The Rhetoric of Death cdl-2, page 25
part #2 of Charles Du Luc Series
“Another man left the chamber just ahead of you. I happen to know that Pere Guise was not there, he was in the library. I must ask what the two of you were doing, my son.”
In his excitement, Charles gripped Dainville’s hand. “Did you recognize him, mon pere? Who was he?”
Dainville snatched his hand away and stared at Charles in consternation. “You do not even know who he was?”
“No, and I must. Please, mon pere!”
“So brazen in your sin?” Dainville crossed himself, shaking his head.
Charles suddenly realized what the old priest was saying. With so many men and boys living together, confessors worried constantly about the danger of unnatural affections. And Guise might well be spreading rumors about finding Charles in Antoine’s room.
“Mon pere, be assured that there was nothing sinful in what you saw,” Charles assured him. “More than that I am under obedience not to say. But I must know who you saw in the passage.”
“Under obedience to whom?” Dainville said suspiciously.
“To Pere Le Picart. I swear it by all the saints.”
The old priest frowned and then slowly nodded. “All I can tell you is that the man was dressed as a lay brother. Not a big man, certainly smaller than you. He ran past me, and that passage is always dark. I fear I do not see so well as I used to. But he wore an apron and a short cassock. And boots, so he must have been about to ride somewhere.”
So La Reynie was right, Charles thought, trying to keep his horror off his face. The killer was a Jesuit. Or a senior student in lay brother’s clothes? Hardly stopping to thank the perplexed Dainville, Charles hurried out of the garden as fast as his aching body would let him. The rector was in his office, in the act of rising from his prie-dieu. Before Le Picart could even speak, Charles launched into what he had to tell.
“-but Pere Dainville only saw his back,” Charles finished. “Mon pere, it is critical now that Antoine’s tutor-or someone-keeps the boy always in sight. Always!”
A cascade of falling metal came from the courtyard, accompanied by ripe curses. With a mild oath of his own, Le Picart slammed the casement shut. Charles started to speak, but the rector held up a peremptory hand.
“Let me think, for the love of God!” Le Picart stood utterly still, staring at the floor. “I can replace Maitre Doissin. I should have done it before now. And I will have the lay brothers’ dormitory searched-I will say there are rats or something. When we find the boots, we will find the man. If we find nothing, I will have the students’ quarters searched as well.”
“And when La Reynie makes the man talk, we will have Pere Guise,” Charles said ruthlessly. “Is there any lay brother Pere Guise is especially close to?”
The rector sighed. “He has sponsored one or two. That young redhead-Frere Fabre. That was a sad case, the boy is barely seventeen. He owes much to Pere Guise.”
Charles’s stomach felt hollow. Fabre had told him that and he’d forgotten. “Why did Pere Guise want to keep him?”
“He is capable of simple benevolence,” the rector said angrily. “Whatever you may think!”
“Forgive me, mon pere.” Charles bent his head in outward apology and kept his thoughts behind his face.
The rector cast a harried look toward the courtyard as the college clock chimed. “Go to your rehearsal, maitre. I had overmuch to do and now I have more.”
Charles picked his way through the maze of construction, wondering if it was one of the half dozen lay brothers wielding hammers and saws who had tried to kill him. His steps slowed as he studied the rapidly rising stage. It would cover most of the court’s east side and reach to the top of the second-story windows. The stage floor was already in place against the rhetoric classroom’s windows, with space beneath for the ropes, capstans, and the massive wooden gears that worked the stage machinery and trap doors. In spite of everything, excitement about the upcoming show surged through him.
Rehearsal hadn’t started, but the rhetoric classroom was a whirlwind. Two boys, in outsized papier-mache masks with open mouths and knobby features, clung to the ladder Charles had used for the sugar snowstorm. The ladder was teetering dangerously and Maitre Beauchamps was trying to steady it. A third boy was picking up pieces of his mask from the floor. Charles recognized the three masks as those portraying the ballet’s hubris-crazed giants trying to climb into heaven, allegories for the Huguenots.
“Hold on, lean out, balance each other,” Beauchamps yelled to the two on the ladder. “Ah, morbleu, jump then, but don’t let the other two masks fall!”
The boys landed on their feet and Charles lowered himself toward a bench and then had to stand up again as Jouvancy called everyone together for the opening prayer. Then Jouvancy took the actors through the tragedy with no stops while Charles and Beauchamps did the same with the ballet. In spite of the workmen hammering, shouting, swearing, and spitting sawdust just outside the windows, the dancers did so well that Charles forgot his fears and his aching body and grinned from ear to ear as he softly counted measures. Jouvancy called a break and came to sit beside him.
“Whoof! Excellent! I think we are going to make it after all! Today, tomorrow, Tuesday, and then we’re on, can you believe it? They’ll finish the stage tonight and tomorrow morning the machinery will be in place. The Opera craftsmen showed me the finished Hydra yesterday and I tell you, it is glorious, painted the most deliciously horrible green and orange and purple!” Jouvancy hugged himself in anticipation. “Tomorrow afternoon is our first rehearsal on the stage. Cast, costumes, machines, musicians, everything. It will be a disaster, it always is. My only comfort is that this year we’re not putting the musicians in trees.” He suddenly focused on Charles. “How are you, maitre? I was so very sorry to learn of your injury. I have never trusted horses! You must not tire yourself,” he added vaguely, and stood up, clapping his hands and shouting for everyone’s attention. “We will begin again, alternating the tragedy acts with the ballet parts, as we will on Wednesday. Place yourselves!”
Everyone-actors, dancers, and the presiding theatrical saints and goddesses-more than rose to the occasion. On Wednesday the closing Ballet General would end with the philosopher Diogenes, played by Pere Montville, descending on a painted cloud with his famous lantern to find the boys receiving the annual school prizes and bring them to the stage. Today it ended with Charles, Jouvancy, and Beauchamps kissing each other on both cheeks and Beauchamps bursting into a spontaneous gigue as everyone stamped and clapped and yelled. Charles was clapping and yelling, too, his aches forgotten, when he saw Frere Fabre at the door. Watching the brother warily, Charles pushed his way through the crowd of boys.
“Are you looking for someone, mon frere?”
Fabre stared mutely at Charles, his eyes wide with shock.
“Mon frere?” Fear clutched at Charles’s heart. “What is it?”
“He’s dead,” Fabre whispered.
“Who?” Charles shook Fabre roughly by the arm. “Who’s dead?”
“Maitre Doissin,” Fabre finally got out, his voice shaking.
Charles stared in bewilderment. “Was he ill? I didn’t know. What happened?” And in the next breath demanded, “Antoine-is he all right?”
“Yes, he didn’t-he was in the little study, he-”
“Wait here.”
Charles pulled Jouvancy out of the jubilant crowd and told him what had happened.
“Go to Antoine,” Jouvancy said grimly. “I’ll follow as soon as I can.”
Charles shepherded Fabre out of the building. “Tell me the rest as we go.”
“It was gaufres,” the lay brother whispered, still staring at Charles.
“What? Do you mean those little sweet wafers?” Charles pulled Fabre out of the way as a pair of workmen hauled on ropes to raise a joist. “Start at the beginning!”
“Someone left them-a package of them-with the porter. For Antoine.”
“Who left them?”
Fabre shrugged. “Frere Martin just gave me the package to take to Maitre Doissin. Since gifts go first to the tutor and-”
“I know. When was the package left?”
Fabre shrugged again.
“Did Maitre Doissin seem well when you gave him the package?”
“He was just as usual. We started talking and he unwrapped the gaufres and ate one. He offered me one, but I said no. They had syrup on them and I don’t like them like that, thank St. Benedict!” St. Benedict, once the target of poisoning, was everyone’s protector against it.
Charles crossed himself. “Thank St. Benedict indeed. What happened then?”
“We talked about candles and sheets for the chamber.” Fabre’s voice was shaking and Charles could hardly hear him. “Things like that. Maitre Doissin kept eating the gaufres and then he started spewing. Then he couldn’t breathe. He just-collapsed. Antoine and the other boys ran in from the study, but I made them go back. Then I yelled out the window for help. A proctor came and then Frere Brunet arrived with his medicines. But by then, Maitre Doissin couldn’t swallow anything. Before God, maitre, if I’d known anything was wrong with the gaufres-”
“You couldn’t have known. It wasn’t your fault.” They were almost at the door of the building where Antoine lived. “Go and find out everything Frere Martin can remember about who brought the package and when, every detail. And find out-” Charles caught himself. Find out where Guise was, he’d been going to say. But he couldn’t ignore the fact that Fabre owed his escape from the tannery to Guise. “Never mind. Just talk to Frere Martin.”
“But he already told me he hardly saw the man-”
“Ask him again, talk him through it, he may remember something. Then come and tell me. Go on, hurry!”
Stifling a sob, Fabre stumbled back the way they’d come. At the top of the stairs Charles could hardly make his way through the excitedly appalled tutors and lay brothers blocking Antoine’s chamber door. Doissin lay on the floor in pools of vomit and Frere Brunet was on his knees beside him, closing his bulging eyes. Golden gaufres, shining with syrup, were scattered over the floor like giant’s coins, their sugar and vanilla sweetness strong even under the smells of death. The death that would have been Antoine’s, if this poor hapless man hadn’t been so greedy. Charles leaned down to Brunet.
“Was it poison, mon frere?” he said quietly.
The infirmarian looked up. “I think so. Most likely in the syrup. Aconite, perhaps, though a few others could act as fast. Those gaufres should be picked up, maitre, but keep the syrup from cuts or scratches, it could kill you.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Charles saw a gawking elderly lay brother lean into the room and pick a gaufre off the floor.
“Leave it!” He slapped it out of the man’s hand. “Unless you want to die like Maitre Doissin.”
The brother’s dull eyes were full of offense as he rubbed his slapped hand. “Why? He was possessed. I always thought so, the way he fell asleep all the time. A demon killed him, why shouldn’t I take a gaufre?”
“Why not, indeed?” someone said sardonically, and Frere Moulin’s face appeared, looking over the old man’s shoulder into the room. He grimaced and shook his head.
“Mon frere,” Charles said quickly, “will you see that our brother here washes his hands, and thoroughly?”
Moulin grunted assent, and Charles shut the chamber door and went into the study, closing that door, too, before the boys’ avid eyes could see around him. Antoine’s companions traded frustrated looks and slumped on their benches, but Antoine ran to Charles, who put an arm around him. One of the boys snickered and Charles shot him a look that made him bury his face in his Cicero.
Antoine looked up at Charles. His wet eyes were huge in his pale face. “Maitre Doissin is dead.”
“Yes, mon brave, he is. I’m sorry.” Charles was sorry, and not just because an innocent man had been murdered. For all his laziness, Doissin had given Antoine warmth and kindness, and Antoine had liked him.
The other boys erupted in questions. “Why? How? Was he sick? That old lay brother said it was demons!”
Deciding that a modicum of truth was better than demon rumors, Charles led Antoine back to his desk, sat him down, and addressed them all.
“Maitre Doissin was suddenly very sick and died of it.”
Antoine whispered, “We should pray for him, maitre.”
Charles led them in prayers for the suddenly dead. Then he waited a moment and said, “You are all to stay here until someone comes for you. I see that you have books and work to do, yes?”
All four of them looked with distaste at the quills, paper, Ciceros, and Latin grammars in front of them.
“Good,” Charles said briskly. “To your books now.”
The other three made at least a show of settling to work under Charles’s stern eye, but Antoine sat motionless.
“Maitre?” His voice was so small that Charles had to squat on his haunches to hear him. “Did he die because of me? Like Philippe?”
Charles took the boy’s cold hands. “Look at me, mon brave.”
The child brought his eyes up fleetingly and then looked down at his desk again, studying its scarred and initialled surface as though it were an examination text.
“Philippe and Maitre Doissin died because a grown-up person did evil things,” Charles said softly. “None of it is your fault. Do you understand?”
A tiny nod-in which Charles did not believe at all-was all his answer.
“Your uncle Jouvancy is coming for you, mon brave. You won’t be left alone.”
Charles patted his shoulder, murmured stern encouragement to the others, and went back to the chamber, where Brunet was praying beside the body. Charles took a towel from Antoine’s cupboard, covered his hand with it, and collected the spilled gaufres. As he laid them on the thick paper they’d come in, he wondered whether, if he’d killed the booted man in Pere La Chaise’s garden, Maitre Doissin would be alive. And whether, in the divine economy of sin, one outcome would have been better than the other.
Chapter 26
P ere Jouvancy arrived a few minutes later and led Antoine away, holding his hand as though he would never again let the child out of his sight. Frere Fabre returned, and he and Charles spoke at the head of the stairs, empty now of gawkers. Fabre’s freckles stood out sharply against his blanched skin as he tried not to look at the rewrapped package of gaufres in Charles’s hand.
“What did you learn from the porter, mon frere?”
“He-he said-maybe a woman left them. Maybe an hour ago. He didn’t see her face because she wore a long veil. Or a big shawl, maybe. Maitre, it could have been a man dressed in woman’s clothes.”
“Did she-or he-sound young or old?”
“Young. But some people sound young when they’re not. She-he-just said that the package was for Antoine.”
“Did the porter say anything else?”
“The gaufres might have come from the bakery next door. He said the little girl brought him one yesterday.”
Charles’s heart sank. If the LeClercs had sold them, the rector and the police would descend on the bakery, which was the last thing Pernelle needed. Not that he thought for a moment that the LeClercs had poisoned the gaufres. The bakery wasn’t even open today, it being Sunday, but the gaufres could have been bought yesterday and then poisoned. But what poisoner would be stupid enough to buy the gaufres next door?
“Do you have any cuts or scratches on your hands, Frere Fabre?”
The boy gaped at him. Charles grabbed one cold clammy hand and then the other. Finding stage scenery paint stains but no grazes, he thrust the package at Fabre.
“Stay here and give these to the rector when he comes. Do not put them down or give them to anyone else. Tell the rector to keep them wrapped. Frere Brunet will tell him the rest. Then wash your hands. Thoroughly. With soap. I’m going to see Mme LeClerc. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Leaving Fabre holding the package at arm’s length as though it might explode, Charles went to the street passage. The porter got up from his stool.
“Frere Martin,” Charles greeted him, “tell me again about whoever brought the gaufres.”
“I told it all to the boy. Poor cabbage, you’d think he’d never seen death.” Martin repeated his story, but it wasn’t quite the story Fabre had told. Martin was certain that the person under the mourning veil was a woman. Small, he said, and by the voice, young.
“Little hands, maitre. Gloved. Hot weather for that, but carrying poison, that explains it.”
“Who else has come and gone in the last hour or so? Professors, students? They may have seen something, if I can find them.”
The porter shook his head. “No one at all. Did young rooster head tell you those gaufres maybe came from next door? Little Marie-Ange brought me one yesterday. But it wasn’t poisoned, as you see!” He laughed heartily as he opened the postern for Charles.
Life, Charles thought sourly, was much less harrying for the unimaginative. To his relief, the bakery door stood open, no doubt to let out the strong smell of burned pastry that met his nose. Mme LeClerc, arranging cream cakes behind the counter, whirled when she heard him and her hard, unwelcoming expression stopped him in the doorway.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, with a relieved smile. “But you should still be resting, maitre!”
He managed a smile. “I’m well enough. Forgive me for startling you, madame.” His eyes went toward the back of the shop, where he heard Pernelle’s voice.
“Yes, maitre, she is there, helping clean up our ass-brained apprentice’s mess. Roger would insist on letting him practice pastry on Sunday. Are you come to see your lady?”
“One small moment. Madame, did you sell gaufres yesterday to a woman in a mourning veil?”
“I did not. Why?” She finished arranging the cakes on their wooden tray and stepped back to look critically at them, her head on one side.
“But you did make gaufres?”
She looked up. “How did you know?”
Not wanting to get Marie-Ange in trouble, Charles didn’t reply. Instead he said, “We’ve had another tragedy in the college. Someone left poisoned gaufres for Antoine.”
