Le Picart and Charles crossed the stage and stood on either side of Fabre. Jouvancy rapped for silence and brought everyone back to the last-minute business of where to be tomorrow before the performance and when. When he finished, Le Picart picked up Fabre’s discarded shoes and said something in the boy’s ear. Fabre seemed to protest, then subsided and followed him dejectedly across the court.
Hoping against hope that Dainville would say it hadn’t been Fabre he’d seen, Charles forced himself back to the job at hand and went below stage to help with the damaged Hydra. Pernelle was holding a glue pot for Jouvancy.
“I suppose an Opera workman did it,” Jouvancy was saying as he brushed glue carefully onto the canvas skin where the patch would be. “Hid someone’s boots for a joke.”
“At least,” Charles said, “they fell out today and not tomorrow.”
Chapter 33
It took another two hours to finish the last-minute stage details. When all that could be done had been, Charles left Pernelle hidden under the stage-getting her back to his rooms was impossible until everyone was at supper-and went to find Pere Le Picart. Pere Dainville couldn’t say, the rector told him, if it was Frere Fabre he’d seen that day. If he’d seen the flaming hair, the old man said, he would be sure, but the passage had been dark and whoever it was had worn the regulation broad-brimmed outdoor hat. Fabre, in tears, had fiercely proclaimed his innocence, but Le Picart had sent for Lieutenant-General La Reynie. When La Reynie got no further with Fabre, he’d tried to take him to the Chatelet but had finally agreed to Le Picart keeping the boy under the college version of house arrest for now. An agreement reached only after a pitched battle, Charles surmised, reading between the lines of the rector’s account. Fabre was shut into a small room, decently provided for, with a large, incurious brother posted at the door.
That was news enough, but Le Picart had saved the real news for last. When La Reynie had come to the college yesterday, the rector had told him, as he’d told Charles, that Pere Guise was gone to Versailles. But this afternoon, after questioning Fabre, La Reynie told the rector that he’d sent a man to Versailles to make sure Guise was there. The man had returned to say that Guise was not, and had not been seen there. La Reynie now had two men watching the Hotel de Guise, which was his best guess as to where Guise might be. La Reynie had also gotten a female spy inside the Guise house as a new kitchen maid, to listen to gossip.
“It may be,” Le Picart said to Charles, “and M. La Reynie obviously thinks so, that Pere Guise has helped Mme Doute to escape. I suppose she could have sent a servant to him after Frere Fabre’s sister was taken away. And she could have bribed her sister’s servants to keep quiet about her disappearance. But even if Pere Guise helped her, I think we will find that he is as devastated by what she has done as the rest of us. Remember, he used to be her confessor, it would be like him to try to bring her to penance before she is turned over to the police.”
Charles listened, but kept his thoughts to himself-admonishing himself the while for lack of charity-and agreed with Le Picart that whatever the truth was, the college’s priority now had to be tomorrow’s performance. The rest could wait on God’s good time.
On his way back to the stage, Charles found Pere Jouvancy supervising brothers who were setting up rows of benches in the courtyard. Seizing his chance, he made a show of being on his last legs, not needing to put much acting into it.
“Mon pere, do you think the kitchen might send me bread and cheese or something in my chamber? Enough for tonight and the morning, too?”
“Of course, Maitre du Luc, of course,” Jouvancy said apologetically. “I am so sorry, I forget that you are still recovering from your wound. You have been working like a Trojan.”
When the supper bell emptied the courtyard, Charles walked Pernelle into the street passage, as though seeing “Jean” out. They slipped through the main building’s side door and made it to Charles’s rooms without meeting anyone. As he closed the door and dragged the heavy chest across it, his sigh of relief became a groan because Pernelle demanded washing water. The eccentric desire to wash ran in the family.
A lay brother brought a bucket of hot water, Charles filled his shaving basin, and Pernelle emerged from the study and made for the water like a peasant making for a side of beef.
“Out, Charles, go and pray, or whatever you do!” She untied the neck of her shirt.
Schooling his eyes like a novice nun, he retreated to the study. “Leave some for me. While it’s still warm!”
“Soap?”
“Under the towel beside my shaving mirror.”
Trying to ignore the blissful sighs from his bedchamber, he began to say Vespers. But his head was soon on his arms and he was nearly asleep when Pernelle dashed into the room, holding her shirt around her and clutching a dripping towel.
“Quick,” she hissed in his ear, “get wet.”
As he gaped at her, she wrung the towel out over his hair and face.
“Where do you want this, mon pere?” a voice called from the bedroom.
Supper, Pernelle mouthed.
Charles waved her behind the door and grabbed the towel. “Coming, mon frere!” He went into the chamber, mopping his head and face.
“Thank you,” he said, as the elderly man squeezed the laden tray in next to the basin. “This is most appreciated.”
“Why are you keeping that chest in the middle of the floor like that? Someone will break a leg.” The brother eyed the basin and bucket. “Ill, are you?” He backed away.
“No, no, just tired and dirty.”
“St. Firmin preserve you,” the brother muttered as he fled, invoking a saint known to be effective against plague.
Charles dragged the chest back across the door, dipped the towel in the warm water, and scrubbed at his face, sniffing hungrily at the savory steam rising from the dishes.
“Wait your turn!” Pernelle whispered from the doorway.
He threw her the towel and went back to his desk. Watching dusk fall outside the window, he tried not to think about how much he was enjoying the camaraderie they’d settled into in their close and illicit quarters.
“Charles?” Pernelle came in, dressed in the LeClerc apprentice’s oversized breeches and one of Charles’s clean shirts, which hung to her knees. Her skin glowed from its scrubbing and her wet hair was a mass of short curls. “Why did those boots matter? Are they to do with the murders?”
He told her about Philippe and Antoine and Lisette Doute.
“Those poor children!” Her eyes glistened with tears. “How could she, standing in the place of a mother to them? She must be mad!”
“For her sake, I hope so.”
Pernelle hugged herself. “Sometimes I think that if I don’t find Lucie again-if anything happens to her-I will go mad.”
Charles clasped his hands tightly to keep from taking her in his arms. “You’ll find her. It will all turn out, you’ll see.”
“Turn out, yes,” she said shakily. “Everything ‘turns out,’ idiot, one way or another. But how will it turn out?”
“When this show is over, we will get you on your way to Geneva again. Where Lucie will grow up and you will grow old in blessedly dull safety.” He pushed himself to his feet.
Pernelle summoned a smile and took a book from the top of the leaning pile. “Nothing more exciting than Tacitus?”
“The banned books are under the bed,” he said, straight-faced, and went into the chamber. The water wasn’t very warm anymore, but it ran over his tired body like a blessing. Even his wound felt better. He put on his last clean shirt and the same dirty breeches, his only pair, and called Pernelle to eat. What Jouvancy had sent was more than enough for two: lentil stew, bread, cheese, half a roasted chicken, salad, and a pitcher of wine. They saved the
