by M. J. Rose
I wondered why Julien had not told me about Monsieur Dujols’s request. How long would it be before I would even see him to ask? I pictured him and Cingal sitting sadly in a parlor, surrounded by friends and family.
“Did you have a specific reason for asking me to return? Other than wanting the grimoire, of course?” I asked.
“Did you bring it?”
“I’m not comfortable taking it out of the house in inclement weather.” The truth was I couldn’t actually move it out of the tower and didn’t want to admit it. Twice I’d picked it up and carried it to the door. Normally heavy and cumbersome, once I reached the bell tower threshold, it became suddenly and impossibly weighty. When I’d turned back to return it to its hiding place, it was manageable again.
“The Secret Witch of rue du Dragon is an enigma.” There was a long, low table in front of us covered with maps, and as Dujols spoke, he piled them up and moved them to one side. “I have studied her for years. Through you, we may be able to learn more about her secrets. Will you bring it soon?”
“Of course I will.” Another lie. “But how can you be sure she wasn’t just an ordinary seductress? Perhaps a bit more intuitive and sensitive to the people around her, but cast unfairly in the role of a witch?”
“Alchemy, witchcraft, casting spells, understanding the occult . . . captures our imagination. We sense that there are secrets beyond our grasp; we are sure there are powers greater than us, some benevolent, others malevolent. Religion has tried to explain the mysteries of the universe, but man does not just strive to understand; he needs to harness them. Through time, those of us who have had just a soupçon more of the ability to access the mysterious have been feared, revered, thwarted, maligned. Almost never elevated as deserved. No, I don’t think La Lune was an ordinary seductress.” Dujols studied my face. “And neither do you, so why do you suggest it?”
I was caught off guard by his forthrightness and for a moment wasn’t sure how to even respond. As it turned out, I didn’t have to.
“I’m sorry, that was quite rude,” he said. “I didn’t mean to challenge you. You came here to see me today, so how can I help you?”
I regained my composure and took the paper out of my silk reticule. “I was at the flea market last weekend and saw a painting that had some curious symbols on it. Some were a bit familiar and I thought they might intrigue you, so I copied them down. Since you know so much about symbols, you might know what they mean.”
I was pleased with my story. It made sense without suggesting that my interest was any more than curiosity or that the painting was something I owned or had access to.
“Yes, yes, this is quite interesting,” he said as he peered at the paper.
“Why is that?”
“Let me show you something.” He got up and walked over to a large, low file cabinet, the kind that oversize prints and drawings were kept in, and began to riffle through one of the drawers.
I was thinking about what he’d said about La Lune. I know he’d called her a witch before, but this time it terrified me to hear it. The word coming from his lips was harsh and ugly, and La Lune, while desperate and determined, was none of those things.
But what else was there to make of all the strange phenomena that had occurred?
A necklace with a clasp that sometimes refused to open? I knew it was not the result of an old hinge.
And the paintings I was creating? It was impossible they were only a latent talent blooming out of tragedy, stirred by my surroundings and nurtured by one of Paris’s best teachers.
The horrible accident at the Eiffel Tower? A woman who’d drunk too much champagne? An errant umbrella carried away by a gust of wind at just the right moment?
“Yes, yes. Here it is,” Dujols said as he withdrew a sheet the size of a frontispiece to a large book.
Gingerly, he placed it in front of me.
Judging by the ragged edge of the yellowed paper, the page had been ripped from an ancient book. The printing was not refined, and the quality of the ink was uneven in spots. The type was fairly small and hard to read, but I could make out enough to know it was archaic French.
Painted over the printing, in an oddly familiar style, was a woman scantily clad in a dress made of cobwebs. Bugs and insects nested inside her long reddish-brown hair. Around her was a laboratory with shelves of alembics and beakers. I recognized the position of the windows and beams—this was my bell tower.
And the painting was done in the same style as the illustrations I’d discovered in the grimoire in the ancient studio. La Lune’s paintings. La Lune’s grimoire.
“What is this?” I asked.
“A page from a book called the Malleus Maleficarum in Latin, which, translated, is The Witches’ Hammer. It was written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer, a German Catholic clergyman. It’s a treatise on the prosecution of witches.”
I shivered, as if the door had opened and a frigid wind had blown in, embracing me in its chill.
“The goal of the manifesto was to prove that witchcraft existed and to educate other members of the church and government on how to hunt and prosecute them, since sorcery was condemned by religious and secular institutions. The papal bull instituting the first inquisition was included in the preface of this book. The rest is broken into three main sections. The first is an argument against critics who denied the existence of witches and the reality of witchcraft. The second lists and explains all the forms of witchcraft and what witches are capable of, including how they recruited other witches. Usually something would go awry in the life of a younger woman, causing her to seek out the wisdom and guidance and help of a witch.”
My shivering increased. I had painted that very scene in my bedroom on rue de la Chaise the morning my grandmother went mad. I’d painted La Lune going to the old crone in Prague for help in seducing Cherubino.
Dujols noticed my discomfort. “You are cold—let me throw some more coal into the heater.”
While he was gone, I examined the page. It appeared to be the very one that had been ripped out of the front of my book in the tower.
Dujols came back and picked up where he’d left off: “The book describes rituals and explains how witches cast spells. It includes remedies to prevent young women from falling victim to those spells.” He stopped. He was staring at me.
“And the last section?” I prompted.
“Yes, yes. The last section is for those who are given the power to judge and confront the witches and witchcraft. What to look for, how to determine if someone is a witch, how to test her. It’s quite horrific. The tests were set up so that no one could survive. For instance, a suspected witch was submerged in the water. If she drowned, she was not a witch, but she was dead. If she didn’t drown, she was a witch, but then she was killed.”
“What about the painting?” I asked in a voice that surprised me with its strength since I felt quite weak. “Why do the letters and symbols match the ones I’ve brought you?”
“The legend is that the woman who painted this was herself a witch, and it was said that she had a formula that not only gave a witch immunity from harm but also allowed her to keep herself alive forever.”
“The formula for immortality.”
“Yes.”
“And you think the symbols and letters I copied down are part of that formula?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because of the instances where it’s turned up.”
“So there are alchemists who have tried out this formula?” I asked.
“Yes, but what’s survived is incomplete. We only have the first step in what must have been a long and complicated set of steps.”
“And what does all this have to do with La Lune?” I asked, even though I was sure I already knew the answer.
“It’s believed La Lune is the witch who was given th
e formula, who painted this.”
“Believed? Doesn’t anyone know?”
“No, no, not for sure. It’s an ancient legend that dates back to the 1600s. Just one grain of sand in a search for hidden knowledge that goes back to the beginning of time. It is a labyrinthine journey, Mademoiselle Verlaine. Sometimes we are searching in the dark; other times we have but a single candle to shine on the walls of the caves as we crawl through them, hunting for clues.”
For a moment neither of us spoke. I was glad I hadn’t told Dujols the symbols I’d written down came from paintings in our house. But had showing him even this much put me in jeopardy? How insatiable was Dujols’s hunger for more information?
“Well, it’s very fascinating,” I said, “but like all legends, I’m certain it’s become more fantastical over time.” I waved my hand as if dismissing the possibility that it had any basis in reality.
“Perhaps or perhaps not,” he said in a voice that sounded as if he were still wandering those dark passages in his mind. “Certainly your grandmother has told you how the legend was passed down to her? Surely she’s given you details.”
I shook my head and lied again. “Nothing like what you told me, no. I know of La Lune of course, but only that she was a courtesan and an artist’s muse. Bewitching for sure but not a witch.”
Dujols smiled.
“That’s odd. Your grandmother and I have talked about it at length. She discussed you with me, too, a long time ago, before I met you. She told me how much she feared for you.”
I was stunned.
“You didn’t tell me that before. Not when you met me. Not when I came back and you offered to set up the séance. Why?”
“She’s always been so concerned that La Lune would one day try to possess you, I assumed it was she who had sent you back here.”
I was angry that my grandmother had talked to a stranger about me and confided her fears in him. But anger now was a wasted emotion. We were far past that. There was still more information I needed, and I couldn’t afford to alienate Dujols. He was my only ally now, even if it was an uneasy alliance. We both wanted the same thing. The question was, how far would he go to get it? How much did I have to fear him?
“So these symbols”—I pointed to the edge of the page ripped from the book—“what exactly do they stand for? Do you know?”
“Yes. The first is the symbol for blood. This second is for salt, and the third is for night.”
“Blood?”
“Blood, herbs and flowers, chemicals, human hair, excrement, skin, parts of animals . . . they were all used by alchemists.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I believe that there are more mysteries that we will never solve than those that we will.”
Dujols picked up the paper I’d brought and placed it next to the ripped page. “But to return to your question and what brought you here today, the symbols and letters are out of order in the painting you saw. The way they are written there, they spell out nothing . . . but if you rearrange them to go backward, not forward, they say . . . ‘Make of the blood, a stone. Make of a stone, a powder. Make of a powder, life everlasting.’ ”
“That phrase. You know the first time you said it, I was sure I’d heard it before.”
“And had you?”
“I didn’t think so, but now . . . I think I might have dreamed it.”
I was remembering. Yes, these were the words I’d heard in the recurring dream I’d had as a child. I was certain of it.
“A stone? Powder? What do you think it means?” I asked.
“It’s the first part of the formula, Mademoiselle Verlaine.”
He looked from me to the page he had shown me and then back to me again.
“When you are ready to tell me where you really found those letters and symbols, I will be here to help you. In the meantime, it’s best to be careful. It’s called darkness because there is no light. And without light it is easy to trip and fall.”
He was scaring me. Hadn’t Julien warned me that the men involved and invested in the search for hidden knowledge were determined? I felt something shudder under my feet. Almost as if the earth was warning me as well.
I got up.
“There is so much to explore . . . and I can help you. But you have to let me help you.” Dujols took my hand, bent over it, and kissed it. When he straightened up, he looked right into my eyes. “You do resemble her, you know. In fact the likeness is extraordinary.”
“Resemble who?” I asked, feigning ignorance.
But he didn’t answer; he just walked to the door and opened it for me.
I stepped out into the evening. The temperature had dropped, and it was chilly again. I pulled my coat around me and looked for a carriage. There was none in sight. No matter, it was only a few blocks and the fresh air would invigorate me. Blow away the miasma that had settled over me.
I’d gone several blocks, preoccupied by the phrase at the heart of the mystery.
Make of the blood, a stone. Make of a stone, a powder. Make of a powder, life everlasting.
What did it mean?
I’d come to a corner. Crossed the street. Walked half a block more and then, in a shop window’s reflection, glimpsed a figure that I thought I’d seen before. I had been so preoccupied since I left Dujols that I hadn’t stopped to check to see if I was being followed. How could I have been so careless? Continuing on, I willed myself not to turn around and give myself away.
A few yards farther on, I glanced in another window and saw the same man reflected there. He was small, hunched slightly; he wore a tall hat and a long coat. And he didn’t walk as much as he crept.
Did this man work for Benjamin, or was he just a passerby going in the same direction I was?
I hailed a carriage and had the driver follow a circuitous route across the Seine, through the Tuileries, and then, when I was one hundred percent certain no one was following us, had him take me to rue des Saints-Pères. All I could do was pray Benjamin’s men hadn’t found me and vow to be ever more vigilant.
Chapter 31
Make of the blood, a stone. Make of a stone, a powder. Make of a powder, life everlasting.
It meant nothing to me, and yet it stayed with me, a recurring thought I ruminated on that night and all the next day, even at the École. There was no question it was what the woman in my dream had said to me so long ago. The same words she’d said to my father.
I was trying to do what Moreau had taught me and use my consternation and fear as I painted the female model. She was lying on the podium on a chaise longue in need of new springs, but I had placed her in my bell tower, on the daybed, surrounded by ornate pillows, cast in shadows, lit by candles. Moonlight from the windows illuminating her eyes.
“This style of yours intrigues me, Mademoiselle,” he said when he came up to me. “The loving way you render the skin so that I can almost touch it, the ability that you have to caress it with your brush and make it come alive . . . it’s almost alchemical.”
I felt pinpricks of shivers. That word again. It seemed to be following me.
“The opulence and the sensuality is powerful, but I still think you can go further to claim it. Our job,” he said, continuing, “is to see the world in all its storied wonder and synthesize it through our personal vision and then give it back to others on canvas. Look at Matisse, with his bold colors and the way he flattens out the figure. Or Rouault—” He was pointing across the room to his two favorite students. “They are painting their version of reality. Just as you are. What I am saying is that I want you to make this even more your own version. Exaggerate the things that interest you. Make the blacks blacker. Make the skin more luminous. Exploit the sensuality.”
After all those weeks of studying with Moreau, I suddenly completely and totally understood what he meant, as if a switch had been turned on in my head, and for the next four hours I painted in
a wild frenzy.
At the end of the day, Moreau stopped by to see my progress. He stood watching me for several minutes. Then nodded. Once and again. Finally, he said just four words, and it felt as if I’d waited a lifetime to hear them.
“You have found yourself.”
I bowed my head.
“Now you are ready to give some thought to what you are going to submit to the Salon,” Moreau said.
“I didn’t think I was ready.”
“You might not have been before, but you are now. Your improvement has been remarkable. Truly remarkable.”
A few easels away, I saw Serge Mouton glance over at us.
“Do you have a suggestion?” I asked Moreau.
“I would never suggest a subject. This is one of the steps you must take on your own on your path to becoming the artist you are meant to be. Your choices at every juncture make a statement, and it is through those choices you will speak to us. Make a woman look like a statue, or make her look like a harlot. Paint the light as if it were healing and holy, or paint it as if it were flat and damning. Use the paint as harsh reality or as fantasy. Make red violent or as generous as a rose. Every choice speaks of who you are.”
I looked at the painting I was working on. What did it say about who I was?
Moreau seemed to be looking, too.
“Choose wisely and paint a sketch this week for us to consider. Many of my students work on the Salon submission all year . . . but your best work, Mademoiselle Sandrine, is not labored. Use your darks and your lights and your feelings, and paint me something. Make me some magic this week.”
“Don’t you think there is something curious about Mademoiselle’s work, Maître?” Serge asked. He’d walked over and was standing to the right of Moreau. “Suspicious perhaps?”
Our teacher looked surprised by the interruption.
“Suspicious? What an odd choice of words. By all means, Monsieur, what do you think is suspicious?”
