Chapter 18
Trying to make sense out of his revelation, Charles went to his chamber for the ballet livret and then made his way through the last of the after-dinner hour’s quiet recreation in the Cour d’honneur to the rhetoric classroom. He went to the professor’s dais at the front of the long, white-walled room and put the livret on the seat of a high-backed oak chair. Experimentally moving his shoulder, which hurt less after Frère Brunet’s salve and rubbing, he walked between the rows of benches, straightening the ones pushed out of line and casting an eye along them to be sure the morning class had left nothing behind. When the college clock began to chime, he went to the classroom door, where a line of boys, watched by tutors and cubiculaires, was forming. Henri de Montmorency’s tutor was there, Montmorency was safely in the line, and Bertamelli was last, just behind him. So far, so good, Charles thought, and then saw that Montmorency was looking over his shoulder as Bertamelli whispered urgently to him. Charles and the little Italian’s cubiculaire hushed them-Montmorency’s tutor looking indolently on-and as the students came into the classroom, Bertamelli walked to his place as though tiptoeing over meringue. Jouvancy, arriving hard on Bertamelli’s heels, walked to the dais with Charles.
‘Welcome back to the classroom, mon père,” Charles said warmly. “You look very well.”
“Yes, thank you, I am. And you continue to escape our plague?”
“So far, thank all the saints. But Frère Brunet has told me that poor Charles Lennox is in the infirmary now.”
“Terrible timing to lose him now from rehearsals! But better now than later, I suppose. If our students keep dropping like flies, how can we rehearse? We must pray none of the rest get it.” Shaking his head, the rhetoric master took his place at the lectern, Charles standing behind and a little to one side. Jouvancy swept the class with his eyes. “Rise, messieurs.”
Everyone stood and took off their hats, and Jouvancy prayed. He gave thanks for the life of St. Aurelian, whose day it was; commended the class’s speaking, acting, and dancing to God; gave thanks for the king’s recovery and his own; prayed for the recovery of the ill, especially their classmate Charles Lennox; and nodded at everyone to sit.
“Today we begin working harder on our August sixth tragedy and ballet performance.” Jouvancy ducked his chin, swept the room with a wholly spurious glare from under his eyebrows, and gave the class his usual dire warning about the shortness of time. “I beg you to remember that the sixth of August is less than two months away. You will have to work like Trojans to be ready! Like soldiers building fortifications! Beginning on July the seventh, all three hours of our afternoon session will be given to rehearsing. Until then, we have only the second two hours, and this first hour for classroom work. Let us begin now with whatever you have prepared for the class hour.” He turned questioningly to Charles.
“Cicero, mon père. Recitations.” Which should hardly have needed saying, Charles thought with a mental sigh. It was nearly always Cicero.
“Excellent.” Jouvancy smiled happily at them. “We will see now how you do.”
The faces looking back at him registered every feeling from complacence to panic. Jouvancy divided the class in half, and he and Charles took fifteen boys each. Charles settled his group on the back benches, sat down facing them, and steeled himself to listen to them recite in turn the thirty-two parts of Cicero’s speech in defense of the poet Aulus Licinius Archias. In fact, the recitations, from memory, were not bad, Charles only correcting pronunciation here and there or supplying forgotten words. Each boy spoke twice, and then the first two spoke again, to make up the thirty-two parts. The only trouble was that Montmorency, already scarlet with embarrassment at needing Charles to supply nearly all his words, was one of those who had to speak a third time. But as he stood up, the hour bell rang and a very quiet sigh of relief whispered through the rest of the group like a breeze. With his own inner sigh of thankfulness, Charles told the students to move the benches to the side of the room and get the old costume hats they used for rehearsal. Then he went to consult with Jouvancy, who stood on the dais while his own group moved benches.
Shining with the excitement he always brought to the beginning of rehearsals, despite his dire prognostications of chaos and disaster, Jouvancy took the tragedy script from the lectern. “I will take the Erixane cast at this end of the room, and you and Maître Beauchamps will form your usual ballet ‘stage’ at that end. What do you hope to accomplish today?”
“I’ll complete the casting,” Charles said, taking the ballet livret from the chair where he’d left it. “And see what Monsieur Beauchamps has done while we were-”
Charles broke off as heels rapped over the floor and Maître Pierre Beauchamps swept into the room as though onto a stage. His morose skinny servant slouched behind him, carrying the wooden case that held Beauchamps’s violin. Jouvancy and Charles went to greet Beauchamps, who made them a perfect bow.
Since Jesuits created the ballets but didn’t teach the dances, every Jesuit college hired a dancing master from outside to prepare students for performances. Beauchamps, though, was more than a dancing master. He was probably the best dancing master in Europe and certainly the best dancing master in France, director of the Royal Academy of Dancing, dance director of the Royal Academy of Music, and Creator of the King’s Ballets. At Louis le Grand, he not only taught each ballet’s dances but often wrote and directed the ballet music. Having him as the college dancing master was like having St. Peter for the parish curé.
“Welcome back,” the dancing master said. “I rejoice to see you in better health, Père Jouvancy.”
“I thank you,” Jouvancy said austerely. “I trust you are well, also.”
“Always, always.” Smiling broadly, Beauchamps turned to Charles. “I trust you enjoyed Versailles, maître?”
Knowing that Beauchamps had spent years at court as both the king’s dancing master and fellow performer, Charles chose his words carefully. “It was certainly another world.”
Beauchamps’s mouth quirked at one corner. “What a very politic summing up.” He stepped to the center of the room.
“Bonjour, messieurs.” The dancing master bowed to the students.
“Bonjour, Maître Beauchamps,” the class said in unison, and bowed in return. Then, at a nod from Jouvancy, the boys took off their scholar’s gowns and hung them on the hooks provided, since rehearsing in only their jackets, shirts, and breeches made it easier to move and easier for directors to see and correct mistakes.
As the ballet cast marked the edges of their “stage” with old costume hats, Jouvancy reclaimed Beauchamps’s attention. “Maître du Luc will observe what you have done in our absence and approve it.” He paused fractionally. “Or not.”
Beauchamps breathed in slowly through his nose and twitched at the ivory lace cascading from his blue coat cuffs. Jouvancy was making it more than clear that he had not forgiven Beauchamps for going to Italy in January and absenting himself from preparations for the February show that had ushered in Lent.
“I’m sure all will go well,” Charles said quickly, restraining himself from stepping physically between the two. “Shall we begin, mon père?” With a brilliant smile at Jouvancy and without waiting for an answer, he ushered Beauchamps toward the other end of the room.
“What a diplomat you have become,” Beauchamps murmured. “Do we owe this to your experience as a courtier?”
“I hope not.”