The Book of Lost Fragrances: A Novel of Suspense (19 page)

Then she realized:
she
was the woman. Her thighs were covered with a thin linen robe; her feet encased in jeweled sandals. The man was somehow familiar. Not his face, but his smell. It was spiced, exotic amber that wrapped around her and drew her in. Close. Warm. Wanted. Whole. Finally. She belonged here. With him.

Then the fear hit. A wrenching fear of impending separation. What was wrong? What was happening?

Jac tried to open her eyes but couldn’t. And then she was spinning again. The man and the woman were gone. The river was gone. There was no perfume at all. Dark night sky breaking into slivers of glass. Shattering.

And then she was in a new place.

The air was heavy with burning incense. The terror was gone. Here, inside the church, with her parents and her sister, here she was safe. Here, only peace.

Nineteen

PARIS, FRANCE, 1789

Saint-Germain-des-Prés, with its gilded copper and gold mosaic basilica and marble columns, was the oldest church in Paris and the one place where Marie-Genevieve Moreau always felt at peace. But today she felt as restless as her little sister, who was playing with the hem of her dress even though their mother had twice pulled the child’s hands away.

The site of the church had been a temple to the Egyptian goddess Isis hundreds of years earlier, and that was one of the reasons she looked forward to coming here. Not because she felt closer to God here, but to Giles. And when the priest swung the shining silver censer and she breathed in the dense smell of the incense, she felt her lover’s presence even more palpably.

Giles L’Etoile had left for Egypt a year ago. His father and brothers had been excited about the youngest son exploring ancient perfuming methods and materials perhaps unknown to them. Egypt’s history was full of perfume secrets: the timeless methods of extracting the essences of scent from flowers and woods; the processes of expression,
enfleurage,
maceration and stream distillation from the land that had invented many of them. If Egyptian processes and techniques were superior, then L’Etoile Parfums would have an edge over the competition. And there was much competition in Paris in the last decade of the century.

Only Marie-Genevieve had been afraid for Giles.

She didn’t remember a time when she hadn’t known him or loved him. Her father, a tanner, supplied the elder L’Etoile with the leather he needed to make the fine scented gloves he sold in his store. The two children had been inseparable since childhood—almost, Marie-Genevieve’s mother used to say, as if one was the right glove and one was the left.

There had never been any question they would marry. Marie-Genevieve had thought that would happen when she turned eighteen, but Giles had decided to take the trip to Egypt first. He wanted to see something of the world beyond the street that he’d been born on, he told her. The comment stung, though she knew he hadn’t meant to be cruel. She just couldn’t imagine that there was anything beyond this street—and particularly his arms and his warmth and the smell of his neck where his soft brown hair met his skin—worth leaving for.

“I’m scared,” she’d finally admitted in a whisper the night before he set off.

He laughed. “You think I’m going to meet some exotic Egyptian princess who will keep me there?”

“No . . .”

“Then what?”

She didn’t want to tell him about the terrible dream she’d been having over and over.

Giles down deep in a tomb when a sandstorm struck. In agonizing slow motion, she saw the grit whorl around him, getting in his eyes, his mouth, filling up his throat, and finally suffocating him.

“What is it, Marie?”

“I’m afraid you’re not going to come home.”

“But how can that be? What could make me stay there with you waiting for me here?” He kissed her in the secret way they had. They were careful. She was a smart girl and scared of having a baby too soon. Not for any of the religious reasons, not because it was a sin, but because she didn’t want to share Giles yet.

Now she knelt at the altar, pressed her hands together and lifted her face up to the crucifix of the savior Jesus Christ and waited patiently for the priest to give her the body and blood of He who had risen. She closed her eyes and imagined Giles there naked before her, not Jesus. Imagined that it was her lover’s body and blood that were going to be given to her. And then she felt the familiar hysteria rising in her.

Why did she imagine such blasphemous things? Yes, the incense always reminded her of Giles, but to imagine that the priest was holding wafers made of Giles’s flesh and offering a gold cup that held his blood?

She went to confession and tried to admit these travesties but never managed—she was always too embarrassed to speak of them. Instead she’d tell the priest about her other failings.

“I worry so much about Giles that I make a mess of my embroidery, and then Maman gets upset and yells at me because she can’t sell it if it’s not perfect.”

“You have to trust in the Virgin Mary,” the priest would intone through the iron grill. “And when you feel the fears coming upon you, you must pray, Marie-Genevieve. Pray with all your heart.”

And that’s what Marie-Genevieve was doing while she waited patiently for her portion of the holy host. Behind her, as the parishioners who had already received communion returned to their seats, she heard their feet scraping against the stone floor, the rustle of their dresses, the clinking of their rosaries, the soft murmur of their prayers all filling the church with a familiar sound: the sound of faith. Faith that she tried so hard to have.

“Mon Dieu, non, non, mon Dieu!”
A woman’s cry that was rough and raw, that had escaped rather than been uttered. Extraordinary in the church during a service.

Marie-Genevieve looked to see what was wrong, turning her back on the priest as he approached.

Giles’s mother was standing in the aisle next to Jean-Louis L’Etoile, who was holding up his wife. Marie-Genevieve focused on his horrified face. His expression that said all the things his wife’s voice had suggested. It was as if he were suddenly one of the stone statues in the side chapels, not Giles’s father any longer.

Beside them was a bedraggled man, in dirty, worn clothes, who looked like he had not slept or washed for days. Had he brought this bad news? From far away? How far? From weeks at sea? From Egypt?

Marie-Genevieve tried to run toward them, but her mother held her back.

“No. You must wait until they come to us.”

But Marie-Genevieve didn’t care about convention. She pulled out of her mother’s grasp and ran toward Giles’s parents just as his brothers joined the group.

The priest had stopped the mass.

The church was silent.

Everyone was watching.

As if his wife were a rag doll, Jean-Louis L’Etoile handed her over to his eldest son and went to Marie-Genevieve. When he took her hands, his were freezing cold, and she pulled back. From his touch, she knew she didn’t want to hear what he had to say. Maybe if she didn’t hear it, it wouldn’t be true. Maybe if she never heard the words, she could go on waiting for Giles to come home, go on being his betrothed, go on living on the memory of what he had looked like, and smelled like, and how gentle he had been with her and how the two of them were like the two hands of one pair of fine French gloves.

“It’s our Giles . . .” Jean-Louis began in a broken voice.

And she felt her legs give way beneath her.

Twenty

PARIS, FRANCE
WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 10:00 A.M.

“Dead?” Valentine repeated, staring at William in disbelief. He’d said more than that, but she wasn’t sure she’d heard anything else. “François can’t be dead.” As sometimes happened, she’d slipped out of French and into the Chinese dialect her mother had used with her when she was a child.

“But he is,” William said. Even though it was a warm morning, he was shivering. His arms were crossed over his chest, hugging himself. “My contact emailed me a copy of the police report. And the death certificate.”

“It’s a mistake. Someone else’s.”

“There’s a photo, Valentine. A photo taken of François. In the morgue—”

She screamed over his words. “Shut up! Just shut up! It’s not true!”

William reached out for her. Took her in his arms. Put his head on her shoulder. She felt his tears through her thin T-shirt.

Gagging, she pushed him away and rushed to the bathroom. Leaned over the bowl. Retched.

When she’d finished throwing up, she slipped to the floor and lay down on the cold tile.

It was impossible. It was all a mistake.

William had called her at midnight when François hadn’t returned home. She’d told him not to worry. Things happened on a job. François never gave up. He was probably chasing the perfumer through Paris. At two in the morning, William called again. And again at dawn. Each time she told him to calm down. To wait.

Tuesday had been the longest day she could remember. No matter how many times William broke, she held strong.

“You know the rules,” she told him, echoing what François had taught her. “Without confirmation, no assumptions.”

William came into the bathroom without knocking. Helped her to her feet. Wet a washcloth with cold water. Gently washed her face. He squeezed out an inch of toothpaste and handed her the brush. “It will make you feel better,” he told her and left her alone.

When Valentine came out of the bathroom, he was sitting at the dining room table staring at an empty vase. Valentine sat opposite him, pulled an ashtray and her cigarettes closer. Shook one out of the pack and lit it. Took a long, deep drag.

“You said asthma?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I’d have known if François had asthma. He would have said.” She looked down at the burning ember between her fingers. “I smoked in front of him.”

“I’m going to make tea.” William got up.

“Tea?” Her laughter sounded hysterical in her own ears. François always made tea, too. Was never without a cup, especially in a crisis. Crisis equaled tea in so many cultures. As if heat could heal. Who started this nonsense: the Indians, the Chinese, the British? Macerated dried leaves wouldn’t solve anything.

In the kitchen, William started the ritual. Every sound—the water running, the cabinet squeaking open, the china cups clinking on the countertop—grated on her nerves. She needed to try calming down; to practice one of the meditation techniques that François had taught her when he’d first taken her in.

“Why would he let me smoke in front of him?” she called out. “Why wouldn’t he tell me he had asthma?”

“He didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Not even me? I don’t believe it.”

William came out of the kitchen, holding a tray, shaking his head. She thought she detected a little smile of satisfaction on his lips. William was always slightly jealous of her relationship with his lover. She’d even wondered if he’d joined the Triad just to keep an eye on François. He’d never seemed to care about the cause, the brotherhood, or the thousand-year-old traditions. She and François had been the true soldiers. Comrades in arms. And now she was left with the wrong partner.

“He wanted to appear invincible,” William said.

“He was invincible,” she whispered.

“Will you come to the hospital with me this afternoon?” he asked quietly.

“Where?”

“To the hospital. We can’t leave his body unclaimed. We have to honor him.”

She looked at him as if he were insane. “How can we claim his body? Who do we say we are?” She realized that she was yelling and raised her hand in apology.

“You took an oath,” William said.

Since the nineteenth century, all members had taken the same thirty-six oaths. She’d memorized them and still knew them by heart.

I shall assist my sworn brothers to bury their parents and brothers by offering financial or physical assistance. I shall suffer death by five thunderbolts if I do not keep this oath.

William was right: she had to help him. “But not yet,” she said. “François would tell us this job comes first.” Trying to keep her voice from cracking, Valentine clenched her fists. She’d killed someone once with her hands wrapped around the man’s neck as François stood nearby, giving her instructions on how and where to press.

She tried to summon him.

What should I do? With you gone, who do I ask for help?

François had trained her for this contingency.

“No one of us is as important as the society,” he’d asserted. “If one of us is caught, even killed, the rest of the team continues.”

He’d given Valentine marching orders and made her memorize them like she’d memorized her oaths.

“If a plan fails, create a new plan. Don’t forget that if you need to, you can go on without me. You’re ready.” He’d smiled proudly. “You’re ready. Do you understand?”

Valentine crushed the cigarette out. Drank the strong black tea that François favored. That she always found so bitter.

“I need to call in the rest of the team,” she said. “Reorganize. We need to get someone outside the House of L’Etoile with directional microphones and find out what’s going on.”

“Shouldn’t we contact Beijing first?”

“It’s too late in the game for that. They might send in someone new to oversee us. We’ll lose our momentum.
We
need to take charge.”

“So you’re appointing yourself incense master?” William asked, referencing another of the oaths they’d all taken.

I shall be killed by five thunderbolts if I make any unauthorized promotions myself.

“No. Of course not. Beijing can name anyone they want to fill the official position. We need to finish the job François started.”

He was looking at her as if she were a stranger. “You’re ready to go back to work? We have to mourn him, Valentine.”