He remained motionless, the night lights wavering in his gray eyes. Her mouth opened, and for the first time she saw him hesitate. Sounds appeared behind them.
“Run, Thaddeus! Go!”
Although her words urged him to go, her body refused to be separated from him, and she grabbed his arm.
He pulled her against him, ran his fingers through her hair and kissed her cheek.
“Tomorrow, at dawn, the Blue Chapel,” he whispered into her ear, but before she could even react, or run away with him, he disappeared into the night.
She heard De Bok spluttering behind her and she turned around. She narrowed her eyes slightly and slowly knelt beside him.
“Thaddeus,” he whispered. “It had to end like this. The order of things. I had hoped, however, to run away with another name. To offer myself a new life. Not everyone has your chance, both of you. And Seth.”
He seemed delirious, but when Seth was mentioned, Sixtine pursed her lips in anger.
“To avenge Seth’s death. All this energy that you put into this vengeance. Don’t you feel foolish? You’re trying to avenge Seth when he’s the one who killed you.”
He forced a smile but coughed, spluttering blood and did not hear Sixtine stammering.
“Pretty Sixtine, you were his little Santa Muerte, the bride. His life was no longer long, it was in death that he wanted you by his side. Forever after. He took you into his eternity…”
De Bok’s eyes suddenly sparkled, as if he was burning the last drops of vital energy in these sentences.
“You didn’t know it, did you? This was my revenge against Thaddeus. He wanted to hide it from you so badly, protect you at all costs. Do you see how revenge, his, mine, yours, is so futile? We all end up dying.”
He coughed again and his face twisted with pain. At her fingertips she felt the spasms in De Bok’s body.
“I now understand Seth’s reasoning,” De Bok murmured. “You are so beautiful, Sixtine. You would have made a wonderful companion in death, but pardon me. I have to go alone.”
He pressed his hand against his chest and pulled a small object stained with blood from his pocket. Sixtine recognized it immediately. It was the plumeria, the virgin of Guadalupe.
Sixtine helped him to place the plumeria in his palm and closed his fingers around it.
A slight smile passed over his face and the gray veil evaporated.
Yohannes De Bok was dead.
She glanced around her miserably.
Thaddeus was gone. Everyone was gone. The night was empty, the crowd had disappeared. She was alone with the truth.
The dead man had warned her in the catacombs.
The truth will destroy you much more than the lie.
35
Sixtine, or Jessica, whoever you are, let me tell you why I think this.
My ancestor’s name was Vivant Mornay, born in 1763.
Long stays in Greece and a rare scholarship in ancient history made him one of the very first archeologists.
He was in a loveless marriage that quickly turned into ordinary contempt. The union gave birth to a son who grew up elsewhere.
Vivant Mornay therefore lived seventy-two years, fortunate and deeply alone, but in his last decade has seen the birth of two events that have changed its existence.
First, to make up for the loneliness of his old age, he founded a club of rich antique collectors in 1825 at the age of 62. He gathered nostalgic people from the destinations of the Grand Tour, a journey all the noble gentlemen of good families took at the time. Men gathered, compared their objects, shared childhood memories in Italy, Greece or Egypt, discussed the latest academic theories, such as Champollion’s on hieroglyphics, and winters were milder.
A few years later, Vivant met Félicie, a beautiful 19-year-old apprentice with whom he fell madly in love. If the physique of this almost seventy-year-old man did not at first sight charm the young lady, his immense fortune did so largely. Within a few months, the old boy turned into a fiery lover and Félicie, the innocent orphan, into a muse of all his fantasies – one of them having those fantasies fulfilled with the Parthenon in Athens as a backdrop.
Under Félicie’s caresses, Vivant finally lived. It is a cruel irony to discover at the threshold of death what any poor person already enjoyed at the age of twenty!
These two inconsistent episodes could have remained confined to Vivant Mornay’s biography alone if fate – or delirium – had not deposited an idea on the deathbed of a certain Nathaniel Emmitt-Foster.
Emmitt-Foster was a wealthy landowner and amateur Egyptologist. It was thanks to his patronage that some of his friends’ gentlemen, in 1805, began excavations on the Giza plateau.
They discovered a tunnel that reached the pyramid, and overlooked numerous stores.
These stores contained nothing or had already been looted. They were not connected to a burial chamber, the large Gallery or the rest of the structure.
An anomaly, in short.
But they were equipped with a closing system with cap blocks that made them an impregnable safe. Emmitt-Foster obtained a firman signed by Mehemet Ali, viceroy of Egypt, ensuring him the exclusive enjoyment of this passage, in return for a colossal sum that made it possible to modernize the country. Its workers blocked access from the Giza plateau and extended the tunnel to a secret site that was the responsibility of a guard.
Over the years, this “lease” was renewed, and the Egyptian authorities continued to enjoy the immense generosity of Emmitt-Foster. And the Englishman, in turn, private access to one of the seven wonders of the world.
It was said he organized very popular social dinners in his rooms. The affair was almost the end of the magnate’s fortune, but he had died before ruin prevailed, so that at the time of his death, he expressed an ultimate wish. He wished to be buried in that underground tunnel there in Cheops where it had cost him so much.
Vivant Mornay became enthusiastic about the idea. He gave it a spiritual dimension. It was already accepted that the members of their club could be buried in these beloved lands from which they had greatly enriched the leaders. And hadn’t they practically revealed the excellence of these ancient monuments to the rest of the world? It was agreed. So wasn’t it right that it was them, the great men of old Europe, who could join, in their tombs, the powerful of antiquity, their fellow men, their brothers?
Nathaniel Emmitt-Foster. had not yet retired when his friend Vivant launched himself body and soul into the company; not only in his organization, but in the development of the philosophy that would accompany him.
His diary became a witness to his research on life after death in extinct civilizations. Vivant had until then, just like his peers, believed softly in a possible existence in the afterlife. Now he was exploring it through the most obscure ancient texts, like an excited tourist before a great journey.
In a few short months he had learned Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Persian, Turkish and Ethiopian. He managed to convince his dying friend that he had to take all his fortune to Cheops’s room, to be as rich and powerful in the afterlife as he had been here on earth. As a result, he was only imitating what kings, queens, queens, priests, nobles, the greatest warriors had done for centuries and on all continents – it all went to death, prepared for their funeral journey, their graves filled with treasures.
But if Vivant Mornay buried his friend Nathaniel Emmitt-Foster in Cheops with a ten-thousand-pound gold coin chest, when his own health deteriorated at a rapid pace, he decided to take with him to the grave a completely different treasure.
The pleasure of eternal love.
The other six members of the club, all of them of age to consider their funerals, had welcomed Nathaniel’s last wishes rather favorably and each one of them was already thinking about the ancient monument that would be his final resting place. Theories on life after death and the need to take treasures to the grave also met with collective approval, less out of deep conviction than out of practicality: one mi
ght as well be prepared for any eventuality.
However, Vivant’s latest eccentricity did not fail to arouse strong objections.
First, there was conscience to be appeased; they would take these girls to their final resting place against their will.
Secondly, on the subject of life after death, certainly, the elders contemplated the possibility of an eternity of pleasure in charming company.
But in committing this crime, however passionate it may have been, was there not also, perhaps, Hell at the other end?
Vivant proposed a vote; the majority of the seven would win.
Before that, her ancestor spoke to each of the members in private. They may have been old, but all of them had a young girl to support somewhere; one a servant, the other a laundress. Caresses helped to age, but pleasure had not yet clouded their judgment. These ladies did not love them with true love, of course. They consented to this company because they coveted wealth and benefits; they spoke of wills and their eyelashes fluttered.
Could we blame them, these dear creatures, who had known the infamous misery? These pretty girls were sinners. And if they were ready for anything for a life of privilege, wouldn’t they be ready to die for an eternity of luxury?
Félicie, like most of the others, was without a family. Who would claim her?
So, they voted.
Four for, three against.
One of the three changed his vote to yes when a doctor gave him a month to live.
Vivant wrote the rules of these funerals: the chosen one had to be an orphan and ostensibly attracted by money; the marriage had to be pronounced before the funeral, because the chosen one had to answer “yes” to the question of the priest to whom, for the occasion, we would ask to change his sermon: “From then on, they loved each other in life and in death.”
He drew the cross, the emblem of the club, to be tattooed on the members. He imagined a killing ceremony for those, like him, who did not want to wait for death and its suffering.
It was only at the last moment, a few weeks before his last breath, that he added the last rule, inspired by the practices of the Vikings and Egyptians of the first dynasties.
The chosen one had to be buried alive.
The height of barbarism, certainly, but what would we not pay for an eternity of happiness?
The other five members had already gone too far into their fantasies of life after death to chat about this detail.
Rumor has it Vivant Mornay, the late Lord Falmouth, was buried in the Falmouth Manor Chapel. His wife of a few weeks, Félicie, had not been able to bear the loss and killed herself immediately after the funeral. In truth, Vivant and Félicie were buried six feet underground in the shadow of the Parthenon.
How long did it take Félicie, walled up alive, to reach her executioner in the afterlife?
Throughout the world, ancient monuments were the burial places of young ladies whose only crime has been to dream of a better future.
Fairy tales turned into nightmares, princesses became treasures and charming princes led them to their deaths.
Seth Pryce knew he was going to die. He chose you because you were beautiful, orphaned and blinded by his fortune. He bought Cheops, and Tutankhamun’s gold.
You were the unfortunate chosen one.
Now you are living a second life to which none of the wives of the members of the Vivant Mornay club have been entitled.
A second chance.
What are you after?
Would we repeat the same mistakes even if we had seven lives? You were chasing after fortune. I was running for glory. We could be sisters in our delusions. I lost the man I loved, but is it too late for you?
Perhaps because I saw you being reborn from the belly of the pyramid, I think of you and I hope you will be happy to live this second chance.
I wish you to love, to really love, without a glance for what shines. Our hearts speak a language we rarely understand because we do not bother to listen to them. The world speaks loudly and silences the essential. I learned something tonight in the sky of Cairo.
A heart never betrays. We are the ones who betray it.
I, the descendant of your executioner, beg you, be happy.
This is the greatest revenge you can take on Seth Pryce and the members of the Vivant Mornay club.
Yours sincerely,
Florence Mornay-Devereux
36
Just before dawn, Sixtine found herself under the blatant curtains of the Sonora market, more than a mile from Zócalo Square.
There had been several shots fired in front of the gift shop, and she had run all the way here through the maze-like market.
Her back was drenched in sweat and her legs ached. She still had De Bok's blood on her shirt.
Another red dahlia.
She wandered among the stalls they were tearing apart. She ignored the sleeping people, the garbage that overflowed the sidewalks, the vomit in a passing corner.
The day after the celebration.
Traders piled up sugar skulls, medicinal herbs that cured imaginary diseases.
When Sixtine heard the monkey's cries, she did not even react. She wandered through the crowded alleys, her shoulder hitting passers-by, her feet stumbling, her eyes lost.
Then she passed cages with birds. Thousands of them, as if those on the wallpaper at Gigi's house suddenly wanted to leave the damp walls. Their singing mixed with the monkey's cries, but Sixtine was still unfazed by their sounds.
Seth had chosen her, loved her, then killed her. To have him to himself, in his eternity.
That was his fairy tale.
She relived their short engagement, their hasty marriage, the determination of Seth who had sworn there would only be one marriage. The reception at the Louvre, the lapis lazuli necklace. The priest's sermon in the Parisian church. The promise to the church.
For life, for death.
Seth had to hear her promise.
It was this promise which sealed her fate.
She closed her eyes when she remembered the words exchanged with Thaddeus a few hours before her wedding. One last warning.
“Take away all that shines, Jessica, and what remains is a man, a woman and a promise, in the name of love, to life, to death. I see you on this balcony, and I think I'm the last messenger. Are you ready to make that promise? To life, to death?”
A merchant approached Sixtine, asked her for something in Spanish. As she did not understand, he tried in English, “Love. Bird blood, good for love, miss. Bird blood, love. Bird blood, love.”
Love, the blood of the bird, good for love.
BIRD BLOOD, LOVE.
She finally saw it clearly in her mind and her eyes widened. A dried up hummingbird, its eyes sunk into black holes. Its blackened, dull feathers, hanging from its small body like keys on a key ring, a metal ring passing through its neck, and hanging from the skin of a snake, in a pot.
Then something stirred inside Sixtine.
She saw her hand take the pot, try to open the lid. Then the man's hand on her arm, who wanted to stop her.
The cries of birds, monkeys, the smell that burns everything. And then red, black, nothingness.
Sixtine wouldn't remember anything. The others, those who were there, who turned around at the screams, would remember that girl exploding with rage.
A massive rage whose echo electrified Mexico City.
Sixtine, whose multiplied strength transformed her into an Aztec goddess, destroyed everything in her path, screaming, scratching, taking down all the cages that exploded on the ground. She would have eaten them, these men who came running, helpless, trying to contain her. Her anger flowed like a green, powerful, inexhaustible river and the world became a circus of debris and cries and feathers and rage.
After a few minutes, there was only one shred left of Sixtine and her rage that amused the market. In a corner of a shop, bent over a folding chair, with her eyes in the void, her vocal cords raw, there was nothing left but a broken girl.
The onlookers turned their necks to see her; a stranger bandaging her bloody hands.
In her hair, a blue feather.
In her head, all the ghosts were gone.
The monkey, the belly of the pyramids, even the green river.
What remained, alone in the middle of the ruins of Sixtine, was something strange and wonderful. A new certainty, whose rage had made the particular clarity shine ever brighter.
She was alive.
From this new gleam appeared words which had been obscure until then. She could finally read, engraved in herself and perfectly clear, what this traitor, her heart-scarab, had revealed.
37
In the Pocito chapel, Sixtine found Thaddeus kneeling at the altar, speaking to the priest, in front of the Golden Virgin.
He turned around, his eyes reddened with fatigue and the light of a few candles made his face glow, accentuating his facial features. The priest withdrew quietly and soon they were alone under the sparkling dawn dome.
Her voice had been lost in the middle of the cages, so she whispered, as they do in churches, still shaking, “Thaddeus…”
“You came to Mexico City to look for me,” he said in a tired voice. “Despite the threats on your life and mine. Why did you do that?”
“Because you’re all I have left.”
He smiled tiredly and she knelt down beside him.
“The pyramid erased the memory of what happened after the wedding. Luckily in the last few days, some of my memories have returned.”
He turned to her, his gray eyes reflected the candle holders of the chapel.’
“I don’t know the beginning or the end of our history, but I think I have seen the essential parts. I didn’t just see them. I’ve been through it. The traces are still there, on the surface.”
She placed her trembling hand on his, her knuckles whitened by the tension inside her. As her skin touched his, Sixtine felt her whole body blossom as if she had missed an element to survive for so long. This element, more important than water, more important than air, was the presence of Thaddeus.
Sixtine- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 45