Plague of Lies (9781101611739)

by Rock, Judith

  Charles pulled his surplice unceremoniously over his head and thrust it at the startled man beside him. “Monsieur, give this to Père Damiot, I beg you,” he said in the man’s ear. “Tell him, please, to wait for me. I will return.”

  Charles ran toward the street door. Behind him, the man hissed, “For the bon Dieu’s sake, just use the wall, maître—it’s no great matter!”

  Bertamelli was gone, of course, before Charles reached the door and the rue aux Fers. But he saw the hat’s white plume bobbing as Bertamelli turned left at the corner and started up St. Denis. Loping after him, Charles opened his mouth to call out to the boy, then shut it. He wanted to know where Bertamelli was going. But Bertamelli, nearly as agile with words as with dance, was unlikely to tell him straight out. Following him would yield better results. Keeping the boy in sight, Charles walked seemingly at ease among the crowd, pulling his cassock skirts aside from the street dirt, shaking his head at beggars and vendors, having nothing to give or spend, and nearly falling flat when a dog chased a cat almost under his feet. Bertamelli kept straight on until the rue du Mauconseil, where he turned left again, past a low stone building with scallop shells carved on its gateway. In spite of his hurry, Charles stopped, staring at the sculptures of the apostles across the building’s front and realizing that this was the Hospital of St. Jacques, a shelter for the poor where St. Ignatius himself had lived as a penniless student. Telling himself he’d come back, Charles put on a burst of speed.

  He quickly had Bertamelli in sight again. Mauconseil was almost tranquil after the din of the rue St. Denis, and Charles had to follow slowly, keeping the sparse traffic and scattered vendors’ stalls between him and the little Italian. The street curved briefly to the south, and as it straightened, Bertamelli stopped at a corner where crumbling walls enclosed an overgrown garden. In the midst of the tangle of greenery, an old, half-ruined tower rose, looking bereft, as though it had once been part of something more. Charles hung back, thinking that Bertamelli was waiting for a pair of horsemen to turn out of the side street before he crossed. But the boy suddenly disappeared into the garden.

  Charles hurried to the breach in the wall, but Bertamelli was gone from sight. The tower, with its empty arched windows and battlemented top, was just the sort of place a thirteen-year-old would want to explore. But surely the boy hadn’t slipped out of the college only for that. How would he even know the tower was here? Charles stepped back out of sight and waited for Bertamelli to come out when he’d satisfied his curiosity and go on to wherever he was really going.

  But he didn’t come out, though from somewhere a clock struck the half hour. Charles began to worry. Suppose he’d fallen down the no doubt half-ruined stairs? Charles waded into the rank grass, grunting in exasperation as he stumbled over hidden stones and pulled his cassock out of the grasp of wickedly thorned roses long gone wild. He started to call out, then again bit off the sound before it shattered the quiet. He still wanted to know where Bertamelli was really going.

  Halfway around the tower with still no sign of a door, he looked up at the dark blank window arches and saw that the structure was at least five stories high. Wondering who had built it, and why it stood forlorn in this tiny rank wilderness, he kept on until he was nearly where he’d started. And saw the low arched doorway, visible only from the place he’d reached because dense bushes blocked it from every other angle.

  Cautiously, stepping over and around stones and the remains of crumbled steps, he went to the threshold. Just inside, stone stairs twisted upward into cobwebbed shadow, but there was enough light from the broken roof to show him lichened walls enclosing the deeply worn steps like a shell. Steps it would be all too easy to slip on. If Bertamelli lay hurt higher up, wherever he’d been going was a moot question.

  “Bertamelli!” Charles’s voice echoed off the stones like a drum roll. “Are you—”

  There was a blur of movement at the curve of the stairs and something hurtled toward him and glanced hard off his left shoulder. His knees gave way and he fell on his side on the stone threshold. Then a lumbering body was on him and he was flattened facedown into the stones. The bushes outside the door crackled and rustled, and Charles got his head up in time to see a broad, brown-coated back disappearing through them. With a vague feeling that there was something familiar about that back, he struggled to his feet, gripping his injured shoulder, and plunged into the bushes. He half ran to the wall and looked both ways on the street. His attacker was not there. Charles hesitated, wanting to go after the man. But Bertamelli was still in the tower.

  Thinking morosely that whatever had been thrown down the stairs at him would, of course, hit the shoulder with the old war wound, he made his way back to the tower door. The ruined garden’s quiet seemed ominous now, and the flat bright faces of the old roses looked back at him like red staring eyes. With a snort of disgust at his overwilling imagination, he charged up the tower steps.

  “Bertamelli!” he yelled furiously, holding his throbbing shoulder. “Come down here!”

  There was no answer.

  “Bertamelli!”

  Something knocked him off his feet again and down the few steps he’d climbed. But this time the missile was chest high and spouting desperate Italian. Bertamelli fell to his knees beside Charles, wringing his small brown hands and weeping bitterly.

  “Latin, Bertamelli. Speak Latin. I can’t understand you.” Wearily, Charles sat up against the tower wall.

  “Maître, maître, I accuse myself, I hate myself, I will cut off my hand!”

  This time, there was enough Latin mixed with the Italian that Charles got the drift. “Did your hand throw the stone that hit me?”

  “No, no, no hand threw it, the wall dropped itself, maître, it is so old, like my grandfather, he falls down because his knees have died and gone to heaven—or maybe hell—before him. I was only looking down the stairs to see who was there and—and—holding on to the wall and—and the stone let go of the other stones and I did not know it was you!”

  “Then you’ve gone deaf. Didn’t you hear me yelling for you? Who was up there with you, Monsieur Bertamelli?”

  Bertamelli seemed to shrink, his face so white that his huge eyes were black as a moonless night.

  “Who?” Charles demanded.

  The boy chewed at his lip. “I—I don’t know. I heard him. I was afraid—”

  Charles had developed a good ear for boys’ lies. Bertamelli was definitely not telling the truth. “And did you see him?”

  “No!” Bertamelli shook his head and went on shaking it, as though that would make his story true.

  Charles sighed. “Why did you come to this garden? Why are you out of the college?”

  The boy clasped his hands on the breast of his black wool coat. “I didn’t come to the garden. I came to see the Comédie Italienne. It is just there, you know.” He pointed in the direction of the cross street. “Across the street. My cousin is there. I knew the rector would not let me go, so I just went.”

  “You could have asked the rector to send for your cousin.”

  “But I wanted to go and see him.”

  “And his show?”

  “Yes!” Bertamelli looked up from picking industriously at a patch of orange lichen. “The Italian comedians are the best, you know!”

  “Why did you turn aside into this garden?”

  “Oh. Here?” Bertamelli blinked, and he bent over the patch of lichen again. “I only wanted—to see the tower. We have many towers like it in Italy. My family used to have one in Milan, but I have never seen one here before. So I went in.”

  “I see. And why did you look into Holy Innocents cemetery?”

  “Oh. Were you in there? Is that how you saw me? I just wanted to see what was on the other side of the door.” He shivered. “But I didn’t go very far in. I don’t like dead people.”

  “That’s unfortunate, because we’re going back there. Help me up.”

  Wordlessly, Bertamelli helped him up and
they made their way to the street. Charles noticed that the boy didn’t so much as glance at the Comédie Italienne’s theatre. He walked silently beside Charles, his shoulders hunched as though he were trying to hide inside himself. They turned down the rue St. Denis toward the cemetery in silence, Charles keeping a wary eye on him and trying various ways of putting together the pieces of the morning to make them show what the boy wasn’t telling.

  Chapter 17

  They found Père Damiot with the Holy Innocents priest, just inside the church doors on a bench built out from the wall and deep in talk about doves. Charles had encountered Damiot’s dove obsession before and wondered how long it would take to get his attention.

  “…and she had the prettiest little curl of feathers on her head,” Damiot was saying rapturously. “Like a lady’s fontange. Have you ever seen one like that?”

  “No. But I think my brother—he’s the seigneur of Pont-Rouge—has talked of one like that.”

  Charles coughed. Damiot looked around and frowned, as though trying to remember who Charles might be. His frown deepened when he saw Bertamelli.

  “Well.” Damiot sighed and got to his feet. “I thank you for your company, mon père,” he said to Père Lambert. “But we must go back to the college.”

  Lambert stood up slowly, wincing and putting a gnarled hand on his knee. “When the bon Dieu made knees, he did not remember how much priests have to kneel.” He smiled at Charles. “Remember that.” His faded blue eyes studied Charles’s face. “I watched you serving the Mass.”

  A tremor went through Charles. “Yes, mon père?”

  “Don’t forget what you feel. It is easy to forget.”

  Charles was too startled to speak. Damiot, bent over Bertamelli, had seemed not to hear. Damiot said their good-byes and they went out into the street, Bertamelli between them. Over the boy’s head, Damiot looked questioningly at Charles, who was rubbing his shoulder and thinking about what the priest had said.

  “Where did you go? What’s the boy doing here?”

  “Forgive me, mon père,” Charles said. “I know I should not have left. But when I saw Monsieur Bertamelli in the cemetery, I thought I should discover how he came to be there.”

  “Well thought,” Damiot said dryly. “And how did you come to be there, Monsieur Bertamelli?”

  “I was only looking, mon père,” the boy mumbled uneasily, his eyes on the cobblestones. “At the burial ground.” Something of his usual insouciance returned, and he clasped his hands under his chin and gazed soulfully up at Damiot. “You tell us to remember we are all going there. To the burial ground. I was remembering!”

  Damiot’s mouth twitched. “And when you had remembered? Then what did you do?”

  Bertamelli’s head drooped like a dying flower. “I sinned, mon père,” he sighed mournfully. And glanced up from under his long lashes to gauge the response. When none came, he said, “I was going to the Italian Comedy. For the honor of my family. My cousin is one of the players and I felt I must go and pay my respects. That is all.”

  “Not quite all.” Charles looked at Bertamelli, but spoke to Damiot. “Monsieur Bertamelli went into a little wasteland across the street from the theatre. With an ancient tower in its center. When I started up its steps to find him, someone heaved a stone down the steps and ran past me while I was flat on the floor. Monsieur Bertamelli says no one threw the stone, it only came loose from the wall when he leaned on it.”

  “I am so sorry for that, maître!” Bertamelli struck his thin chest. “I abhor myself, I abase myself before you, before my mother, before all Milan!” He made to fall to his knees, but Charles caught him and hauled him up again.

  “None of that will help my shoulder. Nor will it help your case. What will help—”

  The boy’s sudden strangled cry silenced Charles, who looked anxiously around for its reason. Bertamelli’s feet stuttered to a halt and he clutched Charles’s cassock, staring ahead. They were walking toward the Pont au Change, on the covered, cobbled way that divided the Châtelet’s criminal court from its prison, and Charles saw nothing more threatening than hurrying robed lawyers with their clerks and pages. There was also a massive Châtelet guard walking toward them, his brimmed pot helmet pulled low on his forehead. But he was smiling and humming to himself, making the pike on his shoulder bob in time to his rumbling music. Bertamelli let out another terrified squeak, which broke off when the man shoved his helmet back as he passed, showing more of his wide, placid face. Charles felt the boy sag against him with relief. Puzzled, Charles turned to look again at the guard. His broad back, like the broad back of the man who’d run from the tower, struck a chord of memory in Charles. He tipped Bertamelli’s face up to the light.

  “What frightened you so?”

  The boy twisted out of Charles’s grasp and turned away, shaking his head.

  “What?” Charles demanded, increasingly worried about whatever it was Bertamelli wasn’t saying.

  Bertamelli stayed mute. And that worried Charles even more, much more than any words would have. And Damiot, too, from the look on his face. Charles had never seen the boy this forlorn, never seen him speechless, rarely even seen him quiet outside the imposed silence of a classroom. The little Italian’s frightened silence also reminded Charles of Anne-Marie, Lulu, the Duc du Maine, even of Montmorency, and by the time they were passing the Ste-Chapelle, he felt as though he had a clutch of frightened, endangered young hanging to his skirts.

  Damiot suddenly pointed to the Ste-Chapelle’s spire. “Look up, Monsieur Bertamelli,” he said kindly, “and see the angel.”

  Bertamelli cast a dull but obedient look upward at the lead-cast angel on the Ste-Chapelle’s roof slowly revolving to show the cross it held to all points of the compass. But the angel clearly failed to comfort him.

  “What do we do with him when we get back?” Charles asked Damiot in French, so Bertamelli would not understand. The boy’s French was rudimentary. “I need to find out from him what he was doing.”

  Damiot eyed him. “Why?”

  “I can’t tell you,” Charles said. “But I’ll tell the rector,” he added quickly, seeing Damiot’s disapproval.

  “We’ll certainly have to take him to the rector. He and Père Montville should be back—they were supposed to return this morning.”

  “But if they aren’t back? Must we go to Père Donat?” Donat would probably dismiss Bertamelli from the college forthwith. Charles had thought for some time that the boy would leave them early because of his talent as a dancer, and Pierre Beauchamps, the college dancing master, had even said that he wanted to take Bertamelli’s further training in hand. But being dismissed by Donat wasn’t how Charles wanted Bertamelli’s leaving to be. “I don’t want him thrown out and sent home!”

  “Neither do I. Though he deserves to be dismissed and sent home!” Damiot said in Latin, for Bertamelli’s benefit. Then he went back to French. “Here’s a thought, if the rector isn’t back. You say there’s something our friend here can tell you and that the rector understands you need to know it. So I will use that as an excuse not to go immediately to Donat. The boy is in your rehearsal this afternoon, yes?” When Charles nodded, he said, “Then you can be responsible for him during the afternoon. Oh, but I’m forgetting. What about his tutor? Surely he went to Père Donat when he found the boy gone.”

  “Monsieur Bertamelli,” Charles said, switching back to Latin, “how did you get out of the college? Where was your tutor?”

  Bertamelli hunched his shoulders still farther. “I am poor and share a dortoir with five others. One of us was taken ill last night, and so was our tutor. They’re both in the infirmary.” He glanced up, and Charles saw a glint of satisfaction in his eyes. “Getting out was easy. I won’t tell you how,” he added stubbornly.

  “Blessed Saint Benedict!” Damiot was shaking his head, but not over Bertamelli’s stubbornness. “This illness is spreading like plague.”

  “Plague?” Bertamelli looked up, wide-eyed w
ith fear.

  “No, no, it isn’t plague, people don’t die of it. They just feel like they might. All right,” Damiot said to Charles, “if the rector still isn’t back when your rehearsal is over, I’ll collect this miscreant and take him to whoever’s been given charge of his dortoir.”

  The three of them crossed the Pont St. Michel and turned along the river to the rue St. Jacques. As they climbed the hill to the college, Bertamelli was visibly drooping and Charles was gritting his teeth against the pain in his shoulder. Damiot had begun discoursing educationally on doves, but neither of them was listening.

  When they reached the college postern, Charles tugged at the bellrope and a small thin lay brother nearly hidden under his canvas apron opened it.

  “Bonjour, mon frère,” Damiot said. “Do you know if our rector has come back?”

  The brother shook his head sadly as he shut the door behind them. “Alas no, and won’t for now. Nor Père Montville, either. They’re ill, both of them. We had word from Gentilly. The sickness is there, too.” He lowered his voice. “So we’re left tiptoeing around His Holiness till they’re well.”

  Charles and Damiot traded a look, and the college clock began to ring the dinner hour.

  “It will have to be the second plan, then,” Damiot said, and he and Bertamelli and Charles started through the arched stone passage toward the Cour d’honneur. Behind them, someone pulled hard at the postern bell and Charles heard his name called.

  “You in there!” Mme LeClerc’s voice was even more urgent and impatient than usual. “Maître du Luc, wait, I beg you, I need one very little word with you!”

  Mme LeClerc was Marie-Ange’s mother, wife to the baker who had the shop beyond the chapel’s street door. She and Charles shared a warm liking, but she talked like the Seine in flood, and listening took more effort than Charles wanted to make at the moment. And he didn’t want to miss dinner. Suppressing a sigh, he waved Damiot and Bertamelli on and turned back. The brother had the postern open again and was trying to tell Madame LeClerc that Charles was in the refectory.