and looked as though they’d been in the clothing store since one of St. Ignatius’s original companions turned them in. The shoes, for a miracle, came close to fitting him. And the cloak was heavier than the one he’d lost at the fire. Clothed again, he walked around the curtain and bowed to the clothing master. “Again, my apologies, mon frere, and my thanks.”
“I trust your confessor will hear how much of my stores you have destroyed.”
“He will, mon frere.”
Charles bowed again and escaped. The bright sunshine was at its early January zenith, striking rainbows from ice crystals and glittering on the snow, but it had no more warmth than a painting of sunshine. Pere Le Picart had received Charles’s report before dinner with some alarm at the firefighting story, and disappointment that what Charles had discovered was not enough to confirm Brion’s claims of innocence. Le Picart had also given Charles permission to return to the Couche when need be. For now, though, Charles had his usual duties to perform. He turned his steps toward the grand salon for the student confraternity’s almsgiving, trying to ignore how little his wet stockings were doing for the comfort of the new shoes. He’d gone to the Capuchins wearing both his pairs of stockings for warmth and had not had the courage to ask anything more of the clothing brother.
Arriving early in the grand salon, he sat down in one of the armchairs to wait for the students. His eyes closed almost immediately and he slept till the jarring of his head falling forward woke him. He stared sleepily at the framed paintings of Jesuits on the grand salon’s walls, and the other paintings and engravings scattered among them. The nonportrait drawings were changed from time to time, and Charles got up to look more closely at one he hadn’t seen before. It was an engraving of a heart-not the familiar symbol of Christ’s Sacred Heart, but a liverish- red anatomical rendering that might have been drawn at an autopsy. It was pierced with a myriad of tiny black swords. Sins, the caption explained, damaging and deforming the heart of the sinner. Which should have made him consider the state of his own sinful heart, but instead made him wonder what the Conde’s heart might look like under its silk wrappings.
“Here they are, maitre,” a tutor said from the street passage door.
The boys distributing the week’s alms for the older pensionnaires’ Congregation of the Ste. Vierge came in. Two carried a hip-high basket of loaves between them, and three others were nearly hidden behind the piles of garments in their arms. The remaining pair of boys brought the walnut table from the grand salon to the antechamber and placed it in front of the double doors.
Charles thanked and dismissed the tutors, helped the boys arrange the loaves and clothing, and gathered them for prayer. Then Armand Beauclaire and Walter Connor pushed open the great doors, the snow in front of them having been cleared aside by lay brothers. To Charles’s surprise, Marin was already standing there. The old man hobbled forward.
“Have you medicine, maitre?” He seemed much more himself than when he’d fled from Charles outside the church of St. Louis.
“Not here. Are you ill, Marin?”
“Not me. My boy Jean. He’s coughing up his guts. Has been for a while, but it’s worse now.”
Charles grimaced in sympathy, remembering the young man’s thinness and harsh cough. “I can ask our infirmarian for something to help him.” Charles called Beauclaire to him. “Monsieur Beauclaire, go to Frere Brunet and ask for the remedy he uses for coughs. As many lozenges as he will give you. Quickly.”
Beauclaire bowed, happily important at being trusted with the errand, and sped away. One of the other boys handed Marin a loaf, and the old man tore off a piece and moved aside, eating while he waited.
People were crowded around the doors now, narrow-eyed against the light. Charles stood back as the students distributed bread and clothes. Filthy hands reached for the round loaves, and pinched faces lightened at their solid weight. Charles smiled with satisfaction at the intensity of the boys’ concentration, the effort they made to be courteous, in spite of the running noses, the breath stench, and the sores. In spite of wariness, and sometimes a little fear, they listened courteously to the grumbling, most of it merely sullen, some of it outright crazed.
The icicles hanging from the stonework above the doors were beginning to drip, lifting Charles’s spirits somewhat to see that the thin sunshine had that much warmth. A man leaning against one of the open doors and trying on a pair of shoes cried out and leaped backward as a foot-long icicle fell to the snow beside him.
“Trying to kill you for your coins, are they?” a University of Paris student called merrily from the other side of the street. “Be on your guard!”
“Animals!” Old Marin began wading furiously through the snow toward the student, swinging his stick. “I don’t see your kind giving anything, you pigs!”
The boy and his laughing fellow students hurled snowballs at him and darted down the rue des Poirees, which led off the rue St. Jacques deeper into the University’s territory. Cursing them and their fathers back to Adam, Marin brushed snow off his face and coat. Most of those receiving alms had prudently ignored the University students, but a few women cast frightened eyes at Charles, who sighed and stepped farther back into the antechamber’s shadows. The almsgiving wore on. The last of several pairs of gloves (all worn and denuded of their trimming but still a rarity in the alms box) were given out, the man who’d dodged the icicles went away with his new shoes, and a student handed the last loaf to an old woman. Marin came back to the doors and looked anxiously into the antechamber, his face lighting with relief as Armand Beauclaire ran breathlessly in from the street passage.
“Here they are, maitre, he just finished making them, that’s what took me so long.”
Thanking him, Charles took the little package wrapped in paper, told the boys to clear away the table, and went to Marin.
“These should help your Jean,” Charles said. “I will pray for him.”
Marin turned the little package over with his swollen, knotted fingers and glanced worriedly up at Charles. “Angels can’t die, can they, maitre?”
“Angels cannot, no.”
“My Claire sent Jean to me.” The old beggar’s faded eyes shone with unshed tears. “I know, because he told me just how she looked. She won’t let him die.” Marin frowned suddenly. “Will Jean have to die for my sins?”
Charles was lost once more in Marin’s crazy logic. Before he could answer, the tutors arrived to escort the boys to afternoon classes.
“Wait a little, Marin,” Charles said, and called the boys together.
“Shall we close the doors, maitre?” Beauclaire asked, but Charles shook his head.
“I will see to that. We will pray now.”
He led them in giving thanks that they had alms to give, and asked that their giving be a means of grace, to themselves and to the beggars. As the boys left, the afternoon class bell began to ring. The bell also meant rehearsal, but Charles hesitated, feeling somehow reluctant to leave the old man. He went outside and pushed the double doors closed. Marin, standing in the street and murmuring to himself, didn’t seem to notice.
“Marin, shall we go and stand by the postern door? I need to see someone as he comes in.” Charles had decided to give Germain Morel a message for Jouvancy. “And then I will walk with you back to where you stay. And you can tell me about Claire.”
For a moment, the old man’s wandering wits were as clear as Charles’s own. “No, no. You can’t go with me.” He shook his shaggy head until his ancient leather hat fell off. “Foxes have holes,” he said sonorously. “But the Son of Man has no place. No son of man and no daughter of woman.” He picked up his hat. “That’s Scripture.”
Glancing up and down the street for some sign of Morel, Charles led Marin to the postern. But before he could ask again about Claire, the dancing master arrived panting at the postern door.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Morel,” Charles said. “I need to finish some business here and will be somewhat late to the rehearsal. Will you please tell Pere Jouvancy I am detained on the rector’s business?”
“Of course, maitre.”
Morel bowed, glanced curiously at Marin, and went into the college. Charles turned to Marin, but he was interrupted again.
“Maitre du Luc, look!” Marie-Ange LeClerc, in an old red cloak trailing on the snow, burst out of the bakery and stopped breathlessly in front of Charles. “Maman made them!”
She held something wrapped in a white napkin out to Charles.
A strange sweet fragrance spread in the cold air. He bent closer, unwrapped the napkin, and peered at the two small golden cakes it held.
“What is it that smells so good, ma petite? I don’t recognize the scent.”
