Instead of making speed back to the classroom, Charles went in search of Pere Le Picart. A lay brother directed him to the infirmary, in a small court with a tidy garden of herbs and flowers, above the workroom where the infirmarian prepared what medicines weren’t bought from apothecaries. Le Picart answered his tap at the infirmary door.
“Maitre du Luc?” The rector frowned. “Has something else happened, God forbid?”
“No, please forgive my intrusion, mon pere, I came because a woman in the street, the wife of the baker LeClerc, told me she saw the accident. But perhaps Pere Guise has already told you…?”
“He told me what he saw. He has just gone. But come in, the more we know, the better.”
The big square room was dim and herb-scented, with wooden shutters half-closed over the windows and rush matting on the floor to muffle footsteps. The infirmarian, a bear of a man with hands the size of soup bowls, sat on a stool beside one of the dozen narrow beds, busy with a cloth and pitcher.
“Maitre du Luc, this is Frere Brunet, who sees to our health.”
Brunet glanced up and nodded.
“How is the boy?” Charles asked him softly.
“The head wound seems to be the only injury,” Brunet said. “Except for bruises. If he wakes soon, he’ll do well enough.”
“Mother of God, let him wake,” Charles murmured and crossed himself, watching Brunet sponge wine into the gash on Antoine’s forehead to help against infection. Wine stung an open wound, but the boy’s eyes stayed closed and he lay ominously still. Charles peered over the infirmarian’s beefy shoulder.
“A sharp slice, mon frere,” Charles said. “Though in the place where he fell, what cobbles there are, are rounded. And where the cobbles have come up, there’s only mud. Nothing sharp that I could see.”
“Perhaps the horse’s hoof caught him,” Brunet said, spreading a foul-smelling unguent on the cut.
“But wouldn’t the injury be worse? And the flesh more bruised?”
Charles had seen men horse-kicked in battle, and most of them had gotten not only cuts and bruises, but their skulls broken in the bargain. The infirmarian’s hands stilled for a moment as he considered.
“Maybe not, if it was a glancing hit.”
Charles held his peace. The injury could have happened like that. He looked up to find the rector watching him narrowly.
“The baker’s wife?” Le Picart prompted him. “Pere Guise told me that Mme LeClerc was there, but he dismissed what she said.”There was a fractional pause. “Myself, I have always found her reliable.”
Charles repeated what she’d said about the masked man riding straight for Antoine and reaching out for him. But he left out her insistence that Guise had bribed the porter. He needed to be very sure of his ground before he made an accusation that serious.
“Well,” Le Picart said, “the mask sounds like a tale. But if three people see a thing, especially if it is frightening, they see three different things. But could the man have been trying to abduct the child, I wonder? Rather than trying to shove him aside, as Pere Guise thinks?”
Charles shrugged. “It must have happened so fast, mon pere, both efforts might look the same.”
“Yes. Well, the child’s father will want to know as much as possible. I should tell you that Pere Jouvancy-uncle to the Doute boys as I’m sure you’ve been told-has already left for Chantilly to fetch him.” The rector’s face was grim. “We sent a message about Philippe yesterday, of course. And we are still hoping he has made his way home, but we have no word yet.”
Brunet finished bandaging Antoine’s head, tucked the blanket snugly under the boy’s chin, and sat back on his stool. “That’s all there is to do for him now. Except to pray he wakes soon.”
“And to pray that Philippe is safe in Chantilly.” Le Picart gave Charles a brief and wintry smile. “And if he is, to pray that his father rewards him appropriately for putting us all through this!”
“I cannot understand Philippe,” Brunet said mournfully, turning on his stool to look up at them. “All he’s ever wanted, ever since he came here, was to be the star of the ballet! Why would he-”
Another tap at the door made them turn, and Jacques Doute’s worried face appeared around the door’s edge.
“What are you doing here, Monsieur Doute?” The rector strode to the door as though to shut it in the boy’s face. “Go back to your classroom, we have had enough Doute disobedience!”
Jacques bowed awkwardly to Le Picart and Charles. “No, mon pere. I mean, yes, mon pere. Maitre Beauchamps gave me permission, mon pere. I was worried about my cousin.”
“Come in, then. But quietly, do not trip over anything!”
Wavering on tiptoe, Jacques approached the bed. “He’s not dead?”
“Now, now, don’t be foolish, it’s just a bump on the head,” Brunet said robustly.
“They say he fell down in the street?” Jacques made the question sound as though Antoine was reported to have flown. “And a horse went over him?”
Charles’s attention sharpened. “You are surprised at that, Monsieur Doute?”
Jacques nodded, chewing his lip as he gazed at his unconscious cousin. Before Charles could ask more, Jacques glanced at the rector, bowed his head, and prayed silently. When he finished, Le Picart drew him away from the bed, though not out of Charles’s hearing.
“I asked you yesterday, Monsieur Doute,” the rector said, “and now I ask you again. Do you know where Philippe has gone?”
The boy’s eyes were instantly wary. “No, mon pere, I swear it! I told you, he just disappeared from our rehearsal.”
“Could Antoine have known where he went? Perhaps Antoine was going to Philippe when he was hurt?”
“I don’t know, mon pere.”
“Do you know what has been troubling Philippe lately?”
Jacques’s face flushed and he looked down. “Not really.”
“Which means?”
Jacques brightened, as though with sudden inspiration. “Antoine, perhaps? Antoine has been homesick, you know,” he said earnestly. “He’s not yet even nine. Philippe was angry when his father let his stepmother send him to school, so maybe…”
The rector was staring at Jacques like an unimpressed cat, and the boy’s words trailed into silence.
“So perhaps Philippe ran away because he is worried about his little brother here in the college? If you are going to make up a tale, do yourself-and me-the honor of making sense, M. Doute. Understand this. We are very worried about Philippe. If you develop any ideas about where he has gone or why, or if he sends you any word, you are to come straight to me, do you understand? Failure to do so will mean severe penance. Expulsion from the ballet. Perhaps expulsion from the college.”
Jacques bowed his head. “Yes, mon pere.” There was a short silence. Then he raised pleading eyes to the rector’s face. “But if Antoine is worse, you will tell me?”
“But yes, of course.” Le Picart’s face softened and he put an arm around Jacques and turned him toward the door. “You heard Frere Brunet, we think Antoine will do well. All the same, Pere Jouvancy has gone for your uncle. M. Doute will no doubt want to see you when he comes.”
Jacques looked sideways at the rector. “Antoine’s stepmother is already in Paris, mon pere. If you want her, too.”
“How do you know that?”
“Philippe said so. At dinner yesterday.”
“Then might Philippe have gone to her? Why haven’t you told us this? Where is she staying?”
“Where she is staying, I don’t know, mon pere. But Philippe would never go to her!”
“Why?”
“He hates her!”
“And why is that?”
“Because Mme Doute-he said she-” A new tide of red crept up the boy’s neck. “He just doesn’t like her. You know.”
“No, I don’t.”
Sweat had broken out on the young man’s face. “She-well-she kisses him,” he said, keeping his eyes on the floor. “And she tries to make him kiss her back. And other things. He told her just a few days ago, at her birthday fete, that if she didn’t stop, he was going to tell his father. He wouldn’t really tell his father, though, because it would make M. Doute feel like a cuckold.”
Le Picart’s frown was showing a new kind of worry. “Are you so sure Philippe doesn’t like what she does? Some boys would, I fear.”
“He hates it!”
“That is to his credit, then.” Le Picart turned Jacques toward the door. “Go back to your rehearsal now,” he said briskly. “Maitre du Luc will come shortly.” When Jacques had gone, Le Picart shook his head in exasperation. “I pray that Jacques is right and that Philippe has not run off to his very young and very pretty stepmother. I will have to talk seriously to him when we find him. That wretched girl-she’s no more than that, twenty this last birthday. And Philippe will soon be seventeen. And poor M. Doute, whether Jacques is right or not! I must find out where Mme Doute is staying and make certain Philippe is not with her. And send her a message about Antoine.” He grimaced. “Like Philippe, I prefer to avoid her. Truth to tell, she flirts with every man she sees!”
“You could let her husband fetch her when he arrives,” Brunet said. “Because of her condition. She expects a child in the autumn, you know.”
“A child? Dear Blessed Virgin, and trying to entice her stepson even so?” Le Picart sighed heavily, but a measure of relief showed on his face. “I will make her condition my reason for letting her husband fetch her. How do you come to know about the child, mon frere?”
“This little one was chattering one day when I mended his skinned knee.” He put a hand on Antoine’s forehead, grunted, and got heavily to his feet. “So, Maitre du Luc,” he said, “it seems you and Mme LeClerc are not the only ones wondering about this accident.” His voice grew muffled as his head disappeared into the depths of a cupboard. He came back to the bed with another clean cloth and a blue pottery bowl. “My feverfew infusion,” he said, resuming his seat. He dipped the cloth in the bowl and wrung it out. “He’s heating a little-which is only to be expected.” He loosened the blanket, sponged Antoine’s face, and dipped the cloth again. “These cousins,” he said, with a glance over his shoulder at Charles and the rector, “know each other very well.”
“Yes, they do, Frere Brunet,” Le Picart said. “And so?”
“And so Philippe is graceful, agile beyond the ordinary,” the infirmarian murmured. “I’ve heard this little brother is the same.”
Le Picart glanced at Charles, cast his eyes up at the ceiling, and folded his hands in an attitude of patience. “Yes?”
“Jacques, now, he might fall like that. Under a galloping horse. Our Jacques falls off the carpet. But I think he finds it hard to believe that Antoine simply fell.”
“And you are saying what, mon frere?”
“I am not saying. Only wondering.”
“On the contrary. You are saying that perhaps Mme LeClerc is right and this was not an accident. But why? Why would anyone want to harm Antoine?”
Brunet ducked his head. “I only wondered.”
“Keep a rein on your imagination, mon frere,” the rector said, moving toward the door and motioning Charles ahead of him. “Send me word of how Antoine does before the bedtime bell.” He shepherded Charles briskly downstairs. “Thank you for coming to tell me what you learned from Mme LeClerc,” he said, as they walked through the infirmary garden. “And I am sorry that this sad accident thrusts all the responsibility for rehearsals on your shoulders so soon, Maitre du Luc.”
Charles smiled and bowed. “I will do my best, mon pere.” But his smile faded as he hurried back to the classroom, thinking about what Jacques and Brunet had said. Too many people were “wondering.” The accounts of Antoine’s accident, taken together, seemed even further from making sense.