The bathhouses made no distinction of rank, nor even of sex. Men and women entered through the same door, shed their clothes in the same damp heat, and let the steam decide what, if anything, still mattered.
Louis, Nicolas, and Quentin lowered themselves into the same tub, a broad iron-bound wooden vat, already steaming. The water was scalding at first, then bearable, then almost pleasant. Shoulders began to loosen.
Shirts removed, bare skin sometimes brushed against skin. An arm, a thigh, a flank. Nothing intentional. Nothing innocent, either. The clouded water masked what was not customary to look upon, and each man kept to the same unspoken rule: never to name what the body, for its part, already knew.