Judith Rock - The Eloquence of Blood

“I was a Conde page. They dressed us up and gave us boys’ swords and placed us around the dancing floor. The swords were sharp, and when she fell and he didn’t help her, I ran at him, trying to draw, but my sword stuck in its scabbard. They only thought I was running to Claire’s rescue. So they sent me to her household. So golden, so pretty…” His lucidity vanished in a long-drawn wail. “Claire, forgive me, Sacred Heart, forgive me…”

He lunged away from Charles and flailed his way through the tumbled snow up St. Genevieve’s hill. With a sick sense of pity for the little princess and the boy the old man had been, Charles watched him go. Then, thinking uneasily about Marin’s demons and the sword story, and remembering that Marin had struck down and probably killed the man who had tried to stab him in the tavern fight, Charles rang the postern bell.

In the salle des actes, the familiar lunacy of rehearsal came as a relief. Germain Morel was shouting at Henri Montmorency, who was mounted on his golden plinth and pointing his baton at his two-soldier brigade with utter disregard for music, choreography, or the dancing master’s exasperation. At the other end of the room, Jouvancy stalked back and forth in front of the stage like a displeased crow, listening to a scene from the Latin tragedy.

“No!” Jouvancy jumped onto the stage and grabbed the fledgling St. Nazarius by the back of his coat. “You are a saint! Have you never heard of humility? Dear God, are you trying to look like a fat merchant addressing his guild?” With both hands, he pushed the boy’s shoulders forward, shoved his head lower, and stepped back. “Better.”

St. Nazarius, looking now like a wild-eyed hunchback, quavered. “Yes, mon pere. Shall I go on?”

“Yes. No! You’re still not right.”

“But, mon pere,” St. Nazarius ventured from his crouch, “the saints seem proud to be saints. At least, their statues do. I mean, not like this-”

“They’re not proud till they’re dead.” Jouvancy glowered at his actor as though offering him that opportunity, then seemed to think better of it. “Watch.” In a silken transformation, the rhetoric master softened his spine, bent his neck just enough, opened his hands, and became the perfect humble saint. “Like this, do you see?”

The other actors, recognizing the start of a long ordeal for the unfortunate Nazarius, faded silently into the background. Keeping his face carefully straight, Charles moved so that Jouvancy would see that he’d arrived. The rhetoric master gave him a vague glance, as though he’d forgotten quite who Charles was, and turned his attention back to his saint.

At the dance end of the room, Morel was now standing on Montmorency’s plinth, directing the two soldiers through the steps of their Air Anime with authoritative grace and singing the music.

“Do I have to sing?” Montmorency asked in horror when he finished.

“No, Monsieur Montmorency,” Charles cut in smoothly, to keep Morel from saying what he was all too obviously about to say. “No one is asking you to sing. Monsieur Morel, shall I work with the other dancers?”

“If you would be so kind, maitre,” Morel said through his teeth. “Now, Monsieur Montmorency, let me see you direct your soldiers.” With the light of battle in his eye, he took up his small violin from a bench against the wall.

Smiling with satisfaction that Montmorency had met his match, Charles went to the other dancers. Most were going silently through their steps, though without the full execution the steps would have in performance. Marking the steps, dancers called it. Michele Bertamelli, though, was doing what he’d learned of his canarie as though the world were watching. Canaries were full of springing steps, and as Charles watched, Bertamelli nearly propelled himself through one of the south-facing windows.

“Doucement, Monsieur Bertamelli,” Charles cried, running across the floor and pulling the boy to a halt. “You are a magnificent jumper, but that is not all you must be to perform this dance!”

“But, Maitre du Luc, it only jumps, it jumps everywhere, what else does it do?” Bertamelli’s shoulders were around his ears. “So what else can I do?”

“For your jumps to be as beautiful as they can be, you must also know how to go slow, Monsieur Bertamelli. Remember, dancing is not the same as doing tricks.”

The little Italian stared at Charles in frank bewilderment.

“And jumping is like pulling a rabbit out of a hole,” Charles improvised, miming his words. “If I only reach down a little way and pull out my rabbit, well, it’s nice to see a rabbit, but it’s not all that exciting. But if I pull my rabbit out of a very deep hole, it is another thing entirely.” Charles extracted his imaginary rabbit.

Bertamelli’s eyes widened. “I see, I see!” He clapped his hands. Then his face fell. “If my jumps are the rabbit, maitre, where is the hole?”

“The hole is only a verbal figure, the kind you learn in the rhetoric classroom. You make your jumps more astonishing by being able to go slow as well as fast. So I am giving you a very very difficult exercise, mon brave,” Charles said gravely. If Bertamelli thought the exercise was so difficult that doing it well enhanced his honor, he would give his life’s blood to it.

“Watch now.” Charles walked across the salle and faced the boy. He drew himself up and began to walk. With utter concentration, so slowly, so intentionally, that every smallest movement, every lightest touch of a part of his foot on the floor was a physical revelation. Hardly breathing, Bertamelli watched, his wide black eyes seeming to take up most of his face. Before Charles reached him, Bertamelli’s body was moving as Charles was moving.

“You see, then,” Charles said.

“Oh, I do, maitre.” The boy wiped his sweating face. “It is very hard indeed. How can that be?”

“Keep on doing it and you will understand. After you practice like that, you will understand much more where your jumps come from. You will pull astonishing and beautiful rabbits out of the very deepest holes, mon brave.”

Thinking that this child’s “rabbits” were going to be very astonishing and very beautiful indeed, Charles left him to it and called the shy Charles Lennox aside. They went to work on the majestic, but short, measured, and relatively simple entree grave he’d persuaded Monsieur Charpentier to include for Lennox’s St. Ambrose.

When the bell rang for three o’clock, Charles was sure it could not be so late. Lennox had turned out to be surprisingly good at making himself into a grave old man and putting the dignity of age into his steps.

“Well done, indeed, Monsieur Lennox,” he said, as the boy made him a reverence.

“Thank you. I like dancing, Maitre du Luc.” Lennox’s barely audible voice was presently wandering painfully up and down the scale. “I wish I could dance all the time. Or play cricket.”

“Cricket? What is that?”

“It’s just a game, maitre. But I like it.” Lennox’s blue eyes lit with a rare smile and he bowed to Charles, picked up his hat, and moved with the other boys to the door.

Holding Montmorency’s flaking gold baton and shaking it as he talked, Morel escorted the hapless noble soldier to join them. Jouvancy chivied his actors down the room, still talking intently to poor St. Nazarius, whose eyes looked as glazed as sugared figs. When Jouvancy saw Charles, he paused and Nazarius escaped.

“Ah, Maitre du Luc, you are with us, good, good, it is all going very well. I think we must make these French operas a yearly thing, they are very good practice for the boys. Very beautiful. And you, Monsieur Morel, are heaven sent. Perhaps I will write to our usual dancing master-Maitre Beauchamps, you know-that he may stay in Italy and buy pictures, for all we care! On, now, go on,” he called to the students, “quickly, I am following. The ancients await us!”