The Collector of Dying Breaths

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The author Mark Slouka once gave writers this advice:

1. Trust a few, necessary voices.

2. Try, as much as possible, to avoid torturing these brave souls with your own insecurities.

3. Shut up and write.

With gratitude, this book is dedicated to the two brave souls I’m sure I do torture: Steve Berry and Douglas Clegg.

“You may think me superstitious, if you will, and foolish; but indeed, I am more than half convinced that he had, in truth, an abnormal gift, and a sense, something—I know not what—that in the guise of wall and door offered him an outlet, a secret and peculiar passage of escape into another and altogether more beautiful world.”

H. G. WELLS, “THE DOOR IN THE WALL,” 1911

Chapter 1

MARCH 1, 1573

BARBIZON, FRANCE

Written for my son to read upon my death, from his father, René le Florentin, perfumer to Catherine de Medici, Queen Mother.

It is with irony now, forty years later, to think that if I had not been called a murderer on the most frightening night of my life, there might not be any perfume in Paris today. And that scent—to which I gave my all and which gave me all the power and riches I could have hoped for—is at the heart of why now it is
I
who call myself a murderer.

It is one thing to fall in love with a rose and its deep rich scent. Once the blood-red flower blooms, browns and decays and its smell has dissipated, you can pluck another rose about to bloom. But to fall in love with a woman after a lifetime of not knowing love? In the browning of your own days? Ah, that is to invite disaster. That is to invite heartbreak.

The château is cold tonight, but my skin burns. My blood flows hot. Who knew that yearning alone could heat a man so? That only memories could set him on fire? I feel this pen in my fingers, the feather’s smoothness, and I imagine it is Isabeau’s hair.

I close my eyes and see her standing before me.

Isabeau! Exuberant, tender, dazzling. And mine. I see her sapphire eyes twinkling. Her thick mane of hair like a blanket for me to hide in.

I whisper to her and ask her to undress for me slowly, in that way she had. And she does. In the dream she does. She strips bare, slowly, slowly, of everything but her gloves, cream kid gloves that stretch above her elbows. Her silken skin gleams in the candlelight, golden and smooth, smelling of exotic flowers. Gardenias and camellias and roses, scents that emanate from within. This is her secret and mine. Isabeau had a garden inside of her body. Flowers where other women had organs. Her own natural perfume richer and more luxurious than anything I ever could have created and bottled.

In this dream, Isabeau never takes off her gloves. Night after night, I beseech her to strip all the way for me, but she just smiles.
Not yet, René. Not yet.
And then she reaches out with one gloved finger and traces her name on my skin.
One day, René. Once you have found the elixir.

I dream this asleep. And hear it, awake, in the wind. Her promise.

Once you have found the elixir.

I lie there, sweating into my nightshirt. Trembling from the memories.

There was something about the way the bell rang that first day she came to my shop. Its tone was different, almost tentative, as if it wasn’t sure it should be ringing at all. Now, looking back, were the fates warning me? How cruel of those witches to give me love at that moment—after a lifetime of holding it back.

But I will have my revenge on them. I, Renato Bianco, known as René le Florentin, will figure out how to reanimate a dying breath and so wreak havoc for their folly. So help me God, this I will work at until I have no more of my own breath in my body.

Winter is upon us now, and it is quiet here in the woods and forests of Fontainebleau. The days stretch before me, an endless vista of foggy mornings and chilly evenings and dark nights devoted to one thing and one thing only: my experiments. If I cannot succeed with them, I cannot, I will not, go on with my life.

It was one man who heard the bell ring to the shop and opened the door, and another who closed it. That was how long it took for Isabeau to alter me. And it is the me who is altered who has this need for revenge on the crones who have done this to me.

Let me tell you first about the man who heard the bell.

Chapter 2

MARCH 2, 1573

BARBIZON, FRANCE

When I close my eyes, I can still see the laboratory as it was, shrouded in shadow. The light hurt Dom Serapino’s eyes, and so I would only ignite a very few candles—enough to see what I was doing. Their flames danced, mocking the solemnity of the occasion. Their burning added to the scent in the windowless cell, which was sweet with Serapino’s favorite incense—a combination of rosemary, angelica, lavender, and frankincense.

Dom Serapino, the monk I was apprenticed to, had been suffering for weeks and had begged me to help him leave this world and travel to the next. Heaven, he was certain, would welcome him. Had he not spent his life creating wonderful-smelling potions and healing balms and tonics? Had he not been devout?

I watched the shallow rise and fall of his chest. Listened to the rattle of his breath. As his student, I had memorized all his instructions. I had seen him perform this duty but had never done it myself.

His quest was to capture a person’s last elusive exhalation, to collect his dying breath, then to release it into another living body and reanimate that soul. To bring it back from the dead.

What was he? A necromancer? A magician? An alchemist? Serapino would accept no title but that of monk.

“René,” he would say, “that is all I am. A humble monk using the gifts nature offers.”

In the last few years, Serapino had devised a method to capture those dying breaths. Now it was up to me to use the contraption the way I had seen him use it so many times on other monks once his tonics and balms had lost their capacity for healing and death was inevitable.

The iron rack, the length of two hands, had spaces in it for a dozen openmouthed bottles; nearby corks were at the ready. The job of the collector was to judge when the end was near and then start filling one bottle after another with breaths, stopping them one after the next. It was only the last one that mattered, but there was no way to guess which that would be.

Sometimes the end took so long in coming that I was given the task of rinsing the bottles out with wine so Serapino could reuse them and start from the beginning again. Filling one bottle after another.

But that final night, I had no helper. My master was dying. I’d arranged three sets of collection bottles. Thirty-six chances to capture Serapino’s final breath. Then—later, much later—I might complete his alchemical research and find the elixir to mix with the breath and perhaps one day bring him back to life.

Serapino hadn’t opened his eyes for several minutes. I knew enough about the potion I’d administered to know that he wouldn’t open them again. His death was only moments away. The draught had been far more powerful than it needed to be, but that was what he’d asked for. He wanted no half measures and no mistakes. Serapino was ready for the end and didn’t care that some considered it a sin.

The pain of the disease eating his bones was too great a burden.

“Surely God did not put herbs and flowers, even these, on the earth if he didn’t want us to use them,” he said. “The greater sin would be not to use those gifts.”

And now I was listening to his breaths, counting how long between each. They were coming further apart. And then he began to move his lips. No sound emanated from between them. Was he praying? Asking God for forgiveness? For help? For a benediction? I tried to read the words as he formed them. Struggled to make sense of the way his mouth moved.

It was my name he spoke—not the name of his God, but my name. What was he trying to say? What was there left to say? I had known him since I was brought to the monastery, fourteen years before, when I was but three years old and an orphan. And it was Serapino who, when I was seven, had taken me as his apprentice, befriended me and given me a profession.

He mouthed my name again. And then managed a hoarse whisper. “René . . . the bees . . .”

I was so caught up in trying to understand that I forgot my task and stopped capturing his breaths. What was he saying? Was this the poison talking or had he in these last hours made some connection that he wanted to share?

“Bees?” I asked.

But there was no response.

I remembered with a start that I had a job to do and followed the instructions Serapino had taught me before he became ill.

“Make sure you move quickly, René. Be careful not to let the atmosphere in the room corrupt the breath.”

I lifted a bottle to his lips, captured his breath, and then shoved a cork in its glass neck.

That night, with tears streaming down my cheeks, I corked the tenth vial. Then, I held the eleventh up and waited. Waited. Counted. Waited. His chest did not move. Still I waited.

I had known this moment would come, of course, yet still I was somehow unprepared. I wasn’t even aware that I had dropped the eleventh bottle till I heard it crash on the stone floor and shatter.

I threw myself on his still form and wept into the monk’s rough robes.

For the first time in memory, I was alone.

How long did I weep that night over the body of my protector, mentor and friend? An hour? Two? At some point I reached out and took the tenth bottle and held it. Held what had been Serapino’s last breath.

Serapino had been my all. I could not imagine how to go on living without him on this earth.

As I sat beside his deathbed, I vowed never again to love so much, to be so vulnerable to loss.

I do not know how many minutes or even hours passed, but after a time I became aware of footsteps. Clutching my treasure in my fist, I turned from the still body to see who approached.

How had news of the alchemist’s passing traveled? It was still the dead of night. No one had been in the laboratory with us. Serapino had been sick a long time, and no one expected him at midnight prayers, so his absence could not have been a warning. Yet there in the thick shadows under the ancient stone archway stood Dom Beneto, the abbot, long taper in hand, taking in the scene. He glanced from Serapino’s body to me. His unearthly black eyes did not blink. There was no compassion in them. No sympathy on his ancient face.

He walked over to the body, placed his long pale fingers on my mentor’s neck and leaned down.

From where I stood it appeared Dom Beneto was kissing the dead monk. Rage rose in me. How dare he? I took a step, prepared to grab him and pull him back. But Beneto retreated on his own.

“I smell bitter almonds,” he said and looked back at me.

Since the 1220s the Dominicans had been creating herbal remedies, creams and balms renowned for their properties. Every monk at the monastery of Santa Maria Novella was equipped to sniff out hundreds of scents.

“You poisoned him,” Dom Beneto said.

I can still see the candles’ shadows rising and falling on the walls like specters come to witness the death as the friar’s shocking words echoed in that grim chamber.

While I lived in the monastery, I was at home in the city of Florence. Weekly, I traveled outside the sacred walls to interact with the people who bought our wares. I made scents for the daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino and often visited the palace where Catherine lived. I knew the world well and was hardly naive. But the last thing I expected to hear in that moment of grief and despair was Dom Beneto’s accusation and his charge.

“You have committed an unspeakable act, René Bianco. I am placing you under arrest. We will try you here in the monastery.”

“Dom Beneto, it was Serapino’s wish.”

“Do not lie to me.”

“Brother Serapino created the formula for the potion himself. He drank it himself.”

“He was too ill to make a potion.”

“Before he fell so ill.”

“And how did he get it into his hands? He has not had the energy to leave his bed for weeks.”

“Well, yes, I . . . I . . . handed it to him, but—”

“So you admit your deed,” he said, interrupting.

“I was just doing what he asked of me. He was in such pain, Dom Beneto. What was I to do? Refuse him?”

“So say you! How do I know you haven’t been poisoning him all along? His illness has come upon him suddenly enough. He was a healthy man five weeks ago and you alone had much to gain by his passing.”

Beneto waved his arm around the laboratory. His candle illuminated the hundreds of glass bottles filled with potions and elixirs, essences and remedies. The light flickered over the brass scales, the mixers and measuring cups on Serapino’s worktable. Those he studied to make up the salves and lotions and scents as well as the notebooks wherein he kept the formulas he’d created and the ones he was working on.

“Chief apothecary of the monastery is a title worth killing a man for. Isn’t that what you have been aiming for all along? Has not Brother Serapino talked about your ambition?”

“I would never have done such a thing.” It was a feeble defense. But what else could I say? I was unprepared. Even now I don’t know what I might have offered that would have changed Beneto’s mind. Because I wasn’t really who he was accusing that night. It was Serapino who he was damning.

“His was not the work of God and I will not allow it to be continued!” Beneto shouted at me. “I ordered Serapino to stop these experiments!”

Reaching out, he shoved the rack of captured breaths to the floor. An explosion of breaking glass echoed in the small chamber as bottle after bottle fell and shattered on the stone floor. The noise was so loud and the scent so overpowering I glanced over at Serapino to see if the melee had roused him, forgetting for the moment that he had died.

Bottles were still falling, still breaking. I watched the continuing destruction of all our work. “No!” I moaned and knelt down to . . . what? The mess was too great. The demolition too complete. Hundreds of scents were escaping into the air. Stinking as they mixed together.

“Get up,” Beneto shouted. “Leave all that alone.”

Then, crunching more glass under the weight of his body, he walked past me and over to Serapino’s table. Reaching for my master’s notebook, Beneto opened it, held the candle close, wax dripping on the pages, and read.

All was quiet for a few moments, then: “Did he not heed any of my warnings?” he asked, looking up at me. “How long has he been disobeying me?”

When I didn’t answer, Beneto took two steps toward me, grabbed me by the collar of my shirt. I was decades younger and stronger, but he was the abbot. I could not fight back.

“How long?”

But I could refuse to answer. And I did. Infuriated, Beneto shoved me away. It took such a great effort that he stumbled, bumped into the deathbed and fell. The impact jostled Serapino’s body. One of Serapino’s hands fell from his side off the cot and onto Beneto’s shoulder.

The abbot screamed like a frightened little girl.

Struggling to his feet, he brushed off his robes. Then, glaring at me, he made his way back to the desk. After searching through Serapino’s things for a moment, Beneto grabbed a ring of keys and pocketed them. Then he riffled through the books. Ignoring those that were written by others, he separated out Serapino’s notebooks. When he’d gathered all four that he found, he turned back to me.

“There will be a trial, René Bianco. You will stand for the crime of killing Brother Serapino with poison. Until that time, you will remain here. Pray for your soul, you miserable liar. Because no one else will be praying for it. You have robbed the monastery of one of its treasured monks. That deed will not go unpunished.”

Then, before I realized what he was doing, he walked to the door, pulled it closed and locked it from the outside.

I rushed to the door, but I was too late. Grief had dulled my reflexes. I was imprisoned in the laboratory with the body of Brother Serapino. There were bits of glass everywhere. Liquid spills. The smell was now an ugly combination of too many essences that had no business being mixed together. All augmented with the odor of death. Precious books lay soaking in the mess on the floor, being ruined while I watched.

But I wasn’t thinking about that.

I’d been charged with a job by Serapino—to discover the secret of reanimating dying breaths. I had promised him I would achieve that goal. But to succeed I would have to escape with two items.

Beneto may have thought he had erased all traces of my master’s work.

But the notebook holding the unfinished formula I needed was hidden under a loose stone in the floor. Serapino never trusted anyone but me with it. And in my hand was something I’d been clutching when Beneto barged into the cell, the bottle I’d never let go of, the bottle that held Serapino’s dying breath.