The Collector of Dying Breaths Page 18

  And so the little man’s prediction had come to pass. I knew my rival would soon be coming back to court because as queen, Catherine could demand it. More than ever I needed to prove my superiority over Ruggieri. And what would accomplish that better than solving Serapino’s riddle of how to reanimate the breaths?

  In the meantime, taking no chances, I would do to Ruggieri what he had done to me. He’d brought other perfumers to the court to try to diminish my position. I would bring other astrologers to try to diminish his.

  Instead of going back to Paris with Catherine, I rode out in a different direction, to search out someone who might usurp Ruggieri’s place: a Frenchman named Nostradamus.

  Finding him, I convinced him to come to court and obtained a promise that he would arrive before the month was out. I returned to the Louvre, hopeful I had a plan to prevent my rival from gaining an unwieldy power, but when I arrived, I was distressed to find Ruggieri already in residence. The queen had not wasted a moment. Ruggieri was given his old quarters back and was seen coming and going from Catherine’s rooms at all hours of the day and night. The years in exile had exaggerated his looks. More evil and dark than ever, he seemed not to care about his appearance or his cleanliness at all, and a stench followed him wherever he went. Catherine, who was so fastidious, seemed not to notice. Every day I was made ever more aware of the bond between them that seemed to defy logic.

  The first time I visited her in her rooms after he’d arrived, I spied several bottles of revolting-looking liquids that reeked of his handiwork. Foul-smelling potions were always part of the spells he cast.

  “You have to be careful, Your Highness,” I told her upon sniffing one of the bottles. “There are elements of poisons in these. What has Ruggieri told you to do with them?”

  “He’s teaching me to read the waters. These are the liquids I put into the bowl. Do let me try to read yours.”

  I was stupefied. This was one of the most intelligent women I had ever met! How could she think of engaging in this dangerous activity in the open? Reading the waters and trying to see the future through sorcery flew in the face of what the church professed.

  “Surely the inquisition will not try a queen, yet I am worried nonetheless. What if the men of the church want to make an example to the world of their ultimate power?” I asked her.

  She laughed as she assembled what she needed. A copper bowl from a shelf behind her table. A bottle of dark red-black viscous ink. A pure white feather pen with one black stripe at the top. A sheet of vellum. A silver plate. Six small votive candles and one taper.

  First, using the pen and ink, she drew a blood-red pentagram on the sheet of paper. I wanted to ask her what the ink was made of, but I was too afraid. Besides, Ruggieri might not have told her the truth. If it was indeed human blood mixed with ink, the sorcerer would not have wanted her to know. But there was little doubt in my mind it was blood from a living creature and not dye from a plant that gave the ink its strange color.

  Done drawing, Catherine placed the paper on the silver tray and then lit it on fire. Once the vellum had burned to ash, she used the ash to draw yet another pentagram, this one on the wooden tabletop. Next, Catherine placed the copper bowl in the center of the pentagram. After lighting the votives, she positioned each at a point of the pentagram. Finally, she spilled the contents of one bottle of liquid and then another into the bowl.

  “Now we must wait for the water to settle and calm,” she told me in a portentous whisper.

  “And then?”

  She held up her hand to quiet me as she studied the contents of the bowl. After a moment she seemed satisfied. “If I am to tell you your fortune, I need to study the water, looking for pictures of you. Just stay quiet for a moment longer, René. It takes great concentration.”

  I was flattered that she trusted me enough to perform this blaspheming in front of me. Like my old mentor, she sensed that even if what I was seeing was foreign and frightening, my loyalty was with her, not the church.

  “Ah, there you are,” Catherine said finally. “I see you in your laboratory, surrounded by all your tools and tinctures.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “You have a lot of secrets there, René, don’t you?”

  “From you? None.”

  “But I see you mixing mysterious dark potions. Much like Ruggieri’s spells.”

  “You’re mistaken. There are no black magic recipe books in my laboratory. There are only alchemical formulas I am working on to come up with a solution to use with the breaths. Perhaps that is what you’re seeing?”

  “No, these are different potions,” Catherine said and then grew quiet again, watching the water, barely breathing lest she disturb its surface. “You know how to make many elixirs other than medicines, perfumes and lotions. You do, René. And you’ve used them.” Suddenly she looked up. Away from the water and into at my eyes. “You made something that you gave my husband for his mistress, and it changed their time together and I became pregnant. What was it you made? I see it here.”

  It wasn’t possible that Catherine was divining this. No one but I had known the truth about the cream cut with powders that would seep into Diane’s skin and put her to sleep.

  Could Diane de Poitiers have figured out that the cream made her drowsy and told one of her ladies-in-waiting? Could other women of the court who each knew one side of the story have put all the different pieces together and shared it with Catherine? Was she teasing me about it now?

  When I didn’t respond, she insisted.

  “What did you do, René? What were these creams you gave Diane de Poitiers?”

  “Nothing, Your Highness. Simply creams to keep the skin supple, that’s all.”

  “Why are you lying to me? Don’t you understand that I will reward you for your ingenuity? Never punish you . . .” She peered into the waters again and was lost in the glassy surface for several moments.

  I watched her trying to make sense out of what she was seeing. Of what it meant.

  What was going to become of her if Ruggieri’s influence continued unabated? How far into this game could he push her?

  “I know what you did, I can see it here. Come look.” Her voice sounded deeper than usual and less animated. Almost as if she were in a stupor.

  I leaned closer to the table, and as I did, I got a better whiff of the candles. These were not made in my shop. Not the perfumed candles infused with roses and lilies that Catherine preferred. These contained lavender, poppy seed and star anise. Had these candles been created by Ruggieri? Was he using herbs to drug Catherine and induce visions?

  There was nothing in the water. Whatever Catherine thought she saw was in her own mind.

  “You are mixing up the cream here . . .” She pointed. “And here you are giving it to my husband . . . and here his whore is administering it, and here see how she grows tired from it. How she stays in bed, sleeping so long in the morning. That was clever of you, René. Very clever. And very clever not to tell anyone. Your ability to keep your own council is important. You have so many secrets, don’t you? Did you always? Even when you were a young boy? Secrets your mentor in the monastery taught you?”

  “What is it you are asking, my lady?”

  She looked up and into my eyes, held them for a moment and then wordlessly looked back.

  “In Florence, when I went to the prison that day, they told me what you were accused of.”

  “I assumed they had.”

  “They said you had murdered the monk who had taught you everything you knew. That you had poisoned him.”

  “Yes, that is what they accused me of.”

  “Had you done that?”

  “No, of course not. Serapino was ill and asked me to administer something to help ease his pain. But if the church had accepted my word, they would have had to accept that he took his own life, which would have meant
he had not died a good Catholic, would not have been able to be buried in consecrated ground. It would have meant that God had failed him.”

  She nodded. “What men do in the name of God is atrocious. It’s all around us, and the fight is heating up. In this battle of the Protestants versus the Catholics so many people will die.”

  She was right of course. The political climate was rife with the religious wars raging in England and France, and it worried all of us.

  “In the water,” Catherine whispered, “I can see bloodshed.”

  I nodded. “Yes, my lady.”

  “There are enemies of the Crown. And one in particular has begun to spread rumors that I am not on the side of the church. That I converse with the devil.”

  I had always feared the day Catherine would stand on the narrow ledge between witchcraft and devout Catholicism. I couldn’t allow her the misstep that would push her to the side of the accused.

  “You must give up these practices that Ruggieri has taught you.”

  She was about to say something and then stopped herself. “I need you to help me, Maître René. I need to send a message that my enemies will be able to read without any trouble.”

  “Of course,” I responded with assurance. But I thought it strange that she was asking me to deliver a note for her. Unless of course she intended to have me deliver it along with a gift of fragrance.

  “The nobleman in question brings his clothes to you to have them perfumed.”

  There were so many men who had me scent their garments I couldn’t even guess who she might mean.

  “I want you to create a poison and impregnate his clothes with it.”

  Revenge and nefarious activity was a Medici family trademark; nevertheless, I couldn’t bear that my lady would engage in the black art of poisoning.

  “I can’t do that.”

  “It’s not impossible. I’ve read that there are substances that could accomplish exactly that.”

  “Yes, there are. It’s certainly possible. But it’s murder of a most—”

  “You would deny me now that I need you? Turn your back on me? I am alone here except for you and Ruggieri. Only we three share the same past and truly understand one another. I still remember coming to get you in the prison in Florence . . .” She shut her eyes as if the memory were too intense. “Oh, how that cell stank and how miserable you were. Do you remember when I finally got you out of there, when we stood on the street, how you kept breathing in gulps of air? Even the rotten air near the tanneries was better than the dungeon’s stench.”

  She put her hand on mine. “Look in the water, René. Can’t you see yourself ? As you help me rise to power you become the most important perfumer France will ever know.”

  In that moment, the only thing I could see in the water was my own face reflected back at me. But there was a message in the way her fingers pressed into mine and the sound of her voice filled the chamber.

  Catherine had never before asked me to repay her for what she had done for me. This was the first time since we’d left Florence that she had reminded me of my past, and now she was using it to tempt me with an alluring future. Her message was clear. Help her and my prominence would be guaranteed.

  What if I said no? What would happen to me? I might be dismissed from the court, but I could survive that, could I not? I had my shop. Catherine had given me the deed to the land. I could sell it, and the price it would fetch plus the riches I had stored away would be enough. But where would I go? Back to Italy? I had been accused of murder there. Well then I could stay in Paris in my shop. But without Catherine’s patronage I would be just another perfumer. Without Catherine I would lose my clients . . . I had no real friends outside of the court . . . no wife, no family . . . Catherine was my sun and my moon. I had lived in her orbit since I was fifteen years old. Without her I would be alone again . . . orphaned as I had been as a child.

  Chapter 23

  THE PRESENT

  It was almost five PM. Griffin and Jac sat side by side in the small hidden laboratory behind the wine racks. He was poring over the notations in René’s notebook. Jac had brought him back to the château after dinner to show him what she’d found and to introduce him to Melinoe and Serge. Melinoe been thrilled that the translator had arrived and welcomed Griffin, asking him what he’d already deciphered from the silver bells. Griffin said that he’d only begun to work on them, and they appeared to be incantations of some kind, but there was still so much he hadn’t been able to figure out because of the combinations of ancient dead languages and arcane symbols.

  Though she was clearly disappointed, she rallied and invited him to stay at the château to give him more time to continue his work in concert with Jac. But he declined, saying he was fine at the small hotel in town.

  Jac was also disappointed that he hadn’t agreed to move in, more than she would have imagined. Had she unconsciously been anticipating a midnight tryst? That didn’t make sense. If that was the case, she could certainly go back with him to his hotel.

  No. This was something else. Jac felt that it was imperative Griffin be here. In the château. That he belonged here. Seeing him sitting at René’s worktable, hunched over the perfumer’s papers, Jac had one of the strongest feelings of déjà vu she had ever experienced. And then, while she was watching him, she felt a physical push toward him, as though someone was actually pressing on her shoulders. She even turned around.

  For a second she thought she saw Robbie behind her. His hands poised to push her again. Laughing as he lunged.

  Despite trying to resist, she fell into Griffin.

  He looked up.

  “Sorry,” she said, not wanting to explain. Not now.

  Griffin brushed a lock of his salt-and-pepper hair out of his eyes with a familiar gesture. The moment was surreal. Being in the château, feeling the past so alive, sensing the perfumer who’d lived here almost five hundred years ago, and at the same time aware of Robbie’s unreal presence and the reality of Griffin’s as he sat here helping her. And helping do what? Search for a formula to bring the dead back to life. It was all too fantastic.

  “These first ten pages are all ingredients,” Griffin said. “I assume you got that far and know what they are?”

  “I recognized some of them—spikenard, frankincense, myrrh, ambergris, civet, lemon—but not all of them. And not the formulas themselves. I’m sure it’s written in Latin, but I’m hardly fluent.”

  “It’s fifteenth- or sixteenth-century Latin. I’ll do my best.” He read for a few minutes. “He says that the most important thing is the quality of the ingredients,” Griffin said, then read more. After a few seconds, he pulled out his phone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I have an ancient Latin dictionary app.”

  “On a twenty-first-century cell phone. Of course.”

  He smiled. “But it doesn’t matter since the phone doesn’t seem to work down here.” He went back to the notebook. “I think these are saffron, cinnamon and pepper, but I’ll need to check when I can get online.”

  “Those are all easy enough to find,” Jac said.

  “Dragon’s blood. Aloewood. Tutty,” he continued, working from René’s notes. “Have you ever heard of them?”

  “Some of them. Aloewood is also called agarwood. And it’s a very important perfume ingredient. Most of us refer to it as oud. It’s actually a resinous heartwood that forms in evergreens from Asia when they become infected with a certain type of mold.”

  “Did you ever wonder who was the first person who thought, Hmm, if I mix a tree fungus with an orange blossom oil, it might smell good?”

  “All the time. Robbie and I used to make up scenarios and enact them. Like the moment someone decided to use whale vomit in a perfume.”

  “What kind of tree does aloewood come from?”

  “It’s called heart
wood. It’s light-colored and doesn’t have much of an aroma. But once infected, the tree produces an aromatic resin as a response to the attack. It’s very rare and was highly prized and important in many religious ceremonies going back to ancient times. It’s even mentioned in the Sanskrit Vedas. Since the mid-1990s the trees have been listed as an endangered species, but some countries have created whole plantations of them.”

  “Off the top of your head . . . you just happen to know all that?”

  “Robbie knew it . . . The past year working with him has been an amazing education . . .” Her voice drifted off.

  “How about tutty and momie. Have you ever heard of them?”

  Jac shook her head. “No, but there were a lot of ingredients used in the Renaissance that we don’t use anymore. I have some books upstairs from my grandfather’s library that Robbie was using to research this project. I’m not sure—but maybe we’ll be able to find them there. Only one of the books is written in English. The other two are copies of Italian texts from the sixteenth century.”

  “And people wonder why studying a dead language like Latin is so important.”

  By the time Jac came back downstairs with the books, Griffin had translated more of the notes. “I’m certain this was René’s workbook. Each of these lists varies only slightly from the others. As if he was refining one formula. At the end of the book here”—he showed her a page—“is a more formal recipe that features aloewood, tutty, momie, black henbane, honey, ambergris and musk pods.”

  “In Greek mythology henbane is called the plant of forgetfulness. It’s a powerful hallucinogenic,” Jac said. “Greek oracles burned it to help them go into trances. And a beer made from henbane was often left with the dead to help them pass over and was also drunk by mourners to ease their pain.”

  Griffin was riffling through one of the books. “This fits too. Listen.” He read: “ ‘Henbane was part of every ancient alchemical laboratory. It’s been found at Celtic Neolithic burial sites. According to the historian Albertus Magnus, sorcerers burned it and then searched for demons in its smoke. Mixtures of henbane and barley were found in ritual funerary drinking vessels, probably drunk by shamans to help the dead’s passage to the next life. Zoroastrians reported that a man could drink it and spend a week in the afterlife.’ ”