The Whispering of Bones (5 page)

Charles was in no mood for Damiot's humor. “If Père Dainville dies, whoever killed the man in the crypt will have two deaths to pay for. And I would gladly help La Reynie scour Paris for him! Though you're right about the superiors. I'm not likely to have the chance to help La Reynie this time.”

“I wouldn't mind helping him, either,” Damiot said, earning a startled glance from Charles. “Though what help I'd be is open to question.” That drew a bark of laughter from Charles, who could not imagine the fastidious Damiot in tandem with the blunt police chief.

“So you've been told in so many words that you won't have the chance to help La Reynie again?”

“It's unlikely I'd get permission, now that I've started theology study,” Charles said lightly, sidestepping the question.

They went through the archway into the fathers' court, where the fathers' refectory and most of the Jesuit living quarters were.

“Why am I sure there's more to it than that?” Damiot said quietly.

Charles sighed. “Because at heart you're the village witch.” He'd rarely been able to deflect Damiot from anything he wanted to know. Or already, somehow, did know.

“The college
is
much like a village,” Damiot said, smiling. “And you must know that it's bad luck to keep things from the village witch.”

“If I tell you, will you put a spell on my Saint Thomas book so it won't open? All right, the rector told me last summer that there's been too much gossip in the college about things I've done. He cautioned me to call no more attention to myself. You're not the only one who knows something about what I've done with La Reynie, and the rector wants no more talk about that.”

The ironic eyebrow went up again. “For his own sake, I would imagine, as well as yours. Which is administratively understandable. But unfortunate, because from what I've heard—and seen—you're quite good at finding killers.”

“However,” Charles responded, “that talent is not in demand in the Society of Jesus. And, it seems, neither are scholastics who make themselves conspicuous. So La Reynie is on his own. And he'd better catch the man,” he added darkly.

They had reached the refectory, where cloaked Jesuits were going to and from the frugal college breakfast of bread, cheese, and watered wine, taken standing and in silence. But near the bottom of the stairs to the door, a small group of Jesuits was talking quietly. Père Joseph Jouvancy, the rhetoric professor whom Charles had worked with last year, stood with three college administrators: Père Montville, Père Donat, the rector's third in command, and Père Le Boeuf, the dour college provisioner. Maître Louis Richaud, an unpopular, sour-faced scholastic at the same stage of training as Charles, hovered nearby, trying to listen without seeming to.

Père Jouvancy's face lit with welcome when he saw Charles. As he gestured to him, Montville turned also. “Ah,
maître
,” Montville began, but Jouvancy was already in full spate.

“My
dear
Maître du Luc!” the little rhetoric professor cried, beaming at Charles. “We do miss you sorely in the rhetoric class. The boys as much as I.”

“Not more than I miss being there,
mon père
. The saintly church fathers are not nearly such good company.”

“As my saintly self, you mean?” Jouvancy grinned at Charles. “I'm already planning next summer's ballet and I am
so
thankful that you'll be working with me! I'm calling it The Ballet of Seasons! And with the leaves so lovely just now, I've been thinking that Autumn should wear—”

“Mon père!”
Donat, a dull-witted stickler for every slightest rule and formality, glared at Jouvancy. “Remember, I beg you, what we are discussing here!”

“Hmmm?” Jouvancy glanced at him. “Yes, we're discussing the ballet. Now,
maître
, as I was saying—”

Damiot, who had drifted unobtrusively in Charles's wake and was listening, choked with stifled laughter. Montville rolled his eyes and stepped closer to Charles.

“Bonjour, maître,”
Montville greeted him loudly, drowning Jouvancy's words. Red-faced, portly, and usually in high good humor, Montville was uncharacteristically sober and impatient. Lowering his voice, he said to Charles, “The rector asked me to tell you that he and I have already been to the infirmary, and Père Dainville is much the same.” He looked warningly at Donat, who had edged around his bulk and was staring malevolently at Charles, whom he seemed to dislike this morning even more than usual. “The rector also reminds you,” Montville said in Charles's ear, “to speak as little as possible of what happened yesterday. The less gossip here about the poor murdered man, the better.” He tilted his head very slightly toward Donat and the stiffly silent Le Boeuf, who was regarding Charles as though he were a column of kitchen expenses that refused to add up correctly. “As the presence of two of our companions here should remind you,” Montville went on, “the less gossip about your involvement with yet another death, the better.”

“But,
mon père
,” Charles couldn't help saying, “I'd never seen the man before. I'm hardly ‘involved' in his death. And it was almost certainly Père Dainville who found him first.”

“Yes, yes, but there are those who won't bother with that distinction. So remember the rector's caution, because—” Suddenly realizing that Charles was looking beyond him and no longer listening, Montville frowned and turned sharply.

The scholastic Richaud, who had crept close to Montville to overhear what he said to Charles, skittered backward. In the last several months, Richaud had taken to reporting Charles to the rector for fancied infractions of the rules. Now Charles watched with unconcealed satisfaction as Montville upbraided the other scholastic. But his satisfaction turned to wariness as Donat and Le Boeuf protested against Montville's “unjust chastising” and took their martyred favorite up the stairs to breakfast.

“And there you have it, Maître du Luc,” Montville murmured, watching in disgust as the trio disappeared into the refectory. “Those three are the heart of at least half the college gossip. And too many of their rumors are aimed at you.” He eyed Charles. “I'm not the only one in authority here with hopes for your future. So heed the rector's warning. And mine.” Fetching a sigh from the depths of his formidable belly, he made his ponderous way out of the courtyard.

Charles let his breath go and looked around for Damiot. His appetite for breakfast was gone, but he knew that if he didn't eat, half an hour of classes on the church fathers would make him wish he had. Damiot was talking to another grammar professor, so Charles started toward the refectory door on his own. But Jouvancy suddenly appeared beside him. Charles expected Jouvancy to say more about the ballet, but he didn't.

“I saw all that,” he said soberly, glancing toward the refectory door. “Don't let those three worry you. Père Montville and our rector think very well of you. And you know that I do.”

“That's kind of you,
mon père
,” Charles said. “I'm grateful.”

“You may not be, when you've heard what else I'm going to say to you.” They reached the top of the stairs and Jouvancy drew Charles aside. “I'll be as quick as I can. So listen. You have much talent, which leads you to put your nose where it needn't go. Or where others don't want to find it. Oh—I know, I know, don't bother saying it. You don't mean to cause trouble. But you do cause it. And why? Because you are good at too many things. That is more often a curse than a blessing. One who is good at too many things tends to think he knows best.”

“I don't think that,” Charles said hotly. “I only—”

“You ‘only' think I'm wrong. And that you are right.”

Charles's face burned and he held his tongue.

“I'm going to tell you a story about Père Dainville when he first came to the Novice House. No, I wasn't there, of course. But the story has been told to most of us older men. For our own good. Now it's your turn. When Père Dainville entered the Society, he was not very amenable at first to obeying his superiors.”

Charles could easily believe that, remembering what Dainville had told him about his life before the Novice House.

“After a somewhat turbulent first year of his novitiate,” Jouvancy said, “our Père Dainville began to see the benefits of obedience. Finally, he said to his novice director, “Well,
mon père
, it is inexpressibly comforting to understand that
I
, at least, am not God!”

Charles smiled in spite of himself. “Did you make that up for my edification,
mon père
?”

“It is true, I promise you! And one day in time to come, if I am not much mistaken, you will tell it to some other young man of ours.”

They went into the silent refectory, whose bare floor, walls of snow-white plaster, and high ceiling made it seem colder than the courtyard. Charles took a glass of watered wine from the side table, cut himself slices of bread and cheese, and began to eat. Richaud, Donat, and Le Boeuf, standing together and eating on the other side of the big table, pretended not to notice him. Charles ate quickly and drained his glass. Then he gave thanks; returned the empty glass to the side table; nodded to Damiot, who had just come in; and escaped outside. But two bent, elderly Jesuits were coming slowly up the stairs, and he went back and held the door open for them.

“But did you
hear
her this morning?” one of them said, loudly aggrieved, as he climbed. The irreverence!”

“Shhh. I think everyone in the chapel must have heard her,” his companion replied, and Charles realized they were talking about the two women who had argued after Mass.

“Why on earth her husband left her the business, I cannot fathom,” the first man said, shaking his white head. “I tell you, a self-respecting cleric can hardly go into the shop now, she's selling such blasphemy!”

“Oh?” His companion leaned closer. “More obscene books from Holland?”

“Those, no doubt, but even worse, she's got
Descartes
displayed
downstairs
—not to mention that poor, bitter-tempered Pascal! How that man could be so blind to God's good gifts I cannot fathom. And we taught Descartes—how he could—”

“Well, Pascal and the Jansenists are at least Catholics . . .”

The two men made their way through the door, and Charles closed it thankfully as the college clock chimed the half hour. As he went briskly down the stairs, Damiot caught up with him. “Where do you go now?” he said.

“I go to Père Remy, here in the fathers' courtyard, for the Saint Thomas Aquinas class.”

“How do you like the class? And how many of you are there?”

“There are eight of us starting theology. As for the class, it's all right. Except that because of my height, I'm assigned to the back bench, and Père Remy is hard to hear. Which is not going to make Saint Thomas any clearer.”

Damiot grimaced in commiseration. “Yes, Thomas can be obscure enough without that. And after Thomas, what do you do?”

“I have my first session on Saint Augustine at the Novice House. With Père Quellier. The eight of us go in pairs on different days. I go with Maître Richaud,” Charles finished ruefully.

“You're fortunate. He's a great authority.”

“Oh? Maître Richaud is?” Charles said innocently.

“That doesn't deserve an answer. So far as I know, Maître Richaud is an authority on nothing but sheets.” Until now, Richaud had been a
cubiculaire
, overseeing student chambers and shepherding boarding students through their daily schedules. “Well, keep your heart up,
maître
, Père Quellier is worth a little suffering.”

“I hope so,” Charles said with a sigh. “May all your students be bright today.”

“Hmmph. That is tantamount to hoping that our Lord will come back to earth before dinner. Which one may hope for without expecting it.” But Damiot strode eagerly toward the Cour d'honneur and his first Latin grammar class of the day.

As Charles crossed the court to an old timbered house where the scholastics' classes were held, the frost was melting on the courtyard's north wall, and the sun was finally high enough to chase shadows. Glad to be going inside, he pushed open the ancient house's weathered oak door. The smell of old wool met him, from generations of cassocks perpetually damp in Parisian weather, and under it the smells of tansy and rue, evidence of diligent lay brothers fighting a century and more of fleas.

Charles was the last to arrive in the classroom. As he took his seat on the last of the four short benches, the class bell began to ring and Père Valère Remy moved from his chair to the lectern.

“Please stand,” Remy said, his soft voice nearly inaudible and his hunched shoulders rising and falling in what looked to Charles like a sigh of resignation.

The eight scholastics rose to their feet, Remy offered up a not very hopeful prayer for the grace of learning, and the scholastics sat down again.

Remy surveyed them. His angular face was pale and lined, and his large brown eyes looked oddly vulnerable. “I begin,” he said, “by reminding you once more that you studied philosophy earlier in your scholastic years because philosophy is the beginning of theology, the foundation of the thirst for a systematic knowledge of God. Never forget that, because you will need all the philosophy you learned in order to grasp what Saint Thomas and I attempt to teach you now.” That dire reminder given, he swept a doubtful gaze over the class. “As I said at our last meeting, Saint Thomas lived for several years at the Dominican monastery just up the hill from us and was a revered teacher at the University. Not, of course, revered by everyone, since rivalry at the University four hundred fifty years ago was much what it is now. Thomas had a gift of divine clarity. He made for us a very useful system for understanding God, nature, and humanity. He is called the Angelic Doctor for good reason.” Remy cocked an eyebrow at his students, and the ghost of a smile came and went on his face. “You would think his Dominican brothers, who still live just up the hill beside the wall, might enjoy some of that same clear thinking. But apparently not, since they are on the point of taking us to court over our brotherly request that they stop siphoning more than their share of water from our common springwater pipe.”