Judith Merkle Riley Read online

  That’s what informers do, before they go to the bailli, I thought. They laugh at their victims. I mean, it really wasn’t my fault that I’d shot Thibault Villasse. Admittedly, I knew his face well enough, being affianced to him for all those long, dull years, but you must consider that it was dark and he was masked. Besides, my poetical labors, along with close stitching, have caused a certain shortsightedness to come upon me recently. It really couldn’t have been expected that I should do otherwise.

  I must admit to a brief spasm of guilt when the smoke cleared and I saw that the face at the windowsill had vanished. Such a dreadful fall, you see, down into the moonlit courtyard, and I am by nature very tenderhearted. Why, I cannot bear to see a fledgling bird fall out of the nest without replacing it. And besides, I had put on mourning for him, which showed the world I was sorry. Clearly, it was not I who had shot off father’s harquebus, but Fate. And Fate couldn’t be undone.

  “You can’t change Fate,” I said.

  “Demoiselle, I have wearied myself traveling all this way to change Fate, and for the good of this realm, I tell you that you must return.”

  “And for the good of myself, I must go forward. Change Fate another way.” The old doctor’s face turned crimson, and he sputtered with rage.

  “You conceited old maid, do you realize great kings have given me purses of gold for a single word of my advice?” But I am an Artaud of La Roque: insults do not move me. I looked down my nose at him, one of my most successful gestures of scorn, since I am tall above the ordinary.

  “Then go away and advise them. I shall do what I shall do.” As I turned to go, he seemed so set down, I felt almost sorry for the vainglorious old windbag. A southerner, by his accent. They are all boasters, those southerners. Clearly, this doctor had swallowed too many medicines of his own compounding. Kings, indeed.

  “Stay, wait—” he said, and I paused. He looked me up and down, his gaze assessing. “Even so—yes—it could work out. Just heed my warning: beware the Queen of Swords.”

  “I have no idea what you mean,” I said.

  “Oh, yes you do,” he said, as his servant brought his mounts to him from the trough. “Old maids always read the tarocchi.” As the servant came closer, I made out that he was not leading a doctor’s mules, but royal post-horses. The strange old man was traveling on business for the crown. Oh, dear, he must be important after all. Had I been too uncivil? Did he know my dreadful secret? As if in answer to my unspoken question, the odd doctor turned back to look at me as he set his foot in the stirrup. “Mourning, pah!” he said. “You should be ashamed.” For a moment, my heart stood still.

  The proprietress, in slatternly apron and cap, was crossing before me bearing several cups of her odious home-brewed beverage. “Good woman,” I said (thus does politeness make liars of us all), “tell me, do you know the name of that elderly fellow with the long beard and the doctor’s gown?”

  “Him? Indeed I do. From Provence on the queen’s business. His man seems to think his name is very important. Doctor Michel de Notre-Dame, if you please. I’ve met much greater here, I can tell you.”

  Nostradamus. The talk of every parlor and fashionable cénacle since the appearance of his little volume of prophecies in verse. Not a prosecutor’s informer, but a prophet who read the future, summoned by the queen, herself. I felt a shiver go through me at the very sound of his name. Fate and I had just met on the Orléans road.

  But what had he meant about the kingdom?

  Two

  It was dawn, the kind of sticky dawn that has brought no relief from the heat, and promises a muggy, unbearable afternoon. Diane de Poitiers was emerging from her cold bath, and two maids stood by with towels to rub her dry. The palace had awakened; in the kitchens, pots were clattering, in the stables horses being brushed and saddled, among them Diane’s and the king’s. Here and there a late-sleeping roisterer aroused himself, stretched, pissed into the fireplace, and called for drink. In one bedroom, the queen was holding her levée, the Duchess of Nevers holding out her shift. In another, the king, his long, morose face oddly contented, was having his points fastened by a valet, as he gave orders to the courtiers that surrounded him. He was pondering a move to Fontainebleau, where the air was fresher, before wintering in Paris at the Louvre. Well, perhaps not just the Louvre. Perhaps Anet, one of the jewel-like chateaux he had given his mistress. She had spoken of planning a splendid entertainment for the entire court during the season of Christmas. A courtier approached him with a message. Ah, what bother—the ambassadors from the Venetian Republic, here so soon? They must wait another day before he could receive them. The council must consider the fresh impudence of the King of Spain. Yes, the Empire grows too great. No, if the heretics do not recant their Lutheranism, they must be executed for the good of the state. There is no excuse for breaking the law.

  Diane de Poitiers, La Grande Sénéchale, and Duchesse de Valentinois, holder of the crown jewels, snatcher of estates, and center of patronage and corruption for the entire kingdom, held an audience that morning. Several poets had requested royal allowances in return for works praising her beauty and wisdom; a sculptor had been called for a commission to create a bas-relief depicting Diane, in idealized unclad form, entwined with a stag as Goddess of the Hunt. She in fact did not care for the hunt, but that hardly mattered. When the whole world praises my eternal beauty, she said to herself, how can the king ever dare think otherwise? My artists have made a dull, morose little boy into a legendary lover. What man would willingly refuse such a title? And if he does not see himself as he is, he won’t see me as I am. An icy little smile crossed her narrow, heavily made-up face.

  After the artists came several distant relatives, desiring offices and church benefices; they did not go away disappointed, although they possessed not a spark of competence among them. Then there was an accountant, bringing her reports of property seized from executed heretics, to which the king, in a fond moment, had given her all the rights. So very little? Surely, heresy must reside in some greater houses. Perhaps there should be more informers, less leniency with great names. And, after all, the entertainment at Anet would be so expensive…

  Diane was rising to go, when one of her trusted ladies-in-waiting ushered in a humble carpenter. Diane’s eyes narrowed with pleasure as she interviewed him.

  “Two holes? In the ceiling of my bedchamber? And a secret panel in the floor above, you say? How very good of you to inform me. You shall not leave this room a poor man. Be sure to let me know of any other little surprises you have created for the queen.” And as the carpenter left, bowing and walking backward, praising God and the beautiful and gracious duchess, Diane smiled inwardly. It is just as well, she thought, for that pitiful Italian merchant’s daughter to be reminded who rules here, and why, and that she has not the slightest hope in the world.

  ***

  In the city with watery streets, the houses were much taller in this quarter, four or five stories high, crammed in together for want of space, their rooms low and cramped, the lower floors sunless. Laundry stretched across the narrow backwater canals, and the fetid stink of the water mingled with the smell of cheap cooking: garlic, cabbage, and onions. As the last sunlight gilded the facades of the rich villas on the Grand Canal, the shadows fell fast and hard in the narrow alleys of the Ghetto of Venice. In a room at the top floor of one of these ancient tenements, a young man with limp brown hair was rummaging avidly through the contents of the shelves in a large, open cupboard on carved legs. The door behind him opened silently, and an old man entered without making a sound. He had a long white beard, a skullcap, an ankle-length gown. His face was scarred with deep lines and the marks of old injuries.

  “At last you’ve come. I’ve been expecting you.” The young man whirled around to confront him, drawing a wicked knife.

  “Don’t bother with that,” said the old man, pausing to cough. He pressed a cloth to his mouth, and it came away bloody. “What you’re looking for is in the chest benea
th the window.” The young man backed toward the window, reluctant to take his eyes off the old man for fear of a trick. “The stars told me you would come this evening,” said the old man. There was the slightest hint of an ironic smile on his face. Stars, thought the younger man. There must be a trick, something magical. With renewed caution, he looked around the room. It was filled with alien objects: an astrolabe, an armillary sphere, instruments of brass and bone, whose use he could not imagine. They’d bring a bit at the pawn-shop, he thought. Maybe I should do the old fellow in and take the lot.

  “Don’t try,” said the old man. “There is not a dealer in the city who would not know my mark.” The young man started. The vile old man could read his thoughts. God knows what deception he has in mind.

  “No deception,” said the old man. He coughed again. “You’re welcome to it. Come now, tell me how you got in?”

  “From the roof, through the window. You should lock your shutters.” He edged toward the chest, and eased the heavy lid open with his free hand, never dropping the knife.

  “It’s the silver-gilt box, that one with the engraved signs there, with the thing in the chariot in the center of the lid,” said the old man. The young man with the limp hair scooped it up and stared at it, astonished. “Take it away,” said the old man. “It will be a great weight off of me to have it gone.” He sat down suddenly on a bench by the wall and bent over to cough again and again, pressing the cloth to his mouth.

  “It’s—it’s very—rich. How can you give it up so easily?” There was something eerie about the box, exquisitely made as it was. Could it be the bizarre image of a snake-footed, rooster-headed deity in a chariot between the sun and moon on its lid? The unreadable letters engraved beneath? The heavy catch made of a strange kind of steel, which glinted like a Toledo sword blade?

  “Believe me, the burden, the temptation…It has worn me out and used me up. It is done with me now; it has ruined me and knows I am dying. Take it, and what is left of my life, at least, will be free of it. Regret, a vain attempt to make amends—hell on this earth before hell in the next—that is all it has left me with. I warn you though: don’t, if you value your soul, look into it.”

  “How do I know you aren’t trying to deceive me with an empty box?”

  “You would have a far easier time, I assure you, if it were empty. But it is not. It contains…the answer to every wish you ever made, and, oh, just God, the most hideous secret of all…the secret of eternal life. That is the final gift it will offer when it has transformed that very life into agony. Agony unending. That last evil gift, at least, I have refused.” The young man noticed that a curious cadaverous smell seemed to surround the old man as he sat. How revolting. When the old man had finished coughing again, he looked up and said, “Since you have left me time to prepare the end of my life, I will reward you with this warning: Do not, if you value your soul, open the box that contains The Master of All Desires.” But the old man’s face held a curious combination of bitterness, resignation, and malice, as if he knew that no power on earth could keep the younger man from peering into the box sooner or later. The temptation was sooner. The younger man, consumed with curiosity, put down his knife and opened the box. There was a roar, and a flash like lightning in the room.

  “Oh, my God, it’s vile! I’ll see it in my nightmares!” Horrified, he slammed the lid shut again almost as soon as he had opened it.

  “My, what a pity. But I did warn you. It’s all yours now—you won’t be able to give it up. Until it’s done with you, it will reappear in your life even if you throw it in the deepest ocean. Like a lover you’ll be drawn to it over and over again, until in giving you your every desire it has robbed you of everything worth having. Death and doom follow it everywhere. See? Already you are thinking the one you are stealing it for is unworthy to have it. Who paid you for it? What is he, that he deserves such a treasure?”

  “Maestro Simeoni,” whispered the younger man.

  “Simeoni? That third-rate hack? He can’t predict a full moon. What a joke! Simeoni wants it!” The old man threw back his head and laughed, but the sound ended in choking and coughing. The laughter seemed to make the younger man’s eyes go wild.

  “Maestro Simeoni said it would make his fortune. Why should I settle for a piece of a fortune when I can have it all?”

  “A fortune? Then it is not Simeoni who wants it after all. He is currying favor with someone greater.”

  “Why shouldn’t he want it? Why shouldn’t you want it?”

  “Ah, young man, remember I was young and foolish once, too. And remember this from me: Lady Wisdom often charges a cruel price. Oh, yes. And greet her for me, will you?”

  “Who?” asked the young man, his voice sarcastic as he tied the box into a bundle on his back. “Lady Wisdom?”

  “No,” the old man. “She who is willing to pay for that evil box.”

  But the younger man had swung out of the window onto the rope that dangled beyond, and did not hear these last words.

  ***

  The thief with the limp brown hair pulled himself onto the high rooftop, coiled up his rope and tied it about his waist, then nimbly made his way across the roofs until he came to an attic window that looked out over the chimney pots. Making his way through a maze of crowded tenement rooms, he climbed down the last three floors of the building via a rickety outside staircase to the lapping water of a canal. There, waiting in the dark on the water, was an unlit gondola with closed curtains. “Do you have it?” whispered a voice from behind the curtains.

  “Yes,” whispered the thief.

  “Good, get in.” There was barely a sound as the gondola slid out into a wider waterway, barely a sound as the dagger slid into the thief’s body, and hardly a splash at all, when weighted and tied with his own rope, the still warm corpse slid into the black water.

  The next day, a man with a dark, curling beard and an earring boarded a galley bound for Marseilles. In his baggage was a silver-gilt and ivory box, sewn for the trip into heavy, waterproof canvas, and inscribed with the words, TO MAESTRO COSMO RUGGIERI AT THE HOUSE OF LORENZO RUGGIERI, AT THE SIGN OF THE RED COCKEREL ON THE RUE DE LA TISARENDIRIE, PARIS.

  Three

  It’s all because I’m riding a little brown roussin, I thought, instead of a lady’s hackney, and I don’t have a liveried footman. He took me for some hoberau’s daughter, who threshes wheat with her father’s peasants and hunts rabbits with a bow and arrow. That’s why he was rude about my little artistic creations. He doesn’t know anything about the Higher Mind. So that shows he doesn’t really know about any of those other troubling matters, either. That Nostradamus is just a rude, intrusive charlatan, that’s all.

  After all, if he could see so much, he’d have seen that my father’s escutcheon has sixteen quarterings, and he would have given me the respect that is owed to a person whose bloodline stretches back to before the Crusades. Besides, I was educated for two years at the Convent of Saint-Esprit, where I studied Italian, music, embroidery, letters, and the art of elegant conversation. I am used to associating with the finer sort of cultivated people, not with dreadful, bad-tempered quacks who pretend they know everything. Conversing with more elevated souls has created in me a Higher, or Spiritual, Self that gross-minded persons such as he are incapable of perceiving. He is fortunate that my Higher Self has turned me toward all that is refined and away from the coarser instincts of my Lower, or Sensible, Self, or I might have done something—well, something even more uncivil.

  Every turn in the road was an old friend, for each summer of my childhood we would move from our house within the city walls to the farm and then back again after the harvest. But that time was long gone, and so, too, was my grandfather’s rambling old house on the rue de Bourgogne, passed irrevocably out of the family’s possession, due to father’s improvidence.

  The house of my childhood, I thought, I should create a poem to its beloved old vine-covered walls, but as I rode on toward the distant walls and sp
ires of the city, another house rose in my mind’s vision, a new and elegant mansion in white stone, discreetly tucked behind garden walls. The house of Madame Tournet, my aunt Pauline, just off the cathedral square. And inside—oh, inside I saw again the tapestried room where golden light shone through the windows, catching on the bright silver of a dish sculptured like a seashell. The dish, I know—so clear is the memory—is full of little sweets flavored with fennel.

  ***

  “Go ahead, have one,” says the aunt of my memory. She looks just like the fairy queen to me. A square linen headdress reveals the coils of her dark brown hair tucked away under a shining green silk net. A high half ruff frames her face, and a loose sleeveless brocade sacque floats over her day-gown. She is beautiful; everything about her rustles, glistens, smells of dried roses and essence of lily of the valley. The crimson satin folds of her wide-hemmed undergown fascinate me—they shine with a different light on the top than in the depths. A magic gown. I reach for the dish and mother shames me with a glance. She is pregnant again, her dress of dark gray wool faded and her oversleeves threadbare at the elbow. I am the oldest, I am six. A maid holds my little sister Laurette, a round-faced baby with pink cheeks and golden ringlets. Mother has Annibal, my four-year-old brother, by the hand. He is still in skirts, and his hair is in long, pale brown curls. His face is distended like a squirrel’s, with a candy stuffed in each cheek.

  “She shouldn’t be spoiled,” says mother.

  “She doesn’t look like the others,” says Aunt Pauline.

  “She grows more unlike each day,” says mother, her voice weary. “Look at her there—she’s taught herself to read, she wanders by herself instead of playing like ordinary children—she says she’s looking for fairies. What shall I do, Pauline?” The grown-up talk is strange. Big people are so slow, and ponderous, and dull. I think I do not want to ever be one.