The Book of Shadows (54 page)

It was in September, their thirst for blood still not slaked, that the people passed through the prisons. October, November, and December came with more of the same; all the while, the Royals remained in the Temple, imprisoned and awaiting a fate that grew ever more certain.

Meanwhile, those in power—an ever-changing cast of characters—tried to determine how best to rid France of its Sovereigns. This, after all, was a lesson no European country of the day had learned. True, there was the American example; but they, the colonists, had simply sailed away from their King…sailed away to that vast country's eastern shore.

While debate raged,
la famille Capet
was kept in the Temple, a tower fortress on the grounds of an estate that had formerly belonged to the King's brother, Artois. The two floors accorded the family were comprised of tiny, airless rooms. The stony walls were slick with lichen. The ceilings were suffocatingly low. The floors were white-speckled with the droppings of vermin, still in residence despite “the royal infestation.” No linens were allowed on the hard beds. The walls, which had long been painted with the pure white of the Bourbons, were bordered in insulting red, white, and blue bands; over this revolutionary pattern was scrawled the text of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.

Imprisoned, the royal children passed the days reciting Corneille, playing battledore and shuttlecock, bowling hoops and tossing balls. The Queen did needlework, which was confiscated and burned lest it conceal a secret message she sought to smuggle out to conspirators. As for the King, deprived of the intricate locks with which he'd passed countless hours, and too dispirited to keep up with his detailed lists—of his game, his riches, his courtiers—he suffered without distraction the insults, large and small, heaped upon him. As there'd been innumerable ways of honoring the King at Court, now, in prison, there were as many ways of insulting him: it was an inverted sort of protocol. And the family was never left alone: there was always a representative of the Commune present, even at their most intimate rituals. Indeed, a highlight of the day was the Queen's…evacuating; an alarm would rise, and all the guards would assemble to watch, to jeer, to cheer, and place grotesque bets.

The Queen found some solace in her dog, a gift from her lover, the Swedish envoy, Axel Fersen. (Only the King believed the dog was a gift from Madame de Guéménée.) Too, she shopped; for, even while their jailers were encouraged to heap all manner of abuse upon the Royals, even as their fate was being debated, the Legislative Assembly accorded the Capets a resident staff of thirteen, including a valet and the aforementioned shaver. (Imagine the particular thrill that Asmodei must have taken in holding to the multiple chins of the King, twice daily, a straight-edged razor.)…In keeping with this contradictory indulgence of the Royals, the Commune allowed the Queen to order a new wardrobe. Dressmakers came and went from the Temple, and seamstresses busied themselves outfitting a Queen they knew they would kill. She, in a typical act of vengeance, one particularly sweet, or
fragrant,
burdened the Commune with a bill for 100,000 francs—for perfumes.

Finally, early in the new year, the Convention, after thirty hours of debate, condemned the King to death.

Some months later, with the Revolutionary Army victorious over the allied forces at Hondschoote, it was determined that the Queen—known as “the first deputy's mother,” a reference to her surviving son, whom only she referred to as Louis XVII—was expendable; her foreign affiliations, which had kept her alive, would no longer need to be called upon. She could be killed. But first there was the matter of a trial.

The Queen awaited her trial not in the Temple, but in the prison of La Conciergerie on the Île de la Cité, in a tiny room without windows. She was allowed no visitors; indeed, she never saw her children again. The charges against her—in general, Conspiring Against France—ranged in their particulars from her alleged complicity in various assassination plots to the counterfeiting of assignats to the disclosing of state secrets, and even, most absurdly, to incestuous relations with her son. This last charge the Queen fought vociferously; in her teary and strident defense, she nearly won over
les tricoteuses,
those old women who sat knitting through all the trials, looking up from their handiwork only to stab at the accused as they passed.

A jury of two carpenters, a musician, a hatter, a café-keeper, a wig-maker, and a printer unanimously convicted the Queen, and condemned her to death.

Such were the days—known now as the Reign of Terror, known then as the Reign of Virtue—during which the paths of my four saviors crossed.

Simply put, the elementals trailed Asmodei from the moment they discovered him in possession of the King's head. Eventually, he led them to the Bal des Zephyrs, held in the cemetery of St. Sulpice; and it was there they met Sebastiana.

Asmodei, said the elementals, was everywhere at once in the days of Blade and Blood; but Sebastiana's attendance at the ball was unusual—or so they'd learn—for she had long been living at a literal remove. Having thrown the Greek Supper and seen its consequences, having had her fill of Society and life itself, she'd retired to Chaillot. “Overwhelming was her remorse, her guilt,” said Father Louis. “She'd sunk into a darkness of mood, an abyss from which she could not rise, abandoning her paints, poring over whatever
Books of Shadows
she could find, seeking a way to undo what she believed she had done.”

In those early days, while still at Chaillot, Sebastiana would venture into Paris only to see what it was she'd wrought. She would load her coach with food, bags of coin, clothing; she'd go to where the poor were massed and give it all away.
Yes,
said Madeleine,
she gave away a great deal; but she'd earned such wealth, wealth unknown to any uncrowned woman.

“She kept up with events in the aptly named capital,” said Father Louis, “following every act of the Crown and the Clubs. And so it was she learned of the Victims' Balls, asking herself, ‘Can it have come to
this
?'…She would go. To partake of Death, as the faithful do Holy Communion.”

In order to attend these balls,
said Madeleine,
one had to present documentation, proof that one had lost a close relation to the blade. It was a fine day for forgers; trade was brisk. And so it was Sebastiana attended the Bal des Zephyrs as the sister of one Madame Filleul, tried, convicted, and killed for “wasting the candles of the nation.”

“The Victims' Balls were
stylishly
grotesque,” said Father Louis, “as death was fashionable then. To dress
à la victime
was all the rage. Women wore their hair up, and tied thin red ribbons round their necks; men too sported such ‘blade marks.' At the end of each dance, one saluted one's partner with a sudden drop of the head, chin to chest, meant to mock the work of the blade.”

Sebastiana came masked to the ball,
said Madeleine;
otherwise she'd have been quickly recognized and associated with the Court or the Queen, and that was simply too risky. In Paris, then, one lived as one died: quickly.

…She saw him standing far across the cemetery, tall and broad and pale as a Norse god. I remember his blond hair was untied, and he wore a scarlet domino and a half-mask of hardened black taffeta through which his emerald eyes burned. He approached her. He asked her to dance. And not a half-hour later she'd learned from him the latest German waltz…. And there the two of us stood, incarnate, watching as they traipsed over tombstones set flat in the ground.

Now doubtless she'd had a bit to drink. Doubtless too she was distracted by this strange man's attentions…

“Oui,”
concurred the priest, “but by her own admission the act was rash.” He explained: “The night nearly over, the moon opalescent overhead, the air thin and fine, Sebastiana showed Asmodei
l'oeil de crapaud.”

And thusly did she win him to her side for life
. This, with no little sarcasm, from the succubus.
Apparently, most men stare or scream or fall in a heap at the witch's feet when shown the eye. Not Asmodei. He simply threw back his blond mane and laughed that laugh of his. And they waltzed on. In their way, they are waltzing still.

Within weeks, I learned, Asmodei was living in Sebastiana's cottage. Later, at the height of the Terror, when she decamped to the Breton coast, he followed. There they remain, living, according to the priest, “in an approximation of love, of family life…which satisfies, is enough.”

Somehow,
said Madeleine,
Asmodei roused her, finally. It was he who convinced her that it was not the literal climate she'd called down that had caused such catastrophe, but rather the climate of excess that had long been brewing. Why he, of all creatures, bothered with such an effort of kindness, I've no idea.

“Love, I'd say,” came the priest's response, which met with a sneer and silence from the succubus. (Sebastiana has written warmly, if discreetly, of that night; indeed, when first I discovered the entry, there fell from her Book a thin red ribbon, doubtless the very one she'd worn to tease or to appease the ghosts of the guillotined.)

Madeleine suspected Sebastiana was a witch when first she saw her; her showing Asmodei
l'oeil de crapaud
confirmed it. Not long after, though still not knowing what species of man Asmodei was, the elementals decided to ally themselves to those two beings, so fortuitously met. Their goal then was the same: Madeleine's end.

So, the elementals showed themselves to Asmodei and my Soror Mystica.

Father Louis visited Sebastiana in Chaillot. He considered going to her as the King (and he could have, for he had the Sovereign's gloves, stripped from the pudgy hands as they lay hardening in the tumbril), but in the end he decided on taking the more handsome shape of the Queen's lover, Fersen, the dashing Swede. (Of this encounter there is no mention in Sebastiana's Book.)

As for Asmodei, waking from a nap beneath a linden at the end of its seasonal turn, he encountered the Princesse de Lamballe, whom he'd seen several months earlier in…in several pieces. In this way his attention and admiration were won.

Years passed. And, as is the nature of a family, my four saviors were not always near one another, but neither were they ever far apart.

W
E ARRIVED
in Orange. It was late in the day, for I'd whiled away some hours inducing the dream and recovering from same. The next night the new moon would rise. All was quiet in Orange, save for the rushing river, already on a level with its parapets and brilliantly blue under the last of the sun. The market was open but uncrowded. The houses were closed up tight, their northern faces devoid of windows or doors, owing, certainly, to the great winter mistral that blows down from Mount Ventoux, pulled by the warm Mediterranean and said to render the pale blue skies scar-white.

We drove on, out of Orange—past its copper and violet ruins, speaking so eloquently of the Roman era—toward Avignon. Along the way, rocky pine forests vied for precedence with orchards of almonds, olives, and cherries. Homes not so very far from the road sat up to their sills in brown water, and hay that had been harvested into cones poked up through the floodwaters, an archipelago of bristling, tiny islands.

We reached Avignon near dusk to find water in many of the streets of that ancient place. A rose-bronze moon was rising in the sky. I decided to sleep in Avignon, in a proper bed. From what little I understood of our mission and its map, we were near enough the crossroads. I did not consult the elementals, for they'd not shown themselves since Montélimar.

I let a room in the shadow of the Palace. And, ensuring that Étienne had money enough to see to his own amusement, I set off in search of mine.

In the still-settling, violet shadows of the Palace were encampments of gypsies, brightly clad. Stalls were established along the outer ramparts, giving the scene a fair-like aspect. Honeysuckle, eddying off the river, married the still air of a market square, infused with the aromas of saffron, thyme, fennel, sage, black pepper. In Avignon, as elsewhere in the South, I'd find the food wonderfully overrun by garlic and adrift in oil pressed from the olive; my tongue, accustomed to bland stews and overdone game, would suffer the concentration of spice.

As day gave over to night, and the streets grew cramped—with amusing abuse, bad language, and gesticulation the common tongue—I took refuge in a café off a secondary square, hard by the theater. I sat at a tiny table on the
terrasse,
beneath a pergola heavy with plumbago, and waited a long while for a waiter to come. When he did, I ordered
“un café, c'est tout,”
and when he stepped sniffingly away it was to reveal a woman seated two tables from mine whose beauty fell on me like a hammer-blow.

She was among a gaggle of women, all dressed similarly, in a garish fashion quite unfamiliar to me. Men lazed among them. Only when a call boy, tramping over my foot without apology, ran onto the
terrasse
to issue their common cue did the entire flock of actors rise up and run; and I saw by their strides and broad gestures that those whom I'd
supposed
to be women were costumed boys and men of slighter build. Coins were tossed onto the tables, which had been shoved together like game pieces. There were shouted protestations, and plans were made to meet at a later hour. The commotion caused several well-heeled ladies to look aghast at…at my mistress, seemingly the lone
true
woman, who stood, bowing to same with biting insincerity, and, abandoning a marble-topped table strewn with tiny white cups and distended snifters, proceeded to approach me.
Me!

“Monsieur,” said she, “are you the poet of Spain? I was to meet a poet of Spain here on the hour, just passed.”

“No, Madame,” I stammered. She stood before me in her merino skirt, dyed a deep orange, and a man's waistcoat of scarlet silk; into a pocket of the latter, and attached by a long gold chain, was tucked a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles. She was a tall woman. Her head was set squarely on her spine, thick and true. She had gray eyes that would go violet as the light died, a short, sculptural nose, and high-set cheekbones. Her black braids were wound into a tight bun, aromatically fixed with a rubbing of lemon oil. “You are not he?” she asked. I know now that she was waiting for me to stand, as a gentleman would have. When I, dumbstruck, failed to invite her to join me, she achieved the same end by saying, in a deeply accented French which I'd no hope of placing:

“I mistook you, Monsieur, for him. The South is chock-a-block with poets. But now you
must
buy me a chartreuse, as I'm far too embarrassed to take my leave.”

“Certainly,” said I. And when finally I stood, it was only to see her seat herself, as if we two were attached by a pulley system. “Chartreuse?” I led, recovering from these social gymnastics.

“Yes.” She smiled. “The…
aqua vitae,
the very waters of life.” And when the waiter returned, bearing my coffee, she waved both away, asking…no,
demanding
two of the sickly green liqueurs instead.

“Not a poet,” said she, looking at me appraisingly and leaning nearer. “Are you then a white slaver? A crook of some kind come up from Marseilles to cool your scheming mind?”

Before I could answer, she went on: “
Don't
tell me. You are a heart-sick traveler. Provence, you know, is the recognized cure for northerners dying of broken hearts. You are a traveler, are you not?”

“I am. Yes.”

“From where?” she asked. “And
to
where?”

“From the north…and I'm not quite sure to where.” A breeze off the green river set to shimmering the flowered vines overhead. Pastel petals wafted down like confetti. The first chartreuse soon became a second.

“Ah,” said she, wisely. “A vagabond of love.” She looked at me so long, so hard, I had to look away; and with a flushed face I managed to say:

“Hardly…. Are you…are you from here, Madame?”

“I am better known in Arles, Monsieur, but best known in Greece. But
who
can resist dear Avignon. True: one must endure the gypsies.” She then waved with both arms at a transvestite actor passing through the square, a skirt hiked up to his thin hips. Gesturing to same, she added, “One must endure too the traveling players.” Yet she smiled broadly and offered her hand for a kiss as the player came to join us.

He did not sit; indeed, he addressed us both over a low fence of wrought iron that separated the
terrasse
from the square. “A friend of yours?” he asked, staring all the while at me. Though it seemed an impossibility—we'd only just met, and I'd not yet said a word!—it was clear I'd offended the man, who was frightfully thin and wore more rings than I knew a man might or could wear. Shaking his hand, which he offered grudgingly, was like taking up a bag of marbles.

“Acquaintances,” said she, “proceeding fast toward friendship.”

“Indeed,” came the sniffling response. And then there was laughter, in which I did not share, for, not knowing
why
they laughed, it seemed foolish to join them. To judge by the actor's ongoing appraisal of my person, I was, I knew, the focus of the unspoken joke. “Are you,” he asked, staring so hard at my…my various features as to make me shift in my seat, “are you in our play?” And turning to my companion, he added, “Certainly he
could
be. Among the chorines,
non
?” Now she turned to take me in as well; and, with a nod to the actor, her smile grew sly.

This last spoken insult was clear, and it cut deeper than either of them could have known. I was glad when my fast-friend said to the man, “Is that not your cue I hear? Go now.
Shoo!
” And she literally brushed him away; but not before he bent in too willowy a way to take my hand and kiss it, as he had my companion's some moments earlier. “Charmed,” said he. And finally, with these words of the Bard's, he took a most welcome leave. “‘I will believe thou hast a mind that suits with this thy fair and outward character.'” Walking away, he turned back twice to look not at me but at my companion. Far away, he raised a thin arm overhead to wave, without turning, a jeweled hand; he seemed to me a sort of evil genie, and I willed him back into the bottle from which he'd come.

Immediately I worried that this woman, before whose beauty I was abashed, might find
me
rude—inexplicably, for it was the lean and snaky, overly lithe actor who'd intruded, who'd insinuated himself—and so I asked: “Are you an actress, then?”

“I was, formerly, and briefly,” said she, seeming to appraise me still, “…and now I've
no
hope of regaining my former station in society.” As she laughed at this, a cart was trundled past, laden with painted scenery. On the fractured canvas it seemed…yes, I discerned a shipwreck. “I've come for rehearsals, to
consult,
if you will. They open in two days; and the only thing that's a
wreck
is the leading ‘
lady
.'” She looked again at me, hard; sat back to take in my seated length.
“Twelfth Night,”
said she, with a nod in the direction of the theater. “They're here with the Bard's cross-dressing caper. Sebastian, Viola, and the lot.…Do you know it?”

“I do indeed,” said I, and now I knew the line the actor had thrown off. I swallowed hard and said, “I shall be sorry to miss it. I have never seen Shakespeare performed and I'd very much like—”

“Moving on, are you?”

“
Oui,
tomorrow. To Arles. To Marseilles, finally.”

“And then? Overseas?”

“Yes.” I was reacting bodily to her glance, which now was bold. When she took my hand in hers she no doubt found it clammy and slick. She offered a drawn-out
“Hmm,”
as one might when tasting a new dish. Suddenly she let go my hand, sat back smiling, and changed her tack. “You must be
terribly
excited. About the sea voyage. Your first time?”

“Yes, it is. And, yes, I am, Madame…. In truth, I am more than excited: I am afraid, terribly so.” Her eyes showed great sympathy, which ended when she, again, laid her hand on mine and I, foolishly, withdrew, so fast one would have thought she'd hurt me. “Worry not,” said she, leaning so near I could smell the lemony scent of her shining hair. She added, “I bite only when invited.” To this I failed to respond.

“Are you hungry?” she asked, not long after. I was, as was she. Within the quarter hour there sat before us a great fish stew, deeply spiced. We scooped it into our two bowls from the common one. Our chat during dinner—of her travels and light travails—was of little consequence, though her every word was a charm. Dessert involved my first taste of coconut, which I
very
much enjoyed. Finally, there came coffee and a final chartreuse. We raised the tiny glasses and my companion asked if she might make the toast. I shrugged, and she did so—and with words that nearly set me to choking, said, “To the memory of whoever you were.”

“I…I…”

“Your hands will betray you,” said she, with a conspirator's smile. “Beware them…. They are too graceful, too elegant to be the hands of a man. And your complexion is perfection.” My hands? I'd always hated my hands, so huge, so…

“I…I…”

“There are laws, my dear, that's all. You must be aware of them.” She sat back in her chair. “Do this,” she commanded, crossing her legs as men do. “And this,” drumming her fingers impatiently on the table and furrowing her brow. I aped her every move. “…It may have been easier for you in the North, for there, women are often mannish: such was the sacrifice of Catherine the Great, of Queen Elizabeth. But,” she went on, “the southern woman triumphs as she is…. Théodora, Sémiramis, Cléopâtre.” Surely my friend—I will call her Arlesienne, a Woman of Arles, for I never learned her name—
had
passed an hour or two upon the stage. She declaimed further: “Whether the southern woman is skirting the labyrinths of Crete, or walking dagger in hand along the bloody corridors of Mycenae, whether she poisons her man with ease befitting a Borgia or takes from the toreador's hand the still-beating trophy of the bull's heart…”

I coughed to reclaim her attentions, which had strayed in proportion to her rising voice. People were watching us. She concluded: “The southern woman has nothing to fear but her overwhelming sensuality. Now, Monsieur, pay our way from this place and follow me.”

In a moonlit alley she critiqued my walk. She intentionally dropped a kerchief, and when I bent to retrieve it she judged that I'd done so all wrong. “At the
waist,
not at the knee!” Then that alley gave out onto another, and another; I was so turned around it was with great surprise, and crippling anticipation, that I soon found myself standing before my tiny inn, Arlesienne beside me. “Shall we, Monsieur?” she asked, slipping her arm through mine. I did not respond. I could not respond. Finally, she urged us forward, and into the inn we went.

I was some time under her…tutelage. It was fun, and yes, informative. That is, once she recovered from her initial surprise and learned the truth she'd only half-suspected.

“Mon Dieu!”
said she, raising the back of her thin and elegant hand to her forehead and falling backward onto the bed, her vest and bodice undone. “Could it be the green faeries of the chartreuse have finally taken hold?” There I stood at the bed's end, my blouse open, my pants unbuttoned—not by me—and fallen to bunch at my knee, at the mouth of my boots. “I thought you were a simple woman, a woman a bit shy in the sapphic sense—of these I've known a few. But this! It's…it's…an embarrassment of riches!” And she fell then into a kind laughter that was the most welcome sound I'd ever heard. “Not to worry, lucky one,” said she. “I've seen the same before, in Cairo. But I wonder, will I charge you double?” Again, that laughter. Only then did I understand: here was that species of woman I'd long been warned against, a woman who charged for her…
intimacies
. And indeed, intimacies they were, for knowing what I knew it was as though a wall had crumbled and I could say what I had to say, ask what I had to ask, do what I had to do, all without fear of censure. It was as though some silly clock of shame had ticked to a stop. So it was I said, finally, summarily, “I know nothing,” and she rose up into my arms, kissed me, and said, “That will all change in an hour's time.”