Plague of Lies

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The storm-riding demons of the air were gathered over Paris, hurling fire and thunder at the city’s cowering mortals. Every bell ringer in the city was hauling on his ropes, and his bells-baptized like good Christians for just this purpose-were wide-mouthed roaring angels fighting off the storm with their own deafening noise. The spring thunderstorm had begun north of the river, but now it raged directly over the rue St. Jacques, sending thunder echoing off walls and stabbing roofs and cobbles with spears of rain. In the Jesuit college of Louis le Grand, teachers and students were praying to aid the clanging bells. But the prayers of the senior rhetoric class dissolved into gasps and cries when lightning struck nearly into the main courtyard. The near miss made assistant rhetoric master Maître Charles du Luc’s skin tingle. And startled him into wondering if the demons of the air, in whom he mostly didn’t believe when the sun was shining, were bent on making this day his last on earth.

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