Judith Rock: The Rhetoric of Death

“Eleven? You eat later here. The Carpentras college eats at 10:30.”

“In Paris, the hours for everything get later all the time-the influence of Versailles, I always think. But our king does not have to teach boys at half past six in the morning.”

Inside the building, they passed a broad staircase and turned along a right-hand passage.

“We eat with the older boys,” Montville said. “The younger boarders’ refectory is down the other way.”

They went into an enormous room with soaring rafters, full of boys standing around closely crowded long tables covered with linen cloths. Under the eyes of their tutors and the college proctors, the boys kept their noise to a reasonably civilized level, but the room still hummed like a giant beehive.

Montville led Charles up onto the hall’s dais, where they bowed to Pere Le Picart, who stood waiting at the end of the dais table until all its places were filled. Charles and Montville made their way behind the professors standing silently at their places, along a wall painted in faded, old-fashioned red-and-blue checkerboards and stripes. Montville stopped at his own chair and gestured Charles to the empty place at the table’s end. The rector moved to his place at the long table’s center, facing the rest of the hall. Miraculously, the noise drained away like water out of a stone sink. Le Picart said a Latin grace, all crossed themselves, and chairs and benches scraped over the floor’s worn, honey-colored stone.

Lay brothers set green and yellow tin-glazed basins-faience, they were called in the south-along the center of the table. Charles winced as Frere Fabre plunked a basin down beside the rector and sent a wave of steaming sauce onto the tablecloth. Charles’s neighbor offered him a crusty loaf, and Charles realized that he’d seen him twice before, once when he’d come out of the rooms across from Charles’s early that morning, and just now with the proctor in the courtyard, putting an end to the juggling and berating the student who’d stopped to watch.

“You are our new rhetoric man, are you not?” The Jesuit, whose thick black curls might almost have been a wig, drew a serving basin close and used the spoon ready in the dish to help himself to chicken stew fragrant with the smell of ginger.

Charles made his nod half a bow. “I am Maitre Charles Matthieu Beuvron du Luc, mon pere. And very glad to be here.”

“As you should be,” the man said, without smiling or introducing himself. His eyes raked Charles. “A surprising assignment for a simple scholastic. And from the south. As your accent sadly proclaims.”

Charles let the rudeness about his origins and accent pass. Louis le Grand was without doubt the most coveted teaching assignment in the five French Jesuit provinces. He certainly wouldn’t be here if Bishop du Luc hadn’t leaned hard on the head of the Paris Province. Which, of course, was how things usually worked. Someone knew someone-and too often something-which the someone would much rather not have known, and there you were. On the other hand, of course, it might well be of no great consequence to a busy Jesuit Provincial where a lowly scholastic made himself useful.

“Being here is a great honor,” Charles said mildly, pouring his small plain glass half full of wine and adding water.

“The highest honor for someone like you. I see you eat in the Italian fashion,” the man said, as Charles picked up the fork lying beside a matching spoon. “Louis’s style is good enough for me.”

Charles’s neighbor dipped his thick fingers into his bowl and carried a mound of chicken and vegetables to his mouth. A drop splashed onto his cassock, and Charles turned his head away to hide his smile at the old-fashioned affectation. The king, so it was said, still forbade forks at his table-though only at court-but even he probably ate stew with his spoon. And the Paris college, Charles knew, had used forks for a hundred years, ever since a Jesuit inspector from Rome had been appalled at the state of the college tablecloths after so many fingers were wiped on them and recommended the Italian innovation. Although from what Charles could see of the cloths on the students’ tables, forks hadn’t made all that much difference.

“This is good,” Charles said. “Rosewater in it as well as ginger, isn’t there?”

“Rosewater, yes. Old-style cooking, usually. No luxury here. But what there is, is generally good enough.” The man gave him a sharp sideways glance. “Du Luc, your name is?”

Charles nodded, sighing inwardly. One of his hopes when he joined the Society had been that the noisy, glittering show of nobility would be less important. He had very quickly learned that influence was influence, and that Jesuits were as shameless as everyone else about using it.

“The Comtes de Vintimille du Luc?” his neighbor said. “Originally from Nice?”

“We are descended from them, yes.”

The man’s eyes narrowed and he studied Charles. “You are related, then, to the newly appointed Bishop of Marseilles. Young for a bishop. Very sound against the Jansenists, though.”

The mention of his cousin made Charles’s breath catch in his throat. He forced a smile and nodded. He was all too familiar with Bishop du Luc’s ire toward the Catholic followers of the theologian Cornelius Jansen, whose austere piety sometimes made them seem more like Huguenots than Catholics. But the less said about Bishop du Luc, the less chance anyone would discover what had really gotten Charles to Paris.

“What do you teach, mon pere?” he asked his still anonymous neighbor politely.

“I am in charge of the student library. We have an extraordinarily fine collection here, nearly thirty thousand volumes in our new main library. I also have the honor to act as confessor to many at court.” He managed to look simultaneously down his nose and sideways at Charles. “I am Pere Sebastian Victoire Louis Anne of the House of Guise.”

The man rolled the syllables of his name off his tongue as though proclaiming an addition to Holy Writ. Charles choked on a mouthful of bread. Dear God, the House of Guise. Instigators of the Wars of Religion, leaders of the Huguenot-hunting Catholic League. Nearly kings of France, with the help of the League’s Guise-financed army. The irony of getting away with rescuing Pernelle, only to become the colleague and tablemate of a Guise, made Charles uncertain whether to weep or toast the bon Dieu’s sense of humor. Still coughing, Charles picked up his wineglass. Guise turned his broad back and began talking to his other neighbor.

Charles gulped wine, catching his breath, and gazed up at the faded stars between the ceiling’s wide black beams. No luxury here, Guise had said. The little yellow stars, the Virgin’s symbols, did indeed need repainting. Even dull and chipped and faded, though, they comforted him. Mary’s stars made him think of the glittering sky of his childhood in the dry nights of the south. Until he got too big to curl up in the stone window-seat, he’d moved his bedding there most clear nights and fallen asleep watching the sky through the open shutter, imagining that Mary had spread her star-strewn cloak over the sleeping world to keep it safe. He emptied his glass, reached for a pitcher, and drew back his hand. There was no point in trying to drown the Guises of the world in watered wine. And even if there were, he couldn’t go fuddled to his first day of rehearsal.

He turned his attention to eating and watching the sea of students in front of him. In spite of the proctors’ frowns, the boys gestured energetically as they talked. The black sleeves of their scholar’s gowns fell back, lighting the dim room with flashes of white linen and the occasional sheen of richly colored silk. Most of the boys were European, but there were two who had to be the Chinese students he’d been told about, and several others with an exotic slant to eyes or cheekbones. As his eye wandered over the faces, he saw the handsome black-haired youth who had stopped to watch the lay brother’s juggling. Charles jumped as Guise, still turned away from him, slapped the table.