now till April would be fetching and carrying for Pere Jouvancy and the great Jesuit creator of spectacle Pere Menestrier, as they planned the decor for the interment of the Conde’s heart in the church wall. The ceremony would be an elaborate funeral Mass, and Pere Bourdaloue, the most famous Jesuit preacher, would preach. The new Conde had commissioned a new musical setting of the Mass and was paying for the sumptuous decor Jouvancy and Menestrier were beginning to plan today.
As Charles approached the church, he thought about Christmas Eve and his first sight of Marin and Jean-Tito. Only twelve days ago, but it seemed much longer. Inside, the church was chill, silent, and empty. Charles went past the gated altar where the Conde’s jeweled box rested and knelt at the Virgin’s altar. He prayed for Martine Mynette, and Henri Brion, and Marin, all violently cut off from life without a chance to make their last confessions. And for Jean, who had not come back to himself enough to make his final confession to a priest and also needed all the prayers he could get.
Charles also prayed for Reine and for La Reynie. When La Reynie came for Jean’s body, Reine had refused all his offers of help, consenting only to go in his carriage to her daughter at Procope’s.
Charles’s prayers poured out like a silent river, flowing over the dead, over wounds, secrets, and revelations, over the fear and grief of these past holy days, even over the long-past tragedy of Claire Clemence, Princess of Conde, and her coldhearted husband. He prayed, too, for Pernelle and himself, for the healing of that grief and loneliness. When he had prayed himself dry, he stayed on his knees. The Silence closed around him and he felt, for once, no need to argue with It. Nothing is wasted, the Silence had said, that snowy day in a narrow alley. Unless you waste it.
The church door opened, bringing mild air and a burst of noise from the street. Charles rose stiffly from his knees and went to meet Pere Jouvancy and the stately, white-haired Jesuit with him. Jouvancy made the introductions and Charles bowed deeply to Pere Claude Francois Menestrier, who lived now in the Jesuit Professed House here beside the church. Menestrier was famous all over Europe for the glittering celebrations, ballets, and royal entries he created. Taking a key from his cassock, Menestrier led the way to the side altar where the Conde’s heart rested and unlocked the gate. Giving silent thanks, because this was what he’d hoped for, Charles followed the two priests inside. Menestrier picked up the box, and he and Jouvancy discussed its colors, holding it up and turning it in their hands, while Charles stood back and waited.
“No, not black,” Menestrier said judiciously. “Look at the sapphires. This is the church of St. Louis. His color is blue, and the Conde counted him an ancestor.” He replaced the box back on the altar. “Blue, Pere Jouvancy! We will start with blue velvet. Come.”
The two priests went briskly to the high altar, the initially skeptical look on Jouvancy’s face already flaming into enthusiasm. Knowing that, for the moment, anyway, they wouldn’t miss him, Charles stayed behind and picked up the box. He thought at first that it had been resealed since Christmas Eve, but the lid was only tight. He got it open and stared at the Conde’s heart, resting on the blue velvet cushion in its swaddling of gold silk. Then he set the box on the altar and took Jean-Tito’s necklace from his cassock. The red enamel heart glowed like a tiny flame as it rested in his palm. He thought of Tito’s passion for this trinket that meant all he knew of love, of the unknown woman who had put it around her newborn son’s neck in the hope of finding him again, of the nun putting it on another infant to give her a chance at life. He put the little heart on the cushion and coiled its frayed ribbon around it. Then he nudged it farther under the shadow of the Conde’s heart so it was less likely to be seen if someone else opened the box.
Let both hearts rest here, he thought, replacing the jeweled lid. Both had brought suffering. But one, at least, had been given in love.
He put the box back on the altar and went to do his small part in surrounding its interment with beauty.
Epilogue
STE.-SCHOLASTIQUE’S DAY, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 10
With less than a half hour to go before the performance, Charles was in one of the small anterooms flanking the stage, overseeing the dancers and actors whose first entrance was from that side. Charles Lennox-St. Ambrose in the musical tragedy Celse-stood before him, wide-eyed and pale with stage fright. As Charles picked up the saint’s mask and rubbed a smear of dirt off its faintly pink cheek, he half feared that the mask, too, would blanch when the boy put it on. But Lennox looked superb. The black-and-gold coat and breeches fit him perfectly, the coat’s short stiff skirts standing well out from the breeches, and the heavy gold braid around the coat’s edge matched the stockings and the gold plumes of the headdress. Wondering again at Jouvancy’s ability to cajole college parents into paying for new costumes, Charles patted St. Ambrose reassuringly on the shoulder and turned his attention to the rest of the room. Michele Bertamelli, beside himself with excitement over his Louis le Grand debut as Celse’s star, was talking incessantly to anyone who would listen-in Italian, which he insisted was only more beautiful Latin.
From the anteroom on the other side of the stage, where Jouvancy and the rest of both casts waited with the singers, Charles heard the singers’ last-minute limbering of their voices. But only faintly, because the hum of talk in the salle des actes had swelled to a polite roar as the invited audience settled itself for the show’s two o’clock beginning. From the courtyard, the tower clock struck the quarter before two. As though the chime were his cue, Bertamelli shot into the air between one of the Latin tragedy’s Roman soldiers and the dancing master, Monsieur Germain Morel, and executed a jumping passage from his solo. Morel’s startled oath made Charles grateful for the roar of talk in the salle. He grabbed the back of Bertamelli’s shimmering green satin coat.
“Doucement, Monsieur Bertamelli! Softly, and still your tongue. This is the time for gathering yourself together.”
“But I am gathered, maitre, I am bursting, I am-”
Charles lifted an eyebrow at the actors glowering at Bertamelli and bent down till he was face-to-face with the boy. “Still your tongue, signor, or your confreres may cut it out. And I may help them.”
“Oh, no!” Morel said despairingly, from somewhere behind Charles. “Not now, there’s not time!”
Laughing, Charles turned around. “I was only joking-”
But Morel was peering anxiously through the slightly open door onto the stage.
“What is it?” Charles went to look over the dancing master’s shoulder.
“Three candles have fallen out of the chandelier, the big one over the middle of the stage!”
“Never mind,” Charles soothed, “one of the brothers will pick them up.”
The small stage had no curtain and Charles could see the rector and Pere Montville in the front row of the audience, seated on either side of Mme de Montmorency. Before coming backstage, Charles had met Henri de Montmorency’s redoubtable mother. Short, double-chinned, and solid in sea-green satin and a king’s ransom of ice-white lace, she had eyed him severely.
“I trust that you have given my son a part worthy of his lineage,” she’d said warningly.
“Ah, madame, be assured that he is a golden image of martial virtue on our stage, to whom all the others look up and whose commands direct his men,” Charles had answered fulsomely, bowing-and earned himself a quelling frown from Pere Le Picart. Now, watching the rector and Pere Montville inclining their heads courteously toward Mme de Montmorency and her flow of talk, Charles grinned to himself. He could almost see them counting the coins of the gift she might give them if she was pleased with the show. The Mynette fortune being irretrievably lost to the college, a Montmorency gift would be very welcome, and he sent up a fervent prayer that she wouldn’t realize why he’d cast her large, bumbling son as a magical statue and put him safely out of the way on a golden plinth.
He was about to tell Monsieur Morel to close the door when he saw Mademoiselle Isabel Brion sitting with her great-uncle Callot about halfway back. The mourning black they both wore did nothing to dim their obvious happiness. Callot was beaming. And Isabel, smiling at the stage, glowed like an earthbound star. Morel leaned farther out the door.
“I will tell the brothers about the candles, mon ami,” Charles said, pulling him back and closing the door. “I, too, glimpsed Mademoiselle Brion,” he said more softly. “She looks very lovely today.”
“Ah, Maitre du Luc, she is-I am-we-the first forty days of mourning for Monsieur Brion are over, you know,” he finally managed, in a rush of words, and clasped his hands rapturously on his breast. “It still cannot be public, but-
