Judith Merkle Riley (37 page)

“Come closer,” said mother. “She has been repeating your name over and over, so we called for you, though we were not sure you would get here in time.”

“I am sure she wishes to beg your forgiveness and give you her dying blessing,” said the priest. “It is at this time, when heaven is so near, that we make peace with the world we are leaving.” I leaned over the bed, to catch her words.

“Sibille,” she said. “This is all your fault. You left that brooch among your things to poison me. You are my murderer, and I curse you with the last breath I have in my body.” I sprang back as if shot.

“The brooch was poisoned? How could that ever be? It was a gift from Philippe d’Estouville.”

“Shhh, shhh!” said mother, her eyes wide with horror. But Laurette’s voice was rising, her face was swelling with a strange flush, and her body was shaking with the unnatural rage that precedes some kinds of convulsions.

“Philippe! My Philippe! You stole him from me with silk dresses and money! My money, my inheritance that Aunt Pauline should have given to me! I know everything now!” She tried to grab at the stuff of my dress, to pull me closer, but I pulled my hand away, stiff with horror. “She’s
my
aunt, not yours! You never belonged here! You stole my place, my dowry, my everything! By what right did you save your face from the vitriol? Pah! I spit in it now! Poison! Poison of toad, that you poisoned me with! I spit poison on you! Suffer and die, you bastard!” Her eyes were rolling wildly as she heaved herself up, limbs convulsing, and spat bloody saliva at me, but missed.

“Mademoiselle, your immortal soul!” cried the priest, but Laurette’s eyes had rolled up into her head, her neck was jerking, and her arms thrashing wildly.

“Father, it is not her soul speaking, it is the rage—she is delirious,” whispered mother.

“I, I c-curse you—from—the—grave,” she managed to choke out from her writhing mouth and near-paralyzed tongue.

“It’s not my fault!” I cried out.

“No,” whispered mother. “It’s mine.” And before my eyes I could see her shrink and shrivel and her face turn gray.

“Mother, never—”

“Pauline begged for you—she could never have children. But your father, poor stupid man, wanted to spite her, and I—I couldn’t bear to give you up.”

“Mother, is it a crime to love? It’s not your fault.”

But Laurette had lost the power of speech, and lay there choking and gasping.

“Madame, we must begin,” said the priest, as he motioned everyone in the room to draw closer for the last rites. Laurette’s breath came in rough gasps now, and she seemed insensible. By the time the last prayer was done, Laurette’s breathing had ceased. Isabelle and Françoise, silent witnesses to this dreadful scene, retreated in shock to huddle together in the corner behind mother’s bed.

The servants lit candles at the head and foot of the little cot, and turned back the sheets to strip and wash Laurette’s body. The sheets were soaked with bloody sweat. “No, don’t touch her,” said mother. “I alone will wash the body.” They brought a big brass bowl of water and set it beside the bed on the nightstand. They set out rags, a strip of linen to tie the jaw, a winding cloth. “No, Sibille, you must not touch her either. She is mine.” She closed the staring eyes, and silently picked apart the single long, heavy braid into which Laurette’s hair had been plaited for her illness. Tenderly, she began to comb out the matted blond curls.

“Mother, she cursed me, she said I poisoned her. I swear to you, I did no such thing.”

“No,” said mother wearily. “You did not, but the brooch was poisoned by Thibault Villasse and sent to you under a ruse.” Her face was gray and grim as she stripped off Laurette’s stained nightgown. “Take this and burn it,” she said to her maid. As she began to wash my sister’s bluish-gray limbs, she said, “It was beautiful. I do not understand why you never touched it yourself.”

“I thought because it was from Philippe that it belonged by rights to Clarette, but then I thought if I gave it to her, she might think Philippe unfaithful, and me the cause. So I just kept it—but I didn’t touch it—that would have been wrong.” Mother sponged the corpse’s dank, distorted face.

“So blue,” she said. “So cold.” She was rebraiding Laurette’s hair now and laying it in great golden coils about her head. “My beautiful girl,” she said. “My poor, beautiful girl.”

“Mother—”

“You brought it here and my Laurette tried it on, and for that moment of vanity she is dead.” Mother’s voice held a deathly weariness. “Sibille, turn away from me and leave the room. Once I loved you, but now I cannot bear to see your face. I cannot love you anymore.”

“Mother!” I cried, but she had turned herself away from me, toward the bluish, stark corpse of my sister. Hunched up like an ancient woman, she began to shake with sobs.

Icy cold, I passed through the open door like a ghost. Somehow, in some way, I knew that Menander was at the bottom of it all. His horrible secret malice, like an infection, had brought this all about. He was like a web that caught up all the hidden weakness and wickedness about him, and tied it together in one big lump. The gate of evil, Nostradamus had said. But Menander had not created it new—it had already been there for him to find.

As I stood at the head of the stairs, stunned, hardly able to move, clutching a little candlestick, the priest caught up with me. “Demoiselle, you must pray for them both,” he said.

“My sister—my sister cursed me—” I repeated, over and over.

“And that is why you must pray for her,” said the canny old man. “Only you can save her.” The dark at the top of the stairs surrounded us; it seemed full of menace.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I heard your answer, and I know that you are both honorable and honest. Only the living can pray for the dead. And when those who are wronged pray for the wicked, the foolish, the damned, they save themselves, too.” The evil in the dark seemed to retreat a little father into the corners.

“Is that true?” I asked, barely able to speak for the pain in my chest that seemed to stop up my throat.

“It is God’s word. Pray, pray without fail.”

“I shall,” I said. “This moment, tonight, always.” The dark seemed less impenetrable, the candle brighter.

“I know you will,” he said. “And now, forgive me, I must attend to the lost souls in that room.”

“Who is to blame? Who started it?” I asked. And my mind was crowded with the question. Was it Villasse, was it father, was it grandfather? Who started the greed, who started the vengeance? Who began the stuff that spread across the generations, leaving a trail of ruined lives behind it? I could tell by the priest’s eyes, he knew what I meant.

“Those are the wrong questions,” he answered, and his voice was soft. “The correct one is, who will be the one to stop it?”

That night, I did not sleep at all, and again and again as I paused in my prayers and my tears I looked up and said into the dark: I will be the one to stop it.

***

“Sibille, Sibille! A letter from Philippe! He was wounded at Thionville and is recovering at Senlis. He’s well, Sibille, and he’s safe! He’s lost the use of his right arm for absolutely months and months, so he can’t go back to the front! And he writes that your brother is a hero! Oh, isn’t my Philippe wonderful! He remembered us all in his letter!” Clarette had run to the door of Auntie’s house to greet me with the news. Rumpled and despairing, I had been helped to dismount from Flora to Baptiste, who had been sent to bring me back from the farm. Clarette was flushed with joy. How can she be like this, I thought, when my heart feels like a stone?

“Clarette, I’m glad for you—”

“I know you’re sad—it’s only natural. I cried for days when I lost my baby sister. But now I am consoled to know that she’s my guardian angel in heaven—just like your sister will be for you—” I looked at her sweet, uncomprehending, doughy face, and answered:

“You’re right, that’s a very consoling thought.”

“And father has sent word that the Emperor’s strange delay has allowed them to fortify the walls and ship in more arms—if only the Duc de Guise returns in time with his army, then Paris may well be saved, he says.”

“That’s wonderful, Clarette.”

“But you’ll be so happy, Sibille, he’s sent word that he dispatches a courier next week for Genoa, and if you wish to send a letter to Nicolas in the packet—”

“Nicolas! Of course I do! I’ll write today!”

“You see? I
knew
that would make you happier. Sibille, I would be so pleased if someday we could become sisters—I know I can never replace Laurette—”

And it’s a good thing you can’t, I thought. Nicolas—oh, if only he were here, everything would be all right. But then, as I entered the house arm in arm with Clarette, I had a stunning realization: Menander had lost his power. He hadn’t had the strength to follow me to the farm! His box didn’t always have that glossy shine, and if it got a scratch, it mended very slowly. And sometimes, though I had mistaken it for a trick of the light, his box seemed to grow translucent with the effort of thought. Yes, definitely, he was weakening. And with Menander useless, why, that was the greatest barrier to my marrying Nicolas! If there were only a way to bring Nicolas back from exile without risking his execution for illegal dueling…

That evening after supper, I took a candle to my room and hunted among my things for paper and pen. I will write Nicolas a wonderful letter, I thought, with hints that only he can decipher about the fate of Menander. Rummaging in my writing desk, I saw that mingled with sheets of blank paper were several of my latest poetical efforts, three of which had been greatly praised in draft form by the ladies of the court.

I picked up my writing and looked it over. Admiring my poetry will repair me, I thought. After all these horrors, Art…But instead of the usual warm feeling of satisfaction filling me from top to toe, I felt as if I were reading my work through some sort of uglifying spectacles. How formal, how frilly, how devoid of true feeling these poems were! They were mechanical creations, designed to flatter the tasteless, designed to flatter myself…Oh, God, look at this one on Death: “Robe of sable sorrow, cover me—” It had about as much feeling as a society lady might muster over the death of a pet squirrel. And here was one on the seasons, all full of mixed metaphors and shepherdesses named Phyllis. How awful! How could I have been so empty-headed and vain? How could I have understood so little of life? Miserable with failure and lost love, I put my head down on the blank paper I had laid out on the writing table and wept, making the sheet damp and unusable.

My letter. My letter to Nicolas. I had to make myself write. I took a dry sheet of paper, and dipped my quill in the ink bottle. But my head felt oddly throbbing, and I could hear the running of the blood in my ears as I set the first words at the top of the page. Nicolas’s image rose in my mind. Everything in me, everything of me, was his and his only. “Beloved, the adored jailer of my heart,” I wrote, but after that, I find it very hard to describe what happened. Words came up, blazoned in silver, from the depths of my shattered heart. They fell into place of their own will. Rhyme and meter flowed onto the paper as naturally as the pulsation of blood. I felt hot, a fever, then shook all over. The pen, the pen kept writing as if it were possessed. And from it flowed a poem—a poem such as I had never written before and may never write again. Agony and flame, on paper. The pain was like being disemboweled, the exhaustion that followed like death. I looked at what was written on the paper, unbelieving.

“I’m rather unbelieving, too. I didn’t think you had it in you,” said a disembodied voice. I saw, in the high corner near the ceiling, a pair of yellow eyes glowing. Around it, almost invisible, the dim shadow of raven wings, and here and there, little glittery things like sparks.

“I don’t, Monsieur Anael,” I replied, for I had recognized Nostradamus’s familiar. “This was—too painful to repeat.”

“It generally is. And you’ll notice it can’t be done to order. That’s why court poetry is so shallow.”

“Well, since my work is popular at court, why not continue being shallow?”

“Because you know the difference, now. And you are capable of far better things. It’s too easy to please courtiers with shallow things—they don’t frighten them.”

“I—I can’t—be what I was.”

“And why should you? Myself, I like your dialogues. The last one you did was excellent—”

“But I can’t—that was only—oh, I just had a thought.” An idea was springing up in me like new, green life. “I
could
do another—what do you think of a dialogue set in Purgatory, between several lesser demons and the great sinners and courtesans of history? I’d model it on Cousin Matheline’s dinner parties—they’re Purgatory enough—”

“Oh, I like that!” said the Angel of History. “If there’s any little historical details you’d like, I’d be delighted to furnish them—”

“Agreed!” I cried, newly encouraged, as I took out another sheet of paper. And that is how I not only wrote the only poem I have ever counted as good, and a very long letter to Nicolas, but also that very night began the first section of my
Cena
, or “The Dinner Party,” which went through ten printings in the first six months. It is hard to say whether it or its successors were more popular, and they made my name, or rather, my pen name of “Chevalier de l’Aiguille,” very famous, and not on a lie, either. But in a way, it was the last curse of Menander, because that night I had been given the gift of discernment of true art from false, which is the crudest gift of all, especially for a poet.

***

It was late on a January afternoon when a heavily bundled messenger appeared at the Porte du Temple, one of the fortified gates in the city walls of Paris. His sweating horse steamed in the cold air as he showed the seals on the letter he carried. After a moment’s pause he rode off through the narrow streets in the direction of the Louvre, and the passersby clustered around the soldiers at the gate.

“What is it, what is it?” they cried, seeing the expression on their faces, hearing the shouts and exclamations.