A Calculus of Angels (23 page)

Bienville stared at the map unfurled before them and took out his pipe. “Your point is taken, sir. Our first priority is to find civilization from here on.”

“Are we all agreed on this, then?” Mather asked.

“Aye,” Blackbeard said.

“It seems sensible,” Red Shoes added.

As the council began to break up, Red Shoes noticed Mather—not for the first time—favoring him with a hard glance.

“Reverend?” he asked, when the others were gone. “You have a question to ask of me?”

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“I have been meaning to speak to you for some time,” Mather acknowledged, lifting his chin slightly, almost in a gesture of defense—as if Red Shoes had caught him doing something wrong. For just an instant, the Choctaw felt disoriented, as if he were once again speaking to the
oka nahollo,
once again being challenged by the Lower World.

Remembering that the spirit had suggested some connection between itself and the Europeans, he idly wondered how misplaced the feeling was.

“What shall we speak of?” Red Shoes asked.

“The Invisible World, and your relations thereof.”

Red Shoes blinked. “A subject we have already discussed, I believe. Did I not pass all your tests?”

“I am a man of science, and now freely admit that my tests were of no use. I
saw
your familiar spirit.”

“You were able to see that? See my shadowchild?”

“I saw the demon you dispatched to make the wire burn, yes,” Mather replied, eyes sparkling oddly. “I have warned you, my friend. You will damn yourself.”

Red Shoes sighed. “What you saw was not a spirit as you perceive them, Reverend, but a child of my shadow.”

“What nonsense is this?”

How odd it was, Red Shoes thought, that this man could claim to know of this

“invisible world” and yet not know so simple a thing as the distinction between a shadowchild and a spirit.

“Each man, each woman, is made of three things,” Red Shoes began, “in life, at least: the flesh, the
shilombish,
and
the shilup.”

Mather pursed his lips as if to comment, but after an instant, waved him on.

“Explain those words, please.”

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“The
shilup
is the soul, the essence, the breathing part of a man. When we die, it goes beyond the sunset.”

“And the other?”

“The
shilombish.
That is the shadow, the reflection, the image each of us carries. The
shilombish
remains to haunt the living sometimes.
Isht ahollo
send them out to see distant places or divide them to create helpers.”

“Amazing,” Mather said. “Do you speak of the plastic spirit? You do, I think.”

“Plastic spirit?”

“The essence of pattern God has placed in all creation, that life uses to live, that angels, devils, and some men may bend to their wills. Did you read of this?”

“My people have understood the shadow for a very long time. It is our defense against witches—and those spirits which create witches.”

“I know you believe what you say,” Mather told him, “but you have been deceived by the devil into this practice of yours, indentured yourself to the dark forces without even knowing it. I am grateful that you saved our lives. It was that act—selfless, no matter how diabolical the aid you summoned—that convinces me you can be saved, brought into the covenant of grace, despite Satan.”

“What would you have me to do?”

“Confess, and seek the covenant of forgiveness and grace. I can help you find it.”

Red Shoes smiled grimly. “And what if you need me again to save your life?”

“I would rather see your own soul saved than my life.” There was something about the way that Mather said this that took Red Shoes momentarily aback, as if the preacher had said something else, something altogether more A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

threatening. But his expression remained mild, caring even.

“Believe me, Reverend, I would be only too happy to forgo my practices—they give me no pleasure. But if I were to dispense with my guardians—if I did not shape my
shilombish
to defend me—then I would be damned indeed, for the devils you speak of would drag my true soul to the Nightland and send it wandering about, naked and miserable.”

“Even a pact with the devil can be broken, forgiven. Whatever he has made you think, he does not own you. You can be pried from his clutches.”

Suddenly Red Shoes was very annoyed. Was his English so bad, that every single thing he said could be so completely misunderstood by this man?

“Thank you once again for your concern, Reverend,” he said, just to end it. “I will think on all you have said.”

“Please do. I am fully prepared to guide you and help you in your struggle against the devil. I have spoken to you honestly and openly before preferring any other action against you. What happens next is up to you.”

He left, and Red Shoes remained in the cabin, staring at the air as if he could see the preacher’s implied threat, hanging there, itself a sort of entity.

7.

Wine, a Cup, and Two Drops of Wax

With her eyes closed she could still see, though it was not natural vision. Gone the uneasy sky of lacerated clouds, the knee-high grass of the hilltop, the A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

melancholy silhouettes of gravestones. In their place—wonder.

In two weeks she had learned much, but answers still stood in impoverished ratio to questions. She opened her eyes again—her real ones—so that she could scribble in her book, something impossible to do while gazing at the living texture of its matter.

What the living eye sees is a surface, an analogy. It does not see matter, but
the light reflected by matter, its speed and angle determining color and
brightness. It is elementary to say that matter is compounded of the four
atoms, but it is another thing to see, with angel eyes, what compasses the
atoms themselves.

My hand is sensible to the aetheric harmonies of nature. When I gaze upon a
stone I see not the light reflected from the stone, nor yet the atoms composing
the stone, but rather the aethereal ferments within which the atoms are
enmeshed. This is perhaps why each thing has something of the appearance
of sand on a drumhead struck or the blurring tines of a tuning fork. There
and not there, a remarkable thing. A more curious aspect of my vision is that
what I perceive has the look of a drawing or diagram. The world becomes an
etching, as if God drew His creation in pen and ink. I must conclude, that
even with this hand
—
this
manus oculatus—
I cannot perceive things as they
actually are, but must have them discovered to me in figures I already know.

For instance, at night I see the stars, though clouds may bar the way to my
mortal orbs. They are not brighter or dimmer but more or less massy,
nimbused by arcs and waves which intersect in unthought-of patterns, but
which nevertheless have the look of the illuminations in Huygen’s Treatise on
Light. Beholding Jupiter, I perceive the knots by which its moons are bound,
and the fist of the sun, on an arm unimaginably long, grasping the king of
planets himself.

I can also see the malakim, or at least the ones that attend Crecy and myself.

They are strange to look upon, like Jove both a part of and separate from the
harmonies around them, systems, so to speak, unto themselves, and more
disorderly than nature, more manifold. As yet I can see no pattern in them,
no start for a calculus of angels. This much is clear: They are not things of
atoms but of aether, ferments without content, or with very little content.

Those that become visible to human vision
—
like the flaming eyes which
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attended Gustavus
—
do so, I think, by drawing substance into their
emptiness, as a man might draw smoke into his lungs.

They have offered their aid, and they have shown me how to see through my
hand
—
they speak to me through it. What they show me is wonderful beyond
measure, but I must be wary, for, despite everything, I still fear damnation. I
cannot believe in the godless universe of the Korai.

She sat for some time on the hilltop, absently running her natural hand over her strange one, wondering where her heart was. Her discoveries brought her joy that she had not known since childhood, and yet it was not an unmixed pleasure. Something seemed amiss, though it was hard to characterize what.

Perhaps it was like being given something one did not deserve.

But, no, that wasn’t it either.

And then, in the next instant, she had it. It was like being asked to guess a wonderful secret—one that you know upon hearing you
could
guess, given a few moments—and then having the simpleton who posed it impatiently blurt the answer. It was a sort of robbery, a diminishment—-an insult. Now that she understood her feelings, she saw how silly they were. One could learn much of the heavens with the eye, but if a telescope made the task easier, it would be foolish not to use one.

She rose, dusting grass blades from her petticoats. Nearby, the gravestones regarded her silently, and beyond them the bell tower of the country church down the hill. As she hesitated, unsure which direction to walk, a lively whistling interrupted her solitude. She turned to see Hercule d’Argenson strolling up the hill behind her.

“Ah,” he called, his voice half stolen by the whipping wind. “How fair and rare the flowers on this hillside.”

“I see no flowers,” Adrienne said, lifting wide her arms to indicate the bloomless vista.

“No, soft, it has just now bloomed, raised its petals at the wind,” he called back. He was close enough now that she could hear the whisk of grass against A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

his riding boots. His forest-green coat hung open, the same-colored waistcoat buttoned only half up, lending him a country air.

“Sir, by the tenor of your flattery I would guess you to have been a courtier at Versailles, but I don’t recall having ever seen you there. I wonder where else they train such adroit hyperbolizers.”

“I have no idea what you mean. How have I been ingenious?”

“To see a flower in this,” she answered, indicating herself, “takes more than a little genius.”

He clucked and waggled a finger at her as he crossed the last few yards to stand at a comfortable nearness. “Now who plays the courtier?”

“How mean you?”

He stepped back, hand theatrically to chest. “ ‘You are a blossom,” he says to her, and answers she, “Not so!” And he repeats himself. “I am so unlike to a flower,” saysshe, “that it needs you must explain yourself ’Why in the rose blush of your cheeks, Demoiselle,” answers he, “in the supple swell of your bosom, so like to the lotus blossom‘—and the like. In denying my praise you only curry more of it.”

She laughed. “You have the better of me, sir. I only thought I said you were exaggerating, when in fact you reveal to me my own true nature. I thank you humbly.”

He laughed. “May I take your arm, Mademoiselle?”

“Only so you promise not to take it too far, Monsieur
Renard.”

He chuckled again, slipping his arm through hers. “No fox, I, Demoiselle, but only a loyal and stubborn hound. Were you bound anywhere in particular?”

“No. The village is empty?”

He nodded, and some of the good humor went from his voice. “Yes. They are, A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

perhaps, hiding nearby, for the houses show signs of recent habitation.”

“The duke’s men? Will they—?”

D’Argenson shrugged. “As of now they are well disciplined. They will not loot, at least not very much. But I fear before the march is over— Well, we have mountains to cross, and when food is short and fear is everywhere, even virtuous men become less so.”

“How true,” she murmured. “And women the same.”

He tightened his grip on her just slightly. “I can imagine no deed which you could have committed that you do not redeem by your simple existence.”

“You have a limited imagination, then.”

“Mademoiselle,” he said, uncharacteristically softly, “I have no surfeit of imagination; but better, I have intelligence. And I repeat myself. I cannot imagine—nor have I heard of— anything you might have done for which you should bear shame.”

“That, sir, is because you are a rogue, without moral sense or scruples.”

“Oh, yes, true. But what of it?”

“Nothing of it. Your kindness comes from knavery, but since it still has the seeming of kindness—well, I will simply thank you.” And was surprised that, even as she smiled—a real smile, not her old accustomed frauds—her eyes moistened.

“You will dine with the duke this evening?” he asked.

Adrienne nodded, finding herself momentarily without speech. They could now see the camp in the valley below, tents laid out in rows more neat than any real town, the wagons massed together, horses unhitched.

“I, unfortunately,” d‘Argenson went on, “must scout ahead with the cavalry, for we know nothing of the roads. Treat the duke carefully, my dear. He is still A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

just a boy, whose heart is not as well defended as yours or mine.”

“I am mindful of that,” she answered, patting his hand.

When she reached her tent, she found Crecy leaning uncertainly against the frame, slender as a reed in a gown of green silk. She met Adrienne’s chagrined frown with a narrow grin of triumph.

“Veronique, have you no sense? Has the doctor given you leave to walk about?”

“The doctor would rather keep me on my back, I think, and circumscribed by sleep for his benefit, but I will not oblige him,” Crecy answered. “My strength is returning.”

“If you overtax, it will desert you again.”

“Don’t fear for me. My own health is of great concern to me.” She narrowed her eyes slightly. “What of you and—and our friends?”

“I have been exploring,” she said. “It is marvelous, what they give. So much so that I keep wondering what the price shall be.”