Lace and Blade 2

by Deborah J. Ross

  The music was loudest in the ballroom, where fantastic figures whirled, their images repeated endlessly in the mirrors that lined the walls. But Manon’s slender shape was nowhere to be seen. He glimpsed instead his own reflection, and for a moment the blaze of the candelabras became firelight, the ballroom a clearing in the sertão. He saw the figure of the cacique weaving among the Beings of Light that the sacred drink had summoned, that fluttered about him like so many birds. Then the dark shape of a crow flapped past and they were only costumed dancers once more.

  In the gaming room, a murmur of conversation rose above the click of dice and the soft slap of the cards. Beyond the curved backs of the baccarat players, he caught a flash of green. The line of a lifting arm struck instant recognition. That surprised him. He had thought the memory of Corquisa would insulate him from the physical response that at one time had made him Manon’s slave.

  Claude felt in his pocket for the hard edges of the box that held the emerald. For the past two years he had labored to lay the foundation of a new fortune in the Santo Pedro mine, all that remained of his family’s fortune. Once he had planned to return to Manon with a new mistress, decked in emeralds, on his arm. But surely a better revenge would be to give her the jewel, so that every time she wore it—and she would be unable to resist—she would remember what she had lost.

  Tonight she was garbed as a serpent in viridian satin that sheathed her supple figure from breast to hip and clung shockingly to thigh and calf before it trailed across the floor. She sat perched on the padded arm of a chair, clinging to a florid gentleman in the diamond-quilted doublet of Pierrot who was sweating beneath his mask.

  A close-fitting cap formed the serpent’s head. Her arrested pose as she saw him was very like that of a snake he had once surprised in the sertão.

  Her lips tightened as he halted before her and bowed.

  “Is that a costume of Brazil, monsieur? I had a friend who went out to that wild land—” One graceful hand played with a tendril of golden hair.

  Was it possible that she did not recognize him? Claude’s skin was still bronzed from work outdoors, and he no longer minced like the boulevardier who had been her lover.

  “If you would honor me with your company, perhaps we might find that I know him....” Gruffly, he offered his arm. She smiled and started to slide off of the chair, then made a little moue of frustration at the constriction of her gown.

  “I am a hunter from Brazil, mademoiselle, accustomed to carrying off my prey,” said Claude, in one swift movement gathering her into his arms. The florid gentleman dropped his cards and began to protest, but she only laughed.

  “Is he your new beloved?” Claude asked in his own voice, and felt her stiffen in his arms. Until now, she had not been sure, but even without sight he would have known the supple form beneath the satin hide.

  “He thinks so...” she replied, and then, “In the next room there are curtained alcoves. We can be private there.”

  As he settled Manon on the cushions, she tipped back her mask.

  “Claude, is it really you?” she gestured nervously. “Put off that straw and let me see you!” With a curious reluctance, he set the headdress aside, realizing only now how the role, or perhaps the spirit of the cacique, had armored him. But Manon was still looking at him with more than professional appreciation. “Oh, you have changed!”

  “You are the same,” he responded, realizing even as he spoke that it was not true. Still slim, she was more finely drawn, her complexion almost translucent, the good bones pressing against the skin.

  “While you have been dancing with the savages, I have been learning the ancient wisdom of our own land.” She drew a handkerchief from her décolletage, coughed discreetly and thrust it back again. “Monsieur Pierrot—” she nodded scornfully in the direction of the gaming room, “has the privilege of paying my bills, but I have a teacher now who shows me marvelous things. Master Zabadon has the secret of youth eternal, Claude. With his aid, I will never be less than I am now. Come to my salon on Sunday evening, and you will see....” She extended a slim hand and although he still desired her, it was all he could do not to recoil.

  “I have brought you something from Brazil,” he said abruptly. As she opened the box, the calculation in her eyes gave way to wonder. The emerald glowed in the candlelight, shaming the satin of her gown.

  “Oh, Claude! Claude...” With trembling fingers she lifted the golden chain. Green fire swing hypnotically, then he fastened it around her neck so that the emerald pulsed upon her breast. “Oh, how beautiful. My dear,” she said meltingly, “I have missed you so....”

  In another moment, she will be telling me that Monsieur Pierrot disgusts her, Claude thought. She will say that she always believed in me, that she sent me away for my own good. She will not say that she wants me because I am once more wealthy, but that will be the truth behind her words....

  He got to his feet. “Then you will not forget me. Mademoiselle, adieu.”

  If he stayed, he would not be able to leave her, and then the whole cycle would resume. Snatching up the headdress, he made his way blindly toward the door. The roaring in his ears was so loud, he did not know if she had called his name.

  ~o0o~

  When Claude could think again, he found himself in the garden beside a fountain whose crystal drops reflected the light of colored lanterns. Before him stood an enormous crow. He blinked, focused, and the impression of enormity vanished as he realized he was looking at a gentleman in an evening cape whose edges had been dagged to suggest wings. A hood drawn up over his head joined a beaked mask.

  “Monsieur le Baron, bonsoir.” The stranger spread his wings in a bow. “I trust you have been refreshed by the cool night air.”

  “I am well, Monsieur le Corbeau,” said Claude, amusement mastering his surprise. “My thanks for your concern.”

  “And Mademoiselle Manon, is she well also?”

  Claude stiffened. “What do you know of her?”

  “I know that you are correct to be concerned. The master she follows treads a dark path.”

  Claude’s amusement abruptly disappeared. He knew better than to return to Manon’s bed, but it would seem that he was still bound to her, if only by chivalry.

  “What do you mean?”

  “To learn more, you must explore paths that a man of your class does not often essay. But I see from your garments that you have already done so.” Teeth flashed beneath the mask as the man smiled. His accent belonged to Brazil.

  The leather poncho rustled as Claude rose. “What must I

  do?”

  “There is a bookshop on the Rue de Clichy in Montmartre called the Bibliothèque Lyons. If you were to appear there at about four o’clock of the afternoon, you might find those who can advise you.”

  “Will you be there?”

  “Oh, I may turn up anywhere. If you take this road, you will surely see me again.” The crow cape swept up as the stranger laughed. A few steps made him one with the night, leaving Claude staring.

  The noise from within had diminished, and the cacique’s headdress held no more magic. It must be growing late. Time, he thought, to find Henri and go home.

  ~o0o~

  Striding up the avenue on a fine autumn afternoon with the pearly dome of Sacré-Cœur rising like a cloud from the hill before him, Claude found it hard to believe in secret societies and evil magicians. He had put off last night’s fears when he replaced the straw and leather of the cacique’s garments with a new coat of fine grey wool. His old clothes had been hopelessly behind the fashion, and in any case, a new breadth in chest and shoulder made them unwearable. In the clear light, his memories of the night before seemed a fantasy. Magic belonged to Brazil. This was Paris, where the Age of Reason had been born.

  If it had not been such a fine afternoon for walking, he might have turned back, but somewhat to his surprise he found the bookstore almost immediately. Bins filled with tattered volumes had been set out beneath a sign that
showed an ancient god with a raven at his feet. Lettered in gold were the words “Bibliothèque Lyons”, and below them, “J. Rondelle.”

  Claude paused just within the door, breathing in the powerful scent of old paper. Tiered shelves stretched to the ceiling, crammed with books thick and thin. Beyond the counter at the far end was a door, but he could see no one.

  “May I assist you?”

  The voice came from above him. Recovering, Claude looked up and saw a fair-haired young woman with a smudge of dust on her nose perched on a ladder, a book bound in blue leather in her hand. Additional volumes were stacked precariously on the upper rungs.

  “I was expecting to meet someone here—” he covered his confusion with a bow.

  Still on her perch, she inclined her upper body in a suggestion of a curtsey, a motion that suited her rounded figure well. “The bookstore belongs to my father. I believe he is drinking wine with the gentlemen you seek in the back room.”

  Claude watched appreciatively as she slid the blue book into a space on the shelf and reached for another volume, then he made his way past the counter. The door behind it opened to a cloud of tobacco smoke and a babble of speech that trailed off as he stepped inside.

  “Excuse me, your daughter—”

  “Ah, Célie. She must have liked your looks if she directed you in here without coming to ask...” replied a rotund gentleman with thick glasses whom Claude supposed must be Monsieur Rondelle.

  Claude shrugged. “She was up a ladder at the time.”

  The others laughed. In one of them he recognized the nobly bearded Eliphas Lévi, looking rather less imposing in a black frock coat that had seen better days. Of the others, one wore the open collar and loosely-tied cravat of a denizen of Bohemia, and the second was a young man whose coat was even more fashionable than the one Claude wore.

  And what, he wondered, did they see when they looked at him? The gentleman he had been? Or the man of action he had become?

  “My apologies if I intrude,” he said uncertainly. “I was invited by a—gentleman—whom I met last night at Madame D’Arbalêt’s ball. He wore the costume of a crow...”

  “Ah, Monsieur Marabô!” exclaimed the young man of fashion. “Did I miss him? I was hoping to see him there!”

  “He did not give me his name,” Claude said stiffly. “I am the Baron Delorme.”

  “You are welcome. My name is St. Cloud.”

  “Are you a Seeker?” asked Lévi. Claude met the older man’s deep gaze, trying to understand the question.

  “Only in the sense that I seek to do a little good in the world when I can.” That would cover what he had done in Brazil for the courtesan Corquisa, what he hoped to do now for Manon.

  “That is as good a path as any to the Way,” said Monsieur Rondelle with a laugh.

  “So why did Monsieur Marabô send you here?” St. Cloud asked.

  “A...friend has become the student of someone called Master Zabadon. I am concerned about her safety.”

  The atmosphere in the room chilled.

  “He leads a lodge known as the Société du Lys Noir,” Lévi sighed. “I counsel you to remove her from their influence as soon as may be. The dreadful orgies so often attributed to those who study the secret doctrine are for the most part fantasies of the Christian bourgeosie, but there are some deluded souls who profane the Mysteries by seeking to make them real.”

  “We have no certain knowledge,” added the Bohemian, an artist, to judge by the stains on his hands. “But it is said that Master Zabadon’s followers do blood sacrifices there...”

  “It is said...” Claude echoed, “but what do you know?”

  “There are some things it is better not to know,” muttered the artist darkly. “Baudelaire and his imitators sing of the flowers of evil, but they are poseurs, more concerned with the frisson created by the thought of evil than by the thing itself.”

  “By their fruits shall ye know them,” murmured Lévi, stroking his beard. “There are some who would ban all study of the Mysteries, but the Wisdom of the Hidden Temple that has guarded the truth behind all true religion since the beginning is far older than this pursuit of evil for the sake of Power. Study of the occult lore should ennoble the spirit and purify the soul. We do not have to risk the contamination of direct contact. It is enough to observe what becomes of the disciples of Master Zabadon.”

  “Young Stuyvesant, who threw himself off of the Pont de l’Archevêché,” said St. Cloud.

  “And Dumaille, who bankrupted himself funding Zabadon’s search for the Potion of Youth...” muttered Rondelle.

  “But he is not dead!” objected the younger man.

  “He might as well be—lives in a hovel and cringes when you call his name! To think that he was once a scholar.” He shook his head with a sigh. “I can’t count the books he bought from me. I wanted to buy up his library when his possessions were auctioned off, but all the books were gone.”

  “Gentlemen, you have said enough to alarm me,” Claude interrupted them. “If my friend is truly involved with this scoundrel, how do I break his spell?”

  “You must go to the lady and reason with her,” said Rondelle. “If she still cares for you.”

  It is my emeralds she cares for now, came the bitter reflection. He should forget Manon, start anew with someone like the bookseller’s daughter, Célie. But the old protective instinct would not be denied.

  “And if that does not serve?” he said then.

  “I will seek the counsel of the Ascended Ones,” Lévi said slowly. “I have long believed that those who serve the Light have the obligation to oppose the forces of Darkness. Perhaps the time has come.”

  ~o0o~

  During the remainder of that week, Claude was on the watch for Monsieur Marabô, but although he often heard crows calling in the trees, he did not encounter that elusive gentleman. By Sunday evening, the crisp fall weather had become a cold rain. To Claude, his blood thinned by two years in Brazil, it seemed that winter had already arrived, chilling both body and soul.

  As he walked he fingered the folded paper, covered with Hebrew letters and magical sigils of protection that Monsieur Lévi had inscribed for him. It reminded him of designs he had seen drawn in chalk at a crossroads with candles and offerings in Brazil. Had the one tradition inspired the other, or were both part of a greater mystery? In any case, to carry it could do no harm. Just outside Manon’s door, he noticed the feather of a crow on the cobbles and slipped that into his pocket as well.

  Manon had redecorated her lodgings while he was away. The drawing room was now hung with a rather heavy flocked paper in dark red, the chairs and sofas covered with velvet in dark jewel tones. Manon herself wore black lace over maroon taffeta and a curious necklace of garnets that glowed like drops of blood against her white skin.

  Claude paused in the doorway. A thin girl in brown was playing the piano. The other woman wore grey and lilac with a mourning brooch. The pale skins of the men suggested that they did not often see the sun. It was not difficult to identify Master Zabadon, a man of medium height with flowing, silver-shot hair, dressed in a white suit that would have been commonplace in Brazil but was startling in the gloom of a Parisian October evening. Claude would have known the man in any case, the faces of the others turned constantly toward him, like flowers to the sun.

  Flowers of evil? he wondered. These people did not seem wicked so much as lost. Even Manon, who as he recalled retained her self-possession even in the throes of passion, covertly tracked Zabadon’s movements even when she was speaking to someone else.

  The servant announced him and Manon fluttered forward in a rustle of silks, but it was Zabadon whose gaze, open and luminous, held his. Eliphas Lévi had spoken with a venerable dignity, but this man exuded charisma. Claude felt his skin tighten. He had seen eyes like that in Brazil when men were possessed by Powers.

  What are you? he asked silently, and found himself stroking the crow feather in his pocket as if it could reply.

>   “Good evening,” said Master Zabadon. “You must be the Brazilian of whom all the world has been telling me. You have been blessed by a hotter sun than shines on Paris, but I see you are a gentleman.” His laughter let Claude know that this was to be taken as a pleasantry.

  “I left my pelts and feathers at home,” Claude smiled politely.

  “So I perceive,” came the reply. “I have been hearing about the witch-doctor costume you wore to Madame D’Arbalêt’s ball. I understand that it is unique—perhaps one day I might persuade you to show me. You understand, I have a professional interest in such things. These primitives sometimes retain surprising glimpses of the True Wisdom.”

  For a moment memory filled Claude’s vision with bright fluttering images. Had he really seen the Beings of Light, or were these the memories of a brain disordered by the brew called Jurema that the cacique had given him?

  “In their own setting, I found their intelligence no less than my own,” Claude said blandly.

  “Mademoiselle Manon has perhaps told you of our studies.” Zabadon’s dark eyes glowed. “A man of your experience could be quite valuable, and you might find that the Mysteries of the Old World as compelling than those of the New.”

  Claude had half expected this, and found it interesting that the magician had chosen to try flattery. What, he wondered, had Manon told him? Their eyes met, and for a moment Claude felt an odd sensation, like a pressure within his skull. Anger flared as he recognized the attempt to invade his mind, and the feeling eased.

  “You must understand that after so long abroad, my affairs are in disarray. It will be some time before I am free to pursue other interests, but certainly, once I am free....” He let the phrase trail off with a bland smile.

  “Of course. But now I am sure you would wish to speak with our hostess, so I will detain you no more.” With a royal wave, Master Zabadon turned to the thin gentleman with whom he had been conversing.