Judith Merkle Riley (32 page)

“D’Estouville—the cut—no, he’s missed—”

“Don’t move in on them now, you’ll spoil the attack,” the captain of the archers said.

Opposite the soldiers, a small group had gathered to watch the progress of the duel. Some were curiosity-seekers who had followed the soldiers to watch the arrest, and been rewarded with an excellent spectacle. These were shouting encouragement and laying bets. Beside them stood another knot of spectators and a valet who held two horses, one with a pair of bulging saddlebags behind the saddle. An old man held a restraining hand on the sleeve of a tall, angular girl.

“It’s too late. No, Demoiselle, don’t walk between the blades. My boy—no, he parries, now—yes, what is that, that lunge, that strange
botte
? Perhaps—my God, that bastard has a cuirass under his doublet. Nicolas is doomed—”

At the fork of the road by the windmills, a lady’s mule litter, slung between two mounted riders, and followed by a man and a boy on horseback, had turned toward the gathering in the field. Unnoticed by the milling men and horses, as it drew closer, a girl’s voice was raised in prayer.

“Most High and Holy Virgin, graciously spare my brother’s life that he may redeem his soul through repentance and a future life of good works—”

“Hurry, oh, hurry,” called Nicolas’s mother to the rider on the mule in front of the litter. “Go on ahead, Maître, you may yet save him!” The surgeon, his boy and his instruments laden behind his saddle, pushed his bony roan to a trot ahead of the litter. Ahead of them, the clatter and clang of weapons sounded exactly like business. One customer, maybe two, and even more if the seconds got embroiled, as they so often did.

Clarette had clad herself in floating white muslin that morning, exactly like a virgin sacrifice, and combed her dark hair into braids set in loops beneath her ears so loosely, so carelessly, that they might come undone at the moment of tribulation, creating an image of divine and pleading womanhood that could not fail to go unnoticed by the hardest-hearted witness. As the litter approached the bloodstained field of honor, she dismounted, placing herself directly between the mounted archers and the struggling duelists, where the view was excellent. There she knelt, saying her rosary and rolling her eyes toward heaven.

But there was something wicked in the grunting, the smell of sweat, the sound of steel. Something that distracted her prayer, and caused her eyes to swivel back toward the earth, and notice the most beautiful pair of mustachios upon which she had ever laid eyes, a profile like an eagle, a romantically bloodstained sleeve and a sweaty, slightly torn sleeveless doublet. None of these things belonged to her ever-wicked and much preferred brother. They belonged to the innocent, gallant fellow her sin-laden brother was so evilly trying to kill. Suddenly, she noticed something tingling beneath the tight-laced bodice of her gown. It might have been her heart, but it was in fact an alien object, a green-glass bottle, that reminded her of its presence with its hardness. It reminded her of love, and the thought itself, in the presence of the sweating stranger, made a sort of twitching, burning sensation course through her body to the oddest places.

D’Estouville was soaking now, and breathing hard. His man was putting up an unusual fight for a person of little blood. Number thirteen would not come as simply as he’d expected. The Italian rapier was a new weapon in France, and a hard taskmistress, betraying the old-style cuts in which all good swordsmen were trained, and rewarding lightning thrusts, tricky parries, and secret Italian
bottes
, the hidden possessions of wily foreign fencing masters. D’Estouville opened too wide on the attack several times, his cuts left an opening, minute, momentary, beneath the right arm. But the defects of his defense were remedied by the cuirass, which had already parried two fair thrusts and a clever riposte, which had slid off the cuirass, caught in his sleeve, and torn a bloody, but shallow cut on his right arm. And he had parried a low cut clumsily, taking a wound over the left knee. The knee was beginning to give way, but he could see that number thirteen was tiring visibly, breathing hard, his point dropping. He had not the hardness of a soldier who trained daily. It was almost over. A rapid attack of the point, battering it down, spearing the target almost at the center, through the heart…Love potion, indeed. His humiliation would soon be drowned in blood, and Sibille would be at his feet, worshiping him, as women always worship the victor.

But what was this sudden last, desperate attack? Rapid, hard, and not against his torso—no, where? Against his sword. Unheard of. The fellow had closed in somehow, and grabbed the guard of d’Estouville’s rapier with his left hand, placing his right foot beside his opponent’s left. Their two sweating faces were within inches of each other. D’Estouville held on tight and retained his rapier, but as he was pulled off balance over his opponent’s foot and across the fellow’s body by the strong yank on his rapier guard, a knee hit him squarely in the codpiece, and he dropped to the ground. The secret
botte
of Maestro Altoni. Not pretty, but very effective.

A woman’s scream was the next thing he heard, as a heavy weight fell across his chest, adding to his agony and confusion. A sword thrust through the heart? No, it was a plain, doughy-faced girl in white, her hair coming undone, flinging herself between him and the victor’s blade.

“Clarette, you pest!” he heard his opponent say, though he could not see him through the large amount of brunette hair that had been flung in his face. “Get off! I’ve won and his life and arms are forfeit.”

“Nicolas, you beast! How could you!” The ridiculous woman had pinned him down; her hair made him want to sneeze, and he still could see almost nothing—then someone—a woman?—seemed to pull at number thirteen. “Don’t waste another moment here—they’ve come for you—your horse—” he could hear her say, and the sword point that had been hovering over his left eye vanished. After that, through a haze of dark hair scented with rose water, he could see a confusion of soldiers and hear shouts, footsteps, and the sound of a horse at full gallop receding into the distance. There was the clatter of armed men and contradictory shouting and the heavy weight on his chest crying, “Cowards! Don’t you dare touch him! Don’t you see he’s wounded?”

“Captain, the other one’s fled—”

“Well, we’ve got this one—”

“—I am a surgeon—his wounds must be attended to—”

“I have it—” said a woman’s voice—the woman on top of him?—and he could feel movement, and another large flounce of muslin obscured his view. “It’s—a—reviving tonic—”

“Get off me, woman,” said d’Estouville. “You’re disgracing me, whoever you are.”

“Not—until—you drink this.” Something searing was forced between his lips, and before he could even cough, the world went dark.

***

The guards, who had hesitated to grab a maiden in muslin off the body of the duel’s loser, stared in paralyzed astonishment as she pried the cork out of a little bottle in her bosom, forced a few drops into his mouth, and then drank the rest herself. Before she had even swallowed, she had fallen across the bleeding victim, exactly as if dead. The surgeon pulled them apart and put his head to each of their chests. There was no heartbeat.

“Dead,” he announced. “Both of them.” The regret in his tone was genuine. The whole trip, a waste. Two expensive jobs gone, and probably a lot of time eaten up in some wretched official inquiry. Oh, Fortune, you bad tempered old harpy, he thought.

“My girl, my blessed girl!” cried a distraught, wealthy woman, who had dismounted from the litter.

“Who is this?” said the captain.

“My daughter, his sister—who would have thought she had such vengeance in her heart?” cried old Monsieur Montvert. “She has poisoned the challenger and then herself, to escape punishment.”

“She was such a good girl, a quiet girl. She prayed all the time. Went to mass every day—” sobbed Madame Montvert. The soldiers, the watchers, the crowd all milled about the two bodies, their eyes wide with shock and horror.

There they lay, the handsome, bleeding officer, his mouth open like a dead fish, his booted toes turned up, and across his body, the romantic, muslin-clad maiden, her dark hair all undone, flowing like a river across the two bodies. Dead just like that, without warning, without the priest, without a prayer. It was simply too much. Many were overcome and began to weep.

“Take them up,” began the captain. “Wha—?”

There was a faint stirring of the dead man’s hand.

“Look, she’s moving—I hear her sigh,” said someone.

“Surgeon, you’re an idiot—they’re alive—”

“I swear, there was no heartbeat—”

Slowly, with the deepest of sighs, the white-clad maiden raised her head and looked into the face of the wounded man with passionate admiration. His eyes fluttered, and opened, and no one there could mistake the look he gave the girl; it was a look of deepest adoration. Their eyes locked, their cheeks grew pink. Their hearts, in such close proximity, began to beat in exactly the same rhythm. Love, love the absolute, love the infinite, had conquered.

“That nasty shoulder wound, that will want bandaging, Monsieur—” said the surgeon.

And Sibille, whose sharp eyes had not missed a moment of the drama, thought to herself: Thank God for all this crazy distraction—Nicolas is so far away they’ll never catch up with him now.

“I—I don’t understand,” said Nicolas’s father, looking puzzled.

“Didn’t you know he was writing a book on the art of fencing with the Italian rapier?” said Sibille.

“No, I mean that stuff my daughter fed that fellow—what has she done?”

“I’m afraid they’re in love forever,” answered Sibille, picking up the discarded bottle and squinting at it as it glittered in the sun.

“In love—with a wastrel officer? A dandy? A parasite who’ll live forever with his hand in my purse?”

“Well, at least he has good connections—and he’s coming into a title someday, too, you know.”

“The nunnery—why didn’t I listen when she asked?” groaned the old banker.

***

In the shabby apartment that smelled of boiling cabbage, Lorenzo Ruggieri was shouting at his wife. “Beatrice! Have you been using my white arsenic to poison rats again? The bottle’s low!”

“Oh, my dear, not low at all. See the mark you made on it? I haven’t touched it.”

“I’ve told you a hundred times not to meddle with the tools of my trade. Suppose someone offers good money for a high-class poisoning, and I haven’t got enough, and they take their business to someone else?”

Lorenzo’s wife was balancing her latest baby on her hip and stirring a really splendid soup made with pigs’ knuckles and garlic, which was her husband’s favorite.

“Oh, baby mine,” she sang quietly to herself. “When he tastes this soup, the storm will be over. He’ll never notice I filled up his ugly old bottle with leftovers from the others. Oh, such a job I have, switching things around just to get enough rat poison to keep you safe and cozy! Sin, such sin in this wicked world! It’s rats that need to be killed, not people. So what if that bottle’s full of love potion and stomach remedies? What’s so wrong with love? The world needs more of it, I say. More love and less rats, and we’d all be at peace, little sweetie.”

The baby didn’t say anything, but it beamed at the sound of its mother’s voice, its face full of adoration.

The hot southern afternoon had driven Nostradamus to a shady spot in his garden, a cool bench beneath a tree, where he sat on his favorite cushion, reading a letter. Above him was the soft rustling of broad green leaves, and the sound of little creatures, hurrying, fluttering, chirping. Nearby, the sound of water trickling from a little fountain delighted his ear, and above that, was the sharp, joyful noise of playing children. Roses in full bloom sent their lovely odor in slow-moving clouds into the warm air, and only the sternest sense of duty caused the old doctor to avoid taking the delicious little nap that the afternoon invited.

The letter was from his old teacher, the brilliant and ancient Guaricus, who had combed the archives at Rome at his behest, and found, in a book of long-lost secrets, the original contract between Menander the Undying and his master, Lucifer, Lord of Hell.

“Hmm,” said Nostradamus, re-reading the letter for the tenth time, “There must be something here—let’s see, Eternal Life, and power over earthly Fortune, on the following conditions—”

“What are you doing with that paper, Papa? Reading a story?” Little César, curly headed, precocious, round eyed, was staring up at him. A baby still in clumsy long skirts, he was riding a stick horse with a painted head.

“Doing? Why, I’m saving France, my little César,” said the old man.

“With just paper?”

“Paper and wisdom, my boy,” said Nostradamus. “Someday you’ll understand how much grief can be saved with the proper application of these two ingredients.”

“
I
will have a sword—gallop, gallop!” shouted the little boy, as he trundled off on his make-believe horse to join his older cousins.

“And a better world it will be for you, with Menander out of the way,” said Nostradamus, following the little boy with his eyes.

As the old prophet returned to his reading, he thought, no wonder Menander is the way he is. He went and signed this weasel-worded contract, and here his whole fate was written as clear as could be. Menander was deceived; his eyes were clouded and he imagined he would have more than is literally written. It’s not surprising that now he wants to do the same to everyone else. Let’s see—with the death of the body—
body
, ha!—the ability to make his own wishes ends—dirty trick, that. Hmm—and under paragraph 3B, he
has
to grant whatever is wished, unless it’s logically impossible. How interesting, even Hell has its limits—now, that horoscope again. Let me see…

Nostradamus unfolded the rough draft of Sibille’s horoscope, with all the scratchings-out he had made to realign her fortune with the true birthdate that Pauline Tournet had given him. And what a birthday it was! The most fortunate possible, under the circumstances. And it made for a very different character from the frail, changeable lily of the later date. This creature, a Capricorn on the cusp of Sagittarius, was dauntless, ingenious, and passionate. Definitely an improvement in character over that person she’s trying to be, he thought—but it’s not just the date, there’s something else. Let’s count the months—hmm, seven, eight, nine—now, let’s assume, being the eldest child, they dated the false birthday nine months after the parents’ marriage, so to get the date, we count again—yes, that’s it. The girl was conceived three months earlier. Who was the real father? If he’s not the man who raised her, we may have the makings of something here…

That night, despite the heat in the little attic room, Nostradamus sat, all robed, in his secret study before the divining bowl, and called Anael.

“Haven’t you any sense, Michel? You should be in bed. This little room is hotter than the hinges of hell.”

“Anael, in your cupboard, do you keep the past as well as the future?”

“Of course. The past is just the leftover future. I’ve got it all in here somewhere—”

“Can you show me a scene from the past?”

“I wondered when you’d get around to that. Future, future, future, that’s all they ever ask for.
Real
connoisseurs prefer the past. It’s a far more elegant and refined taste. Would you like to see the coronation of Charlemagne? I’ve got it right up top.”

“I was thinking of something else. You know what I want.”

“Michel, you’re a dirty-minded old man.”

“Please, it’s research.”

“All for the sake of the higher good of getting rid of Menander, eh? Michel, you astonish me. Still, I think I’ve got something—” The upper half of Anael’s torso vanished, and there was a rattling and crinkling and clattering as all sorts of things were shifted around in the cupboard. What they were, Nostradamus could hardly tell. They always made such odd sounds as the angel burrowed among them that the doctor was filled with curiosity as to what forms history past and future were stored in. They certainly didn’t seem to be books.

“Stir up your dish, Michel. I can’t find the actual act, but here’s something that will do.”

Nostradamus stirred the water with his magic wand, and as the ripples stilled, he saw a strange scene. It was dark, and men with torches were leaning over a dead man in the street. He was stretched at the foot of a ladder, and the spreading puddle of blood that seeped around him and onto the cobblestones beneath his body looked black in the torch-light. Beyond the torches, a boy was sobbing uncontrollably—no, not a boy—the long hair had come undone and fallen from beneath a low-pulled cap. A girl in boy’s clothing. An elopement gone wrong. A gray-haired man that stood beside the corpse sheathed his sword, and, stepping swiftly, grabbed the girl by her long hair and held her face over the dead man’s. The old man’s face was swollen with rage, and his mouth was distorted, moving—but the vision was too old to hear what he said.

“How young that dead boy is,” said Nostradamus.

“Just eighteen,” said Anael.

“There’s something familiar about him—the nose, yes—that’s it. But she’s older. I swear, he’s the image of Sibille the Dismal Poetess.”

“I wish you wouldn’t be so hard on her, Michel. I rather like her. And I told you, I’m going to get her into history just to spite you. She’s got talent, you know. It just isn’t used right. And she
cares
so much. You’re just a jealous old man.”

“That’s her father, isn’t it? Is the girl down there by the ladder pregnant?”

“Two months along, you narrow-minded old thing.”

“Please, I’m a doctor.”

“You’re still a narrow-minded old thing. Now what do you intend to do?”

“I’ve figured out how to finish off Menander’s wicked deeds for once and for all,” said Nostradamus.

“And how is that?” said the Angel of History.

“I’ve looked at the original contract, and there’s no way to kill him. However, there’s another way—”

“So you think you can outsmart the Devil himself?”

“But of course—he is not French, and he is not Nostradamus,” said the old man, tapping on his forehead and smiling an ironic little smile. “According to his contract, he has to grant whatever he is commanded to do. And I have noticed something about Menander. When two people are working at cross-purposes, it can take him a long time to figure his way out of the tangle. So the trick, you see, is to keep him so busy that he’ll never do anything again. So if I can ask him for an internally contradictory wish, something impossible, he’ll just have to keep working and working on it and never get to the end.”

“Well, well,” said Anael, folding his arms. “It took you a while, but you got there at last, old mortal. And no one can say that I told you, either.”

“And with the information from this horoscope, it’s simple now. All I need to do is write to Sibille’s aunt that Sibille must ask for some favor to be granted to her father, the Sieur de La Roque, and Menander’s brain will be all knotted up forever, because her father isn’t her father. And as for losing her soul on the wish, I’ll tell her aunt she hasn’t got a worry in the world, even if she wished for the moon. See the real birthday? The aunt was so busy concealing it, she never thought of the significance. Midnight on Christmas Eve. The exact hour between the twenty-fourth and the twenty-fifth of December. Even Satan can’t make a bargain with anyone born at the blessed time. Menander should have been so lucky.”

“I can’t say it’s the cleverest wish, but it will certainly do,” said Anael, looking a bit condescending.

“You knew it all along, didn’t you?” said Nostradamus. “I must say, it’s certainly not fair, the trouble you’ve given me.”

“I’m just supposed to
keep
history, not change it,” sniffed Anael. “I can’t break the rules just for you.” Nostradamus looked very hard at Anael.

“Anael, I swear—all those hints—you’re a cheat, Anael. There’s something almost human about you after all.”

“Human? Disgusting. Of course not,” said Anael.

***

As the crossbow hit the outer edge of the distant target, there was a patter of applause from the gloved hands of the ladies-in-waiting, who clustered behind the shooter. As one footman in velvet livery removed the spent crossbow from the Queen of Scotland’s hand, another wound a second bow, loaded it and placed it on the long, narrow table in front of her.

“It’s the distance,” said Queen Catherine, “and there’s a cross-breeze blowing. Aim into it, my dear.” For a moment, one of the drifting white clouds covered the sun, and the outdoor archery range at the Louvre, set up in the lists that had once been old King Charles’s gardens by the Seine, was cast into brief shadow. Women and a few servants were watching out of balconies and windows, only a few gentlemen of rank were in attendance, and those only because they were too old or too ill for war. The Duchess of Valentinois, who sat apart beneath a canopy, shuddered and pulled her silk partlet closer about her white décolletage. She never partook in field sports, but would not consider absenting herself from any fashionable occasion. It was a matter of keeping her creatures, among whom she counted the two queens before her, in their place.

As the sun re-emerged, the willowy, redheaded girl took up the crossbow and said, with a haughty glance at the dumpy little Queen of France, “I will do much better this time.” A feathered cap tilted neatly over one eye, her quilted, embroidered satin sleeves glinting in the sunlight, her pretty face wrinkled in concentration, she had never looked more like a fairytale creature as she took aim at the faraway mark. Beyond the target, and the high walls, the green river rushed by, leaving a dank, lingering scent in the air. The Duchess of Valentinois nodded and spoke to the Queen of Scotland’s governess, one of the ladies who sat gathered around her, beneath the canopy. She had chosen the governess herself, as she had chosen all of the queen’s children’s attendants. Such were her public cares for the Infants of France that even the king himself had come to consider her, in his vague way, a sort of official mother to them. “Our little queen does well for one so young,” said the duchess, her voice cozy and complicitous, just as if
she
were the mother and the queen, not the Florentine.

“Indeed, she does,” said King Henri’s homely queen, who had not failed to overhear the pointed comment. Catherine de Medici’s tone was so calculatedly saccharine and outwardly agreeable, and so clearly contained a hidden barb, that certain of the older onlookers suddenly remembered how, as a fourteen-year-old bride newly come to France on the Pope’s own galley, she had outshot the great King Francis the First in a similar contest. King Francis had laughed uproariously, and asked what other tricks she knew. But that had been the old days, the old court, before the country had begun its strange and eerie sinking into an unknown disaster, and back when laughter had somehow rung clearer, and with less malice…

There was the crack of the mechanism and a whizzing sound as the bolt flew from the fifteen-year-old girl’s bow and buried itself in the middle ring of the target.

“So much better, dear,” said Catherine. “Let me try.” She joined the girl behind the table as the footmen scrambled to load another set of crossbows. An elaborately slashed, embroidered, and massively petticoated gown, a tightly crimped ruff, and ranks of artificial curls topped by an overly jeweled and plume-laden little silk hat had only complicated the dowdy queen’s looks, not improved them. As the podgy little woman picked up the bow with a practiced hand, one of the youngest of the duchess’s attendants suppressed a smile. How could the Italian woman hear a silent fragment of a mocking smile behind her? And yet she did, just as clearly as she felt the direction of the wind on her sagging cheek, and assessed the strength and tension of the bow while appearing to be doing nothing at all. Her shrewd dark eye squinted along the sight, there was a
crack!
and the bolt landed square at the center of the target. Laughter and applause from the handpicked and loyal ladies of her “flying squadron” surrounded her, while beneath the canopy, there was silence.

As the footmen set up tables for the refreshments, the duchess was overheard remarking to one of her ladies, “Why, of course the king consulted me first—one cannot be too careful of appointments in wartime—and, of course, he has requested that I join him at his headquarters at Compiègne—”

The queen’s mouth set small and tight. Was that a trick of the sun across her face, or were her eyes blazing with hidden rage at the indiscreet way the
dear
duchess’s voice carried to her? Calmly, Catherine turned to Madame Gondi, dark and discreet in her dress of deep green silk. “My, my, so many choice new appointments, and so many to the duchess’s relatives. I think it is time for a little—artistic interlude. Send for the Demoiselle de La Roque, and tell her to bring her
friend
with her—I want to discuss…poetry…”

***

It was mid-August, the height of the heat, when open windows bring no breeze, but only the stink from the street, that I received another summons from the queen. There was a great sir and commotion in the narrow street outside when six armed riders, all in the queen’s livery, clattered over the cobblestones and halted before our door.

“Aha,” said Auntie, hearing the stir outside through the open window. “I do believe you’ll manage to escape the heat after all. I
told
you this would happen.
La
Reine
des
Epees
, she crossed my spread last night.” We could hear the sound of strange men being admitted through the door on the ground floor, and voices saying, “—the queen’s command—”