Judith Rock - The Rhetoric of Death

He ignored them like the professional he was, but Charles dashed onstage, ducked under the spear thrust, and snatched them up. Clutching them to his chest, he retreated to his wing and gaped at them in disbelief. They were the color of burnt sugar. Ungartered, but faint lines in the leather showed where garters had been. Their tops were high and folded. Charles stowed them between his feet and stood over them like a bird with one egg.

The finale ended triumphantly and everyone rushed onstage, applauding and congratulating and whooping. The rector, who had watched from a lone chair in the middle of the court, applauded with them. Notes in one hand and boots in the other, Charles praised and congratulated everyone, and tried to keep an eye on Fabre and Moulin. Armand Beauclaire and two other boys made a three-man pyramid and Beauclaire somersaulted from it, landed in front of the astonished de Lille, and made him a wildly elaborate bow. De Lille blushed with pleasure.

“We’ll use that next year, Armand, don’t forget how you did it!” Jouvancy called, laughing.

The crew came up from the understage and down from the loft, and the musicians perched on the edge of the stage. Pernelle sat beside the trap in her hat, silent and watchful. Fabre stood with Moulin in the cluster of stagehands. Jouvancy and Beauchamps dispensed praise, followed by fearsome threats should anyone-performers or crew-slack off tomorrow on the strength of today’s success. They gave their last-minute notes and corrections and then it was Charles’s turn. Charles put the boots down beside him and looked at his notes, but before he could begin, Le Picart, who was standing near the musicians, nodded toward the boots with a questioning look. Charles gave him a small nod and tackled his short critique of the performance.

“And one more thing,” he said, as he finished. “Most of you didn’t see that there was a problem with the Hydra. One mouth was blocked and the smoke couldn’t get out. The smoke pipe dislodged the blockage.” He held up the boots. “Whose are these?”

Everyone jostled, peered, disclaimed, and shrugged. Frowning at the thought that someone might play fast and loose with his precious Hydra, Jouvancy took the boots and examined them closely.

“Mmm-no,” he said, “not ours. They’re good boots, though,” he added wistfully, always covetous of discards for costumes.

“Me, I’ll take them, if no one else does,” someone joked.

“Give the rest of us a chance!” Moulin pushed his way to the front. “They look a good fit for me.”

Charles handed him a boot. Moulin took off his shoe, tugged the boot on over his stocking, put his foot down, and winced.

“My poor big toe is folded in half. Oh, well, too bad.” He pulled the boot off. “Just my luck. Anyone else? You, Frere Fabre, you could use some good news and your dainty foot looks the right size!”

Laughing students and brothers pushed Fabre forward. He shook his head and tried to draw back, but Moulin leaned down and picked up the boy’s foot, making Fabre grab his shoulder for balance. Moulin pulled off the shoe, shoved on the boot, and set Fabre’s foot firmly on the floor.

“There.” He felt Fabre’s toes and tugged up the boot’s top. “A perfect fit, mon frere, this is your very lucky day!”

“They’re not mine.” Fabre started to pull the boot off.

Moulin stopped him, laughing. “But they can be yours now.” He made a half bow to Jouvancy. “If no one minds.”

Charles leaned down to feel the boot’s fit. “Put this one on, too, mon frere,” he said pleasantly. “They really do seem to fit you. Wait here one little moment.”

Looking at his notes, as though he’d just remembered an important question, he hurried to Le Picart and drew him a little distance away, talking low and fast.

“You’re sure they’re the same boots?” the rector said, gesturing at the scenery, as though that were their subject.

“As sure as I can be, though the spur garters are gone. Frere Fabre worked on the Hydra’s mouths this morning. Frere Moulin checked what he’d done, but he only checked two of the mouths. Mon pere, Frere Fabre tried hard to mislead us about who left the poison for Antoine, and now his sister stands accused. And the boots of the man who attacked Antoine and tried to kill me fit him perfectly.”

“But he can’t be the man you chased, not with that hair!” Le Picart looked at Fabre, who was staring miserably at his feet, hardly seeming to hear his confreres’ teasing. “But yes, what you say is damning enough. I will question him. And I will have Pere Dainville look at him in the passage upstairs. If it was Frere Fabre he saw coming out of Pere Guise’s chamber, I will send for La Reynie.”

Le Picart and Charles crossed the stage and stood on either side of Fabre. Jouvancy rapped for silence and brought everyone back to the last-minute business of where to be tomorrow before the performance and when. When he finished, Le Picart picked up Fabre’s discarded shoes and said something in the boy’s ear. Fabre seemed to protest, then subsided and followed him dejectedly across the court.

Hoping against hope that Dainville would say it hadn’t been Fabre he’d seen, Charles forced himself back to the job at hand and went below stage to help with the damaged Hydra. Pernelle was holding a glue pot for Jouvancy.

“I suppose an Opera workman did it,” Jouvancy was saying as he brushed glue carefully onto the canvas skin where the patch would be. “Hid someone’s boots for a joke.”

“At least,” Charles said, “they fell out today and not tomorrow.”

It took another two hours to finish the last-minute stage details. When all that could be done had been, Charles left Pernelle hidden under the stage-getting her back to his rooms was impossible until everyone was at supper-and went to find Pere Le Picart. Pere Dainville couldn’t say, the rector told him, if it was Frere Fabre he’d seen that day. If he’d seen the flaming hair, the old man said, he would be sure, but the passage had been dark and whoever it was had worn the regulation broad-brimmed outdoor hat. Fabre, in tears, had fiercely proclaimed his innocence, but Le Picart had sent for Lieutenant-General La Reynie. When La Reynie got no further with Fabre, he’d tried to take him to the Chatelet but had finally agreed to Le Picart keeping the boy under the college version of house arrest for now. An agreement reached only after a pitched battle, Charles surmised, reading between the lines of the rector’s account. Fabre was shut into a small room, decently provided for, with a large, incurious brother posted at the door.

That was news enough, but Le Picart had saved the real news for last. When La Reynie had come to the college yesterday, the rector had told him, as he’d told Charles, that Pere Guise was gone to Versailles. But this afternoon, after questioning Fabre, La Reynie told the rector that he’d sent a man to Versailles to make sure Guise was there. The man had returned to say that Guise was not, and had not been seen there. La Reynie now had two men watching the Hotel de Guise, which was his best guess as to where Guise might be. La Reynie had also gotten a female spy inside the Guise house as a new kitchen maid, to listen to gossip.

“It may be,” Le Picart said to Charles, “and M. La Reynie obviously thinks so, that Pere Guise has helped Mme Doute to escape. I suppose she could have sent a servant to him after Frere Fabre’s sister was taken away. And she could have bribed her sister’s servants to keep quiet about her disappearance. But even if Pere Guise helped her, I think we will find that he is as devastated by what she has done as the rest of us. Remember, he used to be her confessor, it would be like him to try to bring her to penance before she is turned over to the police.”