“At your pleasure, messieurs.” With more dignity than Charles would have thought he could muster, Montmorency stalked out of the office.
The silent proctor followed on his heels, and the blacksmith made an awkward and rueful bow to the rector and followed. The tutor went, too, but without taking any leave of Le Picart. Wishing he could follow them, Charles waited.
“Now,” Le Picart said. “Say what you would not before the others.”
Charles folded his hands and composed himself to be clear and brief. “Our errand went very well-”
“I already know all that. Père Jouvancy arrived before you and made his report. I sent him to rest. I want to know exactly why Montmorency was sent back here. Père La Chaise’s note said only to keep the boy here in the college and otherwise explained nothing, no doubt because he feared that the wrong person might read it. I assume that whatever happened at Versailles explains why Montmorency has been so unmanageable since he returned. God knows he is not bright, but he has never till now been a rule breaker. The bon Dieu permitting, he will soon finish his time with us. And if he can be prevailed upon to conduct himself acceptably in the meanwhile, I would prefer-for practical reasons-to let him finish.”
“Well you know, of course, about the Polish marriage that is being negotiated for the king’s daughter. And clearly you are also aware of Montmorency’s strong feelings about it, given his fight with Sapieha.”
“Yes. What of it?”
“Montmorency fancies himself in love with the girl.”
Le Picart brought a hand down hard on his desk. “What?”
“He swears that he will prevent Mademoiselle de Rouen from going to Poland. He asked me if I thought the king would let him win her right to stay in single combat.”
The rector stared at Charles, slowly shaking his head. “Dear Blessed Mary.”
“Montmorency is also doing his best to become one of the Prince of Conti’s followers. And Conti encourages him, though I cannot see why, unless for the Montmorency name.”
“Père La Chaise has spoken to me of his doubts concerning Conti’s loyalty,” Le Picart said grimly.
“I should tell you that Père La Chaise thinks there may have been a spy in Monsieur Louvois’s entourage during the recent inspection of the eastern fortifications. He thinks it was Conti’s spy. I suspect that Lieutenant-Général La Reynie thinks so, too. I saw him in the street the morning we left Paris, and he asked me to report anything I heard about Conti. But he refused to say why.”
“But what possible use can Conti have for Montmorency? Who would trust the poor boy with anything of importance?”
“No one, I would think. But Père La Chaise sent Montmorency home after I heard the boy telling Conti and his coterie that Mademoiselle de Rouen would not go to Poland if he could prevent it.” Charles hesitated and then decided to say the worst and have it over. “He also said he wished the king had died last winter, because then Mademoiselle de Rouen would not have to leave France.”
The quill Le Picart was toying with bent double in his hand.
“I have always known that our Monsieur Montmorency is stupid. But the fool is flirting with treason.”
“I think,” Charles said, “that he means treason only in his feelings. I’m sure he would be appalled to see the king lying dead at his feet. Unfortunately, he does not have enough imagination to realize what he could bring on himself. He also harped on seeking vengeance for Louis the Thirteenth’s beheading of the Duc de Montmorency fifty years ago.”
“That Montmorency was nearly as stupid as this one.” Le Picart made a disgusted sound and slapped in irritation at a fly, which fell from the air and landed at his feet. “For half a liard, I would pack this one off home and let his mother be as furious with me as she pleases!”
Charles had often thought he would pay a good deal more than that small-change coin to be rid of Montmorency. But he realized that the rector’s mentioning money was not an accident.
“How much has she promised us when he finishes his education honorably, mon père?”
Le Picart’s lean shoulders rose and fell, and he looked sideways at Charles. “More than I can afford to throw away by dismissing him now. I, the man, would turn my back on the money gladly. However I, the college rector, cannot.”
The college had been short of funds since last autumn. War was in the offing and people were keeping a tight hold on their money, and a looked-for bequest to the college had gone elsewhere during the winter. In February, Madame de Montmorency had “asked” that her son be given a good part in the February theatre performance, and her satisfaction with the school’s obedience to her veiled order had resulted in a welcome gift of gold. Now a second and larger gift was in the offing. So long as she was satisfied.
“I take it that you are not going to dismiss Montmorency?”
Le Picart’s face worked as though he were swallowing something as bitter as antimony. “No. I am not. I will do what I can to let him leave honorably at the end of August-and what I can to keep him away from court. So we will do what Père La Chaise asks and set a watch on him. You will be responsible for him in the rhetoric class and the rehearsals. When do those begin?”
“On Monday. I hope Père Jouvancy will completely recover now.”
“I think he will. I have ordered him to rest until then. Very well. Montmorency’s tutor can watch him from supper through the rest of the evening.” Le Picart’s nostrils flared. “And I will set one of the proctors to watch the tutor. A cubiculaire can take the morning watch.”
Charles took his leave, gave Jouvancy’s saddlebag to a lay brother to deliver, and went upstairs to prepare for supper. When he reached the third floor and opened the door to his bedchamber and tiny study, a burst of gratitude sang through him. After the opulence of Versailles, the plain plastered walls and beamed ceiling, the sun pouring through the west window onto the dusty board floor, the narrow, gray-blanketed bed and scanty furniture, all seemed like a modest heaven. Heaven not least because he could close the door and have the two small chambers to himself.
Charles dropped his saddlebag on the floor, hung his cloak over the old-fashioned rail attached to the wall and his outdoor hat on the hook beside it, and pulled off his riding boots and put them in the wall cupboard. Then he shoved his feet into his square-toed, high-tongued black shoes and went to the small table to clean his hands and face. A folded piece of paper with his name scrawled on it lay beside the water pitcher. He opened it and saw that it was a note from Père Thomas Damiot, his best friend in the college, who lived across the passage. Damiot was also the priest in charge of the bourgeois men’s confraternity, a religious and social group called the Congregation of the Holy Virgin, which met at Louis le Grand. Charles was his assistant. The note told Charles that an elderly member of the Congregation had died, and that Damiot wanted Charles to help him at the Monday morning funeral Mass at Holy Innocents cemetery across the river. Charles was pleased, because he rarely got to serve at a Mass. Finding his water pitcher empty and dry after nearly a week unused, he instead scrubbed the road dust from his face and hands with a linen towel. He combed his hair and, having a little while till the supper bell, opened his window and looked out.
The din of the rue St. Jacques, the Latin Quarter’s main street, rose to meet him. Warm in the late-afternoon sun, the square-cobbled street was full of people walking, riders on horseback and muleback, street vendors trying to sell the last of their wares, slow loaded carts, and carriages with red-and-gold wheels, whose cursing drivers tried to find a way through it all. Across St. Jacques, the dome of the Sorbonne church shone in the sun, and Charles crossed himself as a chanting procession of clerics and laypeople passed beneath his window, carrying a statue of St. Antoine, whose feast it was. Day students just released from Louis le Grand, Montaigu, St. Barbe, and the quartier’s other colleges raced down the hill toward the river, shouting and shoving and taunting each other for sheer exuberance at being done with classrooms for the day. Older students in the short black gowns of the University of Paris, along with still older and more dignified students of law, theology, and medicine, thronged bookshop displays on tables set up in the street, indifferent to the traffic. Clerics of all kinds came and went in longer gowns of black, brown, gray, and white. Pairs of nuns and other women walked together, and coiffed maidservants looking for late-day bargains crowded around the illegal makeshift market stalls blocking traffic where side streets joined St. Jacques. A juggler on stilts had stopped at the corner of the little rue des Poirées just across the street and was surrounded by an applauding crowd. As a cart driver came level with him, the juggler tossed one of his six spinning balls wild, and the driver caught it and threw it back with a friendly insult.