The Collector of Dying Breaths (9 page)

That’s when her grandmother insisted Jac be sent to the Blixer Rath clinic in Switzerland. A Jungian institution where Malachai Samuels was one of the therapists. This “last resort,” as her father had called it, was run by disciples of Carl Jung, who believed many so-called “brain diseases” could be cured with the healing of the soul. Like his mentor, Charles Blixer said the psyche required mythic and spiritual exploration before medications.

The traditional medical community was openly hostile to this holistic, soul-centered approach. But it helped Jac. During her nine months in the clinic she was exposed to in-depth analytic therapy designed to strengthen her own healing abilities. In order to understand the symbolism of her dreams and drawings done after deep meditative sessions, in order to translate her symptoms and recognize any possible synchronistic events in her life that might have a deeper meaning, Jac had to learn the universal language of the soul. What Jung called mythology. And the man who taught her that language and spoke it with her was Dr. Malachai Samuels.

On leave from his practice at the Phoenix Foundation, Malachai was at Blixer Rath as a Jungian therapist, not as a reincarnationist. He never talked to any of his patients about possible past-life episodes. Only years later, reading a magazine article about Malachai, did Jac realize he’d been at the clinic investigating his theory that a high percentage of schizophrenics were misdiagnosed and suffering from past-life memory crises.

Jac folded Robbie’s navy sweater and put it into a cardboard box Serge provided. Then, book by book, she packed up. Melinoe’s phone rang, and she left the room to take the call.

Outside, a steady rain fell, and the moat that Jac could see through the window was so full the water was spilling over onto the mossy bank.

She shivered.

“Are you cold?” Serge asked.

“A little.”

“The sweater?”

Jac picked it up. No reason not to put it on. It would keep her warm. Her brother wasn’t a tall man. Not very broad either. The sweater would only be a bit big. But she couldn’t. She didn’t want to smell him that intensely.

“Do you have any newspaper? I need to wrap up the bottles of ingredients so they don’t break.”

Serge left the room to get some. Jac was alone. She went back to the window and looked out again. The shadows were heavy. There was no way to sense how deep the woods were. She wondered how often Robbie had stood here and looked out. Jac suddenly saw it darken. She saw trees falling and branches breaking in some kind of violent storm. How could the rain have gotten so much worse so quickly? But even as she watched, the view changed again and she was seeing it as she had before. The felled branches and trunks were covered with moss and lichen. They weren’t falling anew. She’d seen the view from a different perspective. Had imagined what it had looked like years ago. Not hard to do when your mind is so ready to play tricks on you anyway. Her imagination was both her heaven and her hell. And right now all she wanted to do was finish packing up and get back to Paris before she had to indulge it anymore.

When Melinoe and Serge returned, he was carrying two rolls of paper towels. Jac began to wrap the bottles, tightening the cap on each one.

“Do you share your brother’s belief system?” Melinoe asked. “Are you a Buddhist also?”

Jac shook her head. “No, I’m afraid I don’t believe in anyone—sorry—anything.” The slip of the tongue had been embarrassing but true. In these last weeks Jac had become aware how little faith she had in anyone. Even Robbie had left her. Abandoned her the way her mother had, the way their father had.

“So you don’t believe someone’s dying breath could contain his soul?” Melinoe asked.

“No.”

“But your brother thought it could.”

“Yes, I know that now. He had his nurse collect his dying breath.”

Jac didn’t know why she’d revealed that to a stranger.

“I wondered if he might.”

“Why?”

“He was so taken with the idea. We’d talked about it at length,” Melinoe said.

Jac was almost finished putting the bottles in the box.

“My brother was a dreamer. Like my father. And like my mother until the dreams broke her.”

“And you?”

Jac shrugged. “I’m not my brother.”

“But you are a perfumer. And, he told me once, a far better one than he was. He was convinced that the solution to the dying breaths would have something to do with scent and essences. He said that alchemy and medicine and scent were closely aligned until the nineteenth century and that he’d done a lot of research suggesting there were ancient ingredients that might have held secrets we’ve become too sophisticated to trust.”

“Yes, that sounds exactly like my Robbie.”

“If he’s right and if you have his dying breath, then perhaps you should rethink your decision. Wouldn’t it be worth a few weeks of your life to find out if it’s true?”

Chapter 11

MARCH 17, 1573

BARBIZON, FRANCE

Time passes slowly in hell. A young man turns bitter in prison. A personality is forged. You change when you live in rancid darkness, forced to inhale the stench of your own body mixed with the stink of the years. When your only companions are monstrous rats and insects. When all you hear is silence.

Every hour was the enemy. Every minute pushed against my sanity. I believe I spent most of my jailed hours hallucinating. Now, I do not remember enough about them to recount how I passed them all. I know I slept because my nightmares clung to my mind through my waking hours.

When I was lucid, I tried to live in my memory. Starting from my earliest days, I worked at recounting everything in an attempt to keep my mind active. For the very first time I remembered moments that I did not know I had access to. I saw my mother—even though up to my days in jail I had never been able to recall her face. How much she looked like one of the women in the frescoes in the chapel at Santa Maria. A pale, thin woman so clearly heaven bound. How long had she been sick? Of that I’m not sure, but in my cell I was able to pull up the distant memory of her speaking to me as she walked me to the monastery on the day she left me there. It was a moment that had never surfaced before but floated to me out of the empty darkness of the prison. And in the dark I wept for her. My young mother whose name I do not know to this day.

I could recall the scene of her standing before the monks and telling them that she had been married to a dead soldier whose name was René Bianco. And that was the reason the monks took me. My father was the cousin of one of the monks. I was related to a Dominican brother. Yes, there in the dungeon I worked out all the fragments of memory. My father’s cousin was the one who took me in. He was the calligrapher who worked in the library. I had always known that I first was taught by Brother Silvius, but I’d never before remembered the connection. I was with Silvius for my first few years, but he was frustrated by my inability to master the finer points of penmanship. As good as I was, he said, I would never be good enough. So when I was seven, Serapino, who had watched me work in the garden, took me. He sensed that I had an affinity for being an herbalist.

Some days, though, were filled with insanity. I couldn’t remember where I was. A prison? An infirmary? Beneath the river? In a cave in the mountains? A lion who stalked my cell spoke in a language I could not understand. A mule appeared and offered escape, except when I tried to pull myself onto him, I found I could not move my legs or my arms. A large bird of prey often circled me, staring with beady eyes, waiting, I was sure, for me to be still long enough for him to take a bite out of my flesh.

The worst of it was that I could find no escape. In my saner moments, I often took out the packet of poison pills from Serapino’s laboratory and sewn into my shirt along with the vellum pages. I would examine it. Contemplate what to do. Swallow them now before I heard my sentence? Or wait? Was there any chance of reprieve? Or would the next stage of my journey be even worse than this one?

I was not a seer. Like many of the monks in the convent I was suspicious of men who looked into mirrors or bowls of water and claimed to foresee the future. Indeed they were heretics who went against God. But then so was Serapino, who believed that he could bring back the dead. I had no premonition about my future. No hint of what was to befall me.

I wanted to take the bitter almond pills and end this hell. All reality was steeped in fantasy, and fantasy was nothing but one horror after another.

What kept me from killing myself was a smell.

I had the pills in my hand, ready to end the torture of the hours that did not pass and the fear that did not abate. I had seen Serapino die not two weeks before, and the peace that he found at the very end beckoned. I did not believe I would ever have the chance to work on his formulas, even as they chafed my skin beneath my shirt. I would never see him or speak to him again in this world. Why not hasten the time when I could?

And then I smelled a familiar odor of lemon, orange blossom and bergamot. A scent I had created in the laboratory at Santa Maria Novella! The fragrance I had made expressly for the daughter of the dead Duke of Urbino.

Catherine’s scent.

The infirmary had been famous for more than three hundred years, dispensing balms and healing waters, poultices and creams. The Dominican brothers were known through all the city-states for their cures. And once Serapino had taken over the pharmacy and begun experimenting with scented waters, our customers often purchased perfumes as well. Serapino’s products for the toilette became as popular as his medicines.

Most days I worked in the pharmacy, selling wares while Serapino kept more to the laboratory, overseeing the novices who pressed the flowers and herbs, dried the leaves, ground the seeds and nuts. So the first time Catherine came to Santa Maria, I waited on her and her chaperone.

I did not know who she was that first day, but the charming dark-haired girl exuded strength and power. She had a pale, rounded face and lithe figure. But it was her brilliant and sad eyes that captivated me. I knew right away—though I don’t know how—that like me she was an orphan. Losing your family at a young age changes the way you look at the world. Your eyes are always searching for family long gone. For people who will never reappear.

Approaching, I asked what I might help her with. She’d come for soaps, she said, and I showed her the bars with pressed violets that we had just created. All expression of melancholy vanished from her now delighted face as she examined the soap, sniffing at it and asking me how we molded it. I explained the process to her, surprised at how interested she was in what I described.

“Did you make it yourself ?” she asked.

“Yes.” I nodded, for I had.

“And you make the scented waters too?”

“Some of them, yes, I do.” This was a lie. I helped Serapino, but I had not yet worked on a fragrance on my own.

She cocked her head to one side. Then leaned forward as if to tell me a secret. “I’ve always wanted a scent that would be mine and no one else’s. Would it be possible for you to create such a thing?”

“Of course. We take orders all the time. What kind of scents do you like?” I asked and began to open bottles and let her sniff at different essences to learn her taste.

She didn’t like incense. Wasn’t fond of cinnamon. Didn’t appreciate sandalwood. She gravitated to the flower absolutes. Rose. Jasmine. Iris. I noted her reactions and then promised that in a week’s time I would have a fragrance for her.

“Would you bring it to the palazzo?” she asked. “As soon as it’s ready?” Her face was alight with pleasure. And I felt heady with the idea that I had put it there. Not sexual excitement. This was different. There was no stirring in my loins for the young girl—though I had plenty of feelings for other girls I’d seen on my excursions out of the monastery or for women who’d come to the pharmacy.

This girl didn’t stir me. But she intrigued me. She made me curious.

“The name of the palazzo?” I asked.

“The Villa de Medici,” she answered.

I believed my fate had just been sealed. I had been invited to create a scent for one of the noblest families in Florence!

Serapino agreed that the fragrance for this maiden would be my own maiden voyage. And so I set to making a scent for the young girl who had never had one made for her before but who, at the age of thirteen, was already at the center of so much political intrigue and gossip.

As I worked, I recalled all the stories I’d heard about her and her lineage.

I would have guessed my awe would have prevented me from doing a good job—but quite the opposite. It was as if suddenly I found my voice. The challenge energized me. I became enamored of the process of mixing perfume in a way that I had not known I was capable. Something in me was born that week. A desire to create. To paint a portrait with scent. And mixed in with that was the realization that becoming an artisan might elevate me. Tantalizing fruit hung from the trees I envisioned during those days. Wealth. Power. Stature. I smelled it in the mixture.

I had chosen the ingredients carefully. Orange blossom for innocence. Lemon for purity. Roses for beauty. And bergamot—it not only smelled wonderful, but the peel of the green fruit helped cure sadness. Just the right addition to the scent.

And so with the flask of perfume I’d created, I took off the next day for the Villa de Medici, only to find the young duchess was not there. Instead of leaving my merchandise, I waited.

After about an hour a manservant came to speak with me. “The duchess has returned. Please come with me,” he said and led me out of the kitchen.

The walk through the palace made me swoon. The monastery was a rich one, with marble floors and gilt decorations. There were fine frescoes everywhere, and money had not been spared to make it comfortable and exalted. But the palace made it look like a shamble. The gold was dazzling. The rugs and porcelain, the tile work and fabrics, were like nothing I had ever seen.

Catherine’s rooms were as sumptuous as the rest of the palace. After she greeted me, she offered me a seat, treating me more like an equal than a merchant.

“Would you like some wine?” she asked.

I nodded and watched her pour the deep-red liquid into fine glass goblets. Everywhere I looked was something to see. I reached out to touch a curtain, to caress a table skirt. I had never been inside such a grand house. Why hadn’t I grown up in a palace like this? Why had fate given me the life of an apprentice and this girl the life of a princess?

Catherine, astute as she was even at thirteen, ever curious and defying convention by talking to someone of a much lower status, asked me about my time in the monastery and my beginnings. When I told her of my orphanage, her eyes misted with tears, and she took my hand.

“René, we are sister and brother in sadness.” And then she told me of how her mother had died, then her father, and how she had lost her most beloved aunt. Now there were rumors that her uncle was fixing a marriage for her.

When she opened the bottle I had brought, she was tentative at first. In time I would learn that was her personality. Cautious, then passionate.

Tipping the bottle over, she wet her fingers with the perfume and then rubbed it at her temples, neck and hands.

Then she closed her eyes and breathed in.

Though you would not think so to look at her now in her dour black clothes and severely pulled-back gray hair, Catherine is a sensualist. She has always delighted in smells and sights and tastes and touches and reveled in beauty. Has she not created more and more beauty and left examples of it in her wake?

“I shall wear no other scent for as long as I live,” she said to me in a solemn voice.

“I’m pleased you like it,” I told her.

“Then what is wrong? I can see that your expression doesn’t match your words.”

“If you never wear another scent, then I can’t create other scents for you.”

She laughed. “Clever René. You have barely sold me this one and already you are vying to sell me more.” She cocked her head and examined me. “You’re more than an apprentice at the monastery, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what you mean, my lady.”

“You have ambition, don’t you?” She said it as if she had never expected it of me.

For a moment I was stunned into silence because I had never realized it of myself. But she was right. I did have ambition. That was the fire I felt. That was what made me wake up in the morning earlier than even the monks and race out into the garden to see what had bloomed. It was ambition that made me scour the spice market, smelling every dark and mysterious concoction I could find. What made me haunt the cellars of the laboratory, sniffing at bottles of scents and potions, some of which dated back more than three hundred years. It was ambition that made me different than Serapino and must have been what he feared in me when he looked at me that way he had.

“Yes,” I said, and with my declaration took one step closer to my future. “I do have ambition.”

“Then I shall help you realize it,” she said, laughing as if we were embarking on a game. Opening a velvet purse hanging off the belt around her waist, she pulled out a gold ducat and gave it to me. “A new scent every month, Master Perfumer. But always this one shall be my favorite. What is its name?”

“Water of the Duchess.”

It was that scent I smelled in the dungeon that day as I held the poison pills in my hand. The duchess’s favorite wafting toward me, over the stench, under the stink. I smelled Catherine.

I was certain I was hallucinating again. I identified orange blossoms and lemon and bergamot and roses. Yes, it was only right that if I was to lose my mind I could at least dwell in the fantasy world of scents that I loved. There were worse fates than to die smelling something beautiful.

I was ready to take the pills. I could accept that this was my end, though I was surprised a bit that all men who were about to depart this earth were ushered out on the clouds of a sweet-smelling aroma. I was happy that the thing I loved the most—scent—would be part of dying.

“René Bianco!”

So I was hearing voices now in my madness? A familiar voice from the other side to greet me in the next world?

“You are a horrible sight!”

Was it someone I knew who had passed over? No! It was not someone who had died. I knew this voice. I opened my eyes.

Catherine de Medici stood before me. Fourteen years old and full of determination and outrage. “I’m leaving for Paris in ten days’ time, and you are to come with me. I’m going to need my perfumer there in that barbaric city.”