“That’s more or less the idea. We’ve watched several foolish people do exactly that since he first came to us.”
“And the queen?”
“She’s iron-willed—she apportions her wishes very carefully.”
“And you?”
“We don’t wish. He hasn’t got a body to force us to, after all, and he can only act when people wish for something, so he can’t do anything to us on his own.”
“He does whisper in the night, though. He says horrible things,” I added.
“Whispers all night, tempts people to lose their souls, causes strangers to traipse through the house. I’m afraid, Demoiselle Sibille, though I have now formed the highest opinion of your character, that this is not the sort of encumbrance I wish my son to have in his life. He could not make much progress in a career with all the nocturnal interruptions, and, I’m afraid, he’s very weak-willed.”
“I understand entirely,” said Auntie. “It’s the sort of thing that even the immense fortune that she will inherit from me would hardly offset.” When she saw that her dart had hit home, she smiled a very tiny smile under her black mustache, so small that her powder didn’t even crinkle beside her eyes.
“Well, then, my mind’s made up,” said Monsieur Montvert.
“And your wish?” said Menander, one eye glittering evilly beneath a tattered, scaling eyelid.
“My wish is that Sibille make good on her offer to come and convince my boy not to fight,” he said. “You’re worse to deal with than the King of Portugal.”
“What?” shrieked Menander. “You’re not wishing?”
“Of course not,” said Scipion Montvert, his voice brusque. “I am a banker, and I make decisions based on costs and benefits. Your cost is high, your benefit dubious, and you haven’t got a means of force. The King of Portugal does. Let some other fool drown in your magic.” Auntie laughed out loud.
“Banker, I like your brain,” she said.
“And I, Madame, respect yours,” he said, bowing to her where she lay in her huge canopied bed. “And now, if I may ask your permission, I have below a fast horse with packed saddlebags and a letter of credit. If Sibille will tell me where they are to meet and you will let her come with me, he will be on that horse and out of the country before d’Estouville and his seconds arrive.”
Auntie nodded her head in assent. “Bring her back safe,” she said. “She is the greatest treasure I possess.”
“That I promise, Madame,” he said.
“But—an extra horse? You knew all along I’d come?”
“Demoiselle. I am foolish sometimes, but never stupid. And I know love when I see it. I never doubted that when you saw the case rightly, you would aid me.” But I knew that in his mind he had added, even if it costs you Nicolas forever.
***
“Well, my friends, it looks as if the coward has fled,” said Philippe d’Estouville, surveying the dueling field. The flattened, half-dried weeds of late summer testified to the spot’s popularity as a place for illicit encounters. The narrow tracks that counted for roads bypassed the place, and only a few isolated windmills overlooked the abandoned spot. At a distance, a handful of early travelers could be spied on the trunk road to the Porte St.-Antoine, the route by which the dueling party had left the city. Inside the walls, on the dark towers of the Bastille, bright pennants fluttered in the morning breeze. Already, the day promised to be scorching. D’Estouville had dismounted, and with his seconds, paced up and down, surveying the distance for signs of his rival’s party, and the immediate ground for whatever advantage it could hold.
“Wait a little—there’s someone passing through the city gate, no, two—three.”
“On foot. Surely, it’s not them. Even bankers’ boys have mules.” The group of officers laughed.
“The sooner you kill him, the better,” said d’Estouville’s second. “My sister has disgraced the whole family by allowing such a fellow into her company.” Annibal de La Roque flicked a green bottle fly off his sleeve. The buzzing of many flies rose from the dark stains on the earth. The blood of the last man to lose an encounter in this neglected place still lay beneath the weeds.
“They’re coming closer. Well, well, it looks as if I will have my thirteenth man after all.”
“Who are those seconds? Gentlemen? One looks like a student.”
“I know the other—the innkeeper’s son from the White Horse. His father tried to buy him a place in the company of Monsieur St.-Andre.”
“And even that corrupt Lieutenant Peyrat wouldn’t have him?” Again, the officers laughed.
“Well, look at that, I do believe he’s brought a rapier. I didn’t know people like that had them. What a pity he wasn’t the challenger. Then he could have named the weapon—dinner knives, I imagine.”
“They say the English allow the one challenged to name the weapons—”
“That’s the English—they get everything backward.” As Nicolas and his seconds approached, d’Estouville called out, “So, Montvert, why have you come?”
“I have come to defend my honor,” said Nicolas, making the formal statement required by the code of the duel, and then added, “Not that yours isn’t long gone, you and your love potion. I’ve got it at home as a souvenir of our last encounter, and I’ll add your arms to it, when I have defeated you.”
“Love potion? You used love potion on my sister?” said Annibal, while his friend turned deep crimson with rage. Noting his state with alarm, his other second said, “Philippe, don’t let him unbalance you with crazy talk. It’s a trick.” Then, while d’Estouville fumed, the seconds checked the lengths of the blades, forgetting entirely their primary duty, which was to try to resolve the quarrel.
Quite unseen to the group of dark-clad men conferring in the field, a half-dozen mounted archers had left the city gate, and turned from the main road to the track that passed the windmills. Their captain had with him written orders to enforce the royal edict against dueling. D’Estouville, in deference to his family connections, was to be stripped of rank and packed off to the northern front posthaste. The Montvert boy was to be executed as a lesson to others. “Over there,” he said, as he spied the knot of figures and watched them suddenly separate. At his signal, the horsemen, harness jingling, pushed to a trot. Then, suddenly, the captain put up his hand to halt. “The salute—they’ve begun,” he said. “It looks like a good fight. Let’s wait until d’Estouville has preserved his honor.”
“Ha, number thirteen lucky! I put six crowns on d’Estouville.”
“That’s no bet. Bet on how long the student lasts before he’s skewered.”
“But if he’s killed, how can he be executed?”
“They’ll just expose the body. That ought to be enough to put tradesmen’s sons off trying to ape their betters.”
The archers pulled up at a short distance from the quarrel. Mounted, they had an excellent view—and an illegal duel to the death? It was better than a bull-baiting; it was the highest of the blood sports.
At this distance, they could hear the clang and slither of steel blades. In front of them were two men, left arms enveloped in cloaks, right arms wielding heavy Italian rapiers of the new style.
“Look—a mistake—he’s in high ward—ha, now the other comes in low!”
“A hit—no, look, d’Estouville has a cuirass beneath his doublet—”
“A thrust—there’s a neat parry!”
The swordsmen were close and vicious, glaring and sweating. Then, suddenly they sprang apart, and there was a quick scramble, so fast the eye could hardly follow it.
“His feet, I haven’t seen anything like that—”
“D’Estouville—the cut—no, he’s missed—”
“Don’t move in on them now, you’ll spoil the attack,” the captain of the archers said.
Opposite the soldiers, a small group had gathered to watch the progress of the duel. Some were curiosity-seekers who had followed the soldiers to watch the arrest, and be
en rewarded with an excellent spectacle. These were shouting encouragement and laying bets. Beside them stood another knot of spectators and a valet who held two horses, one with a pair of bulging saddlebags behind the saddle. An old man held a restraining hand on the sleeve of a tall, angular girl.
“It’s too late. No, Demoiselle, don’t walk between the blades. My boy—no, he parries, now—yes, what is that, that lunge, that strange botte? Perhaps—my God, that bastard has a cuirass under his doublet. Nicolas is doomed—”
At the fork of the road by the windmills, a lady’s mule litter, slung between two mounted riders, and followed by a man and a boy on horseback, had turned toward the gathering in the field. Unnoticed by the milling men and horses, as it drew closer, a girl’s voice was raised in prayer.
“Most High and Holy Virgin, graciously spare my brother’s life that he may redeem his soul through repentance and a future life of good works—”
“Hurry, oh, hurry,” called Nicolas’s mother to the rider on the mule in front of the litter. “Go on ahead, Maître, you may yet save him!” The surgeon, his boy and his instruments laden behind his saddle, pushed his bony roan to a trot ahead of the litter. Ahead of them, the clatter and clang of weapons sounded exactly like business. One customer, maybe two, and even more if the seconds got embroiled, as they so often did.
Clarette had clad herself in floating white muslin that morning, exactly like a virgin sacrifice, and combed her dark hair into braids set in loops beneath her ears so loosely, so carelessly, that they might come undone at the moment of tribulation, creating an image of divine and pleading womanhood that could not fail to go unnoticed by the hardest-hearted witness. As the litter approached the bloodstained field of honor, she dismounted, placing herself directly between the mounted archers and the struggling duelists, where the view was excellent. There she knelt, saying her rosary and rolling her eyes toward heaven.
But there was something wicked in the grunting, the smell of sweat, the sound of steel. Something that distracted her prayer, and caused her eyes to swivel back toward the earth, and notice the most beautiful pair of mustachios upon which she had ever laid eyes, a profile like an eagle, a romantically bloodstained sleeve and a sweaty, slightly torn sleeveless doublet. None of these things belonged to her ever-wicked and much preferred brother. They belonged to the innocent, gallant fellow her sin-laden brother was so evilly trying to kill. Suddenly, she noticed something tingling beneath the tight-laced bodice of her gown. It might have been her heart, but it was in fact an alien object, a green-glass bottle, that reminded her of its presence with its hardness. It reminded her of love, and the thought itself, in the presence of the sweating stranger, made a sort of twitching, burning sensation course through her body to the oddest places.
D’Estouville was soaking now, and breathing hard. His man was putting up an unusual fight for a person of little blood. Number thirteen would not come as simply as he’d expected. The Italian rapier was a new weapon in France, and a hard taskmistress, betraying the old-style cuts in which all good swordsmen were trained, and rewarding lightning thrusts, tricky parries, and secret Italian bottes, the hidden possessions of wily foreign fencing masters. D’Estouville opened too wide on the attack several times, his cuts left an opening, minute, momentary, beneath the right arm. But the defects of his defense were remedied by the cuirass, which had already parried two fair thrusts and a clever riposte, which had slid off the cuirass, caught in his sleeve, and torn a bloody, but shallow cut on his right arm. And he had parried a low cut clumsily, taking a wound over the left knee. The knee was beginning to give way, but he could see that number thirteen was tiring visibly, breathing hard, his point dropping. He had not the hardness of a soldier who trained daily. It was almost over. A rapid attack of the point, battering it down, spearing the target almost at the center, through the heart…Love potion, indeed. His humiliation would soon be drowned in blood, and Sibille would be at his feet, worshiping him, as women always worship the victor.
But what was this sudden last, desperate attack? Rapid, hard, and not against his torso—no, where? Against his sword. Unheard of. The fellow had closed in somehow, and grabbed the guard of d’Estouville’s rapier with his left hand, placing his right foot beside his opponent’s left. Their two sweating faces were within inches of each other. D’Estouville held on tight and retained his rapier, but as he was pulled off balance over his opponent’s foot and across the fellow’s body by the strong yank on his rapier guard, a knee hit him squarely in the codpiece, and he dropped to the ground. The secret botte of Maestro Altoni. Not pretty, but very effective.
A woman’s scream was the next thing he heard, as a heavy weight fell across his chest, adding to his agony and confusion. A sword thrust through the heart? No, it was a plain, doughy-faced girl in white, her hair coming undone, flinging herself between him and the victor’s blade.
“Clarette, you pest!” he heard his opponent say, though he could not see him through the large amount of brunette hair that had been flung in his face. “Get off! I’ve won and his life and arms are forfeit.”
“Nicolas, you beast! How could you!” The ridiculous woman had pinned him down; her hair made him want to sneeze, and he still could see almost nothing—then someone—a woman?—seemed to pull at number thirteen. “Don’t waste another moment here—they’ve come for you—your horse—” he could hear her say, and the sword point that had been hovering over his left eye vanished. After that, through a haze of dark hair scented with rose water, he could see a confusion of soldiers and hear shouts, footsteps, and the sound of a horse at full gallop receding into the distance. There was the clatter of armed men and contradictory shouting and the heavy weight on his chest crying, “Cowards! Don’t you dare touch him! Don’t you see he’s wounded?”
“Captain, the other one’s fled—”
“Well, we’ve got this one—”
“—I am a surgeon—his wounds must be attended to—”
“I have it—” said a woman’s voice—the woman on top of him?—and he could feel movement, and another large flounce of muslin obscured his view. “It’s—a—reviving tonic—”
“Get off me, woman,” said d’Estouville. “You’re disgracing me, whoever you are.”
“Not—until—you drink this.” Something searing was forced between his lips, and before he could even cough, the world went dark.
***
The guards, who had hesitated to grab a maiden in muslin off the body of the duel’s loser, stared in paralyzed astonishment as she pried the cork out of a little bottle in her bosom, forced a few drops into his mouth, and then drank the rest herself. Before she had even swallowed, she had fallen across the bleeding victim, exactly as if dead. The surgeon pulled them apart and put his head to each of their chests. There was no heartbeat.
“Dead,” he announced. “Both of them.” The regret in his tone was genuine. The whole trip, a waste. Two expensive jobs gone, and probably a lot of time eaten up in some wretched official inquiry. Oh, Fortune, you bad tempered old harpy, he thought.
“My girl, my blessed girl!” cried a distraught, wealthy woman, who had dismounted from the litter.
“Who is this?” said the captain.
“My daughter, his sister—who would have thought she had such vengeance in her heart?” cried old Monsieur Montvert. “She has poisoned the challenger and then herself, to escape punishment.”
“She was such a good girl, a quiet girl. She prayed all the time. Went to mass every day—” sobbed Madame Montvert. The soldiers, the watchers, the crowd all milled about the two bodies, their eyes wide with shock and horror.
There they lay, the handsome, bleeding officer, his mouth open like a dead fish, his booted toes turned up, and across his body, the romantic, muslin-clad maiden, her dark hair all undone, flowing like a river across the two bodies. Dead just like that, without warning, without the priest, without a prayer. It was simply too much. Many were overcome and began to weep.
&nbs
p; “Take them up,” began the captain. “Wha—?”
There was a faint stirring of the dead man’s hand.
“Look, she’s moving—I hear her sigh,” said someone.
“Surgeon, you’re an idiot—they’re alive—”
“I swear, there was no heartbeat—”
Slowly, with the deepest of sighs, the white-clad maiden raised her head and looked into the face of the wounded man with passionate admiration. His eyes fluttered, and opened, and no one there could mistake the look he gave the girl; it was a look of deepest adoration. Their eyes locked, their cheeks grew pink. Their hearts, in such close proximity, began to beat in exactly the same rhythm. Love, love the absolute, love the infinite, had conquered.
“That nasty shoulder wound, that will want bandaging, Monsieur—” said the surgeon.
And Sibille, whose sharp eyes had not missed a moment of the drama, thought to herself: Thank God for all this crazy distraction—Nicolas is so far away they’ll never catch up with him now.
“I—I don’t understand,” said Nicolas’s father, looking puzzled.
“Didn’t you know he was writing a book on the art of fencing with the Italian rapier?” said Sibille.
“No, I mean that stuff my daughter fed that fellow—what has she done?”
“I’m afraid they’re in love forever,” answered Sibille, picking up the discarded bottle and squinting at it as it glittered in the sun.
“In love—with a wastrel officer? A dandy? A parasite who’ll live forever with his hand in my purse?”
“Well, at least he has good connections—and he’s coming into a title someday, too, you know.”
“The nunnery—why didn’t I listen when she asked?” groaned the old banker.
***
In the shabby apartment that smelled of boiling cabbage, Lorenzo Ruggieri was shouting at his wife. “Beatrice! Have you been using my white arsenic to poison rats again? The bottle’s low!”
“Oh, my dear, not low at all. See the mark you made on it? I haven’t touched it.”
“I’ve told you a hundred times not to meddle with the tools of my trade. Suppose someone offers good money for a high-class poisoning, and I haven’t got enough, and they take their business to someone else?”
Judith Merkle Riley Page 32
