The Collector of Dying Breaths

by M. J. Rose

  “So its been associated with magic rituals going all the way back through history,” Jac said.

  “Now let’s see what we can find out about the other ingredients.”

  For a half hour Griffin worked on the Latin text and Jac searched through the texts written in English. She loved the old and yellowed books. Loved the feel of the leather covers. Loved knowing that her grandfather had pored over them, and his father before him.

  “Dragon’s blood,” Jac said. “Got it.” And she read: “ ‘A botanical extracted from Dracaena, D. cinnabari, it was used as a medicine, incense and a red dye.’ According to this book it was important in medieval ritual magic and alchemy.”

  “So much of what was called alchemy is what we would refer to today as science rather than magic.”

  They both went back to reading. Fifteen minutes passed in silence. Here, deep underground, the only light from an electric lantern, Jac felt as if she were in the netherworld of her beloved Greek myths. She looked up to tell Griffin—but stopped, struck by a vision of sorts.

  Jac sensed great sadness in the room. The emotion seemed to be perfuming the air. Hovering over Griffin like a cloud. She was looking at him but was seeing the ancient perfumer. His head bowed low. His shoulders slumped in misery. Working on his notes. Bereft.

  “Here’s something else,” Griffin said.

  The scene wavered, and Jac was seeing Griffin again. René was gone.

  “I found a mention of tutty,” Griffin continued. “It’s in this copy of a fourteenth-century book, Francesco Pegolotti’s La Pratica Della Mercatura. Translated it means The Merchant’s Handbook. Tutty, Pegolotti wrote, was the charred scrapings from inside chimneys. It was imported from Alexandria and described as a very expensive nonperishable fragrance.”

  “The wood burned then would have different properties from wood burned now, as would the chimneys themselves. We can try, though.”

  They both returned to their reading. After a few minutes Melinoe interrupted them. “Would you like to come up for dinner?”

  Jac hadn’t realized how much time had passed. She looked at Griffin. “I’d just as soon keep going—you? I’d be happy with a sandwich later.”

  “We can do better than sandwiches. Just come up when you are done. Are you getting anywhere?”

  “I think so,” Jac said.

  “How soon until you can mix something up?” she asked.

  “Oh, we’re nowhere near that close,” Jac said. “We’ve only just identified what we think is René’s final formula and are working on his lists of ingredients. The problem is this was written over four centuries ago. I’m not familiar with some of what he used or even if it’s available anymore.” Jac felt a wave of frustration. What if she had the formula but never could find the right ingredients? Or what if she did but they never figured out what to do with the mixture?

  As if reading her mind, Griffin asked both women, “Do you know what’s supposed to happen with this substance? How it is used to reanimate the breath?”

  “No,” Jac said. Melinoe shook her head.

  “Robbie told me he thought that the potion would be mixed with the breath and then if a newborn inhaled it, the deceased’s breath would take root . . . The baby would host the old soul. Integrate. You’d live on in this new life,” Griffin said.

  “Yes, that’s what Robbie and I constructed from what Thomas Edison and Henry Ford believed. They were fanatical about the idea of reanimating a dying breath,” Melinoe said. “But surely it has to be in René’s notes.”

  “It’s written in fifteenth-century Latin, so it’s going slowly and we’re working it in sections.”

  “Can’t you look ahead? Is there at least some mention of how to make whatever it is—a tincture, a formula?” Melinoe asked impatiently. “Are the incantations on the silver coverings a spell that’s said when you use the elixir?”

  “We just don’t know anything yet,” Griffin said as he carefully turned the pages of the book, scanning each one. “Wait . . .” He looked at Jac. “You didn’t even skim through it when you found it, did you?”

  “It’s in Latin,” she said, not understanding why he was repeating Melinoe’s question. “There was no point.”

  “Well, this part isn’t in Latin. It’s in French.” He handed it to Jac, who read it for a few moments in silence.

  “It’s a formula for a perfume called Soul Water . . .” She read it out loud haltingly, translating into English as she went.

  Take of good brandy, a half of a gallon; of the best virgin honey and coriander seeds, each a half of a pound; cloves and henbane, an ounce and a half; nutmegs, aloewood and dragon’s blood, an ounce; tutty and momie, of each an ounce; benilloes, number four; the yellow rind of three large lemons. Bruise the cloves, nutmegs; cut the benilloes into small pieces; put all into a cucurbit and pour the brandy on to them. After they have digested twenty-four hours, distill off the spirit in balneo-mariae.

  To a gallon of this water, add damask rose and orange flower water, of each a pint and a half; of China musk and ambergris, of each five grains; first grind the musk and ambergris with some of the water, and afterward put all into a large matrass, shake them well together, and let them circulate three days and nights in a gentle heat. Then, letting the water cool, filter and keep it for use in a bottle well stopped.

  “A cucurbit? A balneo-mariae? Benilloes? What are these things?” Melinoe asked.

  “The first is a still, the second is a double boiler. A matrass is a vessel for digesting and distilling. Benilloes are vanilla beans.”

  “And things like dragon’s blood and tutty? Do you know what all those ingredients are?” Melinoe asked. She had come closer to Jac and stood behind her. She was wearing an expensive perfume that day, which Jac recognized as Golconda by JAR. Carnation and cinnamon. An unusual scent—one that, at over eight hundred dollars a bottle, very few women in the world wore. It suited her.

  “No. I’ve never heard of quite a few of them. We’re working on that challenge now.”

  “Aren’t they here?” Melinoe asked as she pointed to the shelves.

  “No,” Jac said. “That’s one of the mysteries we’ve encountered so far. The supplies here are rather pedestrian. The more exotic ones are almost too conspicuously absent.”

  “Why do you think?” Melinoe asked.

  “Maybe René destroyed them . . . Maybe the experiments went wrong and he didn’t want anyone to try and re-create them,” Jac said. And then shivered. She didn’t know why, but the thought frightened her.

  “But you’ll be able to find what’s not here once you can figure out what it is?”

  “Even if we do figure it out, the problem will be whether or not the mixture will be the same if we use modern-day equivalents,” Jac explained.

  “Yes, you mentioned that before,” Melinoe said.

  “Why wouldn’t it be the same?” Griffin asked.

  “Each item grew or was extracted from plants or herbs or woods under circumstances we can’t re-create. Ancient ambergris, for instance. The whales in the sixteenth century had a different diet. The environment has so radically changed that the way the ingredients’ odors mix today will result in an altogether alternate fragrance. If it even was a fragrance. That’s just a guess. We don’t know for sure how this was intended to mix with the breath—and then how to use it? Drink it? Apply it to the skin? We’re still really in the dark.”

  Melinoe shook her head. Like a petulant child, Jac thought. “No. We are not. We can’t be. We’ve come this far, and all this effort will not go to waste. Your brother’s lifetime will not go to waste.”

  Jac winced. What Melinoe was saying was too personal to hear coming from a stranger.

  “What if there are samples of these ingredients somewhere?” Melinoe looked at Jac. “Are there museums that would keep ingredients?”

 
“There are two fragrance museums, one in Grasse and one near Versailles, but I don’t think they have ancient ingredients. And if they do, I doubt they’ll relinquish what they have.”

  “Money,” Melinoe said, “has amazing properties too. Institutions and collectors often want items they don’t have and are willing to deaccession one in order to purchase another. You don’t need great quantities of any single item, do you?”

  “No, but even an ounce of ancient ambergris could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars if you actually could find it.”

  Melinoe shrugged as if the amount were as insignificant as the dust on the shelves. “You leave the acquisitions to me. Just figure out what we need and make a list.” She walked toward the door and then stopped.

  The low light exaggerated the wing-shaped white streaks of hair on either side of her forehead. She was wearing all black. A tight-fitting sweater. A long pencil skirt made of black lace. High-heeled black boots with stiletto heels. Today her fingers were stacked with diamond and emerald rings, and she had a pair of pear-shaped emeralds hanging from her earlobes. She emanated energy and resolve. A diminutive lightning bolt.

  Jac was certain that Melinoe meant every word she said. If the ingredients existed, she would find them and pay for them. But first they had to know what they were searching for.

  Once Melinoe left, Jac and Griffin returned to their research, and it was more than forty-five minutes before either of them found a mention of what they were looking for—the most obscure ingredient on the perfumer’s list.

  “You aren’t going to believe this,” Griffin said in a voice that belied his excitement.

  “What?”

  “Wait—let me just cross-reference it.”

  “Don’t make me wait.”

  He ignored her as he flipped back to a page in another book. Jac glimpsed an illustration of an Egyptian mummy.

  “You mean ‘momie’ as in ‘mummy’? Really?”

  “Yes. This is amazing, Jac. First from Pegolotti. He lists momie as a medicinal spice collected from the tombs of the dead. Collected from embalmed but not totally dried-out corpses. According to him, it was imported from Egypt and the Eastern regions. And here is another mention in the Livre des Simples Médecines, written in the fifteenth century . . .”

  Momie is a spice or confection found in the tombs of the people who have been embalmed, as they used to do in ancient times, and as the pagans near Babylon still do. This momie is found near the brain and the spine. You should choose that which is shining, black, strong-smelling, and firm. On the other hand, the white kind, which is rather opaque, does not stick, is not firm and easily crumbles to powder, must be refused.

  Momie has binding qualities. If a compress is made of it and the juice of shepherd’s purse herb, it stops excessive nasal bleeding. Furthermore, to treat spitting of blood through the mouth because of a wound or a malady of the respiratory organs, make some pills with momie, mastic powder, and water in which gum Arabic has been dissolved and let the patient keep these pills under the tongue until they have melted, then let him swallow them.

  Jac shivered. “An ingredient taken from the spines and brains of mummies . . .” she whispered, almost afraid to say it out loud. Where and how would they ever collect such a thing?

  Chapter 24

  MARCH 20, 1573

  BARBIZON, FRANCE

  In Paris the members of Catherine’s flying squadron flit about the court and its environs like butterflies. When she was princess, there were only a handful of them; now there are dozens. These women are not at all the salacious whores that the enemies of the court like to suggest. I have known many of them to be the most intelligent and clever women in Paris, culled and cultivated by Catherine. She gathers them around her for their stimulating conversations, educates them in certain arts, dresses them, houses them and otherwise cares for them—not only out of the goodness of her heart but also to engender their loyalty to her.

  The queen needs her supporters and she needs to trust them.

  It’s not unusual for some of these women to visit my shop to buy a fragrance or pick up supplies for Her Majesty. Sometimes they bring straightforward requests; sometimes they carry notes that ask for more clandestine concoctions.

  The woman who entered my store that morning on May 16, 1569, was masked, which was not usual. But that mask couldn’t hide her scent, deeply redolent of a garden at dusk. And the mask didn’t conceal her luxuriant hair, the warmest brown of cherrywood, twisted into a spiral except for the few escaped tendrils that curled fetchingly and framed her long neck. Her pale-green satin gown accentuated a narrow waist. The bodice was cut very low, as was the style, especially for ladies of the court, and her honey-colored flesh was abundant above the tight bustline.

  It was a curious thing about Catherine’s court: despite the suggestive and revealing clothes, her ladies were highly chaperoned and expected to be chaste unless Catherine asked otherwise of them. I had befriended many members of the squadron, and they talked freely with me when they came to the shop. Over wine, I was privy to their stories of how they danced with and seduced noblemen in order to gain secrets for their queen and how they were rewarded by her. It was an enviable life compared to some of the alternatives, but I knew how these women feared what would happen to them when they grew old and wrinkled. When the bloom was off their cheeks and their breasts sagged, would Catherine still care for them? How would they fare without families to tend to them in their dotage?

  “Maître René, I have a note from the queen,” my visitor said as she reached into the pocket of her frock and pulled out a letter for me.

  The queen was at Fontenay-sous-Bois, where the court had moved for several weeks, and it was not unusual for one of her ladies to return to Paris if there were things the queen needed.

  Dear René,

  The bearer of this note is Isabeau Allard . . .

  I looked up at the woman. “Isabeau Allard?”

  She nodded.

  “You were married to the comte Allard?”

  Again she nodded.

  Allard had been a customer of mine for several years prior to his death. He was a young man killed in a battle two years before. I wasn’t sure if I should mention this to the woman who stood in front of me, but Allard had been a favorite of mine. He always took his time in my shop and praised my goods generously.

  “I knew your husband,” I told Isabeau. “He was a fine gentleman.”

  She nodded, and for one very small moment the slits in the mask went dark as she shut her eyes. When she opened them again, they were clear but held a trace of sadness.

  “It’s kind of you to tell me, Maître René.”

  “Were you married long?”

  “Only little more than two years.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I was luckier than many. To marry someone who you actually enjoy was a blessing. My father chose well.”

  I returned to the letter and read the rest of it.

  Dear René,

  The bearer of this note is Isabeau Allard. I have need of your lotion, the one with the apple base. Two bottles should suffice. As well I would like a bottle of my fragrance, and find something for Isabeau that suits her, as she will be part of the dinner party we are holding for an important nobleman whom I want her to impress. I will also need scent for two other of my ladies who will be at the dinner. All different scents that complement one another and do not compete.

  And it was signed in familiar slanting handwriting I knew as well as my own.

  Catherine

  “It’s clear?” Isabeau asked. “You understand? Catherine said you would.”

  I looked up—she had removed her mask. She was very lovely, with a high forehead, strong cheekbones and full lips. It wasn’t just beauty; there was something impish and mischievous about her that caught me off guard
and, I would have to say, made me curious about her right away.

  “Yes, very.”

  “The queen wanted me to tell you that I read the note and know what’s in it and what it refers to. In case you had any questions.”

  “That was wise. This is a dangerous business.”

  “But a necessary one,” she said with a meaningful lilt to her voice. “There are so many intrigues at court.”

  “As your husband must have shared with you.”

  “It’s why what I do for the queen is so important to me. I can’t put on armor and go fight for my husband’s honor the way his brother did, but I can fight this way.”

  As she spoke she squared her shoulders and in fact took on the stance of a soldier. Allard, I thought, had been a lucky man.

  “It will take me a few minutes to prepare the apple lotion,” I said. “Would you like wine while you wait? Or drinking chocolate?”

  “Chocolate, please.”

  As I set to preparing her drink, I engaged her in small talk. She had a lilting, almost musical voice, and it was pleasing to listen to. “Have you been traveling all day?”

  “Yes, I came straight here.”

  I glanced back. She didn’t look as if she had been traveling for five hours. But even more curious she didn’t smell as if she had been traveling. There was no scent of horses or sweat about her. Had I been asked, I would have guessed she’d bathed within the last two hours.

  When I brought her the cup of chocolate, I leaned closer than warranted and sniffed.

  “Are you wearing a fragrance?” I asked.

  It was the custom to apply fragrances liberally, and indeed many women were too liberal with them. “Just lemon rose water. My husband used to buy it for me. From your shop I believe?”