Judith Rock - The Eloquence of Blood

Quick light steps approached and Charles withdrew his head just in time. An exasperated maidservant walked through the lodger’s chamber, tucking stray black curls under her white coif. Her gray woolen skirt and bodice were old, but better fitting than the young footman’s jacket. Ignoring Charles, she hurried up the stairs and into the room the music was coming from. And almost immediately backed out of it, as a man burst onto the landing.

“Maitre du Luc!” M. Edme Callot, bent and brittle and in his seventies, leaned precariously over the wooden stair railing, his long, high dressed chestnut wig threatening to slip off his bald head and land at Charles’s feet. “Welcome, maitre! Come up, come up and be at home!”

The maid hovering behind Callot threw up her hands and bustled back down the stairs, this time rolling her eyes at Charles as she passed him.

Charles gave her a rueful smile and started up to the landing. “Bonjour, Monsieur Callot,” he said as he climbed. “I have come to wish you a blessed Christmas season. And to have perhaps some talk about the Congregation of the Sainte Vierge.”

“Good, excellent!”

Callot wove his way back toward the music. Charles sighed and followed. But he was hardly through the door of the small salon when a young woman leaped at him. Her full red lips were smiling and her lemon-colored skirt was bouncing on the small hoops supporting its inverted cone shape. He jumped backward. She pirouetted without missing a beat and struck out toward the salon windows in a series of simple but prettily done chassees. A young dancing master bowing a little pocket violin beside the fireplace nodded at her enthusiastically and redoubled his efforts.

“Ha! She almost had you, maitre!” M. Callot was convulsed with mirth. In a parody of the girl’s chassees, he sidled to Charles and smote him on the shoulder. “Christmas, maitre, make the most of it!”

From the fumes accompanying Callot’s words, and the glass and bottle on a table near the fire, Charles gathered that the old man had already been making the most of it, with the help of the distilled spirits called eau de vie. This was definitely a new view of the quiet, pious elder whom Charles had glimpsed at gatherings of the bourgeois Congregation.

“May we talk somewhere a little quieter, monsieur?” Charles said, raising his voice to be heard over the music. “About the Congregation.”

“No, no, stay and dance! I know you can dance, I saw your Louis le Grand show in August! That Labors of Hercules was a good ballet, though why you bother with those godforsaken Latin tragedies, the sweet Virgin only knows. Ah, me, I would dearly like to dance Hercules

…” He posed unsteadily in fourth position, his right arm straight out as though he held a sword. As the girl danced past him, her feet flickering in swift pas de bourrees, he lunged, swiping the imaginary sword left and right, overbalanced, and fell into her arms. Laughing, she stopped and pushed him back onto his feet. The dancing master stopped playing and glowered.

“Oh, no you don’t, uncle,” the girl admonished, one capable-looking hand spread on Callot’s chest to hold him at arm’s length. “No more Christmas kisses.” She glanced at Charles, shrugged a wry shoulder, and dipped the best curtsy she could in the circumstances. She was perhaps nineteen or twenty, Charles thought, robust and auburn haired, a little too broad-faced for conventional beauty, but her tip-tilted nose and slightly down-slanting brown eyes were appealing. Her mouth, which Charles saw now was naturally red, looked as though it nearly always smiled. And her body-Charles lowered his eyes and firmly refused to consider her body.

“She calls me uncle to make me feel younger, but in fact she is my all-too-lovely great-niece,” Callot was saying. He waved his hand airily between the girl and Charles. “Maitre du Luc, Mademoiselle Isabel Brion.”Then he stepped back from her and grinned at the scowling dancing master. “And that is her very devoted maitre de danse, Monsieur Germain Morel.”

Monsieur, Charles noted, which meant that the dancing master was just beginning in his profession and had not been at it long enough to be called by the more honorable title of maitre, given not only to Jesuit scholastics but to many positions in French society. With a visible effort, Morel composed his face and managed a civil bow to Charles.

“Come now, mon cher Monsieur Morel,” Callot laughed, “it’s Christmas, we must make the most of it!”

“Hush, uncle, I fear you have already made the most of it,” Mlle Brion chided. “I think today you put eau de vie even in your morning chocolate!” She turned to the red-faced dancing master. “Do forgive us, monsieur,” she said sweetly. “Shall I try it once more?”

“Of course! By all means!” The young man’s face cleared and he set his violin on a chest against the tapestry-covered wall. “But first, mademoiselle, allow me to correct your pas de bourree.”

With a dazzling smile, Isabel Brion presented herself in front of him. Morel began to demonstrate, dancing in a circle around her so that she could see the step from every angle. Charles, only half listening to Callot rambling on about Hercules, watched with pleasure. The young teacher might be a beginner, but he was good, very good. Slender and supple, of middle height, wearing his own chestnut hair cut several inches above his shoulders, he had grace and speed, and his technique was perfect. Morel stopped beside Mlle Brion and resumed the pose from which the step began. She studied his well-muscled, stockinged legs, his tautly poised torso, his graceful arms, as though they were Holy Writ, and copied his stance almost exactly. But somehow, her right arm, in its ruffled sleeve that showed her round, firm forearm was just enough wrong that he had to stretch his own arm around her to make the correction. Color flooded their faces and they gazed earnestly at each other. Somehow, Morel forgot to withdraw his arm from around her shoulders.

Charles turned to Callot to hide his smile, wondering what the girl’s father would do if he walked into the salon and hoping he wouldn’t. Callot was still practicing unsteady sword thrusts and mumbling a running commentary on his own performance.

Charles watched him for a moment and said, “I think, monsieur, that I should return another day. I wish you-”

He broke off as the front door opened and shut and voices rose. Callot turned anxiously toward the landing, and the dancing master and Mlle Brion moved apart.

“Mademoiselle,” a deep voice rumbled, “I beg you, calm yourself. It will all come right, I assure you. And now-”

“But if we cannot find it?” It was a girl’s voice, shaking with emotion. “I will have nothing, Monsieur Brion, what will happen to me? No one will want me without money!”

“Ma chere, you forget your faithful Gilles. My son may seem shy in his suit, but I assure you, his heart is yours. But now that you are coming to live in my house, you will have more time to learn that he loves you.”

“No, Monsieur Brion,” the girl said with sudden spirit. “You are very good, but I have told you that I want to stay in my mother’s house. I want to be where she was.”

“Now, ma petite, do not start on that again. You are a minor and must do as I, your guardian, tell you. You will enjoy living with my Isabel, will you not? And as I say, you will come to know Gilles better.”

With an anxious look at Morel, Isabel Brion ran out onto the landing. “Papa,” she called down, “didn’t you find it?”

“We will, ma chere Isabel,” her father called back. “We will! This is only a little setback. I have brought Martine to you to amuse. I am going again to the Chatelet to search. Some disgracefully careless clerk has brought us to this pass, but we will find what we need, never fear, no reason in the world to fear. I don’t know what the Chatelet has come to, it is disgraceful…” The front door opened and shut again, cutting off the stream of words, and feet ran lightly up the stairs.