The summer dark finally came, but Charles lay awake, thinking about Philippe Doute, imagining the air growing thick with prayers around his coffin. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Philippe’s body as it was when he’d pulled it from the latrine. He flopped over onto his back and distracted himself by reliving the tense gathering of the Louis le Grand faculty earlier that evening. Leaving a skeleton staff of proctors to see to the students, Pere Le Picart had called the professors and tutors to the chapel and told them baldly that Philippe had been murdered. Everyone, of course, had been horrified and, equally of course, no one had admitted to knowing anything. Pere Guise, magisterial and grim, had risen to ask who had been the last to see Philippe alive, looking all the while at Charles. Charles had patiently recounted being sent from the classroom to find the boy, which nearly everyone already knew. Guise had stood again to ask how long Charles had been gone on this errand. Twenty minutes, perhaps a little more, Charles had said. Too long, Guise had said with ominous quietness. Much too long. Long enough, perhaps, to strangle Philippe? I did not even know Philippe, Charles had replied furiously. As they glared at each other in the charged silence that followed, old Pere Dainville had bounced up with surprising agility, called ringingly for charity in this most difficult and unprecedented time, and added a tart warning about letting feeling falsify the premises of one’s arguments.
At the rector’s nod, his assistant, Pere Montville, had stood, gestured politely but firmly for Charles and Guise to sit, and shocked the assembly into silence by asking them to rise one by one and briefly state where they’d been at half after two on Monday afternoon, when Philippe left the classroom. Guise was the first to respond, his reproachful baritone filling the chapel as he told them he’d been in the rue Paradis, summoned on family business to the Hotel de Guise by his aunt. When all who could remember where they’d been had said so, Montville directed the others to come to him privately and then laid out what everyone was to watch for, charging them to bring anything they saw or heard or remembered to the rector or himself. And not to speak of the murder yet to students or anyone else. Then he’d poured political oil on the turbulent waters, telling them that as they thought back to that day, they would surely remember any strangers they’d seen, since the killer, of course, must have come from outside. With a final stern reminder of the danger of scandal to the Society and the college, Le Picart had closed the meeting with prayer.
Charles turned over again and told himself to leave his questions for now and go to sleep or he’d never make it through tomorrow. He was beating his thin pillow into a more comfortable shape when a heavy thump from the little salon made him sit up, listening intently as a vision of Guise creeping toward him rose in his mind. Telling himself not to be an idiot, he gave his pillow a last punch and lay down. And shot to his feet as his door opened a few inches. Mentally cursing the old monastic tradition of lockless sleeping quarters, he heard a soft intake of breath and then the creak of boards as whoever it was retreated. Charles went soundlessly to the door, looked out, and hastily crossed himself. A small figure, glimmering white in the darkness, was vanishing into Guise’s chamber, which was almost directly across from Charles’s.
Charles hesitated, then hastily drew on his cassock and tip-toed across the passage. Heavenly messengers wouldn’t need to open doors, and the white around this one’s head looked more like a bandage than a halo. The lambent light in Guise’s chamber was just enough to show him that it was empty and he went softly across it to the adjoining study. Guise wasn’t there, but the apparition was.
“Antoine?”
The small white shape whirled away from the far wall where it was standing in front of a tapestry. It stretched its arms out stiffly, took a step, and crumpled to the floor with a loud moan. Hoping that the child hadn’t hit his head again in the course of his performance, Charles went to him and shook him gently by the shoulder.
“Get up, it’s all right.”
But Antoine didn’t and Charles was afraid that Guise would come back at any moment. He gathered the boy up and carried him into the passage, shut Guise’s door, and hurried down the stairs. As they passed beneath a landing window, Charles looked down at Antoine in time to see the brief bright gleam of an eye.
“Are you all right, mon petit?”
The little body went as still as a hunted rabbit.
“What were you doing in there? Where is your godfather?”
Antoine squeezed his eyes more tightly shut and stayed as mute as a rabbit. When they reached the infirmary, Charles put him down on the disheveled narrow bed and spread the blanket over him.
“Frere Brunet,” he called. “Wake up, please, mon frere.”
The soft snores from the adjoining chamber turned to gurgles and snorts, and the infirmarian appeared in the doorway in his long shirt, blinking and yawning.
“What is it? Is someone ill?”
“It’s Antoine Doute. I found him in the main building,” Charles said loudly and clearly, watching the child’s suspiciously still face. “Sleepwalking, it seemed.”
Brunet took the oil lamp from its bracket and bustled over to the bed. He set the lamp on the bedside table, felt Antoine’s forehead below the bandage, and lifted one of his eyelids. “Sleepwalking? I didn’t know that he sleepwalks. Tsk. He’s chilled. But his pulse is steady. You did well not to wake him. Now he just needs to be warmed.” He tucked the blanket around Antoine and peered up at Charles. “It’s Maitre du Luc, isn’t it? It’s good that you found him, maitre. I’ll sit with him to see he stays put and give him something soothing if he wakes.”
“Mon frere?” Charles nodded toward the inner chamber. “A word first?”
Brunet spread a second blanket over the child and led the way into his bare little room.
“Does Antoine remember the accident?” Charles ignored his conscience’s quick sting at this violation of the rector’s order to leave the accident and the murder alone. “Does he remember why he was out in the street?”
“He said something about finding a message-but I didn’t pay much attention, he was still not himself.”
“A message? From whom?”
“He kept talking about his brother, poor little scrap.” Brunet sighed so gustily that his belly shook under his cassock. “He doesn’t know about Philippe yet, I hadn’t the heart to tell him. I tell you, I dread that moment.” Brunet hesitated and leaned closer. “Is it true you chased the murderer?”
“I think so.”
Brunet shuddered. “But how did he get in unseen?”
“Perhaps the same way he got out,” Charles said, without adding, if he got out. “Over the wall beside the stable.”
“Still-it’s odd no one saw him. The windows of the students’ library-that’s different from the big new library, you might not know that yet, maitre-overlook the latrine court. And he’d have to pass the lay brothers’ kitchen, there’s usually some of us there, and the same for the stable. So you have to wonder…”
“Wonder what?” Charles said.
“Whether the murderer was human,” Brunet whispered. “Or maybe just invisible,” he added judiciously.
Charles grunted noncommittally. Many people, even Jesuits, still believed such things. He did not. Though, when he’d first glimpsed Antoine in the dark just now… and God knew, there were enough unexplained things in the world, in spite of the new science.
“The devil uses his own,” Brunet was saying softly, gazing intently at Charles. “Witches, maitre, we all know that. And he uses those poor damned priests who say Black Masses for people who want what the bon Dieu won’t give-often women burdened with unwanted babes, I’m told. And actual demons, of course,” he added matter-of-factly, “we know those are everywhere.”
A huge yawn nearly dislocated Charles’s jaw and he apologized. Even demons wouldn’t be able to keep him awake much longer.
“Oh, dear, maitre, here I keep talking and you probably haven’t even slept yet, have you? Of course not, after finding poor Philippe like that. Would you like a sleeping draught? A valerian tisane? With a drop of poppy in it?”
Charles shuddered at the thought of valerian’s musty odor and shook his head. He wanted nothing to do with anything that smelled stronger than a flower. Then he thought of the roses beside the latrine and crossed flowers off the list as well.
“Thank you, mon frere, I think I’ll sleep now. God give you and the child a good night.”
But when Charles reached his own bed, he lay awake awhile longer, thinking about the message Antoine claimed he’d had. If there really had been a message, Philippe had almost certainly not written it. If Philippe had not written it, then someone had lured the child into the street and the accident had not been an accident. But why had Antoine been in Guise’s study? And where was Guise? A trip to the downstairs latrine? But there was a close stool in Guise’s chamber. Perhaps he was away for the night. At Versailles, under silken sheets, Charles thought sourly, turning over and wondering if he’d ever get to sleep. He was trying to decide whether it was less trouble to get up and close the window or to wait out a yowling cat, when his body finally relaxed and his eyes closed. Wheels were creaking up the hill toward the college. The untimely dung cart again, he thought vaguely. The wheels ceased their mournful groaning and angry voices rose and were shushed under his window, but Charles was finally asleep and heard nothing.