Judith Rock: The Eloquence of Blood

With a rueful quirk of his wide mobile mouth, Charles resumed his place in this soldierly gathering of men to honor France’s greatest general, the Prince of Conde, who had died on December eleventh. The Great Conde, as he was called, Louis II of Bourbon, was a soul newly reclaimed for Holy Church after a lifetime of freethinking apostasy. Because Jesuits had helped return him to the fold, he had left them the great gift they were assembled to receive. This was only the ceremonial reception of the gift, though. Its interment in the wall behind the high altar would be in April, to give time for the writing of new music for the funeral Mass and the creation of elaborate church decor for the occasion.

The Professed House rector raked a last sharp look over his troops and barked, “Doors!”

Novices hauled the church’s great doors open wide, and Pinette went out to stand at the edge of the porch. The first row of Jesuits filed out past him and stood one on the end of each step. Charles was on the bottom step in the wind’s path, holding his bonnet on with one hand. Damiot was just above him. From the alley at the side of the church, four novices came with flaring, spitting torches. Two stopped at street level and two climbed to stand wide apart just below Pinette.

The sound of slowly rolling carriage wheels, the rattle of harness, and the slow beat of scores of hooves drew all eyes to the west. Along the street, people hurrying to get out of the early-evening cold stopped and crossed themselves, and the men took off their hats. Black and slow under the last slash of crimson in the clouds of Christmas Eve’s sunset, the Great Conde’s procession came. The first riders passed St. Catherine’s well, a score of black-caparisoned horses carrying noblemen so blackly clad they were only white faces in the dusk. Behind them rolled two black-plumed carriages, the first with the heraldic arms of the Bishop of Autun, the second with those of the Prince of Conde. Behind the carriages rode yet more men-at-arms. The first carriage drew up at the church steps and a lackey sprang down to lower the carriage step and open the door. Two clerics emerged and together helped a slow-moving mass of sable and silver to descend. The Bishop of Autun stood stiffly upright and straightened his mitre as one of his attendants pulled the episcopal crozier from the carriage. The second carriage disgorged three more clerics, one of them bearing a small box of pale gold. They paced gravely to their bishop, and the box bearer set his burden on the bishop’s upturned, black-gloved palms.

The bishop mounted the stairs, one cleric going before him with his crozier, the other four coming behind. Jewels on the gleaming box flashed red, blue, and green in the torchlight. Pere Pinette bowed deeply to the bishop and kissed his ring. In clouds of silver frost, the bishop spoke and Pinette replied. Then Pinette received the box, which held the Great Conde’s mummified heart, and the bishop gave his blessing. From their places on the steps and inside the church, the Jesuits began a sonorous Te Deum. The bishop descended majestically down the church steps, back to his carriage.

“Allez, allez, mon cher eveque,” Charles thought toward the bishop behind his singing. “Achieve your carriage and get us out of this wind, or you’ll send us all to join the Conde before our time!”

But the bishop, warm in his sable, knew good liturgical theatre when he met it, and he paced solemnly on. When the episcopal posterior finally disappeared and the carriage door was shut, Pinette turned with equal majesty and bore the box into St. Louis, toward the gated altar where it would stay until its April interment behind the high altar. Still singing, the Jesuits who had stood on the steps followed him in double file, trying not to shove each other to get out of the wind. Those in the nave parted neatly before Pinette and his burden, allowed those who had been outside to pass, then closed behind them in procession toward the gated side altar bright with wax candles and covered with cloth of gold.

The twinkling box had almost reached its temporary resting place among the side altar’s blazing candles when a man reared, bellowing, out of the shadows. He launched himself at Pinette, the singing shattered into chaos, and the box went bouncing end over end into the darkness, clanging on the stone floor like an out-of-tune bell.

Charles lunged for the attacker, saw that Damiot and others were already grabbing him, and instead changed course to go after the box. He prayed that it hadn’t broken open. Or, if it had, that he wouldn’t step on its contents. His first prayer went unanswered. A faint whiff of death overlaid with spices led him toward the side wall. A fast-thinking novice brought a torch, whose light showed them the box lying open on its side. A little way beyond the gleam of its sapphires and rubies lay a misshapen thing the size of a large apple, tightly wrapped in dull gold silk. As Charles bent to pick it up, the attacker broke partly free of his captors and limped a few steps toward the box. He was old, wild haired, and dirty, and his seamed face was twisted with hatred.

“Your box is full of nothing!” he screamed, pointing a shaking finger at the lump in Charles’s hand. “That’s no human heart! That’s a cold clod of filth; the thrice-damned Prince of Conde had no heart!”

In the stunned silence that closed around the words, a dark, slender young man-almost a boy still-threw himself to his knees in front of the Professed House rector. His brown breeches and coat were worn, and his hands were blue with cold as he clutched at Pinette’s cassock.

“Mon pere, I beg you, forgive him, let him go! He is old and his brains are weak, he does not know what he does!”

“He does violence and blasphemy!” Pinette jerked his cassock skirt out of the youth’s fingers. His hard stare shifted from the young man to the old one. “Who is he? What are the two of you doing here?”

“He is no one, I swear it!”The boy was shaking with fear. “We only-we only came inside because we were cold, mon pere.”

The stone walls caught and magnified the frightened whisper. “Cold, cold, cold…” Pinette seemed to be choking on what he wanted to say. A muscle jumped in his jaw and his lips were a thin bloodless line. Charles hoped he would remember that Jesus’ mother had also been poor and sought refuge from the cold one Christmas Eve…

“Get out,” Pinette said through his teeth. “Stay out. If I find either of you here again, I will turn you over to the commissaire. Go!”

The youth scrambled to his feet, and Damiot and another Jesuit escorted him and the muttering old man to the nearest door. The old man twisted in their hands and looked back, his eyes glittering with rage.

“Hypocrite!” He spat at Pinette, barely missing Damiot. “You’re like him, priest, coldhearted as the devils in hell! You’ll be dead and rot like him, too!”

Pinette turned a deaf ear, drew himself up, and faced his men. “Arrange yourselves!”

The lines re-formed. Charles put the swaddled heart back into its lead-lined nest, closed the lid on it, and bore it as decorously as he could to Pinette. Pinette took it, they bowed to each other, and someone started the Te Deum again. Exchanging silent, sidelong looks, the singing Jesuits paced the rest of the short distance. Reverently, Pinette carried the silver gilt box through the open gate of the candlelit side altar and placed it on the glowing cloth of gold. After prayers of thanksgiving and a dismissal blessing, the Jesuits bowed and went silently out of the church to the duties and joys of Christmas. But when they reached the walkway to the Professed House and the steps of St. Louis, the air grew sibilant with outraged whispers about the disrupted ceremony. Inside the church, the sacristan locked the altar gate, pocketed the key, and hurried to contribute his own morsel to the indignant talk, leaving the heart of the Great Conde, Prince of the Blood, to await the spring and its final resting place.