Judith Merkle Riley (30 page)

“You could wish for a better place—” and Baptiste answered with a growl,

“You don’t catch me wishing on no heathen, talking head—”

***

The smell of dirty diapers and cabbage penetrated from the back rooms into the magician’s little reception chamber. The large man settled his body down gingerly, wrinkling his nose as if he feared contamination by the dark, low wooden chair on which he had seated himself. He had worn old clothes for this visit to the wrong part of town, anonymous dark wool trunk hose and doublet, covered by an undecorated black wool cloak, but still, he felt they would have to be laundered or given away when he returned home. He was an immense, sinister man, his plain black beaver hat pulled low over greasy, graying hair and barely skimming an eye patch that covered his left eye. He tapped a finger impatiently on the table that separated him from the magician as he spoke.

“The oil of vitriol, Maestro Lorenzo, it did not work.”

“Surely it did not fail to burn, Monsieur. It was of the finest quality,” answered Lorenzo Ruggieri.

“It burned most powerfully, but some unlucky star made her dodge so as to save her face.”

“Ah, as I warned you. Opportunity is everything with vitriol—you must get close enough not to miss the target. It is entirely different with the death-spell. It is impossible to dodge a well-cast death-spell, Monsieur Villasse, or hide from it, even at the farthest ends of the earth.”

“A spell? I mistrust spells. How do I know that I’ve got what I paid for? No, I want something stronger, more certain. Something that will cause terrible suffering—”

“That can always be managed. I am, after all, a master of my craft. Now tell me again all the things you wish accomplished. As I recall, it is rather complicated.”

“She is a great heiress now, a favorite of the queen—God alone knows why—and is being courted by an officer of high rank. Once he marries her, the property I wish to possess will be beyond my grasp. The vitriol, it might have stopped that, but now—no, it is better that she die. Besides, there are—ah—others with an interest—”

“Ah, another heir to the land.”

“Yes. More beautiful, more agreeable to me, and anxious for marriage.”

“Marriage? I thought you had said that a brother was next in line.”

“One way or another, it doesn’t matter. He is in the military. Things happen.” Villasse shrugged.

“Ah, I think I am beginning to see,” said Lorenzo Ruggieri, tapping on his forehead. “First the woman, something painful, then the man, something quiet. Am I right?”

“Absolutely. You read my mind, Italian.”

“I can’t help admiring a wily fellow who thinks so many steps ahead. It’s an advanced skill. So few possess it but us. But continue—would you also like a love potion?”

“Ha, I don’t need one. Those who hate the same person must needs love one another. The woman stole her younger sister’s admirer, and when the sister heard the two would marry, we became one in our vengeance. Why, she even thought of the vitriol—”

“I thought that sounded like a woman’s idea…” murmured the magician to himself. But Villasse went on, unhearing:

“She needs position; a proud family, but poor. My speculations and monopolies make me more wealthy by the moment; a wife of old family would suit me well. And she is beautiful, respectful, feminine—as unlike her murderous, lunatic elder sister as it is possible to imagine—”

“I should warn you, Monsieur, these urges to kill tend to run in families—you should be wary. Now, a proper love potion—”

“You’d do anything to enlarge your fee, wouldn’t you? First the expense of the vitriol, and now you’re trying to sell me three jobs rather than two.”

“That’s because I always think only for my client’s benefit. You said you wanted suffering for the first job?”

“Yes. Slow, terrible suffering. For the second, I need only speed and undetectability.”

“The second is easy. White arsenic—it will be mistaken for camp fever. The bowels come undone. Send it in a package of food from home. Sausage always does well. People always blame sausage…”

Lorenzo looked dreamily into the air, remembering former triumphs. Villasse drummed his fingers impatiently on the table, bringing Lorenzo back to the present. “For the first, hmm, let’s see—” Lorenzo Ruggieri smiled sweetly and placed one hand on his heart. “Ah, yes, terrible suffering. You might consider poison of toad—not too quick acting, terrible suffering, and an inevitable end. I happen to have some on hand, so I can offer it to you for the same price as white arsenic and less than viper, which I would have to send out for.”

“What is the—ah—type of suffering?” said the lord of La Tourette, his one eye glittering, his mouth half open in voluptuous expectation.

“Quite superior suffering. First light becomes irritating, then blisters grow on the surface of the eyes, gradually blinding the victim. In the meantime, the intellectual ability is reduced to the level of an animal, and sharp pains rend the body, especially, um, the generative parts—”

“Blindness and pain? Oh, splendid. Are you sure?” The stranger was rubbing his gloved hands together in greedy anticipation.

“As if you yourself had taken your will of her with a red-hot iron.”

“Ha, and a bargain, too. I’ll have it, if you can tell me how I can be sure that it gets to its mark.”

“I must say, you really don’t seem to like this woman.”

“Don’t seem to? Do you see this eye? See here?” Villasse rose to his full height, fury making the arteries stand out in his neck as his face crimsoned. “Look, look at that!” he cried, lifting up the eye patch to show a hideously defaced mass of scar tissue, marked and seared with the permanent dark stain of gunpowder fired at close range. “It is she that struck it out.”

“A powerful blow, that. How did she manage? It will be harder to taint her with the poison if she is violent and cannot be lured close to you.”

“She shot me in the face at close quarters with her father’s blunderbuss. But being a fool, she had not loaded it properly. She forgot the shot, and only fired the wadding.”

“Hmm. Quite a shrew, I’d say. She won’t be inviting you in for a cup of wine, then.”

“I should think not.”

“Well, then, I can’t offer you this ring,” said the younger Ruggieri, pulling aside a curtain that concealed a number of shelves with boxes and bottles, and taking down an interesting, ironbound coffer. He set it on the table and opened it to reveal a number of cloth-wrapped objects of various sizes. “See this?” he said, unwrapping a little one. “A beautiful thing. It has belonged to three Dukes, an Emperor, and even a Pope. Look at this—a tiny spring, and it opens to drop the poison into a cup when you merely pass your hand across it.”

“Charming. But not for me.”

“Obviously. Now here are several little mechanisms that send darts across a short distance—”

“No darts. I’ve wasted too much time hiring that rogue to trail after her and throw the vitriol. I want something that works by itself.”

“Well, you might send her a gift—”

“Not from myself.”

“Why not from that generous, aristocratic fiancé of hers? Have it delivered to her door in his name.” Lorenzo Ruggieri donned a pair of gloves and unwrapped another little packet containing a crimson velvet case. He opened it and gingerly picked out of its satin-lined center an exquisite jeweled brooch with a sharp little pin at the back. Shaped with two ornate branches, almost like the upper wings of a moth, its center was formed by a great pearl, surmounted by an emerald, and then a smaller pearl. A short pendant chain formed of small pearls interspersed with carved gold beads hung from beneath the large central pearl. The golden side branches, cunningly ornamented with carved flowers, shone with brilliants and tiny seed pearls. Even Villasse gasped at the loveliness of the thing. Then he grunted.

“Hmph. All those pearls. Beyond my price, I should think.”

“The pearls are false, but no one who has received it has had time to discover the fact. And if you can retrieve it when it has done its work, I’ll buy it back at half price.”

“She’d be dazzled. Any woman would. How does it do its work?”

“See these little flowers? All sharper than knives. The pin at the back has a clasp that is hard to undo—and it is made of spring metal. So easy to prick oneself. And then, even if one is not pricked by the pin, just settling the thing on one’s gown, or into one’s hat, one is bound to be scratched by the flowers. Such a little scratch. One might put it in one’s mouth, or perhaps not. The wings, they are hollow, the holes that feed the surface too small to be seen by the eye. And then, of course, if the poison is colorless, as it was last time, even the surface of the jewel can be painted—”

“Last time?”

“I can assure you, it has never yet failed to do its work.”

“Excellent. I’ll hire an old soldier to deliver it. She’ll never suspect a thing.”

“I admire a man of decision. Now, how about the boy at the front? Will you be sending the package yourself?”

“The problem is the letter that accompanies the gift. He’ll know the writing. Better it should be a gift from his sister.”

“The one who shoots guns?” said Lorenzo, opening the back of the brooch with heavy gloves, and transferring several drops of a vitreous liquid from a bottle into a tiny opening, almost invisible, behind the catch.

“No, the one who adores me.”

“Monsieur, I must speak to you as one whose profession is deceit. You are a master of the first rank.” He sealed the opening behind the catch and replaced the brooch in its velvet case.

“Why, of course,” said Villasse, counting out gold pieces from his purse, tucking a little glass vial into his wallet and then wrapping the velvet box in a linen handkerchief for safe transit. “An unfair life has taught me all her tricks. They have cheated me for the last time, these coldhearted people of old blood. That property was meant to be mine. This time, the goddess of revenge has made me brilliant.” As the door shut behind the black-cloaked man, Lorenzo’s wife called him to supper. Carefully, he removed his gloves and replaced the box on the shelf behind the curtain.

“Oh, Beatrice, what work!” he said, settling down before a bowl of steaming potage. “But today alone, I’ve earned little Fortunato’s school fees for the year. But you—and Roger, too—I must warn you again: don’t open any packages that are delivered here. A man of that type, when he’s done his work, will doubtless have his miserable little lizard-brain turn to thoughts of getting rid of any witnesses. Praise Asmodeus, I am shrewder than he.”

“Some people just have no gratitude,” said his wife, ladling out a second helping all around.

Geometrical reasoning proves that the cut is therefore in fact inferior to the thrust, for a circle has a longer path than does a straight line. The cut is preferred only by those accustomed to weapons of the old school, French and English gentlemen who do not easily come to the new Italian rapier, but whose vain words and posturings are like the blowing of wind. Meet such, then, by awaiting the attack, for they will reveal themselves and leave the defender in the superior position. Should such a one attack by a cut, you may thrust beneath his blade. Should he attack by thrust, which is alien to his nature, you may parry with the blade or with your left hand, which you must furnish with a stout leather or mail glove…

To meet an
imbroccata
in low ward, beat aside the thrust with the left hand at mid-blade, then as you oppose his blade with your own, seize his rapier guard with your left hand and in this way disarm him. This
botte secrete
was imparted by Maestro Francesco Altoni to very few, since if ill-practiced, it can lead to death…

From
secrets of the italian art of fencing

Montvert, N., Sieur de Beauvoir et

Châteauneuf-sur-Charentonne, Lyons, 1571

In the rue de Bailleul, the rattle of drums and the crunch of marching feet rose to the windows above. A company of city pikemen, banners flying, officers on horseback, was marching to join the troops massing at the northern front. Women shouted and threw flowers down from the upper stories of houses that lined the street, and ragtag little boys ran beside and behind the booted, motley-clad soldiers, cheering and waving. But one window, a window in a square tower with pointed roof, was closed. From behind its warped, greenish little panes, a heavy-set man with a square-cut beard, gowned in silk, with a heavy gold chain, pondered the glinting steel pouring through the narrow street like a river.
My
boots,
my
pikes,
my
horses, and
my
advance on salaries, thought the banker Montvert. I wonder if the king will pay the interest. Of course, if we lose, the entire investment is moot. How much more practical to finance both sides, then one would ensure collecting from at least one of the kings. He sighed. Kings were so touchy about this sort of thing; they always seemed to think a man has to be on just one side. And, after all, one did have to choose a place of residence. He sighed again. The kings take your money, he thought, and their servants pick quarrels with your idiot son, who is blinded by their flash and dazzle and lies of chivalry. Who, who is on
my
side?

But there, drifting to his side like a frail leaf of autumn, was his pallid, saintly daughter, Clarette. Her cool hand brushed his brow, and she said, “
Padre
mio
, you have such terrible cares, confide in me and I will pray for you.”

“Is your brother still pounding on the door upstairs?” he asked.

“As loudly as ever, since the day you locked him in. He says you have destroyed his good name since you have prevented him from meeting d’Estouville on the field of honor.”

“What else?”

“A thousand other things, Father, many of them in appropriate for female ears.”

“Then you’ve been listening again,” said the old man.

“Oh, no, Father, I just can’t help hearing, since I kneel in prayer for the salvation of his soul right outside the door.”

“Ah, I see, I see. Well then, my lily, my diamond, pray also for the salvation of his body, and that he learn a proper calling in life and marry. Otherwise, you will have to provide the grandchildren.” The saintly, pale child shuddered, and touched the crucifix—one of a large wardrobe of them that she possessed—that hung around her neck.

“Father, the Carmelites—”

“I have told you, and told you again, Claretta
mia
, my beloved white rose, that I cannot sacrifice you to the altar of Christ. As soon as d’Estouville departs for the front, I plan to pack your brother off to his mother’s cousins in Genoa—in chains, if necessary—and I will then send to Florence to enter negotiations with the Pazzi family for a suitable bridegroom. Would you rather have Giacomo, who is two years older than you, or Guiseppe, who is six months younger, but, they say, the handsomer of the two?” With the cry of a wounded fawn, the pallid girl blew, wraith-like without even the sound of a single footstep, from the room.

“Idiot,” said her father, as he watched her retreat. “The sooner she’s married, the better—before she evaporates entirely.”

Upstairs, Clarette took up her accustomed spot in front of her Satan-possessed brother’s nailed-shut doorway to begin again her prayers for his salvation. The servants, her mother, tiptoed around her, speaking in reverend whispers as they saw her rededicate herself to her holy mission.

“A saint—a saint—” they whispered, and so self-denying was she that she pretended she didn’t even hear them.

“Oh, Madame, your daughter is a blessed virgin,” whispered her mother’s old nurse, who had also been hers and Nicolas’s.

“God has made me suffer,” she heard her mother reply. “He took my little twins, my father, and my brother—but then He repaid me a thousandfold by sending me that blessed child for consolation…” The voices faded off down the hall, and Clarette’s heart grew warm—but then, again, it may have been the effect of the praying.

She raised her voice, slightly, expecting the divinely fulfilling dialogue with the devils inside of Nicolas to resume. She would recite, and he, the madman, the lost soul, the extraordinarily bored prisoner of the bourgeoisie, would shout all kinds of extremely interesting things back through the door. Sometimes, she would pass him some holy work or pamphlet of sermons for his improvement, and it was then that Satan himself seemed to spring forth from her brother’s tongue, steeling her in her divine mission. After all, if she could not enter the convent just now, what higher jewel in her crown could exist than the salvation of her poor, lost, older brother?

But instead of the expected imprecations, an eerie silence ensued. In the door, a slot had been cut, for the passage in of food and drink, and the passage out of the chamber pot. It, too, had been fitted with a bar to prevent the prisoner’s escape by some ruse. The silence boded well, thought the white lily of the Montvert family, perhaps he is ready to contemplate his errors. She took down the bar so that she could slip though the slot a particularly potent prayer, copied in longhand by herself. But no grumbling and growling met her ears. And when she peeked into the room, she saw no caged tiger, but an unmade bed, a broken window, and the end of a sheet tied to the bedpost.

Her screams brought the family, and in the milling around and general hand-wringing, she heard, as in a dream, her father’s voice giving orders to unseal the room, and the pounding and prying of crowbars. All of them, father, servants, mother, old nurse, and sister rushed into the room.

“My boy is gone! Gone to his doom!” cried her mother, half fainting.

“Out the window,” said Bernardo, peering out at the rope of sheets and old clothes, “and his sword and poniard are missing.”

“Damn!” shouted Nicolas’s father. “I didn’t know they were locked up with him—I should have stripped the room first before I nailed the door shut—”

“I have failed,” cried Clarette, rolling her eyes up into her head, and turning paler than ever, but nobody even noticed her in the hullabaloo. How irritating it all was. As usual, everything was about Nicolas. What a curse to be born younger, and a girl. “I shall pray to the Holy Virgin,” she said, a bit louder, but nobody heard her. Her mother was weeping. “My boy, my boy, dead!” Her father was calling down really extraordinary curses, and even the servants were too busy attending them to notice the poor, pallid, self-sacrificial soul in the corner. While they all were inspecting the sheet tied at the foot of the bed, she sat down at its head, mortified, bitter.

It was then that she noticed something unusual winking and blinking in a stray shaft of sunlight. A bottle, a green-glass bottle that her brother had got somewhere, set up like a trophy on the nightstand. Curiosity grew in her. Was it perfume? Was it medicine? She picked it up, and saw that it was tightly sealed with wax all around the cork. She turned it over, and saw a legend engraved in the glass: love potion. What an amazing thing, she thought. Was this how Nicolas made himself the best loved? How had he found it? Did he drink it every day? Or did he pour it in the glass of wine he shared with that wicked courtesan he’d been forbidden to marry, so that she would prefer him to all her other lovers? Did it make people love you, or you love other people? Did it require a drop, or the whole bottleful? Questions began to eat at her, and she tried to think of holy things, but the diabolical little bottle kept interrupting the most edifying thoughts. Where had he got it? Was it expensive? Was there more? Quietly, she slipped it into the bosom of her gown, where the cold glass seemed to make her skin prick and her heart tremble. If anyone had noticed her drift soundlessly from the room, they would have seen two distinct pink patches beginning to form up on her sheet-white cheeks.

***

“Go and have Arnaud see who’s banging on the front door, Sibille, I am entirely too wretched to rise. If it’s Doctor Lenoir, tell him his last purge brought forth nothing but green bile, and my gout is worse than ever.” Aunt Pauline lay, moaning, her body like a mound of cushions beneath the bedclothes, the sheets turned back from her bad foot, for she could bear nothing touching it when the attacks were on her like this. On these occasions, her massive, carved canopied bed became, to use her phrase, a “temple of suffering,” and she would call for the doctor, the last rites, and announce that “soon it would be all over—don’t forget the little ivory box on the mantel, I especially want it to be yours.” Then, of course, company, fuss, and purgation would make her better, and she would rise grandly, order her long-suffering maid to dress her in her finest, and say, “All the while I lay in my bed of pain, I kept remembering that splendid little Italian velvet I saw in that little shop in the Palais. Don’t you think it would make a lovely hood? Let’s go and see if it’s still there. My recovery is a miracle, a miracle, I say—I need to go to the cathedral and give thanks to God—a new hood would be the very thing—out of respect, you know. Perhaps a silk lining in sky blue—” and the crisis was over.

But this time it wasn’t the doctor. On the threshold stood someone entirely unexpected, his hard, lined face in sagging folds, his beard and hair in disarray, his gown splashed at the hem with stinking Paris mud, testifying to his rapid trip across town.

“Tell Doctor Lenoir that I need another eternal pill; my maid has failed to recover the last from the chamber pot, and I am devastated. The lead in pills these days is such poor quality I’m sure a new one won’t work as well. My mother left it to me in her will.” Auntie’s voice came floating out of the bedroom.

“It’s not the doctor,
ma
tante
,” I called, “—it’s Nicolas’s father.”

“Tell him he’s not welcome in my house,” came the response. “He has failed me utterly, and I no longer wish to speak to him.”

“Demoiselle, I beg you, has my son been here?”

“Not since you locked him up. The last I saw of him was when he went to ask your permission to marry me—and never returned. Then when he came to the baths to say farewell before going into exile, you locked him up again, and gave out to the world that you were sending him away to keep him out of my clutches. Monsieur Montvert, you are a bad man who has trumpeted to the four corners of the earth that I am a courtesan who seduced your son to entrap him into marriage. You have spoiled my reputation, and I must bid you farewell, as my aunt desires.”

“Your rep—” He began to turn quite red in the face, then checked himself. “Demoiselle, you are the only one to whom I can turn. Nicolas has escaped, and it is the day appointed for the duello you caused at the bath. I am sure he plans to meet d’Estouville this forenoon outside the walls, where he will either be slaughtered like a calf or arrested and executed. The very least you can do, since it is all your fault, is to plead with him to stop this deadly so-called affair of honor. Malicious as you are, surely you do not want him to die.”

He’s out, and didn’t even send me notice? I thought. He doesn’t love me anymore. Auntie was wrong. The old ladies were wrong. He’s forgotten me. And it’s all his father’s doing. I felt my heart crack at the thought of it. He’d won, that cruel, selfish old man. But I was determined not to show a thing in front of him.

“If he’s gone, how do you know he’s meeting d’Estouville?”

“Because he took nothing with him but his sword, cloak, and poniard. His money, everything else—remained in his room. Demoiselle, he will not listen to me, but perhaps if you beg him, you will have influence—”

“Why should I, an Artaud of La Roque, ask a man to play the coward? Honor is everything, and without it, life is valueless. Sir, you shame yourself in asking such a thing.”

“You needn’t be so snobbish about it. I’d think you, of all people, would know the value of a little accommodation to these so-called rules of honor. My boy’s only a student, he has no experience, and he can be executed if the authorities find out about this duel. D’Estouville is not only high enough in rank to escape the law, he’s celebrated for having killed a dozen men in duels. What is my son’s life to a man like that except to boast that he has killed number thirteen? He’ll spit him like a roast, and I have only one son left. One, do you understand? And he’s my dearest treasure. If he ever learned anything useful, he’d really make something of himself—something better than worm food.”

“The
value
—? I? What do you take me for? My reputation was as white as a lily until you besmirched it with your nasty behavior—and now you’ve succeeded at last in poisoning my Nicolas’s heart.”

“Besmirch? You lure my boy into a public stew, where is he set upon by your lover, who challenges him to a duel that will kill him? And for what? So you may be known as a woman for whom men have died? Are you going to make a poem about it, so that your lovers can sing it at court?”