we are betrothed!”
Charles laughed for pleasure at the news. “I congratulate you both with all my heart!”
Wondering if Morel had been let into the secret of the contraband silver yet, Charles threaded his way through the crowded anteroom toward its other door, which led directly to a tiny backstage area where two lay brothers waited to change the minimal scenery.
“Done already, maitre,” a brother said, when Charles put his head around the door. “We picked up the candles. No time to replace them now, but the chandelier will do well enough.”
As Charles turned away, the clock struck two. He braced himself for the beginning of the musical overture by Monsieur Charpentier and his musicians, positioned in the salle at the side of the stage. But nothing happened. Shrugging, Charles started to gather the boys for the customary prayer. Delays and theatre production were nearly synonymous, after all.
Then Pere Montville hurried into the anteroom, hissing “Maitre, messieurs, before you begin, a word!” His small dark eyes were bright with excitement. “We are unexpectedly honored with the presence of two Legitimes of France! A son and daughter of the king and Madame de Montespan have arrived, the Duc du Maine and Mademoiselle de Rouen.” He eyed the performers sternly. “When you go out onto the stage, they will be directly in front of you. Do our college all the honor in your power by your dancing and acting today, messieurs. Let your eloquent voices and bodies speak feelingly of the teaching you have received in this college named for our king.”
Charles seized the moment of quiet for the prayer. “And that we may do as Pere Montville has bidden us, let us pray, messieurs.” The quiet in the little room deepened. Even Bertamelli was utterly still, his head so bowed on his clasped hands that the boy next to him reached out and steadied his slipping headdress of flowers and small birds.
“Our Father in heaven,” Charles prayed, “let what we do today be a means of grace to those who watch and those who perform. Let us tell the story of your saints with reverence and joy. Grant us, we pray, a blessed Lenten season”-he hesitated, visited by the remembered taste of Lent’s endless salt fish-“but first, grant us a happy Fat Tuesday tomorrow!”
That got a rousing “amen,” everyone crossed himself, and the delayed musical overture sounded from the salle. Charles and Morel lined up their troops in order of appearance, eased open the stage door into the wings, and Charles walked between the flats to take a last look at the audience before the ordered mayhem of performance began.
From the chandelier hanging over the middle of the stage and the iron holders fixed to the side flats, candles cast a welcome yellow glow. But the gray light from the long room’s windows was as somber as Lent itself. Charles reminded himself that nevertheless, the snow was gone, melted in the chill, dripping rain that had come with February. And that Lent brought spring as well as salt fish.
He feasted his color-starved eyes for a moment on the deep blue satin of the Duc du Maine’s suit and his sister’s rose brocade, bright among the more sober colors of their attendants. As he looked, though, he wondered whether the young woman, whose voice was more carrying than Bertamelli’s, was going to chatter to her brother throughout the show. The overture was nearing its end. Charles’s gaze swept one last time over the audience, and he smiled in surprise as he saw Lieutenant-General La Reynie standing at the back of the salle des actes, next to Pere Damiot. Wondering if they’d found something to talk about before the music began, and hoping that they had, he went back through the wing to the stage door and pulled it all the way open.
Celse’s overture was ending. Michele Bertamelli was waiting in the doorway in his spring-green coat and breeches, the wreath of flowers and birds-symbols of youth-nested in his dark curling hair, a branch of yellow silk flowers in his hand. Charles put a hand on his shoulder and guided him farther into the wing, ready for his entrance. In the pause between the overture and the first notes of Celse’s first act, Bertamelli lifted his radiant face to Charles and gave him a smile that made Charles’s breath catch in his throat, a smile so joyous and young that winter and sorrow might never have existed. Then the music began again, and the little Italian filled his lungs and burst onto the stage like spring itself.
