“You?” boomed the lofty, smokelike pillar, drawing itself up toward the vaulted ceiling as if sorely offended. It drifted back and forth against the walls like a man pacing the floor. With each pass it expanded in size until its diaphanous form filled the room, moving like a roiling storm about to burst. I shrank into myself. At last the ghost spoke.
“The secret that I sought remains forever mystery.…” The ghost was still rolling across the skies of the vault, its form dissipating as it became thinner. “Its power lies buried with Charlemagne. I found the first key only. I had hidden it carefully.…”
He flickered faintly against the wall like a flame about to sputter out. I leapt to my feet and tried frantically to keep him from disappearing altogether. What had he hinted at? What was the secret that lay buried with Charlemagne? I shouted over the roar of wind that was consuming the ghost before my very eyes.
“Sire, blessed priest! Please tell me where to find this key you speak of.”
The ghost had completely disappeared from view, but I could hear its voice like an echo bouncing off a long, long hallway.
“François … Marie … Arouet …” And that was all.
The wind died out, and the few candles trickled back to life again. I stood there alone in the vault. After a long time, I made my way back across the lawn to the student quarters.
The next morning I should have been inclined to believe the whole experience a bad dream, but the dead leaves and faint odor of the crypt still clinging to my cape assured me it had been real. The cardinal had told me he had found the first key to a mystery. And for some reason, I was to seek this key through the great French poet and playwright, François Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire.
Voltaire had recently returned to Paris from self-imposed exile on his estate at Ferney, purportedly to stage the production of a new play. But most believed he had come home to die. Why this cantankerous old atheistic playwright, a man born fifty years after the death of Richelieu, should be privy to the cardinal’s secrets was beyond me. But I had to find out. A few weeks passed before I was able to arrange a meeting with Voltaire.
Dressed in my priestly cassock and arriving on the appointed hour, I was soon shown into the bedchamber. Voltaire hated to arise before noon and often spent the entire day in bed. He’d claimed to be at the brink of death for over forty years.
There he was, propped among the bed pillows, wearing a fluffy pink bedcap and a long white gown. His eyes like twin coals in a pallid face, his thin lips and needlelike nose, contrived to make him resemble a predatory bird.
Priests bustled about the room, and he loudly resisted their ministrations, as he’d continue to do until he breathed his last. I was embarrassed when he looked up and saw me in my novice’s cassock, knowing how he loathed the clergy. Waving one gnarled hand above the bedsheets, he announced to the priests:
“Please leave us! I’ve been anticipating the arrival of this young man. He is an emissary direct from Cardinal Richelieu!”
Then he laughed his high, womanish cackle as the priests, glancing at me over their shoulders, scurried from the room. Voltaire invited me to be seated.
“It has always been a source of mystery to me,” he said angrily, “just why that pompous old ghost cannot remain in its grave. As an atheist, I find it endlessly annoying that a dead priest continues to float about advising young men to visit my bedside. Oh, I can always tell when they’re coming from him, because they have that drooly metaphysical droop about the mouth, their eyes wander vapidly, just as your own.… The traffic at Ferney was bad enough, but here at Paris, it’s a deluge!”
I suppressed my irritation at hearing myself described in this fashion. I was both surprised Voltaire had guessed the reason for my visit—and alarmed. For he suggested others sought what I was seeking.
“I wish I could drive a stake through that man’s heart once and for all,” Voltaire ranted on. “Then perhaps I could have some peace.” He was quite upset, and he began coughing. I could see he was choking up blood, but when I tried to help him, he waved me away.
“Doctors and priests should all be hanged at the same gallows!” he cried, reaching out for the glass of water. I handed it to him, and he took a sip.
“It’s the manuscripts he wants, of course. Cardinal Richelieu can’t bear it that his precious private journals have fallen into the hands of an old reprobate such as myself.”
“You have the private journals of Cardinal Richelieu?”
“Yes. Many years ago, when I was a young man, I was tossed into prison for subversion against the Crown, due to some modest poem I’d scribbled about the king’s romantic life. While I was moldering away, a wealthy patron of mine brought me some journals to be deciphered. They’d been in his family for ages, but were written in a secret code no one could read. As I had nothing better to do, I deciphered them and learned a good deal about our beloved cardinal.”
“I thought Richelieu’s writings were bequeathed to the Sorbonne?”
“That’s what you know,” Voltaire laughed wickedly. “A priest does not keep intimate journals written in code, unless he has something to hide. I knew well what sorts of things the priests of his day turned to: masturbatory thought and libidinous deed. I plunged into that journal like a horse to the feedbag, but far from the ribald confession I expected, I found merely a scholarly tract. A greater crock of nonsense I’ve never seen.”
Voltaire began hacking and choking until I thought I must call a priest back into the room, for I wasn’t yet empowered to administer the sacrament. After a dreadful sound like the death rattle, he motioned for me to bring him some shawls. Piling them on top of himself, he wrapped one about his head like an old baba and sat there shuddering beneath them.
“What did you discover in these journals, and where are they now?” I urged.
“I have them still. During my stay in prison, my patron died without heirs. They may be worth a good deal of money, due to historical value. But they are all a lot of superstitious poppycock if you ask me. Witchcraft and sorcery.”
“I thought you said they were scholarly?”
“Yes, insofar as priests are capable of such objectivity. You see, Cardinal Richelieu had dedicated his life, when he wasn’t leading armies against every country in Europe, to the study of power. And the object of his secret studies centered around—perhaps you’ve heard of the Montglane Service?”
“The chess service of Charlemagne?” I said, trying to appear calm, though my heart was now pounding against my ribs. Leaning over his bed and hanging upon his every word, I prompted him as gently as possible to go on, so not to excite another of his attacks. I’d indeed heard of the Montglane Service, but it had been lost for centuries. From what I knew of it, its value was beyond all imagining.
“I thought it was merely a legend,” I said.
“Richelieu did not,” the aged philosopher replied. “His journal contains twelve hundred pages of research into its origins and significance. He traveled to Aachen, or Aix-la-Chapelle, and even investigated Montglane, where he believed it had been buried, to no avail. You see, our cardinal thought this service contained the key to a mystery, a mystery older than chess, perhaps as old as civilization itself. A mystery that explains the rise and fall of civilizations.”
“What sort of mystery could it be?” I asked, trying in vain to mask my excitement.
“I will tell you what he thought,” Voltaire said, “though he died before he solved the puzzle. Make of it what you will, but do not bother me any further about it. Cardinal Richelieu believed the Montglane Service contained a formula, a formula hidden in the pieces of the service itself. A formula that revealed a secret of universal power …”
Talleyrand paused and peered through the gloomy light at Valentine and Mireille, curled in each other’s arms and buried in the deep blankets of the bed. They were feigning sleep, their beautiful shimmering hair fanned out against the pillows, the long silken strands entwined. He stood up and leaned over them t
o pull the covers up, stroking their hair gently.
“Uncle Maurice,” said Mireille, opening her eyes, “you have not finished your story. What was the formula that Cardinal Richelieu sought all his life? What was it he thought was hidden in the pieces of the service?”
“That is something we will have to discover together, my darlings.” Talleyrand smiled, for he saw that Valentine’s eyes were now open as well, and the two girls were trembling beneath the warm covers.
“You see, I never saw this manuscript. Voltaire died a short time later. His entire library was purchased by someone who knew well the value of Cardinal Richelieu’s journals. A person who both understood and coveted universal power.
“The person I refer to has attempted to bribe both myself and Mirabeau, who defended the Bill of Seizure, in an attempt to determine whether the Montglane Service could be confiscated by private parties of high political position and low ethical standards.”
“But you refused the bribe, Uncle Maurice?” said Valentine, now sitting up in bed with the bedclothes tumbled about her.
“My price was too high for our patron, or should I say our patroness?” Talleyrand laughed. “I wanted the service for myself. And I still do.”
Looking at Valentine in the dim candlelight, he smiled slowly. “Your abbess has made a great mistake,” he told them. “For I’ve guessed what she has done, you see. She has removed the service from the abbey. Ah, do not look at me in that way, my dears. It seems coincidental, does it not, that your abbess has journeyed across a continent into Russia, as your uncle told me? You see, the person who purchased Voltaire’s library, the person who attempted to bribe Mirabeau and me, the person who has sought these last forty years to lay her hands upon the service, is none other than Catherine the Great, empress of all the Russias.”
A GAME OF CHESS
But we shall play a game of Chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and
Waiting for a knock upon the door.
—T. S. Eliot
NEW YORK CITY
MARCH 1973
There was a knock upon the door. I was standing with one hand on my hip at the center of my apartment. Three months had passed since New Year’s. I had nearly forgotten that night with the fortune-teller and the strange events surrounding it.
The knocking continued rather forcefully. I put another dab of Prussian blue on the large painting that stood before me and dropped the brush into a can of linseed oil. I’d left the windows open to air out the room, but my client Con Edison seemed to be burning ordure (that’s French for garbage) just beneath my windows. The sills were black with soot.
I was in no mood to greet guests as I headed for the long entrance hall. I wondered why the desk hadn’t rung on the house phone, as they should have, to announce whoever was now banging on my door. I’d spent a rough enough week. I’d been trying to wind up my work with Con Edison and had spent hours fighting both with the managers of my building and with various storage companies. I was arranging for my imminent departure to Algeria.
My visa had just come through. I’d telephoned all my friends; once I left the country, I wouldn’t be able to see them in over a year. There was one friend in particular whom I’d tried to reach, though he was as mysterious and inaccessible as the Sphinx. Little did I know how desperately I would need his help after the events that would soon take place.
Passing down the hallway, I glanced at myself in one of the mirrors that studded the walls. My mass of disheveled hair was streaked with vermilion paint, and there was a splash of crimson lake on my nose. I rubbed it with the back of my hand and wiped my palms on the canvas trousers and floppy work shirt I was wearing. Then I threw open the door.
Boswell the doorman was standing there, his angry fist poised in midair, wearing a navy-blue uniform with ridiculous epaulets that he’d no doubt selected himself. He looked down his long nose at me.
“Excuse me, madam,” he sniffed, “but a certain powder-blue Corniche is blocking the entryway again. As you know, guests are required to leave the entrance of the building free so that deliveries can be made—”
“Why didn’t you ring me on the house phone?” I interrupted angrily. I knew bloody well whose car he was talking about.
“The house phone has been out of service all week, madam.…”
“Well, why didn’t you have the thing fixed, Boswell?”
“I am the doorman, madam. The doorman does not repair things. The custodian does that. The doorman screens the guests and makes certain that the entry—”
“All right. All right. Just send her up.” There was only one person I knew in New York with a pale blue Corniche, and that was Lily Rad. As it was Sunday, I felt quite certain that Saul would be driving her. He could move the car while she was upstairs annoying me. But Boswell was still looking at me grimly.
“There is the matter of the small animal, madam. Your guest insists upon bringing the small animal into the building, although she has repeatedly been told—”
But it was too late. At that moment a bundle of fluff came tearing around the corner of the corridor from the elevators. It made a beeline for my apartment, whizzed between Boswell and me, and disappeared down my entrance hall. It was the size of a feather duster and made sharp little squeaks as it flew along the ground. Boswell looked at me with great disdain and did not speak.
“Okay, Boswell,” I said with a shrug. “Let’s just pretend we didn’t see that, shall we? He won’t make any trouble, and he’ll be gone as soon as I can find him.”
Just then Lily came waltzing around the same corner. She was draped in a sable cape with long puffy tails hanging from it. Her blond hair was tied in three or four large ponytails that frizzed out in different directions, so you couldn’t see where her hair ended and the cape began. Boswell sighed and closed his eyes.
Lily completely ignored Boswell, gave me a fleeting peck on the cheek, and breezed between the two of us to enter my apartment. It wasn’t easy for a person of Lily’s bulk to breeze anywhere, but she carried her weight with a certain style. As she passed, she tossed off in her throaty torch-song voice, “Tell that doorman of yours not to get his bowels in an uproar. Saul is driving around the block until we leave.”
I watched Boswell go, let out the groan I’d been suppressing, and closed the door. With regret, I went back into my apartment to face another Sunday afternoon, shattered by my least favorite person in New York, Lily Rad. I vowed this time I would get rid of her quickly.
My apartment consisted of one large room with a very high ceiling and a bath off the long entrance hall. Within the large room were three sets of doors enclosing a closet, a butler’s pantry, and a pullman bed that folded into the wall. The room was a maze of giant trees and wild exotic plants forming junglelike pathways. Everywhere were piles of books, stacks of Moroccan pillows, and eclectica wrung from Third Avenue junk shops. There were hand-painted parchment lamps from India, majolica pitchers from Mexico, enameled French pottery birds, and chunks of Prague crystal. The walls were covered with half-finished paintings still damp with oil, old photos in carved frames, and antique mirrors. From the ceiling hung wind chimes, mobiles, and lacquered paper fish. The only piece of furniture in the room was an ebony parlor grand piano that stood near the windows.
Lily was pacing through the maze like an unleashed panther, pawing things aside as she searched for her dog. She tossed her cape of tails on the floor. I was astounded to discover that beneath it she was wearing practically nothing. Lily was built like a Maillol sculpture with tiny ankles and curving calves expanding as they moved upward to a billowing overabundance of gelatinous flesh. She had squeezed this mass into a skimpy purple silk dress that ended where her thighs began. As she moved she resembled an unmolded aspic, quivering and translucent.
Lily turned over a pillow and unearthed the silky little ball of fluff that traveled with her everywhere. She picked it up and cootchy-cooed it in her sultry voice.
“There is my darling Carioc
a,” she purred. “Him was hiding from his mumsy. Him bad wittle doggy-woggy.” I felt ill.
“A glass of wine?” I suggested as Lily put Carioca back on the floor. He ran around yapping in an annoying fashion. I went to the butler pantry and pulled a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator.
“I suppose you got that dreadful chardonnay from Llewellyn,” Lily commented. “He’s been trying to give it away for years.”
She took the glassful I handed her and had a swig. Meandering through the trees, she paused before the painting I’d been working on when her arrival had blasted my Sunday all to hell.
“Say, do you know this fellow?” she said suddenly, referring to the man in the painting, a man on a bicycle dressed all in white, riding over a skeleton. “Did you model it after that guy downstairs?”
“What guy downstairs?” I asked, sitting on the piano bench and looking at Lily. Her lips and fingertips were enameled in Chinese lacquer red. Against her pale skin it lent an aura of the white bitch-goddess who’d lured the Green Knight or the Ancient Mariner to life-in-death. But then I thought it was apropos. Caissa, the muse of chess, was no less ruthless than the muse of poetry. Muses had a way of killing those whom they inspired.
“The man on the bicycle,” Lily was saying. “He was dressed like that—hooded and all muffled up. Though I only saw him from the back. We nearly ran him over. Had to drive up onto the sidewalk.”
“Really?” I said, surprised. “I painted it from my imagination.”
“It’s frightening,” said Lily, “like a man riding to his own death. There was something sinister about the way that man was lurking around your building, too.…”
“What did you say?” Something had rung a bell deep in my subconscious. Behold a pale horse, and his name that sat upon him was Death. Where had I heard that?
Carioca had stopped yapping and was now making suspicious little grunting sounds. He was digging the pine shavings out of one of my orchids and tossing them about the floor. I walked over, picked him up, and tossed him into the coat closet, shutting the door behind him.
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