him to have killed Henri Brion. At least, no reason Charles could think of.
“Maitre du Luc,” Damiot said loudly, “have you heard anything I’ve said?”
“What?”
“Do you want to know what I’ve learned about the smuggling scheme or not?”
“Certainly,” Charles said, pushing his fears away.
“Here is what I learned from my father this afternoon,” Damiot said, pitching his voice under the beehive sound of talk in the refectory. “I’ve already told our rector. So far as my father has been able to find out, there were only three other investors in the smuggling scheme besides Monsieur Bizeul the goldsmith and his friend Cantel.”
“Yes, Monsieur La Reynie already told me as much.”
“Well, I don’t think he’s told you this! Cantel, according to his furious wife, left Paris-probably with his mistress-just before midnight on that same Thursday when Monsieur Henri Brion was last seen. Madame Cantel says he’s fled his creditors, and my father thinks the same. Madame Cantel also told my father that it was she who found Henri Brion in a courtyard outbuilding, just before light on Friday morning, and let him out. So,” Damiot finished brightly, “there were only five investors in all. Monsieur Brion kept the number small, you see, so that each could make more money out of the scheme. And very sound policy that is, remember that.”
“Oh, I will,” Charles said gravely. Beyond teasing his friend, he felt grave in truth. Madame Cantel had been much more forthcoming with Monsieur Damiot than with Lieutenant-General La Reynie. Her evidence-if she was telling the truth-put Cantel out of the running as Henri Brion’s killer. Which would only turn La Reynie’s attention more determinedly to Gilles Brion.
The rector rose from his chair as the signal for the final grace, and all talk stopped. Then, as the Jesuits at the faculty table were filing out, the rector drew Charles aside.
“Have you learned anything more today?” Le Picart asked, nodding at Damiot to keep going.
Charles shook his head. He was not ready to tell anyone of his growing suspicion of Marin. “Nothing, mon pere. Pere Damiot has just told me what his father learned about the senior Brion’s investors, but he said that he has told you, as well.”
“Yes, he came to me before supper. So nothing has changed. We have nothing more to use to quiet the rumors. Or the song.” His eyes ranged over the students leaving the refectory in the required silence. “If nothing has changed by Monday, I am going to order a general day of prayer and fasting.” Humor sparkled briefly in his eyes. “Though, given our supper, perhaps that would not be such an unwelcome order. Meanwhile, I must tell you that you have an extra duty tomorrow after the rising bell and prayers. I began this morning having all our entrances guarded as the day students come and go, to prevent any repeat of Thursday morning’s brawl. You will take your turn tomorrow morning at the stable gate, as the younger boys come in by the lane.” The rector sighed and stifled a yawn. “Let us leave this day behind and hope for better tomorrow.”
Dismissed, Charles crossed the court to the main building’s back door, then went through the salon and up the front staircase to his chambers. He was suddenly so tired he could have sat down on the stairs and slept there. When he reached his sleeping chamber, he felt his way to his candle, took it to the passage lantern and lit it, and carried it back to his room. Hugging his cloak tightly around his body-there was still only canvas in his window frame-he looked at the candlelight dancing on the little black stone Pieta in its wall niche. Though his mother had sent it as his New Year’s present, he would keep it only briefly, and then it would be placed where everyone could see it. At first, he hadn’t much liked the carving’s dark stone. But the longer he lived with it, the more its color moved him, as though the mourning Virgin and her Son’s tortured body were dark with all the world’s death and suffering since Adam.
Charles set his candle firmly in its holder beside the prie-dieu and knelt. Outside, bells began to ring, from the Carmelites, the Visitandines, the Jacobins, St. Germain des Pres, Port Royal, Cluny, calling the devout to end the day with prayer. When he finished his prayers, he stayed where he was-partly because he was almost too tired to get up, but also because his mind was still on the dark Pieta. In contrast, the little painting of the Virgin and Child hanging in front of his prie-dieu was full of light and soft, clear colors. The Virgin was young and round cheeked; the plump child was squirming and laughing. Well, that’s how beginnings are, Charles thought. That’s how youth is.
He pushed himself to his feet and took the Pieta from its niche. He brought it to the prie-dieu and knelt again, balancing the carving on the wooden ledge. His eyes went from the painting to the little statue, from the statue to the painting. Beginning and ending, the brightness of birth and the darkness of death. But that was hardly profound. Dead children had lain on their weeping mother’s breasts since the Creation. Nonetheless, he found himself staring hungrily at the way the baby in the painting and the dead man of the statue both nestled against Mary’s heart. Then, for an instant, he saw it, saw what was arcing back and forth between the painting and the statue like lightning. Truth, he thought, at first. No, not truth, only love. He shook his head. “Only” love? Whatever he glimpsed was too bright to look at. And when it was gone, he was still unable to find words for what it had been.
All the weight of his body came suddenly back to him, and he stumbled as he got up from his knees and put the black statue back in its place. His eyes closing with exhaustion, he blew out the candle, clumsily kicked off his shoes, and got into bed, still wearing his cassock for warmth, and was asleep before he got his blankets drawn up.
He dreamed of a nun. He seemed to be standing in her cell, watching her as she slept. With a sigh, she turned over and was suddenly resting her head on a luminous figure he couldn’t quite see-a man’s figure, he thought uncomfortably. Then, in the way of dreams, her black habit became the black of the little Pieta, and then the nun was gone and the empty bed was glowing like a star. Slowly, inevitably, the light took the form of Pernelle’s naked body, shining through her veil of black hair, and the bed she lay in was his. She opened her arms to him. With a great cry, he sank onto the bed, naked now himself, holding her warmth and fragrance, stroking her silken flesh, resting his head on her breast, listening to the beating of her heart. Then the chamber was full of people. A nun held out the Sacred Heart of Jesus to him, with cherubs fluttering around it like the natural history cabinet’s butterflies restored to life. Martine Mynette took the nun’s place, holding out her wounded heart and weeping. Then Charles, alone in his bed, was holding his own heart in his hands and seeing that it was full of tiny black swords buried to the hilt in his living flesh.
He woke with tears on his face and was still awake when the rising bell sounded.
Chapter 25
ST. ODILON’S DAY, SATURDAY, JANUARY 4
The night’s darkness had thinned a little by the time the youngest day boys were pouring through the stable gate under Charles’s watchful eye. At the ends of the lane, lanterns swung as the lay brothers there walked back and forth. So far there had been no trouble at all. But muted talk ran along the file of black-gowned boys, and they looked anxiously over their shoulders, still fearful that Thursday’s attack would happen again.
“All is well,” Charles said quietly. “And silence now, if you please, messieurs,” the rule being that talk ceased at the gate. He held up his lantern and looked along the lane to see how many more boys were still to come. When all the students were inside the college, he would go out and look for Reine. Lying awake after his dreams, he’d settled with himself that before he took his suspicions of Marin to La Reynie, he had to talk with Reine.
Seeing that the line of boys was still long, he went back to thinking about his dreams. The nun had been the least disturbing of his phantoms. Perhaps Marin’s talk of the Sacred Heart had summoned her, Soeur Marguerite Marie, the Visitandine who had revived the old Sacred Heart devotion after her vision of resting her head on Jesus’ heart. It was Pernelle’s visitation that had disturbed him, and profoundly. His famished sinking onto the bed, onto her body, his cheek on her warm naked breast…
“No!” he said desperately, loudly, shaking his head. The last boys in the line jumped and looked wide-eyed at him, and he managed a reassuring smile and waved them through the gate. Then he raised his lantern and signaled to the brothers at the ends of the lane that all the boys were safely inside the college. The brothers signaled back and went to report to the officers at the front doors, as Pere Le Picart’s plan for the morning demanded.
Charles was shutting the gate when the sound of quick footsteps at the end of the lane made him open it again and go out to see who was there. A woman, just visible in the slowly lightening morning, was passing the
