better than you know him.”
Charles gathered Flamme’s reins and shifted a little forward in the saddle. “Now for it, Flamme, mon brave!”
The horse leaped forward with no touch from Charles’s heels. The track poured past them like a river in flood, and wind scoured Charles’s face. The gelding’s black ears were pricked happily toward the rapidly approaching distance. Charles realized that he was laughing aloud for sheer joy at the speed, the wind, the perfect body that carried him, and his own blood was pounding in answer. He wanted to go on riding like that till the world ended. Flamme wanted to go on running like that, too, and when they reached the fortunately clear crossroad, it took all Charles’s strength and skill to pull the horse back to a canter, then a trot, and finally a stop.
Stroking Flamme’s sweating neck, he looked back along the track, where Boeuf was carefully carrying Damiot to meet them. As he waited, Charles set his horse walking up and down the Vaugirard road to cool him off. The first of the village’s hundred or so houses stood a little to the south, and the spire of the church, called St. Sauver, rose farther on, above a tight cluster of slate roofs on the left of the road. Vineyards spread out from the village in every direction, interrupted only by the little abbey of Notre Dame des Prez. Country quiet lay under the harsh cries of crows in the abbey trees, the soft lowing of village cows, and the thudding of hooves as Boeuf neared the end of the dirt track.
“You actually enjoyed that, didn’t you?” Damiot said wonderingly, as he pulled Boeuf to a willing halt. “I was terrified you would break your neck and leave me stranded out here with two horses.”
“Thank you for your pastoral concern, mon pere. Yes, I enjoyed that with all my heart! And body. And soul, too, I think.” He pointed at the houses. “And there is Vaugirard. Now we find the priest and ask for Paul Saglio.”
Damiot’s eyes went from the vineyards and fields to the crows. “How do we find the priest in this wasteland?”
Charles burst out laughing. “Do you see that big thing sticking up above the houses? Even in the country, that’s called a church spire. Where there’s a church, there’s a priest. Anyone would think you’d never been out of Paris!”
“Why would I leave Paris? Why would anyone leave Paris?”
But Damiot managed to turn Boeuf toward the spire and they set off. The road became a slushy village street bordered by houses with snow-covered roofs and full of the sounds of morning chores that take no note of holidays. Doors banged, well pulleys squeaked, dogs barked, mistresses shouted at servants, and wooden shoes, the ubiquitous sabots of rural France, clacked sharply over courtyard cobbles. When they came to the church, they reined their horses in and dismounted. It was small and old, and stood in a large cemetery. Charles eyed its age- blackened walls and the statues of the apostles around its arched door, and Damiot told him that they were made from Vaugirard’s own quarry stone, as were numberless houses and buildings in Paris. “And each apostle is framed in grapevines, as though they’re all standing in a vineyard-a nice touch in a wine village.”
Charles nodded, squinting at the foot-high figures and suddenly homesick on this day when families visited everyone they knew. “A very nice touch. We have churches decorated with vines at home, too.”
They tied their horses to an iron ring in the church wall and went inside. For a moment there was nothing but darkness, and they had to stand still until the holy water font and the altar swam out of shadow. What light there was came through small windows of colored glass set high in the walls. As they dipped their fingers into the font’s frigid water and crossed themselves, Charles saw that, unlike Louis le Grand’s chapel, this church had no benches at all, only stone seats around the edge of the nave. Which meant that, as in the old days, the congregation still stood through Mass, or knelt-or sat-on the stone floor, or on cushions brought for the purpose.
The smell of incense hung in the air, evidence of an early Mass already said. Charles went to the vestry door, but it was locked and no one answered his knocking.
“The house beside the church looks too big for a single man,” Charles said.
“He may live behind it.”
Damiot led the way into the sunlight. They untied the horses and led them down a dirt lane along the church’s north side and the cemetery wall. Where the wall turned, a black cat with a white feather stuck to its face sat on the angle, watching them, and beyond the cat stood a small stone house, its front bare to the lane.
Damiot stopped short and Boeuf, half asleep, nearly knocked him over. “Thatch?” Damiot stared in horror at the roof of a small lean-to wing built onto the side of the house. “Blessed Saint Joseph, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a thatched roof. Could a parish priest so close to Paris be this poor?”
“Well, the rest of the house is roofed in good slate tiles. But the church has a poor feel about it, too. I saw thatched roofs when I was in the army in the north.” Charles grinned ruefully. “And slept under them. Do you know what lives in thatch?”
“No, and I don’t want to. Did Pere Le Picart tell you this priest’s name?”
“No.”
As they approached the house door, someone moved at one of the tiny windows, but the door stayed shut. Charles knocked, waited, and was about to knock again when the door flew open. A tall elderly man in a stained cassock stared unhappily at them.
“God’s blessing,” he said, without much conviction. “What do two Jesuits want of a simple priest?”
“God’s blessing on you, mon pere, and a good new year.” Charles introduced himself and Damiot. “We are looking for a man who may be in your parish. His name is Paul Saglio.”
“Saglio?” The parish priest laughed without mirth. “And why-” He broke off as wings beat over his bald head and a white dove landed on his scalp. “No, no, ma petite Fontange, that is agony to a bald man, how many times must I tell you?” He reached up and the bird walked onto his finger.
“What a superb dove, mon pere!” Damiot’s eyes were shining. He dropped Boeuf’s reins and put out a tentative hand to stroke the bird. “And what a good name for her; that little tuft of feathers on her head looks exactly like a lady’s headdress.”
“Ah, you like doves?” The priest beamed at Damiot as though at a long-lost son. “Come in, come in!”
Damiot followed the priest into the house, leaving Charles to tether the horses loosely to a small tree beside the house, where they could crop the long grass. He went inside and found Damiot holding Fontange and the priest talking steadily about doves as he poured white wine into wooden cups.
“See?” Damiot said, as Charles peered at the bird, “see how perfect her eyes are, and how bright?”
“How do you know so much about doves? I thought you never left Paris.”
“My father has a dovecote.”
The priest turned, holding out two pottery cups. “Does he, mon pere? What sort of doves has he? How many?”
The low-ceilinged, sparsely furnished room was marginally warmer than the outdoors. Charles leaned against the wall to listen to the bird talk, enjoying the wine and this new side of Damiot. And thinking that the parish priest would be more willing to answer their questions after he’d talked awhile. He let twenty minutes or so pass and was about to interrupt, when the church bell began to ring. The parish priest thrust Fontange at Damiot.
“Another Mass to say, but I will return as quickly as I can. Or perhaps you would like to come? And after, you are welcome to share my poor dinner.”
“Mon pere, you are most courteous,” Charles said quickly, before Damiot could accept the invitation. “But we are here on the order of our rector and must be about doing what he has asked us to do.”
The priest’s face fell. “Oh. I see. And what is that?” Regretfully, he took the bird from Damiot, carried her to a window on the other side of the room, and let her fly. “To your cote, ma petite, I will come back to you very soon.”
“We are looking for the man called Paul Saglio, mon pere.”
The priest turned around with a sour expression. “He is at the big house on the right, almost at the end of the village. Anyone will tell you. But I warn you, the man is a rogue. I have tried to warn Madame Theriot, but she will hear nothing bad of him. The idiot woman has made him her cook; he feeds her on Italian messes, and the other servants are saying he plans to poison her.” He brushed uselessly at the bird stains on his cassock. “They say, too, that she will hardly let him out of the house. And that he purrs at her like a cat.” He wandered across the room and opened the door. “You are welcome to my house at any time, mes peres, at any time.” As he went out, he said over his shoulder to Damiot, “I need to rebuild my dovecote. Perhaps you can advise me, mon pere, your esteemed father being such an authority…” They watched him go reluctantly up the lane, still talking.
