The Collector of Dying Breaths

by M. J. Rose

  “Who is it?”

  “Isabeau Allard.”

  “Oh, René,” she said after a moment. Her voice was tinged with regret, and her eyes gazed on me with sadness. Then she got up and walked over to the window that faced the river. There was a strong breeze blowing in, and it carried the scent of the new fragrance that I’d made toward me.

  Now whenever I open a bottle of cinnamon, I feel a rush of anger. A scent memory connected forever to that terrible moment when I realized she was not going to grant my request.

  “I wish that it were that easy, but she is one of the most important women I have in my court. A better spy than any man who’s ever tried to glean information from the enemy. To release her would be to destroy more than a year of hard work. I rely on her, René. No, more than I, the country relies on her.”

  I could see that my queen was indeed torn. But Catherine, the woman who said The Prince by Machiavelli was her favorite book, never let her personal feelings interfere when it came to ruling.

  “If you had asked for the hand of any other woman, not one as entrenched in the political intrigue that is so critical to France’s well-being, I would have not only granted it but given you a lavish wedding as my gift . . .” She shook her head. “But I cannot release Isabeau now. In fact, I am afraid I am going to make this even more difficult because I have to send her away again. And I implore you to let her go without making her departure any more painful than it will already be. She has work to do, and I need her mind sharp and her heart unburdened.”

  I wanted to grab Catherine by her shoulders and shake her, get down on my knees and beg her. I wanted to do whatever I could to change her mind even though it was impossible. No one ever came between Catherine and her plans for France. And if she believed Isabeau was essential to those plans, I knew there was little I could do.

  She reached for the necklace, and I saw that I had made a mistake in bringing a gift. “So what was this, René? A bribe?”

  “Not at all. It is a gift in honor of your return. And you wound me to suggest anything else. You know where my loyalty lies. I am your liege. We have traveled a long road together, my queen.”

  She looked off into the distance. Was she, like I was, remembering the awful dungeon where she had come to rescue me?

  “Back there in Florence, did you poison your monk, René?”

  All these years and she had never asked me before.

  “Not in the way you mean, no. He was in agony and asked me to administer the poison, and I could not deny him release for all that suffering.”

  I was picturing Serapino’s deathbed and the pain that lined his face.

  “So when you poisoned for me, it was your first time?”

  I nodded.

  “I have asked a lot of you, haven’t I?”

  “You asked nothing of me. You saved my life.”

  She walked to me and took both my hands in hers. Her skin was dry and cool. The skin of a woman who had turned herself into a queen, who focused on the affairs of her country and ignored her own heart. Since Henry had died, a part of her had died too. I wished for her what I had found. Another human soul to lay with her and bring that buried part of her back to life.

  “There are so many other women in court—find someone else and I will give you a fine wedding and fill your house in Barbizon with gifts,” she said.

  I smiled at her. “I can’t do that, Your Majesty.”

  Had she really forgotten how the human heart worked? Or was she just trying to convince herself that my request could be so easily fulfilled?

  “Why Isabeau? What is it about her?”

  “Except for Your Majesty, who is on another level, when other women wear my perfume it complements them by making them smell more lovely. Isabeau is the only woman who complements my perfumes by making them smell more beautiful.”

  I did not do as Catherine asked. I got a message to Isabeau straightaway and asked her to meet me in the Tuileries.

  “I will refuse to work for her anymore. I will take my own release,” Isabeau said after I’d explained.

  “So that we can run away and be fugitives?” I asked. “We don’t want to live like that.”

  “I don’t care how we live. I want to be with you. To belong to you. To spend every night by your side, not sleeping by myself in the palace, dreaming of being in your bed.”

  “Please don’t speak so loudly. Don’t look as if you are so distraught.”

  “I know she has spies everywhere. I can’t forget that. I am one.”

  “And she values you. She is not going to let you go.”

  We walked on, not speaking. The complicated future that we faced was as rock-strewn as the path we were on. The days and nights of furtive meetings and long absences stretched out before us, bend after bend.

  “So what are you suggesting?” she asked.

  “That we wait for your current assignment to be concluded and then, when you have fulfilled her needs . . .”

  “No! I can make the duke tire of me and then—”

  “She’s too smart, Isabeau, you know that. If Catherine suspected that you had manipulated him and became angry at you, our fate might be even more miserable. What if she decided to punish you?”

  “So I am to be her prisoner?”

  “No. You aren’t a prisoner.”

  “But if I leave, I leave in disgrace. With nothing. Can you give up your position?”

  “Yes, yes, of course.”

  “So we can go to Florence. You can take me home with you.”

  Home? Paris was home. Barbizon was home. The magistrates in Florence had been clear with Catherine that if I returned, I would return as a prisoner. In their eyes I had murdered a man, and they didn’t want me on their soil. But that had been decades ago. Would it still matter? Would anyone remember?

  “I need to tell you about Florence. And why I left,” I said.

  As we walked down the sandy allée lined with chestnut trees, under the dappled shade they offered, I told Isabeau the story of my childhood. How I was orphaned and taken in by the monks of Santa Maria Novella. How Serapino had made me his apprentice and taught me everything he knew. I told her about his dying breath theory and his experiments and how he’d taken ill and what he had asked me to do for him. I explained how I never questioned what I owed him or worried about the ramifications. And finally, I recounted the details of my trial and sentence—which to that day I had never spoken of to a living soul—and how Catherine had come and plucked me out of the jaws of danger.

  “So I can’t go back. We would have to find someplace new.”

  “Can you leave your store?”

  “It’s just a building made of wood and stone,” I said, but she must have heard some hesitation in my voice. “And, yes, endless bottles of priceless essences and spices and herbs and hundreds of wonderful scents that clients come from far away to purchase. But I have my notes, and I can re-create everything.”

  “What if Catherine heard of your plans to defect and destroyed your shop and your notes before we were able to depart?”

  “Catherine is determined but not cruel.” Even as I said it, I knew I didn’t believe it. She was ruthless, and I had no doubt that despite her loyalty to me all these years, like everyone else, I was dispensable. If it suited her, she would turn on me.

  “I can’t let you give up everything you have worked for,” she said.

  “It’s not your choice, Isabeau.”

  “But it is. It’s my choice. And I choose to stay at court and do what Catherine wants until we figure out another way.”

  It was because of me she was saying we should stay. I’d intimated I was loath to leave. I was the coward, and yet she shouldered the blame. I was about to speak, to protest, but she reached for my hand and lifted it to her lips and pressed her mouth against my palm. She kissed me a
nd then quickly dropped my hand and ran back to the palace.

  I sat on a stone bench in Catherine’s great and grand gardens, under the shade of the trees, and rested my head in my hands, thinking through what Isabeau had said and not said. I had feared she’d find me suddenly monstrous after hearing how I’d helped Serapino to die. Instead she’d been understanding.

  Catherine had forbid me to see Isabeau anymore. But how could I give her up? I closed my eyes. Suddenly, all around me, a garden blossomed. Roses and camellias and gardenias. Except it was not yet the season for such flowers. We had weeks to go.

  I opened my eyes, expecting some extraordinary event to have occurred and that there would be blossoms and beds of riotous color surrounding me. But I saw nothing but the same trees and grasses of a few moments ago.

  And then I realized—it was my hand, where Isabeau had kissed me. She’d left her breath, and in her breath was the garden.

  Chapter 35

  THE PRESENT

  MONDAY, MARCH 24

  BARBIZON, FRANCE

  Jac woke up in the laboratory, feeling drugged and groggy. Looking at her mother’s wristwatch, she calculated that she’d been sleeping there, at René’s work space, for over three hours. The dream—but it wasn’t a dream—wasn’t blurred and ephemeral. The memories were as fresh as if she’d lived them the day before. As she relived what she’d experienced, sadness overwhelmed her, and she sat there and wept.

  After a few minutes Jac roused herself. The solution needed to macerate for twenty-four hours, and it had already begun without one important ingredient. She needed the lemons.

  Serge was in the kitchen. He was wearing maroon silk pajamas and a silk robe, with distinctive paisley velvet slippers from a store Jac knew on the Right Bank in Paris. Despite all the accoutrements he looked tired. His skin looked gray.

  “Good evening,” he said.

  “Hi. Can’t sleep?”

  He nodded. “The last twenty-four hours have left me shaken.”

  “Me too.”

  “Would you like a cup of chocolate? I made enough for an army.”

  “Yes, that would be great,” she said.

  As he stood, he seemed to take note of her clothes. “At least I tried to go to sleep,” he said.

  “I’ve been downstairs all night. I started mixing the formula. I didn’t think I was going to but . . .”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Really? How far did you get?”

  “I’ve done everything but add the lemons.”

  “And after the lemons—what next?”

  “We wait twenty-four hours before the next step.”

  “What does it smell like so far?”

  “A very aromatic liqueur. The brandy is overwhelming everything else.” She thought about René and his personal oak moss and musk scent.

  “I’m relieved that you have everything you need . . .”

  “Except the lemons.” She smiled. “By far the easiest ingredient.”

  He smiled back at her, but it was halfhearted. Serge turned off the burner and poured out the dark shiny chocolate. After putting a steaming cup in front of her, he returned to his seat.

  “You did everything you could to save that man’s life,” Jac said.

  Serge picked up a spoon and stirred the liquid in his cup, but he remained quiet.

  “I watched you. You gave him your own breath.” Jac lifted the cup and took a sip. “This is delicious. My grandmother used to make it just like this with real melted chocolate, not powdered cocoa.”

  “It takes more time to melt the chocolate, but it’s an effort that more than pays off.” He took a sip but then shook his head as if the taste had been so good he felt guilty.

  Or was that Jac’s imagination?

  “It’s very difficult to watch someone die,” Jac said.

  “Yes. It is. And I’ve seen too many people lose their battle . . .”

  She interrupted. “Serge, how could Melinoe have gone back and taken the ingredients from Bruge’s laboratory? In that moment—with all that was going on—how could she have been so merciless?”

  “She’s not someone who is easy to understand.”

  “No one is easy to understand . . . but how can you watch someone dying and think to use that moment to steal something from them?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What are you apologizing for?”

  Serge turned away. Looked at the stove. At the sink. Anywhere but at Jac’s eyes.

  “It didn’t happen exactly the way you think it did . . .” he whispered.

  Jac had to lean in to hear him.

  “What didn’t?”

  “Bruge’s accident . . . it was an accident . . . but . . .”

  “But what?” Jac was certain that Serge, despite his one weakness for Melinoe, was not a cold-blooded killer.

  His face was collapsing. His features softening into misery. His eyes filled with tears that remained unshed. His voice was barely even a whisper now. “Melinoe had wanted me to create some kind of accident so he’d be hurt and then to help him . . . save him . . . so that he’d feel so grateful that he’d sell her the ingredients.”

  “Did you somehow make that branch fall?”

  “No, it just happened. The branch broke off and knocked him down.”

  “And then?”

  Serge was quiet. Had Bruge really cracked his head on the stone, or had Melinoe bashed his head in with the rock?

  Jac didn’t bother to ask. Even if Serge knew, which she doubted, she was certain he’d never turn his stepsister in.

  “When Melinoe realized that Bruge had been mortally wounded, she took advantage of that fact to go back and take what she wanted?” Jac asked.

  Again, Serge didn’t respond. But someone else did.

  “No!”

  In reaction to the single word, Serge closed his eyes.

  Jac turned. Melinoe stood in the doorway. Her hair was wild with Medusa-like curls. Her eyes blazed with anger. The skin around her mouth was white with rage. She was wearing a long silk black robe edged with silver lace. Her large diamond earrings sparkled in the dim light. She looked like one of the furies.

  “Discuss our business with a stranger? Serge, how could you?”

  Even though she’d voiced it as a question, Jac knew it was an accusation. There would be consequences for Serge for having broken a confidence. And for her too, she feared. For she’d been the one to hear his confession, and that might have been the greater sin.

  Chapter 36

  MARCH 25, 1573

  BARBIZON, FRANCE

  The following week there was a crisis at court.

  For months Catherine had been carefully planning to marry off her daughter Margaret, a Catholic, to the Protestant Henry of Navarre in order to quiet the religious uprisings. In exchange for giving Henry strongholds throughout France and the potential of his son being heir to the throne, Catherine expected he would agree to marry inside our cathedral and accept his wife’s religion. Catherine believed such a wedding might bring peace to France and end the violent wars that pitted citizen against citizen.

  I always wondered about a God who wanted his flock killing one another over the ways that he was worshipped. But men are monsters all, and something in them wants to force others to see the world the same way they see it. More people had been killed in my lifetime over that eternal need to be right than any other battle.

  Over the years, I’d had clients purchase poisoned garments or tinctures to add to food to exact revenge because they had been cuckolded or deceived. Those were reasons I could understand for taking action. Stealing your wife, your gold, your land, your belongings. Promising fealty and then taking it away. Yes, anger. Yes, revenge. But kill because my church has pomp and yours does not?

  No, I was not that naive—it was
really kill because you want power over me. Well, power or no, the queen had come up with what she thought was a reasonable way to quell the mobs.

  Margaret, though, had other plans. The willful princess was carrying on a dalliance with Henry de Guise, whose family was at the heart of the anti-Protestant sentiment.

  One afternoon she’d come to my shop and asked for a special fragrance. “Something that will make me unforgettable, René,” she’d said. And then whispered, “Unforgettable to a lover.”

  Although she hadn’t used his name, I’d known who the lover was. Margaret was careful, but the court was rife with gossip. I’d even seen her, in the Tuileries, with de Guise when Catherine was not at court.

  I concocted a blend of honey and lilacs and tuberose with a hint of cinnamon. She wasn’t a fair, fragile woman but a bold one with thick dark hair and blazing eyes. The scent worked well for her, I’d thought.

  Henry de Guise must have thought so too because Margaret sent her lady back for refills every other week for a month. I’d been pleased that my handiwork was successful.

  Isabeau had told me that she, along with other ladies of the court, sometimes spied on Margaret through a crack in the floorboards. I was hardly shocked. Hadn’t my queen done such a thing? Spied on her own husband with his mistress?

  “Margaret is wild with her lover,” Isabeau told me. “Their lovemaking sessions last sometimes three or four hours. She’s willing to do anything he wants, and apparently he wants quite a lot. He likes her to dress up for him in costumes.”

  The stories circulating court were quite explicit. One night she had dressed like a nun, and he took her while she wore her habit. Another time she’d dressed like a soldier. Yet another like a poor milkmaid. And his appetite, Isabeau said, was equally matched by hers.

  “She is obsessed with him and his attentions, and sometimes she asks him to walk back and forth, naked, while she sketches his body.” Isabeau blushed. “One of the ladies found one of those drawings. It must have slipped under the bed. It was of de Guise naked and fully erect. Can you imagine what a prize that drawing is? She will be able to blackmail the princess Margaret for whatever she wants with it.”