The Rhetoric of Death Read online

  Beauchamps stopped playing in the middle of a measure and flung his violin to his hovering servant. Grabbing a handful of papers from a bench, the dancing master bore down on Beauclaire. The other dancers exchanged resigned looks and studied their shoes.

  “Your steps are perfect, as usual, Monsieur Beauclaire. But that is all that is perfect and it is not enough, as I have told you more times than I have gray hairs! Your steps are on the wrong notes. Why? You do not know the music. And you do not know the shape of the dance on the page, so you do not know your path on the floor. Though how you cannot know all that by now, the goddess of dance Terpsichore, she only knows.” He cast his eyes up toward a classical heaven and thrust his handful of pages at the boy. “First, the music. Sing it.”

  Panic crossed Beauclaire’s round face. “Sing?” he faltered, staring at the pages.

  Each page had a line of music printed at the top, and below that, a maze of vertical lines crosshatched with what looked like the tracks of a crazed chicken. Jouvancy had told Charles that Beauchamps’s pet project was a way of writing dance, which he was teaching the students to read. That, Charles guessed, was what Beauclaire was staring at so hopelessly.

  “But, maître, I...”

  “You sing like a donkey, yes, we know that. There, at the top, that line is the music that goes with this page of steps. As you should know by now,” he sighed.

  Sweat broke out on the boy’s face, but he drew himself up manfully. “Would you give me the first note, please, maître?”

  Beauchamps sang a pure and liquid note, and Beauclaire plunged into the gigue’s tune like a prisoner jumping from a gangplank. Charles looked away and bit his lip. The boy really did sound like a donkey.

  “No, no, no!” Beauchamps grabbed the papers away and gave them to the small blond who had suggested yesterday that Philippe might have been taken ill. The boy calmly started the melody with perfect pitch and in perfect time, his surprising treble clear as birdsong.

  “There, Monsieur Beauclaire, you see? Compound duple meter. Six beats to the measure, distributed over the underlying beat of two.” He beat the six on his thigh while counting the two. “You see? Come, the rest of you, join in. Not you!” Beauchamps pulled the escaping Beauclaire back from the group. “You will listen as you follow the music and read your steps on the page.”

  Charles listened in amazement as the boys sang the lilting melody line. Everyone who learned to dance learned to read music, of course, but these boys were musicians as well as dancers. What would happen on the courtyard stage on the seventh of August would indeed have more in common with court and professional performances than with the earnest little shows he had helped to produce at Carpentras.

  “Now, Monsieur Beauclaire,” Beauchamps said, with terrifying gentleness, when the singers finished. “Now let us see you put it all together.”

  The dancers took their places. Beauchamps closed his eyes briefly in what looked like prayer and began to play. All was perfection and Charles released his held breath, still marking the steps with his feet and singing quietly along with the melody. Then all six boys went down in a writhing tangle.

  “Ow! Get off, you ass!” Indignant howls rose from the heap as Beauclaire struggled to his feet. “You go left, idiot,” someone cried at him despairingly, “left!”

  Beauchamps barreled onto the stage and grabbed Beauclaire’s hand. “This is your right hand.” He dropped it and grabbed the other hand. “This one is your left. Do I have to tie colored ribbons on them so you can remember?” He marched Beauclaire, who had clearly given up all hope, through the floor pattern again and picked up his fiddle. “Now. With perfect timing. With perfect directions. Or I may kill you.”

  The dejected Beauclaire looked as though that might be preferable, but he and his fellows dutifully began again. Beauchamps played and sang the tune, leaning precariously in whatever direction Beauclaire was supposed to turn. As the boys turned accurately and on the correct notes, Charles relaxed again, his feet still marking the remembered steps. Then Beauclaire did a series of small beautiful leaps in the wrong direction, two other boys skidded out of his way, and Beauclaire cannoned into Jacques Douté, who was standing offstage. The dancing master sank onto the bench beside Charles, laid down his violin as though it were his dead beloved, and put his head in his hands. A deathly quiet descended on the ballet end of the room.

  “Maître du Luc,” Beauchamps said into his hands. “Show him how it is done.”

  Charles blinked. “Maître?”

  “You know the part,” Beauchamps said without looking up. “I saw your feet. Would you rather dance it for him or would you rather I kill him? Let us hear what Jesuit casuistry has to say to that proposition.”

  “Please, Maître du Luc, we have never seen a professor dance, not really!” the boys clamored.

  “On the other hand, we have never seen a teacher kill one of us, either,” someone else said in an interested tone.

  Charles wished he could disappear like Philippe. Everyone of his social class learned to dance, of course. And he was a good, even gifted, dancer, indeed had thought more than once when he was younger of running away to join a theatre company. But now he was a Jesuit, and while teaching was one thing, performing, even for these boys, was quite another. He hadn’t danced—not really danced—since the ball where his secret betrothal to Pernelle had been discovered.

  “Well?” Beauchamps was glowering at Charles from under his eyebrows.

  “Yes—I do—I did—know Monsieur Beauclaire’s part of this gigue. But you must excuse me, maître, you know that Jesuits do not perform.”

  “Nonsense. Is your Superior General going to drop through the ceiling and excommunicate you if you dance this gigue for us? You are a teacher. What I ask is part of teaching M. Beauclaire. So teach.”

  “But, maître, I can no longer position my left arm exactly as it should be and—”

  “You have another arm and two legs, use those. We’ll get the idea.”

  He positioned his fiddle and waited. Charles turned toward the front of the room to enlist Jouvancy’s help. The senior rhetoric master could put a more courteous stop to this than he himself could. But Jouvancy was busy demonstrating dance’s fourth position, a stance used by actors, lawyers—and most males having their portraits painted—as well as by dancers. As Charles watched, Jouvancy threw up his hands in exasperation and pulled off his cassock to stand in his linen shirt and black breeches, then struck the fourth position pose, his black stockinged legs and small feet in their low-heeled shoes turned out just so, his arms, hands, and fingers softly curved, his whole stance imbued with arresting, silent beauty. Charles shrugged and pulled off his own cassock. Jubilantly, the boys cleared the stage for him and he took up the gigue’s beginning position, wondering how much he really remembered. And what Beauchamps would do to him when he reached the end of his memory.

  The dancing master gave him a nod, attacked the fiddle with the bow, and they were off. Charles plunged into the gigue like a hooked fish thrown back into water. He stepped, he leapt, he flew. He balanced on one foot’s tiptoe as though merely pausing during levitation. A wild joy possessed him. His feet invented effortless, flickering steps for what he’d forgotten. He pirouetted, flashing like a top as he spun. He wove a lover’s knot of a pattern on the ancient floorboards and sprayed his audience with sweat as he skimmed past them. When the fiddle achieved its finish, his blood and his heart went on singing. Grinning from ear to ear, he bowed to Beauchamps, who bowed in return, though with one raised eyebrow to mark Charles’s inspired improvisations.

  The boys clapped wildly. As Jouvancy and his actors turned to see what was happening, Père Montville, the rector’s assistant, burst into the room. For one startled moment, Charles thought Montville had come to censure him. But Montville hurried to Jouvancy and whispered urgently in his ear. Jouvancy blanched and grabbed up his cassock. Montville left as quickly as he’d come. Beauchamps and Charles looked questions at each other
as Charles shrugged hastily back into his own cassock.

  “Gather both casts, please,” Jouvancy said as he passed them, “work on the finale, the ballet général.”

  He rushed from the room, his cassock billowing behind him. Seeing that Jouvancy had dropped his black cloth cincture, Charles grabbed it up. “I must take him this,” he told Beauchamps, and hurried after the rhetoric master.

  Chapter 6

  If Père Montville’s news was about Philippe, Charles thought, running across the Cour d’honneur, then the news was obviously bad. He caught up with Père Jouvancy in the postern passage and handed him the cincture. Jouvancy wound it around his waist without breaking stride.

  “What is it, mon père?” Charles said, walking beside him. “Can I help?”

  Jouvancy shook his head. “It is my nephew.”

  He pushed his way through the postern, which was blocked by a crowd of lay brothers looking out and talking excitedly. As Charles hesitated, torn between knowing that he should go back to the classroom and wanting to know what had happened to Philippe, a hand plucked at his sleeve.

  “Down there.” Frère Fabre pointed at the narrow street that opened off St. Jacques almost straight across from the college. “The baker’s little girl said it happened down where the rue des Poirées turns.”

  Charles threw a sop to his conscience, telling himself that Jouvancy might need him, and squeezed through the door into the street. Movement caught his eye and he glanced to his left, beyond the chapel’s street door, where a small girl was pointing anxiously toward the rue des Poirées as a man in a baker’s baglike cap held her firmly by the shoulder.

  Charles followed Jouvancy into the shadows of the rue des Poirées, over its patchy and uneven cobbles toward the sharp left turn where Père Montville and Père Le Picart were bent over something hidden by their cassocks. To Charles’s surprise, Père Guise was there, talking to a tall gaunt street porter with a loaded wooden carrying frame on his back. A small, round woman stood watching them, radiating indignation, even at a distance. Beyond the bend in the street, two lay brothers held back traffic, stolidly silent under a rain of abuse from riders, a carriage driver, and a dozen pedestrians, all determined to gain the rue St. Jacques without going the longer way around. Less encumbered pedestrians were starting to edge past the brothers along the house walls.

  Jouvancy pushed his way through a knot of gesticulating university students and dropped to his knees between Montville and Le Picart. Charles, tall enough to see over their shoulders, hung back, wondering in confusion who the little boy lying on the pavement could be. He certainly was not Philippe, he looked almost too young to belong to the college at all. The boy lay ominously still and his eyes were closed. The rector was trying to stanch the blood pouring from a long cut on his forehead.

  Not dead, Charles prayed silently. Dear Blessed Virgin, don’t let him be dead. Fabre and another brother arrived at a run with a board. As Jouvancy and Le Picart carefully lifted the boy onto it, his bony little chest rose and fell in a shallow breath and Charles released his own held breath in a prayer of thanks. The lay brothers lifted the board and started back to the college.

  “Go back to the classroom,” Jouvancy said distractedly as he passed Charles, his eyes on the motionless child. “Keep them working. I won’t return today.”

  Montville, on Jouvancy’s heels, stopped and laid a hand on Charles’s arm. “If you need help, Maître du Luc, just ask any of us. I know you’ve hardly arrived.”

  “You are most kind, mon père. But I’m sure Maître Beauchamps won’t let me put a foot wrong. Who is the child? What happened?”

  “He is Antoine Douté, brother to the silly young bravo who ran away yesterday. The boys are Père Jouvancy’s nephews.” He jerked his head at Guise. “And this little one is also Père Guise’s godson. As for what happened here, well, it seems a little confused, but witnesses say that a horseman, probably drunk, knocked the child down.”

  “Who saw it happen?”

  “Père Guise, for one. And that man he’s talking to, the porter with the twisted nose.”

  Charles looked over his shoulder and saw that the poor man’s nose had at some time been broken so badly that it was flattened almost against his cheek.

  “The baker’s wife saw it, too, the woman there in the wooden shoes. Those university fellows say they saw nothing, but you know what that’s worth. I must get back, but please ask for whatever you need, maître.”

  “Thank you, mon père. I only hope that Philippe returns, and that this little one is not badly hurt. That looks to be a bad slice in his head.”

  Montville nodded, his ebullience dimmed for once. “To have these things happen to both boys—” He shook his head. “We’re hoping that Philippe has simply gone home to Chantilly, but there is no word yet. Keep praying, maître.”

  Montville walked quickly toward the college and Charles went to the place where Antoine had lain. He stared thoughtfully at the patches of slightly rounded cobbles glistening with a roux of street debris, dung, urine, and last night’s rain. The lay brothers had released the blocked traffic, but Charles, heedless of the stream of people, animals, and carts parting around him, protected the piece of road with his body while his eyes moved steadily out from the place where Antoine’s head had been.

  “What are you doing here, Maître du Luc?”

  Charles looked up to see Guise glowering from under his wide hat brim. “I brought something Père Jouvancy needed, mon père. Like all of us, I am wondering how the accident happened.”

  Guise looked around pointedly. “Père Jouvancy is gone. And so should you be. There is nothing more to gape at.”

  “No? Père Montville said the child is your godson.”

  Guise’s expression rippled and smoothed, like water when wind blows over it. He moved to the side of the street, and gestured Charles to follow.

  “The child’s name is Antoine,” he said gravely. “I saw him fall. The man who rode him down was going like a demon out of hell. Oh, I know it happens all the time, but I would dearly love to get my hands on the cur.”

  “Was Antoine with you?”

  “He was not. I have no idea how he got out of the college. He should have been in his grammar class. Why he was not, will be for his tutor and his teacher to answer,” Guise said grimly. “And answer they will. No, I was coming from the bookseller’s back there on the corner. Reading, as is my bad habit, as I walked.” He held up a small, elaborately bound book. “When that street porter cried out a warning to Antoine, I looked up and saw the horse galloping at the child.”

  Charles nodded encouragingly, surprised at Guise’s sudden friendly spate of words. “The rider came around the turn. I thought the horse was going to fall, it was going at such a pace. Poor Antoine tried to get out of the way, but—” Guise shook his head sadly. “To the rider’s credit, he leaned down—at some risk to himself, I may say—and tried to push the boy aside. But Antoine stumbled and fell. And then the cursed man just kept going. Afraid he’d killed him, I suppose. Well, all we can do now is pray.” He gestured toward the rue St. Jacques. “Will you walk back with me?”

  Wooden shoes clattered on the cobbles and the woman Charles had noticed earlier pushed her way between the men.

  “I saw you over there with your nose nearly on the cobbles,” she said to Charles. “You seem to have eyes in your head, anyway. Unlike some.” She twitched a shoulder at Guise behind her. “I must talk to you, mon père.”

  “Be off, woman!” Guise pushed her aside. “Do not waste your time on this excessively stupid woman, Maître du Luc. Her lurid tale is nonsense.”

  “Tale, is it?” The woman spun around and looked Guise up and down. “It’s the truth and you know it, you saw it yourself! Antoine never fell, the man rode him down on purpose, I saw it with these two eyes!” She turned back to Charles, pointing at her round brown eyes as though Charles might not know where to find them.

  “If you must talk to someone, Maî
tre du Luc,” Guise said, barely opening his mouth, “talk to the street porter. He is a reliable man.”

  He departed in a whirl of cassock skirts and Charles turned to look for the porter, but the man was gone.

  “Now that there is no man available, perhaps you will listen?” The woman’s curling chestnut hair was escaping from her white linen cap in every direction and her eyes snapped with outrage. “That priest is lying. Lying, do you hear me?” She spat over her shoulder at the place where Guise had stood. “But what can you expect from such a mignon?” She picked up her coarse brown skirt and mimicked the way Guise was holding his hem away from the street dirt as he walked toward the rue St. Jacques.

  “Mignon?” Charles turned involuntarily to stare after Guise. Surely she didn’t mean “darling” the way the court meant it, as a jibing name for the pretty men so beloved of the king’s brother. Whatever else Guise seemed, it wasn’t that.

  “You want to tell me something, madame?” He hoped that Beauchamps was not keeping track of how long he’d been gone from the classroom. “I have only a moment.”

  “I have been trying to tell you something,” she said severely.

  “I am listening, madame.”

  “Well.” She gave herself a small shake, like a ruffled bird. “Little Antoine comes into our shop sometimes with his brother, Philippe, and—”

  “Your shop?”

  “Ah, I thought so from your accent, you’re new, that’s why you don’t know anything. We’re the first shop to the right of your chapel door. My daughter Marie-Ange and I were returning from delivering bread to the boardinghouse kitchens. We’re bakers, LeClerc the baker, that’s us. The amount of bread these skinny students eat, you’d hardly believe it—but, there, I suppose you would. Anyway, we were walking back toward St. Jacques and Antoine was running this way, toward us. Though he hadn’t seen us. Marie-Ange called out to him, but just then a man coming toward us, that street porter, shouted, and I turned and saw a horse coming around the turn and galloping straight at Antoine. I yelled out to warn him and the porter jumped out and tried to frighten the horse and make it turn. Antoine dodged—he’s very fast, that little one—and I thought he was safe, but—” She shook her head and dropped her voice dramatically. “The rider swerved and went after him! And pushed him down! Antoine fell and the man kept going, if you can believe it. I sent my little girl running to the college for help and I went to see how badly the child was hurt. But that son of a pig Guise got there first and warned me off.”