Judith Merkle Riley (11 page)

“Don’t damage my box,” said the thing inside. As I watched in horror, the dent and the scuff marks from Auntie’s stick slowly vanished, and the coffer was exactly as it was. Auntie didn’t seem to notice.

“A talking box,” she said. “These things are worth money. Doubtless going to court as a curiosity. No wonder it got stolen. Tell me, in there, are you good for anything else besides chattering?” There was a long silence. I had the distinct feeling the thing in the box was sulking. “I say, wake up!” said Auntie, giving the box another couple of whacks. There was a low, sinister whine from within. At last a voice spoke, faint, irritated.

“In all the seventeen centuries since I was put to death, I have never encountered a more monstrous female. You, woman, are an abomination above all abominations.”

“I would hope so,” said Auntie. “I’ve learned a few things since I married my late husband for his money. And one of them is never to put up with bad-mannered spiritual phenomena. Tell me—are you good for anything? Otherwise, into the cellar with you. Deep. And don’t think to curse the house. It’s absolutely crowded with walking spirits and cursed objects already. They followed my husband home from his work. There’s hardly room for you as it is.”

“Recite the words above the lock, and look into my face, and I can grant you your heart’s desire,” the words came floating out. But they sounded a bit lackluster.

“Now
there’s
a foolish thing. Most people, having given it far too little thought, would be horrified if they received what they say is their heart’s desire.”

“Exactly,” said the voice, sounding happy. “Why are you the first person I have ever encountered who knew that
before
they were tempted to enter my power?”

“Very simple,” said Auntie. “I wanted money more than anything. Along came Monsieur Tournet, sprinkling money wherever he walked. It’s not getting what you want, it’s the baggage that comes with it that makes the trouble.”

“Ah, very good. Almost as if I’d done it myself.” At this gloating tone of voice, Auntie paused.

“You
are
a malignant little thing,” she said. “Sibille, it’s time to dump this creature. Half the world will be wanting it, but I want it out of my house. There just isn’t room for another curiosity.”

“Too late,” gloated the thing in the box. “The young woman who fancies herself a poetess has already seen my face. Since my last possessor has already been murdered, that means I’m hers until she dies or condemns herself to eternal damnation by her continual wishing. She’ll be drawn to me, drawn as if to a lover, hating herself more each time she sees my face. Then she’ll make a wish—just a tiny, tiny one. But such troubles it will bring, she’ll soon need another. Oh, I give people exactly what they want, and they mend, and mend, and mend, and get deeper and deeper—”

“Not
my
goddaughter you won’t bother that way. Arnaud, take it out and dump it in the river. We’ll burn the dispatch case. Sibille, quit sniffling and get dressed. You’ve errands today, not that your father deserves your devotion. My devoted brother, ha! He hasn’t spoken to me in years, except to ask for money.” As I watched Arnaud taking out the box, I could hear it saying:

“Not the river, oh, think, how I have suffered. You above all, who has lived without a leg, can understand a man who has to live without a body—I could give you your heart’s desire—wouldn’t you like a lovely, strong leg back again—”

“You old quack, why don’t you give yourself your body back, then—” But the rest of the conversation was lost down the corridor. I looked at Auntie, my eyebrows raised in the unspoken question.

“Oh, don’t worry. He won’t be tempted. Arnaud knows the face of evil quite well. And make no mistake about it, that box
is
pure evil.”

“But—but it sounds rather pitiful. I mean, it knows it’s ugly—”

“Sibille, don’t let yourself be taken in. Evildoers always sound pitiful when you get close to them. They are as full of excuses as a dog is fleas. The whole world is to blame but them. Ah yes, find me a righteous man who claims he was mistreated and is only getting his own back, and I will show you a true villain. I’m sure if we could question a blackhearted creature like Nero about his crimes, we’d find he claimed he was pitiful, too.”

On the best of days, I would find this a difficult thought, and this was not the best of days. But still, even with my nerves utterly exhausted, I asked politely, “Auntie, how do you know so much about such things?” I was really thinking of her cold-blooded and fearless approach to what I regarded as a shattering and abnormal experience. I mean, there she was, in her dressing gown and walking stick, smacking down diabolical objects before she had even had breakfast.

“About evil?” she answered. “Sibille, my dear, perhaps someday I will tell you how Monsieur Tournet made his money—”

I envy you, brother, this pleasant home, a nice little city practice. You have no idea of how difficult and demanding it is, serving a single patroness, and she all-powerful. No, it is your good fortune to run your own business, free of the queen’s insatiable demands.” Cosmo Ruggieri gestured about him to the narrow confines of his brother Lorenzo’s best room, part of an upper-floor apartment in the rue de la Tisarendirie. His black leather boots were propped up on the only footstool, and his black cloak was hanging on one of a row of pegs driven into the wall. Above them, several star charts had been nailed beside the red-painted sigil of Asmodeus, the Ruggiero family’s patron demon. After all, sorcery and fortune-telling were a family business.

Cosmo’s brother’s wife, a pleasant little woman in housedress, white cap and apron, bustled in to refill his wineglass. In the next room, children could be heard reciting their lessons for the youngest of the Ruggiero brothers, who was also their tutor until his paintings might bring him sufficient funds for a separate household.

“Well, Cosmo, that is your blessing and your curse—being the eldest. You inherited the family patron. Beatrice, are there any more of those little cakes for my honored brother? And what fortune! What stars! Our father always said our Duchessina was destined to be Queen of France. And look at us here, all prosperous, because of her good fortune, and yours! I tell you, Cosmo, you are just nervous. You should get married; it will do you a world of good. My wife has a cousin in the old country they say is so beautiful she makes the clock in the church tower stop every time she passes—”

“I can’t do it, brother. Domestic harmony would spoil my mystery as surely as if I wore any other color but black. Professional demands—father always warned me—and now, the Great Lady is at me nearly every day like a harpy. Entirely thankless that it was I who made her queen! What chance did
she
ever have, the wife of a second son? I tell you, my life’s in jeopardy if I can’t satisfy her this time.”

“Again? What happened to gratitude? Here she was childless, about to be abandoned, and thanks to you and the spell we had from our father, she had ten children.”

“That puffed up, self-congratulating Doctor Fernel claims the credit. So does the surgeon who performed the operation on the king, as does that meddlesome Gondi woman, who sent away for some quack charm or other, and besides that the Old Constable, Montmorency, who collected foreign remedies on his travels, and a crowd of everyone else who wants her favor. You just can’t expect laypersons to understand good, sound, diabolical principles.”

“The curse of our profession, isn’t it, brother? Father was right. Every amateur thinks they understand sorcery, and we are reduced to over-awing them with puffs of smoke and mysterious robes to keep them in their place. Parlor tricks! Maybe Roger was right to take up painting. Sorcery’s a demanding business.”

“To say the least. Ah, these little cakes—your wife certainly knows how to cook…” Cosmo Ruggieri brushed the crumbs off his sinister black leather doublet as he spoke. “The queen won’t rest content until she pries the Duchess of Valentinois out of her husband’s bed. She’s taken up amateur spell-casting, and getting it wrong—”

“They always do that.”

“—then she threatened to send for that meddlesome old Michel de Nostre-Dame to take my place—”

“Not sound, that man. And a bad poet, too.
The
Centuries
. Cheap self-advertising—”

“And Simeoni was breathing down my neck—”

“Simeoni? He’s no good—”

“But he heard some Venetian astrologer had discovered the legendary Master of All Desires, and thought it would get him ahead of me in royal favor, so he sent off an agent to get it for him.” Cosmo’s brother sat down hard on a little cushioned stool, and struck at his own forehead.

“The Master of—you mean the Undying Head of Menander the Magus? That awful thing! Didn’t Guaricus have it?”

“No, that’s rumor. He’s too wise to ever touch it. It was Josephus Magister. So I sent Giovanni to steal it from Simeoni’s agent—”

“That thing—that despicable, filthy thing—even father wouldn’t touch it when it was offered to him. Cosmo—it’s a mistake—”

“I had to do something, the queen was growing impatient. So I told her I was obtaining it—then one of her ladies came by for a love potion and told me in strictest secrecy that the queen had dispatched two royal messengers to intercept it—”

“It’s working already. A trail of misery follows that thing—”

“—and that the Duchess of Valentinois wants it now, too, so that the queen can’t have the powers it grants. Knowing her, I can’t believe she hasn’t dispatched her own agents to get hold of it.”

“Ugh, a tangle of women. There’s nothing worse. Beatrice, my dear, open that bottle we’ve been saving under the bed. Cosmo, you will stay for supper, won’t you?” Silently, Cosmo, his face flushed with wine, nodded his assent, then wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead with a black silk handkerchief that he pulled from his sleeve.

“That’s a nice touch,” said his brother admiringly, looking at the expensive little trinket.

“Gift from the queen—ah, brother, brother, when you walk higher, you can fall farther—at this moment, I’d give it all up for a nice little city practice like yours—rich ladies who want astrological charts for their lapdogs, lovesick young men in for a potion or two, some amateur diabolists who want a séance with their favorite demon—no threats of the rack or the
poire
d’angoisse
. Ah, Asmodeus, how I suffer!”

But wonderful smells of garlic and rosemary, warm bread and roasting lamb were penetrating the room, and the inviting clink of metal goblets and knives being set on the table called the queen’s chief sorcerer from his melancholy musings. As they went into the next room, the younger man put his arm around his older brother’s shoulders.

“A wife, that’s what you need—and a cozy little household you could keep in secret. The old lady who lives downstairs isn’t going to last long, and my wife would love the company—” But Cosmo Ruggieri was still absorbed in his own thoughts.

“Turning the Undying Head of Menander the Magus loose in the royal family. A dreadful idea—still, it wasn’t mine. In a way, it serves her right, all that amateur meddling with things she doesn’t understand. And if I don’t control that ghastly old thing, then he might work against me. A sealed niche, protected with the Seven Sacred Signs—meetings in the dark of the moon. I must somehow get her to open the box first. I certainly don’t want it attached to
me
. Nobody who’s owned it has escaped an early and ugly death—”

***

“I’m sure this is very intelligent,” said Auntie, as she squinted at my petition. “The words are long. Long words show intelligence, and you are quite as full of them as a sausage is full of garlic. And what devotion! My brother doesn’t deserve a daughter like you. Why aren’t the others here? Don’t answer, I always knew it would be you—headlong courage, passionate loyalty—” She paused, and shook her head over some secret thought. “The mind. It’s in the blood. I knew it would be.”

Auntie put down the reading glass and closed the curtain so that the tiny sliver of sunlight that illumined her ornate desk was strangled into nothingness. “Sun,” she said, spying the look on my face. “Nothing is worse for the complexion. See mine? Not a wrinkle. And you’ve already turned brown. Too much sun, once you moved to the country. Soon lines, then folds and sags, and after that, you’ll look no better than that dried up old head in the box we’ve just thrown out. Oh, don’t look so horrified. It’s not too late. You must simply begin a
regimen
of beauty. This afternoon, when you’ve returned from the Bishop’s palace, we’ll burn those awful dresses you brought, and you will lie down for an hour with a facial treatment I have devised of cucumbers and cream.” She rang her little bell. Taken aback, I looked down at my dress. In her rich and rather decadent house, it suddenly looked pitiful, countrified, and too short in the hem, having no train at all.

“Do I look wrong? My dress—”

“Surely, you weren’t thinking of wearing
that
, were you? Important people are never impressed by sincere poverty. That is a fantasy of the poor. Black silk, I have just the thing from my slender days—I had Amalie lower the hem for you last night.” With an assessing look she regarded my pedal extremities. “Those feet, my dear, they must be your little secret…” Then she cocked her head on one side, as if thinking. “The hair, it does shine, even if it is a common color—the dearest little soupçon of a veil…You’ll warm his heart before you’ve said a word. Oh, yes, and do me a favor. Wear this ring. It will bring you good luck.” She rustled in her desk drawer and came up with a strange old ring in red gold, heavily engraved with a floral design in which the letters “P” and “M” were engraved. Tiny brilliants spangled waving vines about the letters. It was a woman’s ring, just the size for a narrow little finger.

“Oh, it’s too pretty, I couldn’t—”

“Just for today, my dear,” she said, as she slipped it onto my finger, where it looked far too grand for my bony brown hand. “It’s a bit of a keepsake. But today, it will make you lucky. Oh, there you are, Arnaud. Have Georges put her sidesaddle on Flora. The velvet-trimmed blanket with the gold embroidery, the one I used to use on Sundays, back when I could still sit a horse. Remember this, Sibille—a lady never sets her foot on the ground, not even to walk across the cathedral square. And only a bumpkin would ever consider traveling on that fool packhorse of your father’s. Even
he
wouldn’t ride it into town. I have caught you just in time, before you were beyond reform.”

***

I must have cut a mysterious figure, a veiled woman on a richly decked out gray hackney, with two liveried footmen at her bridle. Sweating passersby, a laundress with her basket, two clerks in conversation, idling boys, and even the beggars in the shadow of the cathedral porch, glanced up briefly, then turned away as if the heat made even staring too great an effort. Over and over I rehearsed my speech, finding it worse each time I said it to myself. My petition made me cringe with shame. The work of a fool, a know-nothing. If only it were Latin, drawn up by a clever notary…

As one of auntie’s lackeys held my horse in the courtyard of the Bishop’s palace, the other helped me to dismount. Again, servants slowed on their errands to stare, a priest paused to sniff his disapproval, and two ponderous, well-dressed older men in heavy silk gowns and gold chains, who had just been shown out through the great double doors, paused on the top of the stair to inspect my person. Rich merchants, by their clothes, not gentlemen. Leaving the door behind them by several paces, as if accompanying them but not wishing to be seen with them, trailed a tall, olive-skinned young man with an aquiline profile and observant eyes. I watched as he glanced dismissively, one by one, at the petitioners that were already crowding the courtyard. His dress looked alien to him, as if he had been waylaid and forced into it on pain of death, and, somehow, out of pure truculence, it was busy undoing itself. A loose point dangled from beneath his doublet, his short gown sat askew, and his ruff lay, limp and unhappy, like an overheated dog, around his neck. Hmp, I thought, he looks as if the wind blew him in. He must be a relative. No clerk could dress like that and keep his place.

But he was very good-looking, in a tallish sort of way, and I found myself wishing him not to find anything to scorn about
me
, even as I was scorning him. I set my chin high, and prepared to sweep past, but not failing to take note of the changing tilt of his black eyebrows and the new expression in his dark eyes. They brightened as they spied me, and followed me even as he pretended they weren’t. Aha, I thought, I’ve won the duel of the eyes, no doubt thanks to my new, costly silk gown. That’s the sort of thing that impresses people like that. Now to pass on quickly, I thought, before I forget my hard-memorized speech.

But one of the older men suddenly turned to address me. Surely I didn’t know such, oh dear, yes, he had trimmed his beard a new way and it had grown grayer—It was my gossipy cousin Matheline’s husband, that vulgar rich banker, M. Bonneuil.

“Why, indeed, it’s Matheline’s cousin Sibille!” he said, moving closer, his companion still at his elbow. “Sibille, you have grown quite elegant in the time since we last met. Allow me to present a dear friend, Monsieur Montvert of the House of Fabris et Montvert, and this is his son—” I hardly heard the rest, so concerned was I that the last of my speech would vanish in the interruption. Besides, I had never heard of Montvert, whatever that was. Some new estate with a purchased title, no doubt, or a banking firm of slippery Italians. “—Demoiselle Sibille is a poetess of note in our city, and her
Dialogue
of
the
Virtues
was received with great admiration at my wife’s
cénacle
Michaelmas before last—”

My speech, it’s going—it’s vanished—I’ll fail—and all because a grand silk dress has attracted that upthrusting, uncouth husband of Matheline’s, I thought. Then I noticed that the strangers were all looking at my feet. Oh, God, my shoes—such a contrast with the borrowed dress and veil—and so big—the hem—not low enough—I could feel my face growing red beneath the veil. I could hear the strange older man say something about the Muse, and I stammered something back, but mainly all I heard was my heart beating, thumping out of pure humiliation.

“It’s a pity about your father’s trouble,” said Matheline’s merciless husband. “I’m afraid you’ll find most doors barred to you, even ours, my dear, should he be burnt—heresy, you know—one really can’t risk, these days—but you’re right to come to the Bishop. I hear all the bankers’ gossip, and the word is that M. d’Apchon, that creature of Marshall St.-André’s, has had his eye on your grandfather’s house for a long time. They say he borrowed a considerable sum not only to refurnish it, but to bribe the
bailli
—the confession of a commoner under torture—hardly enough to accuse a gentleman under ordinary circumstances.”