A Plague of Lies Read Free

his seat and flung his arms wide.
    “But,
maître
,” the Italian boy wailed, “I cannot speak Greek, it hurts my tongue!”
    Snorts of laughter erupted along the benches, and Charles bit his lip to keep from laughing himself. Henri de Montmorency, the eighteen-year-old dull-witted scion of a noble house, turned on his bench and gaped at Bertamelli.
    “You’re mad. Words can’t hurt anything!”
    Charles called the class back to order, fixed Bertamelli with his eye, and schooled his face to stern disapproval. The boy’s scholar’s gown had slipped off one shoulder to reveal his crumpled and grayed linen shirt, and his huge black eyes were tragic with pleading. He was one of the most gifted and passionate dancers Charles had ever seen, but he was also proving nearly impossible to contain within Louis le Grand’s rules—and probably its walls, though Charles preferred not to think about that. He suspected that the little Italian would not be with themlong, though who would crack first, Bertamelli or the Jesuits, he wouldn’t have cared to predict.
    “To put Monsieur Montmorency’s puzzlement more politely,” Charles said, with a sideways frown at Montmorency, “how does Greek hurt your tongue, Monsieur Bertamelli?”
    “That language has hard edges, sharp edges,
cruel
edges. It bites me! My tongue is a tender Italian tongue!” To be sure Charles understood, he stuck the sensitive member in question out as far as it would go.
    “No need for scientific demonstration, Monsieur Bertamelli, and please pull your gown closed over your shirt. And if at all possible, compose yourself.”
    Bertamelli yanked his gown onto his shoulder, pulled it straight, and clasped his thin brown hands together under his chin. His eyes grew even larger. “My tongue—”
    “Let your tongue rest,
monsieur
, and make your ears work. Hear three things that I am going to tell you.” Charles held up his thumb. “Number one: Learning Greek will strengthen the sinews of your tender Italian tongue.” His first finger joined his thumb. “Two: Every educated man must learn Greek. We speak Latin here in the college because Latin is the international language of scholarship, but what the Romans wrote in Latin is rooted in what the Greeks wrote.” Charles’s third digit uncurled and his eyes swept the classroom and came to rest on Montmorency. “Three: And this is for each of you. You will observe the rules of classroom behavior. If you want to speak, put up your hand—as you all know very well. Now, Monsieur Bertamelli, sit down and prepare yourself for your Greek recitation.”
    Bertamelli sat. Two tears spilled from his wounded black eyes and he wiped them with the edge of his gown, gazing at Charles like a martyr forgiving his tormentors. The room filledslowly with a quiet, dogged murmuring that Aristotle surely would not have recognized as his native language.
    Charles left the lectern and opened one of the long windows, letting in a rush of the unseasonably cool air the storm had brought. The rain had stopped, leaving behind the music of water dripping from the blue slate roofs and splashing onto the courtyard gravel. Charles had come to the school from the south of France less than a year ago, but he’d quickly learned to love Louis le Grand’s sprawl of ill-matched buildings grouped around graveled courtyards. Some buildings were five stories of weather-blackened stone, the oldest were two stories and half-timbered, and a few were bright new brick with corners and windows trimmed in stone. All the roofs bristled with chimneys and towers. Some of the courtyards had shade trees and benches, two had gardens, one had an old well, and one boasted an ancient grapevine on a sunny wall. Rounded stone arches led to passages between the courts and from the enormous main courtyard, called the Cour d’honneur, out to the rue St. Jacques.
    It was in the Cour d’honneur, outside the rhetoric classroom windows, that the outdoor stage for the