The Secrets of Casanova (38 page)

“Are you in a right way—in a right mind, Jacques, to accompany me?” asked Quentin. He was ignored.

Petrine climbed into the primitive, worn-out saddle. The mare clopped forward. Horse and rider crossed through the bank of fog and were soon out of sight.

“Well, we’re a bit late,” Quentin said.

Jacques pivoted from his makeshift bedding. “Is there a soul?” he blurted.

Quentin tucked his chin to his chest, then gazed at Jacques. “In a group of budding theologians, I would expect this question, but in the light of your peculiar humors …”

Jacques clicked his teeth together rapidly.

“Is there a soul?” Quentin repeated calmly.

“
Sola scriptura
,” Jacques said. “
Sola scriptura
. The scriptures are
the sole authority, true enough? The scriptures should have the
answer.” Jacques squawked like a bird.

“Yes, the scriptures are
most
important,” countered Quentin,
“but even as a Christian, I believe the proverb that warns us to
beware the man who has read only one book to discover his truth.”

The wind erupted, forcing Quentin to pull his ragged coat closer to his body. “Shall we begin our journey? We shall talk of this on our way to Lisbon.”

For several moments, Jacques stood back, staring only at
Quentin’s face.

***

Jacques slammed the top of his trunk shut, making Petrine jump. “What are you doing here at the close of day with my papers in your hand? What business have you with them? What else of mine do you have? What else?”

Petrine stood straight as a sword blade. He handed the sheaf of papers back.

“You seem less than repentant.”

“Please don’t shout, master. I can explain.” Throwing a look
across the dusky sky, Petrine pulled his fists to his sides and resumed. “I wanted to find out if your pamphlet is nearly at the ready so that we might leave for Paris soon.”

“I scarcely believe that—”

“As is the custom, you’d want your arrival announced in the gazettes, wouldn’t you? And I would be in charge of—”

“Perhaps, ronyon, I don’t want my name known to all of Paris. Especially with Cavaliere Grimani and his ilk. Perhaps I’ve changed my mind about the pamphlet. Perhaps you’ve overstepped your—”

“Hello there,” came Quentin’s voice, carried on the blustery
breeze.
“So many clouds. Barely a sun to tell us it’s sunset.” He crossed
toward Jacques and Petrine. “What passes?”

Jacques flung open the trunk, threw his papers inside, slammed the lid, and stalked a few paces away.

Quentin ignored the behavior and stepped to Petrine, placing his
arm over the valet’s shoulder. “A miracle—that your faculties
returned.
A true miracle,” Quentin said loudly—and in Jacques’ direction.
“One for which we might express thanks to God.”

“Tomorrow,” Petrine said bluntly. He flinched at a sudden flash of lightning, slipped out from Quentin’s arm, and wandered toward the mare, glancing from the corners of his eyes at his master.

***

It was the next morning when Jacques awoke with a start. He was tense. Day after day, hungry thoughts had clawed his mind. He
thirsted
for something—but he knew not what. At night he toiled with
desperate dreams that engendered a yearning unlike any he’d ever known.

He stared out across the rocky soil while the invisible wind lofted debris high into a dull, gray sky. Bleary, he gazed through a peephole in the palace walls and saw, at a fair distance, refugees tramping by, their heads bent toward the pathway before them, as if hitched with a yoke.
Dreary monotony of endless manhood
.

He rose and relieved himself, a dozen thoughts in his head
competing for attention. At this hour of the morning, the sweet fragrance of perfume used to please his nostrils. Now, piss and stale dung.

While he scrubbed fiercely at his rough beard, his mouth filled with words. “I must go back,” he said. “I must return.”

In short order, he gathered food, water, and what items he
deemed necessary for the journey, then woke Petrine. “I want you with me. Rouse yourself now.”

A short distance away, Quentin was waking. “What cryptic needs have you this morning?” he called out. No answer came back.

Jacques faced the cold wind, mumbling to his valet. “I’ve made up my mind to travel to the seat of my present miseries: the citadel.”

By noon, Jacques and Petrine stood at the foot of the citadel ruins. The tower was gone. The spiraling stairs upward—those few that remained—were caked in mud and refuse. The rest of the steep incline looked as if a phalanx of infantry had trampled it to grit.

Jacques said nothing, his mouth grim, fixed.

Petrine spoke. “The parapet wall, some of it, is still there, but …” he shivered “this place does not please me.”

“Stay here at the base.”

“Should you need me, shout from above.”

Jacques did not acknowledge his servant but, with eyes pitched upward, began his ascent in a crawl.

After reaching his destination at the top of the hill, he peered about, his breathing ragged and heavy. For a time he lay on his belly,
lingering, looking. Fouling the rock yard were numerous fish
skeletons, battered bits of human refuse, and pulverized dead trees. Hoary clay and coffee-colored mud melded together in rivulets. Jacques seemed a spectator to the upheaval of the underworld.

He clambered, finally, across the uneven stones until, arriving at the edge of the pit, his initiative gave way.

When at last he brought himself to peek into the hole, Jacques saw nothing more than mud and rubble.

On his elbows, he wrenched in each direction. No Dominique.
His
body curled up. Then, as if he were being crushed by a heavy
atmosphere, he flattened to his back, unable to move, to breathe, to cry out. He felt fragile, frail.

A beaded raindrop struck his cheek. Then another. His hands fumbled against the surface of coarse stones, his fingers earning no
relief until a thing of a different texture piqued his senses. He
clasped
the object tightly, fingers gliding over its slippery, rain-soaked
surface before bringing it to his eyes.

“A nautilus, a chambered nautilus.” Faintly he spoke. “My good brother painted and painted and painted the lustrous cross section of your inner shell, so elegant, symmetrical,” he confided to the object. “Should I again find symmetry in this world, I’ll think upon you, nautilus. And upon Francesco.”

More, even dearer words, flowed from his lips. “A creature of the sea, a thing of beauty—Mademoiselle Nautilus. Abandoned here on an earthen hill? So far from home. Belonging to nothing, to no one. From what distant ocean did the furious wave carry you? The
wave that stole our Dominique.” Jacques, blinking away the
rainwater from his eyes, gulped for air. “You have your shell to protect you. What have I?”

He swabbed his skin and hair with the once-living nautilus,
feeling its rain-cold chill. It was as if Fragoletta’s fingers stroked his face. Cool comfort.

He settled into his solace until a greater cascade of rain cut it
short.

His search persisted through the devastated ruins until, driven by the storm, he descended the tangled stairs, nautilus in hand.

The rain pelted with formidable power by the time Jacques reached his valet at the foot of the stronghold.

“Were your pamphlet studies worthwhile?” Petrine asked.

“I’d no business with the pamphlet. I sought to reclaim …” Jacques ran the nautilus shell across his chin. “It feels as if the Fates commanded me here. As if Dominique wished me here, purely for this simple gift.” In his palms he framed the nautilus before placing it into his shirt. With nothing more to say, he turned and scuttled
down the steep road. Petrine hauled his pack to his shoulder,
wondering.

***

The breeze blowing through Lisbon’s hills was cold the
following afternoon, but once the sun begged the clouds for a breach and those clouds allowed the fiery sphere to give out its glories, Quentin and Jacques slowed their pace. The Jesuit had questions about the adventurer’s outing the previous day; about his continued, solitary trips to Lisbon; about the scroll. Jacques remained silent.

As the pair rounded a wood, an inky crow drawing down the wind careened past, practically unseating Quentin from his saddle and extracting a harried glance from Jacques.

Jacques lagged next to the mare, pointing past a crooked tree just ahead. “Bring me my snuff. My snuff, Petrine. And snuffbox,” he shouted.

“You left your valet at my place early this morning to forage
again. To whom, my friend, do you now talk?” Quentin asked,
shaking his head. He tightened the reins.

“We have snuff to trade,” rang a voice from behind.

Jacques spun on his heels while Quentin wheeled the horse about as best he could.

Both observed, at a dozen paces, two figures in hooded cloaks and a third man, his exposed face worn and pale.

“Refugees on the move,” Jacques muttered.

“We have snuff to trade. For food,” insisted the first hooded man.

Astride the mare, Quentin took a quick glance down to Jacques as if to say, “Do you really want tobacco?”

“Food for snuff?” Jacques asked. “We have food.”

One stranger tramped past Jacques, who stood beside the constricted path. “Our companion—the one behind us—has crab’s-eye, sir. Help yourself.”

“
Aide-toi, le ciel t’aidera
,” mumbled the other hooded man as he
passed.

“Help yourself, and heaven will help you,” translated his
snickering companion
.

English
.
He sounds English.
“The man on the horse has the food,” Jacques said to the strangers’ backs.

The pair of men trudged toward Quentin, who reined in the skittish mare, barely urging it away from a tree onto the path. Once the horse was adequately under control, Quentin jabbed into the bundle behind his saddle.

The third man offered his trade to Jacques. “Besides tobacco, good sir, you may want to occupy yourself with this, if it pleases you.” From inside his cloak, the man brought out a snuffbox and pressed a button on its side. When a small compartment opened, he held it up to Jacques’ eye.

Jacques grinned. He pressed his palms together. “Why, yes, I truck with these. Yes,” he said, noting the man’s hand.

I’ve seen that scar somewhere
.

A dull thud of hooves struck Jacques ears. He looked back at Quentin, extended over the fragile neck of the mare, offering bread to the two men who crowded his horse. In an instant, the larger man
took hold of Quentin’s arm, flinging him to the ground. The mare
reared.

“Murder!” Jacques cried.

A hand tightened around Jacques’ wrist. He reacted by driving his free elbow into his assailant’s face. Just as quickly, he faced a pistol barrel. He slipped sideways, then redoubled the attack on the man. The hood recoiled from the attacker’s head while Jacques, dry
with rage, pummeled again. A pulp of bloody flesh. He’d crushed an
eye.

The man crumpled to the ground, but not before Jacques seized the pistol, pushed the barrel into the base of the man’s limp neck, and fired. The head exploded like a red firework, spraying nuggets of bone, blood, and brain.

Racing toward Quentin, Jacques swiftly ensnared the assailant’s dagger, stabbed the man to death, then spotted the third stranger, who had clumsily drawn back into a gnarl of trees.

It was as if a tiger had cornered a hare. But the hare immediately found courage in the guise of a pistol. The gun belched smoke. A deadly ball jumped from the barrel, sizzling with swift death as it passed Jacques’ face.

From beneath his cloak, the man jerked out another pistol and aimed.

Jacques sprang, brandishing his bloody dagger. There were only
gasps—no screams—when the man sagged to the mushy ground.
Jacques stood flat-footed while the body shook violently from head to toe, then ceased to move.

Panting without stop, he marched back to Quentin. He gaped at the thick pool of blood that outlined the Jesuit, then knelt.

“Beg their forgiveness,” the Jesuit choked. His eyes remained closed. “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you,” was the final utterance of Quentin Gray.

Jacques wiped red ooze from his arms, fingers, and face before sitting cross-legged. He was cold, chilled. Wrapping his arms around himself, he surveyed the carnage before him and behind him.

After a time, Jacques unsheathed his poniard and plunged it into the damp soil, overturning a large chunk of brown earth. He dug again and again until he growled, “Deep enough.”

He examined Quentin’s body before laying it in the grave. “
Mors ultima linea rerum est,”
he shouted. “Death is the final boundary line of all things.”

After finishing the burial, Jacques moved toward the mare. Approaching the alarmed animal, he took several determined steps; then gently reaching for the reins, he coaxed the horse close. The animal stood firm while Jacques whispered in its ear.

“Much chatter jangles in my head, friend. How much between your ears?” He moved to the other side of the mare. “I want you to know,” Jacques said in a plaintive tone, “I’m not responsible for his death. Truly, I’m not.”

Jacques wrapped the reins around a thick shrub. To the dead man in the gnarled trees, he marched.

“Weeds will soon grow through your ribs, fellow.” He ripped the man’s shirt from his abdomen, then trod to the second assassin, again tearing the shirt away from its owner.

“As I supposed.” Jacques stared at the gut of his victim, took his dagger, and thumped the pommel against the man’s abdomen. “Didn’t Quentin say he’d fit this silver plate? For a saber cut?” Jacques threw down the bloody shirt, spit into his palms to scrub
away the blood from his hands, and eased the dagger’s blade
beneath a lanyard around the dead man’s neck. He cut the leather thong. From it, he unthreaded a crucifix.