Divah

by Susannah Appelbaum

The head bounded along, unconcerned with corners or the few steps we encountered. Soon, we had come to a small iron-hashed door, a little peephole looking out into the night. I yanked it open and we were free.

  67

  Did I say free, Itzy? For I was anything but. There was no sign of Marie, but pikes and iron spikes were everywhere, many with human heads atop. The revolution had begun.

  “Don’t look.” I cradled Nicolas.

  In the clear dark air, I shuddered. All this suffering, for naught.

  In my misery, I heard the sound of footfalls coming from the small wooden bridge. Shining René’s staff, my heart soared. It was the queen’s minion, the doctor, and while I saw no sign of the queen, what I did see quickened my step. Beneath his arm was an unmistakable plume, dancing, teasing the night air.

  “My feather!” I cried.

  The battle was now pouring from Notre Dame. Shrieks and cries were sounding as panic spread, people trying to escape the monstrous creatures from the vaults, rushing to their freedom only to be met by armed and angry peasants at the building’s front entrance.

  There was traffic in the Seine—no doubt the queen would make for her bateau. But as I rushed to the quay, there was nothing moored beneath me. Brackish water swirled in melancholy whirlpools.

  I spied an overloaded hay barge approaching from the west, its load high and heavy. It drew near the Petit Pont, low in the water. Its captain, a man with a nicotine-stained beard and a burlap hat, was shouting something to a few men with long oars and poles who were using them to navigate the approach to the low-slung bridge.

  Upon this very bridge the doctor ran, dragging his wounded leg behind him, oblivious to the oncoming barge. He had lost his pitchfork in the fight and was hobbling along angrily without it. On the far side of the old wooden bridge were a set of gates, the very ones I had come through at dusk. But the gendarmes stationed there had abandoned their posts when the cursed bells rang, gathering what weapons they could carry and running home to their families. They had left in fear and locked and barred the doors. The doctor howled at the iron grate, pounding upon it with a clenched fist.

  The barge, laden with hay, was swiftly approaching the small wooden bridge, and as it did the shouts increased from the ship’s deck. The captain was gesturing wildly at the height of his load, and a few of his men scrambled atop the unsteady pile to let loose armloads so they might pass beneath.

  Hay was everywhere, in the air, clogging the narrow section of the Seine, drifting by with the clean pleasant scent of pasture. Nicolas sneezed. “Bless you,” I said.

  The bridge was all that lay between me and my feather. The doctor was cornered.

  “Shall we?” I asked Nicolas, ambling over to the Petit Pont.

  A fiery woodwose streaked by us. The queen’s wildman was burning, his hunched figure engulfed in oranges and reds, and as I watched languidly, he bounded over the stone wall and made to jump into the cooling river. Flailing through the air to save himself, he succeeded only in landing on the hay barge.

  Nicolas didn’t say anything—he didn’t need to.

  “Stupid, foul creatures,” I cursed. “Now he wants a bath?”

  The hay ignited in a whooshing gulp.

  The captain and his fellow sailors jumped ship, bobbing in the oily water beside the inferno, swearing with raised fists. With no one to man the barge, it sped forward with the current, ambling toward the low bridge, and we had naught to do but watch.

  The hay lit up the night sky, raining fiery wisps and black stalks down upon the quay. It was the purest tinder, the driest of kindling, in hindsight—a boat meant for burning. A boat of ash. I could just see the scorched silhouette of the woodwose as he became one with the roaring fireball. With a sickening thud, the barge made its way beneath the bridge, wedging itself aflame beneath its low wooden supports. The doomed bridge caught flame.

  I tried to restrain Nicolas. He lurched about in my arms like a greased ostrich egg. Finally, he sunk his teeth into my thumb, and, cursing, I dropped him. The last I saw of him, he was making his way over the Petit Pont, bobbing and bouncing, a silhouette of wispy hair and withered skin, bounding forward gallantly. That was the last, too, I saw of my feather—reds and yellows of the flames reflected in its glossy plumes. The doctor and the feather were gone, seemingly vanished into thin air.

  It was a noble gesture, the gesture of a true friend.

  I looked on as the scorching flames closed in on Nicolas. I could have saved him—but for one thing.

  Itzy, I had no wings.

  68

  Charred ribs and a few floating, fiery stalks of hay were all that remained of the marriage of the Petit Pont and the barge. It was not a moment for me to appreciate irony, Itzy, yet I do so now. Fire transforms everything.

  The captain’s burlap hat was floating idly, but I saw no signs of its owner. I stared blankly at the swirling eddies of the Seine and felt a slight wind upon my neck.

  “René’s gone,” I said.

  “I know.” I felt Maurice’s hand on my shoulder. It tingled.

  “My feather is, too. All this was for naught.”

  “We will turn Paris upside down for your feather.”

  “You won’t find it,” I said. “She will never let me go.”

  We heard shouts and the sounds of gunpowder.

  “The peasants are coming—best be gone,” said Maurice.

  “I do not think I care for peasants. For France. For anything.”

  Maurice took my head in his hands. “We are winning, Luc.”

  “Is this what winning feels like?”

  “Come—” He looked over his shoulder more urgently. “I will carry you home.”

  And he did, Itzy. He gathered me in his arms like a babe, and cradling me, he rose up, hovering over the smoldering Seine. I saw the streets as I hadn’t seen them in years; I saw them as I was made to see them—from on high. I saw the raucous gathering of revolutionaries storm the cathedral, fearing not the giant’s roar that greeted them, nor the flying buttresses snapping like matchsticks in the rear. Their banners waved above them as they piled upon the courtyard, trampling the ring of ash. Some daring ones climbed the very walls of the cathedral, scaling as high as a gargoyle might. They were calling for the queen of France, of course; they were bloodthirsty and tired. Tired and sick of the demon queen from Hell.

  I knew just how they felt.

  Maurice rose still higher, and I saw the sun readying itself implacably upon the eastern horizon. I kicked off my boots, to better leave behind the torturous earth. They fell, one after the other, down to the tiny city below. The City of Lights, some call it. I might call it something else entirely.

  “They won’t find her there,” I said to Maurice. “She’s slunk back to Versailles.”

  “Perhaps not tonight,” he said, a slight smile gracing his sturdy face. “But they’ll get her in the end.”

  69

  They did, of course. But you already know that, Itzy.

  It was a proud day for Sanson, the executioner, who, by then, had perfected his showmanship.

  It was a proud day for Professor Guillotin, too, who I am sad to say would soon follow Her Majesty to the scaffolds and experience his invention firsthand. Being a scholar is dangerous work—and in the end, he succumbed to the dangers of his profession. When his time came with Lady Razor, the blade was so dulled from use that it had to fall twice. By then, though, the guillotine had nearly done its job—16,594 demons had been vanquished in France, sent back to Hell where they belonged, their demon queen along with them. France would remain demon-free for the next several centuries, and demons throughout the Underworld would rue the day they heard the language of love, of all things French.

  The guillotine was not to be my salvation, though. On that, Maurice was wrong.

  “This is not over,” I said, as they brought Marie Antoinette to the scaffolding that day in October 1793.

  She was remarkably poised, in that dress, the color of a th
undercloud.

  Remember that color, I told her wordlessly. They have no clouds in Hell.

  As the blade fell, Gaston leaned in to me. “Taking out the trash,” he said over the exulted crowd.

  Her banishment blew the lid off the city’s catacombs and sent bone dust thick as ash into the air. It settled all around us—an early snow.

  “For René,” I smiled at him weakly.

  “Well—thank god that’s over, lover boy,” Laurent announced, dusting the ghostly film from his waistcoat. “I’ve got a date.”

  “Over?” I repeated, hollowly. “It’s not over. Perhaps for them”—I gestured at the crowd, at those who were destined to die—“it is over.”

  “They will forget,” Maurice sighed. “Humans and history. No matter how much they write it down, they never get it right.”

  “And Luc’s feather?” Gaston asked. My feather had never been found, for all of our searching. Not in Versailles, after the peasants sacked it, not in her palaces in Paris. My feather had simply vanished alongside the doctor.

  It was Maurice who realized it first.

  “She still has it,” he said. “You must call her back. Luc’s right. This is not the end.”

  “Call her back?” I asked, horrified. “I’d rather walk in these shoes for all of eternity.”

  “You remember the last war.”

  “I wasn’t the cause of that one.”

  “Luc, this is no longer about you. We saw what she’s capable of. Besides, Anaïs said.”

  “Anaïs said what?” I asked.

  “To appeal to her vanity. Trick her out of hiding. Bait her. The feather must be retrieved at all costs.”

  “Bait her with what?” I cried. “It is she with my feather, not the other way around!”

  “I dunno,” Laurent drawled, appearing to think. “Another soul? Something irresistible. Ah! Don’t divahs find fledglings particularly juicy?”

  “A fledgling?” Gaston scoffed. “As if.”

  “But we’ve just rid ourselves of her!” I gestured to Sanson as he paraded with the queen’s head. A puppet theater nearby was reenacting the execution with marionettes and a miniature guillotine.

  “Jamais!” I wailed. “Never!”

  “There’s time. Think on it. Laurent’s had the marvelous idea of writing her a few letters. Love letters. He’s even volunteered to do it himself.”

  “How terribly gallant.” I scowled at him.

  “It’ll be my pleasure. I’ll sign them Lover Boy. She shan’t resist them.” Laurent grinned wickedly.

  “Well then,” Maurice said. “It’s decided.”

  I stepped away from my friends and into the rowdy crowd. My eyes, even then, were searching through drifting ash and bone dust for my feather. Lover boy, Laurent’s taunt echoing through my mind.

  They were selling trinkets the day she died.

  “How much?” I asked, pointing.

  “One livre,” the boy said. I tossed him the coin. The boy looked astonished—he had expected to haggle.

  I brought the lock of her silver hair close to my face. It smelled of roses and dungeons. I snaked it through my fingers and lifted it to my nose.

  What could have possessed me?

  PART III

  HELL HOTEL

  Gates from gristle and hides for hinges

  Gates from thew and bones for bolts

  Gates from sinew and teeth for keys

  70

  Itzy gasped awake. She saw blue—blue sky filled her vision. Was she flying? Where, then, were the clouds? Luc loves clouds, she thought dreamily. I love Luc, and Luc loves clouds. She, too, would love clouds, for Luc. She blinked and the color flattened out, dulling, and she recognized it finally as the blue of the wallpaper and the faded ceiling of her room at the Carlyle. Beside her, there he was. Gorgeous. But dark circles beneath his eyes made him look gaunt and worried.

  “They call you lover boy?” she rasped. “That’s rich.”

  A book in his lap clattered to the floor as he looked up at her.

  “Itzy?” Luc asked, wide-eyed with relief. “How—how do you feel?”

  “Like Hell.”

  “No wonder. You’ve been very sick. A bad fever.”

  Itzy blinked, looking at Luc’s chair beside her bed. “You stayed with me.” Her insides lit up. She resisted the temptation to touch his messy hair. Several days’ stubble made his chin irresistible.

  “Yes.” His eyes crinkled around the corners when he looked at her.

  I can’t believe they make them this good, she thought.

  “I had the strangest dream.” She rubbed her eyes, and the room went dim and wobbly.

  “In dreams begin responsibilities.”

  She stopped rubbing her eyes and the room came back into focus. Itzy sat up, suddenly panicked. “The doctor—” She looked at Luc with wide eyes. “He shot me with something, I remember, before it all went black!”

  “It was a cocktail of several antibiotics, I believe.”

  “You’re sure?” She frowned at him skeptically. “Not Botox?”

  Luc smiled. “You’re a little young, Itzy.”

  She glared at him.

  Luc sighed. “The doctor has a vested interest in seeing you alive, Itzy. You were very sick, remember? Your fever—while necessary—was dangerously high.”

  “How high?”

  “I stopped measuring it at 106. Then the ice baths began.”

  “Ice baths?” Itzy looked down. She was in an unfamiliar white nightgown, soft as silk. “Who—who gave me these ice baths?” And this nightgown?

  “I did.” Luc looked offended. “Pippa helped.”

  Itzy was suddenly at a loss for words. The image of perfect Pippa and Luc holding hands over her while she floated naked in a claw-foot tub came to her—little ice cubes clinking against the porcelain, bobbing beneath her chin, her armpits, her legs. The thought was mortifying.

  “You were dressed,” Luc explained, reading her expression correctly.

  “Oh.”

  “The good news is that a high fever like yours is a rite of passage.”

  “Rite of passage? What sort of passage?”

  “You’ll soon see.” His eyes sparkled and her insides melted.

  He looks so damn gorgeou—

  Something clicked inside her head.

  “I know your voice now, Luc—where I’ve heard it before.”

  Luc smiled at her, his eyes softening, the amber color looking so deep it could grab her up like any old insect and trap her alongside the rest of them.

  “It was you, in Brittany. At the cottage, that awful night. The guest who stayed too long, talked deep into the night.” One of the guests had lingered, and their lilting conversation punctuated her sleep. Her parents had seemed eager for the man to go, but he kept pouring himself wine.

  Luc was silent, but his eyes grew sharp.

  “My parents were tired, but too polite to ask you to leave.”

  “I tried to warn them, Itzy, I tried to warn your parents. Your Aunt Maude was the only one who would listen. There was an attack coming, and I was there to deflect it. I knew the Divah, you see. I knew she would never give up.”

  Itzy struggled to remember. Her head was still fuzzy and the space behind her eyes ached. There was an attack, Itzy thought. Her mother had hidden her in a box for firewood by the old stone hearth and never came back. The smell of ash and sulfur returned to her and she felt a wave of nausea rise.

  “Here—” Luc was close, a glass in his hands. She could smell him—that old library, deep-knowledge smell. “Drink this.”

  It was water, a crescent of lemon floating in it. He was closer then, and her heart beat so loudly she wondered if he’d hear it. She struggled to sit up.

  “Well, you failed then, Luc. Because that night was the last night I ever saw my mother,” Itzy said, her eyes plainly disobeying her and tearing up.

  “It’s true; no one’s seen Anaïs since that night in Brittany.” Luc’s voice
was sad. “She left soon after I arrived, hoping to find help. Your aunt, she stayed up with your father while we waited, keeping vigil. Maude hid you with ashes when I commanded it. Ashes are a shield, Itzy. Maude saw the danger. She knew what you were. She protected you, Itzy. Your whole life she protected you.”

  “Hardly.” Itzy wiped her tears away with a sleeve angrily, and Luc produced a folded silk square, which he handed her.

  “Do you know why your mother named you Itzy?”

  She shook her head; her neck felt stiff.

  “Because you were just a tiny thing—against such great forces.” His voice was gentle. “I did not fail that night in Brittany, Itzy.”

  Itzy snorted. She had meant it to sound more delicate, but she needed to blow her nose.

  “I was there that night to save you.”

  71

  The window was open against the stuffiness of her sickroom, and this amplified the noise that had begun from outside. It sounded to Itzy as though a bird might be trapped, a pigeon perhaps, for something was making an awful racket against the bricks, and it was coming closer. Something big.

  “As I was saying, fever is good. Fever sharpens your ability to see.”

  “To see what?”

  “The truth, Itzy.”

  To Itzy’s great surprise, a man appeared in the window, a young man about Luc’s age. First his legs, and then the rest of him, until finally he stepped upon her window ledge, and Itzy saw the young man had a pair of wings upon his back, sturdy and flecked with copper, like those of a large sparrow, and tawny-colored skin. At the joints, the talons sparkled like a new penny.

  “Et bien. Enfin!” he said, lifting the window higher.

  “Gaston, that was quite a racket. Maurice would say you’re losing your touch.”

  “Tell me about it. That was the fifth airshaft I’ve been down. Oh—the things I’ve seen here at the Carlyle. My eyes will not soon recover.” He grinned mischievously. “Salut.”

  Gaston nodded at Itzy. She grinned shyly back. He was tall and lanky, quick to smile. His nose appeared to have been broken at one time, and his face was somehow better off for it.