If Pere Montville’s news was about Philippe, Charles thought, running across the Cour d’honneur, then the news was obviously bad. He caught up with Pere Jouvancy in the postern passage and handed him the cincture. Jouvancy wound it around his waist without breaking stride.
“What is it, mon pere?” 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.” Frere 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 Poirees 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 Poirees 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 Poirees, over its patchy and uneven cobbles toward the sharp left turn where Pere Montville and Pere Le Picart were bent over something hidden by their cassocks. To Charles’s surprise, Pere 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, Maitre du Luc, just ask any of us. I know you’ve hardly arrived.”
“You are most kind, mon pere. But I’m sure Maitre Beauchamps won’t let me put a foot wrong. Who is the child? What happened?”
“He is Antoine Doute, brother to the silly young bravo who ran away yesterday. The boys are Pere Jouvancy’s nephews.” He jerked his head at Guise. “And this little one is also Pere 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?”
“Pere 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, maitre.”
“Thank you, mon pere. 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, maitre.”
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, Maitre du Luc?”
Charles looked up to see Guise glowering from under his wide hat brim. “I brought something Pere Jouvancy needed, mon pere. Like all of us, I am wondering how the accident happened.”
Guise looked around pointedly. “Pere Jouvancy is gone. And so should you be. There is nothing more to gape at.”
“No? Pere 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 pere.”
“Be off, woman!” Guise pushed her aside. “Do not waste your time on this excessively stupid woman, Maitre 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, Maitre 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.”
“The rider swerved and went after the boy? Are you sure, madame?”
“As sure as I stand here and hope for salvation!”
Charles turned to stare at the place where Antoine had fallen. “You say the man reached for him-Pere Guise saw that, too. He said the rider was trying to push the boy out of the way.”
“Then why didn’t he try to stop the horse or turn it?” She frowned and her eyes opened wider. “Unless he was reaching out for the boy because he was trying to snatch him up and ride off with him!” She stepped closer, her eyes avid. “Another thing I can tell you, he wore a mask!”
“A mask, madame?” Charles quickly reassessed his informant, remembering Guise’s sneer at what he’d called her “lurid tale.”
She crossed her arms over her straining bodice. “I see you don’t believe me. But I saw what I saw. I swear it. It was the kind of mask ladies wear when it’s cold. Or at Carnival. But-” She looked expressively up at the sky. “-it is not cold, not today, anyway. And it is not Carnival. And he was not a lady.” She eyed Charles triumphantly, as though she’d just bested him in a rhetorical display.
“Did the porter also see the mask?”
“Is he blind? Of course he did. And so did your mignon. But the porter will never tell you he saw it, now that your mignon has got hold of him.” She held a hand under Charles’s nose and rubbed thumb and fingers together in the age-old sign for money.
Charles’s head was beginning to spin. “Pere Guise gave him money?”
Her shrug nearly took her ears off. “Why did the porter run away before you could talk to him? And Guise does not like my version of the story at all, you heard him.”
“Did he offer you money to change your story, madame?”
Mme LeClerc spat again. “That object knows better than to try his tricks with me.”
“Madame, Pere Guise is Antoine’s godfather. Why would he pay the porter to lie about what happened?”
“Why would the masked man ride the child down?”
Charles opened his mouth, then shut it. It was not the moment for a logic lesson. “Did you notice anything else about the man, madame? What was his horse like?”
“A rangy chestnut. Missing his manhood, if you know what I mean, poor thing.” She dimpled and Charles suddenly realized that she wasn’t much older than he was. “The horse was. About the man, of course, I couldn’t say.”
Charles struggled to keep a straight face, thinking that the baker was a lucky man.
“The rider’s hat was pulled down low.” She paused, watching the air, obviously seeing the whole thing happen again. “Plain and flat the hat was, a floppy brim, no feather. His hair I didn’t notice. He looked wiry-not thin or reedy, though, he looked strong. A good rider. Not so tall, not nearly so tall as you.” She looked Charles up and down approvingly. “His coat and breeches were ordinary brown. Like this.” She touched her worn bodice. “The only thing good was his boots. A blackish color like burnt sugar, and they folded over at the top.”
“Which way did he ride?”
She pointed toward the rue St. Jacques. “I was looking at the child, I didn’t see which way the man turned.”
“Do you know the street porter’s name, madame? Or where I could find him?”
“I never saw him before. But you might find him on the quays, they wait there for the boats to unload.”
“And you, madame, can you be found in your shop?”
“But of course. You can’t miss it, as I said, it’s beside your chapel door. Which is beside your little postern, in case you don’t know yet. Our bakery and the bookbinder farther along are the only shops left in your frontage now.”
Charles thanked her and began his farewells before he remembered that she didn’t know his name.
“Forgive me, Madame LeClerc, I have not introduced myself. I am Maitre Charles du Luc.”
She nodded her approval of his manners and made him a small reverence. Then she frowned. “Why are you not pere? What did you do?”
Charles burst out laughing. She sounded exactly like his mother. “Nothing, madame-at least, not in the way you mean. It takes a long time to become pere in the Society of Jesus.”
“That Guise is pere and you’re not? Pah. It’s the same in the church and out, the bad ones get everything, the good ones go begging.” Her face softened. “I will pray for our Antoine, maitre.”
“As we all will. Au revoir, madame.” Head down, he walked toward the college, thinking about what he’d learned and scrutinizing the paving stones as though he’d lost a handful of gold.