“Is that what Oyonnax told you?”
This left Eliza speechless for a turn; so d’Avaux continued: “I was born a count, you were made a countess; I am one of those few who can accuse you.”
“You really are hideous.”
“I accused you before, after you spied for the Prince of Orange; but you escaped trouble, because you were doing it for Madame, and because you paid. Now you are alone, and you have no money. I do not know who it is precisely that you mean to poison: perhaps the Duke, perhaps Étienne, perhaps one and then the other. I am strongly tempted to wait and to watch as you do these crimes, and then destroy you—for to see you chained to a stone wall in the Bastille would be most satisfying to me. But I cannot allow a Duke and Peer of the Realm to suffer murder, merely to slake my own base cravings. And so I warn you, mademoiselle, not to—”
“Kill me,” said a voice from ahead of them.
D’Avaux and Eliza, still clamped together side by side, arm in arm, had reached the ancient double doors at the back of the chapel, and gone through. It looked entirely different now. Eliza half supposed they had come into the wrong room. The sun had gone down, so no light came through the windows; but hundreds of candles were now burning on scores of silver candelabras. Their light gleamed on the polished backs of many gilded chairs, which in lieu of pews had been arranged on the stone floor—no, on a Persian carpet laid over the floor. The altar was covered in a white silk cloth encrusted with gold brocade, though this was difficult to see, as the front half of the chapel had been turned into a fragrant jungle of white flowers. Eliza’s first thought, oddly, was, Where the hell did those come from at this time of the year? but the answer must have been some nobleman’s stifling Orangerie.
Étienne de Lavardac d’Arcachon, attired in full-dress cavalry colonel’s uniform, was sprawled on the carpet at the base of the altar, posed like an artist’s model. Resting on the carpet before him, at the head of the aisle, were two shiny objects: a serpentine dagger, and a golden ring.
D’Avaux had stiffened up so violently that Eliza half hoped he was undergoing a stroke. But his grip on her arm slackened, and he began to retreat.
Étienne was having none of that; he jumped to his feet. “Stay! If you please, Monsieur le comte. Your presence here is fortuitous and most welcome. For it were improper for me to meet with Mademoiselle la comtesse without some chaperon; which, as I have lain here awaiting her, has been troubling me more than words have power to express.”
“I am at your service, monseigneur,” said d’Avaux, watching beneath a creviced brow as the nimble young Arcachon collapsed to the floor, and resumed his former pose.
“Kill me, mademoiselle!”
“I beg your pardon, monsieur?”
“My suffering is unendurable. Please end it by taking up yon flamboyant dagger, and plunging it into my breast.”
“But I have no wish to kill you, Monsieur de Lavardac,” said Eliza, and threw d’Avaux a vicious glare; but d’Avaux was far too profoundly taken aback to notice.
“Then there is only one other way in which my suffering can be ended; but it is too much to hope for,” said Étienne. And his eyes fell on the band of gold.
“Your discourse is fascinating—but strangely clouded,” said Eliza. She was moving cautiously up the aisle toward Étienne. D’Avaux, trapped, stood at attention in the back.
“I would be more direct, but such a magnificent being are you, and such a base Vagabond am I, that even to give voice to my desire is unforgivably rude.”
“I have comments. First, you may be over-praising me, but I forgive you. Second, I know something of Vagabonds, and you are not one. Third, if you must be rude in order to say what is on your mind, then please be rude. For considering what it is that you appear to be asking—”
The chapel door whacked open and in stormed an officer, dressed in the same regimental colors as Étienne, but of less plumage. He stopped in the aisle and turned white as a freshly picked orchid, and was unable to speak.
But everyone knew what he was going to say. Eliza came out with it first. “Monsieur, you have news of Monsieur le duc?”
“Forgive me, mademoiselle—yes—if you please—his carriage has been sighted, coming on at great velocity—he shall be here in an hour.”
“Has word of this been sent to the Palais du Louvre?” asked Étienne.
“Just as you directed, monsieur.”
“Very well. You are dismissed.”
The officer was more than glad to be dismissed. He took a last beady look around, then bowed, and backed down the aisle. As he was going arse-first out the door, he rammed someone who was attempting to come in. There was an exchange of abject apologies back in the shadows; then in stalked a robed and hooded figure, looking like Death without the scythe. He pulled back the hood to reveal the pale face, the dark eyes, and the carefully managed facial hair of Father Édouard de Gex; and the look on his face proved that he was as surprised, not to say alarmed, by all of this as anyone else.
“I say, was this all planned?” demanded Eliza.
“I received an anonymous note suggesting that I should be ready to perform the sacrament of marriage on short notice,” said de Gex, “but—”
“You had better be ready to perform the sacrament of extreme unction, if the young Arcachon does not untie his tongue, or hide that dagger,” said Eliza, “and as to short notice—well—a lady requires a little more time!” And she stomped out of the chapel.
“My lady!” called de Gex several times as he pursued her down a gallery; but she had not the slightest intention of being called back in there, and so she ignored him until she was a safe distance removed from the chapel, and had reached a more frequented part of the house. By that point, de Gex had caught up with her. “My lady!”
“I’m not going back.”
“It is not my design to coax you back. You are the person I wished to see. For when Monsieur Rossignol and I made inquiries as to your whereabouts, they said you had gone to the chapel. It was never my intention to interrupt a—”
“You interrupted nothing. Why were you with Monsieur Rossignol?”
“He has got some new messages from the Esphahnians.”
“The who?”
“The Armenians. Come. Please. I pray you. It’s important.”
FATHER ÉDOUARD DE GEX ESCORTED Eliza to the library as fast as he could walk, which meant that he kept edging ahead. The most direct route took them through the grand ballroom of the Hôtel Arcachon. Here, though, he faltered, and fell behind. Eliza wheeled about. De Gex was gazing up at the ceiling. This was understandable, for the de Lavardacs had hired Le Brun himself to paint it, and he had only recently finished. It was a colossal tableau featuring Apollo (always a stand-in for Louis XIV) gathering the Virtues about him in the bright center while exiling the Vices to the gloomy corners. The Virtues were not sufficiently numerous to fill the space, and so the Muses were there, too, singing songs, composing poetry, &c. about how great the Virtues were. Along the edges of the piece, diverse earthly humans (courtiers on one side, peasants on the next, then soldiers, then churchmen) listened adoringly to, or gazed rapturously at, the Virtue-promoting works of the Muses whilst generally turning their backs to, or aiming scornful glares at, all of those Vices crowded into the corners. Just to make it sporting, though, you might see, if you looked carefully enough, a Soldier succumbing to Cowardice, a Priest to Gluttony, a Courtier to Lust, or a Peasant to Sloth.
So everyone who came in here looked at the ceiling; but the expression on the face of de Gex was most peculiar. Rather than being dazzled by the splendour of the work, he looked as if he were expecting the ceiling to fall in on them.
He finally directed his dark eyes at Eliza. “Do you know what happened here, mademoiselle?”
“A fabulously expensive remodeling campaign that took forever and is only just finished.”
“But do you know why?”
“Le Brun is always engaged at Versailles, except when
le Roi leaves off building it so that he can go fight a war. And so only since war broke out has any progress been made here.”
“No. I meant, do you know why they remodelled?”
“From the looks of it I should say it was de Maintenon.”
“De Maintenon?!” De Gex’s reaction told Eliza that her answer had been emphatically wrong.
“Yes,” she said, “she came along in 1685, did she not? Which is when this remodel got under way…and the subject matter of the painting is so markedly Maintenon-esque.”
“Correlation is not causation,” de Gex said. “They had to remodel, because of a disastrous Incident that took place in that year.”
And then De Gex seemed to remember that they were in a hurry, and once again began striding toward the library. Eliza stomped along beside, and a little behind him.
“You do know what happened here—?” he continued, and glanced back at her.
“Something grievously embarrassing—so embarrassing that no one will tell me what it was.”
“Ah. To the library, then.” They departed the ballroom and entered a gallery.
“What was that you said earlier, about being asked to perform a marriage on short notice?”
“I received a note to that effect. I suspect it was from your beau. Never mind; obviously he was deluding himself.”
“It is a bit sad,” said Eliza, remembering the chairs carefully arranged in the little chapel, never to be sat on, and the precious flowers, never to be seen or smelled before they were hauled out to a midden. “Perhaps he had in mind a sort of elopement—but being so polite, wished to arrange it so that it would enjoy the sanctions of Family and Church.”
“That is between you and him,” said de Gex a bit coldly, and hauled upon the library door for Eliza. “If you please, mademoiselle.”
“I PHANT’SIED YOU MIGHT FIND this interesting in more than one way,” said Bonaventure Rossignol. He sat with his back to the arched window of the library, which, though dark, afforded a view over the torch-lit courtyard of the Hôtel Arcachon. Eliza was shocked to observe occasional snowflakes spiraling down—so intemperate and remorseless was this winter, they might as well be living in Stockholm.
Before Rossignol was a broad table on which he had spread out a panoply of letters, books, and notes. Many bore the Armenian script.
“I mentioned to you before that the Cabinet Noir had intercepted a remarkable letter, posted during the first week of August from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and addressed to the family Esphahnian, who were said to be dwelling in the Bastille.”
“You had not mentioned the family name to me,” said Eliza, “but it scarcely matters, and it is almost certainly an assumed name anyway—”
“Why do you say that?” said de Gex.
“Esphahnian simply means ‘of Esphahan,’ which is a city where a vast number of Armenians dwell,” Eliza explained. “It is as if you went to live among the Turks and they called you ‘Édouard the Frank.’ ”
Rossignol nodded. “I agree it is probably not the true name of this family, but it is the name we shall use, lacking any other. At any rate, I inquired after them, and learned that some Armenians had indeed been put in the Bastille in 1685 and kept there for a year or so: a mother and a large brood of sons. One of them died there. The matriarch was released soonest, then the brothers. Some went to debtors’ prisons.
“It took me some time to track them all down, for more have died in the meantime, and it was difficult to establish who is the eldest of the brothers. I found him—Artan Esphahnian—in a wretched entresol not far from here, and caused the letter from Sanlúcar to be delivered to him.
“A few days later, Artan mailed a letter addressed to one Vrej Esphahnian in Cairo. I had an exact copy of it made, then sent it on its way. At the time, I held no particular opinion as to who this Vrej fellow might be—like you, mademoiselle, I suspected that the name Esphahnian was a meaningless ruse, or perhaps even a vector of hidden information, which, if true, might mean that Vrej was not even related to Artan.
“Nothing further happened until yesterday, when a letter came in addressed to Artan, posted from Rosetta, at the mouth of the Nile—and written in the same hand as the one from Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Now this was remarkable, for I had translated the Sanlúcar letter into French, and it had said nothing about Egypt. It was full of family chitchat. The fellow who wrote it—who I now believe to be Vrej Esphahnian—had been out of contact with Artan for a long time. He had said nothing whatever about what he was doing in Sanlúcar or whither he might be going next. And yet Artan, upon receiving this document, had known, somehow, that he must post his reply to Vrej in Cairo. Not long afterwards, this Vrej had appeared at Rosetta—which is en route to Cairo—long enough to despatch yet another letter filled with banal chitchat.”
“And so it is obvious to you that encrypted messages are contained in these letters,” Eliza continued; for she had spent enough time listening to the discourse of Natural Philosophers to recognize when one of them was developing a hypothesis. “This I understand well enough, and I compliment you on your prowess. But why do you deem it so important to tell me about it?”
Rossignol was not willing to attempt an answer, and looked at de Gex. From which Eliza collected that it must be a delicate matter; for de Gex, as de Maintenon’s favorite churchman, was allowed to speak bluntly in a way that was unusual in a place where insults were commonly answered with rapier-thrusts. “We who love and admire the family de Lavardac,” he said, “are terribly concerned that Monsieur le duc d’Arcachon, acting out of the most noble motives, and exhibiting marvelous ingenuity and strength of will, has made a mistake. We would assist him in mending his error before it leads to embarrassment. It were best to mend it this evening, before the ramifications spread any further. To bring it before Madame la duchesse d’Arcachon, or Étienne, might not be as productive as to bring it before you, mademoiselle.”
“Very well. Does the mistake have something to do with Alchemy?”
The briefest of pauses. Then: “Indeed, mademoiselle. Monsieur le duc participated in an act of piracy, which, as you know, is a usual thing in war, and wholly honourable. However, I am sorry to report that he was misinformed by persons who were ignorant, or perhaps malicious. Monsieur le duc supposed that the prize was silver pigs. In fact it was gold. And not just any gold, but gold imbued with miraculous—even divine—qualities.”
“I see,” said Eliza. “And needless to say, the Esoteric Brotherhood takes a proprietary interest in it?”
“I should prefer to say custodial, not proprietary. This material is not for just anyone to possess. In the wrong hands it could do the Devil’s work.”
“Hmm. Would Lothar von Hacklheber’s be the wrong hands?”
“No, mademoiselle. Lothar is a difficult man, but one knows where he lives, and one can reason with him. A boat-load of Vagabonds at large in the Mediterranean, bound for Egypt—that is the wrong hands.”
“Well, you may set your mind at ease, Father Édouard. The gold you seek was to have come ashore along with Monsieur le duc. He planned to drop it off in Lyon. It should now locked in the strong-box of a certain banker there, who values it only as gold. I shall be pleased to supply you with his name. He has no awareness of, or interest in, its supernatural characteristics. Presumably he will be pleased to exchange it for an equal or larger weight of mundane gold.”
“We should be in your debt, mademoiselle.”
“You may consider the debt discharged, if you tell me one thing.”
“Name it, mademoiselle.”
“The Bastille is a prison for enemies of the Realm. Why were the Esphahnians thrown into it?”
“Because they were thought to be connected to what happened here in 1685.”
“And—since I will be the last person in France to know—what happened here in 1685!?”
“You may have heard, on the lips of servants or other vulgar persons, tales concerning a man called L’Emmerdeur. By yo
ur leave, mademoiselle! For even his epithet is almost too vulgar to speak aloud.”
“I have heard of him,” said Eliza, though in her ears, the sound of her own voice was nearly drowned out by the stomp, stomp, stomp of her heart. “I did hear a story once that he showed up uninvited at some grand soirée in Paris and made a bloody mess of it—”
“That was here.”
“In this house!?”
“In this house. He cut Étienne’s hand off, and completely destroyed the ballroom.”
“How can one Vagabond, vastly outnumbered by armed noblemen, single-handedly destroy a Duke’s ballroom?”
“Never mind. But to make matters worse, all of these things happened in the presence of the King. Most embarrassing.”
“I can imagine!”
“The King of the Vagabonds, as he was styled, made his escape. But the Lieutenant of Police was able to determine that he had been dwelling in a certain apartment not far from here—and the Esphahnians were living directly below him. He had befriended them, and drawn them somehow into his schemes. But since he was long gone, retribution fell instead on the Esphahnians. Off they were taken to the Bastille. Their business was destroyed, their health suffered grievously. Now those who survived dwell as paupers in Paris.”
Through the windows came the clatter and rasp of many horseshoes and iron wheel-rims on cobblestones. All turned to see the white carriage of the duc d’Arcachon—wrought to look like a giant sea-shell borne on the foam of an incoming tide—being drawn, by a team of six mismatched and exhausted horses, into the courtyard. It passed below them, out of their view, and pulled up before the entrance of the ballroom.
But the noise did not let up, but doubled and redoubled, as into the open gates of the Court rode a vanguard of Swiss mercenaries, and a squadron of noble officers, and finally the gilded carriage of Louis XIV, lighting up the court as the Chariot of Apollo.
ÉTIENNE, WHEREVER HE WAS (presumably, at the door of the ballroom), could finally relax, for much that must have been troubling him had been resolved in these few moments. His father had come home. No more would embarrassing questions be asked about where the Grand Admiral of France was during this time of need. Almost as important, this party now had a guest of honor; and so the many guests who had come would not go home disappointed. Most important of all, the King had arrived, and had arrived last.
The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World Page 154