The Collector of Dying Breaths

by M. J. Rose

  As the Mass continued, I held my rosary and automatically moved my fingers on the beads as I had been taught so long ago. All habit. I was no more praying than I was sleeping. But the movements of my fingers were as mesmerizing as the sounds and the smells.

  It was in this state that the work I had been doing since I’d left Florence came to mind. The souls of so many people were trapped in bottles and locked up in a cellar room in my store. By this point in my life, I had collected over twenty dying breaths. From Serapino’s to King Henry’s and Catherine’s sons’ and well as those of others not as famous. Despite all my work and labor with Serapino’s unfinished formula, the solution still eluded me all these years later.

  I’m no longer quite sure how my thoughts progressed the way they did or where my inspiration came from. I recall there were massive amounts of roses in the church. It being summer, they were in bloom in all the gardens of Paris. The nuns had picked huge bouquets and placed them not just on the altar but in front of the statues as well.

  The scent of roses has always been a talisman for me. My mother smelled of roses—it was one of the few memories of her that I had. The very first fragrance I’d created for Catherine had a rose base. Isabeau’s husband had bought her a rose-infused water from me.

  The roses that filled Sainte-Chapelle that evening were deep blood red and fully opened. The very next day they would begin to die, but during that Mass they were at the apex of their beauty, offering up their most exquisite scent.

  I suppose it was because I was thinking about the roses that the sonorous hum of the priest’s voice intoning the Latin liturgy reminded me of buzzing bees. That, coupled with my previous ruminations about Serapino and the dying breaths, jolted my memory, and I suddenly remembered something long forgotten. My mentor had talked about bees just before he died.

  At the time I had been so scared. Serapino was expiring before my eyes—and I was trying to capture his breath so I could keep him with me forever. His last words had seemed incoherent mumblings brought on by the potions I’d administered.

  There in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, in the jewel-toned light, inhaling the myrrh and frankincense and the roses and listening to the chants I’d heard since I was a babe, I wondered . . . What if the last thing that Serapino had uttered had meant something? Could he have been giving me a message? Were bees or their nectar part of the formula for the elixir that might animate the breaths?

  I spent the entire Mass lost in my ruminations. In fact so deep was my meditation I didn’t realize the service was even over until I felt a coolness on my skin, opened my eyes and saw the church was empty.

  The scent of extinguished candles and paraffin now mixed in with the perfume of lingering incense and flowers. Rising, I walked toward the back of the church.

  The sun had dropped lower in the sky, and the great rose window on the south wall was barely illuminated. With almost no light in the chapel, I couldn’t be sure if anyone lingered in the shadows.

  “Isabeau?” I whispered.

  There was no response.

  I walked the perimeter of the apse, peering into the shadows.

  My heart fell. Isabeau was not there. Had something happened to prevent her from coming? Hesitant to give up, I walked from the rear of the church back to the altar and then down the opposite side. I had just accepted that she wasn’t there when, as I passed the confessionals, I heard my name whispered.

  I stopped. Turned. The heavily carved wooden door opened just enough for me to glimpse inside and see Isabeau.

  Quickly, I entered the small space.

  In Santa Maria Novella, I had been dutiful, confessing my sins weekly and doing my penance. But it had been almost forty years since those days when I acknowledged my petty jealousies and desires to my confessor. And since then, my list of sins had grown long. No one but Isabeau could have enticed me into a confessional that night.

  The interior of the confessional at Sainte-Chapelle might have been as elaborate as the one at Santa Maria Novella, but I don’t know. I can remember the walls were painted the same royal blue with gold fleurs-de-lis as the rest of the church, but I only saw them as backdrop for Isabeau.

  As soon as I shut the door behind me, she pulled me to her and pressed her lips on mine. Oh, the sensations! And the smell! I had wondered if I’d imagined her scent all those weeks. Could she really have smelled the way I remembered? Had I been drunk? Could any woman really smell of a blooming garden?

  But she did, and it was even more intoxicating now in the small space. Without room for us to lie down, we knelt upon the prie-dieu, facing each other, embracing as if we might never see each other again.

  Neither of us was thinking that anyone would come back to the confessional now that the Mass was over. We felt safe in our blasphemy.

  Isabeau’s fingers worked the buttons on my doublet and then my shirt, and within minutes she was touching my bare flesh and I was shaking with desire.

  My being was centered on the rising pressure in my groin. Everything pushing, pulsing. At once I yearned to relieve and also to prolong its exquisite pain.

  I buried my face in Isabeau’s neck. Smelled her hair . . . her skin. There was no longer a world outside of this cramped enclosure.

  I had so many questions I wanted to ask her. Was she all right? What had she endured with the duke? How were her actions resting with her? Was she afraid? Was Catherine demanding too much?

  But I didn’t speak any of them. I couldn’t. My mouth was too busy making a trail of bruising kisses from her lips down her neck, down across her chest, until I found the swell of her breasts and then one of her erect nipples waiting for me.

  With both hands I lifted her skirts and found her naked flesh beneath all the layers of silks and lace. How hot her skin was. Burning. Fevered. And the place between her legs was so wet with juices that they dripped down her thighs. I moaned at this tactile proof that her desire matched mine and forced myself to not dwell on what she had been doing in the weeks since I had seen her. But I could not resist the torture of asking.

  “Do you come to the duke like this? All wet and wanting?” The whisper escaped my lips.

  “How can you ask?”

  “How can I not? Are you ripe like this for every man?”

  She laughed. It came from deep in her throat, and the sound almost brought me to climax.

  “I don’t open my legs for him, René. I never have for any of them. There are other ways to take care of men. I may be a widow and so not a virgin, but I am one of the queen’s ladies. It is a privilege for these men to be with me. An honor that the queen bestows on them. They accept what I offer, the way I offer it.”

  Her hand had worked its way to my pants, and she had released my cock and was stroking it with her long, lithe fingers. I knew then that the men she seduced probably never even realized they were not getting the prize.

  “Be careful,” I whispered. “You are too good at what you do.”

  “Yes, that I am,” she said and squeezed me in a certain way that stopped my feeling of imminent release.

  Beneath my hand she was writhing. Her thrusting, an invitation I found impossible to resist.

  Sensing how close I was, and she was, I maneuvered so I could enter her.

  As much as both of us yearned to let go, we also knew it might be a long time before we saw each other again and so we lingered, went slowly, savored every stroke, every clench.

  Kneeling on a velvet cushion embroidered with the king’s fleur-de-lis, we consummated our mutual confession. I no more took her than she took me. Never before had I been with someone so expert, and while I resented it, I also found it exciting that this woman who knew so much was choosing to be with me.

  Deep inside the church, deep inside the confessional, deep inside of Isabeau, no sound penetrated our hideaway. It wasn’t until we had both exhausted ourselves and slumpe
d to the floor that I heard the dull roar.

  Recovered, my breathing returning to normal, I pushed the confessional door open and leaned out and listened; the sound was much louder.

  “What is that?” Isabeau asked.

  It wasn’t a roar now that it was clearer, but instead screaming and shouting rising up to meet us.

  I stood. Quickly I redressed, fastening my clothes with racing fingers. Isabeau did the same. Once we were properly attired, we made our way down the nave and out onto the stone terrace that overlooked the inner courtyard. There before us was a scene out of hell similar to the one carved into that first confessional I’d visited at Santa Maria Novella.

  “Get down,” I said, and as I dropped to the stone floor, I pulled her with me. The spaces between the stone columns were more than wide enough for us to see the melee and madness going on below.

  “Is it the heretics?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Yes, the Huguenots.” These were the men who had broken away from our church and its rituals and sacraments. Who stole into our churches to defile our statues and saints. Who claimed Catholics were obsessed with dying and the dead. That our pilgrimages did nothing to help people find redemption. Who wanted a simpler religion based on faith in God as the righteous path. The Protestants, one in every twenty Frenchmen by then, wanted freedom to worship and have churches of their own.

  Their heresy was not only a threat to our souls; many Catholics believed it was the very reason that plague, famine and disease were visited upon us. God was angry, the Catholics said. And only when all men and women once again worshipped and prayed the right way would God grant peace.

  But the battle was not all about God. Is it ever? It was about power, rivalry and wealth. A struggle between the Crown and a faction of the nobility: Louis de Bourbon, Gaspard de Coligny and Henry of Navarre on one side; the House of Guise on the other. And my queen trying to juggle them all and keep the peace.

  To date there had been two civil wars, and recently there had been several uprisings instigated by the Huguenots. And from my perch on the terrace, it appeared this skirmish below was their doing. They had lain in wait till the service was over and attacked as the congregation exited the church.

  There were bloodied and broken bodies everywhere. The clash of sword fights rang out as individual battles erupted. Knights and ladies who moments before had been praying now lay on the cobblestones, many of them past help.

  While Isabeau and I had made love, men and women had been ambushed. By staying in the church, we had been protected. Our coming together had been a miracle and had saved our lives for a fate that was yet to be determined. One that might be far better . . . or far worse.

  Chapter 33

  THE PRESENT

  MONDAY, MARCH 24

  BARBIZON, FRANCE

  Griffin called Jac from New York later that morning.

  “I’m taking a six PM flight. I’ll be in Paris by morning. I have a meeting in the afternoon, and then I’ll take a car to Barbizon. I should be there by early evening.”

  “It will be good to see you.”

  “You sound tired,” he said.

  “It’s nothing.” She had almost told him what had happened during the trip to Wales. It wouldn’t be fair for him to be stuck on a plane with nothing to do but think about the situation and stress over it.

  “You sure?” he asked.

  “I don’t remember you being such a worrier when we were in college.”

  “I was at that age when you think you are immortal and nothing can ever happen to you.”

  “Well, we know that isn’t true anymore,” Jac said.

  “Oh yes, that we do know,” he responded, his voice dropping into a deeper register as if he was reflecting on his own tragedies. Of course he had them, Jac thought. His ruined marriage. His parents’ deaths. And his own mangled career as a scholar that had been destroyed when he’d been accused of plagiarism by his own father-in-law. Even when Griffin was able to prove that the printer of his book had left out the two critical pages of footnotes, it was too late. His reputation had been tarnished. Four years later he was still rebuilding, repairing, fighting to regain some measure of the success he’d had before.

  “How was New York?” she asked.

  Griffin had gone to see his daughter, but that meant he would also have seen his wife. They were separated but not yet divorced. Jac hadn’t been able to stop herself from worrying that being back with them both, he’d have second thoughts about the breakup of his family. Even though he’d told her there was no possibility of a reconciliation. They’d tried to do that before and had failed.

  “It was wonderful to see Elsie,” he said.

  “How was her birthday party?”

  “Terrific.”

  “And Therese?” Jac was mad at herself that she’d asked.

  “Fine. She was fine. I can hear the uncertainty in your voice, though. We’re not getting back together, she and I. Trust me,” Griffin said, making her smile.

  She almost said she was sorry, but she really wasn’t, and he’d know that. “I do,” she said instead.

  After getting off the phone, Jac walked out of her bedroom and ran smack into Melinoe, who was strolling down the hallway.

  “I was just coming to talk to you,” she said.

  “You were?”

  For some reason Jac wondered if Melinoe had been lingering outside the room and listening to her calls.

  “If you have a few minutes, would you join me in the library?”

  “Of course,” Jac said and walked with her hostess down the formal staircase and across the marble-floored foyer.

  Unlike the rest of the château, where the artwork, collectibles and objets d’art demanded your attention and were distracting, the library, which was Serge’s domain, was calmer.

  Serge was already in there, sitting on the leather couch. Laid out in front of him were three amber bottles and a green crystal skull.

  Jac recognized them instantly. The ingredients that Chester Bruge had shown them only twenty-four hours ago.

  She sat down in one of the chairs opposite Serge. Melinoe sat beside her brother.

  For Jac, seeing the items out of context here at the château was disconcerting and frightening.

  “How did you get them?” Jac blurted out.

  “We borrowed them,” Melinoe said before Serge could answer.

  “But when?”

  “Yesterday,” Serge said. He was looking down, staring at the bottles with a sorrowful expression.

  A lot of time had passed between the moment when Bruge fell and Serge went rushing to the elderly man to help him and the moment when Jac returned to the path with the limo driver. What had happened during those thirty minutes?

  “These ingredients are useless to everyone but us. We couldn’t just leave them there in the shed once we knew what had happened to Bruge,” Melinoe said as if it were the only logical conclusion.

  “You went back inside after he collapsed?” Jac asked.

  “I was going to try to convince Bruge to let us have portions of each one in exchange for telling him what we were working on and offering to include him in the project. I’m certain he would have agreed,” Melinoe said.

  “But we will never know,” Jac said.

  “No.” Melinoe’s face betrayed no emotion except for the hint of stubbornness and the defiance in her eyes that was always there.

  Jac had never seen the woman soften. Not even what Jac had heard on the other side of Melinoe’s bedroom door had been tender.

  “I would think you would be excited,” Melinoe said to Jac. “Now, you can create the perfumer’s potion using all authentic materials.”

  Jac was staring at the fluorite skull. Remembering how proud of it Bruge had been when he showed it to her. And now it was here. Stolen, as the k
indly man lay dying.

  “You will begin tomorrow, won’t you?” Melinoe half asked, half ordered.

  Jac wanted to, but using pilfered ingredients was an impossible way to begin formulating the elixir. Except what choice did she have? She needed to know if this goal was achievable as much as Melinoe did. They were sisters in this quest—for different reasons, but each as desperate as the other to prove that the impossible was possible.

  “You are worried about how we got these, aren’t you?” Serge asked Jac.

  Melinoe put her hand on her brother’s arm. “Serge, it’s pointless to have this conversation,” she said. “We had a goal. We achieved it. The circumstances were unfortunate, but now we need to move on. We always do, don’t we?”

  “We always have, but these circumstances are different,” he said.

  Melinoe’s fingers caressed her brother’s forearm, as if trying to calm him. “Not so different. You’ve handled far worse. You know you have. You are the strongest man I know. This is not like you.”

  Jac wasn’t sure she understood the subtext running under their conversation, but she knew there was more to it than Melinoe helping herself to the ingredients while Serge tried to assist Bruge.

  Had they been involved in a similar situation before? Was Melinoe referring to the awful murder-suicide of their parents? Had witnessing death brought back the horror of that long-ago tragedy?

  Whatever Melinoe was saying, it was having an effect on Serge.

  He squared his shoulders, looked at Jac and said: “Let’s concentrate on moving forward. How long do you think it will take you to make up a formula?”

  “From the description, a couple of days. The problem is what to do with it once we have it.”

  “Has Griffin been able to translate the engravings?” Melinoe asked in a tone that assumed Jac had heard from him.

  “Not yet, no. He’s searching for a key to unlock the cryptic language. I might have found something to help him, though. I noticed similarities between some drawings on Bruge’s wall and the engravings on the bells . . . I was hoping that Griffin might get a look at some of his books . . .” She trailed off.