Judith Merkle Riley (31 page)

“My lovers? You horrible old man, leave at once! Nicolas was right about you—you’re just dirty-minded, and wouldn’t know a pure heart or an honorable intention if you stumbled over it in the dark. You don’t
deserve
a son like him!”

“Sibille, what is that I hear, voices? I thought I told you that man was not welcome in my house. Surely, he has already done enough harm to you—” Auntie’s voice came floating in from the bedroom.

“I did
not
lure him—he hates d’Estouville for what he is—a titled parasite and a fortune hunter who’s after my inheritance, and I’ve never even let him in the house—”

“Inheritance?” said Nicolas’s father, his eyes wandering suddenly to the furniture and tapestries in the room.

“And what’s more, the spa is very respectable and ladies of the highest standing patronize it, and—”

“But you are seen in court, and unmarried—”

“I was invited by the queen herself—”

“But your cousin Matheline said—”

“Matheline? What has she to do with it?”

“She said—she said, your poetry had brought you lovers of the highest rank, and she was going to take up writing herself, it was all the rage with the court ladies now—”

“Lovers? Lovers? I don’t dare have lovers! They’d just be after the queen’s box that I can’t get rid of! My life has been ruined by Menander the Undying, and the only person in the world who understood and cared for me was Nicolas, and you’ve stolen him from me. I hope you’re happy about what you’ve done. It’s all your fault, you did every bit of it, and he only came to the spa to say good-bye, and if you’d let us marry, it never, never would have happened—”

“Menander the Undying? Who is that?”

“Sibille, I’ve heard you both. I told you to send him away. But now that your tongue has wagged a little too freely, bring him in here. I need to look him in the face.” Auntie’s voice, quite strong for one in mortal illness, called through the open bedroom door.

“Who is that? I’m sorry, I must go—Nicolas—”

“Tell him to come in here or I will put a curse on him that will make his hair stand on end,” Auntie said. “Family, fortune, all will fail if he crosses me now. Tell him that Menander the Undying wants his presence.” I saw Monsieur Montvert go quite pale. Poised for flight on the threshold, he suddenly took a long look about the room, breathed hard, stepped back in.

“Sorcery,” he whispered. “Not sin, but sorcery. What is it that you are entangled in?” I sighed deeply.

“Come and see,” I said.

“Will it save my boy?” he asked.

“Only at a price you’d be unwilling to pay,” I answered.

“I’d pay with my soul,” he said, and at that moment my hate slipped away, and I felt sorry, so sorry for him that I could hardly bear the weight of it. I think I knew even more than he did exactly what he was saying.

“Don’t ask Menander for anything,” I said. “He’s as evil as they come—he’ll twist your wish and spoil it. He destroys everyone who gets involved with him. The great Nostradamus told me once he was the open gate into Hell. I’ll—I’ll go with you to wherever they intend to meet each other for the duello, even if it puts my reputation in rags. I’ll beg Nicolas to betray his own honor for your sake. Just don’t make me guilty of showing another man to his ruin.”

The old man turned and looked me full in the face, staring, silent, haggard. His eyes were full of fear and sorrow. Then, with resolute step, like a man marching to the gallows, he went into Auntie’s bedroom, where the open box of Menander the Undying lay upon an ornately carved, dark table by the window.

“Well, well,” said Menander, his voice like the whisper of dry leaves, “another man anxious to shed himself of his soul. It’s dead weight, Monsieur Banker, and you’re bound to lose it anyway. Why not in good cause?” Monsieur Montvert walked back and forth before the table that held the open box, as if inspecting Menander from every angle, thinking, calculating.

“Because now that I see your nasty little eye, I have no doubt that you’re a bigger cheat than the monarchs I lend money to. They never pay their interest, and rarely the principal. Have you ever paid off on your promises, Monsieur Evil Head?”

“I always pay—exactly what my devotees wish, no more, no less. I am exact. Confide in me your desire, and you shall have it—come now, it’s so simple, and who sees a soul anyway? It is doubtless imaginary, and you’ll be missing nothing—” But instead of temptation and desire, the old banker’s face grew as hard as iron, and his lip curled with snobbery and disgust.

“I’ve known people like you,” he said. “Hard dealers, sellers of repossessed goods and dead women’s hair. All’s fair, isn’t it?” The old banker turned to me, his eyes assessing every shade and corner of my face. “Tell me, Demoiselle, when did you take up sorcery as a hobby? Did you call this thing to you with some evil spell? Or did you animate this leaving from the gibbet yourself?”

“I didn’t. This thing was in the hands of a stranger, and attached itself to me by accident, and now I can’t get rid of it, though I’ve tried dozens of times. But the queen wants it for herself—so I keep it for her, and bring it to her when she wants to wish for something. I’m not allowed to travel far from her presence, just in case something comes up suddenly that she wants to wish on.”

“So that is the secret. How far it is from what I imagined. And you, Madame Tournet, I apologize for my intrusion. I seem to have got everything backward. I know the Sieur de La Roque-aux-Bois, your brother, Madame—”

“And you imagined his daughter to be as shameless as her father—a penniless adventuress who wormed her way into my good graces and then used me to go to court to make her fortune, and who now wanted a simpleminded husband as a cover for her affairs.”

“Such things are not unheard of,” answered Montvert the banker. “Ambitious women are more numerous than honest ones in these wicked days.” He shrugged, as if to rid himself of old memories. “But now, since my son’s life is in danger, I must ask you a few questions. This unpleasant, living, mummified head grants wishes, I take it?”

“If you recite the words on the box.”

“And in bad spirit? That is, it takes your wish literally, and gives you precisely that?”

“Yes, indeed. I recommend you be very careful with the wording. If you wish for your son’s life, he may be blinded. If you wish for his health, he may lose his mind. Menander’s game is to get you to make another wish to mend the first one, and so on, until you sink into your grave from horror and regret.”

“So he not only takes your soul in trade, but is so greedy to collect that he hurries you to give it up to him ahead of time?”

“That’s more or less the idea. We’ve watched several foolish people do exactly that since he first came to us.”

“And the queen?”

“She’s iron-willed—she apportions her wishes very carefully.”

“And you?”

“We don’t wish. He hasn’t got a body to force us to, after all, and he can only act when people wish for something, so he can’t do anything to us on his own.”

“He does whisper in the night, though. He says horrible things,” I added.

“Whispers all night, tempts people to lose their souls, causes strangers to traipse through the house. I’m afraid, Demoiselle Sibille, though I have now formed the highest opinion of your character, that this is not the sort of encumbrance I wish my son to have in his life. He could not make much progress in a career with all the nocturnal interruptions, and, I’m afraid, he’s very weak-willed.”

“I understand entirely,” said Auntie. “It’s the sort of thing that even the immense fortune that she will inherit from me would hardly offset.” When she saw that her dart had hit home, she smiled a very tiny smile under her black mustache, so small that her powder didn’t even crinkle beside her eyes.

“Well, then, my mind’s made up,” said Monsieur Montvert.

“And your wish?” said Menander, one eye glittering evilly beneath a tattered, scaling eyelid.

“My wish is that Sibille make good on her offer to come and convince my boy not to fight,” he said. “You’re worse to deal with than the King of Portugal.”

“What?” shrieked Menander. “You’re not wishing?”

“Of course not,” said Scipion Montvert, his voice brusque. “I am a banker, and I make decisions based on costs and benefits. Your cost is high, your benefit dubious, and you haven’t got a means of force. The King of Portugal does. Let some other fool drown in your magic.” Auntie laughed out loud.

“Banker, I like your brain,” she said.

“And I, Madame, respect yours,” he said, bowing to her where she lay in her huge canopied bed. “And now, if I may ask your permission, I have below a fast horse with packed saddlebags and a letter of credit. If Sibille will tell me where they are to meet and you will let her come with me, he will be on that horse and out of the country before d’Estouville and his seconds arrive.”

Auntie nodded her head in assent. “Bring her back safe,” she said. “She is the greatest treasure I possess.”

“That I promise, Madame,” he said.

“But—an extra horse? You knew all along I’d come?”

“Demoiselle. I am foolish sometimes, but never stupid. And I know love when I see it. I never doubted that when you saw the case rightly, you would aid me.” But I knew that in his mind he had added, even if it costs you Nicolas forever.

***

“Well, my friends, it looks as if the coward has fled,” said Philippe d’Estouville, surveying the dueling field. The flattened, half-dried weeds of late summer testified to the spot’s popularity as a place for illicit encounters. The narrow tracks that counted for roads bypassed the place, and only a few isolated windmills overlooked the abandoned spot. At a distance, a handful of early travelers could be spied on the trunk road to the Porte St.-Antoine, the route by which the dueling party had left the city. Inside the walls, on the dark towers of the Bastille, bright pennants fluttered in the morning breeze. Already, the day promised to be scorching. D’Estouville had dismounted, and with his seconds, paced up and down, surveying the distance for signs of his rival’s party, and the immediate ground for whatever advantage it could hold.

“Wait a little—there’s someone passing through the city gate, no, two—three.”

“On foot. Surely, it’s not them. Even bankers’ boys have mules.” The group of officers laughed.

“The sooner you kill him, the better,” said d’Estouville’s second. “My sister has disgraced the whole family by allowing such a fellow into her company.” Annibal de La Roque flicked a green bottle fly off his sleeve. The buzzing of many flies rose from the dark stains on the earth. The blood of the last man to lose an encounter in this neglected place still lay beneath the weeds.

“They’re coming closer. Well, well, it looks as if I will have my thirteenth man after all.”

“Who are those seconds? Gentlemen? One looks like a student.”

“I know the other—the innkeeper’s son from the White Horse. His father tried to buy him a place in the company of Monsieur St.-Andre.”

“And even that corrupt Lieutenant Peyrat wouldn’t have him?” Again, the officers laughed.

“Well, look at that, I do believe he’s brought a rapier. I didn’t know people like that had them. What a pity he wasn’t the challenger. Then he could have named the weapon—dinner knives, I imagine.”

“They say the English allow the one challenged to name the weapons—”

“That’s the English—they get everything backward.” As Nicolas and his seconds approached, d’Estouville called out, “So, Montvert, why have you come?”

“I have come to defend my honor,” said Nicolas, making the formal statement required by the code of the duel, and then added, “Not that yours isn’t long gone, you and your
love
potion
. I’ve got it at home as a souvenir of our last encounter, and I’ll add your arms to it, when I have defeated you.”

“Love potion? You used
love
potion
on my
sister
?” said Annibal, while his friend turned deep crimson with rage. Noting his state with alarm, his other second said, “Philippe, don’t let him unbalance you with crazy talk. It’s a trick.” Then, while d’Estouville fumed, the seconds checked the lengths of the blades, forgetting entirely their primary duty, which was to try to resolve the quarrel.

Quite unseen to the group of dark-clad men conferring in the field, a half-dozen mounted archers had left the city gate, and turned from the main road to the track that passed the windmills. Their captain had with him written orders to enforce the royal edict against dueling. D’Estouville, in deference to his family connections, was to be stripped of rank and packed off to the northern front posthaste. The Montvert boy was to be executed as a lesson to others. “Over there,” he said, as he spied the knot of figures and watched them suddenly separate. At his signal, the horsemen, harness jingling, pushed to a trot. Then, suddenly, the captain put up his hand to halt. “The salute—they’ve begun,” he said. “It looks like a good fight. Let’s wait until d’Estouville has preserved his honor.”

“Ha, number thirteen lucky! I put six crowns on d’Estouville.”

“That’s no bet. Bet on how long the student lasts before he’s skewered.”

“But if he’s killed, how can he be executed?”

“They’ll just expose the body. That ought to be enough to put tradesmen’s sons off trying to ape their betters.”

The archers pulled up at a short distance from the quarrel. Mounted, they had an excellent view—and an illegal duel to the death? It was better than a bull-baiting; it was the highest of the blood sports.

At this distance, they could hear the clang and slither of steel blades. In front of them were two men, left arms enveloped in cloaks, right arms wielding heavy Italian rapiers of the new style.

“Look—a mistake—he’s in high ward—ha, now the other comes in low!”

“A hit—no, look, d’Estouville has a cuirass beneath his doublet—”

“A thrust—there’s a neat parry!”

The swordsmen were close and vicious, glaring and sweating. Then, suddenly they sprang apart, and there was a quick scramble, so fast the eye could hardly follow it.

“His feet, I haven’t seen anything like that—”