The Rhetoric of Death (3 page)

He latched the casement, glad for its glass against the night's unseasonable chill, and closed the plain wooden shutter over it. These two little rooms were the first he'd ever had with glassed windows, since most windows in the warmer south—except in churches and grand houses—were still made of oiled paper. He turned to survey his chamber. Its roughly plastered white walls held a narrow, uncurtained bed, a backed but uncushioned chair, an age-blackened wooden chest for his linen, a hanging rail for his cassock, and a small oak table against one wall. A candle stood on a three-legged stool beside the bed and a couple of nichelike plaster shelves were built into the thick walls. The low, massive ceiling beams weighed on the small space, and he fought the urge to crouch as he went to trim his guttering candle's wick. Neither the chamber nor the even smaller adjoining study had a fireplace, and he was too cold for the fumbling process of finding his flint and tinder in the dark and relighting the candle.

He shed his cassock, riding breeches, shoes, and stockings and stood in his long linen shirt eyeing the bed's thin brown blanket. His woolen cloak was still wet, so he spread his cassock on top of the blankets, stirring the candle flame and sending shadows winging out from the crucifix hanging at the foot of the bed. He knelt, said the night prayers, gave thanks for his safe journey and this new assignment, and added prayers for Pernelle and her family. Surely, in the two months since he parted from them, they had reached Geneva. Let her—let all of them—be safe, he whispered, leaning his head on his clasped hands. Then he blew out the candle and slid between the coarse and worn flax sheets.

He woke to freezing feet and the clamor of bells. Peering blearily over the covers, he saw that his feet had neither mattress under them nor blanket over them. A common occurrence and his mother's fault. His maternal forebears were the Norsemen who'd swept down from the Viking lands long ago to leave their name to Normandy, and their blondness and long bones to future generations. Charles was still gathering his sleep-sodden wits for morning prayers and rubbing one foot against the other for warmth, when a sharp rap at the door made him draw his feet out of sight like a startled turtle.

“Still sleeping, I see.”The lay brother sent the door bouncing back against the wall. He set a tray on the table and flung open shutter and casement to a flood of morning light that turned his red hair to a shock of flame. Charles grimaced. The light was as accusatory as the brother's voice. It was obviously long past five o'clock, the normal rising time in a Jesuit college.

“Bon jour, mon frère,”
Charles said, trying to reclaim some dignity.

The lay brother, lean and wiry under the heavy canvas apron over his shorter version of the Jesuit cassock, looked to be still in his teens, a good ten years younger than Charles.

“It's half after six,” the brother said. “Those bells were for first classes. But I was told to let you sleep. Since you were so late getting here.” He stared down his long thin nose at Charles, who couldn't tell whether the boy disapproved of all lateness, or was simply envious of his chance to stay in bed.

“I am Maître Charles du Luc,
mon frère.
May I know your name?”

“I am Frère Denis Fabre.” His disapproving gaze shifted to Charles's feet, showing again beyond the end of the bed. “Your bed is too short,” he said, as though Charles had made away with part of it during the night. He turned to the table and began taking things off the tray. “The assistant rector, Père Montville, wants to see you,” he said over his clattering. “Immediately.”

Charles shot out of bed and hurriedly straightened its covers. “
Mon Dieu
, why didn't you say so sooner?”

“You were asleep sooner. Here's shaving water. And something to break your fast. The bread is stale. And the water won't be hot now.”

“Good, fine, thank you.” Charles was searching in his bag for his razor. “Where do I go when I'm ready?”

“I'll have to show you, won't I?” Frère Fabre drifted out of the room, sighing faintly.

Charles rolled his eyes, laughing in spite of himself, and dug his razor out of his bag. He shaved himself badly in the cold water and got a crick in his neck peering at his greenish reflection in the little round mirror he'd brought. He nearly choked himself trying to get quickly through the dry bread and cheese. But in spite of his hurry, he uncorked his little pot of wine vinegar, salt, alum, and honey and gave his teeth a sketchy cleaning with the end of the towel. Not something most people would have done, but another thing he had to thank his mother for. He cleaned his teeth most days, and he even washed with water fairly often, instead of only changing his linen or wiping himself down with a dry towel. He took his brother Jesuits' warnings about the likely consequences of his eccentric habits in good part and went his way, usually free of lice and, so far, with all his teeth.

He recorked the pot and pulled on his cassock. With a final gulp of heavily watered wine to dull the sting of his tooth cleaner, Charles clapped a new skullcap on his head for extra warmth and hurried into the passage. The lay brother, slumped against the wall and whistling tunelessly under his breath, broke off abruptly and was running a critical eye over him, when the door across from Charles's opened and a thick-bodied Jesuit with long, curling black hair emerged. Ignoring both Fabre and Charles, he swept toward the stairs with his Roman nose in the air.

“Your cap is crooked, maître,” Fabre said to Charles laconically.

Gravely, Charles straightened it. “Better?”

Fabre nodded curt approval and loped down the stairs. After two narrow flights, the bare wooden stairs widened and became pale stone. A grand, stone balustraded curve decanted the two of them into an anteroom between the college's tall double front doors and the grand salon, where the rector, Père Le Picart, and the senior rhetoric master, Père Jouvancy, had briefly greeted Charles the night before. Fabre led Charles across the salon to another anteroom and stopped at a closed door. Before he could knock, the door opened and a Jesuit backed slowly through it.

“But,
mon père
,” he was saying earnestly, “I beg you, you cannot imagine what this glorious painting would add—”

“I can imagine what our superior, our good Paris Provincial—not to mention Rome—would say about the cost,” someone beyond the door said tartly. “No, and again no. I am sorry.”

Pulling the door shut harder than was strictly necessary, the disappointed Jesuit muttered a greeting to Charles and clumped dispiritedly away. Fabre tapped on the door and it flew open.

“No, I tell you! Oh. Sorry, not you.” The speaker's middle-aged pudding face relaxed into a beaming smile and he bowed slightly. “I am Père Montville, assistant rector here. You must be Maître du Luc. Come in, come in,” he said, as Charles bowed in return. “So long as you don't want me to buy paintings. Thank you for delivering him, Frère Fabre.” He ushered Charles into his tiny office. “Every Jesuit wants something for his pet enthusiasm,” he sighed. “More paintings for the chapel, more telescopes, maps, books, I don't know how the bursar keeps his sanity. And when he says no, they come to me!” He waved Charles to the only other chair in the room. “And you, I suppose, will want more ballet costumes.”

“But yes,
mon père
,” Charles said, ingenuously wide-eyed. “And all cloth of gold, please.”

“Don't even think it.” Montville laughed. “Well, Maître du Luc, you are welcome to Louis le Grand! This morning we will see to the details of your life with us and get you settled in. A Jesuit college is, of course, a Jesuit college, but all have their differences, too. First, though, I must write you into my ledger of our scholastics.” He thumped the enormous leather-bound book lying on his desk. “Then you will see our rector, Père Le Picart. I know you met him last night with Père Jouvancy, but he wishes to talk with you further. I think you will find that we are fortunate in our rector—though his ability to see straight into our souls and out the other side can be a touch disconcerting.”

Montville laughed, but his description of the rector's perspicacity made Charles's stomach tighten, in light of his recent activities.

“After that,” Montville went on, “you must go to the clothing master. Your cassock, if I may say so, is showing the effects of your journey. Do you need anything else?”

“Perhaps another shirt,
mon père,
if he has one to spare. Other than that, I think I am well supplied.”

“Good. When the clothing master has finished with you, he will take you to the prefect of studies, who will work out your teaching schedule. And if, after all that, you are still standing, I will give you a tour of the school, which will end at the refectory and dinner. After dinner, you will go to Père Jouvancy.” He shook his head, laughing. “Père Jouvancy is excused from dinner the last two weeks before a show, because no matter how often anyone reprimands him, he simply forgets to come to eat.” Montville eyed Charles speculatively. “They have been rehearsing the tragedy and ballet since late May, you know. It's quite unusual to get a new rhetoric assistant this far into summer show preparations.” He raised an inquisitive eyebrow, but Charles refused the bait. “Well, well, far be it from us to question the will of our superiors, especially when it brings us such a good gift. So. Your father's name?” He picked up a quill and opened the ledger.

T
he warning bell was ringing for dinner and Charles's head was spinning as Montville led him back to the main courtyard after the promised tour. It had already been spinning when the tour started. Père Le Picart, a lean man in his forties with eyes as gray as the North Sea, had been less formidable than Montville had painted him, smiling gently and nodding approval as Charles answered questions about his studies and his teaching experience. But there had been unspoken questions in his cool gray eyes, and Charles had gone to his next appointment with some sense of escape. The clothing master Frère Dupont had scuttled around his dark room, searching through the piles of black cassocks as he measured Charles with his eye and shook his head at how much of him there was to clothe. When a cassock with enough hem to let down had been found, and a new linen shirt to go under it, Dupont had dismissed him to the prefect of studies, assuring him that the new garments would be taken to his chamber. Père Joly, the prefect of studies, eagle-beaked and ascetic-looking, had told Charles in the fewest possible words that he would be assisting in a morning grammar class and spending his afternoons working with Père Jouvancy to ready the ballet and tragedy. Joly had added austerely that such a light schedule was only for now, and that after the performance, Charles could expect more classes added to his day.

Then Montville had appeared at Joly's door and swept Charles away to tour the college. They'd started at the opulent chapel on the south side of the Cour d'honneur, as the main court was called, and from there Montville had chivied him over the entire property, explaining who taught what to whom and where, and where they all lived, ate, and studied. A secondary school, like all the Jesuit colleges, Louis le Grand's students ranged from about ten to twenty years old. Its syllabus of studies followed the plan laid down by St. Ignatius and was based on Latin and Greek writers of the ancient world. The general shape of the Paris college's life would be familiar to any Jesuit, but as Montville had said, each college also had its uniqueness. Louis le Grand was known as the nursery of France's great men. The college's day students outnumbered its
pensionnaires
, or boarding students, by nearly four to one. But the
pensionnaires
, the five hundred or so boys from noble and wealthy upper-bourgeois families, were its heart. It was these boys who acted and danced in the elaborate schedule of plays and ballets for a large and influential audience.

“An astronomy class?” Charles had said, peering through a window at perhaps a hundred half-grown, black-gowned boys crowded cheek by jowl on benches, windowsills and floor, listening to a small bespectacled Jesuit turning a large, wood-mounted globe of the heavens as he lectured. “Are all the classes so large?”

“No, not at all, those are day boys.” Montville had shrugged. “We try not to turn any qualified boy away, whether or not he can pay. We also have a handful of scholarship boys, who live together in a
dortoir
and are counted with the
pensionnaires.
Most of the day students are Parisians. They sleep and eat at home, or in cheap student lodgings. If we hadn't been able to expand our property as much as we have, we'd have to sit them on bales of hay in the street and teach them there, like the university did a few hundred years ago. Fortunately, we've bought, stolen, won—depending on who tells the tale—a number of neighboring college properties, most of them defunct or derelict. Mans, Marmoutier, most of les Cholets. But it's taken decades, and without our Père La Chaise—the king's confessor—speaking for us at court, we'd still be arguing over the loot, so to speak. Some of it, I may say, cost us a good deal to repair. Ceilings coming down, rooms you couldn't swing a cat in, rats fighting the fleas for floor space. But on the whole good bargains, and our classes are spread over all of them. The University of Paris, our less than good neighbor across the rue St. Jacques, is sick with envying our property. And our popularity. But what do they expect? The lackwits still teach as though it were eleven hundred-something and poor Peter Abelard were on the faculty!”

The acquisitions had turned Louis le Grand into a minotaur's maze of largely old and ill-matched buildings, most built of weather-blackened stone, a few half-timbered in the old fashion, some five stories high, some only two. Blue slate roofs pitched at clashing angles sprouted a mushroom growth of chimneys and dormer windows, an exuberant roofline further punctuated with towers as ill assorted as the buildings. The largest tower, on the south side of the Cour d'honneur, had bells and its own windows. A smaller tower at the southeast corner had a bell and a clock, and a windowed hexagonal tower on the north side looked to Charles like it might be an observatory. Though what anyone hoped to see through the clouds of this northern sky, he couldn't imagine.