The monk had stood motionless until now. He stood aside for her to enter, with a smile playing at his lips.
‘We had better continue this most interesting conversation inside, Mademoiselle.’
He showed her into a small study, its walls lined with an impressive quantity of books. Some were bound in dark brown or tan calfskin, others in red, green or yellow morocco leather embossed with delicate, lacework patterns and rolled borders. Older, rarer copies were decorated with graceful, scrolling motifs and fleurons, or inlaid with mosaics. One book lay open on the worktable.
Chiara inclined her head in curiosity.
‘What are you reading, Monsieur?’
‘The Palace of Secrets, or Nocturnal Dreams and Visions Explained by the Doctrine of the Ancients. The work is more than a century old, but I remain curious to pierce the mysteries of sleep and dreams.’
Chiara looked doubtful.
‘It serves no purpose whatsoever!’
‘Wrong! One day, you will see the birth of a new profession: the interpretation of dreams! As for me, I carefully set down all my dreams upon waking, and I ponder their significance over breakfast.’
She gave a small, tinkling laugh that seemed to echo around the walls.
‘You are most surprising!’
‘So you know who I am, Mademoiselle?’ asked the monk casually, after inviting her to take a seat.
Chiara refused the offer, preferring to run her finger over a map showing the whole world, its lands and oceans.
‘Soldier, duellist, monk, philosopher, doctor, anatomist… Do you really think you have been forgotten, Monsieur de—’
Swiftly, the monk placed a finger over her lips.
‘Do not speak my name—even these walls have ears!’
‘And what are you afraid of?’
‘That they will hear!’
She considered him with curiosity.
‘Is it true what they say about you?’
‘That rather depends on who’s talking,’ observed the monk wickedly.
Chiara’s face lit up with a smile.
‘Those who love you say that you were a great scholar, ahead of your time. The others—’
‘Yes?’
She shuddered.
‘That you were the Devil himself.’
‘The Devil in a monk’s habit?’
‘You wear it very little!’
He laughed.
‘Why should I? I broke my vows long ago.’
‘Why?’
‘They say that a Christian is driven to action by grace, and a philosopher by reason.’
‘Do you no longer have faith?’
‘Well… not really, no.’
‘So you do not believe in God?’ she insisted.
‘Not really, no.’
And he added in the blink of an eye:
‘Sequere deum, fata viam inveniunt: follow God; fate will find its own way.’
Chiara looked at him with evident curiosity.
‘Tell me about the Chevalier de Volnay.’
‘And why should I tell you about him?’
She stared him in the eye, with that natural arrogance that is the preserve of the highest-born in this world.
‘You will tell me about him for the very good reason that I desire it! Or do you wish me to reveal your identity at every dinner and salon in Paris?’
A faint, cold light showed in the monk’s face.
‘Your threats do not scare me. Sartine knows who I am.’
‘Indeed. But your sentence, though it was never carried out, has not been cancelled. It is merely—what’s the word?’
‘Suspended,’ said the monk.
Chiara nodded.
‘That’s it: suspended. Any rumours about you could force even untouchables like Sartine to act against you. Our chief of police can hardly boast in public that he employs an excommunicant.’
There was not a flicker of movement in the monk’s face, but his eyes turned deepest black. It occurred to Chiara suddenly that he would make a formidable enemy.
‘But come now,’ she said anxiously, ‘I am not your enemy. And don’t look at me like that. I have acted on behalf of the Marquise de Pompadour, for sure, but it was for the good of all.’
‘Many a private advantage is served for the good of all,’ said the monk.
The young woman gestured nervously. Her fluttering hands betrayed her impatience, too.
‘I merely wish you to reconcile me to the Chevalier de Volnay!’ she exclaimed.
‘Why?’
‘But…’
She blushed faintly.
‘I do not wish him to think ill of me.’
A smile played at the corners of the monk’s mouth. His eyes shone more amiably now.
‘Why do you wear a habit?’ asked Chiara suddenly.
‘Because I am forced to, young lady. When, a long time ago, I was excommunicated by the Church for publishing my works, I fled to the countryside.’
He looked at her for a moment. She was listening attentively, with an almost friendly expression.
‘But that was not enough,’ he said. ‘The royal powers issued an arrest warrant, because I had dared to assert that a man should be free to come and go, both physically and in his thoughts.’
He raised one finger with a slight, thin smile, as always when he wished to stress a great truth or principle.
‘Because, Mademoiselle, if thoughts are not allowed to circulate freely, there can be no other freedom. But those in power do not wish it, because the more people think, the more learning and intelligence they acquire, and that flies in the face of their leaders’ plans for their subjugation.’
‘You are just as I imagined,’ she smiled.
‘I beg your pardon?’
She leant towards him, her eyes shining. With disarming frankness, she reached out and took his hands.
‘I have read your words, passionately. You have spoken so many truths, ahead of so many people! You are possessed of a great heart and mind.’
‘I vouch merely for the good of all in a century where too many think only of their own interest. The tragedy of mankind is that we bring everything down to our own level and put ourselves at the centre of all things.’
Chiara watched him thoughtfully, noting his ardent gaze, his faint, ironic smile, tempered with obvious good nature.
‘Tell me more about Volnay.’
‘Alas, sighed the monk, ‘he saw his father, the man he admired more than anyone, retract his words on the bonfire, and abjure what he had believed all his life. After that, the poor man fled in shame and died of sorrow when his son was not yet twelve years old. I had taken refuge in Geneva at the time. I have spent my time fleeing France, and then returning to her.’
He fell silent and seemed to think for a few moments.
‘In short, I took the boy in, because he was the son of my best friend, and I loved him. When he reached adulthood, he took the curious decision to enter the police force. To repair some past injustice? Chance smiled on him, and he saved the king’s life and was made Inspector of Strange and Unexplained Deaths, the post that has sparked so many rumours. Two years ago, the king authorized him to bring me back to France, but on two conditions: the first was that I serve the king as part of his police force—hence I am Volnay’s partner and colleague. The second was that I wear this habit as penitence, and that I go out and about as little as possible. Which is why, as a rule, I live like some old owl, surrounded by my test tubes and my books, and the handful of corpses of interest that Volnay brings me here.’
Chiara was remarkably quiet throughout the monk’s account. When he had finished, she heaved a long sigh.
‘That explains everything,’ she said.
The monk nodded. He saw that she was satisfied with his explanation. And so was he. Indeed, it was so convincing he almost believed it himself.
Chiara rose gracefully from her seat.
‘Your laboratory must be of the first order. May I visit it?�
�
The monk gave a thin smile and led her to the room. The strangeness of the place seemed to seep from its very walls. Chiara walked for a moment among the round furnaces with their domed lids, the crucibles, the alembics and the test tubes. She admired the instruments carefully arranged along each table.
‘What is this?’ she asked suddenly, pausing in front of a glowing furnace in one corner.
‘One of my experiments. I have kept that material alight for two years.’
Chiara knelt down with a loud rustling of silk.
‘Projective powder, to enact the transformation of base metals into gold!’ she declared excitedly.
‘Ah!’ said the monk. ‘You are one of us!’
He closed his eyes briefly, opened them again and recited, in a solemn voice:
‘Whatever is below is similar to that which is above. Through this the marvels of the work of one thing are procured and perfected.’
‘Separate the earth from the fire,’ Chiara intoned straightaway, ‘the subtle and thin from the crude and coarse, prudently, with modesty and wisdom.’
The monk seemed to reflect for a moment, on the revelation of her knowledge. Chiara appeared to him now in a new light: no longer a spy and a schemer in the service of the Marquise de Pompadour, but an open, enlightened mind, full of boundless curiosity.
‘However scientific our cast of mind, it always comes down to this, does it not?’ said the monk, in a fatalistic tone. ‘The magnum opus and the philosopher’s stone! How to get rich and remain forever young. The universal dream of mankind. But who led you down this path?’
Chiara hesitated, then shrugged.
‘When I was twelve years old, I found a chest full of old books in one of my parents’ country houses in Italy. One dusty manuscript told the story of Nicolas Flamel and his wife Pernelle—how they discovered the elixir of youth and the powder of sympathy. I was amazed. After that, I read Paracelsus—’
‘Oh, Paracelsus! One of our greatest thinkers. So many alchemists sought one thing only: the secret of the transmutation of steel into gold, but he sought the power of healing. You know how?’
‘Yes,’ said Chiara, in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Using natural, edible substances like fennel, nutmeg and cloves. He was looking for the Active Principle, for the preparation of medicines—the quintessence, because the quintessence of a plant is so effective that half an ounce will accomplish more than one hundred specimens of the same plant in its natural state.’
‘Modus praeparandi rerum medicinalium,’ said the monk sagely. ‘Paracelsus used alchemy as a medicinal art to prepare remedies, and not as a technique for the transmutation of base metal into gold. He replaced the heating up of metal by fermentation, or digestion.’
He broke off suddenly and scrutinized Chiara’s face intently.
‘Why are you so interested in Volnay?’
Chiara blinked for a moment in surprise. Then her eyes lit up.
‘Who says I’m interested in him?’
‘You asked me to tell you about him, and I sensed an interest—a tenderness—on your part.’
The monk’s tone was cordial, and his intelligent gaze was filled with goodness and understanding. Chiara blushed delicately nonetheless.
‘You are mistaken, and my lack of feeling is requited, for the Chevalier de Volnay shows no interest at all in me.’
‘That remains to be seen. I have found him noticeably pensive lately. As for the Chevalier de Seingalt, well, he’s quite a different case altogether, is he not?’ observed the monk wickedly.
‘He is most… obliging,’ agreed Chiara.
‘Obliging? Casanova? More a creature of instinct and sensation, in my view. While Volnay is doubtless too much the master of his own impulses.’
He muttered the rest under his breath:
‘At least, he aspires to be so.’
Chiara gazed around at the test tubes full of multicoloured liquids. The room was suffused with an intensely studious atmosphere, quite at odds, it seemed to her, with the monk’s wayward nature.
‘You never say anything about yourself,’ she told him, in the reproachful tones of an infatuated daughter to her father.
‘My memories are as ragged as I am! My parents followed convention. They had predestined their eldest son for a career at arms, and their second—me—for the clergy. But our tastes were precisely the reverse, and we longed to change places. I was a young hothead, and I loved nothing better than a good sword fight. My older brother was gentle and reserved. The education I received made a scholar of me nonetheless, but when my brother was killed in combat, I exchanged the cloth for a soldier’s uniform, to seek my revenge. And that is how I came to take part in the Polish war of secession, and the invasion of Lombardy and the Duchy of Palma, with the French and Piedmontese troops. I fought against the Austrians in San Pietro and Guastalla. In the army, I learnt how to fight, but also—thanks to a military doctor—how to treat the sick. When I returned to France, I relinquished my uniform and joined the encyclopedists. You know the rest… tried, imprisoned, escaped, returned.’
‘You are remarkably sage and scholarly now,’ said Chiara.
‘I was guilty of so many stupidities as a youth that it fairly hurts my brain to think of them now. And so I have tried to live at a distance from my passions, though a vague yearning for love tugs at me even now… But Volnay—he is still young, in the grip of folly and mad daydreams, just like you.’
They shared a companionable silence that grew until it set them apart once more.
‘Volnay told me about the letter,’ said the monk, at length. Chiara had been expecting this.
‘Yes, the Marquise de Pompadour entrusted me to recover it, but I know nothing of its contents. All I discovered yesterday is that it was not the letter she had been expecting.’
‘Yet it was indeed the letter that Volnay found on Mademoiselle Hervé’s body. There was no other, I assure you.’
She covered his hand with her own and squeezed it affectionately.
‘I believe you. In which case, the poor victim must have handed the original letter to someone else, unless someone stole it from her.’
‘Wallace is dead,’ said the monk. ‘The truth cannot come from his lips. Clearly, the Devout Party do not have the letter, or they would never have expended so much effort on its recovery. Our best hope is to try to find out more from the marquise about its contents.’
Chiara frowned.
‘She does not trust me enough for that. The Comte de Saint-Germain, on the other hand…’
The monk shuddered. Him again!
‘Yes,’ Chiara continued, staring thoughtfully into space, ‘the comte is the only person who seems to have her complete confidence. One might almost think…’
She left her sentence unfinished, but the monk had heard too much already. Somewhere in his mind, a corner of the sky brightened. To set the seal on their new-found friendship, the monk presented Chiara with a phial of aqua ardens, distilled from old wine, an infusion of quicklime stones, sulphur and tartar of Montpellier.
‘I ground the powder myself, and distilled it in a well-luted alembic,’ he said. ‘Aqua ardens has infinite applications, as you know. It will be highly useful to you in your experiments!’
*
The comte received the marquise in silence but signalled that she was free to talk. They were in a closed room, with the shutters drawn. The walls were lined with panelling decorated with touches of rose-tinted gold. Sunlight filtered through the shutter slats, bathing the room in a soft glow, and contributing a touch of unexpected colour as they lit up a Chinese vase of painted enamel on copper.
‘This room is sealed off from the world, with inner and outer windows. As you can see, I have had thick drapes hung all around; there is a double door, and a guard is standing now in the passage outside.’
The Marquise de Pompadour nodded.
‘Do you still have some of the potion? I am so tired…’
‘Madame,’ said
the Comte de Saint-Germain, ‘I fear for your health. My potion will help you to feel better, but if you do not change your habits, you will not live beyond another four or five years.’
The marquise sighed.
‘Four or five years is plenty. One can achieve a great deal in that time. And I am unafraid of death. I shall be together at last with my dear departed daughter.’
A tear formed in the corner of her eye, and she wiped it away delicately.
‘Be of good courage, Madame,’ said the comte. ‘There is still hope.’
‘It always pleases me to hear you say so, my dear comforter and guide…’
Her words trailed away. The comte covered her hand with his own—the hand of a friend, and she took no offence, though she had a horror of physical contact.
‘Trust me!’
‘But I do trust you. You are my friend!’ she declared.
‘A friend who is greatly concerned for you, Madame.’
He leant towards her.
‘The letter, Madame la Marquise—the letter stolen from you by Mademoiselle Hervé is still in unknown hands. The king’s mischief has distracted us. A request for me to kill the germ of life in a mistress who is with child! Truly, he is deranged! But we must find the other letter.’
La Pompadour’s pursed lips betrayed a hint of vexation, but she said nothing.
‘Try to remember, Madame,’ urged the comte. ‘I entrusted the letter to you myself, here in my own home, so that you might show it to certain individuals. You had it about your person when you climbed into your carriage. But papers may fall from a pocket, in a carriage. And so Mademoiselle Hervé picks it up discreetly and conceals it on her person. Or removes the papers while you are dozing. Then she asks the carriage to stop near her Paris residence, and not in Versailles. And the rest we know. Did you see nothing, notice nothing?’
Stricken, the marquise shook her head.
‘Madame,’ the comte continued, ‘you must continue to play on your informer, Casanova, and on your young disciple, Chiara.’
‘She detests that—’
La Pompadour broke off. The comte had lifted his hand, with his fingers spread wide, and brushed her face. Suddenly, she saw his eyes roll back in their sockets, and felt him stiffen. She held her breath. The comte stood frozen, and a bright aura seemed to surround him all at once, but whether from the rays of the sun or from some other, more mysterious source, she could not tell.
Casanova and the Faceless Woman Page 23