Catherine: One Love is Enough (Catherine Series Book 1) (31 page)

‘You will be admitted as one of her ladies-in-waiting, which will put the finishing touches to your social education.’

If he was at all surprised at finding the Moorish doctor, who had so greatly excited the curiosity of the people of Bourg during his stay there, now actually resident in his house, he gave no sign of it. Catherine for her part introduced Abou-al-Khayr as an old friend of her uncle’s, and Garin seemed delighted to meet him. He received him with a courtesy and generosity that charmed the little doctor.

‘In this century of ours,’ Garin told the doctor in greeting, ‘where men tear each other to pieces like wild beasts and think of little else but looting, stealing and destroying things, a man of science whose mission is to alleviate the sufferings of our poor human bodies seems like a gift from God.’ He invited Abou to stay in his house for as long as he liked, and approved of Catherine’s choice of rooms for their guest. ‘That room on the first floor of the west wing; it would not be difficult to have a laboratory set up there should you decide to stay here for some time, or perhaps permanently.’

To Catherine’s surprise and indignation, for she considered him bound by loyalty to Arnaud, Abou-al-Khayr thanked Garin effusively and accepted. When she reproached him about this later, he replied: ‘The sage saith: “You will serve your friend more effectively under your enemy’s roof, but you must not let him pay for the bread you eat.”’ After this, seeing that Garin had retired, he went to his room to say his evening prayer.

The young woman was satisfied with this explanation. Besides, she was in fact delighted to have Abou under her roof. With him there, she could talk about Arnaud to someone who knew him well and had remained at his side for months on end. With the Moorish doctor’s help she would get to know Arnaud better. He could tell her about his daily life and what things he liked and didn’t like. It was as though a particle of Arnaud himself had come to the Hôtel de Brazey. Now he would no longer be just a memory stored in the shadowy recesses of her mind, a painful and inaccessible image. Abou’s presence lent life and substance to this shadow, and the hope she had stifled for so long of seeing him again burgeoned anew, stronger and more vivid than ever.

Each night when her maidservants helped her prepare for bed, Catherine took a new and intense pleasure in the beauty of her own body. While Sara stood behind her, combing out her golden hair till it shone as brightly as the gold comb she used, the other women washed her with rose water and then elaborately perfumed her body, using different scents for its different parts. Sara, whose long years in the Venetian merchant’s household had made her an expert in perfumes and their properties, supervised this ritual and chose the different scents. Ten years spent in the shop of an apothecary and spice merchant are liable to teach one a lot of useful and curious information. But strangely enough it was only recently that Catherine had discovered this talent in her old friend.

The maid would place a few drops of violet essence on her hair and eyes, powdered orris root on her face and bosom, marjoram behind the ears, spikenard on her legs and feet, rose on her thighs and stomach, and finally a little musk in the folds of the groin. It was all so delicately and lightly done that when Catherine moved, she felt herself enveloped in a cloud of fresh, delicious but subtle fragrance.

The big polished mirror, in its elaborate gold and Limoges enamel frame, reflected back a charming picture, all rose pink and pale gold. It was such a ravishing sight that Catherine’s eyes sparkled proudly. Her present mode of life and the fact that she was a very rich woman did at least ensure that she could take care of her looks and groom her beautiful body to become an irresistible magnet, a delicious trap for the man she loved. She longed for Arnaud with all the ardour of her proud heart and all the passion and vigour of blooming youth. There was nothing she would stop at to get him back. For the ecstasy of holding him in her arms once more, as overcome by desire as he had been at their first meeting, she was even prepared, if the need arose, to commit a crime.

When Perrine, the young maidservant entrusted with the task of preparing and applying the perfumes, had finished, she too stood back a little distance to admire the enchanting vision of womanhood reflected in the mirror with its aureole of candle flames from the masses of slender wax tapers that lit the bedchamber.

‘By rights the master should be head over heels in love,’ she murmured to herself. But Catherine heard. The reference to Garin, who was so far from her thoughts just then, brought her back sharply to earth and made her shiver. Stretching out a hand she impatiently seized the dressing-gown that had been placed on a nearby chest. It was a sort of long, loose tunic with wide sleeves and a low neckline. The cloth of which it was made, a gold tissue embroidered with flowers in brilliant colours and fantastic shapes, had been brought by a Genoese vessel from Constantinople. She wrapped it quickly round herself and slipped her feet into the little matching slippers that had been made with the remnants of the gold material. Then she dismissed her servants.

‘Leave me now, all of you!’

They all obeyed. Before closing the door behind her, Sara turned and tried to catch Catherine’s eye, in the hope that the command did not include her. But Catherine stood motionless in the middle of the room, staring into the fire, and did not turn round. With a sigh, Sara left the room.

When she was alone, the young woman went over to the window and opened the heavy painted and gilded wooden shutters, the decoration on which echoed the motifs on the ceiling beams. Looking down into the courtyard outside was like looking down a well. There was not a light to be seen. Garin’s windows were quite dark. She suddenly felt like calling Sara back and sending her to see what her husband was doing, but pride prevented her. Heaven knows what Garin would think if she sent someone to him! One minute she would be praying that he would not visit her that night, and the next she would be longing for his presence. She both feared and desired him. But Catherine tortured herself to no purpose, for Garin de Brazey did not knock on her door that night, or on any of the nights that followed. And she, quite unreasonably, felt aggrieved and injured.

During the time that passed between his return and Catherine’s presentation to the Dowager Duchess, Garin de Brazey had the pleasure – for that was how he seemed to regard it – of introducing his young wife to all the hidden treasures and marvels of his house. While he had been away, Catherine had made herself thoroughly at home in her own apartments, and had visited and admired the section of the house set apart for receptions and social life. She had seen over the main hall, with its carved and gilded ceiling and walls hung with superb Arras tapestries interwoven with gold thread showing scenes from the lives of the Prophets. Then she had toured the suite of rooms leading off it; slightly smaller, most of them, but no less luxuriously decorated and furnished. In every one, the walls were of that rich crimson shade that seemed to be Garin’s favourite. They were decorated lavishly with gold and silver and set about with a profusion of
objets d’art
and things chosen either for their beauty or for their novelty. There were innumerable samples of the goldsmith’s art, some of rare beauty; priceless books, their covers studded with precious stones; enamelled caskets; gold, bronze and crystal statues. The floors were strewn with rugs so thick that Catherine’s feet seemed to sink into them up to the ankles, and there was a collection of musical instruments, all carved from the rarest and most costly woods. Catherine had also visited the immense kitchens, where everything seemed on a scale required to feed an army, and toured the gardens, with their rose-beds enclosed by clipped borders, and the stables and the storehouses where the household’s provisions were kept. But she had never once set foot in the east wing of the house. This was reached through a solid, heavy oak door with massive iron hinges that was always kept locked. Nor had she seen her husband’s apartments. This wing stood at right-angles to the long gallery that, with its coloured glass windows, ran the whole length of the first floor of the house.

When Garin first picked up a blazing torch and opened the mysterious oaken door, Catherine realised at last why it was kept so carefully locked. The whole east wing of the building, which appeared to be of great antiquity and was lit only by narrow slit windows, was really a sort of enormous warehouse where the Lord Treasurer stored the shipments of merchandise that were constantly arriving from the farthest corners of the globe and that he would then dispose of at a handsome profit through his many agents. In addition to and quite apart from his many distinguished and honorific posts, it seemed that Garin also operated a thriving and far-flung business empire. Though necessarily secret and hampered to some extent by the interminable wars, it had nonetheless proved highly lucrative.

‘You see,’ said Garin, half serious and half ironic as he escorted her through rooms crammed with every conceivable sort of merchandise, ‘I am letting you into all my secrets, in the hope, I need hardly add, that you will feel free to take anything you need or like from here at any time.’

She smiled her thanks and followed him, her eyes round with wonderment and admiration, as he guided her through his vast storehouse of treasures. One of the rooms was piled to the roof with carpets, rolled up one on top of the other, and they gave out a heavy, musky scent, suggestive of sunshine and distant lands. The light from Garin’s torch brought their glowing colours to life for a moment. There were carpets from Asia Minor, from Smyrna, Brousse and Kulah, recognisable by their warm colouring of deep blues and greens contrasted with rich reds and purples. Others, in more delicately blended shades, were from the Caucasus. Then there were Persian carpets from Herat, Tabriz, Meshed or Kashan, blossoming with all the flowers of an imaginary garden, superb Bukharas, brilliant rugs from Samarkand, and even some of the loosely-woven Khotan silk carpets from fabulous China.

Other rooms held cloth of gold from the Euphrates, costly furs, sables, ermine, fox and vair from Mongolia, saddles and harnesses from Kerman, jasper from Kara-Shahr, lapis lazuli from Badakhshan, uncarved ivory from the African jungle, white sandalwood from Mysore. Then there were spices worth their weight in gold, among them ginger from Mecca, cloves from China, cinnamon from Tibet, black pepper, cumin and nutmeg from Java, white pepper from Cipango, pistachio nuts from Syria, all of them packed in bags piled in great pyramids. The odour of all these spices combined was so strong that it made Catherine’s head reel. She felt the first warning throb of an impending migraine. The whole place was rather like a magical cave, in the dark depths of which something would suddenly catch the light; a bright scrap of cloth, perhaps, or a gleam of metal, the creamy whiteness of a piece of ivory or the opaque green of a fragment of jade. When they reached the far end of the last room, Garin, who had carefully locked the door into the gallery after they had passed through it, drew back a plain green cloth curtain to reveal a low door, which he then unlocked with a key that hung from his belt. Catherine found herself for the second time in her husband’s room, stood behind the very same silver and crystal chair before which she had undergone such agonising moments on that previous occasion after her wedding.

‘I still have a few more treasures to show you,’ Garin said.

She allowed herself to be led a little nervously toward the bed. Then Garin went round the back of this massive piece of furniture and showed her another door, normally concealed by the velvet curtains round the bed-head. It led into a little round tower room. Three huge iron chests with massive padlocks took up almost all the available space. Garin put his candlestick down on a slab let into the wall and then, with an effort that made the veins on his forehead stand out sharply, struggled to open one of the chests. In the gloom Catherine could just make out the yellow glow of a mass of gold coins.

‘There’s a king’s ransom in there, should it ever be needed!’ said Garin with an oblique smile. ‘The second chest is full of gold too. As for this one …’

He wrenched back the heavy lid to reveal a dazzling Aladdin’s treasure of flashing gems of every possible size, colour and shade, some mounted and others unset. In one corner of the chest a number of little caskets, each covered with purple velvet, stood neatly piled on top of each other.

There were turquoises from Kerman, round Coromandel pearls, Indian diamonds, Kashmir sapphires, emeralds from the Red Sea. There were orange corundums as well, transparent blue aquamarines, milky opals, blood-red carbuncles and golden topazes. But not a single amethyst.

‘All the amethysts are in the caskets,’ Garin explained. ‘There is no finer collection in the whole world. Not even the Duke’s! I think he even envies me them a little …’

He gazed at the jewels with a glint in his eye. He seemed all of a sudden to have forgotten Catherine’s presence. The light reflected off the jewels onto his face in a curious coloured pattern which gave him a little of the look of some weird demon. Then he suddenly plunged his long, dry hands into the blazing heap of gems and drew out a large barbaric-looking necklace made of enormous, crudely-cut turquoises, set in a sort of heavy gold lattice formed by intertwined serpents. Before Catherine could stop him, Garin threw the necklace round her shoulders. His hands, which were trembling as with a sudden fever, struggled to fasten the clasp at the nape of her neck. The necklace was so heavy that Catherine felt as if someone had tied a lead weight round her neck. It was also much too long to fit within the modest neckline of her gown; a simple one of brown velvet bordered with a narrow band of marten fur.