The Collector of Dying Breaths

by M. J. Rose

  “We have almost all the ingredients. They’ve found them and paid for them. I couldn’t have done all that. What we don’t have, we’re going to pick up tomorrow.”

  “I’m coming back then.”

  Jac felt a moment of sheer happiness that he was returning. That he wanted to be with her. But it only lasted for a moment. She didn’t want to pull him into this quest. She imagined the face of the tragic perfumer who had lived in the château so long ago.

  “Come back to do what? To protect me?” She feigned injury. “I’m not a little girl, Griffin. I’ve managed on my own for a long time; I don’t need you to swoop in and save me.”

  Chapter 28

  Jac closed her phone. Pushing Griffin away was the last thing she wanted to do, even though she knew she had to. Overwhelmed with sadness, she sat down on the stone steps of the folly. Was she making a mistake? There was no one to ask.

  A text came through.

  It won’t work . . . I know what you’re doing. I’m coming back the day after tomorrow. It’s the soonest I can manage. Be careful till I get there.

  The reassurance that he was returning was almost strong enough to wipe out the fear that he was returning.

  Suddenly in the distance she could see someone approaching. Even from this far away she could tell it was too large to be Melinoe. It was Serge.

  “Jac?”

  She slipped the phone into her pocket, not wanting to alert him that she’d come outside to take a call.

  “What are you doing out here so late?” he asked.

  “I was restless.”

  “You’re upset about what happened today, aren’t you?” he asked.

  Was this why he’d come looking for her? Were he and Melinoe worried that she was going to walk away now—or, worse, go to the police?

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Upset and worried.”

  “Don’t be. It was harmless. We left something of equal value.”

  “But Melinoe—”

  “You can’t blame Melinoe,” he interrupted. “She’s spent so many years working on this . . . buying the breaths . . . the château . . . She is obsessed.”

  Jac was worried that she was beginning to share the same obsession. Hadn’t she just ignored Griffin’s warnings? Her own desire to re-create the formula for the dying breaths was so strong . . . she was now under the same spell Melinoe was. Jac felt a sudden wave of compassion for the enigmatic and curious woman.

  “How can you just accept what happened today?” Jac asked. “It was wrong.”

  She’d liked Serge from the moment she’d met him. There was something solid and reliable about him. Something that suggested he would be a ballast in a storm. Was that what Melinoe saw in him too?

  “When you truly understand someone’s psyche, it’s far easier to excuse their excesses or their faults,” he said.

  They were walking around the folly now, having fallen into a stroll without articulating that was what they were going to do.

  “And you understand her psyche?”

  “I’m part of it. She and I share a history. We lost everything together on the same day. We were all we each had. We’ve tried to live separate lives, but something connects us.”

  “Grief,” Jac said. She and Robbie shared a similar pain. “I felt that kind of bond with my brother too.” Except for one part of it, she thought.

  Serge nodded in understanding. “He was a special person and you were lucky to have him.”

  Jac heard something in Serge’s voice. Jealousy?

  “Sometimes I wish that Melinoe and I were able to stay close, the way you two did, but still have our own lives, our own selves.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  Jac was certain Melinoe would be furious if she knew they were talking about her behind her back. The fact that Serge was exhibiting nervousness now, looking to the right and left before he answered, proved it.

  “She saved my life . . .” Serge said. “I was stabbed. Lying there dying. Melinoe called the ambulances, stayed with me in the hospital, nursed me back to life. All that despite what my life cost her. She loved me that much.” He paused. “I owe her everything,” he said simply, without emotion.

  “And she demands everything.” Jac should have not said such a thing. It wasn’t her place. It wasn’t her business. But it had slipped out.

  Jac watched his face and the play of passion and pain she saw there. She knew their relationship was far too complicated for her to understand.

  “You shouldn’t judge her,” Serge said.

  Jac thought about what Griffin had said about Melinoe. About how Malachai had spoken of her. She’d enchanted him and then damaged him. Malachai! A pillar of emotional reserve and cool calm. How powerful Melinoe must really be.

  Maybe Serge was wrong; maybe she should judge this woman who she had agreed to help, a collector so obsessed with their goal that she had stolen something from a museum, who used people with a finesse they were oblivious to. Made them love her despite her power over them. Maybe she should judge Melinoe even more harshly. But if she did, it would mean she’d have to give up their shared goal. Because it was her goal now too. And she couldn’t imagine giving up.

  Chapter 29

  MARCH 22, 1573

  BARBIZON, FRANCE

  I climbed the stone steps from my laboratory in the Louvre and entered the queen’s chamber. Again, she was with the man I dreaded seeing, Cosimo Ruggieri. In front of them, on the table, was a small waxen figure of a man with hair the color of fire and dressed in formal attire.

  Catherine looked up. “I have a problem, René, and I need you to help me.”

  I bowed. “As is my duty and privilege.”

  “One of my ladies has found out some important information. While we were in Fontainebleau, she discovered that one of the leading members of the Protestant opposition is planning an uprising, and I need to prevent that from happening.”

  “Of course.”

  “But everyone is now wary of us.”

  “And so you have resorted to black magic once again?” I asked.

  “I didn’t invite you here to be impertinent,” Catherine snapped at me.

  “No, you didn’t. I apologize.” I glanced over at Ruggieri, who was smiling slyly at her rebuke.

  “What can I do for you, Your Majesty?” I asked.

  “Once before I asked both of you to work on the same problem together and the results were superb. Again I am asking both of you to help me.”

  I looked at the doll. I knew what it was for. This was obviously Ruggieri’s solution. Mon Dieu, but he was flirting with disaster and putting the queen in a precarious position if it were to be discovered.

  There was much talk about the totems that were fashioned with bits and pieces of a person’s hair, fingernails and some cloth taken from one of their items of clothing. Pins were then stuck in the little doll in the places where you intended the victim to feel pain.

  It was said that Ruggieri had killed people with this method. I couldn’t imagine it was possible, but that wasn’t what worried me. I was solely focused on the problems my mistress was inviting by including the magician in this effort. The conflicts between the Protestants and Catholics were at the heart of all her efforts, and yet she was risking her own credibility with both sides by engaging in Ruggieri’s nonsense.

  “We are working on the problem one way. I’d like you to work on it from another so there’s no chance of failure. I would like you to create a gift for a certain gentleman. Something I can have a lady in my squadron give to him that will not be suspect. But something that will cause his demise and send a message to the Protestants that they do not have the blessing of God on their side.”

  “Your Majesty, we don’t need a perfumer to create such a thing. I can—”

  Now it was Ruggieri’s turn
to receive Catherine’s icy stare and my turn to smile. Except I couldn’t. Something the queen had said made me worried.

  “Which lady, Your Highness, has discovered this?”

  “Isabeau Allard,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  Ruggieri was watching me carefully. How I answered was crucial. Ruggieri would seize on any perceived weakness.

  “You sent her to me and asked me to create a perfume for her to aid her in seducing someone at court. I was wondering if this was the fruit of that labor?”

  “Indeed it was. Isabeau has managed to insinuate herself into the man’s life, making herself quite indispensible and all the while delivering important information to me. Isabeau has become invaluable.”

  “I’m glad,” I said, “that it was a success.”

  I was sick to my stomach. I had not heard from Isabeau Allard since that first day she’d visited my shop. Every night I went to sleep thinking about her, trying to conjure up the scent that emanated from deep inside her. Every morning I spent hours at the perfume organ, trying to re-create it. She haunted me. The sound of her pleasure and feel of her hands on my body came to me in my dreams. I was like a lovesick youth. I lost my appetite and need for sleep. I wanted to see her again, feel her, taste her . . . to smell her! But I could not approach her. Isabeau was in the queen’s retinue and out of my orbit.

  Daily, I had invented errands that allowed me to walk through the castle in the hopes I would run into her, but so far I’d failed. It had been three weeks of torture. Now, at last, I had learned why.

  “Has she gone back to the Protestant’s court then?”

  “Why are you asking me about this, René?” Catherine questioned. She was scrutinizing me.

  “Only because I was thinking that if Lady Allard was going back, she might need more perfume. I don’t remember exactly which formula I gave her, though. Perhaps if she came to my laboratory I could make some more.”

  “I cannot allow her to go with him back to his court—that would be folly on my part. She’s my bait to keep him where I can see him.”

  I wanted to hear more and, at the same time, listen to none of this. I had lain awake at night trying to imagine Isabeau with the Protestant duke. I had wondered just how far she would go for her queen and how she felt about it and how she survived it. Pictured him touching her . . . worse, her touching him back. The imagery made me ill.

  I glanced over and saw that Ruggieri was staring at me again. Busying myself with the bottle of scent I had brought up for Her Majesty, I wiped at the gold cap to get rid of smudges.

  “Well,” the queen said, “Isabeau Allard needs more than a perfume now. I want you to concoct something much more lethal.”

  “Yes,” I said, feeling a sudden burst of happiness. Catherine wanted to dispose of the duke. Isabeau would be freed of him. “There are all manner of ways we can do that with formulas any of your servants can put in his food or drink. You don’t need to ask one of your ladies to do it.” I didn’t want Isabeau to have a murder on her conscience. It was one thing to seduce a lord to get information but quite another to kill a man.

  “Of course, we could, but she tells me he is already suspicious and he has a tester. It must be something she can give him—he is so besotted with her, he trusts her, René.”

  “I need to think about this puzzle and consult my notebooks.”

  “The duke is planning to return in a week’s time. I’d like it to be ready by then.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  I stood, assuming I had been dismissed. “Wait, René, I want to show you something.” She withdrew a silver box from her pocket. It was the size of an egg and encrusted with pearls and emeralds that shaped a fleur-de-lis. It had a small latch made of rubies, which she opened and then held the box out to me.

  “What do you think of this?”

  As I took it, I saw Ruggieri’s lips slide into another of his sly smiles.

  “Smell it, René. Tell me your opinion.”

  The egg was filled with a waxy substance that was uneven and mottled with specks of the ingredients that had gone to scent it. Bits of petals, I realized. The effect was quite pretty and reminded me of the soap I’d made as a boy in Florence. I leaned down and sniffed at the pomade. It was a simple scent, unsophisticated and common.

  “Other than the design, which is something we perfected at Santa Maria Novella, I’m not impressed with the scent, I’m sorry. Was it a gift?”

  She nodded. “Ruggieri found a young perfumer who he thought I might be interested in bringing to the court. This is his work.”

  I turned to my nemesis. “You’re looking to bring more perfumers to the court, Ruggieri?”

  “This man, Oliverotti Ferante, does work for a noble family in Tuscany. While I was exiled there, I made his acquaintance and thought his style fresh and exciting.”

  I wasn’t surprised Ruggieri was scheming to get rid of me. Was Catherine aware of what he was attempting? She was too shrewd not to. Was she showing me the egg as a warning? Reminding me that if I didn’t agree to her nefarious requests, I could be replaced?

  Focusing my ire on Ruggieri, I turned to him. It wouldn’t do to show my consternation with the queen herself. “I think you should stick to your charts, Astrologer. This is nothing but a simple jasmine-and-lemon scent. It takes the imagination of a five-year-old. And the quality of the wax is substandard. It’s not even a clean pour.”

  I handed the egg back to Catherine.

  “Have no fear, Maître René, you are the perfumer to the court.” Catherine smiled. “But your jealousy is refreshing. After all these years I’ve come to think of you as a stoic.”

  “No, my lady, I have feelings.”

  “Even if you have never shown them to me,” she said a little sadly.

  “Why would I? You are my queen. You have the burdens of the court on your shoulders; you don’t need mine also.”

  “But we have been together so long. You and I and Ruggieri. We are a family of sorts.” She looked from me to the astrologer and then laughed. “There should be no rivalry between you two, but I suppose it’s inevitable.”

  “There is no rivalry,” Ruggieri said. “That would be like the moon being in competition with a mere star.”

  “So now you are the moon?” I asked him.

  “Are you suggesting that mixing up scents and soaps can compete with the art of astronomy and astrology and being able to see the future and foretell what is to come?”

  I knew that Catherine was enjoying this and had pitted us against each other on purpose. It would be so easy to have these meetings with us separately, but she chose to inflict us upon each other. What pleasure did it give her? Or did she just think that this was the way to make each of us work that much harder to accomplish what she asked of us?

  With a sense of dread I took my leave and returned the way I’d come, via the stone staircase, down to my laboratory. As I ruminated on what I’d learned about Isabeau and the success of her seduction, I took out my notebook and began to peruse its pages. There was something in Serapino’s notes about a poultice and the danger of overmixing one ingredient because when it touched the skin—

  My door opened. The one to the queen’s private room. The door I had just closed. In all the years since I had been in the court, I had opened this door to go up to see her, but the queen had never come to see me.

  I stood and watched as she— But it was not the queen but Ruggieri who entered.

  “What do you want?”

  “To extend an olive branch.”

  I didn’t trust him. “Is that so?”

  “I think Our Highness is pitting us one against the other. Perhaps it would be in both our interests if we can make peace with each other.”

  There was no way to know what his motive was, but I doubted that anything he said was genuine. He was a man who pu
t on the robes of a priest and said a Black Mass. A magician. A heretic.

  “I want to help you, René.”

  “I’m very capable of working on my own, but thank you.”

  “No, not with the poison the queen asked you for. I know you can create that. It’s just a formula and a bit of cleverness. No need for magic with that.”

  “What then?”

  Ruggieri walked around to where I was standing and looked down at my open notebook. He was examining the drawings of alembics with notations beside them when I flipped the book shut.

  “If we joined forces, we could work on your experiments with your collection of dying breaths. Catherine told me you haven’t yet been able to figure out how to reanimate them, and I sense she’s getting impatient, funding all these experiments without seeing any results.”

  Catherine had been talking about me and my experiments with this madman? A charlatan who didn’t understand science at all and had no respect for reason? Why had my queen confided in him?

  And then I realized it didn’t matter why. All that was important was that the bond between them was so strong. I supposed it stood to reason. After all, Ruggieri was the one person in the world who had been able to help Catherine cope with her own strange abilities to see the future. For that, he had earned a place in her heart that no one could usurp.

  “Are the formulas for reanimating the breaths in that book?” Ruggieri pointed to the notebook I’d prevented him from looking at. “They might have much in common with my own ideas for bringing the dead back to life.”

  “I have no intention of working with you, Ruggieri. My experiments are nothing like yours. Play with the devil if you want, but don’t equate your work with mine. I’m a man of science, not spells.”

  “You are making a mistake. I’ve seen in the bowl of waters what will happen to you if you don’t work with me, René. You can’t succeed on your own. You will lose her and in losing her wind up a bitter old man.”

  Lose her? Who did he mean? Certainly not the queen. But how did he know about Isabeau? There could be only one way. I did not believe in his sorcery. I must have given myself away by asking the queen too many questions. My desire must have been visible on my face.