Judith Merkle Riley (9 page)

Following the route of the royal posts, and taking care to travel, when possible, in a company of merchants or the train of an illustrious nobleman for the sake of safety, Nostradamus and his servant made unusually good time, finding themselves traveling from Orléans to Paris by mid-August. All the way, Nostradamus grumbled to himself that he would have made even better time without Léon, and it was all his wife’s fault for being so nervous about him. After all, hadn’t he traveled alone all through the known world in his youth? I mean, should a man be reduced to dragging along a
valet
like some dandy who changes his clothes three times a day just because his
wife
gets nervous?

“At least he’ll write to me to let me know how you are,” she’d said, “and you know you always get too busy for things like that.”

“
Write?
” answered the old man. “The fellow can’t even hold a pen.”

“But he was with my father for twenty years before he came to us, and he’s absolutely devoted, and he knows how to hire a public letter writer as well as anyone. Besides, Léon is very practical. You need looking after.” So Léon came, and he wasn’t so bad after all, being very practical, but still, if you considered the added expense of another mouth and the fact that it was an insult when a man had traveled to the heart of Arabia by himself and escaped the clutches of the Great Sultan in Constantinople and studied the secrets of the Cabbala among the Magi of the Holy Land, and never needed a babysitter of a servant to follow him about…

He was grumpily considering this problem at a particularly debased watering place that kept its custom only by monopoly of location, when he noticed something odd. Or rather, somebody odd. A girl out of place, unaccompanied except by the biggest, ugliest hound puppy he had ever seen. The gangling thing lolloped around her in circles, smelling everything, and she addressed it as Gargantua. This made the old man perk up. Literary. Hmm. Genteel, too genteel to be without a duenna. One footman, if you can call a peasant boy without livery a footman. Dressed in a made-over mourning gown too short in the hem, but not in the least sad. The aura—guilty about not being guilty—she’s just done something outrageous. Very preoccupied with some unusual task. And here was the queer thing. Most auras the old prophet saw clung about the person like a limp cloak, readable but unremarkable. Once, however, he had seen a shepherd with an immense one that radiated nearly twenty feet. He had bowed to him and addressed him as a future Pope. But this demoiselle, how curious. Her aura
hiccupped
. First it would swirl close, then pop out, here, there, only to be sucked back in again. Something was going on. She was changing. From what into what?

Curiosity overcame him, and he looked closer. With her delicate aquiline profile, olive skin, and heavy, curling dark hair, she looked more like a southerner, but taller than the women of the south. And she had a regal posture, but heavens! The most angular of elbows, the boniest of ankles, and the largest feet! Different, somehow. People might call her handsome, beautiful even, but never pretty. He addressed her; she answered in the local accent, but looked long at him with a pair of dark, assessing eyes not unlike his own. Yes, something southern.

Generously, he gave her fortune without charge, at which she was insulted and turned her back on him. Her horse was tied in the shade. A little brown
roussin
heavily overburdened with a gaudily tooled and painted lady’s sidesaddle. Nostradamus scratched at his temple, where it felt as if a gnat were walking. No, not a gnat. It was his hidden sense, telling him that this pretentious, irritating creature was part of the problem he was mulling over. Somehow
she
was connected to the fate of France. Something would happen within the next twenty-four hours, something that involved her.

AU FEU, AU FEU,
meurent les Lutheriens!
Death to all heretics!” A fierce mob was crowding beneath the heavy portcullis at the city gate of Orléans, and spilling out onto the road beyond. The coarsest soul could not fail to shudder at their grim chant; gooseflesh rose all over my body, and my heart grew as heavy as a stone. For there in the midst of them was a man in his shirt, his knobby knees bleeding from a previous fall, carrying a heavy bundle of kindling on his back. A heretic being led out to be burned alive. Who? I didn’t recognize him. Perhaps even the glove merchant himself. And what of Father? The boy at my bridle shrank from the unruly crowd, while I was all the more anxious to make haste to pass through the crowded gates.

“Demoiselle, you’ll find it hard going to enter while the world wishes to press out,” I heard a man’s voice say, and I looked down to see a heavy, rough sort of fellow, pressing through the crowd toward me. He looked like an artilleryman on the way to join his company: he had his powder charges strung around his neck, and he was carrying a bundle on his back. At his side was a short sword, and on his head a battered hat with the scrap of a plume. What was it that looked wrong about him?

“Where is your harquebus?” I asked.

“Ah, Demoiselle, there is the story—it’s left for security with a pawnbroker on the rue Sainte-Anne within the walls, and I can’t rejoin my company without it. Put my bundle behind your saddle and I’ll help your boy clear the way.” Still in shock at the sight before me, I nodded silently. Gargantua sniffed at the bundle as he tied it on, as if it contained something delicious, like a ham, but then, Gargantua thinks old shoes are appetizing. “Make way, make way, for the demoiselle who is called to her grandmother’s deathbed,” cried the soldier, and this plus his bulky and warlike person pushed us all the way to the gate.

“Gillier, you old salt-smuggler, halt where you are,” cried one of the guards at the gate, and two others rushed out to grab him before he could unsheathe his sword.

“Halt? I’ll have you know I’m a reformed fellow, in the service of this lady here,” he said. Now people were stopping to look at our little drama, and despite my facade of cool and ladylike elegance, I was all in a panic to hurry on before someone recognized me as the daughter of the man who had rented the heretic his house.

“I’m visiting my sick aunt, Madame Tournet, who lives near the cathedral square,” I said by way of explanation. The guards were searching the soldier, and I intended to give them his bundle, but then the thought of Villasse’s purchased salt monopoly rose in my gorge, and I saw no reason to be of assistance, even posthumously. Why hand over the evidence, whispered my Sensible Self. It will just involve you and slow you down. Very good, said my Higher Self, for once we agree. If the package is salt it ought to be free anyway, since it was created in great plenitude by God for the use of all men. That despicable Villasse would have tried to charge for air, if it had been possible. Then it occurred to me that it was all his own fault he’d been murdered, because God obviously had wished him to perish for his greed, so that I was merely a Divine Instrument, and therefore hardly to blame at all.

In the midst of these cogitations, I felt a sudden nervousness that certain earthly authorities, currently engaged in executing the glove merchant, might not fully understand my role as Divine Instrument quite correctly. The soldier, or perhaps salt-smuggler, cast me a frightened glance, as if to say, don’t give my bundle to them. It then came to me that questioning about my possession of an illicit package might well lead to the uncovering of the unfortunate accident to Monsieur Villasse. My brilliant mind responded at once. “My aunt said I must not delay. I’ve a letter to her from my mother,” I said, my voice high and snobbish. As I watched them squint at the address, I realized they couldn’t read.

“Good enough, pass through,” said the guard. “But your servant is going to the
bailli
.” He’ll soon enough be let out, I thought, since they have no evidence, and we are both as free as birds. Once again, the higher mind triumphs over the artifices of the uncouth. As my boy and I passed through the gate, a curious dark man with an earring moved to speed in behind us. If I had been less modest, I would have thought he was trying to follow me.

“Not you, fellow,” I could hear the guards say behind me. “You look like a foreigner. If you can’t show business within the walls, you can’t enter. This city is no place for aliens and masterless men.” Entirely proper, I thought. One cannot be too careful what sort of criminal riffraff one admits within city walls.

***

All moral literature informs us that it is the fate of criminals to sink ever lower in social standing until their final meeting with Ultimate Justice, which hurls them into the pit. It struck me as I leaned from my horse to lift the bronze knocker on Aunt Pauline’s courtyard gate that perhaps I was more criminal than I had supposed. The house looked untended and the gate was not new as I remembered it, but unpainted, with rusting hinges. The walls on either side of it were crumbling and vine-covered. Perhaps fleeing to this decayed place was my first step Downward.

Again I knocked, this time louder. Still, there was no answer. Suppose Aunt Pauline had died unexpectedly, or moved away, and we had never been told? An unpruned plum tree from some hidden garden within had dropped spoiled fruit over the wall, and the sweet stink mingled with the filthy odors of the street. When Monsieur Tournet had lived, his wealth had made him welcome in all the more raffish circles, though we had never been allowed to enter his house.

“Filthy money,” my father would say. “She sold our family honor to a nobody for cash.” Sometimes I would hear the older women talking with mother, “Of course, we cannot
receive
her, you understand. That husband she married is quite without distinction. What on earth possessed your husband’s parents to allow such a mismatch?” And mother would remain silent, or perhaps say, “Madame Tournet remains a relative, no matter whom she married,” and that would be the end of it. Once, in a weak moment, she said to me, “And how do you think your grandparents remained in possession of their estate, without Jean Tournet’s loans? He was good enough to finance and equip fleets for the king, but not good enough for them. And they consider it beneath their rank ever to repay him.” It gave me a moment’s glimpse of a hidden side of her, a stranger who put justice before rank. What other secret thoughts, so different from my father’s, did she harbor? But the hidden window on her thoughts closed as abruptly as it had opened, and she had sailed away, blank-faced, elegant, the image of good breeding and propriety. And then Monsieur Tournet had died, and with him his loans, and our prosperity.

Again I banged on the gate, this time loudest of all. With that a face appeared at a grilled opening in the gate, took my name, and vanished. Then, after another interminable wait, the gate swung open with a dreadful creaking. While I stood and stared at the unpainted, vine-invaded, almost abandoned-looking manor within the courtyard walls, a morose servant led my footman and my horse away without saying a word. The face at the grille, belonging to an old valet with a wooden leg, inspected me silently from head to toe. Still wordless, he led me across the cobblestoned inner court to the front door, which swung open from inside to reveal the shadowy interior of the reception hall.

“Come in, come in, Goddaughter,” said a woman’s voice from deep within the dark, luxurious room. “The cards told me you would be arriving here today.” The eerie house, the voice in the semi-dark, made me suddenly timid. A few candles stood on an inlaid table made of different rare woods that shone and glittered in the feeble light. Dark, heavy, carved furniture, chairs, benches, chests, seemed to lurk about the walls and in the corners. Here and there the candlelight caught the shine of satin cushions and silk tapestries. An immense, complexly patterned dark rug shone like the color of old blood at the center of the room, then receded into the shapeless darkness by the wall. I caught a glimpse of another darkened chamber, vast, rich, with shrouded furniture. The smell of mice and decay rose from the floorboards, the tapestries, the very walls of the place. “Oh, you’ve brought a dog. Señor Alonzo will not like that.”

“I’m sorry, Madame Tournet. He ran away from home and followed me here, and now he won’t leave me.”

“Madame Tournet? Sibille, my goddaughter, call me your Auntie,
ma
tante
. I
am
your aunt, after all. Come closer, come closer. I have not seen you since you were six years old, and I wish to see how you have grown.” Auntie sat at the table, a spread of cards laid out before her. Face cards, the atous, the suits; the entire deck of the
tarocchi
was in play. A pattern I didn’t recognize. She laid out a six of deniers onto her spread, then set the rest of the pack aside.

“I’ve brought a letter from my mother,” I said, extending the letter. Auntie had father’s nose; the rest was herself. She had grown plump with the years, and required quite a wide chair. Her hair was the shiny and alien black that can be achieved only through the dyer’s art. Her eyes were intelligent, a knowing amber, surrounded by lines earned through some secret, hard knowledge. Her mouth was painted, and circles of rouge sat on her cheeks. She had a hint of a mustache, but her skin was soft and white and curiously unwrinkled for her age. From her face, the way she moved her hands, her posture, it was clear that memory had not played me false, and she had once been a great beauty. A cane with a strange silver head in the shape of a monkey lay against the side of her chair. Gargantua, sniffing about the unfamiliar room, knocked it over. When she took the letter, I retrieved her cane for her.

“Ah, thank you, my dear. My gout, you know. Sometimes it’s hard to get about. The seals are broken on this letter. Did you read it, Sibille, my insatiably curious goddaughter?”

“The whole world has read it, Auntie. They wouldn’t let me pass in the city gates so close to sunset alone, so I had to show them mother’s letter.”

“How unpleasant for you, to be taken for a woman of ill fame. They must have been very rude.” What was it about Auntie’s strange house, and her even stranger person, that stripped away my Higher Self and left some inner being, raw and naked, aching to tell my carefully hidden secrets?

“I am worse than a woman of ill fame, Auntie. I’m a murderess, even though it’s not my fault—entirely not—and I had to, but it was all a misunderstanding, just a mistake, you see. And if father can’t be freed, I’m a beggar, too. Will you turn me away now?” She looked at me with those amber eyes, whose centers were great black wells in the semi-dark.

“A murderess? My, how discreet your mother was in this letter. Whom did you murder?” Auntie was quite calm.

“My fiancé, Thibault Villasse. Entirely by accident, though,” I hastened to add. At this, the old woman let out a sound somewhat between a series of snorts and a cackle. When she regained her composure, she said:

“Pull up a chair, my dear. I want to hear all about it. You may rely on me to keep your secret. After that, a little supper.” She rang a little silver bell. “Arnaud,” she said, “lay a third place at the table. My goddaughter has come to stay for a while.”

I had scarcely got through the story of Thibault’s sudden and unexpected embrace of religious literature when it was time to transfer the conversation to the supper table.

“My goodness, dear,” she said as she helped herself to the dozens of rich dishes that came one after another, “you’re hardly eating anything. No wonder you’re so thin.”

“Auntie, I’m hungry and not hungry all at once. I’m so worried about father, my stomach hurts.” At the mention of father, she gave an almost imperceptible little sniff, then served herself the breast of a duck prepared with candied orange peels and a strange spice I could hardly bear to smell. How curious her table was, I thought, as I watched her chew. Just the two of us, and an empty place, set with a half-size silver goblet and plate. The chair before it was high, narrow, and cushioned.

“Never mind about
him
for tonight,” she said. “It’s more important that you eat and rest right now. You’ve had a terrible shock, I’m sure. Villasse. Heh, heh, heh.” She wiped her lips on her napkin, then helped herself to a Ragoût of beef that lay in a large silver dish. “What a pity Señor Alonzo hasn’t seen fit to join us. See here? I’ve his favorite candied pears tonight. He’ll be sorry, the ungrateful wretch. I’m afraid, my dear, he is jealous because you have come. He grows more spoiled every year.” So, that was Señor Alonzo’s chair, not a child’s. He must be a dwarf. Rich ladies all have dwarves and jesters. They make the time pass in between cards, gossip, and hunting. I didn’t imagine Auntie to be fond of hunting.

“Who—?”

“Now, you must tell me exactly how you caused Villasse’s demise. I want to enjoy the details.” Auntie was a strange audience. Where I expected her to frown, she laughed that peculiar laugh of hers. Where I expected horror, she showed bright-eyed concern, where interest, disapproval. Sometimes her mind just wandered off and she spoke of something else entirely, even though all the while she was still thinking over what I had said. I had never encountered anyone like her. She seemed completely unaware of what was proper in life. And all the while she spoke and listened, she consumed the most astonishing array of foods. I was quite in awe of her.

“You collect stones?” she said, when I told her of Monsieur Villasse’s gory death. “What sort? Oh, how interesting. But you haven’t a bezoar. I have several. I suppose they’re too costly for a girl’s collection. But you do seem to know a great deal of natural history. And you draw bones? I’d love to see that someday. That Villasse, he deserved it. But if you free your father, be assured, Villasse’s family will never dare speak of it. Tell me, do you have an interest in the stars? I prefer night to daytime. The stars are guides; the sun merely spoils the complexion. Throw open the curtains, Sibille. It is quite dark now, and I want to see the moonrise.”