Judith Rock - The Rhetoric of Death

“I can’t see your side,” the man said. “We have to get your priest gown off. It’s either rip it, which you surely don’t want, or it’s flip you and untie your belt.”

There was an unpleasant interval in flickering candlelight before the voice faded into dark and painful dreams. Then the thin light of early morning was seeping into the room and someone had an arm around his shoulders and was holding a cup to his mouth. He opened his eyes, gasped at the face looking down at him, and choked on the sour wine.

He was dead and this was an angel. A dirty, bedraggled angel whose eyes glittered like wet onyx with unshed tears. Greasy black curls hung over her tired face and she was beautiful beyond words. His bewildered gaze strayed around the ramshackle room. Heaven couldn’t be this filthy. Though hell might be. But hell had no angels. Especially not Provencal-speaking ones.

“Softly, now, softly, slowly. The wound is not deep, but you bled like a pig and you’re weak.” The angel settled herself beside him on the floor and gently stroked his hair back from his forehead. “I was just as surprised to see you, believe me.”

Charles stared, wine dribbling down his chin. “Pernelle?”

Hello, Charles,” Pernelle said gravely, easing him back onto the thin pallet.

He groped for her hand, feeling with dismay how thin it was. “In God’s name, Pernelle, what-how did you come here?” Wherever here was. A baby began to cry and she withdrew her hand and turned quickly toward the wailing.

“Lucie?” he croaked, realizing as he said it that the baby sounded too young.

The crying stopped abruptly and she turned back, shaking her head. The slowly growing light glazed her jutting cheekbones and showed him the gray shadows under her eyes.

“Where is she?” he said, speaking Provencal to her and realizing how much he’d missed it.

“Safe, I pray God every moment. Oh, Charles, I thought we’d never get anywhere, at the rate the widow’s coach traveled. We were weeks on the road and when we reached her house, we had to stay a little because Julie was unwell. Then a soldier caught me as we were fording a stream in sight of Switzerland. Julie and Lucie were on the horse and they got across and away.” Her mouth trembled. “I pray they are in Geneva.” She looked down, smoothing the skirt of her stained blue gown and trying to steady her lips.

“I pray so, too. But how did you get here?” He looked around at the dirty floor, the makeshift brazier, the thin partitions and half-boarded window and realized that “here” was the murdered porter’s room in the beggars’ Louvre and he was lying on the dead man’s pallet.

“I will tell you, Charles-but then it will be your turn to explain what you are doing here! Me, I was packed into a coach with seven other women and sent here. To a penitential convent over the river. I escaped two nights ago.”

“How, in the name of God’s holy angels?”

“Out a third-floor window, along a ledge, down a tree, and over a wall. Thank God men always underestimate women. The back garden was unguarded.”

“Male stupidity is good for something, then,” he tried to joke. But the risk she had taken turned him sick. “And you ended up here.”

“Barbe brought me.”

“Who is Barbe?”

“The mother of the crying baby.” Pernelle nodded toward the partition. “When I saw you last night, I thought I had finally gone mad with worry and was seeing things. I still half believe I’m seeing things.” She fixed her black gaze on him and waited.

“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 Nimes. 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-mache. 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!”