Moulin stopped him, laughing. “But they can be yours now.” He made a half bow to Jouvancy. “If no one minds.”
Charles leaned down to feel the boot’s fit. “Put this one on, too, mon frère,” he said pleasantly. “They really do seem to fit you. Wait here one little moment.”
Looking at his notes, as though he’d just remembered an important question, he hurried to Le Picart and drew him a little distance away, talking low and fast.
“You’re sure they’re the same boots?” the rector said, gesturing at the scenery, as though that were their subject.
“As sure as I can be, though the spur garters are gone. Frère Fabre worked on the Hydra’s mouths this morning. Frère Moulin checked what he’d done, but he only checked two of the mouths. Mon père, Frère Fabre tried hard to mislead us about who left the poison for Antoine, and now his sister stands accused. And the boots of the man who attacked Antoine and tried to kill me fit him perfectly.”
“But he can’t be the man you chased, not with that hair!” Le Picart looked at Fabre, who was staring miserably at his feet, hardly seeming to hear his confrères’ teasing. “But yes, what you say is damning enough. I will question him. And I will have Père Dainville look at him in the passage upstairs. If it was Frère Fabre he saw coming out of Père Guise’s chamber, I will send for La Reynie.”
Le Picart and Charles crossed the stage and stood on either side of Fabre. Jouvancy rapped for silence and brought everyone back to the last-minute business of where to be tomorrow before the performance and when. When he finished, Le Picart picked up Fabre’s discarded shoes and said something in the boy’s ear. Fabre seemed to protest, then subsided and followed him dejectedly across the court.
Hoping against hope that Dainville would say it hadn’t been Fabre he’d seen, Charles forced himself back to the job at hand and went below stage to help with the damaged Hydra. Pernelle was holding a glue pot for Jouvancy.
“I suppose an Opera workman did it,” Jouvancy was saying as he brushed glue carefully onto the canvas skin where the patch would be. “Hid someone’s boots for a joke.”
“At least,” Charles said, “they fell out today and not tomorrow.”
Chapter 33
It took another two hours to finish the last-minute stage details. When all that could be done had been, Charles left Pernelle hidden under the stage—getting her back to his rooms was impossible until everyone was at supper—and went to find Père Le Picart. Père Dainville couldn’t say, the rector told him, if it was Frère Fabre he’d seen that day. If he’d seen the flaming hair, the old man said, he would be sure, but the passage had been dark and whoever it was had worn the regulation broad-brimmed outdoor hat. Fabre, in tears, had fiercely proclaimed his innocence, but Le Picart had sent for Lieutenant-Général La Reynie. When La Reynie got no further with Fabre, he’d tried to take him to the Châtelet but had finally agreed to Le Picart keeping the boy under the college version of house arrest for now. An agreement reached only after a pitched battle, Charles surmised, reading between the lines of the rector’s account. Fabre was shut into a small room, decently provided for, with a large, incurious brother posted at the door.
That was news enough, but Le Picart had saved the real news for last. When La Reynie had come to the college yesterday, the rector had told him, as he’d told Charles, that Père Guise was gone to Versailles. But this afternoon, after questioning Fabre, La Reynie told the rector that he’d sent a man to Versailles to make sure Guise was there. The man had returned to say that Guise was not, and had not been seen there. La Reynie now had two men watching the Hôtel de Guise, which was his best guess as to where Guise might be. La Reynie had also gotten a female spy inside the Guise house as a new kitchen maid, to listen to gossip.
“It may be,” Le Picart said to Charles, “and M. La Reynie obviously thinks so, that Père Guise has helped Mme Douté to escape. I suppose she could have sent a servant to him after Frère Fabre’s sister was taken away. And she could have bribed her sister’s servants to keep quiet about her disappearance. But even if Père Guise helped her, I think we will find that he is as devastated by what she has done as the rest of us. Remember, he used to be her confessor, it would be like him to try to bring her to penance before she is turned over to the police.”
Charles listened, but kept his thoughts to himself—admonishing himself the while for lack of charity—and agreed with Le Picart that whatever the truth was, the college’s priority now had to be tomorrow’s performance. The rest could wait on God’s good time.
On his way back to the stage, Charles found Père Jouvancy supervising brothers who were setting up rows of benches in the courtyard. Seizing his chance, he made a show of being on his last legs, not needing to put much acting into it.
“Mon père, do you think the kitchen might send me bread and cheese or something in my chamber? Enough for tonight and the morning, too?”
“Of course, Maître du Luc, of course,” Jouvancy said apologetically. “I am so sorry, I forget that you are still recovering from your wound. You have been working like a Trojan.”
When the supper bell emptied the courtyard, Charles walked Pernelle into the street passage, as though seeing “Jean” out. They slipped through the main building’s side door and made it to Charles’s rooms without meeting anyone. As he closed the door and dragged the heavy chest across it, his sigh of relief became a groan because Pernelle demanded washing water. The eccentric desire to wash ran in the family.
A lay brother brought a bucket of hot water, Charles filled his shaving basin, and Pernelle emerged from the study and made for the water like a peasant making for a side of beef.
“Out, Charles, go and pray, or whatever you do!” She untied the neck of her shirt.
Schooling his eyes like a novice nun, he retreated to the study. “Leave some for me. While it’s still warm!”
“Soap?”
“Under the towel beside my shaving mirror.”
Trying to ignore the blissful sighs from his bedchamber, he began to say Vespers. But his head was soon on his arms and he was nearly asleep when Pernelle dashed into the room, holding her shirt around her and clutching a dripping towel.
“Quick,” she hissed in his ear, “get wet.”
As he gaped at her, she wrung the towel out over his hair and face.
“Where do you want this, mon père?” a voice called from the bedroom.
Supper, Pernelle mouthed.
Charles waved her behind the door and grabbed the towel. “Coming, mon frère!” He went into the chamber, mopping his head and face.
“Thank you,” he said, as the elderly man squeezed the laden tray in next to the basin. “This is most appreciated.”
“Why are you keeping that chest in the middle of the floor like that? Someone will break a leg.” The brother eyed the basin and bucket. “Ill, are you?” He backed away.
“No, no, just tired and dirty.”
“St. Firmin preserve you,” the brother muttered as he fled, invoking a saint known to be effective against plague.
Charles dragged the chest back across the door, dipped the towel in the warm water, and scrubbed at his face, sniffing hungrily at the savory steam rising from the dishes.
“Wait your turn!” Pernelle whispered from the doorway.
He threw her the towel and went back to his desk. Watching dusk fall outside the window, he tried not to think about how much he was enjoying the camaraderie they’d settled into in their close and illicit quarters.
“Charles?” Pernelle came in, dressed in the LeClerc apprentice’s oversized breeches and one of Charles’s clean shirts, which hung to her knees. Her skin glowed from its scrubbing and her wet hair was a mass of short curls. “Why did those boots matter? Are they to do with the murders?”