A Plague of Lies (35 page)

For a little while, the rehearsal went forward with reasonable progress and no crises. Beauchamps finished teaching the steps for the Harlequins’ dance, which included nearly the whole cast, and went to get his violin. Charles, who had been helping him place the dancers, took the chance to sketch the placement in the
livret
.

Most dancing masters carried their little
violon du poche
, the small instrument used for teaching, in a long pocket on the inner side of their coat skirts. But Beauchamps disliked anything that deranged the fit of his suits, and he had his instrument carried in the box by his servant. The man flipped his greasy gray pigtail out of the way and handed Beauchamps the violin. Beauchamps went back to the silently waiting dancers and positioned the violin under his chin. Then he glanced up and erupted into fury. He tossed the violin at the servant, who leaped to catch it, and stalked through the frozen scatter of boys.

“So you became a choreographer in the last three minutes, Monsieur Bertamelli, and have changed my dance?” He glared down at the little Italian, who had left his place in the front and was standing beside Montmorency in the stage left back corner of the ensemble where Beauchamps had tried to hide his gracelessness. “This is not where I placed you.”

“He forgot his steps,
maître
,” Bertamelli whispered piercingly to Beauchamps. “I saw him trying to remember and didn’t want him to be yelled at so soon.” He patted the scowling Montmorency on the arm.

“Do not presume on your talent, Monsieur Bertamelli. You are neither a choreographer nor a dancing master. Go back to your place.”

With a warning glance at Montmorency, Bertamelli scurried to the front of the ensemble, leaving Charles wondering what was going on between the two. Whatever Bertamelli might do elsewhere, Charles had never known him to come even close to disobeying during a rehearsal. Unless—surely this new piece of unlikely behavior had nothing to do with Bertamelli’s visit to the tower? But Montmorency knew Margot, and Bertamelli
had
gone to meet Margot’s servant…

Charles dragged his attention back to the rehearsal. The cast made its first stumbling attempt at the Harlequins’ dance and then moved on to the soldiers’ dances. With the help of Beauchamps’s servant, Charles brought the chest full of wooden swords from the top of the stairway down to the
cave
where scenery and props were kept. Eyeing Montmorency and Sapieha, he issued a stern warning about using them for anything but rehearsing the dances, and then handed them out. He took one for himself and gave one to Beauchamps, and they began teaching the two troops of French Heroes how to use them while they danced.

Charles hated war, but he liked sword dances—the sweep and swing of the arm, the majestic thrusting and turning of the dancer/swordsman. Most of the students had been taught to use real swords, and Charles saw with surprise that even Montmorency wasn’t doing badly. In fact, it looked as though the boy might be quite a decent swordsman. They were all sweating
and happy when Jouvancy called the first break, a few minutes for rest and water between the first and second rehearsal hours.

The cast obediently put their swords down on the stage and went to the side table where pitchers and pottery cups stood. Charles had water, too, and then watched Jouvancy talking earnestly to Beauchamps, his earlier resentment apparently forgotten. Since his return from Versailles, Charles had been nursing an idea for an addition to the ballet
livret
. Now, when the rhetoric master was pleased at being well and back to work, seemed a good time to suggest it. It was a daring idea. But if he presented it as he’d planned, there was a chance that Jouvancy and Beauchamps would see only its surface, leaving the deeper meaning for the audience to see. With a sense of girding his loins, Charles walked down the room.

“This Queen of Acre,” Jouvancy was saying. “I am still not altogether happy about female roles. But the story calls for them, so what can I do?”

Beauchamps pursed his lips. “Was there a real Queen of Acre called Erixane? I’ve never seen a Jesuit play about crusaders.”

“Nor have I. I don’t know of any others. I suppose playing female roles is good practice for the boys. Knowing how to play a woman does make a court actor or dancer more versatile. And Queen Erixane hardly appears. Her daughter, though, has a large role—she even dresses up like a boy and fights for her mother’s honor.”

“Well,” Beauchamps said, laughing, “she
is
a boy. Here, anyway.”

Charles, who had been standing quietly, listening, laughed with him.

“True,” Jouvancy said reluctantly. “And I suppose they have to learn about girls sometime.”

“Some of them have already learned,” Charles said dryly, thinking of Montmorency.

“Oh, do you think so?” Jouvancy’s blue eyes rounded with worry.

Beauchamps snorted with laughter, and Charles intervened before Jouvancy could retaliate. “
Mon père
,
maître
, may I offer a thought for a small addition to our ballet’s
livret
?”

“What is it?” Jouvancy looked wary.

But Beauchamps looked interested, and Charles plunged ahead. “The ballet’s third Part concerns war and the hope for triumph in war. But being mortals, we cannot know what will happen. Which makes the courage of our soldiers all the more admirable.” He smiled guilelessly. “I propose that, during the third Part’s musical prologue, we show the three Fates seated on a cloud above the stage where the soldiers will fight. As the prologue is played, we see the Fates spinning the thread of man’s life, measuring the length of the thread that determines the length of his life, and cutting the thread at his death. Seeing that would remind our audience of our classical roots. But more, it would remind them that humanity never knows its future. And that we are always dependent on God. Whom, of course, we cannot show onstage.”

The rhetoric master and the ballet master looked at each other, brows raised consideringly. Jouvancy looked up, as though looking into the overstage where the cloud would be hung. Or possibly to consult heaven.

“That might be an admirable addition,” he said judiciously. “How large would the cloud be? And in what colors would we paint it? Grays might be suitable.”

“Yes,” Beauchamps said. “And the somber grays could be carried through in the Fates’ costumes. That would be interesting.” He frowned at the floor. “And they should be masked, I
think. The Fates. Not grotesquely, but very simply and serenely. The impassive face of Fortune, as it were.”

Charles hardly knew whether to laugh or cry at this easy reception of his wickedly subversive comment on the king’s wars. Before he could respond at all, pandemonium broke out at the far end of the room.

Chapter 19

C
harles reached the shouting ballet cast first. Alexandre Sapieha was swiping at Montmorency with a wooden sword and roaring in Polish so furious that its meaning was clear. Montmorency stood like a rock, staring at the Pole and seeming not to feel the blows. Bertamelli leaped forward and hung on Sapieha’s sword arm, but Sapieha shook him off. The other boys backed away, a few cheering for one hero or the other.

“Stop it! Both of you! Now!” Charles was bellowing the way he had on the battlefield, but he might as well have been talking to the wall as far as the two principals were concerned. Jouvancy and Beauchamps were also shouting outraged orders, and Montmorency finally moved. He swung his long arm back and scythed Sapieha down at the knees with his wooden sword. Bone cracked, the sword broke, and Sapieha fell, yelling in pain. Montmorency dropped what was left of his weapon and made for the door. Charles got in front of him.

“Stop, Monsieur Montmorency. You have felled your enemy. Stop.”

The boy seemed to look through him and kept coming. Knowing that he was breaking the college rules, knowing how sore his shoulder already was, knowing he probably didn’t remember
enough to do this right, Charles tackled him. His shoulder screamed louder than Sapieha had been, but he got Montmorency facedown on the floor. The boy lay still as a corpse, and except for Sapieha’s moaning, the watchers fell silent.

“Get the proctors,” Charles said through his teeth, from where he lay across Montmorency’s back.

“I’ll go,” Jouvancy said. He nodded toward Sapieha. “I’ll bring lay brothers to take him to the infirmary.”

As Jouvancy left, Charles said to the students, “Carry Monsieur Sapieha outside. No need for more people than necessary to come in.”

Murmuring comfort, four boys gathered up the crying Pole and carried him out of the room, to the building’s courtyard door. Beauchamps drew to one side, his hand on Bertamelli’s shoulder. Charles sat up cautiously, keeping a hand on Montmorency’s neck.

“No more,
monsieur
,” Charles said. “Do you hear me?”

Montmorency nodded and Charles removed his hand, poised to move quickly if he had to, but thinking he wouldn’t. Montmorency sat up.

“What began this,
monsieur
?”

Montmorency looked at him blankly and shook his head. He was rubbing one hand over the other, and Charles saw that he was caressing the ring with Lulu’s hair in it.

“The fight was about this marriage?”

Montmorency cradled the hand with the ring against his chest, his brown eyes pools of misery. His broad, smooth face showed several of the inflamed pustules young people often had. And something about that—the ugly spots, his misery, his awkwardly budding manhood—made Charles’s heart contract.
Suddenly and to his shame, he knew why this furious grieving boy irritated him so, why he mostly just wanted him gone from Louis le Grand. It was himself Charles saw looking out of Montmorency’s eyes, himself at Montmorency’s age, himself when he’d known beyond hope that his beloved Pernelle would be married to someone else. His raw grief had opened hell itself. Literally opened hell, in fact, because it was what had sent him fleeing into the army.

“Monsieur—”
Charles reached impulsively for the boy’s hand and searched for words, something to keep Montmorency from making a hell of his grief. But before he found anything to say, Jouvancy came in with three large proctors.

Charles got to his feet. “No need for force,” he told them. “He’ll go with you to his chamber. Do we have your word that you will do that, Monsieur Montmorency?”

“Yes.”

Without taking his eyes from the boy, Charles spoke quietly in Jouvancy’s ear. “Even if his tutor is there, I think it would be wise for a proctor to stay outside the chamber door. If you’ll allow it,
mon père
.”

Jouvancy nodded and gave the order to the proctors. Montmorency got to his feet like a shambling bear and the proctors closed in on him, one on each side and one behind. Jouvancy saw them out. He came back to Charles, shaking his head, and Charles braced himself for admonishment for physically tackling a student.

But Jouvancy said fervently, “Thank you. The boy seems—almost possessed. At least out of his wits.” Louder, to Beauchamps and the students, he said, “We will all pray privately for Monsieur Sapieha and Monsieur Montmorency. That they will both amend. And that Monsieur Sapieha will mend. But for now, this rehearsal will continue.”

The rhetoric master kept them at it until the clock chimed four, then oversaw the replacement of the benches, gathered them for an extra prayer for the two miscreants, and dismissed them. Bertamelli lingered as long as he could, looking pleadingly at Charles. But when Charles started across the room to speak with him, Jouvancy called him back sharply to the argument over how to alter the ballet with two fewer dancers. Sapieha would be unable to walk for a while, and Montmorency would not be allowed back. He would probably be dismissed from the college.

“Well,” Beauchamps said finally, “I only hope no one else decides to air their differences during rehearsals. I don’t have enough professionals free to replace them. And you couldn’t afford them, even if I did.”

He and Jouvancy gave each other the slightest of bows, and Beauchamps stalked from the room. His long-faced servant shouldered the violin box as though it were a small coffin and trailed after him.