Secrets of Casanova

by Michaels, Greg

  “This irritation stems from the lackey,” Jacques threw his victuals at the dilapidated wall and stumbled across the rocky soil. Standing at full height above the valet, he crooked over, then yanked an object poking out from Petrine’s shirt.

  Suddenly, Jacques’ stomach churned. “My gold snuffbox,” he whispered, “reflects the sun. My prized snuffbox! The lackey,” he said, “how did this come to be here in his possession?”

  Petrine’s face remained hard and blank.

  Jacques stood before the valet and calmed himself. “If I somehow confirm he stole it, I’ll watch—uncover his game.” Jacques slid the snuffbox under Petrine’s blanket. He rapped the stuporous valet on his head, shuffled back toward the wall, and squatted. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer …

  ***

  The days passed onward, and in the chill of an evening’s twilight Jacques, toying with a weed sprouting from the dirt, recalled Corneille’s great play Medea. The distraught heroine, after losing her husband and murdering her sons, is asked what she has left. “Moi, dis-je,” replies Medea “et c’est assez. ‘Myself, I say, and that is enough.’”

  “I’ve relied on myself all these years,” Jacques said aloud. “Myself. My clip of courage. My adaptability. Notoriety. The force of my person.” He spit at the weed. “I no longer have myself,” he said. “Who am I? Who do I deceive? It seems I’m perpetually within the grasp of some magnificent solution to a problem, to squaring the cube, to finding a treasure. Have I accomplished one single thing on this earth? No! The children I’ve sired are indolent and inept. My mother is foreign to me. I’ve hardly known a father for I am unsure to which father I belong. I’ve been cut adrift in this seething madhouse called society. I want, I need the howling voices in my head to stop.”

  He ripped the weed from its home soil and offered it as a sacrifice to the gloom of the swollen sky. “I’ve told and retold my story of escaping prison to whoever would listen. That is the ringing achievement of my life, the sole thing I’ve accomplished. Escape.”

  Overhead but not far away, soot-colored birds winged in random patterns while plucking a banquet of bugs from the air. They squawked their triumphs before fading into the bone-thin clouds and oncoming darkness. Jacques stared in cold amazement.

  ***

  Over a small cook fire, Quentin Gray—returned home—removed food from his pack, then closed it up. “Earlier this afternoon, I was nearly shot.” He shook his head, smiling. “Nearly shot. For looting.”

  From his seat on the ground, Jacques looked up after Quentin coughed hoarsely. “Me, a looter? I wasn’t robbing the woman and her sister but giving them last rites.”

  Quentin planted his fists on his hips and took up a mock stance of arrogance. “I, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, the king’s man in Lisbon, brook no disorder. I conduct executions immediately, publicly. These mobs of refugees will behave. Lisbon sits atop property owned by the Crown. It will remain the property of the Crown.”

  Quentin grinned with embarrassment at his imposture, then offered a parcel of bread to Petrine, who, taking it in his mouth, chewed monotonously as a cow its cud. “Thank the good Lord,” added Quentin “that Sebastião José de Carvelho e Mello recognized his error: I am unshot.” He smiled.

  “Error,” repeated Petrine lifelessly.

  Quentin again smiled, rolling his eyes at the remark.

  Slurping from his spoon, Jacques threw it aside and pitched forward on his knees. He tossed his half-eaten plate of food over his shoulder before leaning back against a pile of stones and snorting loudly into the night air. “You, Quentin, stink of corpses, of rotting flesh.”

  “Yes, most likely. My mission is among the maimed who are slowly dying.”

  “A nosegay, Jesuit, must be of little use with the stench of Lisbon’s carnage,” Jacques laughed. “Lisbon’s rotting flesh. What we all are, Quentin Gray. Hark! Look next to you—my valet. Here by the light of your cook fire he appears more cadaver than man.”

  Quentin sat down, staring hard across the fire.

  “You gawker.”

  “I’m at loose ends,” Quentin said. “I barely keep my eyes open tonight. Such is my fatigue from the duties in Lisbon. We need not quarrel about the dead.”

  A mule brayed in the distance. While Quentin rubbed his forehead with the heels of his hands, his eyes glowed yellow, reflecting the bounding flames. “In this frivolous era,” he said to himself, “I ponder the tragedy of Christian Lisbon and wonder how Europe may view it.”

  The earth rumbled, clattering several cook pans against one another.

  Quentin tensed. In a brittle voice, he intoned, “God is our refuge and strength. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.” The swaying stopped as Quentin repeated his litany. “God is—”

  “A rancid and skulking scum, if He exists,” Jacques screeched. “He’s a drinker of blood. A cretinous filth who filches life from the innocent, yet requires the guilty to live. I defy heaven. I piss in God’s face. God sucks dark-brown shit from my ass.” Jacques angled his head and thrust out his tongue at the drab heavens.

  Quentin staggered backwards from the fire into the dark.

  When he again appeared in the light of the weak flame, his face was rigid. To Jacques he spoke. “I’ve dealt with foul sinners, with blasphemous heathens. My fortitude has not once wavered amidst the shocking scenes of Lisbon. Yet a guest, who must be—who is—out of his senses, has caused me extreme suffering.” Quentin managed a mea culpa and stumbled away.

  Minutes passed before Quentin’s voice bellowed from the blackness of the night.

  “Tomorrow morning, signor, I will share something that may save you from your inexcusable temperament.”

  ***

  Harsh morning sunlight skeltered across Jacques’ eyelids but it was his profusion of nightmares that awoke him.

  From across the palace wall, Quentin addressed his guest. “Will you hear me out, Jacques Casanova?” he said, striving to avoid the unkind sun. “I’ve withheld particular information from you. Information regarding the treasure.”

  Jacques, fingers in his mouth, crooked his head. He leapt up abruptly and strode imperiously toward Quentin and Petrine. “My disconsolate shadow leads the way,” he cried.

  “This is important, vital.” Quentin unrolled a leather article the length of his forearm, sat on the ground, and in his lap smoothed out the delicate antique object. “This is the cover—the cover—that accommodated my scroll. An oiled animal membrane cloth. I always kept the scroll and the cover separated for various reasons, but primarily as surety for my safety.” Quentin’s lips drew tight. “My safety.” He motioned Jacques closer, then displayed the article. “On this thin cover, I count forty-seven pinpricks—”

  “Meaning?” muttered Petrine, hunkered near a corner of the roofless dwelling.

  “Meaning?” repeated Quentin without taking his eyes from Jacques. “I don’t know its meaning.”

  “Meaning. Life has meaning,” sang Petrine, who promptly fell listless.

  Standing above Quentin, Jacques cackled. “Forty-seven random pin-sized dots prick your scroll cover. Ha! Vital information. Momentous clue.”

  “This is pertinent, I’m certain. You and I will find where it fits in our puzzle.”

  “We will?” Jacques howled.

  Quentin carefully set the scroll cover on the ground, roused himself to standing, and spoke with firmness. “You, Jacques Casanova, were put on this earth for a reason. I do not guess at your ultimate purpose, but it’s not by accident that the Lord placed you here to twice spare my life, allowing us to solve this mystery together. Look at me, Jacques! I’ve practiced patience a long while, seen my share of treachery and death surrounding this secret. I have, God forgive me, participated in deceit myself.” Quentin pointed a finger at the cover, drew a long breath, and went on. “As for your lack of character and courage—about which you hourly rant�
�you revealed your character in the crisis on the citadel parapet. For that reason, I choose to believe I can trust you. Also because Dominique Casanova told me of your character, I trust you.”

  Jacques slapped his hands to his ears and stamped his foot violently at the ground.

  “She confided in me,” Quentin said emphatically. “Does that stun you? Yes, she confided while I oversaw her wound. Yes, she was a Christian who knew she had sinned. She sought my spiritual comfort and advice. She told me you two were not husband and wife, as I suspected. She told me of your brother’s death, of his lack of faith. She admitted her adultery. She spoke of your weaknesses, Jacques.”

  Jacques tore his hands from his ears. “Did she recount that she saved my life? But I … I could not return the kindness.”

  “I saw you with my own eyes make a decision that imperiled your safety. You descended into that chasm. You chose to save her. You were willing to sacrifice yourself.”

  “I insisted—I demanded she come to the parapet that morning, leg wound and all. Jacques’ voice shifted. “She needn’t have been there.”

  “Dominique was willing to sacrifice herself for you against the Turk and for your search to find the treasure. In order that you might return to Venice. She had her doubts in the beginning, she told me, but as time went on, she was unambiguous. She supported your wishes, regardless of the cost. She performed ‘the difficult task of loving you.’ Those were her precise words.” Quentin closed his eyes and rubbed his brows. “My advice is to examine yourself deeper. In God’s world, we are all deserving of love.”

  Jacques threw his arms over his belly as if cinching in his guts, then slunk out the doorway shambles of the palace. His head drooped lower with every step.

  “God delivered you for a reason,” Quentin said quietly.

  For the whole of the day, Jacques lay on his back, receiving little solace from the elements. All of nature seemed hushed. The sky, a barricade of gray, provided little antidote for his ill feelings. No activity of mind stirred him, and if asked what he was experiencing, there would have been no obtainable answer. When insolent clouds chased the weary sun to nightfall, Jacques pulled himself up, trudged back inside the palace, and dumped himself opposite Petrine.

  A crackle in the brush. Jacques’ ears tingled. Beyond the wall, he thought. An intruder. So be it. Jacques sat still, all too ready to meet his fate.

  “It’s early, but I’ve returned nevertheless,” Quentin said, stepping across the threshold and brusquely slinging his pack to the ground. His cheek twitched as he clamped his jaws tight. “A stern and final rebuke from the king’s minister, a staunch adversary, it seems, of the Society of Jesus. A man who considers even former Jesuits enemies. Today he ordered me to quit my mission, to allow the king’s authorities to dictate policy. My helping hand in Lisbon is no longer welcomed.” Quentin collapsed to a rock near Jacques and Petrine, smashing his fist into his palm. “As for good news, King Joseph escaped the catastrophe, as I have said. Several portions of the city are left undamaged. Neither quake nor flame has harmed them. God has spared them. But my spirits wane when I tell you of the fire-consumed Patriarchal Church, the many government offices, the Royal Palace, and scores of other notable buildings, private homes, and museums. All destroyed in the fire. Alas, too, the greatest of Lisbon’s cathedrals have perished. Only the glorious city library remains whole. A very large portion of it, anyway.”

  “What cost in flesh?” Jacques yelped.

  Quentin, ignoring the remark, stopped his quivering hand. “All seven of the Jesuit houses in Lisbon are destroyed.”

  “Seven, heaven, forty-seven,” muttered Petrine.

  “What?”

  “Seven, heaven, twenty-seven. Seven, heaven, thirty-seven. Seven, heaven, forty—”

  “Enough, Petrine. Do you understand? Enough!” Quentin buried his face in his sleeve and said nothing until, suddenly raising his head, he pinched his chin. “Seven Jesuit houses. Forty-seven pinpricks on the parchment. Forty-seven. Heaven … heaven. Saint. Forty-seven.” His eyes turned toward the orange-streaked evening sky as he stroked his mouth rapidly. “At that time, at the time the treasure scroll might have been devised—1181, I believe—there would have been forty-seven monasteries in Europe. Not Jesuit monasteries, but Cistercian. Forty-seven Cistercian monasteries.” Quentin sprung from his rock, hurried to a bit of broken wall, and slowly extracted the scroll and its cover. “Can this association …”

  Jacques watched him with indifference.

  Quentin returned and quickly squatted between Jacques and Petrine. “If these pinpricks indicate monasteries, one of them may hold the treasure.”

  “Search forty-seven monasteries?” Jacques sneered. “Over all of Europe?”

  “Yes, if these …” Quentin repeated the Latin verse, “Ab uno disce omnes. From one, learn to know all. This verse could affirm that from one monastery we could know all,” Quentin said. “In the twelfth century, Bernard, founder of the Cistercians, designed all his monasteries with identical floor plans for the buildings. Identical. A blind man, it is said, having learned one, might enter any Cistercian monastery and find his way about. Saint Bernard was a man who prized discipline and uniformity, so he demanded—in the initial charter for the order—that in all future times there would be forty-seven monasteries, no more, no less. From my searches about our mystery, it’s clear Bernard was well known to—and very influential with—the early Templars.” Quentin scanned the parchment. “The second verse says, ‘But to know all, you need but three.’ Could this mean that to know where the treasure is hidden, you need but three?’ Search three of the monasteries? That’s not too many to solve a mystery of this magnitude.”

  “Magni—tude,” replied Petrine in idiotic singsong.

  Quentin turned toward the lethargic servant, whose long, rumpled hair obscured his face. He drew in a breath, shifted his body, and thinned his eyes. “It is held, Petrine,” Quentin said, choosing his words syllable by syllable, “that the mystery will direct us to something of enormous value.” He tucked gray hair behind his ear and made with his hand the sign of the cross before circling it around his mouth and whispering loud enough for Jacques to hear. “We seek the Son of God.”

  “Yes, the Son of God,” Jacques said, defiance rising in his voice. “He’s someone whose acquaintance I must surely make. It goes without saying. Be that as it may, my future is determined. I shall write a firsthand account of the horrific scenes in Lisbon, return to Paris, and sell my account to the public. I’ll again be the talk of Europe. Indeed, the toast of Venice.”

  Quentin’s jaw dropped. His voice flared. “Making money on the miseries of others? This is the time for righteous actions—a noble enterprise—that may go a long way toward healing you.”

  Ignoring Quentin, Jacques mused further to a vacant Petrine. “I may be nothing now, valet. But I’ll again be respected, recognized, recognizable.” Jacques paused. “Maybe even to myself.”

  - 33 -

  “UNFORTUNATELY I’M MORE DELICATE than I appear. I’m not used to riding.” Quentin laughed nervously, his eyes reflecting the scarlet sunset. “One trip up from Lisbon city on this mare, and my skin is raw.” The horse boxed, its flailing head barely missing Petrine, who stood next to Jacques.

  Quentin’s face turned ashen. With extreme delicacy, he climbed from the saddle. “I also found—without intending to—the old girl gallops like the wind.” He laughed again and fiddled the horse’s mane. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have rescued her, but she was loose, with no owner or rider anywhere in sight.”

  Quentin pushed the reins into Jacques’ hands. While scanning up and down the path adjacent to his dwelling, the Jesuit lowered his breeches and examined his inner thighs.

  “The skin has been excoriated from the flesh,” Jacques said, looking around Quentin’s shoulder. “Well done, well done. Or should I say rare? Bloody and rare?”

  Quentin’s attention was all for his legs. “I’ve some aloe as well as other m
edicines I shall apply. In the meantime, you’re welcome to the horse.”

  Without a second thought, Jacques shook his locks and, tightening the surcingle, hopped into the saddle and kicked his heels hard into the mare’s belly.

  That night, Quentin pulled a blanket around his shoulders, while the mare, tied up inside the palace wall close by, whinnied and continued eating the scrubby grass. Through the smoke of the cook fire, Quentin glanced at Petrine, then up at Jacques, who stood over the limp flames.

  “Now that the mare is in our possession,” Jacques said, “I’ll be going down to Lisbon.”

  “To minister to the needful people?”

  “No, my mind is not changed. In Lisbon, nothing—or no one—will touch me. Nor I them. My plan is to take notes on what I hear, see, and smell, then based on close observations, each night I’ll write my pamphlet within the confines of these walls.”

  “My opinion is you will also recommence our scroll search, with me or without me,” Quentin said. “What I know for certain is that I’m a weary man who no longer has the vigor to carry on. By myself. Yet still, still my deep desire, my need, is to find the Christ, to know the truth of this matter. That necessitates utilizing your youth, Jacques Casanova, and your worldly wisdom.” Quentin’s voice grew staunch. “In the search, you’ve been a catalyst for me. My heart, Jacques, knows you’ll continue to seek. And because of who you are, the treasure you may discover is greater—”

  “I don’t require you, your speeches, or your nag.”

  “Let us be forthright, signor. You may be at times beyond reason. But you’re keen enough to stay near me. For my purse. For my foodstuffs.”

  Jacques found he did not have a response. He turned away. The Jesuit speaks true. I use him. All my life I’ve used people for their purse or for what I could secure from them. My brother. Cardinal DeBernis. Dominique. Perhaps I am a leech. A mere parasite, as Cavaliere Grimani insisted. A parasite that needs a host on which to feed.