The Collector of Dying Breaths (19 page)

She started to pull away, but he stopped her.

“I won’t let you go. Not this time. Not until you give me a chance to prove how wrong you are. Besides, without me it’s going to take you weeks, months, to find someone to do the translations. Especially because unless you agree, I’m not going to give you the work I’ve already done. I’m not going to tell you what I’ve already figured out. You might be able to let me go . . . but can you let the knowledge go?” he asked. And then, he smiled because he already knew the answer.

Chapter 22

MARCH 20, 1573

BARBIZON, FRANCE

It was exactly twenty-six years ago today, and I’d been at the Medici court for fourteen years.

“Come with me to Cloux. The king is so ill, René.” Catherine arrived in my laboratory in the early morning. She looked as if she hadn’t slept at all. “I’ve just had word that things have taken a turn for the worse.” She tried to hold back her tears, but her eyes filled and overflowed.

Of all the people at the court, the king had been the first who was kind to her when she’d arrived from Italy, welcoming her and making her feel like a daughter. He’d also protected her through the barren years when many at court wanted the marriage annulled so a more fertile bride could be brought in. Francis stayed loyal, and she’d never forgotten.

By the time King Francis took to his deathbed, my princess had given birth to her first son and heir, Francis, and a daughter. Catherine gave my perfume credit for breaking the spell that had been cast upon her, and I was always careful to point out that it was not a spell that had needed to be broken. She had just needed more time with Henry, I told her. And the sleeping potion in the cream I’d made for Henry to give to Diane de Poitiers had done the trick.

But spells? Magic? Not at all, I insisted, for the specter of Ruggieri was never far from my thoughts. I didn’t want him back at court. There were enough rivals waiting in the wings, new perfumers who brought Catherine gifts all the time, trying to gain favor. I had my shop and my savings and a small hoard of precious gems, silver and gold, but every position at the court was precarious. I had been in France with Catherine for fourteen years and had seen how easy it was to fall out of favor. Not even for doing anything wrong. Sometimes simply because someone more interesting or novel had arrived.

“I want you to try to capture his breath,” Catherine said softly. “If this process you’re working on is really possible, I think we should have the king’s breath, shouldn’t we?”

We arrived at the king’s summer residence at Cloux by nightfall and went right to the king’s chamber. Surrounded by dour-looking men of the court, His Royal Highness appeared to be sleeping peacefully. I asked to speak to his doctor on the princess’s behalf, and he told me about the elixirs they were giving the king. I had brought a Santa Maria Novella formula with me, but what they were giving Francis was almost identical.

I was able to reassure the princess that the king was not suffering. The mixture was made from poppy seeds, I told her. There was no finer drug for those in pain and distressed. But my mistress was still distraught.

“I am losing the only father I’ve ever known,” she said to me as we sat vigil at his beside.

In all the years since Serapino had taught me his process of capturing exhalations I had not been able to improve on his methods. It was difficult to guess which breath was to be a mortal’s last, so it was necessary to catch one after the other when the end was near. That in itself was complicated, but usually you can hear the time when it comes. Breathing becomes labored, and a sound like a drum filled with seeds rattles in the chest.

Over the next seventy-two hours, Catherine and I remained by the king’s side. Occasionally she fell asleep only to wake with a start, remembering where she was and why. She begged me to wake her if it seemed the end was close. But when it came, I didn’t have to; she was holding his hand and whispering to him.

The doctors allowed me to capture breath after breath. Each time I filled all twenty-five bottles I had brought with me, one of the pages rinsed them out, and I refilled them all.

Three times we went through the filling process until at last the king took his final breath and died. I looked at the woman who sat beside me, trembling and weeping. In that moment, she had gone from being my princess to my queen.

Ruggieri, the astrologer, came to my mind. More than a decade had passed since that night, a month before her marriage, when homesick for Florence, Catherine had arranged for a dinner of some of us who had known her the longest—Ruggieri and I and some of her other confidants. There were thirty or so around the table in the cavernous dining room. Despite her wealth, she didn’t treat us any differently because of our rank or station. She was but a fourteen-year-old girl. We were her friends who she could speak to in Italian. We were home to her.

It was that night, sitting next to her, whispering to her like a lover, that the ugly sorcerer told her he knew her future and asked her if she wanted to know what the years would bring. Of course, Catherine was eager. Ruggieri rolled out his charts inked on vellum, and Catherine stopped eating and drinking to examine them.

She put her hand on Ruggieri’s hand and leaned closer to him. The sight of them conspiratorially whispering annoyed me. Her intelligent eyes scanned the star maps as he spoke. And then her pale cheeks flushed.

Getting up from my seat, I circled the table, stopping to talk to this person and that, and then made my way toward Catherine so it appeared I wasn’t seeking her out—in case anyone noticed.

Standing slightly to the right of her chair, in the shadows of an alcove, I strained to hear the conversation, but the room was too full of noise and chatter. I had no choice then but to approach directly.

“You look like someone who’s just been given a surprise,” I said to her. And then looked at Ruggieri. “Have you cast a spell over her future, magician? What are you promising her?”

Even then he was proud and defiant and so sure of himself. “I haven’t had to cast a spell—it’s all written out. Even though she is marrying a second son, our duchessina is going to be the queen of France one day. It’s in the stars.”

And so the little man’s prediction had come to pass. I knew my rival would soon be coming back to court because as queen, Catherine could demand it. More than ever I needed to prove my superiority over Ruggieri. And what would accomplish that better than solving Serapino’s riddle of how to reanimate the breaths?

In the meantime, taking no chances, I would do to Ruggieri what he had done to me. He’d brought other perfumers to the court to try to diminish my position. I would bring other astrologers to try to diminish his.

Instead of going back to Paris with Catherine, I rode out in a different direction, to search out someone who might usurp Ruggieri’s place: a Frenchman named Nostradamus.

Finding him, I convinced him to come to court and obtained a promise that he would arrive before the month was out. I returned to the Louvre, hopeful I had a plan to prevent my rival from gaining an unwieldy power, but when I arrived, I was distressed to find Ruggieri already in residence. The queen had not wasted a moment. Ruggieri was given his old quarters back and was seen coming and going from Catherine’s rooms at all hours of the day and night. The years in exile had exaggerated his looks. More evil and dark than ever, he seemed not to care about his appearance or his cleanliness at all, and a stench followed him wherever he went. Catherine, who was so fastidious, seemed not to notice. Every day I was made ever more aware of the bond between them that seemed to defy logic.

The first time I visited her in her rooms after he’d arrived, I spied several bottles of revolting-looking liquids that reeked of his handiwork. Foul-smelling potions were always part of the spells he cast.

“You have to be careful, Your Highness,” I told her upon sniffing one of the bottles. “There are elements of poisons in these. What has Ruggieri told you to do with them?”

“He’s teaching me to read the waters. These are the liquids I put into the bowl. Do let me try to read yours.”

I was stupefied. This was one of the most intelligent women I had ever met! How could she think of engaging in this dangerous activity in the open? Reading the waters and trying to see the future through sorcery flew in the face of what the church professed.

“Surely the inquisition will not try a queen, yet I am worried nonetheless. What if the men of the church want to make an example to the world of their ultimate power?” I asked her.

She laughed as she assembled what she needed. A copper bowl from a shelf behind her table. A bottle of dark red-black viscous ink. A pure white feather pen with one black stripe at the top. A sheet of vellum. A silver plate. Six small votive candles and one taper.

First, using the pen and ink, she drew a blood-red pentagram on the sheet of paper. I wanted to ask her what the ink was made of, but I was too afraid. Besides, Ruggieri might not have told her the truth. If it was indeed human blood mixed with ink, the sorcerer would not have wanted her to know. But there was little doubt in my mind it was blood from a living creature and not dye from a plant that gave the ink its strange color.

Done drawing, Catherine placed the paper on the silver tray and then lit it on fire. Once the vellum had burned to ash, she used the ash to draw yet another pentagram, this one on the wooden tabletop. Next, Catherine placed the copper bowl in the center of the pentagram. After lighting the votives, she positioned each at a point of the pentagram. Finally, she spilled the contents of one bottle of liquid and then another into the bowl.

“Now we must wait for the water to settle and calm,” she told me in a portentous whisper.

“And then?”

She held up her hand to quiet me as she studied the contents of the bowl. After a moment she seemed satisfied. “If I am to tell you your fortune, I need to study the water, looking for pictures of you. Just stay quiet for a moment longer, René. It takes great concentration.”

I was flattered that she trusted me enough to perform this blaspheming in front of me. Like my old mentor, she sensed that even if what I was seeing was foreign and frightening, my loyalty was with her, not the church.

“Ah, there you are,” Catherine said finally. “I see you in your laboratory, surrounded by all your tools and tinctures.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“You have a lot of secrets there, René, don’t you?”

“From you? None.”

“But I see you mixing mysterious dark potions. Much like Ruggieri’s spells.”

“You’re mistaken. There are no black magic recipe books in my laboratory. There are only alchemical formulas I am working on to come up with a solution to use with the breaths. Perhaps that is what you’re seeing?”

“No, these are different potions,” Catherine said and then grew quiet again, watching the water, barely breathing lest she disturb its surface. “You know how to make many elixirs other than medicines, perfumes and lotions. You do, René. And you’ve used them.” Suddenly she looked up. Away from the water and into at my eyes. “You made something that you gave my husband for his mistress, and it changed their time together and I became pregnant. What was it you made? I see it here.”

It wasn’t possible that Catherine was divining this. No one but I had known the truth about the cream cut with powders that would seep into Diane’s skin and put her to sleep.

Could Diane de Poitiers have figured out that the cream made her drowsy and told one of her ladies-in-waiting? Could other women of the court who each knew one side of the story have put all the different pieces together and shared it with Catherine? Was she teasing me about it now?

When I didn’t respond, she insisted.

“What did you do, René? What were these creams you gave Diane de Poitiers?”

“Nothing, Your Highness. Simply creams to keep the skin supple, that’s all.”

“Why are you lying to me? Don’t you understand that I will reward you for your ingenuity? Never punish you . . .” She peered into the waters again and was lost in the glassy surface for several moments.

I watched her trying to make sense out of what she was seeing. Of what it meant.

What was going to become of her if Ruggieri’s influence continued unabated? How far into this game could he push her?

“I know what you did, I can see it here. Come look.” Her voice sounded deeper than usual and less animated. Almost as if she were in a stupor.

I leaned closer to the table, and as I did, I got a better whiff of the candles. These were not made in my shop. Not the perfumed candles infused with roses and lilies that Catherine preferred. These contained lavender, poppy seed and star anise. Had these candles been created by Ruggieri? Was he using herbs to drug Catherine and induce visions?

There was nothing in the water. Whatever Catherine thought she saw was in her own mind.

“You are mixing up the cream here . . .” She pointed. “And here you are giving it to my husband . . . and here his whore is administering it, and here see how she grows tired from it. How she stays in bed, sleeping so long in the morning. That was clever of you, René. Very clever. And very clever not to tell anyone. Your ability to keep your own council is important. You have so many secrets, don’t you? Did you always? Even when you were a young boy? Secrets your mentor in the monastery taught you?”

“What is it you are asking, my lady?”

She looked up and into my eyes, held them for a moment and then wordlessly looked back.

“In Florence, when I went to the prison that day, they told me what you were accused of.”

“I assumed they had.”

“They said you had murdered the monk who had taught you everything you knew. That you had poisoned him.”

“Yes, that is what they accused me of.”

“Had you done that?”

“No, of course not. Serapino was ill and asked me to administer something to help ease his pain. But if the church had accepted my word, they would have had to accept that he took his own life, which would have meant he had not died a good Catholic, would not have been able to be buried in consecrated ground. It would have meant that God had failed him.”

She nodded. “What men do in the name of God is atrocious. It’s all around us, and the fight is heating up. In this battle of the Protestants versus the Catholics so many people will die.”

She was right of course. The political climate was rife with the religious wars raging in England and France, and it worried all of us.

“In the water,” Catherine whispered, “I can see bloodshed.”