Judith Rock - The Rhetoric of Death

Table of Contents

It only takes a writer to create a manuscript, but it takes many people to create a book, and I am more grateful than I can say to those who have helped this one come into being. Damaris Rowland, my agent, has believed in me against all odds, taught me what I needed to know, and kept me writing. Shannon Jamieson Vazquez, my editor, has believed in Charles and his story and has been welcoming, meticulous, and every good thing an editor could possibly be to a new fiction writer.

To those who helped with research, warm thanks, indeed. Patricia Ranum generously shared her extensive knowledge of seventeenth-century clothing, and of Jesuit clothing in particular. Ryan Auer and Jeremy Zipple, S.J., also helped with information about what Charles would have worn. John Padberg, S.J., whom I think of as Charless literary godfather, gave me essential feedback about details of Jesuit life and attitudes. Any historical or other mistakes that remain are solely mine.

Finally, to all those who have read and responded to the manuscript at various stages, my thanks for helping Charles come to life. And a special thank-you to Lydia Veliko, who saw into Charless heart.

JULY 5, 1686

The sun of Languedoc poured down like molten brass. As the sound of water began to murmur in the still air, the man huddled under his wide-brimmed clerical hat straightened in the saddle and sighed with relief. A few more minutes, and the Gardon River lay before him, rippling blue and green and gold beneath the Pont du Gard. When were across, ma douce, the man murmured encouragingly to his tired horse, well stop and drink. As she plodded onto the bridge and the shade of the Roman aqueducts upper level swallowed them, the man looked through the wide stone arches at the river below, wondering as he did every time he crossed, how the Romans had done it. The aqueduct no longer carried springwater to the town of Nmes, now safely eleven miles behind him. But as a bridge, it looked likely to stand a second sixteen hundred years. On the far bank, he dismounted and led the horse upstream away from the road, around a stand of scrub oak and down a gentle slope to the water. As she drank, he looked up and down the river, listening intently. He was almost sure he wasnt being followed, fairly certain hed gone unseen that night in Nmes. That terrifying night was more than a month past now, but as things were, it was foolish to be too sure of anything.

He saw no one, heard only the rivers music and the mare sucking in water. The heat had stilled even the birdsong. He tethered the mare under a wide-canopied oak, well hidden from the road but in reach of rough grazing, and loosened the saddle. On a river-lapped rock under the tree, he stripped off his cassock and shook the white limestone road dust from it, dropped it on the rock, and set his flat-crowned black hat on top of it. Because anything white would show like flame against the shade, he also shed his long, high-collared, sweat-soaked linen shirt. Then, still in the black knee breeches hed put on under the cassock for riding, he lay flat on his stomach to drink and splash his face. The cool water felt so good that he dipped his head under and came up shaking himself like a happy dog. With a grunt of satisfaction, he rolled over, pulled off his boots and stockings, and stretched his legs to let the river slide over his bare feet. No Jesuit should be this naked in public, but was he in public if there was no one to see him? Smiling wryly at his self-serving logic, he lay back on the rock and squinted at the hard blue sky, figuring the time. Last nights wine-drenched family gathering had made for little sleep and a very late start. An hours rest out of the morning could hardly matter. He put a hand behind his head to cushion it and shut his eyes.

If a casual passerby had noticed Matre Charles Matthieu Beuvron du Luc on his shady rock, he would have seen only a young man taking his ease without a care in the world. Though Charless left arm rested carefully across his middle, a war wound in the Spanish Netherlands having left him unable to lift it higher than his shoulder, he was good to look at, big and broad-shouldered and brimming with life. His straw-colored hair, long since grown over the symbolic little Jesuit tonsure given at first vows, was drying in thick, unruly curls, and his face was tanned to pale gold. More than a few women still sighed over the sad fact that Charles du Luc had chosen a cassock.

Seven years a member of the Society of Jesus, Charles had finished the two-year novitiate and taken first vows, the three traditional promises of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Now, in what Jesuits called the scholastic phase of his training, a long period of study and teaching, his final vows and ordination as priest were still some years off. Because he already wore the Jesuit cassock, laypeople often called him pre, or father, but his real title was matre, meaning master or teacher, and his present work was teaching rhetoric, both Latin and French. Rhetoric was the art of communication, and because Jesuits believed that the body, too, should be eloquent, his teaching included directing the student ballets, which were part of the school dramatic productions. Charles had spent the five years since finishing his novitiate assigned to the Jesuit school in Carpentras, the same school hed attended as a boy. Now, after a brief farewell visit to his familyminor Provenal nobility scraping a bare living from their vineyards deep in the countryside beyond Nmeshe was on his way to Paris to teach at Louis le Grand, the flagship of the Jesuit schools in France.

Or on his way into discreet exile, depending on how you looked at it, he thought, wriggling into a more comfortable hollow in the rock. Far from being at ease there beside the river, he was a hairsbreadth from being a fugitive. If his cousin the bishop changed his mind... But he wouldnt. God send that he wouldnt.

Six weeks ago on Charless twenty-eighth birthday, his mothers most trusted servant, old Fanchot, had ridden at a gallop into the Carpentras college courtyard, reined his lathered horse to a halt in a spray of gravel, and half fallen from the saddle. Refusing to tell anyone else what he wanted, hed bullied his way to Charles.

Get gone, Matre Charles. Fanchot had gasped when they were private, and pulled a wrinkled letter from his belt. Your girls in mortal danger.

Not mine anymore, Fanchot, Charles had said sternly, not needing to ask what girl. But his heart had turned over. Hed given the exhausted old man into the care of the lay brothers and gone to his chamber to read the bad news in privacy, the bad news about Pernelle, his second cousin, his first love. It was very bad news, written in Mme du Lucs native Norman dialect, which all her children had learned along with Provenal.