A Plague of Lies by Judith Rock

comes to it, I can carry you.” Though he hoped it wouldn’t, for the sake of his own oddly weak knees, as well as to lessen the gossip about Jouvancy’s sudden indisposition in case anyone saw them. Of course, as soon as he’d thought that, two men turned the corner ahead of them, walking in their direction.
    “What’s the trouble?” one said, taking in the two Jesuits in surprise.
    The other grinned. “Too much indulgence at dinner, I see.”
    “He’s ill,” Charles snapped, adding, “It’s contagious, I think,” for the satisfaction of seeing them scuttle away.
    Jouvancy was too short to rest an arm over Charles’s shoulder, and by the time they were making their way along the north side of the wing, the rhetoric master was limp, his feet barely shuffling. With a sigh, Charles picked him up in his arms like a child. Jouvancy’s head lolled against Charles’s shoulder and his eyes closed.
    Peering anxiously at the rhetoric master’s deathly pale face and closed eyes, Charles muttered anxiously, “Don’t lose consciousness,
mon père
, please!”
    “I haven’t,” Jouvancy quavered, opening one eye, “but I would like to.”
    With a relieved snort of laughter, Charles turned the corner of the gallery, where their chamber door was finally in sight. He edged through it and across the anteroom and laid Jouvancy carefully on the green-curtained bed. He removed the priest’s
bonnet
, untied the sash of his cassock and pulled off his shoes, and covered him with the green silk coverlet. Then he stood wondering what else to do.
    “Do you want a doctor,
mon père
?”
    “You’re supposed to take care of me,” Jouvancy said faintly.
    “Yes, but my experience is with battle wounds,” Charles replied. “If someone shoots you or runs you through with a sword, I can help you. But they haven’t.”
    “Such a pity,” Jouvancy returned, trying to laugh.
    Charles saw that he was starting to shiver and pulled a blanket over the coverlet. “Try to sleep a little,
mon père
. I will be here beside you, if you need me.”
    Jouvancy sighed and turned his head into the pillow. Charles went into La Chaise’s chamber for the stool. When he came back, Jouvancy was asleep. Charles watched him carefully, trying to remember what he’d looked like the day he’d fallen ill at the end of the rhetoric class. Pale, he remembered that. And weak. And spewing. But he hadn’t been so fevered as he seemed now. Charles went back to La Chaise’s chamber and rummaged in the cupboard for a towel. Then he emptied the old basin of water out the window into the courtyard and refilled it from the copper reservoir. Sitting on the stool with the basin in his lap, he prayed steadily as he wiped Jouvancy’s flushed face every few minutes to cool him. When the others returned, the rhetoric master was still fevered.
    “
Mes pères
, I think he needs a doctor,” Charles said, looking up at them from the stool.
    “Do you? But he isn’t as ill as he was at the college,” Le Picart said, looking anxiously at Jouvancy. “This was probably brought on by too much exertion, as you said earlier. I blame myself—I should have waited longer before sending him here.”
    “He is still very weak,” Charles said. “I realized yesterday as we traveled that he was weaker than I’d thought. That’s why—”
    “Oh, rest will probably cure him,” Montville said comfortably.“We must just let him sleep and feed him nourishing broth when he wakes. Isn’t that what Frère Brunet does?”
    “Plus his medicines,” Le Picart said.
    “Yes, medicines.” Charles was trying to curb his impatience. “I think Père Jouvancy needs them. Which is why he needs a doctor.”
    That got him surprised looks for his flat lack of deference.
    “A court doctor will bleed him,” La Chaise said, and Charles realized that till now he’d said nothing. “That will make him weaker.”
    Montville turned shocked eyes on La Chaise. “Don’t you believe in