Judith Merkle Riley Read online

  “But, ma tante, you said—”

  “Never mind what I said! See there! A glovemaker’s! It’s not the dressmakers we need to see—it’s the shoes! The gloves! You know your hands and feet are simply too large for anything of mine. We must shop! You can’t see the queen without gloves!”

  “B-but, I have a pair of gloves, you got them just—”

  “Nonsense, I hear my money calling out to me. Would you deny a poor old lady her one pleasure? Why, I can feel my heart palpitate! Don’t stop me now, you wouldn’t want to be responsible for my death, would you?”

  I tell you, it was like releasing a tiger from a cage. “A fan!” she cried, as she spied a lady with a fan on her wrist, mounted pillion behind her valet. “Did you see the one your dreadful cousin Matheline had? You must have one much better! Ah! Over there! Just look at that shop with the darling embroidered slippers! I must have some. Théophile, my cousin, halt everything! Baptiste, stop, stop here, and run in and get the shopkeeper! I want him to bring out those silk ones embroidered with roses that I see on the shelf in there behind the worktable!” She turned to me, her eyes glittering with shopping madness. “Sibille, you must learn never to lose an opportunity when you are shopping. If you pass something by, you may never see it again. Then you’ll dream about it. So it’s best just to buy it at once.”

  Embarrassed as I was, still I couldn’t help feeling sympathy for Auntie. That is, when a shopping sort of lady has been immured for many years, it seems natural that she should go a little wild when finally getting to the biggest city in the kingdom. Ever since the queen’s messenger had arrived with the letter, she had been awhirl with joy, planning the trip, packing and unpacking jewelry, veils, headdresses, and exulting over how father, having given up all claims on me, wouldn’t get to share in the glory. She’d even sent him a crowing letter that she wasn’t good enough for him, but was good enough for royalty, so there.

  The shopkeeper had come out into the street and bowed before her, carrying the coveted slippers. Auntie took one, and, behind a half-closed curtain, slipped it on her gouty foot and pronounced it perfect.

  “I’ll have them. Do you have anything like them but really large?” she asked. I could feel myself blushing again.

  “We could make something up,” offered the shoemaker. “You could come in and see our lasts, and perhaps you’d find something suitable.”

  “Madame my cousin, the delay—we are almost at the inn—perhaps later—”

  “Théophile, my dear, dear cousin, could you be an angel and run ahead and make the arrangements? Baptiste, you stay here—I’m going to stop at this master cobbler’s establishment for a while and order a few little things.” Oblivious to the little crowd that had gathered to stare as she was heaved out of the litter, she sailed into the shop ahead of me, a footman and Gargantua bringing up the rear of our procession.

  “Look at that dog, will you!”

  “It’s only a pup.”

  “That’s what I mean. It’s already a big as a full-grown wolfhound. What will it be when it’s grown up?”

  “The paws, you can tell by the paws.”

  “Haw, they’re as big as that woman’s feet—”

  “Wonder how big she’ll be—?”

  “I think she heard you, Georges—”

  Ah, God, I thought, if only I were a satirist with a vicious tongue, instead of a sweet and delicate soul of poetic nature. How I would stab them with a vicious cut! But instead I just wished the ground would open and swallow me up, large feet and all. Worst of all, a little voice in the back of my mind told me I had better get used to it, that life in the future would be a series of embarrassments, or, as my mother used to say when father was drunk in public, “These things a lady must learn to deal with graciously.”

  Mother’s dictum was tested again at the inn, when poor Baptiste, laden with packages, ran directly into a provincial looking valet coming out of our room, similarly laden. As they scrambled to pick things up, it became clear that the previous tenant had not yet fully departed, and his servant was engaged in transporting his things to the Hôtel de Sens.

  “So sorry, so sorry,” said the valet, “my master has taken ill, and I’ve been in such a hurry.”

  “Ill, eh?” said Auntie, blocking the valet with her large bulk, and poking her walking stick at him, just for effect. “Is it catching? I don’t want to stay in a room where someone has come down with a catching illness. Where is my cousin? How could he have done this? Without me to guide him, he doesn’t take even the most rudimentary precautions! And just like an innkeeper! Why, they can put you in a room where they’ve just taken a dead body out! Shameless ruffians! You there, tell me what your master has.”

  The valet, pulling himself up in a dignified way, said, “My master, the great Nostradamus, does not have a catching disease!”

  “And how does he know?” said Auntie, as I shriveled up and prayed that no one else would see this interchange.

  “Madame, my master is the greatest plague doctor in the whole world. If he says he hasn’t got a catching illness, then he hasn’t. Now, let me pass, if you please.” Yes, I thought I’d recognized the valet. Now I was sure. The servant who’d held the horse for the interfering old doctor I’d met on the road to Orléans.

  “Auntie,” I whispered, “it really is the servant of Maistre Nostredame, the great seer.”

  “I don’t care if he’s the archangel Gabriel. I want to know his symptoms, before I stay in this room.”

  “It is a return of my master’s old complaint, the gout. He has pains like hot irons through every joint. Now, Madame, let me pass.”

  “Hot irons, eh,” said Auntie, never lowering her walking stick, with which she was prodding the unfortunate servant in the chest. “No, it shouldn’t feel like hot irons—that’s something else.”

  “I vow to you, Madame, it is the gout.”

  “No, it’s not. It sounds like a hex. But hexes aren’t catching. You may go, boy, but if your master wants the hex removed, I am something of an expert. Have him send word to me. We’ll be here the next two days, and after that, at Saint-Germain. We have an audience with the queen.”

  “Auntie,” I said, my voice low, “it’s Nostradamus, he knows everything, he sees the future.” And here she is offering advice on hexes, as if he were a nobody who didn’t know anything about the supernatural. I was completely mortified.

  “I know who Nostradamus is, Sibille, and I know he’s a man. Men don’t know anything about removing hexes.” With that, she put her walking stick back on the floor and leaned heavily on it as she walked suspiciously into the room, sniffing at the walls, lifting up the bedclothes and peering at them. “These sheets have not been changed,” she announced. “Sibille, go tell that valet on his way to—oh, there you are back again. Have you thought again about the hex?”

  “Madame, I need to check the armoire, I think he left—oh, my God—” As he pulled the heavy doors open, we all saw what he was seeing. That wretched box was forming up on an interior shelf.

  “You damned busybodies,” said the thing inside, “haven’t you anything better to do than go shopping all day? First you bore me to tears, and then you leave me in the litter down in the stable. I tell you, I expect more respect.”

  At the sound of the voice from the box, the strange valet fainted.

  “Baptiste, fetch some water,” said Auntie. “We seem to be in a pickle. I wonder what it will take to buy his silence? We certainly can’t let him go without an explanation. That thing is an intolerable social burden. Whatever possessed you, Sibille, to open it up in the first place?”

  ***

  “A talking box, you say, Léon? What did it look like?” Nostradamus, groggy with opium, lay in a vast, ornate bed in one of the guest rooms of the winding old medieval hôtel that was the Paris home of the Cardinal Bourbon. The covers were turned back from his painful leg joints, and his bare, swollen feet stuck out on the heavy tapestry bedcover. They were gradually ta
king on a dusky blue hue.

  “Silver-gilt, quite ornate, with letters written over the catch. Something like Agaba, Orthnet—”

  “Don’t repeat them, Léon, if it is what I think it is, it would be…most unwise.” He spoke slowly and carefully, as if he were afraid he might slur words, but it was clear to his servant that even in a fog his mind was keener than any ordinary man’s.

  “And I swear, I recognized the younger one. The girl on the Orléans road, only dressed up so’s you’d hardly recognize her in a dark blue traveling gown with slashed sleeves and silk trim. She acted embarrassed.”

  “As well she might—if she was silly enough to open that box. It will follow her until it kills her, Léon. I knew there was something—ouch—significant about her. Didn’t I tell you? She holds the key. Somehow, she has wandered into the center of one of Anael’s historical knots. That wretched angel, why doesn’t he keep his cupboard in better order? Then I’d know what the alternatives are. That horrible coffer—it’s the gate straight into hell. It is fully capable of sucking down the whole country. No wonder I have been having all these horrible visions lately. How can I—uff—save France? I wonder where she found it—ugh, ow, this pain. Entirely unlike gout. I swear, my feet feel as if they were being held in the fire, and yet they’re turning as blue as if they were frozen. Ugh. Now it’s my heart. My chest is being crushed. The covers—take them off my heart—This is nothing—nothing I’ve ever seen before. Perhaps that old harpy was right. I’m willing to try anything at this point. Get her for me right away, Léon. New dresses, trips to the queen—it’s clear to me they’ve already begun wishing themselves to perdition. If that ghastly box succeeds in doing what it always does, it will pass on to someone else quite soon, and earth won’t be seeing those two women again. Ah, God, the pain. Where’s my opium?” Léon rearranged the covers, and holding up his master’s head from the pillow, spooned another dose of tincture of opium down him, the last in the bottle. Then he hurried away to the inn at the sign of Saint-Michel.

  ***

  Across town, the two Ruggieri brothers had barred the door to Lorenzo’s little workshop room. A wax doll with a scrap of cloth wound around its middle, and with pins thrust through its limbs lay on a table next to a dish of water and a burning candle.

  “It’s working, Lorenzo. The queen herself complained to me that Nostradamus is pretending to have gout, so that he won’t have to go to Blois right away. She suspects him of wanting to linger in Paris to see clients. Now, let’s give him the sensation of drowning. She’ll be sure he’s malingering.”

  “Just finish him off, Cosmo. The longer he stays in Paris, the poorer my business will be.”

  “No. Discredit first. I’m tired of her saying, ‘Nostradamus this, Nostradamus that,’ as if he were the oracle of the age. That’s how she repays my faithful service! Flying to every new charlatan she hears of, looking for a guarantee of good fortune! No, I intend to go slowly. Keep him in bed, then every day a little something. Then hold the head above the flame, slowly, so the brains melt bit by bit. By the time I’m done with him, no one will ever dream of usurping my place again.”

  ***

  “Humph,” said Auntie, inspecting the blue feet. “Definitely not gout. It’s a hex. I can feel it all around you. Are you missing anything personal? A hair? A fingernail clipping?” But the old prophet was incoherent, choking and spluttering as if he were being held underwater.

  “You see how it is. Hurry, Madame, if you can do anything to help,” said his horrified servant.

  “Baptiste, hand me my hex powder. I never travel without my hex powder. Sibille, beat on that little drum I gave you.” Baptiste reached into a wooden box full of little stoppered bottles and gave her one that was half full of a poisonous-looking greenish-brown powder. She took a little pinch and sprinkled it about, the way you’d salt an overlarge cauldron of soup.

  “Stop that infernal racket,” said the great Nostradamus, opening his eyes, spluttering, and wiping his face as if it were wet.

  “Ha!” said Auntie. “It works every time.”

  “What about the drumming?” I asked, for my hands were getting tired. It was a little drum, barely bigger than a little goblet, all made of some dark metal, with barbaric designs etched out in gold on its surface. The drumhead, stretched tight, was a very sinister brownish stained color. My fingers were beginning to feel bruised, from striking the rim. The noise was so irritating that even faithful Gargantua had given up lying at my feet and with a doleful howl, had fled and hidden beneath the bed. I began to drum more gingerly.

  “Keep it up, Sibille. Don’t flag now. I’m going after the pins next.”

  “Léon, this is your fault. Where on earth did this horrible woman come from? Can’t a man have any rest? My God, what a headache! My head feels as if it were melting. Get her out of here.”

  ***

  “I don’t understand it, Lorenzo. Look, I’m holding the head directly in the flame, and the wax doesn’t melt.”

  “Cosmo, look at the pins!” said his brother. As Cosmo Ruggieri pushed the head of the wax figurine deeper into the flames, the pins thrust through the figurine’s right leg began to move, first slowly, then with greater speed. Then one of them fell to the table with a plink! sound.

  “Put that back, will you, brother.”

  “I can’t! The wax is as hard as iron!”

  “I’ll fix that,” said Cosmo Ruggieri, and ruthlessly ran the candle flame up and down the entire body of the little wax manikin. But instead of melting the wax, the heat made the cloth wrapped around the figure burst into flames. With a cry, the sorcerer dropped the red-hot figurine to the table, where the flames suddenly flared up hugely, threatening to set fire to his wiry black beard and beetling eyebrows. He leaped back.

  “The curtains, brother, the curtains. Beat it out before it spreads!” Thinking quickly, his brother upended the bowl of water on the flaming figure, which entirely vanished with a sputtering sound as the flames were doused.

  “That damned old man—” said Cosmo Ruggieri.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. He’s got a way of countermanding the death-spell. I’d give anything to know what it is.”

  “I doubt that he’ll tell you, after this,” said his older brother with a sigh. “It looks as if I can’t get rid of him this way. I’ll just have to think of something else.”

  “You’ve never failed yet, brother. No one can outthink a Ruggiero.”

  ***

  “I could have sworn it was gout,” said Nostradamus, sitting up in bed and rubbing his bare, pink ankle. He had quite bony feet, I noticed, and didn’t trim his toenails very carefully.

  “I can’t do a thing about gout,” said Auntie, who, without invitation, was sitting on the foot of the bed. “If I could, I wouldn’t have it myself. But I’m outstanding on hexes.”

  “May I ask who taught you this—unusual technique?” inquired the old man, his eyes roving up and down the huge, silk-brocade-covered mountain of flesh, unconfined by corseting, and taking in the little mustache, the strange, mushroom-like pallor, and the vast arrangement of glossy dyed black hair beneath the complicated and eccentric headdress of her own devising.

  “An African sorcerer. Sibille, remember the old black fellow with the crocodile tooth necklace? That was his drum. Works every time.” She beamed at the bedridden prophet. “The powder’s his recipe, too. Took me absolutely forever to get the ingredients, and one of them’s just henbane picked at the new moon, which had to substitute for some plant he kept insisting on, but I simply couldn’t find—”

  “You have both traveled in Africa?” said Nostradamus, his voice tinged with respect. “I have traveled only in Egypt. I studied the secrets of mummies, and the mysteries of Osiris and Eternal Life. But beyond that—”

  Auntie’s face was envious. “I’ve always wanted to travel,” she said. “But Monsieur Tournet said he’d done enough traveling for the both of us. I never set foot out of the house. Spas. I
’ve been as far as Balaruc and Montpellier, but only before I married.”

  “But the sorcerer?”

  “He came to me. On the drum. A slave ship, you know—when my husband pursued, they lightened the load by throwing them all overboard in their chains. The drum was a souvenir the captain kept in his cabin. Convenient, don’t you think? Easy to pack.”

  “Then I take it you were instructed by—”

  “By a ghost. Of course. My house is infested with them. It’s all the fault of my late husband’s business. Insensitive, that man. He never even noticed them.”

  “But, Auntie, how could the African fellow speak French to tell you the recipe?”

  “He doesn’t. Just a bit of Portuguese. And I know a bit, too, so we’ve managed. He started by throwing the furniture around, but just as I was about to call in the exorcist, he called a truce. I offered to pray weekly for those poor souls at the bottom on the ocean, and we’ve got on well ever since.”

  “You pray for heathens?” Nostradamus’s servant, who had been listening intently, could not help exclaiming in surprise.

  “So what if I do?” answered Auntie. I saw the light of interest, and a kind of deep understanding kindle in Doctor Nostradamus’s eyes. Auntie seemed to fascinate him, like a whale, or a volcano, or some other very large manifestation of nature. I could feel his gaze gently probing, like an insect’s feelers. First her, then me. We were clearly a phenomenon. My face was getting hot again, and I wished I could shrivel away and vanish through the half-open door.

  “Madame,” said the old doctor, his voice courteous and concerned, “is there some return I can make you for this—singular—ah, service?” Auntie’s face looked concerned, and she picked her walking stick up from where it was resting against the foot of the bed and pointed it in my direction, where I was trying to shrink myself into the floor.