The Collector of Dying Breaths (20 page)

I nodded. “Yes, my lady.”

“There are enemies of the Crown. And one in particular has begun to spread rumors that I am not on the side of the church. That I converse with the devil.”

I had always feared the day Catherine would stand on the narrow ledge between witchcraft and devout Catholicism. I couldn’t allow her the misstep that would push her to the side of the accused.

“You must give up these practices that Ruggieri has taught you.”

She was about to say something and then stopped herself. “I need you to help me, Maître René. I need to send a message that my enemies will be able to read without any trouble.”

“Of course,” I responded with assurance. But I thought it strange that she was asking me to deliver a note for her. Unless of course she intended to have me deliver it along with a gift of fragrance.

“The nobleman in question brings his clothes to you to have them perfumed.”

There were so many men who had me scent their garments I couldn’t even guess who she might mean.

“I want you to create a poison and impregnate his clothes with it.”

Revenge and nefarious activity was a Medici family trademark; nevertheless, I couldn’t bear that my lady would engage in the black art of poisoning.

“I can’t do that.”

“It’s not impossible. I’ve read that there are substances that could accomplish exactly that.”

“Yes, there are. It’s certainly possible. But it’s murder of a most—”

“You would deny me now that
I
need
you
? Turn
your
back on
me
? I am alone here except for you and Ruggieri. Only we three share the same past and truly understand one another. I still remember coming to get you in the prison in Florence . . .” She shut her eyes as if the memory were too intense. “Oh, how that cell stank and how miserable you were. Do you remember when I finally got you out of there, when we stood on the street, how you kept breathing in gulps of air? Even the rotten air near the tanneries was better than the dungeon’s stench.”

She put her hand on mine. “Look in the water, René. Can’t you see yourself ? As you help me rise to power you become the most important perfumer France will ever know.”

In that moment, the only thing I could see in the water was my own face reflected back at me. But there was a message in the way her fingers pressed into mine and the sound of her voice filled the chamber.

Catherine had never before asked me to repay her for what she had done for me. This was the first time since we’d left Florence that she had reminded me of my past, and now she was using it to tempt me with an alluring future. Her message was clear. Help her and my prominence would be guaranteed.

What if I said no? What would happen to me? I might be dismissed from the court, but I could survive that, could I not? I had my shop. Catherine had given me the deed to the land. I could sell it, and the price it would fetch plus the riches I had stored away would be enough. But where would I go? Back to Italy? I had been accused of murder there. Well then I could stay in Paris in my shop. But without Catherine’s patronage I would be just another perfumer. Without Catherine I would lose my clients . . . I had no real friends outside of the court . . . no wife, no family . . . Catherine was my sun and my moon. I had lived in her orbit since I was fifteen years old. Without her I would be alone again . . . orphaned as I had been as a child.

Chapter 23

THE PRESENT

It was almost five
PM
. Griffin and Jac sat side by side in the small hidden laboratory behind the wine racks. He was poring over the notations in René’s notebook. Jac had brought him back to the château after dinner to show him what she’d found and to introduce him to Melinoe and Serge. Melinoe been thrilled that the translator had arrived and welcomed Griffin, asking him what he’d already deciphered from the silver bells. Griffin said that he’d only begun to work on them, and they appeared to be incantations of some kind, but there was still so much he hadn’t been able to figure out because of the combinations of ancient dead languages and arcane symbols.

Though she was clearly disappointed, she rallied and invited him to stay at the château to give him more time to continue his work in concert with Jac. But he declined, saying he was fine at the small hotel in town.

Jac was also disappointed that he hadn’t agreed to move in, more than she would have imagined. Had she unconsciously been anticipating a midnight tryst? That didn’t make sense. If that was the case, she could certainly go back with him to his hotel.

No. This was something else. Jac felt that it was imperative Griffin be here. In the château. That he
belonged
here. Seeing him sitting at René’s worktable, hunched over the perfumer’s papers, Jac had one of the strongest feelings of déjà vu she had ever experienced. And then, while she was watching him, she felt a physical push toward him, as though someone was actually pressing on her shoulders. She even turned around.

For a second she thought she saw Robbie behind her. His hands poised to push her again. Laughing as he lunged.

Despite trying to resist, she fell into Griffin.

He looked up.

“Sorry,” she said, not wanting to explain. Not now.

Griffin brushed a lock of his salt-and-pepper hair out of his eyes with a familiar gesture. The moment was surreal. Being in the château, feeling the past so alive, sensing the perfumer who’d lived here almost five hundred years ago, and at the same time aware of Robbie’s unreal presence and the reality of Griffin’s as he sat here helping her. And helping do what? Search for a formula to bring the dead back to life. It was all too fantastic.

“These first ten pages are all ingredients,” Griffin said. “I assume you got that far and know what they are?”

“I recognized some of them—spikenard, frankincense, myrrh, ambergris, civet, lemon—but not all of them. And not the formulas themselves. I’m sure it’s written in Latin, but I’m hardly fluent.”

“It’s fifteenth- or sixteenth-century Latin. I’ll do my best.” He read for a few minutes. “He says that the most important thing is the quality of the ingredients,” Griffin said, then read more. After a few seconds, he pulled out his phone.

“What are you doing?”

“I have an ancient Latin dictionary app.”

“On a twenty-first-century cell phone. Of course.”

He smiled. “But it doesn’t matter since the phone doesn’t seem to work down here.” He went back to the notebook. “I think these are saffron, cinnamon and pepper, but I’ll need to check when I can get online.”

“Those are all easy enough to find,” Jac said.

“Dragon’s blood. Aloewood. Tutty,” he continued, working from René’s notes. “Have you ever heard of them?”

“Some of them. Aloewood is also called agarwood. And it’s a very important perfume ingredient. Most of us refer to it as oud. It’s actually a resinous heartwood that forms in evergreens from Asia when they become infected with a certain type of mold.”

“Did you ever wonder who was the first person who thought, Hmm, if I mix a tree fungus with an orange blossom oil, it might smell good?”

“All the time. Robbie and I used to make up scenarios and enact them. Like the moment someone decided to use whale vomit in a perfume.”

“What kind of tree does aloewood come from?”

“It’s called heartwood. It’s light-colored and doesn’t have much of an aroma. But once infected, the tree produces an aromatic resin as a response to the attack. It’s very rare and was highly prized and important in many religious ceremonies going back to ancient times. It’s even mentioned in the Sanskrit Vedas. Since the mid-1990s the trees have been listed as an endangered species, but some countries have created whole plantations of them.”

“Off the top of your head . . . you just happen to know all that?”

“Robbie knew it . . . The past year working with him has been an amazing education . . .” Her voice drifted off.

“How about tutty and momie. Have you ever heard of them?”

Jac shook her head. “No, but there were a lot of ingredients used in the Renaissance that we don’t use anymore. I have some books upstairs from my grandfather’s library that Robbie was using to research this project. I’m not sure—but maybe we’ll be able to find them there. Only one of the books is written in English. The other two are copies of Italian texts from the sixteenth century.”

“And people wonder why studying a dead language like Latin is so important.”

By the time Jac came back downstairs with the books, Griffin had translated more of the notes. “I’m certain this was René’s workbook. Each of these lists varies only slightly from the others. As if he was refining one formula. At the end of the book here”—he showed her a page—“is a more formal recipe that features aloewood, tutty, momie, black henbane, honey, ambergris and musk pods.”

“In Greek mythology henbane is called the plant of forgetfulness. It’s a powerful hallucinogenic,” Jac said. “Greek oracles burned it to help them go into trances. And a beer made from henbane was often left with the dead to help them pass over and was also drunk by mourners to ease their pain.”

Griffin was riffling through one of the books. “This fits too. Listen.” He read: “ ‘Henbane was part of every ancient alchemical laboratory. It’s been found at Celtic Neolithic burial sites. According to the historian Albertus Magnus, sorcerers burned it and then searched for demons in its smoke. Mixtures of henbane and barley were found in ritual funerary drinking vessels, probably drunk by shamans to help the dead’s passage to the next life. Zoroastrians reported that a man could drink it and spend a week in the afterlife.’ ”

“So its been associated with magic rituals going all the way back through history,” Jac said.

“Now let’s see what we can find out about the other ingredients.”

For a half hour Griffin worked on the Latin text and Jac searched through the texts written in English. She loved the old and yellowed books. Loved the feel of the leather covers. Loved knowing that her grandfather had pored over them, and his father before him.

“Dragon’s blood,” Jac said. “Got it.” And she read: “ ‘A botanical extracted from Dracaena,
D. cinnabari
, it was used as a medicine, incense and a red dye.’ According to this book it was important in medieval ritual magic and alchemy.”

“So much of what was called alchemy is what we would refer to today as science rather than magic.”

They both went back to reading. Fifteen minutes passed in silence. Here, deep underground, the only light from an electric lantern, Jac felt as if she were in the netherworld of her beloved Greek myths. She looked up to tell Griffin—but stopped, struck by a vision of sorts.

Jac sensed great sadness in the room. The emotion seemed to be perfuming the air. Hovering over Griffin like a cloud. She was looking at him but was seeing the ancient perfumer. His head bowed low. His shoulders slumped in misery. Working on his notes. Bereft.

“Here’s something else,” Griffin said.

The scene wavered, and Jac was seeing Griffin again. René was gone.

“I found a mention of tutty,” Griffin continued. “It’s in this copy of a fourteenth-century book, Francesco Pegolotti’s
La Pratica Della Mercatura
. Translated it means
The Merchant’s Handbook
. Tutty, Pegolotti wrote, was the charred scrapings from inside chimneys. It was imported from Alexandria and described as a very expensive nonperishable fragrance.”

“The wood burned then would have different properties from wood burned now, as would the chimneys themselves. We can try, though.”

They both returned to their reading. After a few minutes Melinoe interrupted them. “Would you like to come up for dinner?”

Jac hadn’t realized how much time had passed. She looked at Griffin. “I’d just as soon keep going—you? I’d be happy with a sandwich later.”

“We can do better than sandwiches. Just come up when you are done. Are you getting anywhere?”

“I think so,” Jac said.

“How soon until you can mix something up?” she asked.

“Oh, we’re nowhere near that close,” Jac said. “We’ve only just identified what we think is René’s final formula and are working on his lists of ingredients. The problem is this was written over four centuries ago. I’m not familiar with some of what he used or even if it’s available anymore.” Jac felt a wave of frustration. What if she had the formula but never could find the right ingredients? Or what if she did but they never figured out what to do with the mixture?

As if reading her mind, Griffin asked both women, “Do you know what’s supposed to happen with this substance? How it is used to reanimate the breath?”

“No,” Jac said. Melinoe shook her head.

“Robbie told me he thought that the potion would be mixed with the breath and then if a newborn inhaled it, the deceased’s breath would take root . . . The baby would host the old soul. Integrate. You’d live on in this new life,” Griffin said.

“Yes, that’s what Robbie and I constructed from what Thomas Edison and Henry Ford believed. They were fanatical about the idea of reanimating a dying breath,” Melinoe said. “But surely it has to be in René’s notes.”

“It’s written in fifteenth-century Latin, so it’s going slowly and we’re working it in sections.”

“Can’t you look ahead? Is there at least some mention of how to make whatever it is—a tincture, a formula?” Melinoe asked impatiently. “Are the incantations on the silver coverings a spell that’s said when you use the elixir?”

“We just don’t know anything yet,” Griffin said as he carefully turned the pages of the book, scanning each one. “Wait . . .” He looked at Jac. “You didn’t even skim through it when you found it, did you?”

“It’s in Latin,” she said, not understanding why he was repeating Melinoe’s question. “There was no point.”

“Well, this part isn’t in Latin. It’s in French.” He handed it to Jac, who read it for a few moments in silence.

“It’s a formula for a perfume called Soul Water . . .” She read it out loud haltingly, translating into English as she went.

Take of good brandy, a half of a gallon; of the best virgin honey and coriander seeds, each a half of a pound; cloves and henbane, an ounce and a half; nutmegs, aloewood and dragon’s blood, an ounce; tutty and momie, of each an ounce; benilloes, number four; the yellow rind of three large lemons. Bruise the cloves, nutmegs; cut the benilloes into small pieces; put all into a cucurbit and pour the brandy on to them. After they have digested twenty-four hours, distill off the spirit in balneo-mariae.

To a gallon of this water, add damask rose and orange flower water, of each a pint and a half; of China musk and ambergris, of each five grains; first grind the musk and ambergris with some of the water, and afterward put all into a large matrass, shake them well together, and let them circulate three days and nights in a gentle heat. Then, letting the water cool, filter and keep it for use in a bottle well stopped.

“A cucurbit? A balneo-mariae? Benilloes? What are these things?” Melinoe asked.

“The first is a still, the second is a double boiler. A matrass is a vessel for digesting and distilling. Benilloes are vanilla beans.”

“And things like dragon’s blood and tutty? Do you know what all those ingredients are?” Melinoe asked. She had come closer to Jac and stood behind her. She was wearing an expensive perfume that day, which Jac recognized as Golconda by JAR. Carnation and cinnamon. An unusual scent—one that, at over eight hundred dollars a bottle, very few women in the world wore. It suited her.

“No. I’ve never heard of quite a few of them. We’re working on that challenge now.”

“Aren’t they here?” Melinoe asked as she pointed to the shelves.

“No,” Jac said. “That’s one of the mysteries we’ve encountered so far. The supplies here are rather pedestrian. The more exotic ones are almost too conspicuously absent.”

“Why do you think?” Melinoe asked.

“Maybe René destroyed them . . . Maybe the experiments went wrong and he didn’t want anyone to try and re-create them,” Jac said. And then shivered. She didn’t know why, but the thought frightened her.

“But you’ll be able to find what’s not here once you can figure out what it is?”

“Even if we do figure it out, the problem will be whether or not the mixture will be the same if we use modern-day equivalents,” Jac explained.

“Yes, you mentioned that before,” Melinoe said.

“Why wouldn’t it be the same?” Griffin asked.

“Each item grew or was extracted from plants or herbs or woods under circumstances we can’t re-create. Ancient ambergris, for instance. The whales in the sixteenth century had a different diet. The environment has so radically changed that the way the ingredients’ odors mix today will result in an altogether alternate fragrance. If it even was a fragrance. That’s just a guess. We don’t know for sure how this was intended to mix with the breath—and then how to use it? Drink it? Apply it to the skin? We’re still really in the dark.”

Melinoe shook her head.
Like a petulant child,
Jac thought. “No. We are not. We can’t be. We’ve come this far, and all this effort will not go to waste. Your brother’s lifetime will not go to waste.”

Jac winced. What Melinoe was saying was too personal to hear coming from a stranger.

“What if there are samples of these ingredients somewhere?” Melinoe looked at Jac. “Are there museums that would keep ingredients?”

“There are two fragrance museums, one in Grasse and one near Versailles, but I don’t think they have ancient ingredients. And if they do, I doubt they’ll relinquish what they have.”