The Rhetoric of Death (14 page)

Charles sipped wine to wet his dry mouth. “And did he convince you my views are heretical?”

The rector eyed Charles. “He convinced me that your views are compassionate. Compassionate to a fault and dangerous. Are there Huguenots in your own family?”

Charles nodded warily.

“That must cause you great pain.”

“For many reasons,
mon père
.”

Le Picart got up and went to the open window. “We must never forget that we are Jesuits,” he said quietly, gazing into the court. “But I have learned to be very wary of
any
man who is sure that he is as right as God.”

“For my part,
mon père
, I am sure that cruelty in God's name is wrong.”

In the silence that followed, feet ran across the gravel and boys' voices rose in shouts and laughter.

Le Picart turned to face him. “Many devout churchmen would argue passionately against that. And some would argue passionately for it. I do not expect us to settle that question. I do expect you to remember your vow of obedience.”

“Yes,
mon père
.” Charles began to breathe again.

Le Picart seemed to relax, too, and leaned back against the stone sill. “There is more I want you to understand about this college. Père Guise has no doubt told you that he is confessor to courtiers—I fear he tells everyone at the first opportunity. Although the king shuns Paris, we are only a few leagues from Versailles. This college's links to men—and women—close to the king are, to say the least, intricate. M. Louvois, perhaps the most powerful man in the realm after the king, was educated here. As was the father of Philippe and Antoine, who is now secretary to the Prince of Condé. Condé is a Bourbon, a Prince of the Blood, close kin to King Louis. Now. In himself, M. Douté seems an innocuous man. Well-meaning. A careful secretary, no doubt, but not, I fear, particularly discerning. Witness his choice of a second wife. Nevertheless, he has been close to the old Condé for many years. Though the Prince of Condé appears not to take an active role in the world anymore, his influence has been nearly that of a king. Indeed, it would be a mistake to underestimate it even now. Even though he has long been pardoned, he was one of King Louis's most powerful enemies forty years ago in the nobles' Fronde revolution, as you no doubt know. I say all this, because what has happened to the boys may—just possibly—mean that someone is using them to get at their father—and, through him, at the Condé. M. Douté says that is not so. But I think he would say that, if he were caught in that kind of coil. I have begun to fear that Philippe may have been lured out of the college to be taken and held somewhere. And that Antoine's accident may not have been an accident. Which is why I have called in the head of the police. And why I am telling you to leave these matters strictly alone.”

“But,
mon père
—”

The rector stopped him with a look. “When you came to the infirmary after Antoine was hurt, I saw that you are a man who wants to understand events. And you confirm that impression every moment. You are one of those who cannot resist the thread that leads into the maze. But under your vow of obedience, Maître du Luc, let the thread lie. Others will follow it. Others with more understanding of this particular maze than you can possibly have.”

“But—”

The rector's eyes turned cold. “I have given you an order,
maître.
”

Charles bowed his head and forced the words across his tongue. “Yes,
mon père
.”

“Good.” Le Picart got to his feet and Charles rose with him. “I look forward to seeing your first Louis le Grand production,” he said genially.

“Thank you for your good wishes,
mon père
.” Charles made himself smile politely. “And for all that you have explained to me.”

He walked slowly back to the classroom, turning the conversation over in his mind and simmering with frustration. It was true that he didn't have Le Picart's knowledge of the tangled history and connections that might bear on what had happened. But he could put facts together and how could that come amiss to Lieutenant-Général La Reynie, who had the whole city to keep? And whether it came amiss or not, Charles told himself, he was already involved. Philippe was in the ballet and Charles had been sent to find him. And the cut on Antoine's head was still unexplained, and no matter how Charles looked at Guise's and Mme LeClerc's tellings of the accident, they did not match and he wanted to know why. Two such happenings to two brothers, in as many days, was too much coincidence; he wanted to know the truth. But he was a Jesuit and his superior had given him an order.

Partly to give his frustration time to settle, he passed the rhetoric classroom and went through the little archway to the outside latrine. The warmth was opening new blossoms on the thick hedge of old rosebushes, giving a faint sweetness to the air. But the stench inside the latrine nearly made him retch. Holding his breath and wondering when the dung cart had last carried away the waste, he went to the far end of the long bench, lifted his cassock, and started to unlace his breeches. Then he froze, staring into the hole's noisome murk. Something pale was growing there. Something like a five-petaled flower. Only, of course, it couldn't be. Flowers didn't grow in privy muck. Like someone in an evil dream, Charles reached down to pluck at whatever the thing was.

C
harles stumbled out of the latrine and wiped his fouled hand on the grass. Swallowing hard and trying to force his stomach back where it belonged, he relaced his breeches and went to the classroom. Père Jouvancy was rearranging the placement of actors in a scene and Charles let him finish, because what difference could haste make now? When the boys were placed to the rhetoric master's satisfaction, Charles took him aside. The color drained from the older man's face as he listened, and Charles reached for his arm, afraid he was going to faint. Jouvancy shook him off and blundered headlong toward the door, like a badly worked marionette. Hastily, Charles told the oblivious Beauchamps to oversee both rehearsals and ran after Jouvancy.

When Jouvancy had looked into the latrine hole and been sick behind the rosebushes, he and Charles took off their cassocks, rolled up their shirtsleeves, and went back into the shadowy stench. Charles pulled at the seat's front edge. With a protesting shriek of old hinges, a two-holed section lifted, opening a rectangle about four feet by two. When they finally had the body lying on the dirt floor, they were splashed with shit and urine, and swallowing hard. They knelt beside the body. Jouvancy wept as Charles gently wiped Philippe's face with his handkerchief. The young curve of the boy's cheek, where a beard had been just beginning to grow, emerged from the filth.

“Blessed Jesu,” Jouvancy groaned, rocking back and forth on his knees as Charles scrubbed at Philippe's chest. “Oh, Philippe, dear child. How could this have happened? Only a very small child could have fallen in—I know that sometimes happens, but—”

“This was no accident,” Charles said flatly. He was wiping at the boy's neck, staring at the swatch of discolored skin revealing itself. “Someone put him there.”

Against a background of little boys' piping voices from a nearby classroom, they said the prayers for a violently dispatched and unshriven soul. Jouvancy reached out to caress Philippe's face and caught back a sob.

“He looked so much like my sister. He had Adeline's beautiful eyes. And her grace. Always her grace.” He used Charles's shoulder to push himself shakily to his feet. “I must go for the rector.”

“I will stay with him,
mon père
, and see that no one comes in.”

When Jouvancy was gone, Charles stepped briefly outside and found a stick. He used it to stir the latrine's contents where he'd discovered Philippe, but found nothing more. He stood in the doorway, gulping clean air and feeling his grief and anger at what had been done to the boy sharpen into thought. Philippe's body was shirtless. Which made Charles grimly certain that the body had been here all the time, had already been here when someone shoved Charles to the ground and provoked the chase away from the latrine and out of the college.

A small boy hurtled around the rose hedge and stopped, staring wide-eyed at Charles.

“Yes,
mon brave,
” Charles said wearily, “I am covered in shit. And no, you cannot come in. Piss somewhere else, please.”

“But,
maître
—”

“Somewhere else. Please. Go.”

The boy backed hurriedly away, his blue eyes growing even larger as Jouvancy, Le Picart, and two lay brothers carrying blankets came around the hedge. The rector watched the little boy stumble hastily toward a corner of the courtyard, still staring over his shoulder. Shaking his head, Le Picart motioned to the brothers to wait and went into the latrine with Charles and Jouvancy. Le Picart's eyes were wintry pools of sorrow as he signed a cross over Philippe's body. He turned to Jouvancy.

“I am so sorry,
mon père
. So very sorry.” Ignoring the filth, he put an arm around Jouvancy's bowed shoulders. “We will take him to the washing room. Below the infirmary,” he explained to Charles, “where we occasionally have to prepare bodies for burial—though we have no cemetery here, of course.” He gave Charles a long, unreadable look. “Maître du Luc, when the body is clean, I want you to examine it. You were a soldier, you have seen violent death more often than most of us.”

He led Charles and Jouvancy outside, where they waited for the lay brothers to wrap Philippe in the blankets they carried and bear him away.

“Will you search, please, Maître du Luc,” the rector said, when the body was gone, “for anything in the latrine that seems out of place? It has been too many days, but we must try.”

Trying to breathe as little as need be, Charles made his way slowly along the line of seats, scrutinizing the bench and the dirt floor, finding only leaves and grass tracked in from outside and bits of straw from the braided bundles for cleaning oneself that were kept in a wooden bucket beside the door. Eyes still on the ground, he retraced his steps to the corner where he'd found Philippe. As he stood there, staring at the floor and thinking about the yellow shirt and the hands that had shoved him to the ground, his eyes suddenly focused on what they were seeing. With the toe of his shoe he edged a clump of loose broken straw out of the corner and bent to look more closely at it. Its pieces were longer than the pieces that broke off the braided bundles. He picked up his find with his fingertips, sniffed cautiously at it, and carried it outside.

“Père Le Picart, this isn't from a straw bundle for cleaning. It seems to be a clump of stable straw, with traces of horse dung. Do students keep horses in our stable? Would they track this kind of straw into the latrine?”

The rector's eyebrows rose and Jouvancy wiped his eyes and looked at what Charles held.

“No,” Le Picart said, “our stable is very small. We keep only our own few horses there.”

“Does anyone from the college keep horses nearby?”

“Some of the older students do, mostly at the houses of family. Why would this clump of straw matter?”

“It was in the corner beside the hole where I found Philippe. I wonder how it got there.”

Le Picart shrugged dismissively. “The stables are in the next courtyard and this is the nearest latrine. You found nothing else?” When Charles shook his head, Le Picart said, “Go and clean yourselves quickly, both of you, then come to me in the washing room.” He looked at them ruefully. “You may have to bathe. But at least the day is warm.” Although Jesuit colleges had a reputation for cleanliness, and students were expected to change their shirts every week or so since wearing clean linen was known to keep the body clean, bathing was infrequent and usually regarded with suspicion. Le Picart went the way the brothers had gone with their burden and Jouvancy turned to Charles.

“To the laundry,” he said, steadied by having something mundane to do. “They won't be happy about it, but they'll give us a tub of hot water. The only other tubs are the one they'll use for Philippe—” His voice faltered. He cleared his throat and rushed on, “And the one in the infirmary. But if we go into Frère Brunet's domain like this, he will slay us.” He looked distastefully at his filthy hands. “Some people say filth makes you ill. I hope not, because if we should be ill from this, Frère Brunet will make us bathe again.”

“My mother forced us all into a tub every month or so, winter and summer,” Charles said, glad to ease the moment with trivial talk.

“Really! Even though water can soak through the skin and harm the organs? You are not jesting? Well, I must say, bathing does not seem to have harmed you. But there, things are changing, after all. These new lenses—microscopes, I mean—do raise interesting questions. Some years ago, in Germany, our brilliant Father Athanasius Kircher—you know his work, of course—said he saw a little worm in the blood of plague victims that was not there in the blood of healthy people. Some people think the worm generates in dirt and causes plague. I am not so sure, but I did look through a lens once.”

“What did you see?”

“Little wriggling things like Père Kircher's worm. I was astonished! And do you know what it made me wonder? Whether we might someday make a lens that allows us to see God! I don't mean any blasphemy, but—if a lens lets us see these things too small for the eye alone, then perhaps, on the other end of the scale, so to speak ...”

Jouvancy talked on, pouring the balm of words over his raw shock and grief, and Charles found himself thinking of a young marquis who'd kept him from bleeding to death when he'd been wounded in the Spanish Netherlands, in the battle of St. Omer. The boy had stripped off his own shirt, rolled it into a ball, and held it against Charles's mangled shoulder, talking knowledge-ably and desperately about wine while Charles's blood soaked into the linen and the cart picking up the wounded inched toward them.