“-and because of that, we must be away before the guet comes,” Reine was saying fiercely. The guet was the nighttime police patrol.
A half dozen more beggars had drifted into the yard. Among them Charles spotted the old man’s young keeper, who hurried to his charge’s side. Reine started to lead them all away.
“Wait,” Charles said. “You’ve saved my life. Come to the college and I will feed you, all of you, it’s the least I can do.”
No one spoke or moved. The old man roared out, “Mary’s holy milk, of course we’ll go! And if it’s a trick, we’ll kill him.”
Chapter 15
“They can’t come in here.” Frere Tricot, the usually genial head cook in the lay brothers’ kitchen, was blocking the kitchen doorway with his bulk. Firelight danced across the tonsure age had given him as he shook his head at the beggars. “They’re verminous, see them scratching, even in the cold? You know how hard we work to keep the fleas down. Not to say the lice.”
“Bonsoir, Guillaume.” Reine moved into the light spilling from the doorway and stood beside Charles.
Tricot caught his breath and crossed himself. “Blessed Virgin,” he whispered. “I thought you were dead.”
“I’ve thought so myself, more than once. But never with you.” Her smile widened.
The brother scowled, scarlet-faced, and pursed his lips. “Wait there. Stand away from the door. You.” He pointed at Charles. “Come and help me.”
Keeping his questions behind his teeth, Charles followed him into the kitchen. A thick soup simmered in a three-legged iron cauldron standing in the fireplace. A few tallow candles burning in wall sconces showed strings of onions and braids of garlic hanging from the ceiling beams. Muttering unhappily under his breath, Tricot handed Charles a knife and a basket and nodded toward the loaves on a table in the center of the room.
“Cut bread,” he said curtly. “Two pieces for each one. I suppose you’ve counted them?”
Charles pulled several loaves toward him, mentally making the nine beggars waiting in the courtyard into eighteen and wondering if he could cut forty thick slices before Tricot caught him. Tricot banged a wire-handled copper pot down in front of the fireplace and ladled soup into it. Lentil, from the smell, Charles thought, and with bacon in it. Keeping himself between the lay brother and the bread, he shoved an uncut loaf into the bottom of the basket and covered it with a mound of cut slices.
“Here, then.” Tricot held out the wire-handled pot. Two large spoons stood in it. “How am I supposed to account for all this food?”
“As a corporal act of mercy?”
Tricot grunted.
“Thank you, mon frere. If there are questions, I will take responsibility.”
Charles took the pot, staggering a little at the weight, and led his flock of beggars past the well and through an archway into the tiny stable court. As he’d hoped, the lantern-lit stable was empty, except for the college’s three horses.
He set the pot down and pulled the double doors closed. The beggars gathered eagerly around the pot. Reine surveyed the stable and then sat gracefully on a bale of straw. The old man sank down beside her and leaned back against the wooden wall. The thin, dark young man-boy, he almost seemed-who was his keeper saw him settled and then sat at his feet with his knees drawn up. The young man’s eyes were shadowed and he was coughing harshly. Charles handed Reine the spoons, put the basket of bread beside the pot, and stepped back, wishing he had left the doors a little open to cut the beggars’ fetid smell. A flurry of hands reached for the bread.
Reine looked at Charles. “A blessing?”
The hands stilled and Charles prayed. Reine gave a spoon to the old man’s keeper at her feet and tossed the other to a young woman on the other side of the pot. Everyone fell on the food. Charles had expected them to be loud and rude, to grab for everything they could reach. But they ate in near silence, passing the spoon carefully from one to another, scooping the lentil and bacon soup from the pot without spilling a drop. When a boy of twelve or thirteen kept the spoon too long, a man cuffed him lightly, plucked it out of his hands, and offered it to the boy’s neighbor. The beggars were indescribably filthy, and in the lantern light, Charles saw that many had some deformity. A young man had a twisted foot and there was a woman with a grossly swollen neck. A blind woman was so marked by smallpox that she seemed to have a webbed veil of white over her face and hands. A man who looked to be in his forties had what Charles thought was a withered cheek, but then saw it was a fleur de lys, the cruel identifying mark burned into the flesh of thieves.
When the soup was gone, the beggars clustered over the pot and wiped it nearly dry with hunks of the coarse brown bread.
The young man sitting with the old man leaned his head on Reine’s knees and slowly ate the last of his bread. She leaned down and pulled his coat more tightly closed as a new fit of coughing took him. The old man absently stroked the young man’s head. But the youth kept coughing, and Reine pulled a length of worn tawny velvet from her neck and wrapped it around his shoulders. He gave her a smile of such sweetness that Charles smiled as he watched. Reine looked at the old man half dozing beside her.
“Marin, will you eat more? There is more bread.”
“Eh? Me, I will always eat more! Where is it?”
A young girl with greasy black braids wrapped around her head brought him the basket. He took the last piece of bread, showing his few blackened teeth in a wide grin, and began chewing carefully. Reine looked up at Charles. Her eyes were like green flares in the dimness.
“Well?” she said challengingly. “Now you know my name and his.”
Unsure what his response should be, Charles bowed. “Thank you.” And added almost involuntarily, “madame.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Very pretty. But at my court, young man, the courteous thing is to give us your name in return. I have heard your name, but the rest of us have not.”
“Gladly. I am Maitre Charles Matthieu Beuvron du Luc.” He bowed to the others. “Mesdames et messieurs.”
They stared at him open-mouthed. No one bowed to beggars. Or addressed them with titles of courtesy. The girl with the braids stood up again and curtsied.
“I am Belle,” she said gravely.
The man with the brand said, “I am Richard.”
Then they were all speaking. “I am Matthieu-the same as you!” “I am Therese.” “I am Alain.” “I am Edouard, and the skinny one there who keeps Marin out of trouble is Jean.” “I am Pasquier.” “I am Raymond.”
“Thank you,” Charles said. “You saved my life tonight and I am deeply in your debt. But I cannot help asking why you risked yourselves for a stranger.”
Richard stood up, moved a little aside, then cleared his throat and spat. “You gave Marin the new coat,” he said. “And I saw those bastards standing at the corner when you turned down the street toward the tavern. I was at the innyard gate while we begged, it was my turn to keep an eye out for the archers.” He narrowed his eyes and studied Charles. “You know about the archers?”
Charles said uncertainly, “From the Hotel de Ville?”
“Yes.” Richard spat again. “Them. They’re not good for much except rounding us up and throwing us into the Hotel Dieu or the Hopital General. You’re let out after a while, but if they take you a second time, the men go to the galleys and the women are exiled from Paris. It’s a terrible crime to be poor.”
“It’s not!” The blind woman turned her face toward Richard’s voice. “If needing to eat’s a crime, then Adam and Eve were criminals as much as us!”
“We know for sure Eve was,” a man called out, laughing.
“Shut your mouth, Alain,” the blind woman said. “If she was hungry as me most of the time, she’d eat a sour quince and not care who gave it to her.”
“Well, your belly’s full now,” Richard said placatingly. “The thing is, maitre, we knew those three bastards in
