“We begin,” Charles said to Morel. “Are you ready?”
Morel swallowed, clutching the sheets of music to his chest. “With the help of Saint Genesius and Saint Guy.” Genesius was the actors’ patron who also spared a thought for dancers, and St. Guy-called St. Vitus in some places-cured the strange twitching sickness called St. Vitus’s Dance.
“Don’t forget the ancient goddess of dance, Terpsichore. We’re classicists here, after all,” Charles laughed.
“Terpsichore, by all means. It’s just that I never dreamed of working with anyone as famous as Monsieur Charpentier. He was eighteen years composer for Mademoiselle de Guise, for her troupe of musicians, The Guise Music! Did you know that?”
“Yes, I did know. Well, into the fray, Monsieur Morel.”
The dancers were arguing hotly on their marked-out stage.
“This Charpentier is nobody and he didn’t bow to me,” Montmorency said loudly, his left hand resting on his hip, where his sword would normally be.
Beauclaire, who prided himself on his wealthy bourgeois family’s rise by its own wits, regarded the offended nobility in front of him. Seeing the look in Beauclaire’s eyes, Charles had a good idea of what was coming and decided that Montmorency had earned it.
“Monsieur Charpentier is a most talented musician,” Beauclaire said earnestly. “Is it not God who gives talent? And speaking of talent, would you be so good as to remind me exactly which talent of yours it was that got you born as a Montmorency?”
Crimson with mortal insult, Montmorency reached for him, but Charles got between them in time.
“Monsieur Charpentier has been many years in the Guise household, Monsieur Montmorency,” he said crisply. “And the Guise household is in many ways the royal court of Lorraine. You may take it that our composer knows quite well how to conduct himself. Let me remind you that there is no fighting inside the college. I am sure you would never shame your illustrious house by forcing me to summon the college corrector.” The college corrector was a lay brother charged with administering corporal punishment, professors being forbidden to lay hands on students for any reason.
Leaving Montmorency silenced but seething, Charles turned to the others. “Now that we have our music, we will review who dances what. But first, let me present Monsieur Germain Morel. Our Maitre Beauchamps is not able to be with us for this production, and Monsieur Morel, a dancing master of great talent, is doing us the honor of taking his place.”
Charles named the students to their new master and the boys bowed. Morel gave the group a nicely judged- but not overlow-bow in return and managed a few words of greeting. Charles went over the casting for Morel’s benefit and then had the dancers shed their scholar’s gowns and show a few steps in coat and breeches. Morel’s anxiety fell away as he watched them. When Michele Bertamelli’s turn came, the dancing master was open- mouthed in amazement.
“Opera material, that one,” he whispered in Charles’s ear, when Bertamelli had been enticed back to earth. “Where did you find him?”
“He comes from Milan. He told me that he has a cousin in the Comedie Italienne.”
Charles nodded at Morel to proceed, and the dancing master consulted his score and addressed Walter Connor.
“Monsieur Charpentier has given Saint Perpetua a sung sarabande. Can you sing?”
“Yes, maitre. All of us”-he glanced at Beauclaire-“most of us can sing.”
“He means that I sing like a donkey, maitre,” Beauclaire said resignedly. “That is what Maitre Beauchamps says.”
“Unfortunately Monsieur Charpentier has not included a song for a donkey,” Morel said regretfully.
Everyone laughed, and Charles mentally applauded Morel’s effort to put the boys at ease. Morel riffled through the score and handed Charles several pages.
“Will you begin on the soldiers’ first dance, Maitre du Luc? And I will work here with the others.”
Charles had not expected to be creating a dance. A Jesuit in his position was supposed to be a director, not a dancing master. But yes, this needed to be done. And he did love to dance. He took Andre Chenac, Olivier Thiers, and Henri Montmorency, went a little apart, and looked quickly at the music Morel had given him. The soldiers danced when they threw St. Nazarius out of Milan, and again toward the end, when St. Nazarius and Celse returned to Milan and were killed. The soldiers’ first dance was an Air Anime, after a sung chorus asking the military trumpets to sound. Charles had once used an Air Anime at the Carpentras college, where he’d taught before coming to Paris, and remembering it now gave him an idea of what to do with Montmorency.
“We must imagine our stage, messieurs.” He smiled at the trio of waiting boys. “The front of the stage and your audience are here, where I am standing. The back of the stage is there.” He pointed to the wall. “There will be scenery, but no stage machines. Where the singers will be placed is, of course, up to Monsieur Charpentier. But we will worry about that later. Monsieur Montmorency, you are the captain of soldiers and will begin there, upstage near the wall and in the center.”
Montmorency strutted to his place, assumed a dancer’s fourth position, and expanded his not inconsiderable chest.
“Monsieur Chenac, on his left, please. Monsieur Thiers, on his right. Good.” Charles counted the measures of music. “The melody goes like this.” He sang the music’s first two lines. “You begin with a pas de bourree. Monsieur Thiers, yours goes to the left, and yours to the right, Monsieur Chenac. Yours moves straight forward, Monsieur Montmorency.”
Chenac and Thiers quickly went through the step, then did it again in tandem, adjusting their spacing to leave room for Montmorency to move between them down the middle. But Montmorency didn’t move.
“Like this, Monsieur Montmorency.” Charles hitched up his cassock and demonstrated the step. “Now, the three of you together, just that step.”
Ignoring Montmorency’s stumbling, Charles nodded. “Now, the same step again. For you, it still travels forward, Monsieur Montmorency. For you others, it reverses to the opposite side.”
Thiers and Chenac smoothly reversed their pas de bourrees. Montmorency’s effort was at least in the right direction.
“Good,” Charles said brightly. “Back to the beginning and do that much while I keep time.” He picked up his time-keeping baton from the windowsill and took them through the short sequence three times. Montmorency was still stumbling. “Now, Monsieur Montmorency, when you reach the end of this sequence of steps, you will mount a small platform placed for you exactly center stage.”
Montmorency looked interested for the first time. And, Charles thought, relieved.
“From there, you will use your gold baton of office to direct your soldiers through their steps. At the end of the dance, you will lead them away to capture Saint Nazarius and drive him out of Milan.”
Thiers and Chenac, also relieved to have Montmorency safely confined, grinned at Charles and saluted their captain. Who tried so hard to look down his nose at them that his eyes nearly crossed.
The rest of the rehearsal went more smoothly. By the time three o’clock rang, the beginning of all the dances had been set. Morel gave the dancers a firm command to return on Thursday-tomorrow being the New Year’s holiday-with their steps perfected. Jouvancy shepherded his actors down the room, the dancers put on their scholar’s gowns and retrieved their hats, and all of them gathered at the door. Jouvancy joined Charles and Morel.
“Did all go well, Monsieur Morel?” he asked.
“Very well indeed, mon pere. I congratulate you on your students.”
“Do not compliment the rascals in their hearing,” he said loudly, making sure they heard him. The boys swallowed grins and bowed to Morel.
Charles asked Jouvancy, “How is the play coming, mon pere?”
“Well enough. I think it will all march together, now that we have the pieces in our hands.”
He smiled happily at his subordinates and took the boys away to the rhetoric classroom. Charles turned to Morel.
“That was well done,” Charles said, “Giving them something to practice between now and Thursday.”
Morel laughed. “I confess, I feared that if I did not give the little Italian something to practice, he would be bouncing off the walls and ceilings.” But as they left the salle, Morel sighed and his steps grew heavy. “It has been
