Dinner was garlic mutton. Charles wondered if it was as good as the sign painter’s. Whether it was or not, it tasted like sawdust, since he had to eat it cheek by jowl with Pere Guise. Once, as he reached for the bread, he caught Guise staring at him and the hatred in the man’s eyes nearly knocked him off his chair. But, as Pere Le Picart had said, surely Guise wouldn’t risk another death in the college. When the meal ended, Pere Dainville accosted Charles outside the refectory. His papery old face was grave, but Charles couldn’t hear what he said. While he’d been in the infirmary, the Cour d’honneur had become a chaos of lumber, canvas, and rope, echoing with the hammering and the shouts of workmen and lay brothers constructing the outdoor stage. Like Charles, they were working on Sunday afternoon because time was short. Dainville put his mouth next to Charles’s ear.
“Please come with me to the fathers’ garden,” he said in a quavering shout. “I have something to ask you.”
Charles started to plead his injury as an excuse, but Dainville was already making for the garden and didn’t hear him. Exasperated, Charles followed. Seeing Pernelle would have to wait. Dainville led him across the little expanse of turf drowsing in the sunshine and sat on a stone bench in the lee of the age-blackened west wall.
Charles exclaimed and pointed at the north wall, where ripening grapes fattened on a gnarled vine in what sun Paris had to offer. “Vines here, mon pere? Do we make wine?” He had glanced into this garden in his search for the boots, but he hadn’t seen the grapes.
Dainville laughed. “Frere Brunet tries. But he gets only a drop. Though a venerable drop, as that vine descends from Roman vines, you know. There are still vines like that one all over St. Genevieve’s hill. Sadly, our winters are too cold for them to flourish. I think the old Romans brought Italy’s warmth with them when they settled here, and took it away when they left. And now, mon fils, for what I must ask.” He peered earnestly at Charles. “I saw you come out of Pere Guise’s chamber a few days ago. When we collided in the passage.”
Charles nodded warily.
“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.