Judith Merkle Riley

by The Master of All Desires

  “But—how, I mean, why—um—”

  “Her brother died there, and we had to leave at once to bring his ashes home. But they, my dearest friend—and…and—he—had found they could not do without each other. He wrote. She answered. He came and sought her out—here, at your grandfather’s house—they planned to elope. But your mother’s father found out their plans, and with the aid of my brother, murdered him.”

  “I always knew I didn’t fit,” I said at last.

  “I’m afraid you don’t, my dear. But your mother loved you too much to leave you with the nuns, and I loved you too much to see you cast out, or left unprovided for. You were his child, and for all I know, the last of that family. I think I recall that he once said he was the last remaining child of his father. So you see, for all the love I once bore him, you must live, and marry Nicolas.”

  “So my father is not my father, but murdered my father?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. So you see, you hardly can be said to have killed your father. Besides, it was my brother’s greed that killed him. That and a certain wily selfishness that at last overreached itself—I believe that God Himself would consider you entirely free of blame in his death.”

  “But how did my grandfather find out the time of the elopement?”

  “I—I don’t know—I think he intercepted a letter…” said Auntie, and from her voice I knew I must never ask again.

  How strange, how awful—father had killed my father. Mother had returned home the sole heiress. And father’s reward for his part in the betrayal was marriage, lands, the lordship of La Roque-aux-Bois. Who couldn’t intercept a letter, when such a fortune was to be gained? Gained and spent away like water…

  We moved on to Auntie’s house in Orléans a week later, but mother insisted on remaining at the farm. We left her wafting from room to room, her eyes empty as if already dead, consoling her younger children, but in a strange, absent mood. It was as if, now that her years of purgatory had been lifted, very little remained of her true self. Years of punishment, of silent resentment, of mistrust, had worn away her soul, which had become as pallid and translucent as one of Auntie’s ghosts.

  Luckily, Madame Montvert and her daughter were not the type to see spirits, and they were cheered by being at last away from La Roque-aux-Bois and its dreadful deaths. They exclaimed over the barbaric luxury of Auntie’s furniture, her velvet curtains, her silver, her strange antique gowns, several of which she decreed “absolutely perfect,” to be remade for Clarette. And, of course, there was Cousin Matheline, whose husband was such a dear friend of Monsieur Montvert’s that she simply couldn’t stay away, “in spite of all the scandal, my dear. And it is simply dreadful—they say Villasse has lost his mind, and speaks nothing but rubbish about disembodied talking heads.”

  “Disembodied heads? Why, certainly he must be mad,” said Aunt Pauline. “Do have another of these lovely little sugared almonds, my dear, and tell us all of yourself.”

  “Oh, you do know how I hate to talk about myself. But my little cultural afternoons have become a fixture, yes, a fixture in the life of refinement in this city. Guests of distinction—so many! Everyone has heard of my circle! Why only yesterday, a very distinguished gentleman—there shall be no names—begged me with tears in his eyes for an invitation. And, dear Clarette, I insist that you and your mother attend my next Tuesday—imagine! D’Estouville has succumbed to Cupid’s arrows at last! What a distinguished match for you! And his uncle is such a favorite with the king! And Sibille, and all of you—if only I can prevail upon the Abbé to attend my next Tuesday and read the latest additions to his monograph on the life of the tortoise! The tragedy, the tragedy—it is on everyone’s tongue—I am sure you are much too grief-stricken to read, Sibille, but if you could just make an appearance—”

  And satisfy the curiosity and lust for scandal of all of your friends, I thought. Matheline, you never change. There is a reason everyone within ten miles craves to attend your cénacle, and it isn’t Observations on the Life of the Tortoise. The Abbé bowed graciously in assent from his chair, and smiled that curious enigmatic smile he has, the one that makes me think he knows everything but just doesn’t choose to speak about it.

  “Why, how can you bear up under so much success?” asked Auntie.

  “I try, I try—but you must understand sometimes I am so drained—luckily my dear, dear husband is a saint”—at this point Clarette and her mother looked meaningfully at each other, since they were well acquainted with the “saint” in question—” and so terribly generous with me—you must both come and see the darling little fabric samples he had sent from Paris—of course it will seem ordinary to you—Clarette, dear, that wonderful cut velvet you are wearing—but the color, the shades, they are the very latest! Of course, if Paris falls, it will be such a pity, they won’t be able to send the fabric, such a hardship, when I am just desperate for something more up to date this winter—but my husband writes that something has just paralyzed the Imperial army—they stay in camp and haven’t moved a step toward Paris from Saint-Quentin—it’s been that way for weeks and nobody understands it—it’s as if they’re just waiting for the Duc de Guise to arrive from the south—they say that King Philip’s mind has gone soft—”

  Now it was my turn to look meaningfully at Auntie. Menander. Whatever he’d set in motion before that last wish seemed to be grinding on, like the wheel of Fate. We’d thought that perhaps he’d stop working on everything, and at night, when we heard him breathing and muttering to himself, “No, not that way—well, what about this way? No, not that either—” we’d sit up and speculate. This particular gateway to hell had been shut, and evil forces no longer worked through him—but the old ones were still liberated. Strange, strange. But who were we to understand the operations of the infernal?

  After Matheline had swept away with the rustle of silk, surrounded by the cloud-like resonance of intense gossip only partially expressed, we all looked at one another as if we had thought the same thought at the same time. Abbé Dufour shook his head unbelievingly, Madame Montvert and her daughter turned to me, then we all looked at Aunt Pauline. It was she who said what we all were thinking. “My, my,” she observed. “If Matheline ever suspected that Menander was more than a figment of Villasse’s imagination, I have no doubt that she would have invited him as guest of honor.”

  ***

  That autumn, as the whole city, crammed with refugees from Paris, waited breathlessly for the Duc de Guise to arrive from the south, I hardly noticed any of it. The new steward’s oldest son arrived one afternoon from the farm with news that I must return at once: Laurette was dying. It was the same strange malady that had swept away Villasse in prison before the inquiry was even finished. It was an illness of hideous pain, convulsions, and open, oozing blisters everywhere. Without a moment’s hesitation, I mounted the pillion on the heavy farm horse, and the steward’s son and I rode double that late afternoon and into the night, hoping against hope that we would not be too late. How strange the trees looked that night, and how eerie the cries of owls. Our way was lit by a bright half-moon, sometimes obscured by dark clouds that scudded across it in the autumn wind. Eddies of leaves blew across the narrow, hard-packed road. Trees stretched barren arms into the black sky. At last the dark tower loomed above us, and the waiting steward, lantern in hand, opened the main gate. The farm had an eerie, haunted look that night. Old murder, dismal secrets, and grief had stained the very stones of the place, caught beneath the slate eaves, hung in the doors of the courtyard houses and granaries like shadows darker even than the night sky. How could I have ever been in such a place, and grown, and lived, and breathed?

  “Demoiselle Sibille, it is so good you’ve come home. The priest is already here, and your sister has been asking for you,” said old Marthe, who stood with a shawl over her nightdress, holding a single candle. I followed her up the stairs to where Laurette lay on the little bed in mother’s room. Even in the candlelight, I could see how yellowish
stuff from the open blisters had stained the sheets. Her hands, lying on the bedclothes, twitched and convulsed, and she moaned in pain. The fingers had turned black. Her face was bloated and distorted, and I saw mother, hovering over her, wipe away the blood that was oozing from her ears. Such a terrible death; it froze my heart to see. The death that Villasse planned for me. It served him right that he had been pricked with his own poison. But Laurette, charming, pretty, a bit spiteful, to be sure—certainly there was nothing she had done to merit such an end.

  “Come closer,” said mother. “She has been repeating your name over and over, so we called for you, though we were not sure you would get here in time.”

  “I am sure she wishes to beg your forgiveness and give you her dying blessing,” said the priest. “It is at this time, when heaven is so near, that we make peace with the world we are leaving.” I leaned over the bed, to catch her words.

  “Sibille,” she said. “This is all your fault. You left that brooch among your things to poison me. You are my murderer, and I curse you with the last breath I have in my body.” I sprang back as if shot.

  “The brooch was poisoned? How could that ever be? It was a gift from Philippe d’Estouville.”

  “Shhh, shhh!” said mother, her eyes wide with horror. But Laurette’s voice was rising, her face was swelling with a strange flush, and her body was shaking with the unnatural rage that precedes some kinds of convulsions.

  “Philippe! My Philippe! You stole him from me with silk dresses and money! My money, my inheritance that Aunt Pauline should have given to me! I know everything now!” She tried to grab at the stuff of my dress, to pull me closer, but I pulled my hand away, stiff with horror. “She’s my aunt, not yours! You never belonged here! You stole my place, my dowry, my everything! By what right did you save your face from the vitriol? Pah! I spit in it now! Poison! Poison of toad, that you poisoned me with! I spit poison on you! Suffer and die, you bastard!” Her eyes were rolling wildly as she heaved herself up, limbs convulsing, and spat bloody saliva at me, but missed.

  “Mademoiselle, your immortal soul!” cried the priest, but Laurette’s eyes had rolled up into her head, her neck was jerking, and her arms thrashing wildly.

  “Father, it is not her soul speaking, it is the rage—she is delirious,” whispered mother.

  “I, I c-curse you—from—the—grave,” she managed to choke out from her writhing mouth and near-paralyzed tongue.

  “It’s not my fault!” I cried out.

  “No,” whispered mother. “It’s mine.” And before my eyes I could see her shrink and shrivel and her face turn gray.

  “Mother, never—”

  “Pauline begged for you—she could never have children. But your father, poor stupid man, wanted to spite her, and I—I couldn’t bear to give you up.”

  “Mother, is it a crime to love? It’s not your fault.”

  But Laurette had lost the power of speech, and lay there choking and gasping.

  “Madame, we must begin,” said the priest, as he motioned everyone in the room to draw closer for the last rites. Laurette’s breath came in rough gasps now, and she seemed insensible. By the time the last prayer was done, Laurette’s breathing had ceased. Isabelle and Françoise, silent witnesses to this dreadful scene, retreated in shock to huddle together in the corner behind mother’s bed.

  The servants lit candles at the head and foot of the little cot, and turned back the sheets to strip and wash Laurette’s body. The sheets were soaked with bloody sweat. “No, don’t touch her,” said mother. “I alone will wash the body.” They brought a big brass bowl of water and set it beside the bed on the nightstand. They set out rags, a strip of linen to tie the jaw, a winding cloth. “No, Sibille, you must not touch her either. She is mine.” She closed the staring eyes, and silently picked apart the single long, heavy braid into which Laurette’s hair had been plaited for her illness. Tenderly, she began to comb out the matted blond curls.

  “Mother, she cursed me, she said I poisoned her. I swear to you, I did no such thing.”

  “No,” said mother wearily. “You did not, but the brooch was poisoned by Thibault Villasse and sent to you under a ruse.” Her face was gray and grim as she stripped off Laurette’s stained nightgown. “Take this and burn it,” she said to her maid. As she began to wash my sister’s bluish-gray limbs, she said, “It was beautiful. I do not understand why you never touched it yourself.”

  “I thought because it was from Philippe that it belonged by rights to Clarette, but then I thought if I gave it to her, she might think Philippe unfaithful, and me the cause. So I just kept it—but I didn’t touch it—that would have been wrong.” Mother sponged the corpse’s dank, distorted face.

  “So blue,” she said. “So cold.” She was rebraiding Laurette’s hair now and laying it in great golden coils about her head. “My beautiful girl,” she said. “My poor, beautiful girl.”

  “Mother—”

  “You brought it here and my Laurette tried it on, and for that moment of vanity she is dead.” Mother’s voice held a deathly weariness. “Sibille, turn away from me and leave the room. Once I loved you, but now I cannot bear to see your face. I cannot love you anymore.”

  “Mother!” I cried, but she had turned herself away from me, toward the bluish, stark corpse of my sister. Hunched up like an ancient woman, she began to shake with sobs.

  Icy cold, I passed through the open door like a ghost. Somehow, in some way, I knew that Menander was at the bottom of it all. His horrible secret malice, like an infection, had brought this all about. He was like a web that caught up all the hidden weakness and wickedness about him, and tied it together in one big lump. The gate of evil, Nostradamus had said. But Menander had not created it new—it had already been there for him to find.

  As I stood at the head of the stairs, stunned, hardly able to move, clutching a little candlestick, the priest caught up with me. “Demoiselle, you must pray for them both,” he said.

  “My sister—my sister cursed me—” I repeated, over and over.

  “And that is why you must pray for her,” said the canny old man. “Only you can save her.” The dark at the top of the stairs surrounded us; it seemed full of menace.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “I heard your answer, and I know that you are both honorable and honest. Only the living can pray for the dead. And when those who are wronged pray for the wicked, the foolish, the damned, they save themselves, too.” The evil in the dark seemed to retreat a little father into the corners.

  “Is that true?” I asked, barely able to speak for the pain in my chest that seemed to stop up my throat.

  “It is God’s word. Pray, pray without fail.”

  “I shall,” I said. “This moment, tonight, always.” The dark seemed less impenetrable, the candle brighter.

  “I know you will,” he said. “And now, forgive me, I must attend to the lost souls in that room.”

  “Who is to blame? Who started it?” I asked. And my mind was crowded with the question. Was it Villasse, was it father, was it grandfather? Who started the greed, who started the vengeance? Who began the stuff that spread across the generations, leaving a trail of ruined lives behind it? I could tell by the priest’s eyes, he knew what I meant.

  “Those are the wrong questions,” he answered, and his voice was soft. “The correct one is, who will be the one to stop it?”

  That night, I did not sleep at all, and again and again as I paused in my prayers and my tears I looked up and said into the dark: I will be the one to stop it.

  ***

  “Sibille, Sibille! A letter from Philippe! He was wounded at Thionville and is recovering at Senlis. He’s well, Sibille, and he’s safe! He’s lost the use of his right arm for absolutely months and months, so he can’t go back to the front! And he writes that your brother is a hero! Oh, isn’t my Philippe wonderful! He remembered us all in his letter!” Clarette had run to the door of Auntie’s house to greet me with the news. R
umpled and despairing, I had been helped to dismount from Flora to Baptiste, who had been sent to bring me back from the farm. Clarette was flushed with joy. How can she be like this, I thought, when my heart feels like a stone?

  “Clarette, I’m glad for you—”

  “I know you’re sad—it’s only natural. I cried for days when I lost my baby sister. But now I am consoled to know that she’s my guardian angel in heaven—just like your sister will be for you—” I looked at her sweet, uncomprehending, doughy face, and answered:

  “You’re right, that’s a very consoling thought.”

  “And father has sent word that the Emperor’s strange delay has allowed them to fortify the walls and ship in more arms—if only the Duc de Guise returns in time with his army, then Paris may well be saved, he says.”

  “That’s wonderful, Clarette.”

  “But you’ll be so happy, Sibille, he’s sent word that he dispatches a courier next week for Genoa, and if you wish to send a letter to Nicolas in the packet—”

  “Nicolas! Of course I do! I’ll write today!”

  “You see? I knew that would make you happier. Sibille, I would be so pleased if someday we could become sisters—I know I can never replace Laurette—”

  And it’s a good thing you can’t, I thought. Nicolas—oh, if only he were here, everything would be all right. But then, as I entered the house arm in arm with Clarette, I had a stunning realization: Menander had lost his power. He hadn’t had the strength to follow me to the farm! His box didn’t always have that glossy shine, and if it got a scratch, it mended very slowly. And sometimes, though I had mistaken it for a trick of the light, his box seemed to grow translucent with the effort of thought. Yes, definitely, he was weakening. And with Menander useless, why, that was the greatest barrier to my marrying Nicolas! If there were only a way to bring Nicolas back from exile without risking his execution for illegal dueling…

  That evening after supper, I took a candle to my room and hunted among my things for paper and pen. I will write Nicolas a wonderful letter, I thought, with hints that only he can decipher about the fate of Menander. Rummaging in my writing desk, I saw that mingled with sheets of blank paper were several of my latest poetical efforts, three of which had been greatly praised in draft form by the ladies of the court.