Immortal Muse (14 page)

As for Jean himself, he was a good person, a devout Christian who treated her well, though she told herself that she wasn't in love with him, that she wouldn't
allow
herself to be in love with him. He had asked her to marry him several times; she had refused each time even though she knew her obstinacy both puzzled and hurt him. But she could not, knowing that she would either age suddenly and die, or that she would stay eternally the same as he aged. Either way, at some point she would be forced to leave him, because it would be obvious that she was something other than mortal. That was a dangerous thing, for accusations of sorcery or of pacts with Satan could lead to arrest, torture, and a painful, public death.

She would enjoy Jean while she could. And when she no longer could stay with him, she would leave him and Chartres behind and change her name yet again.

Jean came in from his studio, his tunic dotted with paint specks where he'd absently wiped his brushes. “It's too pleasant a day to stay inside,” he told her. “Why not take the air with me, Isabelle?” His long nose wrinkled at the smells in the room; he was already looking older to her, the wrinkles deepening around his eyes and on his forehead.
We change so quickly—was it that way for me, too?
“It would do you good.”

She sighed and put a cover over the bubbling retort with its smell of sulfur—a walk might indeed be good for her, clearing the fumes from her head so she could think better. “Give me a moment,” she told him. “I'll meet you at the door; we could walk to the boulangerie for some croissants . . .”

Outside, the air was more pleasant than in her laboratory, she had to agree. They walked with arms linked along the rue Saint-Julien, nodding to the passers-by who knew them, passing the street musicians, the jongleurs, the puppeteers, and the simply indigent who all vied for the loose change of the townspeople and the devout. With the political uproar in the wake of the horrific, costly defeat of Charles VI's army against the English king Henry V at Agincourt; with the Duke of Burgundy's capture of Paris last month (though the dauphin had escaped the city); with the king being called
le Fou
, the Mad, more than
le Bien-Aimé
, the Beloved; with English troops holding many of the northern cities; with all that, Chartres was uneasy and its mood solemn. The troubles had increased the numbers who came to worship at the great cathedral, the white steeples of which could be seen for miles and which held the
Sancta Camisia
, the tunic of the Blessed Virgin.

“I don't know why you lock yourself inside with the terrible smells,” Jean said to her. “I could teach you to paint portraits of ladies for their lockets—pieces they would wear proudly, like the pendant of your mother's that you wear: beautiful work, that. But this alchemy . . .” He shook his head. “It's not good for your health, Isabelle, and it's dangerous as well. I'd hate for you to die before your time.”

She nearly laughed at that. “That's not something you should worry about,” she told him.

“Ah, but I do,” he answered. His hand patted hers possessively. “Though that reminds me of something I wanted to tell you. Speaking of alchemy, the news from Paris is that Nicolas Flamel has died.”

Nicolas dead . . .

She couldn't breathe. She staggered, and Jean's arm tightened around hers to steady her, stopping in the middle of the narrow, cobbled street. “Isabelle?”

“I'm sorry,” she told him. “I . . . I knew Monsieur Flamel once. He's dead? You're certain?”

“That's what I'm told,” Jean answered. “You look pale, Isabelle. You see, it's the fumes; they affect you.”

“I'll be fine in a moment,” she told him. “Just let me catch my breath . . .”

Nicolas dead . . .
If that were true, then she needed to return to Paris to see if she could recover her notebook, and with it, the formula for the elixir. This might be her only chance before it was lost, if it wasn't already too late.

 * * * 

She was firs
t told on entering the city that Nicolas Flamel had last lived in the parish of Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, but that turned out to be a house for the indigent set over a tavern, an edifice that Nicolas had built a few years after she'd left: another one of his charitable efforts to mask from the public the ugliness that she knew was the true Nicolas.

After establishing that the house was the wrong one, she went back to their estate on the rue des Saints Innocents; she knocked on the door and asked the servant who answered—not Marianne, whom she doubted was still alive—if this was the residence of Monsieur Flamel. Indeed it had been, the maid told her, but the Monsieur had recently died. Perenelle gave her name as M'mselle Jacqueline Fournier, and said that she had unfinished negotiations with Nicolas Flamel and wished to speak to whomever might be in charge of his estate.

The maid brought her into the front parlor. The room had barely changed from the time she'd left, other than being a decade and a half older and shabbier. Not long afterward, a man entered the room. He was in his mid-to-late 40's, portly with red-veined cheeks. His clothing was aristocratic and well-made; his hands were fat and looked unused to any labor. He looked at her with eyes half-lost in folds as he inclined his head to her. “M'mselle Fournier,” he said. “I'm Didier Dubois. I am the grandson of Nicolas Flamel and the executor of his estate. I'm told you have been in negotiations with my late grandfather?”

She nearly could not speak. She stared at Didier, whose name she well remembered: Verdette's first son, who she'd last seen when he was ten. She marveled that her grandson could appear to be so much older than she, that he had no recognition of her at all, that she could see traces of Nicolas and herself in his face. She wanted to pummel him with questions:
how are your children, my great-grandchildren? Why, your firstborn Verdette, who you named after your mother, must be old enough to have children of her own already. What of your brothers and sisters? Are they well? Do you ever talk about your grand-mère Perenelle and remember her?

But she sat in silence until he cocked his head at her. “M'mselle?”

“I represent my father, who's unfortunately too ill to travel,” she told him finally. “Like your
grand-père
, he is an alchemist. We were negotiating with Monsieur Flamel for some alchemical manuscripts—particularly those that had once belonged to your
grand-mère
Perenelle Flamel.” Saying her own name again sounded strange in her ears. She described the notebook to Didier as she remembered it: the red leather, the shape, the size. “He had agreed to sell the notebook to us, but then we heard the news of his unfortunate death. I've come to see if we can complete the negotiations and take possession of the notebook, which would mean so much to my father's work.”

Didier was shaking his head before she finished. “I regret that I'm aware of no such negotiations. I've gone through my
grand-père's
correspondence and I saw nothing from your father concerning such a notebook.” He raised his hand as Perenelle started to speak. “In any case, I regret to tell you, M'mselle, that the very day that my grandfather died, a young man was seen leaving the house with most of the valuable notebooks and manuscripts that were in the laboratory and library. There's nothing left of any significant value in his library, and certainly no notebook as you describe. I assure you that I would know of it.”

A young man, taking with him all the notebooks and manuscripts. . . .
A fist of suspicion clenched her heart, squeezing hard. “How is it that a thief could enter the house so easily, and at so auspicious a time?” she asked.

“Indeed, M'mselle,” he answered, scowling. “I have asked the household staff that very question, and none of them can give me a satisfactory answer. Unfortunately, I live in Reims and so I wasn't present at the time. The funeral arrangements were handled by two of my grandfather's assistants—who are also now suspiciously missing, though neither of them matches the description of the thief. I arrived in Paris after my grandfather's body was interred. I understand that there are rumors that some of his manuscripts were buried with him in his tomb, but . . .” His shoulders lifted in a shrug. “You'll understand that I'm not willing to disturb my
grand-père's
grave for rumors. I'm afraid, M'mselle, that your journey here was wasted. If you would like, I can accompany you to the library and his old laboratory, and you may see for yourself . . .”

She was certain that there was no hope, though she allowed Didier to show her the library and laboratory, if only to walk again in her old house. The library had been stripped bare of the important papers: the Book of Abraham was prominently missing, and none of the books on the shelves were her notebook.

All of it was gone. Vanished.

She was terribly afraid that she knew where the notebook might be.

 * * * 

Perenelle spent three days watching the Flamel tomb and noting the flow of people around the
Cimetière des Innocents
, owned by Saint-Germain-des-Auxerrois—a church to which she and Nicolas had heavily contributed. She made especially certain to pass by the cemetery at various times of the night: to see how it was secured; to determine if there
were guards or keepers who patrolled the grounds when the sun fled. If any did, they seemed to stay inside the small church attached to the north end.

She couldn't blame them. The stench of the cemetery was nearly unbearable. The
Cimetière des Innocents
had a fabled reputation, for to be buried in the consecrated soil here, it was said, would release the interred soul immediately into heaven. As a result, the cemetery's popularity had led first to the establishment of mass graves for the common people, then to the creation of
charniers
: galleries and arcades built along the cemetery's walls where the dead were placed on display after the flesh had rotted away from their bones, all so that the ground they'd formerly occupied could be used to bury fresh (and freshly-paying) bodies. During the day, merchants hawked their wares from stands set among the charniers, selling religious trinkets. The stench of decaying flesh was as eternal as the sleep of the dead; Perenelle, like most of the visitors, wore a perfumed scarf during her excursions to the cemetery.

The Flamel tomb—where she was supposedly interred as well—was near the entrance to the church. A polished granite sarcophagus mounded over the grave with a newly-carved tombstone set on top of it, the marks of the mason's chisel still fresh on the letters. Three figures dominated the top of the stone, with alchemical signs between them. She stood before the tombstone for some time, trying to imagine Nicolas' body under the sarcophagus.

She could not. But she had to be certain, and there was only one way to prove her suspicions.

On the third evening, she hired two men after some discreet inquiries around the Left Bank. The pair were burly laborers, men for whom a gold tournois would buy silence and obedience. In their grim company, with the moon masked behind thick, brooding clouds, she made her way back to the cemetery in a hired carriage, with shovels and picks hidden under her companions' cloaks.

She had prepared a few alchemical formulae as well, small ones she remembered from the old books and her time with her father, or had gleaned from the manuscripts she'd acquired since leaving Nicolas. As the carriage driver careened away, as if pleased to leave the cemetery and its foul air in his wake, they approached the wrought iron gates to find them secured with a chain and padlock. One of the men raised his pick, but she shook her head at him. She handed the shuttered lantern to one of the men and went to the padlock, sprinkling a compound of rust and bituminous earth into the keyhole of the padlock, and dripping into the lock opening a thick liquid from a vial. There was a hissing and fuming from the keyhole, causing her two companions to step back muttering as the lock shuddered and fell open. She pulled it free of the chain, unlooped the heavy iron links, and swung open the closest of the gates. She held up the vial to her companions before putting it back in the pocket of her cloak. “Remember, Messieurs, I could do far worse to you if you disobey me,” she whispered to them. That wasn't true, but the effect was what Perenelle was after. The two men looked at each other, handed her back the lantern, then followed her into the cemetery.

They made their way quickly among the graves to Nicolas' tomb. She pointed silently to it, but shook her head when—again—one of them lifted his pick. She set the lantern on the ground and approached the sarcophagus. Perenelle dusted a pale white powder over it that seemed to glow in the darkness; she took a taper from her cloak, lit it in the lantern's flame, and touched the fire to the powder, stepping back quickly. A flash like summer lightning illuminated the graveyard as a following thunder growled warning. Her cloak was battered by bits of stone as she brought her hand up to cover her face in its folds. When they could see again, the granite of the sarcophagus had been shattered into a hundred pieces.

She hoped that her companions attributed her actions to sorcery and assumed she could cast spells at them that would do similar damage. She nodded to the men, keeping her face stern. They moved quickly forward with their tools, shoveling aside the broken rock. She watched them and watched for the lanterns of any guards, but either no one had noticed or none wished to approach. The
t-chunk
of the shovels, the grunts of the men as they worked, and the sound of stone hitting ground seemed impossibly loud in the night.

After a time, she gestured the men aside and she examined the grave. Under the sarcophagus, she could see Nicolas' coffin, but only that. No boxes which might hold manuscripts, no sign of anything else. She gestured again, and one of the men inserted the flat head of his pick under the coffin lid. He pried up the lid with a grunt as nails and screws protested and wood splintered. The other man grabbed the edge of the lid and opened it up further until it fell aside