"What do you know of what I am?"
"Perhaps," murmured Anne Poins Genelle, "I, too, have more senses than five. Perhaps I am aware of things beyond this small space and time in which we huddle."
"Child!" In his sudden blaze of feeling, he clutched her forearms. They were small in his grasp, like the forks of the ceremonial laurel rod. "Are you telling-me that you, too, know the hour of sight?"
The suddenness of his cry and movement made her shrink in his clutch, and he let go and stepped back.
"Indeed, I cannot say what I meant," she said, recovering. "I only felt what you tried to say to my cousin, Lady Olande, and could understand when she could not or would not. I'll stay a moment, if you talk to me, messire."
He smiled at her. He had not felt so comradely toward anyone in years. Standing over her in his gown of dignity, he was taller than one might think, so broad was his body and so easily did he carry its breadth.
"I think the more, and speak little," he temporized. "Would that speech were as free as thought. Some day it may come to that."
"A prophecy."
"A hope." He led her to the desk, and lifted from it her mantle. There lay his papers. "You deserve my trust, Lady Anne. And, faith, perhaps I need one to listen and believe and understand. Here. Read this first of my quatrains."
He handed the sheet to her. She read aloud, softly:
" 'Seated within my study-room at night
Alone upon a tripod stool of brass,
I saw from out the silent dark a light
That mirrored magic scenes as in a glass. . .' "
"That explains how visions come to me," he told her. "Thus I begin my record. How came I thus to study and work? Perhaps by way of my fathers—my grandfather read white magic, and urged me to the like. When I went to Montpelier, to the university founded long ago by fugitive wise Arabs, I learned foreign languages and foreign arts, along with medicine. Books of wisdom did I con in the library— Roger Bacon of England, Albertus Magnus, and certain scrolls by Eastern magi. Yet I did hesitate over their teachings. I think," and he sighed, as if weary a little, "that the hour of sight forced itself upon me."
"It came whether or no?" she suggested; and when he nodded, "When?"
"Within this year. I had returned from my last intention at public honors—I had been invited to Lyon, as once before to Aix, where I did some service during the plague year. Coming back, I thought to consider worldly wealth and fame a vanity, and to live and study quietly. Then, it began. By chance, or by another will than mine, I did as the verse tells, after the manner of the soothsayers of the ancient Brancchi."
He explained that classical formula of action—the forked rod, the basin redolent of herbs, the moistening of the robe's hem, the tripod stool such as once accommodated the oracle at Delphi.
"By heaven, the ancients knew rare and curious things. Who can say that this wonder is not science? We once would have thought printing sheer magic, and eke gunpowder. Five hundred years gone, my medical studies would have seemed witchcraft. In any case, a vision came, of another time and place. Then others—but read."
He handed her another quatrain:
The coffin sinks within the iron tomb
Where dead and still the King's seven children lie,
While ancient ghosts rise from the hellish gloom
And weep to see their withered fruit thus die.
"A dubious mystery," said Anne, giving the paper back.
"Because I dare not set down plain what I see, or how," he replied. "What would be my shrift, if witch-finders like that vagabond Gigny should read a true account? I made the verse for my vision of an iron-grilled tomb, marked with a lion for coat-of-arms—"
"The lion of the Valois," said Anne at once. "Of our comely king, the Second Henry. I have been to court with my cousin, only three months gone, at his coronation. Henry is a stout rider and weaponer. He tilted bravely against the best of his nobles, wearing the lion upon his surcoat, and on his head a gold-visored helmet—"
"Gold visor!" interrupted Nostradame in his turn. "Heaven's grace, it is what I saw, and indeed only the king may wear such brave armor. Lady Anne, read this. I saw it at the dawn just past."
She read the quatrain he had written that day, and he told her more fully what the mist had drawn away to show him. Anne's slim young face was grave.
"Now, here's a sad wonder," said she when he had done. "It was foretold the king in his childhood that he would die in a duel. His mother scorned the word, for who would dare challenge a royal prince? But if it falls out as you say, in a joust or tourney—when will this happen?"
"I cannot tell. The visions come not in any order of time, though I see and set down things that help me decide. Perhaps the stars in the heavens are shown me, or I hear a word. For this one, I should say the king seemed older than now—a good forty years turned."
"And he is twenty-eight," supplied Anne. "Twelve years hence, or thereon. The year of 1589? And your other vision was of the death of his house at Valois. Will you tell him these sad things?"
"I would need to know him well before making so baleful a prophecy. Remember your cousin's rage at me. I have no fame or position—"
"But you will gain both," Anne told him, with an earnestness so great that it seemed to take her breath.
"You have prophecy for me."
"No, only faith. It is you who see everything and of every time. I am not skilled nor wise in magic. But I feel sure of your future."
"Child, your words make me feel sure, too." He took her hand, in an honest impulse of inspired comradeship. "Happy the man whom you love."
"I love none, messire. My father was gentle, but poor. On his death I came to live with the Lady Olande. Think you she listens to any talk of love save for herself?"
That was enough to sketch for him the life-picture of a poor relation in the home of a woman who ruled her dependents like a tyrant. Pitying Anne, Nostradame spoke of other glimpses he had caught into the future, and of what they seemed to tell of the world to come. Her interest was for France, and he spoke of the rise and fall of powers, of rebellions and defeats and triumphs; in particular of a strange little ruler, a sturdy short man who wore a great three-cornered hat, who for a time would hold all Europe but whose bloody rule would bring the world into arms against him, and finally cause his downfall.
"You speak of other centuries? How clearly do you see distant times?"
"Clearly. Too clearly. Child, it is a horror to see the wars of that far future. Fire from heaven, wasting away cities, the march of great engines and vehicles, guns as large as giant trees, the advance and retreat of armies as numerous as the generations. Hélas, that man cannot learn!"
"Man shall learn," said Anne, with her air of confidence. "Your prophecies shall teach them."
"How? The future is as rigidly set out as the past."
"Is it so? Perhaps you see but moments, and if men take warning they will be able to change other future moments, for the better."
The two of them could have talked for many hours, but Anne feared what her absence at the house of her cousin might bring. She told him good-day, and again he kissed her hand, which this time did not tremble but squeezed his. And when she was gone, the house and the study seemed to tremble in an afterglow of her presence.
Nostradame grinned ruefully in his beard. Was he falling in love, and with a slender girl, little more than a child? He had thought himself past such things, since the death of his wife. He had mourned her sincerely, that lost wife. She had been kind, loyal and loving, for all she had not once shown interest or even curiosity over his studies of magic and future-reading. Anne Poins Genelle, in two brief hours, had proven herself more understanding and sympathetic.
The afternoon occupied him with another series of patients. He fared out to visit two sick merchants, and found one of them surly, the other depressingly quiet and complaining. He came home to a simple evening meal, and with the fall of night repaired to his study. From the hi
ding into which the Lady Anne had thrust them he dragged stool, basin, diving rod and robe. Quickly he made preparations for the hour of sight.
He confessed himself weary from the day's adventures. Indeed, he sagged rather than sat on the tripod, but a vision was coming. In his ears rang a faint cry, the cry of a child, and then he saw Anne, as she might be a year or two older, holding in her arms a swaddled infant. She smiled and whispered, and the cries ceased. Then she turned her face upward, and lifted the baby to show it to someone. A figure stood beside her chair, and bent tenderly over mother and child. It was himself, in his doctor's gown and his mood of happiness—he, Nostradame, with a hand out to Anne's child in the gesture of a father, proud and joyous—
He started. That had been a dream, not a vision, for he had dozed on the tripod. For an instant he pondered that the ancients had found truth in dreams, too. And then the forked rod was trembling in his hands, and his every fiber grew taut and tense as, in the darkness, a screen of mist made itself.
This time he heard before he saw, a voice muttering a single word, muttering it again. He spoke the word in his turn—"Atoma . . ." Greek, ancient Greek. Atoma signifies that which does not divide. But the voice spoke again, adding another word, this time Latin:
"Atoma divisa . . ."
The mist was clearing, and Nostradame shuddered with a prescience of terror, he knew not what. And then it was gone, mist and voice and all, before completion. His mind had been snatched back to his study by the loud staccato of a knock from the front of the house.
Quickly he rose, doffing robe and laying down rod, and walked into his consulting chamber and to the front door.
CHAPTER III
Pattern of the Future
Anne Poins Genelle was at the door, smiling from her hood.
"I am no soothsayer," said Nostradame. "You are the last person I thought to see."
"Because I am here on your concern. Your second sight is for others—not yourself." He opened the door for her to come in. "I am thought to be in my bed, but a cook in Lady Olande's kitchen is my trusty friend, and I left by the back door. Messire, my head has rung and whirled all this day with the things you told me."
"About days to come?"
"Aye, that. How think you you manage? Are you there indeed, in a time unborn?"
They sat, and he frowned over her question.
"More than anything, it is this: I move, by some great power, past a border or fringe. My sight and hearing are not clear. I see as one is said to see dead ghosts!"
"For example," said Anne, pushing back her hood, "did you make one of the company at the joust where the king died—where he will die, twelve years hence? Did none look at you?"
He shook his head. "Indeed, had I been visible, would any have eyes for me, when they saw their sovereign lord so sadly stricken?"
"Then you do not know."
"I cannot know. Those moments are full of wonder and dread. I speak to none, and none speaks to me."
"Sir," she said, "how if you had a comrade in those moments? One you can know and trust?" She was eager and shy in the same mood. But again he shook his head.
"I have not dared tell any, save only you."
"Then take me for your fellow—into the times to come."
It was his turn to be mystified.
"How that, child? I have told you how difficult and strange is the ancient ceremony—"
"Could not two perform it as well as one—better? Think!" Now she was bold, insistent. "It is an exploration more wondrous than any in history—more than Marco Polo, more than John Mandeville, than Christopher Columbus himself. Have you read the poems of Dante?"
"Aye, that. He saw amazements in hell and heaven, were he to be believed. But he was guided by Virgil."
"They were friends together. Two may prosper where one dare only linger on the threshold," she rose. "Come."
She led him to the study, as if it were her study and he was the guest. There Nostradame, converted to the spirit of her wish, rummaged in the closet and found for her another brass tripod stool like his, and a figured robe which he had discarded for its tatters a year before. From a laurel branch in a corner he cut a forked stick and showed her how to hold it.
"Now," he said.
They sat facing each other across the herb-fuming basin. He showed her how to moisten the fringe of the robe. Leaning across, he blew out the taper on the desk. They sat in silence darkness.
"I see light," she whispered, "or is it my fancy—"
"Hush," he bade her, his own eyes fixed on the faint glow that betokened the gathering of the mist.
For once his hands did not tremble, he did not feel the touch of fear. He would have glanced at Anne to see if she, too, faced the adventure with courage, but feared to break the spell. Through the haze came strange noises, a rhythmic clatter of metal and something like a deep, long shout, but also with something of metal in it, like the blast of a great horn. Would this glimpse grant the solution to that two-tongued paradox, atoma divisa? . . . The mist was clearing.
He saw a platform, lighted brilliantly but artificially, for it was distantly walled and loftily roofed, a great shed that would house an army. To either side of where he seemed to stand ran a strange metal affair the purpose of which he could not guess— parallel bars of bright iron or steel, in pairs and running into dark arched tunnels at a distance. Each pair of bars was supported upon a series of stout timbers, set crosswise and close together. And foggy figures began to make themselves clear, moving onto the platform opposite him, amid a jabber of many voices, shrill and excited and with no joyous note to them.
"Children," said Anne's soft voice beside him. "See to them, herded like cattle. Are they prisoners?"
Her voice helped in some way to clarify the scene. They were indeed children, dressed in the outlandish fashion that Nostradame had learned to recognize as of the far future. They huddled and stared with the blank woeful faces of youth in misery. There were adults, too—two gray-clad women with red crosses on their arms and in the fronts of their caps, and some men in brown, who moved and spoke with authority.
To one side, a woman hugged and kissed two of the smallest and urged them into the group. The children were mounting by steps into a series of long structures with glass windows, structures that stood not upon foundations but upon round wheels that fitted their hollowed rims to the parallel bars of metal.
"Prisoners?" echoed Nostradame. "No, their mothers urge them forward, but this is a sad thing. They weep the poor little ones, and their parents withal."
"Surely the brown-clad men are soldiers. They wear weapons at their belts," said Anne. "It is war, and the children are somehow being taken to safety. Heavens mercy, look to the little girl! She runs, weeping."
A child of six had scampered away along the platform, for the moment overlooked by those in charge. Impulsively Anne moved forward, and Nostradame saw her meet the child, not as a watcher form another time, but as an actor in the scene itself. Anne caught the little fugitive in her arms, and spoke insistently, soothingly, tenderly. The girl answered her back, and was comforted, and turned back to join the group. The children were herded aboard the wheeled structures, and some of the adults with them. There was another deep horn-blast, a rush of smoke from somewhere, and the laden train moved away on the tracks. Then Nostradame and Anne were sitting in the dark, the vision gone from them.
"Ah," sighed Anne, as Nostradame rekindled the light. "She spoke another language than I, but she trusted me and lost her fear."
"I heard her speech, and I know some words of it," replied Nostradame. "It was English, but not like the English of our time. She called you 'angel'—she thought you a friend come to her from heaven." Thoughtfully he stroked his bearded chin. "A friend from heaven you are, Anne. To that poor youngling, and to me."
Sitting at his desk, he chose a pen. "I must set it down. There will be a woeful war threatening the islands of England, and the children must be sent to the country in those huge ca
rs, lest the destruction of the cities overwhelm them."
Quickly he wrote:
Within the Isles the children are transported,
The most of them despairing and forlorn,
Upon the soil their lives will be supported,
While hope shall flee. . . .
"But I was there with them, among them," said Anne. "I spoke to the child, touched her. You have not told me of doing that."
"Because I have never done it," replied Nostradame, pausing in his rhyme. "I have been frightened."
"As I was not."
"As you were not. Child," and he laid down the pen, "you bring me greatness and open new gates of the world to come. How if we try again, and both walk and speak in that strangeness?"
"Do it," she begged. "Here, at once."
"Child—" began Nostradame again.
"Must you call me that? Not that you mean harm, but have I not proven myself a woman grown?"
"Far more than that," he agreed gravely. "As the little English one named you, you are an angel proven. But never have I sought the moment of sight twice in a single sitting. You cannot guess the horrors shown me. Wars, the perishing of races, prisoners burned and drowned, rains of fire from heaven—"
"But if we can walk there as well as look there? If we ease an ill, prevent a death, comfort a sorrow?"
"How, in this present time, change a future one?"
"I did it," she reminded him stubbornly. "You saw. The little girl ran, perhaps toward danger. I met her, persuaded her to turn back. A small matter? But next time it may be a great matter. Come with me, Michel de Nostradame. Who can say the future is as unchangeable as was the past? Not I, not you—come!"
He bowed his agreement, and they sought their tripods again. Darkness, silence. . . .
The mist cleared to a scene gorgeous and exotic. The two of them saw, as it were, from the corner of a great open porch of a public hall or palace. Beyond was a square, and beyond that lifted domes and minarets.
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