Pere Jouvancy had doffed their cassocks earlier in the rehearsal, Charles licked sweat from his upper lip as he flung another handful of sugar over Francois de Lille, the Opera stand-in now playing Hercules, who was leading his suite through a raging sugar snowstorm with the pretty lightness of a windblown feather. Beauchamps’s pinched nostrils as he sawed at his fiddle did not bode well for Hercules.

“No, no, no, the snow is too brown!”

Jouvancy stormed down the room. Maitre Beauchamps stopped playing, still looking daggers at the Opera dancer. The student dancers rolled their eyes at each other. At the ladder’s foot, two boys seated on the floor stopped scraping their knives down the tall cone-shaped sugar loaf that stood between them on a plate. Before sugar could be used, for snowstorms or anything else, it had to be scraped from the hard cone it came in and put through a sifter. Trading a conspiratorial look, the two boys put down their knives and began surreptitiously eating the remains of their efforts.

“Whiter sugar,” Jouvancy snapped at Charles. “I want whiter sugar! It’s supposed to be snow. Not mud oozing from Olympus.”

Charles wiped his sleeve across his face again. “Is there mud on Olympus?” he murmured and smiled down at Jouvancy. “Shall I get whiter sugar now, mon pere?”

“Of course not now, don’t be absurd.” Jouvancy rounded on the new Hercules. “And you, try to dance like a hero, for the love of God! Hercules is not a lovesick girl in a garden!”

De Lille turned helplessly to Beauchamps. Beauchamps abruptly stopped looking as though he wanted to smash his violin over de Lille’s beautiful head and bore down on Jouvancy like a sow defending her one piglet.

“I am the dancing master, Pere Jouvancy, and I and no one else will correct him!”

“I am the livret’s author and I will not see my ballet spoiled by this-this-”

“You only hate him because he is not Philippe!”

“I don’t care who he is not, he dances like a lovesick girl!”

Charles yawned and leaned on the top of the ladder to wait out the squabble. He’d lain awake far into the night, wrestling with his conscience and the order he’d been given to leave the murder and the accident to Pere Le Picart and Lieutenant-General La Reynie. It wasn’t only Charles’s desire for justice that was pushing him to disobey now, but fears for his own safety. His heart had nearly stopped yesterday when La Reynie mentioned Nimes. Louvois and La Reynie had been in close talk with Pere Guise before they accosted him, and Guise had already accused Charles to the rector as a “heretic lover.” Charles was fairly certain, though, that Guise didn’t know he’d rescued his Protestant cousin. Guise would have trumpeted that knowledge to the skies. But he’d insinuated to the faculty that Charles might have killed Philippe, and yesterday Louvois had virtually accused Charles of the murder while La Reynie had stood back and watched, like someone at a mildly interesting play. If any of the unholy trio started digging for damning information, what Charles had done in Nimes might well come to light. If it did, reprisals would fall not only on him, but on his family, both Catholics and Protestants alike.

A new thought made him catch his breath. Le Picart had duly turned the murder over to La Reynie. But had he done it planning to side-step the spectre of scandal by making a scapegoat of the “foreigner” from the heretic-tainted south? Charles shook his head involuntarily. However much Le Picart feared scandal, he seemed too honest for that kind of lie. But that didn’t solve Charles’s problem of the triumverate of Guise, Louvois, and La Reynie and their ominous scrutiny.