He shed his cassock, riding breeches, shoes, and stockings and stood in his long linen shirt eyeing the bed’s thin brown blanket. His woolen cloak was still wet, so he spread his cassock on top of the blankets, stirring the candle flame and sending shadows winging out from the crucifix hanging at the foot of the bed. He knelt, said the night prayers, gave thanks for his safe journey and this new assignment, and added prayers for Pernelle and her family. Surely, in the two months since he parted from them, they had reached Geneva. Let her—let all of them—be safe, he whispered, leaning his head on his clasped hands. Then he blew out the candle and slid between the coarse and worn flax sheets.
He woke to freezing feet and the clamor of bells. Peering blearily over the covers, he saw that his feet had neither mattress under them nor blanket over them. A common occurrence and his mother’s fault. His maternal forebears were the Norsemen who’d swept down from the Viking lands long ago to leave their name to Normandy, and their blondness and long bones to future generations. Charles was still gathering his sleep-sodden wits for morning prayers and rubbing one foot against the other for warmth, when a sharp rap at the door made him draw his feet out of sight like a startled turtle.
“Still sleeping, I see.”The lay brother sent the door bouncing back against the wall. He set a tray on the table and flung open shutter and casement to a flood of morning light that turned his red hair to a shock of flame. Charles grimaced. The light was as accusatory as the brother’s voice. It was obviously long past five o’clock, the normal rising time in a Jesuit college.
“Bon jour, mon frère,” Charles said, trying to reclaim some dignity.
The lay brother, lean and wiry under the heavy canvas apron over his shorter version of the Jesuit cassock, looked to be still in his teens, a good ten years younger than Charles.
“It’s half after six,” the brother said. “Those bells were for first classes. But I was told to let you sleep. Since you were so late getting here.” He stared down his long thin nose at Charles, who couldn’t tell whether the boy disapproved of all lateness, or was simply envious of his chance to stay in bed.
“I am Maître Charles du Luc, mon frère. May I know your name?”
“I am Frère Denis Fabre.” His disapproving gaze shifted to Charles’s feet, showing again beyond the end of the bed. “Your bed is too short,” he said, as though Charles had made away with part of it during the night. He turned to the table and began taking things off the tray. “The assistant rector, Père Montville, wants to see you,” he said over his clattering. “Immediately.”
Charles shot out of bed and hurriedly straightened its covers. “Mon Dieu, why didn’t you say so sooner?”
“You were asleep sooner. Here’s shaving water. And something to break your fast. The bread is stale. And the water won’t be hot now.”
“Good, fine, thank you.” Charles was searching in his bag for his razor. “Where do I go when I’m ready?”
“I’ll have to show you, won’t I?” Frère Fabre drifted out of the room, sighing faintly.
Charles rolled his eyes, laughing in spite of himself, and dug his razor out of his bag. He shaved himself badly in the cold water and got a crick in his neck peering at his greenish reflection in the little round mirror he’d brought. He nearly choked himself trying to get quickly through the dry bread and cheese. But in spite of his hurry, he uncorked his little pot of wine vinegar, salt, alum, and honey and gave his teeth a sketchy cleaning with the end of the towel. Not something most people would have done, but another thing he had to thank his mother for. He cleaned his teeth most days, and he even washed with water fairly often, instead of only changing his linen or wiping himself down with a dry towel. He took his brother Jesuits’ warnings about the likely consequences of his eccentric habits in good part and went his way, usually free of lice and, so far, with all his teeth.
He recorked the pot and pulled on his cassock. With a final gulp of heavily watered wine to dull the sting of his tooth cleaner, Charles clapped a new skullcap on his head for extra warmth and hurried into the passage. The lay brother, slumped against the wall and whistling tunelessly under his breath, broke off abruptly and was running a critical eye over him, when the door across from Charles’s opened and a thick-bodied Jesuit with long, curling black hair emerged. Ignoring both Fabre and Charles, he swept toward the stairs with his Roman nose in the air.
“Your cap is crooked, maître,” Fabre said to Charles laconically.
Gravely, Charles straightened it. “Better?”
Fabre nodded curt approval and loped down the stairs. After two narrow flights, the bare wooden stairs widened and became pale stone. A grand, stone balustraded curve decanted the two of them into an anteroom between the college’s tall double front doors and the grand salon, where the rector, Père Le Picart, and the senior rhetoric master, Père Jouvancy, had briefly greeted Charles the night before. Fabre led Charles across the salon to another anteroom and stopped at a closed door. Before he could knock, the door opened and a Jesuit backed slowly through it.
“But, mon père,” he was saying earnestly, “I beg you, you cannot imagine what this glorious painting would add—”
“I can imagine what our superior, our good Paris Provincial—not to mention Rome—would say about the cost,” someone beyond the door said tartly. “No, and again no. I am sorry.”
Pulling the door shut harder than was strictly necessary, the disappointed Jesuit muttered a greeting to Charles and clumped dispiritedly away. Fabre tapped on the door and it flew open.
“No, I tell you! Oh. Sorry, not you.” The speaker’s middle-aged pudding face relaxed into a beaming smile and he bowed slightly. “I am Père Montville, assistant rector here. You must be Maître du Luc. Come in, come in,” he said, as Charles bowed in return. “So long as you don’t want me to buy paintings. Thank you for delivering him, Frère Fabre.” He ushered Charles into his tiny office. “Every Jesuit wants something for his pet enthusiasm,” he sighed. “More paintings for the chapel, more telescopes, maps, books, I don’t know how the bursar keeps his sanity. And when he says no, they come to me!” He waved Charles to the only other chair in the room. “And you, I suppose, will want more ballet costumes.”
“But yes, mon père,” Charles said, ingenuously wide-eyed. “And all cloth of gold, please.”
“Don’t even think it.” Montville laughed. “Well, Maître du Luc, you are welcome to Louis le Grand! This morning we will see to the details of your life with us and get you settled in. A Jesuit college is, of course, a Jesuit college, but all have their differences, too. First, though, I must write you into my ledger of our scholastics.” He thumped the enormous leather-bound book lying on his desk. “Then you will see our rector, Père Le Picart. I know you met him last night with Père Jouvancy, but he wishes to talk with you further. I think you will find that we are fortunate in our rector—though his ability to see straight into our souls and out the other side can be a touch disconcerting.”
Montville laughed, but his description of the rector’s perspicacity made Charles’s stomach tighten, in light of his recent activities.
“After that,” Montville went on, “you must go to the clothing master. Your cassock, if I may say so, is showing the effects of your journey. Do you need anything else?”
“Perhaps another shirt, mon père, if he has one to spare. Other than that, I think I am well supplied.”