“Norell?” he asked, recognizing the designer.
She blinked and then smiled widely.
“Why, yes. One must look to Hollywood now that Germany has ruined French haute couture. And I feel so patriotic when I do my part for conservation. Why, there is barely a yard and a half of fabric in the whole thing.”
Remus let his eyes compliment her for a moment longer and then forced them away.
How was it possible, he wondered, to have a body like that and not use it for immoral purposes? He knew that he couldn’t have resisted using it for self-advancement had it been his.
Remus felt a frown pull at his mouth. At that moment, he would have welcomed the conviction that she was one of those women who misused their beauty, but in his heart he was convinced otherwise. Thomasina might occasionally flirt with evil in the form of men, but she didn’t routinely embrace them.
So why was she working for El Grande?
Though he willed it otherwise, his eyes flicked back to her once more. Remus admitted that he liked her hair, too. The color was rich and vibrant. It had the same power that had invested Samson’s hair—only her hair affected other men’s strength and not her own. And she was merciful in her power; otherwise, she would probably never have put it up.
Annoyed at himself for being distracted, he looked away. His eyes searched the room, quickly finding the man they called El Grande. The gentleman was strange. Physically he was tall, very lean, very pale. And he had eyes like midnight in the tropics. His accent was also odd—European, but not Spanish, not French, not Italian.
“Senorita Marsh.” As though sensing the scrutiny, El Grande turned and called to his secretary. “Be pleased to join me and meet La Senora Tarantella.”
Thomasina stiffened slightly, her smile freezing. Remus understood. That black gaze was unnerving even if you didn’t know that this man worked hand in glove with the Nazis who were smuggling treasure out of Europe.
Though not called for, Remus offered his arm to Thomasina and joined the large group around the talkative soprano who was going to perform that afternoon, and waited to be introduced. He did it to help her, and to annoy El Grande, who doubtless felt territorial simply because Thomasina was female and in his employ.
Though Remus had half expected to feel a supernatural chill in the evil man’s presence, there wasn’t a single shiver of apprehension. No sense of threat or danger. All emotions were cloaked.
Remus turned his gaze on the others. He watched with fascination as the diva repeatedly wrung the neck of the peacock whose taxidermied and bejeweled head and neck served as the handle for her enormous ostrich-and-peacock-plumed fan. It had small rubies for eyes that flashed brightly with each of the fan’s sweeps.
With the best of intentions, Remus couldn’t prevent his own eyes glazing over as the diva’s inane and ceaseless chatter continued, and he began to think fondly of the mute foreign women who lived in repressed circumstance that encouraged quiet when their menfolk were near.
Then he noticed Thomasina watching him with a barely repressed smile. He instantly smoothed out his contracted brow and made his face agreeable.
“Miss Marsh,” he said, stepping firmly into the flow of babble and letting it eddy around him. He didn’t raise his voice, but he didn’t bother to whisper either. “You look pale. I think you need to come over to the window at once and find some fresh air.”
In point of fact, she was in the bloom of high health, but she did her best to look suddenly wan. He offered his arm again, and she took it immediately. They did a neat about-face and strolled for the French doors. The weight of El Grande’s stare followed them the whole way, and it seemed they could smell faint whiffs of sulfur in the air. It was a relief to slip behind the screen of a potted windmill palm.
“Thank you, Mr. Maxwell. I do feel a bit closed in,” she said for the benefit of the few people who might be listening. “I am not yet accustomed to the heat of this region.”
“Really, it’s the least I could do,” Remus assured her with a charming smile that helped hide the fact that the least was almost always what he did for other people.
“I think the burning question is whether we stop at the window or just keep going,” Thomasina answered, her voice carefully lowered now that they were alone. “The concert is about to start. Finally.”
“I’d rather be drenched in cheap whiskey and set afire than sit through it,” he said sincerely, but with a small grin that didn’t belong to the original Remus Maxwell. “And please don’t bother telling me that you want to hear her either.”
“As it happens, I have some whiskey—good whiskey—back at the villa. I mention this just in case you are bent on self-immolation.”
He looked at her carefully. Her eyes were clear, innocent even, at least of any intent to lure him into danger. The offer was tempting, but it was not one that Remus Maxwell would have accepted.
“I’d never waste good whiskey that way. As it happens, they have an excellent whiskey at my hotel—which is closer. There are also some very comfortable chaise lounges near the pool that seem to be calling to me.” His eyes were also clear, though very dark.
“Calling all the way from the hotel? It’s the heat. You’re hallucinating.” Thomasina looked around and then added more seriously: “Do you think we’ll be missed if we slip out this door?”
They looked back at the crowd taking seats around the piano. The diva was fanning herself vigorously and still chattering. El Grande seemed to have disappeared.
“I’d say it’s doubtful. They seem mesmerized by the remains of that dead bird she’s carrying. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Her voice could strip paint. There are limits to what I will endure without pay.” He added truthfully: “Or even with.”
Thomasina gave a small laugh that she turned into a cough and looked at him reproachfully.
“No more of that until we’ve escaped,” she scolded.
Remus found himself smiling again. There was something about this woman that fascinated him.
“Agreed, no more until we’ve escaped.”
Alex closed his notebook. He found that his hands were shaking. Thomasina, I’m so sorry, my love. I didn’t know what that small act of defiance would cost you.
It had cost Dr. Travers too. That kindly old man had also ended up dead, murdered by Saint Germain’s cruel hands.
“More champagne, Mr. Dumas?” the flight attendant asked. Her pale blue glow identified her more than her face or hair.
Alex smiled at her without really seeing her face. He held out his glass as he nodded, and prayed to the God he had so long shunned that he really was prepared to meet his enemy again. Perhaps if he triumphed this time, all would be made right. He didn’t know what he would do if he was confronted by Thomasina’s ghost on the battlefield and found no forgiveness there.
CHAPTER FIVE
June 9: I read in a legitimist newspaper that I had been caught, weapons in hand in the Saint-Merri cloisters court-martialed in the night, and shot at three o’clock in the morning. The news had such an official tone, the narrative of my execution—which, it was reported, I accepted with great courage—was so detailed; the information came from such a good source, that I had a moment of doubt. I threw off my blanket, jumped out of bed, and ran to my mirror to prove to myself my own existence.
—Dumas’s diary (from Impressions de Voyage)
Thank God no acts of cannibalism have been reported, but, in future, when dramas of fifteen scenes, preceded by a prologue and finished with an epilogue, it should state clearly on the handbill that a succession of meals will be provided.
—Theophile Gautier (in a review of Dumas père’s La Reine Margot that ran over nine hours)
It hadn’t been his intention, but on the last leg of the journey, Alex found himself trying to get a grasp on the ever more elusive narrative by actually telling part of the Casablanca story from Thomasina’s point of view. It was pure fiction, of course, because he had never in point of fact read her mind, but he thou
ght he knew her well enough that it was not too great an impertinence to write for her. Besides, though painful, there was no one else now who knew the tale, and it deserved to be heard.
“Wish me well, chérie,” he said softly to the gentle ghost who still haunted his memory all these years on, and then began to write.
She was attracted to Remus Maxwell, and it felt a bit like Christmas Eve whenever he was near. Of course, that was the problem.
As a child, she had loved Christmas, but as she had gotten older, the feeling had changed. She still felt the anticipation—the heated curiosity about what gifts she might receive from her scholarly parent. Or which foreign visitors would come to call with unusual treats in their pockets, and whether Mrs. Barkley’s traditional plum pudding would be a culinary triumph. But along with that exhilaration came a sort of melancholy, a realization that the pudding—great or terrible—would soon be devoured, that the visitors from faraway places would soon go back to their faraway home, the gifts would be opened and their secrets—usually so mundane and practical—would be known.
The anticipation only rarely proved worth the letdown that followed. It seemed wisest, both then and now, to reserve her feelings. This was especially true where men were concerned.
But she was so moody these days and disinclined to take her own sensible advice. It seemed as if she was pulled this way and that by the sun and the moon and the orbit of things closer and less celestial—like Remus Maxwell.
Thomasina raised her wrist to her face and inhaled. She liked the perfume he had given her. It was very different, a custom blend that he had ordered for her birthday. She hadn’t worn scent for a few years. The modern perfume aesthetic was so confusing. The Americans—what few there were in her own country—were making scents that were overpowering.
She giggled suddenly. Remus had said that they were like Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon, scents that seemed to belong on giant, hairychested men and Valkyrié-like women. The English were better, but still doing the same old pale toilette waters, diluted lilacs and roses, the castoffs from a flooded garden. Perfumes for men and women alike that smelled as if they belonged on fops and blue-blooded hemophiliacs. And then there were the French. Their scents were—what had Remus called it? An indigestion of smells. Spice and flowers together until you could not separate out any one note and say this is frankincense or this is jasmine. The message they sent was confused. They did not say “I am pretty” or “I am sexy” or “I am independent.” They just said: “I like to smell like something other than myself.” Everywhere it was the same; there was a uniformity to scent, an appeal to the new middle-class masses that had no elegance or individuality whatsoever. An average woman’s taste in every uniform bottle. Scent had become like shoes or a hat, everyone had to have at least one. To fill the need, the perfumeries were producing scent in vats.
There were a few commercial perfumes she liked—Chanel No.5, of course—but in general, it was all very boring. She found the safety of good taste in high doses to be very dull. Remus understood this about her and had made her a perfume that was warm, slightly wicked, and stayed close to her skin.
This was dangerous. This man saw her too clearly. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be with someone who read her thoughts and knew her wishes even before she did. Such a relationship could be dangerous.
Alex closed his notebook softly and resumed breathing. It was difficult to force air past the pain in his chest. He had thought he was strong enough to face this chapter of his life, but now he wasn’t so certain his heart could endure it. Wound it enough and the heart became scar tissue: hard, ugly, unfeeling. He had stopped loving before that happened—around the time of his marriage really—telling himself that in his circumstances it was better to have a lonely heart than an unfeeling one. But Thomasina had been his one exception in the centuries after. He didn’t regret loving her, but he had paid for it every day, every year since. She was the beautiful mistake he had promised himself he would never make again, and he had taken a kind of comfort in the idea that with her death his heart was finally too scarred to ever again feel pain.
But he had been wrong. His heart felt—or at least remembered vividly—what loss was.
“Ah, what was I thinking to start this book?” he asked himself. “The one thing I have learned: Don’t look back. There’s no point. Something from the past is always gaining on you, and you lose time every instant you take your eyes off of the goal to look back at it.”
He really didn’t know if he could go on with the book, even if he altered the characters and moved the setting someplace else. Of course, this did raise the question of what he was going to do about this story that was due in three weeks. Could he write another story in that time?
He supposed that it would all depend on what he found in Mexico.
The plane set down in San Diego. It took some arranging on Millie’s part, but the car rental agency had an older-model jeep waiting for him. This pleased Alex. He had no trouble with things mechanical, only items that were electronic.
There was no difficulty passing over the border into Mexico. He stopped on the other side only to pick up weapons before heading to Lara Vieja. It wasn’t the usual stop for a tourist, but what was the American witticism? He had high friends in low places who wouldn’t ask questions as long as the money was right. For a generous donation to their off-shore accounts—or the shoebox under the bed; he wasn’t certain which—they would not question why a visiting French writer might want to exert some influence of an explosive nature on whatever he was researching. Alex felt at once paranoid to be carrying a shotgun and two pistols, and yet also uncertain that he shouldn’t have asked for larger armaments. If he truly were going to find Saint Germain, could he be certain that a shotgun would do the job?
Alex drove, guns on the seat beside him, keeping his mind blank and quiet so that he wouldn’t miss any whispers from the subconscious.
There were maps in the glove compartment of the jeep; finding the once-drowned town of Lara Vieja that had been mentioned in the newspaper was not difficult. Night was falling when he arrived, mercifully cloaking the brutal countryside in shadow. Already the spring flowers had shriveled in the sun. Living in a city, it was easy to forget that in rural areas the residents still lived as slaves to the seasons. Summer here was dry and hot, and if it rained it flooded. In the distance there was one tiny stream that wriggled like a large black worm caught out by the hostile sun. It would be dead soon unless fed by a summer storm.
To the human eye, there wasn’t much to see. Nothing lived there—nothing. What hadn’t drowned had burned. The reemerged ruins had the smell of Saint Germain about them, though, a kind of rot and brimstone. Saint Germain and something else. Most people would never notice it, but there was a lingering smell of ozone, as though the magic that had opened up the graves of the newly dead for the wizard still lingered in the soil and the air. Alex had been in other places like that. Places where evil had congealed and all living things shunned them. There had been just such a place in Tangier.
Though it was what he had half expected, the confirmation of supernatural forces in the area still alarmed him. The timing of Saint Germain’s reappearance was bad and probably not coincidental. Alex was nearing the time of renewal and not at his strongest. Finding someplace to accomplish a renewal down here might be tricky at this time of year. St. Elmo’s fire didn’t happen just anywhere, and it was the only thing he had found that could help him when age came upon him. Saint Germain probably knew this.
“Merde.”
As the results of his dealings with the Dark Man had begun to fully present themselves, Alex had begun looking for other answers, other solutions to his succession of deaths and fiery rebirths that held pain and old age at bay. Alex’s son had questioned his late-life dealings with somnambulists and magnetic séances, and there had been little that Alex could say to defend his interest except that they were fashionable. Certainly, revealing the truth wasn’t an option, n
ot after his son’s openly expressed horror of Mary Shelley’s book. Alex could never admit to being Frankenstein’s real monster.
Finally, at the start of World War I he thought that he was ready to face his end rather than submit himself to the fire again, but every time he went to end it, there was some sound reason—some worthy cause or person—that held him back from suicide.
Or maybe it was cowardice. It would have been easier to face his end had he matured as a normal man, but when age returned it came swiftly, first to his eyes, then pain quickly accumulated in his joints and chest. Within weeks his shoulders rounded until he had the posture of an old man carrying the weight of the world. Worst of all was the heaviness around the heart. He should die within days of the return of these ailments…but he didn’t. And the longer he lingered, the more he doubted that he could die. Perhaps this was what hell was: physical damnation without relief.
A return of blindness and mental feebleness was not his desire, but neither was this cycle of death and renewal that had forever changed him and set him apart from the rest of mankind, a change that made him hide his unnatural eyes in daylight and dye his skin, first with a tincture of walnut and now with self-tanners so that it remained dark enough to pass for human. Also, his psychic powers grew stronger each time he died, making him feel ever less a part of humanity. Sadly, though he had searched the world over, he had found no answers for his ills in the modern fads and new sciences that spoke of prolonging life. His deal with the devil was left to stand, even though the Dark Man was himself now dead.
Alex sniffed at a handful of dust and then threw it away. He spat, trying to clear the bad taste from his mouth and sinuses.
Of course, Saint Germain had to have the same problem as the rest of the Dark Man’s get. He too had age rushing upon him, which he was obviously trying to deal with in some sick and dangerous—and as yet unidentified—way.
Against his better judgment, Alex stepped into the ruins of the Lara Vieju church where the feeling of evil was strongest. Around him on all sides and arching overhead were the burned ribs of the cathedral. A strong, vile smell inhabited the air, and got worse as he neared the opening to the underground vaults. The vapor that hung there had gorged on fiery death, and recently. It tried to hide underground, but the odor dribbled out, and the sickening smell made him think of Jonah in the belly of the whale.
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