Floats the Dark Shadow (12 page)

“Next year’s submission to the Salon?” Casimir asked.

It was way too soon to predict, but she played along. “Would they take it?”

Casimir grinned. “Probably not.”

“And if they did, it would be skied.” Averill gestured toward the clouds overhead. “Almost to the ceiling.”

Theo imagined her bold windmill hung so high it would be nothing but dark squiggles. Would refusal be worse, or having it all but invisible? “At least this is not
properly feminine
,” Theo muttered.

“But you—” Jules began, then glanced at her breeches and stopped abruptly.

Frustrated, Theo waited for him to finish his sentence. Was he so uncomfortable when alone with the men? When Jules said nothing more about her feminine approach, either proper or improper, she turned back to her painting.

“You scorn the allure of feminine charm?” Casimir asked her, arching his eyebrows. “No doubt you would prefer a
succès de scandale
?”

“But of course!” Theo exclaimed. “What artist wouldn’t?”

“I don’t think the windmill is scandalous enough.” Casimir feigned solemnity. “You would have to add a nude.”

“Several daring nudes in the manner of Manet, but stretched out along the street,” Averill suggested. “
Le
Sacrifice sous le Moulin.
” He glanced at Casimir and they laughed again.

“I don’t think I can squeeze in a nude,” Theo responded lightly, despite a pang of jealousy. They had known each other for years. Even when she knew their references, she could not hope to match their rapport. Casimir was always amiable but always subtly mocking. Except for his music and his friendship with Averill, she had no idea what was truly important to him—or to Jules, who had been studying his feet since nudes were mentioned, though they populated his poems. Did a woman’s presence embarrass him so much? Did he not like them? Did he like them too much? Either way, he could not remain such a prude around Paul and the others and survive.

She wished Paul were here to comment on her windmill. The extreme difference of their views often gave her fresh eyes. “Paul is not with you today?”

With a breath of relief, Jules replied, “He was with us. I will bring him.” He turned and walked quickly down the street, moving from sun to shadow.

“Paul took a side trip to the bakery where we bought the almond croissants,” Averill said.

Casimir smirked. “Noret is flirting with the baker’s daughter.”

“Ninette?” Theo felt suddenly uneasy. The girl was lovely but far too young for Paul to romance. “She’s barely fifteen.”

“Perhaps she writes poetry,” Averill said.

“I doubt it. She must be his Beatrice—his inspiration.” Casimir laughed. “Paul is so convoluted, such simplicity must be utterly irresistible.”

Ninette was not stupid but not quick either. The image of them together was all the more disconcerting because Paul looked older than he was, and delicate Ninette younger. Could the girl’s parents permit such a courtship? Theo fought her queasiness. For all she knew, Paul was only ordering a cake, not beginning a seduction.

Then Paul came round the corner, Matthieu beside him and Jules trailing behind. They waved and started up the hill. Paul and Matthieu were eating
éclairs
and talking back and forth between bites. Odd. Paul was the last person Theo would imagine being comfortable with children. Maybe Casimir was right and their open simplicity appealed to Paul because his own brain was usually tied in knots.

“Time to go, mademoiselle,” Matthieu said as he approached. “Maman needs me to buy sausage at the
charcuterie
.”

“In a moment,” Theo said, for Paul had walked to stand squarely in front of her canvas. She waited for his judgment. He stared at the windmill for a full minute. “Theo, this is superb. Startling, yet assured. Not a stroke too many.”

She had not expected that! Delight and pride surged through her. “Thank you.”

Then Paul shrugged. “Of course, the Salon will not hang it.”

Theo gave an exasperated laugh. “I have a year to create a painting to please us both.” Was it even worth the effort to please them? Mélanie, one of her good friends from the Académie Julian,
had won a pitiful honorable mention for one of the most brilliant paintings at the Salon. But Theo knew her father would be overjoyed if she won even the smallest award.

“It is not Impressionist,” Paul said. “Certainly not Pointillist. More in the mode of a Synthetist….”

Theo didn’t understand the utter passion of the French to categorize everything. She didn’t care what school Paul picked for it, only that it moved him. Superb. Startling. She especially liked startling.

Matthieu was shifting nervously from foot to foot, so she quickly packed her paints and handed him the box. Working together, Casimir and Averill folded the easel. They divided the burdens then made a parade up and down the twisting streets, past the vineyard, and back up the rue Lepic. Suddenly inspired, Theo kept walking past her door to the alley. She’d warned Matthieu to be careful when out alone. He’d assured her he would be—in the swaggering tone of young boys who weren’t afraid of anything. “I met a detective here not long ago,” she told her Revenants. Let Matthieu listen in and be reminded without her having to sound like a mother hen.

“A detective?” Jules was horrified.

Paul frowned. “Asking about the bombing?”

“No, he was trying to find a clue to the disappearance of little Denis.” She glanced quickly at Matthieu.

Averill understood instantly. He looked only at her, so Matthieu’s boyish pride would not be injured. “Yes, Theo, you cannot be too careful in Paris. Especially at dusk. All sorts of dangerous people emerge from their lairs and stalk the streets.”

“You are right, but almost always I have someone to protect me.”

“It should be always,” Paul said gravely. “Beautiful women are at risk as much as careless boys.”

Casimir rolled his eyes at the
petit
drama she had staged. “Why did you not tell us of your adventure before, Theo? Questioned by the police, no less.”

“I told him all I knew, but that was little enough,” she said sadly. Then memory jolted her. “He hasn’t talked to you?”

“To me!” Casimir exclaimed in faux horror.

“Yes, you took me to tea the evening Denis disappeared.”

“Tea? Ah yes…how corrupt of me,” Casimir murmured.

“Mademoiselle, I must get the sausage,” Matthieu reminded her.

“But of course. Thank you, Matthieu.” Theo took her paint box from him and he ran off down the street. She wondered if she’d made any impression at all. The others followed Theo back to her apartment and deposited her things inside. Theo thanked them and asked when they would meet again.

“We are all attending Leo Taxil’s lecture, are we not? I have procured tickets enough.”

“Yes, I’m going.” Theo had been amused when Averill read aloud the bizarre tales in the
cafés
.

Paul’s eyes gleamed with anticipation. “Even the Hyphens will attend such an extraordinary event.”

“Good.” Theo hadn’t seen them since the last meeting about the magazine, over two months ago.
Les trois Traits
—the three Hyphens—as Paul had dubbed them, were three slim, dark-haired poets named Jean-Jacques, Louis-Patrice, and Pierre-Henri. Professor, student, and fledgling lawyer, they were a bit more traditional than the other Revenants and sought out each other’s company in the Left Bank
cafés
.

“Taxil promises revelations of crazed satanic rites,” Casimir said, as if offering a sweetmeat.

Paul rubbed his hands together with theatrical relish. “A deliciously degenerate Masonic priestess who once consorted with demons will be there in person.”

Jules licked his lips nervously. “The High Priestess was redeemed when she spoke of admiring Jeanne d’Arc. The demons could not endure even the name and fled, leaving the High Priestess free.”

“It should be as entertaining as the Com
é
die-Française,” Averill said.

“You don’t believe Taxil’s tales of demons?” Casimir asked. “You who want to go to a Black Mass?”

“They’re far too amusing to be true,” Averill answered.

“No?” Paul challenged. “Surely demons amuse themselves—and with far less hypocrisy than humans.”

Chapter Eleven

The invasion of the sharks was just

a harmless bit of vengeance….

~ Leo Taxil

BEHIND his podium, Leo Taxil chucked maliciously. “The most distinguished theologians didn't bat an eyelid when our priapic crocodile demon played the piano.”

From his vantage point in the back of the lecture hall, Michel crossed his arms and witnessed the spectacle of Leo Taxil unveiling his gargantuan hoax. Confidence man, cheap tabloid journalist, author of such pornographic masterpieces as
Extraordinary Correspondence of the Ecclesiastical F**kers,
and
The Pope’s Testicles,
Taxil had seized the Catholic Church by the balls and held tight for a decade. Tonight he had released them, but not without a final twist.

“Nor did the wise theologians blink in disbelief when Miss Diana Vaughan claimed to have cavorted on multitudinous planets. Most amazing.”

Taxil’s gleeful sarcasm brought cheers of “Bravo!” from the freethinkers and yet more cries of outrage from the betrayed clergy. An abbot rose from his seat with a cry. “You are a scoundrel, monsieur! A scoundrel!” He was completely overwrought. Several priests drew him back down into his chair and made an effort to calm him.

On stage, Leo Taxil smirked, delighted the abbot had taken the bait. Michel expected him to wag an admonishing finger. How had educated churchmen ever brought themselves to believe the charade of this tawdry sinner’s conversion? But he knew the answer. In an age of dying faith, the Devil was more necessary than ever to prove the existence of God. The Church had embraced Leo Taxil, their prodigal son, and spoon-fed him the fatted calf.

They had just not expected him to spit it back in their faces.

The hisses, boos, and applause subsided and Taxil plunged on. “Those naïve abbots and monks who admired Miss Diana Vaughan because she was a converted Masonic Luciferian Sister are victims of their own ignorance.” Taxil paused significantly. “In Rome, it's another story. In Rome they know full well that no female Masons exist….”

“No!” a distraught priest cried out. “The Freemasons were your accomplices!”

Michel groaned silently. Taxil had promised them revelations. He had given them revelations. His scandalous exposé,
The Devil in the Nineteenth Century,
was not fact but fiction. There would be no meeting with the heroine, Miss Diana Vaughan, high priestess of Palladism, betrothed of the Demon Asmodeus, who had renounced the evil, erotic devil-worshipping rites and returned to the bosom of the Church. Palladism was Taxil’s invention. The High Priestess was only a typist with a perverse sense of humor. But Michel was impressed with Taxil’s pecuniary foresight. Before he made his disclosures, Taxil had auctioned off her typewriter to the highest bidder. Michel wished now he’d tried to win it for Cochefert.

He continued his surveillance of the crowd, mentally noting clusters where tension had risen and making sure the gendarmes were aware of them too. Although Michel had seen no obvious plants, he’d marked the likely troublemakers—the most fervent priests, an incendiary journalist or two, and one self-proclaimed Satanist.

“Some months later, my Canon sent me an enormous Gruyère cheese. On its crust, he had carved pious inscriptions and hieroglyphs of frenzied mysticism,” Taxil confided. “It was an almost miraculous cheese, for it never seemed to come to an end. I consumed each bit with the utmost reverence.”

“Delicious!” Three rows down, a monk burst out laughing and began to applaud. The surrounding priests stared at him in dismay. Taxil did have at least one plant in the audience.

Ignoring both Taxil and his faux monk, Michel turned his attention to Vipèrine, who had chosen a seat very near the podium. Since there were no leads other than Lilias’ rumor of the Black Mass, Cochefert had taken Michel off the case of the vanished children. Officially. When Michel last went to savate practice, he’d told Dancier he was continuing to investigate on his time off. The diabolist was at least a plausible suspect—quite capable of provoking some drama to put himself center stage—but was he capable of true villainy? There was little information to be had on him before his appearance in Paris five years ago, not even his real name.

“I presented my public with the consummate she-devil, wallowing in sacrilege!” Taxil proclaimed. “A true Satanist—such as one meets in Huysmans' books.”

Huysmans’
Là Bas
. The literary reference made Michel turn to Paul Noret. He was seated with a coterie of poets and artists that comprised the
Revenants, one of the innumerable literary groups seeking to make a name in Paris. As far as Michel knew, Noret wasn’t a Satanist. But he was an anarchist. His poetry was the most radical, a vicious invective twisted with images of nightmarish violence. His poetry might only serve as a kind of exorcism. Michel knew of no incident that linked Noret to any act of the kind the anarchists proclaimed “propaganda by deed.” Words only—so far. But Michel had seen him in the company of Felix Fénéon, the famous avant-garde critic and infamous anarchist.

Five years ago Fénéon had been among those arrested for bombing the Foyot Restaurant. There was a violent explosion and the only person harmed was a friend, another young poet with anarchist sympathies. The bomb left him disfigured and half-blind. Police intelligence pointed to Fénéon and his anarchist circle. There was strong circumstantial evidence, but the Trial of the Thirty was a fiasco. Fénéon’s eloquence befuddled the attorneys and won their release. He even continued to clerk at the War Ministry. Michel kept Fénéon under his own personal surveillance. Sporadic surveillance, true, but he only needed to scent trouble to increase his efforts. Now he would add Noret.

“She possesses the ability to walk through walls. Her pet snake writes prophecies down her back with the tip of its tail.” Taxil snaked scrollwork on the air with a fingertip.

Looking past Noret, Michel recognized someone else who provoked his curiosity. Theodora Faraday was sitting with the Revenants. He had seen the tall blonde roaming about Montmartre even before he interviewed her. Tonight she wore a gown of midnight blue satin. The deep hue set off her fair skin and pale, gleaming hair. She seemed far too dynamic for most of that coterie, literary aesthetes who lived on their nerves. He had read the premiere issue of their magazine, which had created quite a stir. There were several striking illustrations, but Michel did not remember their being by a woman. He must have assumed Theo to be a man. Or perhaps she assumed a different male nom de plume, as he had seen her assume male dress. Quite illegal and quite flattering. She had very long legs.

“Assuming the guise of Miss Vaughan,” Taxil exclaimed, “I revealed the existence of secret rooms hidden within the Masonic temple in Charleston, Virginia. In one, a statue of Eve awaits. When a Templar Mistress is especially pleasing to Master Satan, this statue takes on life. Eve becomes the demon Astarte and bestows kisses on the chosen one.”

A tidbit in the grand tradition of Leo Taxil, ecclesiastical pornographer, Michel sneered silently. Lesbian demons on parade.

“Despicable charlatan!”

“No priest will take your confession!”

Taxil moved on to the infamous forges buried beneath Gibraltar and fed by hellfire, and the outbursts faded. The opposing side brooded silently, which Michel thought boded ill. He quietly rose from his seat and stood against the back wall, free to move fast if there was trouble. His gaze roved over the gathering as Taxil embarked on a new tale of Vatican conspiracy. “After Jeanne d’Arc was burned at the stake, the executioner discovered that the heart of our heroine had not been consumed. He threw more burning pitch and sulphur upon it, but the heart would not burn! Finally, in desperation, Jeanne’s heart was tossed in the Seine.” Taxil raised a pudgy finger to punctuate his words. “Be sure that one day a mysterious angel will carry that heart, not to France, but to Italy, and Jeanne d’Arc will be canonized by the Pope. French pilgrims must henceforth go to Rome to view this miraculously retrieved heart.”

Odd. One of the Revenants had risen and was urged back to his seat by Theodora Faraday. Did the mockery of the Maid anger him? Many who cared nothing for Luciferian plots or Vatican conspiracy might still take offence at having France’s beloved heroine derided.

Enamored of his own voice, Taxil rumbled on, “Alas, the final success of my hoax was endangered by a Mason who declared these bizarre claims must be a Jesuit plot. Unfortunate Jesuits! I had sent them a fragment of Moloch's tail as evidence of Palladism!”

In spite of himself, Michel’s curiosity was stirred. What had Taxil actually sent—mummified crocodile? Cochefert would be captivated with this morsel. Personally, Michel preferred Taxil’s story of his first malicious prank—false tales of ravenous sharks hiding in sea caves off Marseilles.

“Fearing my magnificent creation would be suffocated by the evil oubliettes of the Vatican, I have chosen to confess.” With a grand gesture, Taxil proclaimed, “I have committed infanticide. Palladism, the child of my mind, is utterly dead. Its father has murdered it.” Taxil finished with a bow. Silence hovered for a moment, then cacophony reigned. Applause, laughter, jeers, hoots, and accusations rose in the air like myriad squawking birds. The abbot stood on his chair, gesturing for all the faithful to gather round, but the noise drowned out whatever he was saying.

Vipèrine rose, his height emphasized by his theatrical robes. The gleam of their gold embroidery caught the light and drew the attention of the audience. He lifted his chin truculently, his blue beard pointing at Taxil. “There is only one hoax—and that hoax is that Satan has no worshippers.”

Weaving through the stream of the infuriated leaving the auditorium, Michel moved swiftly as Taxil called out his answer, “Ah, monsieur, I acknowledge that he has his worshippers. But that does not mean he exists.”

Vipèrine swirled his cape, then flung up his hands. Fire burst from his fingertips. A flaming object winged like a bat sailed to the stage and exploded with spurts of flame and noxious spirals of black and yellow smoke. Screams of panic filled the hall—cries of “Bomb!” and “Fire!” Taxil ducked behind the podium. Gendarmes rushed to guard him. Still twenty feet away, Michel saw that no fire had actually ignited, though the smoke rose in sulphurous plumes.

Chaos reigned as the remaining audience rushed for the doors. Vipèrine raised his arms again, flames flashing from his fingers, and Michel guessed the next smoke cloud would cover his escape. Stepping into range, he aimed a hard lateral kick, driving his heel into Vipèrine’s thigh. Vipèrine reeled back with a snarl of surprise and pain. The chemical ball he held bounced across the floor, hissing loudly and leaking darkness.

“Police,” Michel said. “Surrender yourself.”

No novice to street fighting, Vipèrine aimed a savage kick at his ribs. Michel blocked it and countered with a low undercut to his opponent’s shin. Vipèrine lurched forward, grabbed a chair for balance, then swung it sideways at Michel’s head. Michel knocked it to the floor, but Vipèrine’s back leg sweep tumbled him. Michel rolled as he hit the floor and came up into a crouch. Vipèrine aimed another kick at his head. Michel dodged sideways, but Vipèrine’s foot grazed his face. A blaze of pain erupted on his cheek. The iron tang of blood filled his nostrils. Vipèrine had razors set in his shoes. With cold fury, Michel rose and spun into a reverse kick that sent Vipèrine staggering. Another slammed him hard against the wall. Moving in, Michel twisted Vipèrine’s arm behind his back, pinning him in place as he pulled out his
ligote
and pulled it tight around Vipèrine’s wrist.

“You are under arrest for inciting a riot and assaulting an officer.” Blood spilled down from his cheek and onto his neck.

“Let me go now,” Vipèrine snarled, “and perhaps I will let you live.”

Disgusted with the melodrama, Michel dragged him up the aisle and into the lobby.