The Book of Shadows

by James Reese

  “You might try the blacksmith’s boy.” This reprieve came fast from the tattooed man. Then, having stared at me a bit too long, he added as afterthought, “I hear he is itching to get away from his father’s fires.”

  “He is gone already, cousin. Off to Nantes. Day before last.”

  “I need a driver.” I said it plainly. (Still I was terribly embarrassed.) “I will pay fairly for a driver to take me to Bourges, perhaps beyond.” I showed my purse, retrieved from the cab; indeed, I held it open in my palms like an overripened, split fruit. Money, I would learn, concentrates the attentions of men, and certain women, too. “My driver has deserted me and…”

  And shortly, with money spent, I had what it was I needed: the name of one Étienne B——. I forget who it was gave the name, but all four men then set to scratching directions in the dirt with the blunt ends of their fishing canes, such that I marvel that I ever found my way.

  But indeed, I’d soon contracted with my new driver, whom I’d found sitting before a squat and squalid home, his chair tipped back against a sill. He was whittling—to no end, no purpose I could figure—the handle of a broom. I made a quite generous offer. He asked for more money, and, flummoxed, knowing only that I did not wish to drive myself, I agreed. (I did not yet know that one is supposed to start low in negotiations of this kind.) This Étienne went into his hovel. Not long after, he came around the distant corner to which I’d directed him, rucksack over his shoulder, saw the berlin and stopped. I feared he’d turn and leave me. “It’s nothing really,” I urged, “just a trap, larger and fancier than some, I suppose.” He smiled, threw his bag up onto the box, and climbed up after it.

  Étienne—who would prove an able and devout driver, and would indeed drive me beyond Bourges, all the way to Avignon—was perhaps three times my age, unclean and ugly, broad-shouldered…but appealing. I knew him by his eyes, which were clear and bright. He had about him the air of one who will do anything for money, owing not to necessity but rather to the simple appeal of coin; and, as the chief characteristic of such a man is silence, the seeming absence of curiosity—Étienne would ask no questions; he made that plain—I was pleased with my new hire.

  We drove toward Bourges, a stretch of some distance. I decided we’d drive directly; that is, we’d abandon the Loire. We’d not waste time seeking out rivers or streams or canals that would sustain the elementals. In truth, after recent events, I wanted time without them, time alone. What’s more, we had but three days before the new moon rose, at which time we’d need to be significantly farther south. If the priest took exception to my decision, he did not come to say so.

  The way was without event. I slept and read and wrote and took in what sights I could see from the on-rolling coach.

  Later, as we gained certain cities—and, again, we’d head toward Bourges, then Moulins and Roanne, with Lyon the goal; later, it would be Vienne, Valence, Montélimar, and Orange, where finally we’d gain what seemed the true South, and then Avignon, and finally, just beyond Les Baux, the crossroads—as we gained these places I would sometimes rap at the roof for Étienne to stop. I might search out the resident bookseller; from their shops or stalls I would cull any and all books pertaining to…let us call them “the dark arts.” (Near Vienne I gathered up a trove of works from an unpleasant man who knew not what he had!) I also, on occasion, divested myself of the nécessaire’s contents: I’d never wear such clothes, and I needed the room in the trunk for my burgeoning library. I’d give the clothes to the needy; and so, if now an unknown hand, extended to beg for alms, shows a thin wrist framed in fine Alençon lace, it is my doing. By the time I set sail the trunk that had been packed with that wondrous wardrobe was laden with books and, yes, that black velvet bag, still tightly tied, the contents of which remained a mystery.

  …The elementals eventually rejoined me—deep in the night, near Lyon—drawing on the strength of the Rhône, rushing down from its faraway Alpine heights, the Swiss mountainscape that contributes to the sudden swell of water that bedevils the land and its people after the spring and autumn rains. From Lyon to the crossroads the elementals would come often, owing largely to the strong waters of the Rhône and its tributaries, which, I would learn, were suffering an early and suspect swelling. Indeed, we’d encounter flooding all through the South, starting just south of Lyon, where the Saône, a quieter river, nearly as wide as the Rhône, was flowing fast. A woman I overheard in a market stall told how, farther north, the banks of the Saône had been pushed back; from a second-story room, said she, she’d watched the Saône spread out shallowly over the countryside, rendering the land a lake whose waters seemed to lap at the feet of the distant, blue-gray Juras.

  I worried that the flooding would impede us. At Lyon I conferred first with Father Louis—no happier at being summoned this second time—and then with Étienne. We were agreed: after an early-morning rest in Lyon, we’d drive on, keeping a bit ahead of the floodwaters.

  I did not take a room that damp and sunless morning in Lyon, as Étienne deservedly did. I took instead to the streets, determined to keep pace with the city, not let it overwhelm me, as had Nantes. I found a river mist overhanging the place, hazing its every outline. The low sky was the color of soot; clouds threatened to let fall torrents of rain to spur the river waters, yet never did. That terribly humid day every wall seemed to weep, the pavers were slick and the balustrades of the staircases clung to one’s palm, leaving it clammy as a cow’s tongue. The Lyonnais, too, seemed imbued with a gray humidity. Their sleepy eyes brightened only when I passed in my…my rather extravagant attire. Finally, having my fill of stares in the street, I determined to find a tailor of the city who might put its famed silks to purpose and re-suit me.

  Sweating beneath his dancing hands and tape, I ordered from a kindly sartor two pairs of the plainest trousers fashion would allow and several full blouses, the better to hide my…my silhouette. I asked the man the price of having him abandon all other work. He stated it. I doubled it, and said I would return in two hours’ time. (I was growing ever more confident in such transactions.)

  Lyon, I would see, serves as a portal between differing climates and cultures. Behind me I would leave the reserve of the northern gentleman, taking up instead the openness of the southerner. This, of course, complicated my charade, for it contradicted my own nature: shy, not sunny; water rather than wine.

  The roads from Lyon were good. They mimed the river’s course and carried us through its verdant valleys and mulberry landscape, the trees of which feed the silk manufacturers. (Those silks, yes…. The tailor had done well; and I left his city happily suited and in possession of several simple-cut batiste blouses, a waistcoat of gray silk and two pairs of black trousers that buttoned at the knee, just inside my high boots.)

  The roads were good, yes, but some had already softened, run to mud in some places, mud into which the berlin sank too deeply down. In time the wheels would churn up mud enough to cover the entire coach, dulling its splendor somewhat, which was fine. Here and there the most ambitious floodwaters leapt to lap at, to suckle at the low belly of the berlin.

  That day I’d peer from the rolling coach to see people of the country, in simple dress, standing along the riverbanks, on dikes and drays, on every raised surface. Further south I’d see them on the sills and roofs of their low-lying homes. Still, the people went about their ways. Fishermen fished, though they had to do so from atop stacked crates. Washer-women washed, kneeling before those few rocks that were not yet submerged. It was the determined pursuit of la vie quotidienne. They’d look up from their labors as we passed; some waved, some pointed, others cursed or laughed as we rolled on; through the berlin’s back window, I watched as they returned to their lives, to the watery work at hand.

  Southward from Lyon, we were always a full half-day ahead of the worst flooding. Travelers told us repeatedly that conditions were worse to the east, or that the river rose high behind us, in a literal wake. Finally, I wondered: were the elemen
tals somehow effecting this? Madeleine, agitated in Angers, and at Chambord, had caused the weather to turn. Was she, were they now affecting the river similarly? I shuddered to think what she might cause at the crossroads.

  We were traveling through the rich plains beyond Vienne, along the willow-fringed banks of the river, where the North ceded to the South as vines were supplanted by cherries, apricots, and pears; farther on, the olive would commence its reign, overtaking all with its ageless and stunted gray-silver trees. Étienne had succeeded, deftly, in navigating Vienne’s warren of medieval streets. Not knowing when the elementals would deign to come, I readied to rap at the roof and order him to stop, for the book I had in hand identified Vienne as nothing less than the cradle of Christianity in the West, and its Corinthian temple seemed to merit a tour. But just as I was about to direct Étienne to return to Vienne proper, I felt the cane slide from my fist, fast and slick. I hadn’t to wonder long what had happened, for across from me I found Father Louis, cane in hand; beside him sat the succubus. “We haven’t time to stop, witch. Are we not agreed: we will achieve the crossroads for this new moon and not the next?”

  “Yes,” I said, “of course. But…” and then, quite pathetically, as if to excuse myself, I pointed to the entry in the guide that featured a well-executed sketch of the temple.

  Put your books aside, commanded Madeleine. Let us speak of life!

  “Of life?” I asked.

  Of life, said she. And of the avenues unto death…. And let us do so before these damned waters rise any higher.

  And so, just beyond Vienne, they’d come—the elementals. To sit with me—mortal fashion—in the cab of the berlin, holding strongly to their own shapes. I was directed to draw the shades and light the two lamps that hung from their enameled hooks and swung with the coach. That light, far less constant than the sun’s, rendered my companions quite changeable; at times whole hands and limbs would disappear, only to return when the shadows shifted…. I was unfazed: I had become accustomed to strangeness.

  My memory of their speech is spotty. They told me extraordinary things; and as they spoke a tension descended like a great drape, and every word seemed weighted. After all, our southern progress was marked in hours now; and soon, if all went as “planned,” Father Louis and Madeleine, together for centuries, in life and after, would separate. I knew little of said “plans,” of course; but I knew, or sensed that we were dealing with the Great Mysteries. And so I was not surprised when, in the darkened cab, Madeleine set to speaking of the reincarnated soul.

  Like you, said Madeleine to me, on your last night at that convent school, when I knew that my life, or my death—call it what you will, but I refer of course to my present state—…when I knew that I was at the center of a mystery, I turned not to life for answers but to books…. You had those S-marked histories of the Burning Days, those trial transcripts and such.

  Likewise, I read all I could find about the means of reaccessing life. Reincarnation, in general terms. And I read not out of mere curiosity, not just to exercise the mind; no, I sought direction, as a traveler does. I sought a way, an avenue unto death.

  “A traveler?” I repeated, though the analogy was clear.

  Yes, said Madeleine. And why not? I’d traveled through a mortal life to a mortal death, and then on to this immortality; once there, of course, I knew the journey to be incomplete. My preferred destination was…was finitude…. How was it I ended up in the opposite place, a place of perpetuity?

  I understood that I’d been consigned by the Church—your most holy Church, whose rites are a mystery to their very practitioners!—to this…stasis, this unchangeable state. Realizing this, I sought a way out. Desperately. I would not be defeated!…Moreover, I wanted no part of life; I’d had quite enough.

  “And you feel that way still?” I asked.

  Defeated by the Church? Yes, there can be no question. That I want to die, to pass from this state? Yes, I feel that way still. The three of us sat staring at one another, and the unspoken was plain: Madeleine might soon have her wish.

  When the succubus next spoke, her voice bore a lightness in its tone, almost of embarrassment. Oh, said she, I read so very much, did I not? She asked this of the priest, who did not respond. Afraid, perhaps, of finding the answers I sought, I ignored my instincts, my hunches, and suspicions, and read far in the opposite direction.

  I read the kabbalah…. I read too in Arab and Muslim folklore. I read of the djinn, those demons ruled by Solomon with the aid of his ring, said to have been inscribed with the true and only name of God. Born of fire, the djinn were resident in the Kaf, a range of mountains carved of emerald and encircling the earth.

  “A waste of time, all of it,” spat the priest.

  Well, did I not have time enough to waste? asked Madeleine. I had an eternity, mon vieux. Her speaking of these things annoyed the priest; it was clear. He, she said to me, with a nod toward the priest, did not condone my research.

  Father Louis looked at me and asked, beseechingly, “You see, don’t you, witch, how all of this is somehow…objectionable, offensive even?”

  I did not have to respond, thankfully, for Madeleine did:

  Ah, Louis, you remain marked by your mortal beliefs. You defend your silly—. She hesitated before continuing, and turning to me to say, He’s a priest of his Church, and he always will be.

  “And so let us speak of that Church, then,” said the priest. “She condemned you, no? Not some band of demons resident in a ring.”

  Yes, said Madeleine. Yes; let us speak of your Church.

  “It is your Church too, until you escape it.” Silence then. Father Louis looked deeply at Madeleine—wordlessly, without apology for words that had seemed to me cruel. In time, he continued: “We believe that the Church, through the rites read over Madeleine, and owing to the disposition of her soul—that is, plainly, her burial at the crossroads in unconsecrated earth—we believe these things have stopped her soul whenever she’s found a way, have barred her passage back into life, into a living being.”

  He paused. I said nothing. When again he spoke, it was to commence an explanation that only confused me more: “These are not tenets of Catholicism, or not solely. In fact, the Church anathematized the preexistence of the soul in 553, but prior to that—”

  Prior to that, took up Madeleine, the Egyptians believed in it. Zoroaster, the Persian prophet of the sixth century, believed in it. The Greeks Pythagoras and Plato believed in it…. Many in the East still believe…. And of course the Celts believed in it.

  “But a Celt,” said Father Louis, “can convince himself of anything.” They shared a smile at that: forgiveness, unsought, had come fast.

  “Believed in ‘it’?” I quoted. “By it you mean…?”

  “May I?” asked the priest of Madeleine.

  Please do, said she, allowing the priest to speak thusly:

  “The soul, you see, lives a series of lives in the flesh as part of a process of spiritual development; a process that ends only when perfection is achieved and the soul merges with…with the Divine Consciousness; in other words, the soul—the essence of a life—advances from human to god form; it aspires to, and sometimes achieves, another plane of existence.”

  “And…” I began, “is this…does this mean that…?” I was overwhelmed.

  Yes, affirmed Madeleine, before I could sputter to the end of my question.

  “We’ve had some proof of it,” concurred the priest. “Proof of the soul’s many lives. Isn’t that what you wanted to know—if the soul passes from host to host along its way?”

  I nodded, and said, “Yet…yet you, Madeleine, have not been able to regain life even though you’re able, apparently, to manipulate the souls, the wills, the essences of others.”

  I’ve tried, averred the succubus. I’ve tried and failed innumerable times.

  “But that’s not wholly true,” amended the priest. “You have at times held to life.”

  Yes, well…

/>   “You have?” I asked.

  “She has indeed,” said the priest. “But never for long.”

  “But…but how?” I asked.

  Madeleine spoke of having hovered over copulating humans—“every variation thereof,” qualified the priest—but those fornicating forms showed no entry to her, no “soul’s door,” as she put it, not even when coition resulted in the creation of a life.

  In time—out of anger born, again, of disappointment; and, in Father Louis’s case, “for fun”—the elementals began to interfere with coupling humans. And, finally, “attendance at ten thousand fucks,” as Father Louis put it, rather indelicately, did finally show Madeleine a way.

  Once, in a mountain village of northern Italy, Madeleine entered a woman exactly at the moment of conception. Then, said Madeleine, when I did that, or when that happened—for it was serendipitous—I thought I’d found a way. Madeleine, as pure soul—for want of a better word—was resident in that woman, in her womb, for a full term.

  When I gained her womb, I was, at first, myself. That is, I knew all I’d known when first I’d entered her, before I married myself to the water of her being. Intact were my mind, my memories, my senses; I had the ability to speak, though not the means, of course. It was a soundless world, a world of water, silent but for the muted drumming of two hearts. And I’ll tell you, that existence was very much like ours when we, Louis and I, forsake all shapes, all semblance of being. When we do that, ours too is a water world.

  I was contained—the whole of me; my soul reduced—I was contained within that nascent being, that still-watery curl in her womb. But each day, each hour, I lost more and more of myself. Memories faded, thought slowed to a stop. Only instinct remained. Ah, but it was a joyous loss, for I knew it brought me nearer life.

  “Were you…were you born, then?”

  Madeleine did not answer me, not directly. Instead, she said this: After nine months I knew nothing. I’d been reduced, distilled—by What, by Whom I’ve no idea—to lifematter, to human essence. I had a body and a consciousness, but to refer to that as me, to think of that as all that had once been Madeleine de la Mettrie, would be incorrect. Or so I believe.