Judith Merkle Riley (29 page)

At that very moment, Ruggieri, divested of his feminine attire, was slinking behind the pole that supported one side of the canopy, not far from the backs of the jabbering old ladies and the monkey’s cage, which had attracted several curiosity-seekers. Señor Alonzo, pleased with his audience, was entertaining them with several of the extraordinarily vulgar acts of which only monkeys are capable.

“Again! Oh, look at that!” There was a patter of applause. A groan came from the bottom of the cage. Cosmo edged closer. Yes, definitely, that was not a monkey sound. In the midst of the laughter, he could distinctly make out words:

“Never, never have I been treated so rudely—”

Yes, that was it! It could only be The Master of All Desires, set beneath a board in the bottom of the monkey’s cage! Quickly, Cosmo looked at the pool. Sibille was emerging behind a large sheet being held by an attendant, and d’Estouville was following, all dripping wet. Soon enough he’d be dressing, then offering her a drink—

In a single bold movement, so swift that the onlookers only gaped, Cosmo Ruggieri unlatched the monkey’s cage and dug beneath the floorboard.

“Stop him! My dear Señor Alonzo!” cried the billowing figure from beneath the canopy.

“The monkey! He’s letting out the monkey!”

“Aiee!” screamed Ruggieri, as blood streamed from his hand where the monkey had bitten him to the bone. Instinctively, he pulled it out, and just as instinctively, Señor Alonzo burst from his cage, screeching joyfully, and swung up to the canopy.

“Catch him, catch him!” cried the onlookers, as the bath attendants scrambled to the canopy. With a splendid leap, the monkey sprang to the gutter that ran along the rooftop, then scampered to the peak of the bathhouse roof. Cheers and laughter accompanied him.

“Oh,” cried Sibille, peeping, half-dressed, from the exit to the ladies’ dressing room, “someone has let out Auntie’s monkey. She’ll be devastated if she loses him.”

“You again!” the bathhouse attendants, who, unable to catch the monkey, had caught Cosmo Ruggieri instead. “You’ll answer to the governor—this time it’s prison for you.”

“I’m the queen’s servant! I’m on a secret mission!” screeched Ruggieri, as they hustled him to the exit. “Call the queen! Call her maître d’hôtel! Call her captain of the guard!”

In the shadows of the arcade, Nicolas, astonished and delighted with the hullabaloo, found his joy expanding infinitely as the odious Philippe d’Estouville, wrapped in a towel and still carrying his clothing, emerged from the changing room crying, “Never fear,
ma
Demoiselle
, I’ll catch him!”

And while Sibille wrung her hands, the gallant captain dropped his clothes on a nearby bench and shouted, “Come down at once! Come down!” while he shook his fist at the monkey. As if to tease him, the monkey, as lightly as a feather, skittered along the peak of the roof until he was almost over the captain. Little black eyes beady with anticipation, the monkey watched as d’Estouville clambered up a large ornamental statue of a nymph with a vase, then descended to the gutter just above the captain’s reach. Then as d’Estouville grabbed for him, the creature, in a single brilliantly swift motion, swung down from the gutter, leaped to the bench beneath, and snatched up the captain’s doublet, to the accompaniment of joyful applause from the watchers in the bath. The captain, marooned on the statue, could only shout.

Screeching and chattering, the monkey dragged the garment to the rooftop and poked at it, shook it, and then tried to put it on. “Bring it back, bring it back this instant, or I swear I will kill you!” cried d’Estouville.

“Don’t you dare kill Auntie’s monkey!” shouted Sibille. At the other end of the roof, two attendants had placed a ladder, and one of Auntie’s footmen was climbing up, clutching a rope with which he hoped to catch the wayward monkey.

“Señor Alonzo is like my child; if you touch him, I’ll drag you through the courts until nothing is left of you,” shouted Aunt Pauline, who was being dragged out of the shady end of the bath by several attendants.

Unable to put on the doublet, the monkey shook it, then flung it away. Something hard and bright caught the sun as it flew from some secret recess of the garment, something like glass. It skittered down to the edge of the roof, where it caught in the gutter, then slid down the rainspout. The flash caught Nicolas’s eye, and he put out his hand beneath the downspout to see what could be rattling down it. The heavy little green-glass bottle had not broken, nor had the tightly wedged cork come out of the neck.

“Why, look at this,” he said loudly, as he inspected the offering that had dropped upon him from heaven, as it were. “It’s a bottle of
love
potio
n
!”

“Give me that, you lowborn little bastard!” cried the captain, clutching his towel and turning his attention from the monkey on the roof to his newly perceived rival in the shadows.

“Love potion!
Love
potion!” shouted Nicolas as he evaded the captain’s grasp. “You couldn’t win her with your dreadful serenaders, so you were going to poison her heart with
love
potion! What a lover! Pantaloon on the stage!”

“Nicolas! Oh, Nicolas, you’re back! I’ve missed you so! Where have you been all this time?” cried Sibille.

“How dare you insult a d’Estouville! I challenge you to meet me on the field of honor!”

“
You
challenge
me
? No, I challenge you, you bag of wind!”

“No challenges within the bath! Throw them both out! You’ll answer to the governor for this! You’re banished for life!”

“Banished from this despicable establishment? You’ll be hearing from my uncle, the
Seigneur
de Vieilleville—”

“Come to mama, come to mama, my little sweetie. Did all those bad people frighten you?” Aunt Pauline, her dripping shift revealing proportions of astonishing magnificence, was coaxing Señor Alonzo down from the roof with one of the copious supply of sweetmeats she always traveled with.

“Nicolas, don’t go! Take me with you!” Sibille, unlaced, unbuttoned, and unshod, her wet braid unraveled down her back, rushed from the dressing room door to his side.

“I can’t, Sibille, I have to leave before they arrest me,” cried Nicolas, as he snatched up his boots.

“Nicolas, I love you always!” cried Sibille, and, still damp and rosy as a water nymph, she embraced him suddenly. Nicolas looked, all in a moment, shocked and then overjoyed, and right then and there, his boots still in his hands, embraced her back. There was the sound of applause from the old ladies in the pool.

“No indecencies! You’re fined! The governor will deal with you!” Two burly attendants grabbed him by the neck.

“Sibille, my father’s exiling me—I love you always—I’ll write!” Nicolas cried over his shoulder as he was frog-marched from the enclosure behind his rival.

“Exiling you?” said one of the men who was hauling him to the exit. “Hmph. I’m not surprised. Troublemaker.”

“I tell you, I am from the noblest family in France. My uncle is the king’s most trusted companion—you’ll regret this—” D’Estouville’s shouts floated back from the outer gate.

“Wonderful,” said a crippled old lady, who had entered the bath with a crutch, but was leaving without its assistance. “Better than a play in the theater. My pains have entirely vanished.” Then she turned to Sibille, who was staring after them and wringing her hands. “Young lady,” she said, “you needn’t worry. That one will be back for you if he has to walk all the way from Tartary.”

***

“What says the Pope’s messenger?” said King Henri, looking toward the Cardinal of Lorraine. Around the council table, faces were grim. With war possible on two fronts, Guise’s army had been called home from Italy, but the debt they had incurred in the past three months was tremendous. Four hundred and thirty-four thousand ecus, and nothing remaining in the treasury.

“His Holiness has approved the collection of a new tax of eight décimes from the clergy.”

“I want you to carry out an inventory of all the church’s objects of precious metal,” said the king. There was a long and deadly silence around the table. The last source of money in the realm, to be collected and melted down if the war continued much longer. France had entered the end game.

“You must go to the bankers of Lyons, the Italian bankers, the Germans. We must have a loan of at least five hundred thousand ecus,” said the Old Constable.

“Tell them,” said King Henri, “tell them that I am a prince of honor, and will not fail to pay them their interest, unlike King Philip of Spain.”

As the meeting wore on, plans were laid, and from these plans, the orders went out: the Old Constable would leave by the end of the month to take command of the war on the northern front, and every man at court able to bear arms was ordered to go with him. King Henri himself would go to Compiègne to be nearer the front, and join the army of the north in person early the following month. August, the season of heat, would be the month of victory over the Empire.

What silver! What lovely linen! Oh, my dear Pauline, you have exceeded us all.” As Auntie’s guests entered our salon, there were little gasps of pleasure at the ornate dishes of dainties on the tables, the pretty little party favors laid out at each place, the two good-looking young men playing the flute and
épinette
in the corner. War, tragedy, and suffering—nothing interrupted these old ladies’ social gatherings. They came in the flush of joy, in the black of mourning, in health, and with one foot in the grave. It was as if they’d lost all sense of decency about others’ grief, especially mine. I had found and lost true love in an instant; I had heard not a word about Nicolas’s fate—was he in the Bastille or on the stony road to exile at this very moment? What of the duel with Captain d’Estouville, who had vowed to kill him? Was Nicolas alive or dead? And here I was, living a shallow mockery in the center of false pleasures.

“Why, it is the very least I could do to honor you ladies, and, oh, my,
dear
Erminette, it’s all because I could never hope to equal your splendid
salle
.” There they all were, just dancing on the tomb of my sorrows, the whole lot of them. Auntie was ebullient, generous. No one loved card afternoons more than she, and she had managed to collect around her a circle of raucous old ladies almost exactly like herself—widows and wives of minor gentry of the robe, of freshly minted and somewhat dubious titles, all thrilled that she had a court connection and all devoted to the art of gossip.

“And you never will equal them, dearie! Those cherries are my secret, and I won’t even tell it to my daughter when I’m on my deathbed,” the old lady cackled. The two strong lackeys the old lady had brought with her helped her into a cushioned chair, covered her vastly swollen legs with a lap robe, and vanished downstairs to pursue the kitchen maids.

“They say the fever kept ever so many away from the funeral of Madame Cardin. Only her grandson came, and him not even in full mourning.”

“
I
hear the others were all disappointed in their inheritance—Thank your stars, dear Pauline, for such a levelheaded, dutiful daughter as your darling Sibille.”

“And so talented, too!” cried another woman, immense in black satin and lace.

The flute player had put down his instrument and burst into song. “Sweet shepherdess, recall, how soon the season of love is over—” One of my most delicate verses, very admired by the ladies at court. How could I bear hearing it now, when all hope of love had fled!

“I’ve had them set a half dozen of her finest works to music,” said Auntie, looking smug. For her sake, and her sake only, I had forced my suffering self downstairs to assist with her card-party. After all, the horrible scandal of the challenges at the spa was on every tongue these days, and the fascination of my presence alone would make her card-party the envy of her set. And besides, when I had died of grief, there would be more people to speak of me, which gave me a certain perverse pleasure.

“And all about the season of love. Too brief, too brief! And all her charming little verses even more in fashion than ever, now that the dear girl is the object of the most celebrated challenge of the season! Just think! D’Estouville, who has killed twelve men in affairs of honor. My, what a hero!”

“But
I
say, the duel won’t be held. The king’s edict against dueling, you know—they’ll both end up arrested for violating the king’s command.
I’ve
heard that the king is furious at the notion of losing officers to private quarrels. They will be forced to reconcile.”

“I’d bet good money that duel will be held. You know these young men and their affairs of honor. When has any royal edict every stopped dueling?”

“Not when every available man must be at the front—the king has sworn to order the execution of anyone who appears on the field of honor, as an example—”

“Arrest d’Estouville? Never! His uncle Vieilleville stands too high at court for that—”

“Well, the other young man then—his family, well, it isn’t—old blood, you know. Besides, I hear his father intends to have him imprisoned, or send him into exile, so that he can’t meet d’Estouville.”

“How lacking in any concept of honor. It would be far better to see him dead than run away from a challenge. But then, I hear his father’s a banker—”

“
Oof
, money. Nobody nice ever talks about money—”

“Still, you know how it is these days. Don’t annoy the bankers, for the sake of their loans, don’t annoy the Lutherans, for the sake of our German mercenaries. Who is left? We are overrun with riffraff these days—”

“Don’t take it personally, dear Sibille. D’Estouville gives the whole affair
style
, so the challenge won’t lower your standing. He’ll just trounce the fellow, if he turns up. And just think! After a fashionable duel like that, you can have any lover you want—”

“Lovers, bah! Don’t mislead the child,” cried one old lady, who had taken out her false teeth in order to speak better. “The best time is when the season of love is past. Then after the season of love, comes the season of cards! A vast improvement! Cut the deck, Pauline! I feel lucky this afternoon!”

“Never give in to love, Sibille, my dear! Men aren’t worth it!” proclaimed Erminette from her throne-like chair at the far end of the table, puffing with the effort of laying out her cards and speaking all at once. “Why, just last week I saw Madame de Bonneville’s chambermaid hanged for drowning her baby so she could keep her position. That’s where love leads! The grave! We’re lucky to have survived the season of love, I say! Aha! I have the queen!”

“They
say
a priest was the father—”

“Well, of course. Who else? Give way to my king, dear Erminette.” Money rattled on the table. The crass heartlessness of these joyful old harpies, so entirely uninterested in my sorrows, which, after all, interested
me
greatly, seemed entirely too much to bear.

“Darling Sibille, you aren’t playing today?”

“I’m not feeling very well—I’m sure I wouldn’t have the least luck. I—I need to lie down.”

“Take a nice glass of cordial, dearie, and you’ll feel better in no time.”

“Yes, we’ll save you a place at the table,” I heard them call, as I fled upstairs.

***

Far from the callous observations of the card players, I rushed forward, utterly dissolved in sorrow, to fling myself upon my bed for a good and proper weeping fit. Imagine, then, what additional shock was laden upon my already tormented breast when, rather than my cozy and well-made bed, a ready receptacle of sorrows, a scene of mortal horror met my eyes!

There, stretched out and dead on the carpet, lay my own truest and most devoted companion, my last friend on earth, Gargantua, his stomach bloated beyond recognition! At the top of the wardrobe, Señor Alonzo was contentedly picking fleas, so I knew at once that it was he who had done the terrible deed. Beside Gargantua’s head lay a few well-chewed scraps of human skull bone, a fragment of lower jaw, a number of brown, ancient teeth—and the open box of Menander the Deathless. Hate rose in my soul, and I grabbed the nearest available weapon, a large brass paperweight in the shape of a lion’s head, and flung it at the vile, furry little creature. “You horrible, horrible, monkey—you’ve killed my own dear Gargantua!” Lightly, the monkey dodged my missile, and leaped to the bed canopy. “I’ll kill you, I swear I’ll kill you,” I cried, snatching up a large embroidery hoop, the nearest thing at hand, and climbing onto the foot of the bed, clutching at one of the bedposts, while I tried to dislodge the monkey with the other hand. At the sound, Baptiste came running, just as I slipped and fell to the floor, damaging my back too badly to rise for the moment.

“Why, that little devil spilled the box off the top of the armoire, and now that big hound of yours has eaten up your magic head. What a disaster!” He tried to help me rise, but I just moaned.

“Don’t touch me. Just kill that evil little monster for me. Look what he’s done to my dog.”

“Come here, come here, you! Mademoiselle, he must have unlatched his cage.”

“Oh, Gargantua, you were the only creature in the world that ever loved me truly.” I wept, still lying flat on the floor and incapable of movement due to the dreadful shock I had undergone.

“
Mon
Dieu
, what a disaster! He has entirely eaten up the magic head!” exclaimed Baptiste. “Now the queen will never call you again. All our good fortune—oh, dreadful, what terrible luck—how will I ever tell Madame?” What? The queen would never call again? The head was gone, and I was free? Oh, alas, poor faithful hound, who freed me at the cost of his own dear life. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe Nicolas hadn’t left yet. I’d write—yes, as soon as I could get up, I’d steal away to his house, perhaps in disguise, and get word to him that I was waiting, and free at last of the accursed head. We could marry secretly; we’d escape beyond the reach of his heartless father; I’d share his bitter exile. Penniless, living only on love, we’d wander into sunnier climes…

“Oh, poor creature, poor creature, he died to save me from that awful—thing.” I put out my hand to embrace my faithful hound, but since I was temporarily unable to move, I could only reach a portion of his noble, self-sacrificial stomach, and not his faithful head.

“Madame will have my hide—oh, God, preserve me—”

“Oh, if only his generous heart were still beating—”

“You devil—you brown, furry devil—” cried Baptiste. “If I have to lose my place here over this, I’ll see you flung out into the street first—” Baptiste threw open the window in a paroxysm of vengeance, and leaped upon a chair to seize the monkey and fling him out. Señor Alonzo leaped again to the top of the armoire, screeching with enjoyment at the chase, while the brisk, fresh breeze entered the room. But with the fresh air, did I feel something, something stirring, something not entirely dead in Gargantua’s swollen belly? I heard a muffled gasping sound. Was my dog returning to life, or was the hideous Menander still alive within his dead carcass? There was another gasp, a breath, and a ripple down the dead hound’s belly and then—

With a start, Gargantua’s eyes flew open with an expression of pure horror. There was a choking, gurgling sound, and without even lifting his head, he began to vomit yellow liquid, with shreds of brown, revolting, disgusting, stinky stuff. But even as I jumped up, horrified by the hideous retching sound, and, I must admit, a certain low desire to save my silk gown, I could see the tiny shreds assembling themselves into bigger pieces, the bigger pieces joining together…

“Ahhh!” cried Baptiste in horror. “It’s still alive!” Even the monkey stopped chattering and leaping and sat on the curtain rod, staring curiously at the sight.

“My dog—Gargantua—oh, live, live!” I cried, my mind torn between joy at seeing my dog alive, disgust at seeing that dreadful Menander reassembling himself, and fear that Menander had reanimated Gargantua in some dreadful fashion and would send him again into death when he was done vomiting up Menander’s well chewed and partially digested fragments. Now the brown teeth, with their long, desiccated roots, were crawling across the carpet like revolting insects, blindly seeking the jawbone from which they had been scattered. The skull fragments rocked and skittered as they drew together, then locked into place. Bits of flesh adhered, a pulpy mass reassembled itself as an eyeball—never in my life do I ever wish to see such a stomach-turning sight again.

“Never, never in eighteen centuries, have I suffered such indignity,” said Menander the Deathless, shaking his head slightly as he nested into his box, the way a person might settle into bed at the end of a hard day. “The greatest magus of all time, reassembling himself out of a dog’s stomach.” The monkey on the curtain rod bared his teeth at Menander. There had to be something good in that monkey after all, I thought suddenly, if he hated that old mummy enough to dump him out on the floor. Not, mind you, that that made Señor Alonzo any more likable.

“My poor, sweet, brave Gargantua, are you feeling better?” I said, stroking my dog’s back and stomach as I bathed his head with my tears. As I was rewarded with first a feeble, then a joyful wag of the tail, that spiteful old mummified head said:

“All that for a dog? You are the most birdbrained, sentimental woman that ever laid hold of a pen.”

“What do I care for your opinion? My brave Gargantua risked himself to save me from you.”

“He risked himself for a snack, you dumb female. He’d have done the same for a rotten ham rind in the garbage.”

“Nonsense. You are so without honor you can’t recognize it in any other creature.”

“Honor, ha! After all I’ve done for you, you should be weeping over me and stroking me! Where would your awful writings be without the queen’s favor, which I may point out,
I
secured for you, gratis? I’ve half a mind to bring about your bad fortune.”

“Mademoiselle—” said Baptiste, his teeth chattering.

“Nonsense. Menander can’t do a thing unless somebody wishes it, and the people who see him are too busy wishing for themselves to wish anything about me. And I’m the one person who doesn’t want him and here I am trapped with him after all.”

“You could always wish that I’d go away—” said Menander suggestively.

“Baptiste,” I said, stroking down my dress, “I am in shock, terrible shock. Bring me a glass of that cordial Auntie saves beneath her bed, or I shall faint away and become permanently ill. And send up Marie—I want this mess on the carpet cleaned up.” I sighed a great sigh. I couldn’t disguise myself and run off with Nicolas after all. The head would follow, and where it followed, so would the queen, the duchess, their astrologers, their relatives—a regular parade, an army, all clamoring to tell their horrid secret desires to that awful box. And, then, oh, God, the thought suddenly came over me, the worst thought of all: suppose Nicolas and I did manage to get married? Menander would be there every night in the bedchamber, making loathsome little comments about our most intimate moments. How could we ever hope for happiness? If only Gargantua had a stronger stomach—Damn, damn, and a thousand damns. “Well, Gargantua, at least you tried,” I said, sitting down on the bed, but carefully, so as not to annoy my injured tailbone. He looked up at me with his big pink tongue hanging out of his mouth and thumped his tail cheerfully on the rug, just as if he had not ever attempted to consume the most filthy dinner in the world. As Baptiste left the room, Menander called after him,