by M. J. Rose
Gaspard Le’Malf, I had no doubt, was an old soul. And I was equally sure he had more information about this castle and what I was here to find than he wanted me to know.
Before I could ask him, a high-pitched shriek rent the air.
“Papa, Papa! Look what we found!”
An excited little boy, about six or seven, came running over, holding something tightly in his cupped hands. Behind him, at a distance, was a young woman, smiling as the boy reached his father.
“Wait, wait. Nicky, where are your manners? We have a guest.”
Nicky looked over at me. He had tousled blond hair, a round cherubic face, and perfect pink cheeks. He also had his father’s eyes, wiser than his years suggested.
“Hello,” he said, very formally. “I am Nicky Le’Malf. I would shake your hand, but I have a surprise for Papa.”
“I’m Delphine Duplessi,” I said to him, with the same formal tone. “And I’d love to see your surprise.”
The boy looked at his father, who nodded.
“All right, both of you, watch now. See what Mademoiselle Gris and I found.”
So the woman was not the boy’s mother. A nursemaid, then?
“Ready?” Nicky asked.
“Ready,” I said.
Gaspard nodded. “Me, too.”
Nicky opened his hands. A butterfly, white with bright orange tips, fluttered its wings and flew out. The beautiful creature hovered in the air, at eye level with Nicky, as if communicating with him.
“Thank you,” the boy said to the butterfly, bowing slightly.
As the insect flew off, Nicky turned to Gaspard. “Papa, was that an orange-tip Anthocharis cardamines?”
Gaspard nodded.
“I have to get my book and write it down.” Nicky turned to me. “Would you like to see my book of butterflies?”
“No, Mademoiselle Duplessi has to get back to the castle.”
The boy looked crestfallen.
“If you don’t mind,” I said to Gaspard, then turned to Nicky. “I love butterflies. I’d be honored to see your book.”
Nicky ran off into the house, followed by Mademoiselle Gris.
“He’s charming. Do you and your wife have others?”
“No. We were expecting another. But my wife was in an accident. Two years ago. The car she was in …” He took a deep breath, as if saying the words took enormous effort.
Before he could finish, Nicky was back, shoving a book into my hands. It was a journal. And I trembled as I took it from him, because I recognized the binding style. It was Mathieu’s work. For a moment, I felt dizzy. Confused. How did this child have one of Mathieu’s books?
“What a beautiful butterfly diary,” I said.
“Last year for Christmas, Madame Calvé got it for me in Paris.”
That made sense. Madame Calvé was a regular at Pierre Dujols’s bookshop.
“Madame is very good to Nicky,” Gaspard said. “She treats him like her grandson. It’s sad she never had children of her own.”
“Not always sad,” I said. “Sometimes a child is just competition for an artist’s other creations.”
Gaspard was about to say something when Nicky interrupted.
“There are more than one hundred and fifty different butterflies in this part of where we live.” He started turning the pages in the book. On each one was another drawing, carefully outlined, not as carefully colored in. As he continued flipping through the books, I noticed a photograph of a woman with Nicky’s coloring, but he didn’t stop to show it to me.
“Whenever I see a new kind—I mean species—I bring it home to show Papa. We study it, and after I draw it, we let it go.” His face became very solemn. “Some people kill them and collect them. We always let them go. I ask them all to fly up to heaven and visit Maman. And they always say they will. She loves them, too.”
My heart seized up. There was something about this little boy that touched me profoundly.
Gaspard stood. “I think we should get you back to the château, Mademoiselle Duplessi. It’s almost time for lunch, and Madame doesn’t like having to send out search parties for her guests.”
“Please, call me Delphine.”
Gaspard nodded.
I said good-bye to Nicky and thanked him for showing me his book of butterflies.
“If you’d like, you can come hunting with me tomorrow?”
“That sounds wonderful. I have to work tomorrow, but as soon as I’m free, I’d love to join you.”
“Mademoiselle is an artist. She might be able to show you how to color inside the lines,” Gaspard said.
Nicky pouted.
“I think coloring outside the lines is much more fun.” I winked at him, and he winked back.
With the dog at his heels, Gaspard led me around to the other side of the cottage, through a gate, and back into the woods.
We talked about his son for most of the way. And then about the woods and the fact that, like Nicky, he had been studying butterflies since he was a boy.
“How many have you seen?”
“I think by now I’ve seen them all.”
Something about how he said it made it sound as if he’d lived longer than what I guessed was thirty or so years. He spoke like an old, old man.
After about ten minutes, we came to a second gate, which he unlocked. On the other side, we walked down a small hill and from there took a path that led to a cobblestone road. I couldn’t believe I’d walked so far that morning.
“Is the route through the forest much shorter?” I asked him.
“No, it’s actually longer.” Gaspard pointed to the left. There, not far off—possibly another ten-minute walk—was the castle. “I’ll leave you here. It’ll be easy now. In the forest, it’s almost impossible to see through the ceiling of trees and find the château’s towers. But anywhere else you go, just look up and search for them. That’s how to orient yourself.”
“Thank you. I really had no idea where I was. I’m not sure I could ever find my way here again, even if I wanted to.”
Gaspard’s expression surprised me. I thought he’d enjoyed my visit, that he’d been happy I’d met Nicky, but the look in his eyes suggested that it would be better if I didn’t try.
Chapter 29
Back at the château, I was just in time for the abundant midday meal that had been prepared for us—country bread, pâté, and a robust niçoise salad made the same way we served it at home, with a variety of crisp vegetables including raw red peppers and artichoke hearts, along with tuna, olives, and tart vinaigrette.
I had questions about the book I’d be searching for, and Madame was only too happy to talk about her obsession.
“Flamel was a scrivener and manuscript dealer. Not well off. Not very successful. And then, around 1365 or so, he purchased a mysterious book written in what appeared to be Hebrew. He made it his life’s work to learn more about it. Finally, he traveled to Spain in 1378, where there were more Jews than in France, in the hopes that he’d find someone to translate it.”
She stopped to pour more of the local rosé into her glass and then Sebastian’s. I had barely touched mine.
“Flamel’s mission failed. But on the road back from Santiago de Compostela, he met a sage, a converso who recognized the book as a copy of the Book of Abraham and aided him in the translation. Everything changed for Flamel after that.” She took another sip of wine. “Do either of you know very much about alchemy?”
Sebastian and I both said we did not.
“I have been a student most of my adult life. The principles come from ancient Egyptians, who learned it from Arabs. It’s an art that involves sacred geometry, magick, chemistry, philosophy, hermeticism, and cosmology. The true goal of alchemy is not to create gold—that’s just a by-product of the methodology. The real goal is to create the Elixir of Life in order to delay the aging process and even perhaps lead to immortality. Alchemists, you see, were simply scientists and seekers of knowledge. But in the Middle Ages, the c
hurch forbade their experiments and labeled them heretics, forcing the alchemists underground. And so their research became known as the black art.”
“Why would experiments with metals for the purpose of a longer life be heretical?” I asked.
“Because the secret to immortality is bound up in the Great Work. Through the ages, we’ve come to believe that turning base metal into gold was the formula for the elixir.” She flipped her hand as if making that look easy. “Flamel accomplished that in the early 1380s, when he first created silver and then gold.”
“That’s astonishing,” I said.
She picked up the basket of bread, took a second slice, and passed it to me. I had been listening so intently to her story that I hadn’t touched my food. I’d read about Flamel but had no in-depth knowledge of him. What she was recounting was tickling my memory, but I wasn’t sure why.
“Yes, but more astonishing was the portal his achievement opened. The threshold one crossed into spiritual enlightenment, where slowing down or stopping the aging process is merely one aspect …” Madame’s eyes glittered. Her voice lowered to a seductive whisper. She wet her lips. “The Great Work is a state of being. A life force. An act of secret initiation and physical revitalization. Its symbol is a hermaphrodite. You know it?”
Sebastian and I both said we did.
“Then you know it is a male who is a female, a female who is a male. The perfect symbol for sexual union and the moment of orgasm.”
She looked at us to see if she had gone too far, if either of us was shocked or uncomfortable. Sebastian didn’t seem to be, and I wasn’t. Although it certainly wasn’t the norm to talk of orgasms at the lunch table in 1925, how could we, descendants of France’s most famous courtesans, have possibly been shocked?
“It is in that moment of coming together that real magick occurs. That the Great Work is achieved. When male and female become part of each other and can reach a mystical awareness of both themselves and the universe and in that moment know the secrets to achieve immortality. Very few can reach that pinnacle, but with the help of the book, on January 17, 1382, Nicolas Flamel and his wife, Perenelle, did.”
She paused for dramatic effect.
“Having become wealthy, thanks to the ability to change metals to gold, Flamel then turned to philanthropy and was well known for his good deeds. Sometime during 1410, when he was in his eighties, he designed his own tombstone, decorated with carvings of esoteric symbols and signs, a code that’s never been cracked. Eight years later, in 1418, he staged his and his wife’s deaths, even going so far as to have elaborate ceremonies performed in order to convince everyone they had passed on. But it was only a ruse set up to allow them to escape their notoriety, take their secrets with them, and live in peace.”
Her stagecraft was superb, and it made her a riveting storyteller. When she spoke, I could see all the scenes playing out, like in a film. But a familiar one. Where had I heard this story? And then I realized. The scene in the bedroom, in the mirror, of the pilgrims on the road—Flamel had been one of them. He’d been on his journey to Spain to find someone to help him translate the book.
“When Cardinal Richelieu first became obsessed with discovering all of Flamel’s secrets, he hired a grave robber to dig up Flamel’s coffin and discovered it was empty. Without a trace of the mystic. His wife’s coffin was equally barren. Some say Flamel and his wife survived another hundred years after their supposed deaths, some say three hundred. Others claim they are still alive. No one knows.”
Madame finished her tale with a flourish. I was surprised not to hear an orchestra add a few telling notes.
“You haven’t eaten a bite,” she said to me.
“I was so caught up in your story I forgot.” I laughed and obediently picked up my fork. The salad was fresh and delicious in the simplest way. Like so much of the food from the south. But as good as it was, eating was an odd accompaniment to the discussion of sexual magick. My older sister and I had scoured my mother’s library for books about it so we could read the “dirty” parts. My friends had their mothers’ risqué novels by Colette and her contemporaries, but we giggled over the orgiastic rituals described in books written by Aleister Crowley, who created the Golden Dawn society, or Maria de Naglowska. And then we gagged reading about the disturbing black masses that used human waste, sperm, and menstrual blood as sacraments.
“And the formula for the Great Work is contained in the book we’re searching for?” Sebastian asked.
Madame nodded. “I believe so.”
My twin turned to me. “Hasn’t Maman talked about an elixir like that? Something that La Lune handed down?”
Once again, Sebastian was breaking our family’s unspoken rules. Yes, my mother had told us about the potion. From La Lune’s grimoire, the formula had been passed down through the centuries. My mother used it for the first and last time in 1894 to save my father’s life shortly before they married.
“Your mother told me and Pierre Dujols about her elixir,” Madame said, surprising both of us. “Years ago, during her transition. We think there are similarities, but your family’s version is weak and unstable and can only be used by a daughter of La Lune.”
“Do you have a physical description of the Book of Abraham?” I asked Madame, wanting to change the subject.
“Varying descriptions. Some say it was made of gold or vellum or parchment. Some sources have it at seven pages, others at twenty-one. But everyone agrees that on every page there are secrets.” Madame’s eyes shone.
A lemon mousse, light and tart, was served for dessert, along with espresso. Once I’d drained my cup, I announced that I was going to my studio to set to work and earn my keep. I’d wanted to start sketching. The sooner I could solve Madame’s mystery for her, the sooner Sebastian and I could leave. I wanted to be gone before the party Madame had mentioned. Especially after seeing Gaspard’s son’s journal and being reminded of the relationship between La Diva and the bookshop. I didn’t want to take any chances that she’d invited Mathieu.
In the studio, I arranged my tools on the table by the easel. A drawing pad, my silver pencil, an assortment of softer leaded pencils, and my blindfold. Just touching it, my fingers tingled. For a moment, I sat, holding it, a portal to so many secrets. My gateway to hidden mysteries of the soul. A light illuminating shadows. For good and for ill.
But not this time. I was using it to see hidden corners of the castle. To look behind its walls and passageways. Under its floors.
I let out a long breath. After five months of trepidation, I put it on quickly. Like diving into the cold sea on a chilly morning. I adjusted the elastic behind my head.
I could no longer see what was in front of me. Everything inside my eyes was dark. I waited for what was hiding to be revealed.
I began sketching the rooms I’d walked through. Drawing scenes frozen in time, rapidly capturing them on paper. Vaguely aware that there were people in the rooms and that their clothes suggested I was getting images from different time periods.
A scullery maid in a kitchen, stirring a cauldron over an open fire. Behind the bricks was a hidden room. I could smell the dust. A storage area of some kind, abandoned. But footprints through the dust suggested someone had been there recently.
The library with its book-filled shelves. A gentleman in a cutaway taking leather volumes off one particular shelf. He reached behind it and pulled a lever. The shelves opened like a door. Inside, I could see the corner of a couch.
A bedroom, dark rose and lavender. A lady’s boudoir. Perfume bottles on the vanity. Their scent overwhelming. Her back was to me, and I could see her in the mirror as she lifted a gold necklace over her head, an old key dangling from it, and tucked it inside her corset.
For room after room, I sketched scenes that revealed secrets about the inhabitants of the château over the years. None obviously about an ancient book. But all of them revealed or suggested hiding places.
The last drawing I did was the most strange.
I sketched a dungeon. Stone walls and floor. Moisture dripping into a pool. The stones were uneven, pitted with dark recesses. And in one, I saw something glitter. Was it gold? A gemstone? I tried to step closer, but I couldn’t walk any deeper into the grotto. An invisible force held me back. I pushed against it, but it didn’t give. I heard music, far off. I knew the music was playing expressly for me, trying to tell me something that the stones couldn’t. I struggled to listen and catch more of it, but it remained elusive. I was certain there was a clue in that music, if I could just hear it more clearly.
I stopped drawing. I took off my blindfold. Around me were more than a dozen sketches. Surprised by the time on the clock, I sat where I was and tried to make sense of what had happened. Usually, I worked for a few minutes. Ten at the most. But according to the Limoges timepiece, I had been working for almost two hours.
I extended and flexed my fingers. They were smudged with graphite and ached. I stood. Bent over, I let my back muscles stretch. When I returned to a standing position, I was a little dizzy.
From the sideboard, I poured water out of a crystal pitcher into a matching glass, which I took to the open window. I looked out into the gardens below. Gaspard was there, Pepin at his heels. The gardener was clipping deep blood-red roses.
Tipping the glass to my lips, I sipped the water. As I watched, the silver-haired man with the golden eyes looked up at the castle, toward me. Even though I doubted he could see me in the shadows, it appeared that he could. First a look of pleasure played around his lips, followed by a frown creasing his forehead.
I’d seen the same reaction from him at the cottage. As welcoming as he’d been, and despite the simpatico I’d felt from him, I had the distinct impression he wished I had never come.
A chilly wind blew in. I put the glass down and lowered the window. Halfway, it slammed shut, catching my forefinger. The pain was intense. My finger throbbed. Luckily, it was my left hand. In the bathroom, I ran the cold water and held my finger under the tap. Once it was numb, I shut off the water, dried my hand, and returned to the drawings, to inspect them again and see if any tiny details struck me as clues. I was always vaguely aware of what I was drawing as I worked, but upon scrutinizing the sketches after they were completed, I often discovered new elements that in the moment hadn’t reached my consciousness.
