City of Crows
Page 16
She shrugged and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Her own contentment was not something she’d had occasion to consider. But yes, she supposed so. More content than some, less so than others. She was moved to think it might be so visible on these cards. ‘But what of Nicolas?’
‘Patience, madame. Let me see. I can also see death and sorrow. Children lost . . . to plague, I think?’
‘Yes. Two of them to scarlet fever. Another of something else. We never knew what. He lasted only one year. Less.’
‘A terrible thing.’
She nodded but was unable to speak. Yes, a terrible thing. A most terrible thing. The candles, their skin slackening as it fell away from the bones that supported it, the suffocating sense of inevitability when they first fell ill. Oh, oh, oh. This is how it is, how it had been, how it will always be. Prayers and a coin in their hands before they were rolled gently into their graves. A grave. No more than a hole with a dignified name. She wondered often about her son and her daughters all these years later and was glad, at least, they each had the company of their siblings.
‘This card. The Empress is there in your past. She is a messenger from God, with her wings. Do you see the distaff in her left hand? This is usually women’s business. And the shield with the eagle as its crest? This card is a woman because she is the only means by which one might be brought across from one world to another . . .’
Madame Rolland, the Empress. Her crown and robes, her face looking off to one side.
Lesage talked on. ‘How one might be born, as it were. She is the giver of life. She might summon an angel, for example –’
‘Or a demon?’
Lesage laughed. ‘Or a demon, yes. The Empress offers great power and knowledge. And here’ – he tapped the second card he had laid out – ‘is the Magician. In a physical sense it refers to the liver, trouble with bodily fluids and various humours. Do you have trouble with these things? No. It might also mean an element of trickery or sleight of hand. Someone to be wary of . . .’
Like you, she thought.
‘. . . but in this position in the spread it might also mean things moving out of sight, hidden from plain view, like the great creatures of the sea. That vast region of things we don’t understand. Have you ever attended the theatre, madame? No? Of course not. Well, sometimes they move items behind the curtain. There are unseen elements that play a role at a later moment in the show; things to appear on the stage much later in the performance, if you understand what I mean?’
Charlotte was unsure if she did understand. She leaned over to look at the card, which bore the illustration of a man in a wide-brimmed hat standing behind a table with coins and cups upon it – the sort of fellow one saw gulling people out of their money at markets and fairs. ‘And what is this third card? The woman holding the round object in her hand?’
‘This card represents the near future. That is the Queen of Coins, madame. The round shape in her hand is a coin. A coin. This is interesting. You know, this is one card I have rarely put out for anyone in all my years of doing this.’ Lesage licked his lips. He seemed greatly excited to see this particular card. ‘This indicates . . . great prosperity, madame. Money in your future. How far distant I could not say. But perhaps not very far.’
Lesage paused and nodded, as if in dialogue with himself. He grunted ruminatively. ‘And this card here is the Hanged Man.’
The card bore a colourful illustration of a man hanging upside down in a sling with his legs crossed at the knee. His breeches were blue, his shoes red and his hair a flaming yellow. She drew breath, for surely such a card was a bad omen, but Lesage sought to reassure her.
‘It’s true that this card appears rather forbidding, but it is, in fact, very good,’ he said. ‘It signifies change, that’s all. Not necessarily death or anything of the sort. No. The Hanged Man. It’s the twelfth card, as you can see. For the twelfth apostle. Some think it represents Judas, but remember the cards do not have definitive meanings. And remember, it was Judas who set the events in motion that led to our salvation. Think about that. Maybe he was actually the most loyal of all the disciples? See his face? Quite calm. Personally, I think the fact the fellow’s legs are crossed in that way is most important. It’s a crossing of sorts to another side. Perhaps the transformation is of a more personal nature. You might get leave to remarry, for instance. Or it’s time to return to your village, perhaps. After all, you are not so old . . .’
Charlotte stared at the card. The man’s face did not look so calm to her. She shook her head, weary of Lesage’s tiresome riddles. ‘Say it plainly, monsieur. Please.’
He ignored her. ‘But here. Do you see this card here? This represents your future. This last card is Judgement. And it’s an interesting place for this to fall, madame.’
She inspected the card. It showed God, or one of his angels, reaching out from red and yellow clouds with his trumpet. A naked, prayerful man and woman were standing below with their eyes cast to the heavens above. The illustration was compelling and Charlotte had to stop herself from reaching out to touch the card, as if by clasping it to her breast she might be relieved, magically, of the pain that had settled there. Oh, my son, she thought. My son, my son, my son. Tears welled in her eyes. Was it better to think of Nicolas constantly, or not at all? For years she had brooded on her dead daughters and her other son, fretted over where they might be, but had her thoughts assisted them or did they merely pain them – and her – even more? Could they hear her weeping all through the night? What could it be like to listen to the longings of those who have loved you, and whom you have loved, drifting across from another realm, one impossible to visit, one barely possible to even imagine? The curé had told her – as he told all the women who lost family to plague or accident – that her children would always be in her heart (‘There,’ he would say, pressing a finger to his own breastbone so hard that his fingertip would redden), but this was not enough for Charlotte. She wanted her children in her arms, although she never said this aloud for fear of appearing ungrateful, or deficient in her faith.
‘Please, monsieur,’ she said. ‘Will I see my son again? Does it tell you that? Please.’
‘I’m sure your son is still alive, madame.’
‘But do you see it in the cards?’
Lesage glanced at her – a little pityingly, perhaps – before looking down once more at his tarot cards. Finally, he tapped the last card, Judgement. ‘Yes. This one here is all about resurrection. Life eternal. God sacrificing his child to save us. You can see the Lord blowing his great horn and the dead rising from their graves to be borne aloft to heaven. All will be well, madame. This is what the card says to me. Do not worry.’ He patted her arm.
Charlotte wiped tears from her eyes. She felt overwhelmed and it was all she could do not to clasp Lesage’s hand in her own to communicate her appreciation to him. ‘And peace? Will we find some peace?’
Lesage seemed perplexed by the question and gazed around at the dark forest beyond the clearing, as if the answer might be found among the trunks and vines growing there in such riotous profusion. He hesitated, and when at last he spoke his voice was thin and dry. ‘I think few people have complete peace in this life, madame.’
‘What does that mean?’
He regarded her as if he considered the answer to her question obvious. ‘It means that there is always a cost, madame.’
The following day the countryside became flatter and greener. There were many more people on the roads, and in the fields loomed giant haystacks and windmills larger than any Charlotte had seen before. There were boats on canals and flocks of birds drifting like dirty thumbprints across the cloudless sky. Villages, taverns, carts, cottages, herds of cattle, great houses shining in the distance. Women humpbacked in the fields stood upright – one hand cupped across a sweaty brow – to watch them pass. Groups of labourers squatted beside the road playing piquet on
upturned barrels, a procession of monks. There were elegant ladies in carriages, travellers, merchants, beggars, lepers hovering in the shade with their clappers and bowls for coins. And corpses, sometimes, of children and old women and men, at first glimpse a skinny grey foot poking from a bundle of rags, then something body-shaped, purple-lipped, reeking.
Then, late in the day, Paris appeared. At first merely a grey smudge on the otherwise green horizon, but gradually the city resolved into buildings and spires, drifts of brown smoke and the glint of glass in the afternoon light. Black spots drifted in the grey sky over the city. Crows, Charlotte realised as they drew closer, and she slipped a hand into her dress pocket to touch her book.
She soon heard the human throb of the city, smelled mud drying in the streets after a summer storm. The road became more congested. There were plenty of other carts, people on foot, shepherd boys beating their flocks to market, nobles and priests and pilgrims and thieves. They joined the procession – the saved and the damned – and passed through its gates.
18
To be imprisoned is to spend all of one’s time longing for the life one can no longer experience. In the dungeons, convicts spoke of the countless things they missed from their lives as free men; memories that, like coals, needed to be banked diligently to ensure their continued warmth. Women were always a favoured topic, of course – those they had been with and those they would never again see. Whores, wives, food, children, the dark thrill of particular forests. The smell and flavour of a lemon found on the ground beneath a tree. A river near a man’s farm where he could catch magnificent eels, a famous night of debauchery, a much-loved hound. But, for Lesage, it had always been Paris. Over the years he had worked hard at keeping the city alive in his mind; even in his worst moments he could recall almost every road, every building and bridge of the great metropolis. At night, deep in his dreams, he had strolled past the grand townhouses of the Place Royale, across the river to the fair at Saint-Germain, then back beneath the benevolent, lurid sculptures that adorned Notre-Dame before crossing the Pont Neuf with its gaggle of boats and barges floating on the river beneath like geese awaiting scraps of food.
The city had grown larger and busier in his absence. The previous evening, as soon as they entered through the Port Saint-Jacques, he noticed more signs of industry, many more houses, greater numbers of carts and barrels, larger piles of rubbish and ordure in the streets. When it came time to part ways with the troubadours, Monsieur Leroux had recommended the house of the widow Madame Simon in Rue Françoise, where Lesage was indeed able to find dingy rooms for Madame Picot and himself. It was clear that Madame Picot was terrified; as they hurried through the dimming city, she had gazed apprehensively upon the buildings and the crowds of people, at the runnels of muck in the streets. And this morning, when he suggested she remain indoors until he returned with intelligence about her son, she nodded with evident relief. She was a strange creature, as if she were uncertain, exactly, of how to use her own abilities.
He ruminated on the Queen of Coins he had turned up for her. It indicated the treasure, of that there was no doubt. But should he mention this to Catherine Monvoisin? Or wait? Something told him to wait. Prudence was generally the best course of action, he thought. Patience. Yes. He hurried across Rue Montorgueil with his chin tucked to his breastbone, unsure if he wished to be recognised or not. While imprisoned he had, of course, envisioned his return to Paris (men and women stopping him in the street to shake his hand, general outpouring of emotion), but now that he was here he thought it wise to keep a low profile. Besides, he felt ashamed of his threadbare clothes, of his wigless scalp. He certainly did not look his best.
Gravel crunched beneath his boots as he headed into the outskirts of the city. It was still sparsely inhabited, but there seemed to be more villas in Villeneuve than he recalled. Even here, he thought. The city has spread even to here. Although it was still early morning, there were quite a lot of people in the streets. Ladies, maids, merchants and beggars. Grey pigeons waddled here and there like little tutting nuns, their fat necks bobbing with disapproval. A cobbler was repairing shoes with his hammer. A scrawny peddler woman with a cane basket at her hip and two infants clawing at her skirts sang out her wares. ‘Peau d’agneau, conil, peau de veau . . .’
Three bearded gentlemen stood talking by the road. Smartly dressed, they were, with fine leather boots, luxurious-looking wigs, bright cloaks and ostrich feathers jammed into their hats. One of these men observed Lesage as he passed them, and the man’s idle, wholly uninterested gaze again made him aware, suddenly, of his own appearance and attire. Once he had commanded a degree of notoriety in this part of the city. There goes Adam du Coeuret, people would whisper. The magician who works with La Voisin. The great fortune teller. But no longer. Thus far he had managed to keep at bay his concerns that the world had irreversibly moved on and left him sinking as if into a swamp, but now this fear returned with renewed vigour.
He paused glumly at a street corner and considered how terrible it was to have once had prestige, to have been someone whom ladies and gentlemen sought for advice. Not only had he been able to imagine the future, but he could – with La Voisin’s assistance – even fashion it on occasion. Fate was certainly cruel.
A carriage rattled behind him. He adjusted his sleeves, then lifted his hat momentarily to arrange the little hair that had finally grown back upon his head. The hat, purchased in Marseille, was ill-fitting; it had been a hasty purchase. And the clothes they had given him at the port prison! Dirty, torn. He pondered the probable fate of the man whose clothes he now wore, however, and this cheered him up somewhat. In addition, the injury to his scalp was, at least, adequately covered. That was something. Yes, something.
But how strange it was to be back in Paris again after all these years – and at the street of his lover, no less. It was a moment he had fantasised about so fervently while imprisoned in the dungeons that, here at last, he feared it might reveal itself to be merely another cruel dream. A dream within a vision. He wondered about Catherine’s husband, the feeble Antoine. Was he still living or had she managed at last to kill him off? Many years earlier – when their love and desire was fresher and more impatient – they had cursed the poor fellow and buried a sheep’s heart in the garden, only for Lesage to lose his resolve and urge her to disinter the fetid thing when Antoine fell gravely ill. After all, to cuckold a man was one thing, to murder him quite another. Was anyone he knew still alive, for that matter? La Bosse? François Mariette? Abbé Guibourg? Lesage prayed that Catherine would still be living at Rue Beauregard, near the city’s northern walls, for she was his best hope of escaping the clutches of Madame Picot.
The high, ivy-covered wall bordering Catherine’s house was as he remembered. Lesage paused to catch his breath, then glanced around before opening the heavy door and entering the garden.
Catherine’s consulting pavilion was at the rear of the property. Lesage crept along the side of the main house, lifted the latch on a low wooden gate and, once inside, peered around the corner of the villa. The past assailed him like a great hound loosed from its chain, and he pressed a hand to his throat as if to prevent it from mauling him. Those walls, the gravel path, the windows glinting in the morning sun.
He had met Catherine when he first came to Paris in the spring of ’67, and had fallen under her spell almost immediately – as, it seemed, she had fallen under his. They were introduced by the Norman, Pierre Galet, whom Lesage knew from his youth. Ostensibly a shepherd, Galet had a profitable sideline supplying herbs, flowers and other useful and hard-to-obtain substances to numerous Parisian midwives, witches and apothecaries. Foxglove, powdered diamond, mandrake, unicorn horn, Spanish fly. With her curious mixture of piety and ruthlessness, Catherine Monvoisin was unlike any woman Lesage had ever met. Indeed, she often swore her powers were God-given, and that she had been using them since she was a girl – in which case, how on earth could they be wrong?