Judith Merkle Riley (13 page)

“I wore all of these at one time,” she said. “I know you won’t believe it, but when I was young, I was as slender as you are now—but without the height, of course. Let’s see—a dressing gown—day-dress, yes, the blue is nice—and this one. Something for evening—can’t do a thing about shoes—your feet are not your best feature, dear. They are much too large. You will have to minimize them. Longer hems, perhaps, but no ruffles—plain, keep the decoration high, to distract the eye…”

I know it was all well-meant, but as she rummaged in her armoires and talked to herself, I began to feel myself gradually transforming into a bony oaf with huge, galumphing feet, in need of strenuous efforts at mending and concealing, instead of the delicate and poetic creature of nature that I preferred to think of myself as. This I found more upsetting than the ghosts. That is, until I noticed what was happening to her dressing table.

“Auntie, look at your dressing table,” I said, and she pulled her head out of the squat green and gold armoire in the corner. On the ivory and lapis inlaid surface of the table, something translucent was shining. Auntie’s eyes narrowed and she took up her walking stick.

“You again! I told you to be off! Now, scat, or I’ll have you thrown right back into the river!”

“I’m warning you, you old cow, don’t you dare dent my box, or there’ll be hell to pay.” The shining thing had finished forming up. A bit of river slime dripped from its corners. It radiated the scent of damp, decayed flesh. It was the ornate silver-gilt box of the dreadful head.

“My lovely, foolish Sibille. I told you I’d never leave you,” said the thing in the box. And at that moment, in the midst of horror, I felt a great temptation. It grew like blind desire, like a living thing. I craved to open up the box. I wanted—I wanted to wish for smaller feet. “Feel it? Feel the desire? Oh, just open up my box, and say the word, and you’ll have your heart’s desire.”

“Don’t listen to that thing,” said Auntie. “It’ll send you straight to hell. I know evil when I see it.”

“Vulture,” said the thing in the box. “You’re next.”

***

Cosmo Ruggieri was seated in his tower workshop, wearing a new black leather jerkin with leather-paned trunk hose puffed out with black wool panels that made him resemble an unpleasant and overlarge beetle. Kneeling before him was his servant Giovanni, the man with the earring, who had stolen the Master of All Desires from Simeoni’s courier in Venice.

“Great wizard, your mightiness, it was not my fault—the theft from Simeoni’s agent went perfectly—consider my travels, the hardship—”

“Then why do you not have it for me here now?”

“Maestro, I was robbed of it in Marseilles by two ruffians who left me for dead—”

“A remarkable recovery,” observed Ruggieri.

“But I recovered myself through a miracle, and questioning the kitchen wench at their inn, discovered they were agents of the Queen of France herself—”

“Quiet, enough,” said the queen’s magician, while he fumed inside at having been double-crossed by his own patroness.

“I followed, I followed—I stuck to them like a leech, all the way to Lyons, where a dismal sly fellow dressed as a soldier drugged their wine in a tavern and made off with it in great haste—”

“Excuses, excuses.” Ruggieri tapped a finger impatiently on a stiff black leather panel of his trunk hose. “Did you discover who this one was working for?”

“I knew his face, Maestro. A notorious criminal—he has done work for the Duchess of Valentinois. He saw me behind him, the city gates of Orléans ahead of him, and passed it to a lady who took it into the city for him. Just as well, for he was arrested at the gate for some other crime, and it would have been seized and kept from us forever—”

“A woman confederate, eh? The duchess, she is full of surprises. Did you find out who the mystery woman was?”

“I questioned the guards at the gate. She was a tall, dark-haired woman, easy to remember. She had showed them a letter to her aunt, a widow Tournet, who lives within the city walls. A wealthy eccentric old woman, but I found her house locked up and well-guarded. She rarely goes out. I was unable to break in.”

“Well then, we shall have to use other methods. What did you say this dark woman’s name was?”

“Sibille, Demoiselle de La Roque.”

“Of the great de La Roques?”

“No, the name comes from some pretentious little
hoberau
’s so-called estate near the forest off the Paris-Orléans road, known as La Roque-aux-Bois.”

“Hmm,” said Ruggieri. “A plan is beginning to come to me.”

“Thank you, thank you, Maestro. Send me wherever you desire. I am your hands, I am your eyes.”

“And my dagger,” added Ruggieri, smiling benignly at his groveling servant.

***

“Get out of bed, Cosmo. Fernel says you’re faking. Fever, indeed! I don’t see even a bit of a sweat on you.” The dumpy little Medici queen had invaded her astrologer’s bedroom in one of the attics of the Louvre—beneath the long chambers where the servants slept three to a bed, but much tinier and more remote than the chambers of the upper palace staff—and stood at the foot of his bed like an avenging spirit, her toad-like little pop eyes blazing with fury. Her rapid, angry Italian rattled like hailstones against the stone walls. At the far door of the little room, which was actually constructed like a sort of swollen segment of a corridor, with doors at both ends, his Italian apprentice, who was also a cousin, set down the jug of barley water he had just brought, and fled. “You’re hiding. Hiding from me, in spite of my orders to appear. You’ve stolen my magic head and sold it to the Duchess of Valentinois. I saw it all in a dream. And my dreams are infallible. Infallible, do you hear me? They show me where traitors are lurking.” At the near door, another woman was standing, arms folded and dark eyes flashing, her mouth tight with disapproval. Madame Gondi, the banker’s wife, known now as Madame Peron,
dame
d’honneur
and the queen’s companion in the supernatural.

“My great and glorious queen, oh, pardon, that I am too weak to rise and greet you. I am eternally grateful that you sent your own personal physician to me, but my illness was beyond his powers.”

“He says your urine’s as healthy as horse piss. How dare you attempt to threaten me by pretending to be mortally ill?”

“It is more than an illness of the body, great Majesty. It is an illness of the soul—the slightest shock might send me off.” At this, the queen paused, then the faintest of smiles crossed her ugly, chinless round face.

“Oh, I’ll take very good care of
you
. But, Cosmo, my friend, I hear your brother is dabbling in sorcery along with his little astrological business. I’d hate to have the good doctors of the Sorbonne discover that.” Cosmo drew a deep, shaky breath, and closed his eyes briefly. “Ah, good,” said the queen. “At last we understand each other. Now, where is my magic head that you promised me?” Ruggieri turned down the sheet and wiggled himself into a sitting position in bed. The queen noted that even his nightshirt was black. It seemed a good sign of his devotion to his primary task. Of all the fortune-tellers she’d ever supported, only Cosmo Ruggieri seemed a perfect sorcerer, from top to toe.

“The Duchess of Valentinois does not have it, although she has attempted to gain possession of it—” Ruggieri paused, playing for time, while his brain spun with alternative plans. “She—she has as an agent a woman sorceress, who drugged my messenger—the woman—possibly the agent of some foreign power—has kept the head for her own advantage—”

“You’re lying, Cosmo. You have it yourself. Someone poisoned my messengers in Lyons, and there wasn’t a woman in sight. It bears all the signs of your work.” The queen had seated herself on the stool beside the bed, and was drumming her fingers impatiently on her knee. She was wearing an attractive day-dress of dark green silk embroidered with pearls, and detachable, puffed sleeves, slashed in salmon color. The stiff, translucent linen ruff at her neck still trembled slightly with her concealed indignation.

“Great, mighty Majesty, this is the truth. The woman has it.”

“And what is her name, this so-called sorceress?”

“The Demoiselle Sibille de La Roque.”

“Ah,” said the queen, while she thought a bit. “The La Roques. I’d never suspected them of harboring an adept. Such a dull family. And here I’d imagined she was someone more—disreputable. This changes things. I will bring her into my own service. How sly of her to capture the head for her own advancement. Yes, the plan is easy.” She conferred briefly with Madame Gondi, who immediately became consumed with envy.
She
after all, had only obtained the queen’s favor by presenting her with a rare and unusual lapdog. How much more could a woman get if she gave her the immortal head of Menander the Magus?

“I’ll dangle a court appointment before her eyes,” said the queen, thinking aloud. “Perhaps hint at finding a suitable husband. Her relatives will apply pressure. —No, she must stay alive—someone else, some
man
potentially less tractable, might get possession of the head if she perishes—” The queen cast a knowing glance about her, and Cosmo did not miss the look. “But she mustn’t know how much I know. I will remind her that with a single signature, she could disappear forever. How much happier she could be living as one of my pensioners. Yes, there she’ll be, serving me in some other capacity, and no one need know—So obvious, so simple—” At this point, Ruggieri’s gut heaved with a spasm of furious jealousy. He knew the queen. Not only would she get her magic head from someone who wasn’t him, after all his trouble to get hold of it, but she’d give credit to anyone crafty enough to outwit him. The Medici queen respected self-interest. It made people predictable in her eyes. A thousand devils, thought Ruggieri. I hate this unknown woman. But how can I get the head away from her without having her wish me into oblivion?

Now, you see, Sibille? It doesn’t show at all, where we took out the fullness of the underskirt, and put the plain band on it to lengthen it in front. Now, turn around. Yes, the shoes are practically invisible.” For a week, seamstresses had labored to make over the dresses Auntie had chosen from her voluminous and many-sized wardrobe. The colors she had chosen seemed a little bright, and the design—well, I can’t pretend to understand fashion, since I have spent my life dedicated to higher spiritual pursuits—but they didn’t seem to look like other people’s clothes. Even less so, once she had had them altered. Still, they were rich, exquisite silks and velvets, and the textures and glitter of them had a sensual beauty all their own. I had never dreamed of wearing such things. It made me think that perhaps a more mannered, decorative style would improve my poetry, particularly my epic, which might involve pirates. Every afternoon, I lay down for an hour with my face covered in a concoction of ground-up fruits and vegetables and various slimy things that was guaranteed to whiten and refine the complexion. But nothing could be done about the feet, except to order plain, dark shoes, to cause them to recede in interest, as Auntie said.

“If you can say boats are invisible,” said Menander the Undying from the top of the dresser.

“If you don’t quit being nasty, I’ll shut your box again,” I said. For days, the box had followed me about the house, materializing in the bedroom to offer criticism of my hygiene, in the reception room to critique my card playing with Auntie, in the garden to spoil my communion with Nature. The thing inside made irritating noises to get me to open it up, so it could see what was going on. So there it was, all dried up and ugly, rolling its weird, living eyes beneath its drooping, parchment eyelids, offering its interfering comments. It’s amazing what you can get used to, if you see it every day.

“Being nasty is my nature,” said the immortal head. “You’re lucky I don’t drive you mad. I’ve driven a number of my possessors stark, raving, lunatic. Do you know what happens to a person who doesn’t get any sleep?”

“They get rapped on the box so they don’t get any sleep, either,” said Auntie Pauline calmly. “Sibille, do try the sky blue silk. It does such lovely things to your complexion. And I want to see how that lengthening with the band of velvet at the top of the skirt, just below the bodice, came out.”

“You could have just wished the dresses longer,” sulked the thing in the box.

“And miss the fun of alteration? Really, you are an ignorant thing. This is even more entertaining than moving the furniture,” said Auntie. By this time, I had stripped down to my petticoat and stays. Needless to say, with that ridiculous head following me about, we couldn’t keep a lady’s maid for a single minute in the same room.

“What a bony figure,” said the head. “You should just quit trying, and content yourself with the knowledge that you’re a freak.” I glared at the head and moved toward the dresser to shut the box. But the head, which was really rather subtle, made a distracting comment to interrupt my purpose. “Really,” it said, rolling one lurid eye at my underwear, “why do you squash yourself flat with that stiff thing, and then put on the puffiest clothes I’ve ever seen? I’ve seen tumors with better shapes than some of those padded sleeves you put on. Women used to look beautiful when I was young, with lovely, loose draped gowns that showed their darling little bosoms.”

“You are entirely ignorant of ladies’ fashion,” said Auntie. “How long has it been since you saw any?” She held up the beautiful sky blue silk to drop it over my head.

“About a thousand years. But it was better then.”

“Old people always say that,” observed Auntie, as she helped me do up the buttons.

“You’ve been around more than a thousand years, and you never noticed what women were wearing?” I asked.

“Not my fault,” grumped the head. “Shut up with magicians most of the time. Same bat-wing decor, same mystic robes, same wands and star charts. And busy. I was very busy. It is not the easiest thing, designing the ways to use people’s own desires to suck them down to their well-deserved doom. It takes a brilliant, never-resting mind.”

“Piffle,” said Auntie. “They’d do it by themselves if you weren’t around.”

“
That
,” said the head, “is a great insult. I remember things like that. Don’t ever expect mercy from
me
.” Auntie laughed.

“As if I ever did. Sibille, dear, just look at yourself in the mirror. Admit you’re quite transformed.”

The dress, made over from a Spanish gown, had a split skirt of dark blue and silver brocade that opened to reveal a sky blue silk underskirt. Laced to a matching bodice with puffed sleeve caps, separate sleeves of the same silk, slashed, had been lengthened with ruffles to cover my long arms and bony wrists. Above a stiff, boned collar, a tightly folded little ruff extended almost to my ears. It was fashion beyond fashion, the most elegant garment I had ever beheld.

“Your head looks as if it were on a platter,” said the thing in the box.

“Is it all right?” I asked.

“The very latest fashion, set by the Duchess of Valentinois herself. My tailor told me so last month,” said Auntie. “Don’t let that old mummy put you off.”

“I’ve seen calves’ heads served exactly that way,” said the immortal head.

Auntie picked up her walking stick and swished it through the air with a single swift gesture, shutting the lid of the box. “That’s enough of
that
,” she said, as the thing was reduced to muffled squeaks of indignation. “And now that you are elegant, Sibille, let us go play cards in the reception room. I’ve had a message from—an old friend, and I’m expecting a visitor today, though I’m not sure of the hour. Friday. Yes, it is Friday, isn’t it? Julian said he’d have him out of prison by Friday morning.” Julian? My goodness, did she know the Bishop personally? Who—who was coming? I began to tremble inside. Auntie heaved herself up from her chair, and began to move heavily toward the door, her walking stick tapping with each step.

“Why yes, it’s Friday, of course, Auntie. Who’s coming?”

“That, my dear, is a surprise. Now tell me, why do you always remove the
atous
and lay out only the deniers when you read the cards?” We were walking toward the reception room in the front of the house now, through a series of richly furnished little chambers that ran together in place of a corridor. Every so often, Auntie would pause, and take down a particularly egregious cobweb with her walking stick. All that luxury, and uninhabited.

“That’s how the
Giardino
di
Pensieri
says to do it. It’s only a game, Auntie. Cousin Matheline showed me how when she gave me the book.”

“That Matheline! An amateur at everything! You must use all four suits, my dear, and all the face cards. It is from the
atous
that you will receive the secret wisdom. I’ll show you. The cards never lie to me. They said you would be coming, and you did. Now they tell me I’ll be traveling. At my age! I have no intention of it. So you must cast them and read them for me. I need a second opinion.”

“I don’t like the
atous
, Auntie. They give me odd feelings when I look at them.” A beetle scuttled from under a carpet. Auntie squashed it with the hard tip of her walking stick. In this room, the curtains had been left open by accident, but it made no difference. The windows were veiled in green vines, and only the palest living light could penetrate them.

“Odd feelings? Don’t be frightened of them. I think, my dear, you may be a natural card-reader. You should quit letting your nerves bother you. After all, you’ve never minded that strange, feathered fellow in the back bedroom. Why should you be frightened of painted pictures on cardboard?”

We passed the better part of the afternoon in agreeable conversation and the study of the cards. The head, sulking, remained in the cupboard and did not materialize his box near us for some good time.

“Now, lay them out again, Sibille, the second crossing the first—See here, this time we’ve got the Popess. That’s a favorite of mine—”

“What’s that you’re up to? Some new fad?” Menander’s box had begun to shimmer and solidify on a carved cedarwood side table. His voice had that deceptive sound that made me think he was anticipating something, and had come for the view. “In my day, a good ram’s liver was enough to tell fortunes. Open my box.” But there wasn’t time to answer. Without even waiting to be announced, someone had thrown open the front door so hard that it thumped against the wall. Auntie never looked up from the cards. There was the sound of a scuffle, as the visitor pushed aside Auntie’s valet.

“Cut the cards, Sibille,” said Auntie, never looking up. A voice reverberated, loud in the silence of her empty, ghost-filled house.

“So there you are, you avaricious old woman! And what are you doing there, Sibille, all dolled up in silk like a rich man’s mistress? I tell you, I’ll tear that trash off of you. I knew it, I knew I’d find you here. I told you never to set foot in this house. Go get your own clothes on at once! I’m taking you home right now!”

It was father.

Now this was not exactly the sort of reunion I had envisioned, which had been altogether more touching in my imagination, involving as it did both gratitude and sentimentality. I thought, perhaps, he would weep at seeing my face after he had been so near to death, and then embrace me and praise me for my bravery in petitioning the Bishop, and say he had never truly appreciated me before, but now he understood everything in that flash of insight that comes when one has faced the end. That was more or less as I had planned it, but I suppose Fate, which had spoiled my speech and filled me with humiliation, had arranged this unpleasant practical joke as a final blow to my damaged pride.

“Well, well, Hercule. Ungrateful as ever. You have not even greeted me. And here I’ve even ordered up a little collation in expectation of your arrival.” Auntie never even looked up from the cards, but dealt herself two more.

“Pauline, you know what you are. I have forbidden Sibille ever to enter this house. And now I find her here playing cards, dressed in a gown not hers, and indulging in God knows what other debaucheries.”

Father looked quite dreadful, quite in need of washing, with his hair askew. Auntie took him in with a cold eye.

“Why, Hercule, I remember in our father’s house, when you knelt before me, and begged me to accept Captain Tournet, for the sake of family. You swore on your honor you would never abandon me. Honor, ha! You don’t know the word.”

“You don’t expect—why, who would ever marry my daughters, if they knew they associated with—my reputation—” Father huffed, stopped short in his dash across the Turkish carpet to grab me by the ear.

“The daughters of an executed heretic? Sibille, the most dutiful of your children, braved the road alone to present the Bishop with a petition of her own composition, arguing most cogently for your innocence.”

“Nonsense. Quit spinning moonshine. I never gave in. My will was iron, even when they showed me the instruments. They were so impressed with my loyalty, the Bishop himself came to question me. Then they allowed me to recant. Recant! Me! Do you know what it means, to sign their slimy, deceiving paper? And what gratitude do I get, saving my family—my
daughter
—from ruin by giving in to them?” Father, hollow-eyed and bitter, fairly spat out the words.

“Your daughter deserves your thanks,” said Aunt Pauline, her voice cold. “Not everyone is allowed to recant—especially if their property is wanted by a royal favorite.” Father’s eyes narrowed as he looked at me.

“She deserves nothing. It is I who deserve thanks, for striving to see her established in an honorable way of life.”

“The blue is pretty on her, don’t you think? It sets off her lovely olive skin. And the headdress with the pearls—her eyes are very expressive and intelligent, wouldn’t you say?” Something about what she had said set him off. His eyes blazing with fury, he reached out to grab me, and I leaped up so fast I nearly overturned the table. At that same moment, Auntie’s stick flicked out faster that a snake’s tongue, and cracked him right on the funny bone. With a howl, he grabbed his elbow, as several servants hurried toward him to hustle him to the door. “Always so violent, brother,” observed Auntie. “Sit down in that chair over there. If it was you that freed yourself, pray how did I know to reserve this chair especially for your appearance this very Friday? Arnaud, pour M. de La Roque a cup of that excellent wine I’ve been saving for him. I have a business proposition to make, Hercule, and I want you to hear me out.”

“With you, it’s probably poisoned,” grumbled father, as the wine was poured. “Tarting up Sibille, inflating her already inflated head. She needs humility. Humility and hard work, not silk dresses.”

“What is it to you if it pleases me to see her attractive?” asked Auntie. “After all, it’s my money.
All
my money, Hercule, and just mine.” Watching the two of them glaring at each other, it was as if there were two conversations going on, one with words, and the other without, having to do with deep secrets long buried, of which I had no clue. “And unlike my late husband, I have no need to try to buy my way into your favor, in some vain hope of gaining respectability.”

“How like you, Pauline, to so excuse your stinginess, your turning your back on your own blood relations.”

“It’s not my back that was turned, Hercule.”

“If you have anything to say, speak up. I don’t want to waste any more time here.”

“Good, then I’ll be blunt. I’ve enjoyed having Sibille here. She’s clever, and having cultivated herself, she has a thousand lively topics of conversation. She doesn’t mind the infestation of my house—”

“And what’s it infested with? Rats? How like her. She probably wants to study their bones, or breed them to see if she can get them all one color. Ugh. I always knew you were a bad housekeeper, Pauline. Or is it insects?”

“Never mind. Something like that,” said Auntie. “Let’s get back to the subject.” I could see Doña Dolores had formed up behind father, and was listening with great interest. Why didn’t he even feel her? I suppose there are some people who aren’t bothered by ghosts. Maybe M. Tournet wasn’t, either. It must be a necessary qualification for the profession of arms. Auntie leaned toward father and put her fist, which was decorated with heavy rings on every finger, on the table. “Hercule,” she said, “I want you to give me Sibille.”