by Jamie Carie
Alone.
The memory pained him like a stab in his belly, so that he bent toward the table and the prism. He lifted the triangular glass object toward the beam of light with shaking fingers. He held it steady though. He would stop living before letting this prize shatter on the floor into a hundred useless pieces. His life would not look like that ever again, so help him . . . please, God.
He looked down at the floor. He was standing in one of hundreds of rooms in a crumbling castle. It was a place so large, and in its time, so foreboding, that no army could stand against it. He saw a rusty stain on the floor. He’d heard his ancestral history told to him like a bedtime story. The castle was built in medieval times. It had watched, from this southern border of strength and impregnability, the crushing of the Cathers, a religious sect against the Catholic Church. It had seen the glory of standing firm during the Crusades, thus this floor bore the blood stains of horror stories—stories of the Cathers, the Crusades, the great Trenceval family. And now him.
Up . . . up . . . through the dust motes, through the darkness, to that one place of light. There. Just there. He held the prism steady as it met the beam of light. But it wasn’t right. Something was not quite right. The beam was too wide, there was too much light in the room. Christophé held the prism at different angles and variations, but all that showed through was a wash of shadows.
He fell into a nearby chair, frowning, holding the prism in his palms. He stared at it, pondering the mathematical equations springing to his mind. Leaping up, he took up a dry quill, cursed at it, then rummaged around for some ink. Dipping the pen, he scribbled down the numbers swirling in his mind. It always amazed him. This language of time and space and distance and matter. The language of numbers. That it could be put to pen and ink spoke of God. And it could. Somehow, he always knew just what the dripping black point should say. He sighed heavily, his hair hanging in his eyes, his mouth pursed, his jaw clenched until he had the full of his thoughts written out.
But he had to prove those thoughts through experiments. Like Newton and the scientific papers from England that he had studied over and over at school. Mathematics were only numbers until they could prove something by sight or sound, touch or smell, taste or even hunch.
He reared back and stared at his calculations. He’d learned all that the university could teach him of mathematics in one year. He’d studied geometry and the newer calculus until his eyes were blurry. He knew what he wrote on paper was sound. Now was the time for experiments. He looked at the calculations again and grinned and then frowned in the next moment. It was impossible. No one would believe him. If what he’d just written—and Newton’s experiment—was true, he could place a second prism some distance away and realign the colors.
White light . . . becoming color . . . back to white light. It was white light that held all the colors, not black as they’d thought.
His mind reeled with the implications. A sudden thought struck him as a blow. He breathed through his nostrils with the vision of it. What if God was like light? Pure and white. And what if man was the splitting into a myriad of colors? And then in the realignment with God, they became pure again.
“But how?” he asked aloud, rising suddenly, scattering the dust motes to pace in the echoing room. “How might we become pure and white again?”
He reeled in his agitation, bumped a table and fell. His head knocked against the sharp edge of a wood table. Dazed, he sat up, bracing his hands against the cold, stone floor. Something warm ran down his temple and cheek.
He lifted his hand to the spot, felt the oozing. When he pulled back his hand, it shone with blood.
He stared at the smear on his finger.
Red.
The color of sacrifice.
He rose, looked down at his disheveled dress—his shirt hanging open, his breeches and bare feet. He rushed to the room where he kept his few belongings, threw on clothes, and tied his cravat haphazardly. He shoved his feet into shoes that were worn and tattered from the long walk to this ancient, southern place next to the Pyrenees Mountains. Carcassonne.
He rushed from the crumbling, old castle, where no one dared live for fear the roof would cave in on them in their sleep. His cracked shoes sprang over the bridge to the other side of the Aude River, where civilization flourished—the real living people. Not the ghosts who haunted him.
The actual village frightened him in the full light of morning. Someone might see him, recognize him as the shabby aristocrat he was, and tell the Republic’s patrols that roamed to and fro across the land. He pulled his long, dark cape closer, hid his face deeper in the folds of the hood, and kept his eyes downcast.
His steps turned toward the noise of town—the marketplace. The woman’s face from the cemetery yesterday morning rose before his mind’s eye. He would like to see her face in the full light of the day, to drink it in for a few shadowed moments . . .
His eyes widened at the thought. No. His hiding place and careful routine, these were all he had. He must remember that.
He turned into the busy street of the city market. There were many booths on each side, selling food of all kinds and tapestries and cloth and anything a man confined to an ancient relative’s castle might need. But all he could smell was bread.
When had he last eaten? He couldn’t recall. Yeasty warm scents led his footsteps deeper into the street, deeper than he’d meant to go. He lifted his chin, the protective hood deep around his face, following his nose. There.
He opened his eyes and saw her.
The impact of her face made him want to shrink back, recoil from such beauty. This world, the world they lived in, didn’t deserve her. Her beauty might break all their hearts—certainly his heart—but he didn’t turn away. He stood and stared. Soaking in the creamy skin reflected by morning’s light. Her eyes were an unusual shade of green, wide and bright with dark, highly arched brows. Her features were perfectly symmetrical, an equal equation. Dark curls lay on either side of the lush display like a frame. She was smiling at a customer. A man.
Before he knew what he was doing he stepped forward, shouldering the man from her view and snatching up a round, still-steaming loaf.
“Oh!”
It was such a feminine squeak of both surprise and then something else—gladness, maybe?—that he pressed his lips together and could only stare at her from his hood. “I need bread.” Ah. That was so wrong!
A gentle smile made her face glow in the morning’s light. It lit so, on her face and in his heart, that sudden equations sprang into his mind. Like the sun. When it ruled the planets. Like rotations. Beauty turning over. Like starlight forever shining. But he could only pull deeper within the cloak and nod as she handed him the steaming loaf.
He reached into his pocket, then stilled. He’d not thought to bring money. He thrust the loaf back toward her, turning away.
“Wait.”
Her voice was like the power of sound . . . wave after wave after wave . . . resounding in his chest and in his heart. The sound of his own heartbeat roared in his ears.
She held it out to him, leaning in. Her breath fanned across his cheek, sending him reeling back a step or two, clutching the loaf like some gift from heaven.
He looked down at the present thrust into his hands. Regaining his voice, he spoke low, leaning toward her. “My thanks.”
It was all he could manage. He didn’t know if she heard the low words but didn’t turn back. As his footsteps rang over the old stone bridge back to his crumbling castle, he found something inside him that hadn’t been present in a very long time.
Hope.
Chapter Five
1789—Paris, France
Jasper pulled Christophé from the middle of the deafending mob to a side street and supported the young man as they half-walked, half-ran from the ghastly scene. Christophé’s body shook uncontrollably within his grasp. Jasper saw the silent tears on Christophé’s cheeks and felt his own heart break with a thunderous crash. How could
this have happened?
Jasper had never married, had no children of his own, and had never grieved a loss. His father, an alchemist with a small shop in one of Paris’s business districts, had died several years ago—leaving Jasper his trade, his shop, and all his knowledge. The shop’s steady clientele believed their concoctions could cure everything from stomachaches to the plague. He did particularly well when some pestilence struck the city. He was an old man, but happy in his solitude. He had his laboratory, his experiments and books, and the cryptic recipes he reworked and refined. He was content—until the day a ten-year-old boy ran into him, knocking them both down.
Now, as he looked down on the man that boy had become, intense gratitude swelled within. He didn’t have much faith in God, had never really needed Him, but even he recognized that it was the hand of fate that brought him and young Christophé together that windy day on a kite’s tail. Without the boy, he would have never known the joy of having a child—nor the sorrow. After all they’d witnessed this terrible day, his heart lay broken and heavy, but he knew that was nothing compared with what Christophé must be feeling.
“Come now. Almost there.”
Christophé had stopped shaking and was walking beside him, stiff, stilted . . . like the dead upright. Jasper reached his door, fumbled for the key, and ushered the young man inside. “Come, sit by the fire,” he ordered his friend in a voice meant to soothe.
Christophé obeyed, collapsed on the floor in front of the small flames, and held out his hands. When he appeared to begin studying the back of one hand in a lost way, Jasper set into motion. He quickly poured Christophé a cup of two-day-old tea, then rummaged around the cupboard until he found a loaf of bread and a crock of butter, setting them side by side on the plate. He sliced the bread into hearty slices then brought the refreshments over to Christophé. He sat the tray down next to the young man with a clatter. The noise had Christophé turning and finally noticing that Jasper was in the room with him. “Here,” Jasper held out the glass. “Drink this.”
Christophé turned his head away from the offerings.
“If you don’t drink it and eat a little, I shall make you a sleeping draught.” He might do that anyway, but he wasn’t going to say it yet. Let the youth get something warm in his belly and then Jasper would see what had to be done next.
Christophé looked up, a little light of humor sparked in his eyes, then extinguished as quickly as it came. He took up the cup and gulped at it. He coughed a little, looking up at Jasper with an angry blaze. “That’s horrible! Are you trying to kill me?”
Jasper offered a grim smile. “No. Trying to save you.”
Hurt and confusion darkened Christophé’s wide eyes. “What do I do? What do I do now?”
Jasper shook his head and stared into the fire. “You can start by not blaming yourself.” He knew it was too soon to be saying such things, but he couldn’t help it. Clearly Christophé thought he had brought this on Émilie by sending her to Jasper’s door alone.
Christophé’s laugh was a harsh cry in the room. “How can I not? When I am alive and she is dead?” He downed the rest of the cup and set it heavily at his side. “It should have been me.”
Jasper’s eyes filled with tears as they locked onto Christophé’s. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried, if ever. Life was so ordered for him. So immersed in compounds and powders and elixirs. His patrons might have problems that they needed solved, but he rarely did.
“Possibly.” Arguing would only upset his young friend more. “But don’t forget the true enemy, son. You did not do this to your family. It was done to you.”
Jasper was of the trade class and should be on the other side. Truly he had wondered what was wrong with him that he felt such antipathy toward the Republic and despair over the recklessness of the Crown. He had little patience for politics. He could only credit the fact to his immersion in his own world, and how he had never lacked for anything he wanted.
“Yes. Robespierre.” Christophé brought him back to the topic at hand. “Robespierre will pay for this day.” Christophé’s eyes sparked again, but this time they burned with fire. “I will escape, hide until they are tired of hunting me. And then, when they’ve given up, I will return and see justice done.”
Jasper wasn’t sure what he had just unleashed, but for now, it was better than the debilitating grief. Against his better judgment, he nodded. “I will help you leave Paris. You will go to Carcassonne, yes? To the old castle your father told you about. It should be safe there.”
Christophé rose and poured another cup of the cold tea. He slung the drink into his throat. “I will sleep now. Tomorrow we will plan it all.”
Jasper led Christophé to the spare room where his father had slept. He tucked him into the covers like a child, watched as Christophé pulled the blanket chin high and turned on his side. When Christophé closed his eyes, Jasper turned to leave, but Christophé’s hand shot out to grasp his coat. “Thank you.”
Jasper ruffled the young man’s hair as he might have years ago when Christophé impressed him in the laboratory, which was quite often. “Sleep now.”
Christophé let go, his arm falling to the side of the bed. “Yes. For a little while.”
THE MORNING LIGHT intruded into the room. It was harsh, and Christophé couldn’t remember, at first, why he didn’t want it to come. Then, sudden and complete, the previous day’s events rushed over him like a death chill.
Émilie! His mind screamed her name. Why God? Why not leave me her? I don’t understand. I can’t move . . . out of this bed. How to make his limbs work? How to make his heart slow to any normalcy? Why did You leave me here? It should have been me.
He wanted heaven to answer him. His muscles grew taut against the crisp sheet as he waited. Nothing. Nothing. So much nothing.
Angry, he swung his feet to the floor and stood, his bare chest heaving in the cold air of the room. “Is that all You have for me?” In the continued silence, Christophé turned away and swung his fist into the thin air. “Fine then. Thy will be done.” That was the first time he said the phrase, and it was filled with all the pain and hurt and rage that he could muster.
Stretching his tired muscles, which felt like they hadn’t any rest or sleep, he reached to the ceiling and then out to the side. He looked at his arms stretched wide. His muscles bulged and flexed as he tested his physical strength. He raised his forearms at a ninety degree angle and bulged out his biceps. He looked down at his chest, saw the muscles swell as he took a deep breath and flexed them. He looked down at his lean belly and chuckled. He was young. He was strong. Maybe he didn’t need God and His will.
Maybe he should abandon his faith—little good it had done him—and trust in his own strength. He laughed, knowing his thoughts were foolishness, but feeling a rise of power into his throat. Walking over, he grasped the molding at the top of the door, set his fingers in the groove of the wood, and lifted his body until his chin touched the doorframe. He did this again and again and again, the air from his lungs becoming great whooshes. He did twenty, then thirty, then fifty.
“Exercise is healthy for the mind.”
At Jasper’s wry voice, he glanced over his shoulder.
“Come. Have some breakfast.”
Christophé dropped to his feet. “I’m not leaving today.”
“No?”
“No.”
Jasper stared at him for a long minute and then smiled. “Very well then. Perhaps you can assist me with a problem I am having.”
Christophé grinned, rubbing his stomach. “Some food first. I have a feeling any problem of yours will require an astute mind.”
Jasper waved him into the kitchen. “Only a study of Pascal’s—some unknown bacteria and the wherewithal to destroy it without killing the good cells. But come, I’ve made you oatmeal.”
As they sat across from each other, Christophé told Jasper his plan. “I can’t leave yet. Not while Émilie’s final resting place is yet unknown.
I have to know where they buried my family before I can leave Paris. I have to pay my last respects.” He looked at Jasper, his lips pressed together in a thin line, then voiced his fear. “I don’t want to put you in danger. Robespierre is looking for me. If he finds me here . . . you will go to prison, at the very least.”
Jasper stared back into Christophé’s eyes, equally hard. “You have always been welcome in my home.” The old man paused and looked down into his own lap. His voice was low as he revealed the hidden parts of his heart. “You are as close to a son as I will ever have. So never again question my love for you.”
Christophé nodded once, then looked down at his bowl and shoved a big spoonful of oatmeal into his mouth so that he wouldn’t have to reply. He nearly choked on the giant mouthful, then grabbed his cup and gulped a quick drink of water to help him swallow.
After breakfast the two men entered the sanctuary of the laboratory. It was just a room. A room filled with beakers and books and powders and potions. Jasper kept methodical records of all his experiments, all the concoctions he had invented or improved upon were carefully recorded, sometimes in a secret code that Christophé had helped invent. Christophé’s interest had veered from alchemy but he respected it more as an art form.
“Here. Come look at this.”
For a moment, being in this place he had loved so as a child, hearing the voice that had led him into the wonders of alchemy and science . . . Christophé was ten years old again. Life was full of promise, not destruction. Life surrounded him.
Death did not exist.
He moved to stand beside Jasper, and they bent their heads, his dark and the other gray, over the latest recipe, which looked more like artistic symbols than text. The familiar symbols filled his mind, drawing his heart and spirit away from terror, into the light of reason.
And there, at his mentor’s side, cocooned by symbols and numbers, Christophé was, for a little while, at peace.
