Floats the Dark Shadow (11 page)

Lilias kissed him lightly, her lips tingling with brandy. She pulled him down to the rug in front of the fire and leaned over him. Her skin was fragrant with the lingering aura of amber and musk. Michel concentrated on the glide of her fingertips along his collarbone, the delicate tickle of her hair framing their faces as they kissed. He began the same sort of touch in return, elusive, almost taunting, across the arched fan of her ribs. He never knew if she would desire roughness or tenderness. It made her all the more alluring. All the more challenging. Her kiss drifted across his cheekbone. A soft exhalation teased the hollow of his ear. Then she bit his earlobe, sharply. He shivered as he felt his flesh reawakening.

“No more talk,” she whispered.

Chapter Ten

Each one of my days like a flower that floats

On the water, then sinks:

What place could they find in my fate,

This hope, this regret?

~ Jean Moréas

VIVID yellow, streaks of sunlight glanced off the blades of the windmill. Their brightness gleamed sharply against the bruised purple clouds lowering in the sky. Deep violet shadows flowed along the dusty streets, the pools of color seductive yet strangely sinister.

Theo lowered her brush, backed up, and contemplated the canvas. The cluster of houses funneling to the windmill lacked detail. The brush twitched restlessly in her hand, but she resisted the urge to elaborate. The clouded sky, jutting blades, the sloping planes of the roofs, would lose impact if she refined the buildings that curved down the hill. She liked the yellow door she saw far up the street. Her painting needed that sort of contrast on the right side, and it would echo the flashes of sun. Choosing a smaller brush, she added a rectangle of chrome yellow to the highest house. Too bright. She muted it so that it didn’t pull the eye away from the windmill. A few quick splashes of vermillion suggested geraniums valiantly blooming in the gathering darkness. The newly added yellow and orange gave the shadows a deeper glow.

Stop,
Theo thought.
Stop.
She put the brush aside.

What would the Revenants think if she left the painting as it was? Only Paul would approve. Casimir would consider it raw and unfinished. Crude. She feared Averill would frown at it too. He most admired the delicate, decadent voluptuousness of Gustave Moreau. Theo had illustrated her cousin’s poems in exquisite, painstakingly rendered detail. But Paris was changing her work, changing her. She would still illustrate Averill’s poems in the style he loved, but her painting would go where it would.

The church bells tolled four. There was still an hour before Matthieu came to help her carry back her easel and paints. She would read a chapter of her book then look to see if the painting really needed more detail. Theo turned the canvas around so she would not steal glances at it. She wiped her hands on a rag, then sat cross-legged in the shade of a chestnut tree. Taking an apple out of her satchel, she bit into the crisp flesh, juicy and tartly sweet. The bright fragrance distracted her from the odors of oil and turpentine that called her back to the windmill. Instead, a still life with apples floated through her mind. Patches of red, yellow, and pale green gleamed as she slowly ate the fruit down to the core.

Finished, Theo searched deeper in her satchel for the book Casimir had recently given her. Drawing it out, she stared at the cover for a minute, reluctant to open it.
Là Bas
fascinated and distressed her. The novel was filled with weird obsessions and unsatisfied quests, overwrought one moment then strangely austere. But it was learning more about the horrific Gilles de Rais that made Theo steel herself before opening her bookmarked page.

‘Association with Jeanne d’Arc certainly stimulated his desires for the divine. Now from lofty mysticism to base Satanism there is but one step. In the Beyond all things touch…
She roused an impetuous soul, as ready for orgies of saintliness as for ecstasies of crime.….’

Theo doubted Jeanne d’Arc would be pleased with what she roused. She read on, descending into a darkness as grim as the catacombs.

‘Then as to being a ‘ripper’ of children…Gilles did not violate and trucidate little boys until after he became convinced of the vanity of alchemy.’

“Is that an excuse?” Theo muttered under her breath. Apparently so, for the narrator thought that Gilles was no crueler than the other barons of the age.

‘He exceeds them in the magnitude of his debauches, in the opulence of his murders, that is all.
’

A shadow fell across the book. Startled, she looked up to find Averill standing above her. He bent close, lips to her ear, and his whisper sent a spark of excitement coursing along Theo’s spine.
“I was born under so fierce a star….”

Stepping into view, Casimir finished Gilles’ most famous quote
“… that I have done what no one in the world has done or could ever do.”
He sounded almost smug. A cat with cream on its whiskers—or a mouse under its paw.

“You’re wicked, both of you. All three of you,” she chided, seeing Jules lurking behind them.

They had crept up on her deliberately. Theo shielded her eyes as she gazed up at them, standing together, backlit by the late afternoon sun. She was still not fully emerged from the nightmare world of Gilles de Rais. Their words,
his
words, overlaid an image of star-spattered blackness in her mind. The teasing touch of fear mingled uneasily with the teasing softness of Averill’s whisper. Her heart was racing, and tiny shivers threaded from the hollow of her ear and down her neck.

“What is happening?” Averill asked, nodding down to the book.

Theo seized the offered refuge. She did not want to talk about the opulence of Gilles’ murders, so she turned to the opulence of his possessions. “I was amazed—he was even richer than the king.”

“The richest man in France and the most profligate,” Averill said.

“He bankrupted himself buying gem-encrusted books and extravagant robes embroidered in gold.” Casimir’s gestures clothed his own body in a flow of silks and velvets. “Every object in his possession was luxurious perfection. He devised flamboyant pageants where even the least of the pages was garbed like a king and built fabulous chapels for his angelic choirboys.”

“He spent even more on alchemists who promised to make gold from lead,” a little smile twisted Averill’s lips, “and sorcerers who promised to summon Satan for him.”

Jules closed his eyes as if praying, murmuring something inaudible.

“What did you say, Jules?” Theo asked, wondering why he tried so hard to vanish. Sometimes it made him all the more obvious.

Startled, he opened his eyes. His lips trembled, but he said, “He lost his soul to black magic. But he was forgiven.”

“Forgiven?” Theo hoped not.

“Yes…” Jules hesitated, “…at the end.”

“Oh, he was executed,” Casimir assured her. “Far too mercifully throttled, then burned.”

“But he knelt in church and begged them all for forgiveness.” Jules sighed and Theo thought she saw tears glistening in his eyes. “It was granted.”

Jules had once wanted to be a priest. Averill was raised Catholic, and Casimir. Was that the reason they understood the excesses of Gilles de Rais better than she could? Like him, they had worshipped in vast cathedrals gleaming with golden artifacts. Like him, they breathed air perfumed with bouquets of lilies and drifting clouds of incense. Priests garbed in embroidered robes chanted rites in Latin, transforming the simple words of Jesus to an impenetrable mystery. Impenetrable to her, but not to them. Did the wafers and wine transform on their tongues to body and blood? Rather than the empty cross of the resurrection that she had gazed on, they lifted their eyes to Christ crucified. It was a world of confession and absolution. Of abasement and glory.

A world of utter damnation—yet one where even the worst sins could be forgiven.

“It’s obscene, his love of excess.” Theo frowned, still haunted by the images the book had painted in her mind. She stood up, dusted off her breeches. “His crimes were just as excessive.”

“Beauty and evil in equal measure,” Averill mused.

“Equal!” Theo exclaimed. She could not be blasé about the slaughter of innocents. “How can any amount of beauty equal the horror of those ravished pages and gutted choirboys?”

Her vehemence made Averill glance away. Her heart plummeted at the small rejection. “Averill…” She stopped, hating the uncertainty in her voice.

He met her eyes, apologetic, defiant. “Excess was a drug, a drunkenness. It was both a quest and an escape.”

“It was a necessity,” Casimir declared. “Think of the void Gilles de Rais had to fill. How could anything compare in glory after Jeanne? The Maid touched his soul, bringing the incandescent light of God into his life.”

“Then came the fire of her death—and darkness after,” Averill said. “It was God’s greatest betrayal.”

Jules crossed himself, lips moving silently.

“And Jeanne’s,” Casimir said. “Greater even than betrayal by a lover.”

Theo remembered the anger and abandonment she felt when her California family died. She had raged at Death—but at them as well.

“Her trial was a travesty,” Averill added, “and her death without mercy. The Inquisition built the platform high above the pyre, so that fire would torment her longer.”

“Horrible. To burn a living saint.” Jules’ voice was a hoarse whisper, as if he could feel the smoke in his own lungs.

Theo shuddered. “Horrible and heartbreaking.”

Did Jeanne truly accept her martyrdom? Did her sense of betrayal rise with the flames? Did she, like Christ, feel forsaken by God? Theo had thought it solely Jeanne’s tragedy, but now she envisioned the fire, the pain, the scalding fury, the inner terror all radiating outward, consuming the hearts of those who had believed in her.

“She is a saint,” Jules insisted. “She should be canonized.”

“She is a heroine to me, too.” Spurred by curiosity, Theo asked, “You seem to get on easily with Paul despite his being an atheist.”

“He who is furthest is also he who is closest.” Jules' voice was low but filled with intensity. “I believe Paul will return to the Church.”

“Return?” Theo frowned. She doubted Jules would be concerned about Paul returning to Protestantism. “Was Paul Catholic?”

“Oh yes,” Jules answered. Averill and Casimir looked as flummoxed as Theo felt. It was impossible to think of Paul as other than his critical, iconoclastic self. But why had she presumed it was the Protestant church he had disavowed?

“The Prussians burned his village during the war. Paul prayed for the Emperor’s troops to save it, but they ran.”

“And so was born our atheist anarchist?” Averill mused.

Jules nodded sadly. “It was a test of faith he was not strong enough to endure.”

“He was not even ten years old,” Casimir said. “Young for a test of faith.”

Averill said, “The Jesuits ask only for the first six years—then give the world the rest.”

Theo shivered. “That’s so cold-blooded.”

“Indeed. I can almost picture Paul as a Jesuit.” Casimir gave a short laugh. “Better he bring his fervor to literature than burn heretics at the stake.”

“He is a lost soul.” Jules was whispering again.

“We are all lost souls,” Averill replied.

Casimir smiled. “But some of us are more lost than others.”

“Like Gilles de Rais.” Jules reached out tentatively, almost reverently, his fingers hovering over her book.

Theo wanted to escape from the despair of Gilles de Rais’ world, and from bitter memories of her own. She put the novel back in her satchel, ending the discussion. There was a moment of shifting silence then Averill gestured to her canvas, leaning against the tree. “So, Theo, you must show us your new painting.”

With some reluctance, Theo turned the canvas around. There was another space of silence as they all studied it. Surreptitiously, she rubbed her palms against her trousers.

“Raw—but vivid,” Casimir commented at last, grudgingly.

Jules moved closer to the painting then retreated. He muttered something inaudible,

“It’s compelling,” Averill said. “The windmill blades pull you in like a corkscrew.”

Theo’s heart lifted. He did like it, even if the baron did not. “Yes, that’s what I wanted.”

“You’ve found something hidden behind the sunshine. The flowers look like spattered blood.” Averill looked from the painting to the Moulin de la Galette, the windmill looking innocent and frisky in the afternoon sun.
“It is ominous but enthralling—the ordinary imbued with mystery. Not quite a nightmare, but a dark enchantment. A sorcerer lives in the old
moulin
and his spells spill out over the streets and into the sky.” He met her gaze. “A powerful sorcerer.”

Her cheeks flushed with pleasure. Always, if Averill liked her art, it was for the same reasons she did. It was a magical resonance of mind and heart.