Judith Rock - The Eloquence of Blood

The doggerel hammered at Charles as he carried the boy toward the gate. It was the first time he’d actually heard this verse. “The notary was strong, but he is dead, lost to enrich the Jesuits.”Trying to shut his ears, he reached the courtyard, half running. Frere Brunet had set up a temporary infirmary in the lamplit stable. With the help of two other lay brothers, the infirmarian was tending boys injured on both sides of the melee. Pere Montville, just inside the stable door, was grimly questioning two half-grown boys. One was a shame-faced Louis le Grand student, and the other, in a shorter scholar’s gown, was a student from another college. Each had a rapidly blackening eye.

Brunet looked up from sponging blood off another boy’s forehead. “Blessed saints, that one looks bad, bring him over here, maitre.”

Charles put the boy down beside the one Brunet was working on. “Do you need me in here, mon frere?”

Brunet shook his head, absorbed in checking his new patient for broken bones, and Charles hurried back to the lane. The brawl was mostly over, the last apprentices and alien students in rapid retreat, pursued by large lay brothers doing their best to lay hands on them. The more culprits Montville questioned-on both sides, Charles thought wryly, since the Louis le Grand day students were as likely as their adversaries to have started this-the more chance a coherent picture would emerge. Now that the way was clear, Charles went to the end of the lane, where it joined the side street near the old college of Les Cholets. The woman he’d glimpsed was no doubt long gone, but it wouldn’t hurt to make sure.

As he reached the side street, his way was blocked by winter street cleaning-a plodding cart horse pulling a wide, heavy triangular drag that captured garbage and frozen horse and mule droppings, which workmen gathered into the cart alongside it. Waiting for drag and cart to pass, Charles eyed the ill-kept wall around Les Cholets and wondered if the shadow might have used the easy toeholds of missing stones to climb into the courtyard. He grabbed the wall’s uneven top and pulled himself up, then wished he hadn’t as pain shot through the old wound in his left shoulder. The price for striking useful fear into the hearts of the brawling boys he’d held off the ground, he realized ruefully. As far as he could tell in the poor light, Les Cholet’s courtyard was empty, and he let himself carefully down again to the lane’s snowy cobbles.

He hurried around to Louis le Grand’s main doors. Pere Le Picart was there, as Charles had thought he would be, talking to two of La Reynie’s officers. The horse drag was toiling noisily up the rue St. Jacques, and the last day students were streaming into the college. These were the oldest day boys, fifteen to eighteen or so, and the only ones allowed to come and go by the main doors. From the look of the students, the fight here hadn’t been as fierce, or it had at least been more equal. Some had black eyes, cuts, and bruises, but overall they seemed not much damaged.

“… most likely to be last night, our informers told us,” the older officer was saying unhappily to Le Picart. “Either they were in on it, or their informers were wrong.” He smiled bleakly. “These bravos launched their attack just after the night patrol was gone, before we got here. That gap shouldn’t have happened.” With grim anticipation, he added, “And someone’s head will roll for it. In any event, the lieutenant-general has assigned guards here all day, and you’ll have the patrol again tonight.”

Le Picart said, “And that song? What have you discovered?”

“Nothing. But as of today, we’re confiscating all the copies we come across and arresting the sellers for inciting violence. That’s all I know, mon pere.”

Le Picart nodded and dismissed them to their places on either side of the doors. He turned to Charles. “Were any of the boys at the stable gate badly hurt? I have not yet been there.”

“That’s why I came to find you. One boy at least seems badly hurt. I found him unconscious in the lane. Frere Brunet took charge of him.”

“May God forgive our enemies for attacking the youngest ones so savagely, because I am not sure that I can.” The rector turned back through the double doors, toward the back door to the Cour d’honneur.

A carriage came rolling up from the Seine, its occupants leaning out the windows to stare at the police around the college door. Charles stood his ground and gazed back at them, wondering if they thought he was a killer.

“ One-two-three, one-two-three, sink-and-rise, stepstep.” Banging his stick on the floor, Charles tried to ignore the competing counting from Morel’s corner of the salle des actes, Jouvancy’s shouts at his actors on the stage, and the mess Montmorency was making of the simple pas de bourree Charles was counting in a misguided effort to help the boy. With equal lack of success, he tried to ignore the headache he had from banging the stick. And from the day in general, which had gotten steadily worse as it went on.

Lieutenant-General La Reynie had come to the college to apologize to the rector for the failure of the police to keep the morning’s attackers away, and Le Picart had called Charles to be part of the talk. La Reynie’s mood had been as black as Charles had ever seen it, and the reason was quickly clear. The lieutenant-general had told them that the minister of war, Michel Louvois, had been informed of the attack on Louis le Grand and had come to the Chatelet just after dawn. Outraged by the burgeoning disorder in the city, Louvois had given La Reynie until Tuesday to announce that the murderers of Martine Mynette and Henri Brion were under arrest. Which meant that if new and compelling evidence had not turned up by Monday, Gilles Brion would be put to the question. Tortured into a confession, that meant. Charles had pleaded. La Reynie had been implacable. The rector had been called to the grand salon to talk to the angry parents descending on the school and, left alone, Charles and La Reynie had been reduced to shouting at each other. The end result was that La Reynie had refused to let Charles go to visit Brion.

“Do you think I want this?” he had spat at Charles. “I have no choice. Let me remind you how the power goes in this matter. First, the king. Second, Monsieur Louvois. A poor third-me.”

“You are head of policing, how can you be a poor third?” Charles had spat back.

“If you are that naive,” the response had been, “you are no use to me. If you want to be of some use, go and find this thrice-damned Tito!”

“Before Monday,” Charles had said bitterly.

At that, La Reynie’s misery had shown briefly in his eyes. “Please God, before Monday.”

As the day went on, the students had grown more frightened, angry, and distracted from their studies. The professors were angry and distracted, too. The lay brothers were simply angry, and secretly preparing for war. Charles heard two different groups of them fiercely planning to redeem the college honor, preferably tomorrow morning.

Now, wondering how he was going to get the dancers he was working with-and himself-through the rehearsal, he put a hand to his throbbing head and called a halt to the doomed dance. Montmorency was standing flat footed, scowling at the other two dancers.

“What is the matter, Monsieur Montmorency?”

“This is a stupid step.”

“It’s not the step that’s stupid,” Olivier Thiers said resignedly, but all too audibly.

Fortunately, Andre Chenac began laughing before Thiers finished his sentence and Montmorency did not hear. Charles gripped his time-keeping stick and prayed for patience.

“It is a simple pas de bourree, Monsieur Montmorency,” Charles said, smiling dangerously. “Or a simple fleuret, whichever you care to call it. Look. I will show you once more.” He put the stick on a windowsill, hitched up his cassock, and spoke the step as he did it. “Bend your left knee as you put your right foot, cocked at the ankle, next to your left ankle. Like this. Then rise onto your left demi-pointe as you step forward onto your right demi-pointe, then step forward on your left demi-pointe, and forward again on your right demi-pointe, like this. Nothing could be simpler!”