Madame Rolland, now at her side, surveyed the site and nodded approvingly. She squatted, produced a tinderbox and, after several attempts, managed to light a lantern.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘take your knife and draw a circle the way I told you. Come, woman. Quickly. While the time is right.’
Charlotte pulled the knife Madame Rolland had given her from her dress pocket, crouched down and, ensuring she remained in its centre, she carefully scratched a wide circle around her in the gravel road. The sound of the blade across the pebbles was loud and even, like a little animal’s spitty hiss. Then, prompted once more by Madame Rolland, she drew a triangle within the circle, dividing it into three more or less equal parts. This, the old woman had told her, was part of the sacred formula.
‘Now. Write the letters J, H and S along the bottom length of the triangle. Make it precise. And draw a cross at the beginning and end of those letters. There. Yes. Like so. Good.’
Charlotte hesitated. She felt sick with fear. Madame Rolland, perhaps sensing her anxiety, shuffled over to her.
‘Remember what I have been telling you. Treat him as you would a disobedient cur. Firmly, and with authority. It is sometimes difficult, for men do not take kindly to a woman telling them what to do. They think they are something better than they are, always unwilling to know what they truly deserve. They are like dogs; you must never let them sense your fear. And – most important of all – be very careful of any deals he might try to strike with you, for such creatures can never be trusted.’
‘And I can send him back whenever I wish?’
‘Of course. He is yours, madame. You will summon him and you are able to banish him. Like any old servant.’ She clicked her fingers. ‘A single word said three times and he will be returned, as it is written in your book. Sending him on his way is easier than calling him up.’
She paused again. The lantern on the ground had attracted a frantic maelstrom of insects that eddied in its light. Around they went. Closer, further away, now closer. Gone again. The night beyond the lantern’s meagre glow was black and vast and filled with a multitude of unknown things. She thought of Nicolas, her poor son. I would walk through fire.
‘Come, Madame Picot. It’s time. Take up the book. Close your eyes. Say the words. We are between the dog and the wolf. When all great and wondrous things happen.’
Dusk, the old woman meant; when the moon rose to replace the sun in the sky. Charlotte hesitated. She looked around, as if farewelling the world she had known. She held her book in one hand and the knife in her other. Finally, she closed her eyes and listened to the voices. They swirled in the air around her, close to her face, like smoke, like moths, they whispered to her and to her alone. And she repeated what they said.
‘In the name of Adonay, Eloim, Ariel, Jehovah and Tagla. I beseech you to release a spirit from his domain to come and speak with me in a decent voice without undue noise or stench. To do as I command. Venite, venite. In the name of God and our Father. Come now, without delay. Venite, venite. In subito. Ainsi soit-il.’
A wind through the forest’s many trees. Charlotte opened her eyes. She waited. Nothing. She was relieved, disappointed, exhilarated. Time passed. She turned to Madame Rolland.
‘But there is no one coming.’
‘Don’t move,’ the old woman hissed. ‘These things take time.’
‘How long?’
‘As long as it takes. But you must wait inside the circle. It’s your only protection. You cannot leave now. But I must go. Goodbye, Madame Picot. May God be with you.’
‘No, madame. Don’t leave me here alone!’
But Madame Rolland had turned away. ‘Don’t fret. You’ll not be alone for long.’
‘Please. What if some other man comes to do me harm? Thieves? How will I know?’
‘Oh, you’ll know.’
And with that the old woman shuffled away until she disappeared from sight, as if borne on the evening’s warm tide.
Charlotte glanced around at the forest, up at the darkening sky, at the road stretching out until it dissolved from sight. She considered the circle in which she stood, and she felt even more afraid.
The night passed. The lantern’s light grew faint and eventually it sputtered out. Such awful solitude. She prayed under her breath. ‘Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus . . .’
Overhead the immense apparatus of God wheeled ceaselessly around the earth. She kneeled on the hard road and licked salty sweat from her lips. A nightingale sang out – tremulous, urgent, quite beautiful. Crickets, the insistent musical abrasion of their tiny legs. A petal tumbled from its stalk to the forest floor. She heard the scrabble of animals over fallen logs – foxes, perhaps, or martens – their paws on rotting wood, pausing to scratch behind an ear, blinking. The smell of soil filled her nostrils, decaying bugs, the stink of a dead hare several leagues away.
Then finally, towards dawn, she detected a human noise. Petrified, exhilarated, she stayed her breathing and cocked her head to listen. Dear God, what had she done? There, footsteps on the road, a long way away but drawing closer, a man murmuring a children’s rhyme to himself.
And, by this time almost familiar, her heart singing its own strange song. Your blood, your blood, your blood.
She stood and tucked her knife beneath her shawl.
12
Lesage strolled with a new-found jauntiness until the tavern and the cluster of cottages fell away behind him and he found himself on a dark and empty road. How strange and luxurious it felt to be in the fresh night air, all alone, inhaling deeply of the cool forest scents. He had heard of men who had been unable to bear a life so unconstrained after prison, who were content to be caught and sentenced again, but he himself felt no such anxiety. After all, who could not wish for this? His boots crunched on the gravel as he sang under his breath. ‘Mes amis, que reste-t-il? À ce Dauphin si gentil? Orléans, Beaugency, Notre-Dame de Cléry . . .’
While in prison his concerns had been so immediate. There was survival from one day to the next and, sometimes, from moment to moment. Aside from the physical rigour of rowing for endless days in the summer heat under virtually no shade, there were worries over food, the countless rats, money for bribes, avoiding the attentions of the many villains. The constant, shifting loyalties of convicts were a great, infernal contraption of pulleys and wheels and gears that would crush a man if he made the slightest misstep. Friends slaughtered friends over perceived slights or made enemies of those who might otherwise be sympathetic to them. He recalled a convict who took it into his mind that another prisoner, who until then had been his bosom friend, was conspiring to steal his food and wine – and brutally stabbed him while he slept. All this limited a fellow, made his world not only physically unnatural, but philosophically stunted as well. The brain cowered in the skull, as did the convict at his bench, and, despite one’s best efforts, the outside world felt as distant as the upper reaches of heaven.
But now, as if in sympathy with his unexpected freedom, Lesage’s thoughts roused themselves, stood up, stretched and looked around. Experimentally at first, and then with increasing confidence, they wandered far and wide. As he walked, Lesage assembled Paris in his mind. The green gurgling river with its flotsam and boats, men bathing in its shallows. The Pont Neuf, Rue Beauregard, its sly beggars. He wondered also what had become of his former accomplice, Abbé Mariette, about La Voisin and her idiotic husband Antoine.
Overhead the sky was growing pale; daybreak was, thankfully, not far away. Lesage heard a frightful high-pitched yelp from somewhere in the forest. He froze and held his breath to listen. Silence. He shuddered and stepped off the road. He flapped at a mosquito whining past his face. He had always hated forests. Dark, sinister places full of animals and vermin, boars and wolves. One never knew where one was, which direction was east or west. Trees covered in ivy, bracken, spiders. Ugh. He muttered
a prayer under his breath and fondled the knife he’d taken from the boy in Marseille. ‘Sic ergo vos orabitis Pater noster . . .’ The sound came again. He listened, then relaxed. A fox. It was merely a fox calling to its mate. Still. He was unnerved, he had to admit it, and he hesitated before setting off again.
Scarron, the tavern keeper, had warned him about travelling alone at night (bandits, bears), but Lesage was most eager to find this so-called Forest Queen. In addition, he felt curiously invulnerable. After all, he had survived five years in the galleys – five whole years! – and thought it improbable he would be murdered on a lonely road by mercenaries. His fortunes had changed. After so many years on the decks of the galleys, his hide was as tough as an old boot and he felt as reckless as an acrobat. The galleys. God, what hell. Men dying all around him from disease, murder, floggings, all manner of barbarism. But he was sure he had been rescued for a purpose. As with most things – the stars, the whims of men, the weave of cloth, the very elements of the world – there was surely a pattern of reasoning for his survival. If only he could decipher it. Then, and only then, might he be able to alter the course of his life to his best advantage.
He had, of course, studied these matters widely, and so much else besides (the cards, alchemy, the lines of the hand), but his knowledge was still somewhat shallow. He knew a little about many things; this was a painful truth to admit. Unfortunately, so much of the scholarship on these matters was completely fraudulent. Ancient books, false talismans, indecipherable marginalia. He had applied himself most diligently to his tarot cards in particular, but felt that – although close to doing so – he had never quite unlocked their great and mysterious secrets. This was most frustrating. He had no doubt that true magic existed in the world – he had seen it with his own eyes – but his own expertise was, sadly, more akin to sleight of hand. Still, his favourite trick was enough to impress the likes of the tavern keeper Pierre Scarron, who was a drunken old goat, certainly, but not a complete fool. The note on which the tavern keeper had scrawled his murderous wish was still in Lesage’s pocket. Please make my wife die of natural causes without pain and also give me some money. Pathetic, really.
People had not really changed in the years he had been in prison, he mused, and although the methods were ever shifting, the results people yearned for were inevitably similar the world over: men desired wealth and other women to fuck, while women sought wealth and men to marry; there was almost always someone wished dead or otherwise disposed of. He could almost write the notes himself and save his customers the trouble. Their wishes were, of course, never for anything admirable; never a plea for happiness or peace, for the health of the King or an ailing neighbour. No. Hardly a surprise, he supposed, considering who they thought they were writing to; to God they revealed who they aspired to be, but to the Devil they revealed their true selves.
He was preoccupied with such thoughts when, after walking several leagues further, he glanced up and saw, in the distance, a startling apparition. There, in the middle of the road, probably a hundred feet away, stood a solitary figure. He stopped to squint. It was a woman by the look of it, standing all by herself, and although her features were smudged by distance and dim light, he sensed her staring at him. He glanced around. He had heard before of this kind of trap; of robbers using an injured person or pretty maid as bait, prompting a good Samaritan to stop, whereupon he would be robbed and beaten. He licked his lips and clutched his satchel to his chest. He felt the bulge of his knife beneath his doublet. He waited, looked around. After a few moments of uncertainty, he slowly approached but halted again when within hailing distance.
The woman observed his every move. He bade her good morning, for indeed it was almost morning, night having finally begun its retreat to the more heavily wooded parts of the forest. She looked startled, as if incredulous at the sound of his voice, and didn’t respond.
Trying again, he raised a hand. ‘Good morning, madame.’
This time the woman nodded, but said nothing. And so he advanced. The neckline of her dress was dark with what might have been blood. On the ground beside her was a sack tied with string. Perhaps she was some sort of imbecile, abandoned in the woods by her family? But her gaze, he saw as he drew closer, was keen and inquisitive – not at all like that of an idiot. She wore a scarf on her head and a green dress which was muddy and ragged at its hem.
Lesage glanced around. There was only the forest, the roads, birds flitting through the air.
‘Is there somebody else here?’ he called out. ‘Are you injured, madame?’
The woman shook her head. Would she not say anything?
‘Then what are you doing here all alone in this place?’
‘I might ask the same of you, monsieur.’
A fair response. He hesitated. Why not tell her? After all, she might be able to help him. Again he glanced around, but saw no sign of anyone else. ‘I’m looking for a woman who I’m told lives near here.’
The woman flinched, as if he had said something wholly unexpected, before she recomposed herself. ‘Who is she? What does she look like, this woman?’
‘I’m not sure. It changes, they say.’
‘It changes?’
‘Yes. Sometimes she is one woman, then another. Sometimes old, sometimes younger. I don’t know for certain.’
‘You are seeking the sorceress,’ she whispered.
It was his turn to be surprised. ‘Yes. But how did you know?’ he asked cautiously.
‘What is your business with her?’
Lesage examined the woman’s pale features, her green eyes and her sharp little nose. Really quite a lovely peasant woman judging from her attire, although the skin of her face was as pocked as the moon and her lips were dry and cracked.
‘I have a . . . proposition for her,’ he said eventually. ‘There is something she might assist me with. Do you know where she lives?’
The woman merely stared at him, expressionless, and he was horribly conscious of her gaze as it trickled like tepid water down the length of his body – from his face and his hat to his shoulders, then down to his breeches and dirty, broken shoes. He felt suddenly ashamed; there was nothing like an attractive woman to make a man feel grubby and inadequate. He tugged at his sleeves and straightened his posture as best he could.
Then the strangest thing. In one hand she held up a book, like a Bible or a book of hours, while, haltingly, with eyes closed, she spoke aloud several sentences in a strange tongue. Greek, perhaps. The meaning of the words meant nothing to Lesage and yet a chill coursed through his blood, for he knew intimately that one did not need to understand the words of a charm to be subject to the dark undertow of its power.
‘What . . . what are you doing, madame?’
She didn’t answer, but when she had finished speaking, she swung her gaze again to him. Her bottom lip, he saw, was trembling.
‘You are afraid?’ he said.
‘I have never seen a . . . man like you before.’
‘I’m sure you have.’
‘Oh no. I can assure you. Or not to my knowledge.’ She winced as she drew breath. ‘And what is your name, monsieur? What shall I call you?’
He performed his bow, accompanied by the subtle flourish of his hand. ‘My name is Lesage. At your service, madame.’
Despite her apparent nervousness (who knew; perhaps because of it?) her gaze was clear-eyed and bold. Was it – could it be possible? – that she was flirting with him? The thought stirred him. Women had been an endlessly popular topic of conversation among his fellow convicts on the galleys, of course, and the collective memories of those they had loved and admired glowed like coals in their bellies. It had been so long, and now – look at this! – here was a fine specimen, a little coquette, out all by herself in the forest. Perhaps he should drag her behind a tree and bend her to his will? Who could blame him for some harmless fun after all these years?
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‘And is it true what people say about you?’ the woman asked. ‘About . . . men like you, I mean? That you can talk with the Devil?’
Lesage was taken aback. ‘You have heard of me?’
The woman appeared amused at this. She dropped her book into the pocket of her dress. ‘A woman like me hears many things.’
‘And what kind of woman would that be, madame?’
She paused to fiddle with her scarf and he saw that her left hand was bandaged. ‘I brought you to me,’ she went on, ‘and if you don’t do as I command, then I will send you back.’
‘Oh? Really? Send me back, will you?’
The woman snapped her fingers in the cool dawn air. ‘Yes. Like that. A few words from me is all it takes.’
Her assured manner and the bony click of her fingers disturbed him. He cleared his throat. ‘And what would you know . . . of that particular place, madame?’
She faltered, but only momentarily. ‘Only what I have heard of it. Enough to know it is a place to which anyone would rather not go. A stinking place of agony and suffering, where men are treated worse than beasts.’
This much was true. Lesage nodded distractedly and wiped sweat from his throat. He felt faint. A glass of brandy would be lovely right now. He ran his fingertips across his bristly cheek to reassure himself that, indeed, he was all here and that, no, he was not dreaming. He swivelled on his heel and looked around – at the forest, at the roads stretching away into the distance. Sunlight was rising like a tide between the pine trees and insects were passing through its cloudy beams, lighting up then vanishing, lighting up again. He felt distinctly uneasy and wished that someone – a coach or travelling merchant – might appear to interrupt this strange encounter. But there was no one in sight.
City of Crows Page 10