The Rhetoric of Death by Judith Rock

your chapel door. My daughter Marie-Ange and I were returning from delivering bread to the boardinghouse kitchens. We’re bakers, LeClerc the baker, that’s us. The amount of bread these skinny students eat, you’d hardly believe it—but, there, I suppose you would. Anyway, we were walking back toward St. Jacques and Antoine was running this way, toward us. Though he hadn’t seen us. Marie-Ange called out to him, but just then a man coming toward us, that street porter, shouted, and I turned and saw a horse coming around the turn and galloping straight at Antoine. I yelled out to warn him and the porter jumped out and tried to frighten the horse and make it turn. Antoine dodged—he’s very fast, that little one—and I thought he was safe, but—” She shook her head and dropped her voice dramatically. “The rider swerved and went after him! And pushed him down! Antoine fell and the man kept going, if you can believe it. I sent my little girl running to the college for help and I went to see how badly the child was hurt. But that son of a pig Guise got there first and warned me off.”
    â€œThe rider swerved and went after the boy? Are you sure, madame?”
    â€œAs sure as I stand here and hope for salvation!”
    Charles turned to stare at the place where Antoine had fallen. “You say the man reached for him—Père Guise saw that, too. He said the rider was trying to push the boy out of the way.”
    â€œThen why didn’t he try to stop the horse or turn it?” She frowned and her eyes opened wider. “Unless he was reaching out for the boy because he was trying to snatch him up and ride off with him!” She stepped closer, her eyes avid. “Another thing I can tell you, he wore a mask!”
    â€œA mask, madame?” Charles quickly reassessed his informant, remembering Guise’s sneer at what he’d called her “lurid tale.”
    She crossed her arms over her straining bodice. “I see you don’t believe me. But I saw what I saw. I swear it. It was the kind of mask ladies wear when it’s cold. Or at Carnival. But—” She looked expressively up at the sky. “—it is not cold, not today, anyway. And it is not Carnival. And he was not a lady.” She eyed Charles triumphantly, as though she’d just bested him in a rhetorical display.
    â€œDid the porter also see the mask?”
    â€œIs he blind? Of course he did. And so did your mignon. But the porter will never tell you he saw it, now that your mignon has got hold of him.” She held a hand under Charles’s nose and rubbed thumb and fingers together in the age-old sign for money.
    Charles’s head was beginning to spin. “Père Guise gave him money?”
    Her shrug nearly took her ears off. “Why did the porter run away before you could talk to him? And Guise does not like my version of the story at all, you heard him.”
    â€œDid he offer you money to change your story, madame?”
    Mme LeClerc spat again. “That object knows better than to try his tricks with me.”
    â€œMadame, Père Guise is Antoine’s godfather. Why would he pay the porter to lie about what happened?”
    â€œWhy would the masked man ride the child down?”
    Charles opened his mouth, then shut it. It was not the moment for a logic lesson. “Did you notice anything else about the man, madame? What was his horse like?”
    â€œA rangy chestnut. Missing his manhood, if you know what I mean, poor thing.” She dimpled and Charles suddenly realized that she wasn’t much older than he was. “The horse was. About the man, of course, I couldn’t say.”
    Charles struggled to keep a straight face, thinking that the baker was a lucky man.
    â€œThe rider’s hat was pulled down low.” She paused, watching the air, obviously seeing the whole thing happen again. “Plain and flat the hat was, a