Judith Merkle Riley Read online

  The panic redoubled when I saw the hard benches in the long salle outside the Bishop’s audience chamber. They appeared to be crammed with pallid, weary petitioners more or less exactly like myself, though considerably less well clad. They could have been here for days, I thought. Maybe he’ll never see me. But then auntie’s footman escorted me to the attendant at the sealed inner door, and motioned me to remove my right glove. “Take a look at my mistress’s ring,” he said, “and tell your master that Madame Tournet’s niece wishes an audience.” This seemed to be the exact right thing to say, and we were shown directly into the Bishop’s audience chamber, where priests and secretaries hurried in and out on important-seeming errands.

  The chamber itself was of a wealth that rivaled the finest rooms and rarest furnishings of Auntie’s sumptuous, if decayed, mansion. Rich arras hung on every wall, and between the gilded arches that supported the ceiling, scenes depicting Christ enthroned in heaven, all surrounded by angels and saints, had been painted by some cunning artisan. Beneath the heavenly canopy, however, an entirely secular conversation seemed to be in the finishing stages, something to do with church property and the income from some estate whose title was in question. How odd: I always thought that Bishops spent all their spare time in prayer, but even in the very shadow of the temple of God I was hearing more money-talk and seeing bankers and other people with calculating eyes go in and out. But then my guide showed me across the floor and presented me, and I was allowed to kneel and kiss the Bishop’s ring.

  The Bishop’s face, smooth, well-fed, and worldly, showed signs that he had once been a handsome man. He brightened as he looked at me, then glanced at the ring on my hand. Something in his eyes flickered, and I knew the curious object had done some secret work. “Well, well,” he said when I rose, surveying me up and down, “this is the third favor in a quarter of a century. Let me see this petition.” He smiled ironically as he opened it up and looked over my writing. “You clearly wrote this yourself.” My well-controlled panic began to rise again. “What an interesting defense of your father.” My heart began to pound harder. What will I say, what will I say? “Are you the daughter who is Madame Tournet’s goddaughter?” he asked. I nodded with what I hoped was great dignity, but not a sound would come out of my mouth. Oh, a thousand curses on those wretches in the courtyard. “Was this your idea?” he asked. Oh, it was hours between each question, and I could tell he expected me to say something.

  “I—it’s all just terrible, just a plot to seize my grandfather’s house—my father would never read a book by M. Calvin, let alone own one—he—he—hardly ever even reads at all—he thinks theology is for priests—and Annibal is too far away to come soon because the Constable is so far in the north just now, even though mother has sent for him—”

  “Your brother knows the Sieur Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France?” said the Bishop, his tone newly respectful.

  “Yes, the Sieur Montmorency himself. My brother is an enseigne in his son’s company of light horse and M. de Damville relies on him utterly—the Constable himself said my brother was very promising—why, Annibal hardly ever gets home anymore—” Where was my speech? “—surely, in your goodness and noble mercy, your discerning powers, you will see the innocence of my father and intervene for the sake of divine justice—”

  “I don’t think either d’Apchon or St.-André suspected your family was so well connected—” A strange, ironic smile flitted across the Bishop’s worldly face. What stupidity made the low gossip I’d just heard tumble out of my mouth?

  “Our family has owned that house ever since Gaston de La Roque built it in the reign of King Charles VII. M. d’Apchon is a vile conspirator and even his patron Monsieur de St.-André will disown him if he offends the Constable, who is personally very concerned if a brave soul like my brother had to leave the service of his family because of a false plot to steal his father’s estate.” I burst into tears of pure rage. Oh, what was going on? Why hadn’t I done it all smoothly, elegantly, the way I’d imagined? And what was that sound I heard? Oh, God the Bishop had put his hand over his mouth. That sound. I’m doomed, I thought. The Bishop, I’m sure of it, had snorted.

  “Well,” he said softly to himself, “it seems once again Pauline has done me a favor.” He looked at me curiously. “Who would have thought that you, of all the family, would be the one to come to me? You appear devoted to your father.”

  “My—my father is a great man. And innocent—” I said.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said the Bishop. “The evidence is very scanty.”

  “It’s forged, all forged—” I said, wiping my eyes beneath that horrid soupçon of a veil, so that I could take my leave, at least, with some decent dignity.

  ***

  “Well?” said Auntie, as I gave her back her ring. “Did you get in to see him?”

  “I did, but I was just too nervous to say anything right. I just know I’ve failed, Auntie, I was so stupid, and the words didn’t come out right, and now we’ll lose everything. What will we do? How will we live?” We were in Auntie’s great gilt-decorated, shadowy, reception hall, where she sat on her cushioned chair, the velvet curtains pulled against the dangerous midday sun. Outside, in the light, I could hear the faint cry of vendors in the street beyond the courtyard gate. Life and air seemed very distant. I felt as if I were smothering. Father. Everything gone. On the table beside her sat a book, On the Discernment of Spirits, with her embossed leather marker sitting halfway into it.

  “A pity,” she said. “I thought his memory would be a little better. Age takes us all, I suppose.” She sighed, and shrugged her shoulders. “I imagine you might live here,” she said. “And your mother—she was my best friend before she married my brother, did you know that? I’d enjoy her company now. But your sisters—I fear they couldn’t tolerate the place. Too frail, too nervous.” For a minute I was irritated. I mean, I am the sensitive one, and much more frail than they. The sensitivity of brilliance is ever so much more sensitive than just being droopy and feminine.

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  “See that over there?” she said, picking up the walking stick that lay against the desk, and pointing it in the direction of the curtain. A light breeze was swaying it, and there was a sort of blurring, almost like a mist, in its upper-right-hand corner, near the ceiling.

  “Why, yes,” I said. “The curtain’s moving. Is the window open?”

  “That’s what I mean. Even Annibal would shudder when he saw that curtain move, much as he needed the cash for that little mare he wanted. And your sisters—my! They certainly wouldn’t last long around here. But you, you just ask if the window is open. No, it’s not. That’s Doña Vargas y Rodriguez. I let her stay because I enjoy her company. Very genteel, excellent conversation of an evening, even if her French is bad.” She looked up and addressed the moving curtain. “It’s all right, Dolores, this is a relative. You can come out. Sibille, let me introduce you. Doña Dolores is too polite to manifest without a formal introduction.” Auntie then proceeded to introduce me to the air, and made the air acquainted with me. It was all too curious.

  But as I watched the spot she addressed, the misty form of a slender young woman in a heavy Spanish silk gown took shape in front of the curtain. Her heavy, peaked, pearl-encrusted headdress clung close about her hair, her dark eyebrows were mobile and expressive, her eyes and mouth like hidden pools. And her throat was cut from ear to ear. The black shadow of ghostly blood soaked her gown all the way to the hem. I couldn’t help shuddering. But the spirit, for that’s what she obviously was, seemed embarrassed by my reaction, and pulled a light scarf around her ruined neck with an apologetic smile.

  “You see? What a lady! She’s my very favorite. There’s not many of them so considerate.” The misty lady’s mouth moved. She appeared to be talking. “Do you hear her?” asked Auntie. “No? Well, you will in time. It just takes practice. She’s telling you her story. She always has to do that, before
we sit down to a good ladies’ gossip. I have had some excellent recipes from her.”

  “But her story?” The ghost had clearly reached a very dramatic part of her narration, where she flung aside the scarf and revealed the wounds that had killed her.

  “She was newly wed, on a galleon headed for New Spain to join her husband, when Captain Tournet murdered her for her wedding jewels and trousseau. After, I am afraid, various insults to her person which should not be repeated before an innocent young woman such as yourself.”

  “But your husband—?”

  “My dear, with all the insults that your family has no doubt showered on me, did they never tell you how Monsieur Tournet made his fortune?”

  “Only that he was not socially acceptable.”

  “Ha! How like Hélène. Not a rude word ever passed her lips, the whole time we were best friends. She deals in euphemisms, your mother! Sibille, dear, my husband was, to put it bluntly, a pirate. Or rather—shall we be genteel about it?—a licensed privateer, sailing under royal commission. The notorious Captain Jean Tournet, who organized many a private fleet for His Majesty out of La Rochelle. Had he an older escutcheon he would have been respectable enough, once rich. And you’d think, of all those who use crimes to gain estate, there would be nothing special to single him out—” Auntie sighed, shrugged, and spread out her plump, white hands before her. “But they pursued him, the shades of the slain. From the sea inland, from place to place. We once owned two great houses at the oceanside, and an estate in the north, and this little one here, in the land of my own ancestors, which he bought to please me. All of them were stuffed full of ghosts. What respectable folk would pay a visit to a house where they inhabited? He never mentioned his murders, you understand, but the spirits, they sit in the walls and whisper.”

  Oh, I thought. That explains the strange rustling sound I sometimes heard in the wall. I thought it was mice. Spirits, I do not find shocking. But the thought that Monsieur Tournet might have been a man of no birth whatsoever—why, I had always taken father for a snob, an exaggerator—“Auntie, how—?”

  “My marriage? Arranged, dear, for his money. What did you think? And my despicable brother Hercule was loudest of all in his promises of gratitude, if only I would sign the papers.”

  I must have looked rather taken aback at this new view of my father. Auntie’s smile was cynical. “This house, this fortune, like so many others, is entirely built on blood. Oh, don’t be shocked. Where do you think money in this world comes from? Work? No, it’s theft. The New World has made the Spanish king rich, and us, too, indirectly, thanks to our king’s commission. Monsieur Tournet retired, far from the sea, and tried to become a gentleman. You know how it is; marry into a good family, buy a bankrupt estate, build a large house, give money to charity. It didn’t work for him. His houses were too full of ghosts. Most of them moved in here when I sold the other places after his death. The jewelry, the gold, the pitiful things for which they died, they cling to them. See those candlesticks over there?” She pointed to a pair of huge, gold torchères that stood on the floor. Behind I could just make out a row of stolid-faced, alien men in feather cloaks. “The gold was melted down from some heathen idol of theirs from across the sea, I’m sure,” she said. “We didn’t do it—the Spaniards did. You’d think they’d go haunt the churches in Toledo and Madrid where their treasures were made into church ornaments. But no, they have to cram in here with the rest of the spooks. Maybe it’s because I’m too hospitable.” She sighed.

  “I don’t know why we should be the ones to have them, when so many others deserve them. Oh, well. They keep me company. If they’re quiet, I don’t have them exorcised—it’s very expensive, you know, and it disturbs everything. But your family, yes—they wouldn’t be as bold as you. And I really am not rich enough to set them up in a separate establishment. All those dowries—no, it can’t be done. Hercule couldn’t do it, and I don’t see why I have to. Especially when he was perfectly content to take Monsieur Tournet’s tainted money when he was alive, and never even spoke once to me, his own sister. It’s a judgment on him, what’s happened to him, even if it is based on a lie.” At this, the ghost nodded happily in agreement, but I felt stunned. No help from the Bishop, no help from Aunt Pauline. What could Annibal do? By the time he got here, it would be too late. The burnings are scheduled right after the completion of the interrogation. Even I knew that much. Could the interrogations be stretched out? Could I take another petition, a better, improved one, to the Cardinal in Paris? How would I ever get an audience?

  “You look pale, my dear. It’s that dreadful dress. You need a brighter color to set off your complexion. And dinner. Dinner always mends everything. And you can see,” she said, gesturing to her generous figure, “that I have had a lot of mending to do.” I followed her as she puffed up the stairs to her own room, which was crammed full of furniture: a huge bed with carved cupids holding up the canopy, chairs, chests, silver and gold candlesticks, plates, basins, and ewers of fine porcelain, all decorated with bright gold and enamel patterns, and figures of the gods and goddesses of Greek mythology, and several armoires stuffed to bursting with rich silk and velvet court gowns in an array of styles and sizes.

  “I wore all of these at one time,” she said. “I know you won’t believe it, but when I was young, I was as slender as you are now—but without the height, of course. Let’s see—a dressing gown—day-dress, yes, the blue is nice—and this one. Something for evening—can’t do a thing about shoes—your feet are not your best feature, dear. They are much too large. You will have to minimize them. Longer hems, perhaps, but no ruffles—plain, keep the decoration high, to distract the eye…”

  I know it was all well-meant, but as she rummaged in her armoires and talked to herself, I began to feel myself gradually transforming into a bony oaf with huge, galumphing feet, in need of strenuous efforts at mending and concealing, instead of the delicate and poetic creature of nature that I preferred to think of myself as. This I found more upsetting than the ghosts. That is, until I noticed what was happening to her dressing table.

  “Auntie, look at your dressing table,” I said, and she pulled her head out of the squat green and gold armoire in the corner. On the ivory and lapis inlaid surface of the table, something translucent was shining. Auntie’s eyes narrowed and she took up her walking stick.

  “You again! I told you to be off! Now, scat, or I’ll have you thrown right back into the river!”

  “I’m warning you, you old cow, don’t you dare dent my box, or there’ll be hell to pay.” The shining thing had finished forming up. A bit of river slime dripped from its corners. It radiated the scent of damp, decayed flesh. It was the ornate silver-gilt box of the dreadful head.

  “My lovely, foolish Sibille. I told you I’d never leave you,” said the thing in the box. And at that moment, in the midst of horror, I felt a great temptation. It grew like blind desire, like a living thing. I craved to open up the box. I wanted—I wanted to wish for smaller feet. “Feel it? Feel the desire? Oh, just open up my box, and say the word, and you’ll have your heart’s desire.”

  “Don’t listen to that thing,” said Auntie. “It’ll send you straight to hell. I know evil when I see it.”

  “Vulture,” said the thing in the box. “You’re next.”

  ***

  Cosmo Ruggieri was seated in his tower workshop, wearing a new black leather jerkin with leather-paned trunk hose puffed out with black wool panels that made him resemble an unpleasant and overlarge beetle. Kneeling before him was his servant Giovanni, the man with the earring, who had stolen the Master of All Desires from Simeoni’s courier in Venice.

  “Great wizard, your mightiness, it was not my fault—the theft from Simeoni’s agent went perfectly—consider my travels, the hardship—”

  “Then why do you not have it for me here now?”

  “Maestro, I was robbed of it in Marseilles by two ruffians who left me for dead—”

  “A remarkable re
covery,” observed Ruggieri.

  “But I recovered myself through a miracle, and questioning the kitchen wench at their inn, discovered they were agents of the Queen of France herself—”

  “Quiet, enough,” said the queen’s magician, while he fumed inside at having been double-crossed by his own patroness.

  “I followed, I followed—I stuck to them like a leech, all the way to Lyons, where a dismal sly fellow dressed as a soldier drugged their wine in a tavern and made off with it in great haste—”

  “Excuses, excuses.” Ruggieri tapped a finger impatiently on a stiff black leather panel of his trunk hose. “Did you discover who this one was working for?”

  “I knew his face, Maestro. A notorious criminal—he has done work for the Duchess of Valentinois. He saw me behind him, the city gates of Orléans ahead of him, and passed it to a lady who took it into the city for him. Just as well, for he was arrested at the gate for some other crime, and it would have been seized and kept from us forever—”

  “A woman confederate, eh? The duchess, she is full of surprises. Did you find out who the mystery woman was?”

  “I questioned the guards at the gate. She was a tall, dark-haired woman, easy to remember. She had showed them a letter to her aunt, a widow Tournet, who lives within the city walls. A wealthy eccentric old woman, but I found her house locked up and well-guarded. She rarely goes out. I was unable to break in.”

  “Well then, we shall have to use other methods. What did you say this dark woman’s name was?”

  “Sibille, Demoiselle de La Roque.”

  “Of the great de La Roques?”

  “No, the name comes from some pretentious little hoberau’s so-called estate near the forest off the Paris-Orléans road, known as La Roque-aux-Bois.”