by M. J. Rose
Late one afternoon, I forced myself at least to look at the object of my depression. Removing my scarlet blindfold from its velvet-lined box, I held it for the first time since February.
It wasn’t alive but had always stimulated a life force in me, a low-level humming that I felt deep inside my chest and womb. Oh, I had missed the thrill of that sensation. I hadn’t even realized how much until that dusky hour.
Lifting it to my face, I rubbed its satin smoothness against my cheek. Gliding like a lover’s finger, it caressed my skin, the sensation a whisper, begging me to put it on. To join with me again. To show me what I couldn’t see without it.
I shut my eyes and stroked the fabric over my eyelids, feeling its familiar, cool touch. I longed to slip the elastic over my head, to position the shade just so, then succumb to the deep visions that would overwhelm me, until there was no other feeling but mysterious awareness, clarity of sight, and then release. Like a drug delivering a euphoric vision and a heightened sense of being.
I let the blindfold fall from my fingers onto the stone floor. Staring down at it, I could almost hear it whispering to me, begging me, tempting me. The blindfold was as lost without me as I was without it. But I couldn’t. Not ever again. I wouldn’t.
I bent to pick it up, smoothed it, and was putting it back in its velvet tomb when I heard a knock on the door. I left the blindfold out and went to see who it was.
Sebastian handed me a package. “I was at the market, and they just got in some of our favorite cheese. Do you have any bread?”
I put the wedge of Saint-André on a plate, sliced off a few pieces of the baguette I’d bought that morning, and put a bottle of rosé and two glasses on the table between us.
He ate every crumb.
“I have something to tell you,” he said. “And I just want you to hear me out before you say no.”
“Sebastian, you’ve turned into a nag.”
“So I have. Because you’ve become as obstinate as a mule. Now, listen. La Diva has made us an offer that is simply too large to turn down.”
“Is this about painting her house again?”
“Yes.”
“Sebastian, we’ve been through this.”
“No, no, just hear me out. It’s a house, Delphine. And it’s hiding a treasure that is hundreds of years old. No one can get hurt. You can’t see a secret that will harm anyone. You’ll be looking for a book, not searching inside someone’s soul.”
He had stood up and was pacing. He noticed my blindfold in its open box. Lifting it out, he dangled it from his forefinger.
“I’m done telling you that you need to do this for yourself. Now I need you to do it for me. When you lost your sight, I couldn’t give it back to you. I was helpless. Maman had magick to use, but I had none. It’s been the same since you came home. It’s as if you are blind all over again. And I’m helpless all over again. Please, Delphine.”
He was right. I owed it to him. Ever since I was a little girl, he had been the one to do everything for me, including being my eyes for that terrible year. He’d championed my work and was tireless in promoting me. Every important commission I’d ever had was because of him.
“I want to say yes, to make you happy, to do it for you.” I shook my head. “But I won’t. I can’t.”
“I want to show you something.” Sebastian reached into the leather satchel he’d put on the floor, pulled out a magazine, and flipped it open to an illustrated article about Madame Calvé.
I ran my eyes over the page of photos, from top to bottom, right to left: La Diva in costume, in her most famous role as Carmen on the stage in Milan at La Scala. Next, in another costume on the stage at the opera house in Paris. And finally in street clothes, standing in front of a stone castle.
Suddenly, I felt as if a window had been thrown open and cold air was rushing in. Compared with the others, the last photograph shimmered. I stared at La Diva standing in front of a large wooden door, which was open to show a glimpse of the castle’s stone interior.
Her intense gaze seemed to bore right through me. I knew that a photograph couldn’t literally pull me into it. Even so, I gripped the arms of my chair for ballast.
“There are more pictures of the place.” Sebastian turned the pages. “Do you see? It’s not just some house, Delphine. It’s seeped in all the history you have loved reading about since you were little. Now it’s a chance to walk inside one of those castles. The Château de Cabrières was built in the eleventh century. They say that in the thirteenth century, the Knights Templar kept a treasury there, and when they wouldn’t reveal its whereabouts, they were put to death. It’s smack in the middle of the Languedoc that you and Papa used to explore together. You’ve been telling me for years that the area is the seat of mystical and supernatural occurrences no one can explain. Madame is looking for a book, but while you are there, you can investigate those caves and grottoes you love so much.
“Emma has access to so much history. Listen to the story she told me about an old letter that a local priest she’s friends with showed her. In 1300, the last seneschal of Cabrières, a Templar, passed through the region on his way to a monastery in Montserrat. With him were a squire and six pack mules laden with bags of gold. Realizing that he was being pursued by King Philip’s men, the Templar buried the treasure somewhere in the area.
“Days later, when he was apprehended, he refused to divulge where he’d hidden the gold and so was executed on the spot. Since then, twice, once in 1820 and once in 1860, Arab gold pieces have been found in the area. Even if you don’t divine La Diva’s book, you might be able to find some of that buried treasure and who knows what else.”
When my father and I explored the area, searching for artifacts from the Templars and the Cathars, we’d never discovered anything as exotic as gold. Over the years, I found broken pottery, a button, and a metal clasp that must have held a cape together. On one trip, my father stumbled on a rough-hewn granite altar that invited hours of rumination, as we imagined who had prayed there and what their lives had been like. As an architect, he was fascinated with the ruins and the stories behind them. I was the only one in our family as interested as he was. Every summer, we’d take a weeklong hike through the area and explore a different ancient village, looking for buried treasure. The Cathars were a heretical Christian sect that had created all kinds of enigmatic work. The paintings and cave art in the region mesmerized me and, I’m sure, influenced my work. We’d do tracings and stone rubbings and take them home with us in an effort to make some sense of their symbolism. No one had ever figured it out. The Cathars’ codex had never been found.
I only half listened to Sebastian’s story. As much as I was interested in the castle’s history, I was too distracted by the sense that I’d seen it before. Why was it so familiar? Even if I’d once seen a photo of it and not paid much attention, it wouldn’t explain the particular cluster of feelings welling up in me.
Excitement, mixed with fear, laced with power. Similar to the bouquet of emotions I experienced when I put on the blindfold. Or when I was scrying. Giving in to irresistible temptation was always dangerously thrilling. To be privy to a secret scene, knowing I was lifting a veil that very few people even knew existed, was exhilarating. Despite the potential danger, the craving to feel that painful elation again enticed me.
And that’s when I remembered. I’d been scrying unintentionally days before when Sebastian was standing on the street beside a rain puddle. And I’d seen this very facade in the reflection. But in that watery image, my brother had been standing in front of the castle, warning me: Unless you are here to save me …
I’d thought I could save someone once before. Would it be different with Sebastian?
Chapter 23
Book of Hours
July 18, 1920
Mathieu took me to the Louxor movie palace today. From the first step into the lobby, I was transported. A combination of Art Deco and Egyptian Revival, every inch gleamed. A replica of an ancie
nt cartouche hung above the box office. The ochre walls were decorated with lotus-blossom motifs in dark green, cobalt, and turquoise. Giant terra-cotta sphinxes stared with black-and-white glass eyes as the guests filed in.
We settled down in plush red velvet seats, and La Belle Dame Sans Merci, directed by Germaine Dulac, began. I’d read about the movie when it had opened and knew about the romantic notion of a woman in a failed relationship which ends when her male lover, who cannot live without her, kills himself.
Dulac’s movie was set in the present, postwar France. It opened with a phone call between the main character, Lola, an actress, and her lover professing his undying adoration and passion for her.
Mercilessly, she replied that she would forget him “in the time it takes to smoke a cigarette.”
After the film ended, Mathieu took me to a nearby café for wine.
“What did you think of the movie?” he asked.
“It was sad, wasn’t it?”
“Victor Hugo once said that melancholy is the pleasure of being sad.”
“Yes, that’s a perfect way to describe it.”
Once again, Mathieu had found the exact words to explain how I felt.
“It was stunning visually. But Lola was such a victim of love,” I said. “So twisted by her own pain she had to employ her talents as an actress to get her revenge on the whole male species.”
“She’d been disposed of by men, so she used them.”
“And whatever delight that gave her, ultimately she was miserable,” I added.
“The poem the title was based on was by Keats. Do you know it?”
“I know no poetry. And no poets but you.” I smiled at him, but he flinched at my words. Retreated and grew silent. As he had in the bar the first time we’d talked about his aspirations, he drank what was in his glass too fast.
I’d made a mistake. And now I felt terrible. How could I help him? What magick could I call on to close the gash in his soul that kept him from being the artist I knew with all my heart he was meant to be?
He picked up the half-full bottle of wine. “Let’s walk,” he said, as he took some coins out of his pocket and left them on the table.
Outside, night had fallen, and the sky was filled with clouds. We walked in and out of their shadows toward the river.
He held the bottle in one hand, the other hand in his pocket. I didn’t know what to say to defuse my gaffe, so I was silent.
Finally, we reached the Seine, and I followed him down the stone steps to the shore. There we stopped under a leafy chestnut tree, and he pulled me as close to him as he could and kissed me hard on the lips. Surprised but not displeased by his intensity, I kissed him back.
On the river, a tugboat chugged by. Somewhere a dog barked. My world had narrowed to the space within Mathieu’s arms.
We broke apart, and he pulled me down onto a bench. He offered me the bottle. I took a drink and handed it back to him. Either the kiss or the wine had emboldened me.
“I’m sorry for what I said in the café,” I whispered.
He shook his head angrily. “No. It’s me. The movie disturbed me. It made me think about Keats’s life. Such a brilliant but short life. He died at twenty-five. That’s the same age my brother was when he died. That’s what disturbs me about the movie the most. While it’s a romantic notion to kill yourself over being jilted, it’s too melodramatic. Too wasteful.”
“No, I can’t imagine you doing anything like that,” I said.
“How would I handle it if you treated me as callously as Lola?” He’d become playful again, teasing me.
“But I never could.”
“Ah, but never is a long time, Delphine.”
I felt a wave of sadness come over me.
“Someone more handsome, more successful, with better prospects, will come along, and you’ll—”
“No. It can’t be like that for us.”
“Us?” he asked. “You and me?”
“No, my sisters and me.”
And so, while we drank more of the cold, dry wine, I told him what each daughter of La Lune inherits. Not the bits and pieces of legends and gossip that he’d heard over the years from conversations in the bookshop but the truth.
“My great-grandmother has always said that for the women in our family, love is not a blessing. It leads to heartbreak and tragedy. For generations, we’ve been cursed when it comes to matters of the heart. We are only allowed one absolute love per lifetime. And that love, once given, never wanes. Even if the man is untrue or dies, we are destined to pine for him and never find another mate.”
“I believe in a lot of things, Delphine, but that is simply not possible. It’s suggestive thinking. I’ve read about it—it’s all explained in what the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud has been writing about.”
“I know about him. And Carl Jung. My brother is fascinated by their theories. But believe me, this curse is real. Generations have tried without luck to find an antidote to love, going back to the first La Lune, who lost her lover, Cherubino, and did everything in her power, including selling her soul, to try to bring him back from the dead. She failed. And like every other daughter since who has made a similar effort, she never stopped loving him.”
By now, I was crying. Unable to stop myself from imagining how I’d feel if I lost Mathieu.
He twisted on the bench so he was facing me, then took both my hands in his, and my heart lurched. The slightest touch, the scent of him, the sight of him moving so purposefully—I reacted to it all.
“I promise you, I will not leave you,” he said.
I could see in his eyes that he meant every word, and as he took me in his arms again, I tried to make myself believe him and be soothed by him and at the same time be set on fire by his lips and fingers and sweet whispered endearments.
Chapter 24
One afternoon toward the end of July, Sebastian picked me up in his black-and-maroon Cottin-Desgouttes Torpedo, a bigger car than my little blue boy, as I had come to call my Bugatti. We were driving to Emma Calvé’s château, a trip that would take about four hours. We would stay for a week to ten days, or as long as it took me to paint her home using my scrying art and to help her find the lost Book of Abraham that the castle was hiding.
This was Sebastian’s scheme to liberate me from my self-imposed hiatus. Finding hidden treasure would be so much safer than uncovering people’s secrets. Wouldn’t it?
My scheme was to protect him.
The route wound west and then north about four hundred kilometers. Sebastian had planned the drive so that we could stop in Aix-en-Provence and have lunch with Marsden Hartley, the American painter I’d met at the Duplessi Gallery. Sebastian told me that Marsden had a house in Venice but was spending the month in Aix painting some of the local landscape that Cezanne had made famous.
Our lunch on the terrace was a much-needed respite from the long drive. Marsden’s housekeeper made a delicious lemon sole served with buttered parsley potatoes and a lovely, chilly rosé. Afterward, there were strawberries, good bread, and runny cheese.
The view from the terrace was a painter’s dream, and in the hills I saw the geometric patterns that had captured Cezanne’s imagination. I told Marsden that I was looking forward to what he’d do with the vista, and he invited us to stop back on our return trip.
“Where did you say you were headed, Duplessi?” he asked my brother.
“Delphine has a commission. We’ve been invited to Château de Cabrières by Emma Calvé.”
“The opera singer who was at my opening.”
“The same,” my brother said.
“I heard she has a school there for young girls studying opera. You should have quite a musical visit.”
“I hope the school’s not in session, Sebastian,” I said. “That would be far too distracting.”
“It’s not an official school,” my brother explained. “Young girls study with her at the château, but she assured me there are no students there now. You can co
unt on peace and quiet.”
“Where exactly is it?” Hartley asked.
“Millau.”
“The land of the Cathars. There are legends on every twisting road,” he said. “I’m something of a history buff and explored there a bit. The paintings and cave art in the region are worth taking a look at. They say the Cathars were in possession of many relics, including the Holy Grail.”
I told him that I, too, loved the history of the region and how my father and I used to spend time there every summer searching through ruins.
“I would imagine it’s the perfect kind of place for you to practice your—what did you tell me it was called?” Marsden looked at Sebastian.
“Scrying,” Sebastian said.
Marsden nodded, then turned back to me. “What an exceptional gift. Your brother told me that you’ve had it since you were about ten?”
“Yes,” I said. I was shocked that Sebastian had told the painter about me. My brother had always hinted at my intuitive powers to obtain commissions but had never gone so far as to mention my scrying to anyone outside the family who might not understand. Marsden sensed my discomfort and returned to the previous and safer topic of history.
“I have a book that has some unusual Cathar stories in it. Hold on.” He left us but returned moments later. Not long enough for me to say anything to my brother about what I considered his indiscretions.
Marsden handed me a book. The green leather binding was worn and had some water spots on it. The title, embossed in gold, read From Ritual to Romance, and it was by Jessie L. Weston.
“This is one I actually don’t have,” I said.
“Take it. It will prove for some interesting reading while you are in Millau. I’d like to hear what you think of it.”
