Judith Merkle Riley

by The Master of All Desires

  “Is your brother still pounding on the door upstairs?” he asked.

  “As loudly as ever, since the day you locked him in. He says you have destroyed his good name since you have prevented him from meeting d’Estouville on the field of honor.”

  “What else?”

  “A thousand other things, Father, many of them in appropriate for female ears.”

  “Then you’ve been listening again,” said the old man.

  “Oh, no, Father, I just can’t help hearing, since I kneel in prayer for the salvation of his soul right outside the door.”

  “Ah, I see, I see. Well then, my lily, my diamond, pray also for the salvation of his body, and that he learn a proper calling in life and marry. Otherwise, you will have to provide the grandchildren.” The saintly, pale child shuddered, and touched the crucifix—one of a large wardrobe of them that she possessed—that hung around her neck.

  “Father, the Carmelites—”

  “I have told you, and told you again, Claretta mia, my beloved white rose, that I cannot sacrifice you to the altar of Christ. As soon as d’Estouville departs for the front, I plan to pack your brother off to his mother’s cousins in Genoa—in chains, if necessary—and I will then send to Florence to enter negotiations with the Pazzi family for a suitable bridegroom. Would you rather have Giacomo, who is two years older than you, or Guiseppe, who is six months younger, but, they say, the handsomer of the two?” With the cry of a wounded fawn, the pallid girl blew, wraith-like without even the sound of a single footstep, from the room.

  “Idiot,” said her father, as he watched her retreat. “The sooner she’s married, the better—before she evaporates entirely.”

  Upstairs, Clarette took up her accustomed spot in front of her Satan-possessed brother’s nailed-shut doorway to begin again her prayers for his salvation. The servants, her mother, tiptoed around her, speaking in reverend whispers as they saw her rededicate herself to her holy mission.

  “A saint—a saint—” they whispered, and so self-denying was she that she pretended she didn’t even hear them.

  “Oh, Madame, your daughter is a blessed virgin,” whispered her mother’s old nurse, who had also been hers and Nicolas’s.

  “God has made me suffer,” she heard her mother reply. “He took my little twins, my father, and my brother—but then He repaid me a thousandfold by sending me that blessed child for consolation…” The voices faded off down the hall, and Clarette’s heart grew warm—but then, again, it may have been the effect of the praying.

  She raised her voice, slightly, expecting the divinely fulfilling dialogue with the devils inside of Nicolas to resume. She would recite, and he, the madman, the lost soul, the extraordinarily bored prisoner of the bourgeoisie, would shout all kinds of extremely interesting things back through the door. Sometimes, she would pass him some holy work or pamphlet of sermons for his improvement, and it was then that Satan himself seemed to spring forth from her brother’s tongue, steeling her in her divine mission. After all, if she could not enter the convent just now, what higher jewel in her crown could exist than the salvation of her poor, lost, older brother?

  But instead of the expected imprecations, an eerie silence ensued. In the door, a slot had been cut, for the passage in of food and drink, and the passage out of the chamber pot. It, too, had been fitted with a bar to prevent the prisoner’s escape by some ruse. The silence boded well, thought the white lily of the Montvert family, perhaps he is ready to contemplate his errors. She took down the bar so that she could slip though the slot a particularly potent prayer, copied in longhand by herself. But no grumbling and growling met her ears. And when she peeked into the room, she saw no caged tiger, but an unmade bed, a broken window, and the end of a sheet tied to the bedpost.

  Her screams brought the family, and in the milling around and general hand-wringing, she heard, as in a dream, her father’s voice giving orders to unseal the room, and the pounding and prying of crowbars. All of them, father, servants, mother, old nurse, and sister rushed into the room.

  “My boy is gone! Gone to his doom!” cried her mother, half fainting.

  “Out the window,” said Bernardo, peering out at the rope of sheets and old clothes, “and his sword and poniard are missing.”

  “Damn!” shouted Nicolas’s father. “I didn’t know they were locked up with him—I should have stripped the room first before I nailed the door shut—”

  “I have failed,” cried Clarette, rolling her eyes up into her head, and turning paler than ever, but nobody even noticed her in the hullabaloo. How irritating it all was. As usual, everything was about Nicolas. What a curse to be born younger, and a girl. “I shall pray to the Holy Virgin,” she said, a bit louder, but nobody heard her. Her mother was weeping. “My boy, my boy, dead!” Her father was calling down really extraordinary curses, and even the servants were too busy attending them to notice the poor, pallid, self-sacrificial soul in the corner. While they all were inspecting the sheet tied at the foot of the bed, she sat down at its head, mortified, bitter.

  It was then that she noticed something unusual winking and blinking in a stray shaft of sunlight. A bottle, a green-glass bottle that her brother had got somewhere, set up like a trophy on the nightstand. Curiosity grew in her. Was it perfume? Was it medicine? She picked it up, and saw that it was tightly sealed with wax all around the cork. She turned it over, and saw a legend engraved in the glass: love potion. What an amazing thing, she thought. Was this how Nicolas made himself the best loved? How had he found it? Did he drink it every day? Or did he pour it in the glass of wine he shared with that wicked courtesan he’d been forbidden to marry, so that she would prefer him to all her other lovers? Did it make people love you, or you love other people? Did it require a drop, or the whole bottleful? Questions began to eat at her, and she tried to think of holy things, but the diabolical little bottle kept interrupting the most edifying thoughts. Where had he got it? Was it expensive? Was there more? Quietly, she slipped it into the bosom of her gown, where the cold glass seemed to make her skin prick and her heart tremble. If anyone had noticed her drift soundlessly from the room, they would have seen two distinct pink patches beginning to form up on her sheet-white cheeks.

  ***

  “Go and have Arnaud see who’s banging on the front door, Sibille, I am entirely too wretched to rise. If it’s Doctor Lenoir, tell him his last purge brought forth nothing but green bile, and my gout is worse than ever.” Aunt Pauline lay, moaning, her body like a mound of cushions beneath the bedclothes, the sheets turned back from her bad foot, for she could bear nothing touching it when the attacks were on her like this. On these occasions, her massive, carved canopied bed became, to use her phrase, a “temple of suffering,” and she would call for the doctor, the last rites, and announce that “soon it would be all over—don’t forget the little ivory box on the mantel, I especially want it to be yours.” Then, of course, company, fuss, and purgation would make her better, and she would rise grandly, order her long-suffering maid to dress her in her finest, and say, “All the while I lay in my bed of pain, I kept remembering that splendid little Italian velvet I saw in that little shop in the Palais. Don’t you think it would make a lovely hood? Let’s go and see if it’s still there. My recovery is a miracle, a miracle, I say—I need to go to the cathedral and give thanks to God—a new hood would be the very thing—out of respect, you know. Perhaps a silk lining in sky blue—” and the crisis was over.

  But this time it wasn’t the doctor. On the threshold stood someone entirely unexpected, his hard, lined face in sagging folds, his beard and hair in disarray, his gown splashed at the hem with stinking Paris mud, testifying to his rapid trip across town.

  “Tell Doctor Lenoir that I need another eternal pill; my maid has failed to recover the last from the chamber pot, and I am devastated. The lead in pills these days is such poor quality I’m sure a new one won’t work as well. My mother left it to me in her will.” Auntie’s voice came floating out of the b
edroom.

  “It’s not the doctor, ma tante,” I called, “—it’s Nicolas’s father.”

  “Tell him he’s not welcome in my house,” came the response. “He has failed me utterly, and I no longer wish to speak to him.”

  “Demoiselle, I beg you, has my son been here?”

  “Not since you locked him up. The last I saw of him was when he went to ask your permission to marry me—and never returned. Then when he came to the baths to say farewell before going into exile, you locked him up again, and gave out to the world that you were sending him away to keep him out of my clutches. Monsieur Montvert, you are a bad man who has trumpeted to the four corners of the earth that I am a courtesan who seduced your son to entrap him into marriage. You have spoiled my reputation, and I must bid you farewell, as my aunt desires.”

  “Your rep—” He began to turn quite red in the face, then checked himself. “Demoiselle, you are the only one to whom I can turn. Nicolas has escaped, and it is the day appointed for the duello you caused at the bath. I am sure he plans to meet d’Estouville this forenoon outside the walls, where he will either be slaughtered like a calf or arrested and executed. The very least you can do, since it is all your fault, is to plead with him to stop this deadly so-called affair of honor. Malicious as you are, surely you do not want him to die.”

  He’s out, and didn’t even send me notice? I thought. He doesn’t love me anymore. Auntie was wrong. The old ladies were wrong. He’s forgotten me. And it’s all his father’s doing. I felt my heart crack at the thought of it. He’d won, that cruel, selfish old man. But I was determined not to show a thing in front of him.

  “If he’s gone, how do you know he’s meeting d’Estouville?”

  “Because he took nothing with him but his sword, cloak, and poniard. His money, everything else—remained in his room. Demoiselle, he will not listen to me, but perhaps if you beg him, you will have influence—”

  “Why should I, an Artaud of La Roque, ask a man to play the coward? Honor is everything, and without it, life is valueless. Sir, you shame yourself in asking such a thing.”

  “You needn’t be so snobbish about it. I’d think you, of all people, would know the value of a little accommodation to these so-called rules of honor. My boy’s only a student, he has no experience, and he can be executed if the authorities find out about this duel. D’Estouville is not only high enough in rank to escape the law, he’s celebrated for having killed a dozen men in duels. What is my son’s life to a man like that except to boast that he has killed number thirteen? He’ll spit him like a roast, and I have only one son left. One, do you understand? And he’s my dearest treasure. If he ever learned anything useful, he’d really make something of himself—something better than worm food.”

  “The value—? I? What do you take me for? My reputation was as white as a lily until you besmirched it with your nasty behavior—and now you’ve succeeded at last in poisoning my Nicolas’s heart.”

  “Besmirch? You lure my boy into a public stew, where is he set upon by your lover, who challenges him to a duel that will kill him? And for what? So you may be known as a woman for whom men have died? Are you going to make a poem about it, so that your lovers can sing it at court?”

  “My lovers? You horrible old man, leave at once! Nicolas was right about you—you’re just dirty-minded, and wouldn’t know a pure heart or an honorable intention if you stumbled over it in the dark. You don’t deserve a son like him!”

  “Sibille, what is that I hear, voices? I thought I told you that man was not welcome in my house. Surely, he has already done enough harm to you—” Auntie’s voice came floating in from the bedroom.

  “I did not lure him—he hates d’Estouville for what he is—a titled parasite and a fortune hunter who’s after my inheritance, and I’ve never even let him in the house—”

  “Inheritance?” said Nicolas’s father, his eyes wandering suddenly to the furniture and tapestries in the room.

  “And what’s more, the spa is very respectable and ladies of the highest standing patronize it, and—”

  “But you are seen in court, and unmarried—”

  “I was invited by the queen herself—”

  “But your cousin Matheline said—”

  “Matheline? What has she to do with it?”

  “She said—she said, your poetry had brought you lovers of the highest rank, and she was going to take up writing herself, it was all the rage with the court ladies now—”

  “Lovers? Lovers? I don’t dare have lovers! They’d just be after the queen’s box that I can’t get rid of! My life has been ruined by Menander the Undying, and the only person in the world who understood and cared for me was Nicolas, and you’ve stolen him from me. I hope you’re happy about what you’ve done. It’s all your fault, you did every bit of it, and he only came to the spa to say good-bye, and if you’d let us marry, it never, never would have happened—”

  “Menander the Undying? Who is that?”

  “Sibille, I’ve heard you both. I told you to send him away. But now that your tongue has wagged a little too freely, bring him in here. I need to look him in the face.” Auntie’s voice, quite strong for one in mortal illness, called through the open bedroom door.

  “Who is that? I’m sorry, I must go—Nicolas—”

  “Tell him to come in here or I will put a curse on him that will make his hair stand on end,” Auntie said. “Family, fortune, all will fail if he crosses me now. Tell him that Menander the Undying wants his presence.” I saw Monsieur Montvert go quite pale. Poised for flight on the threshold, he suddenly took a long look about the room, breathed hard, stepped back in.

  “Sorcery,” he whispered. “Not sin, but sorcery. What is it that you are entangled in?” I sighed deeply.

  “Come and see,” I said.

  “Will it save my boy?” he asked.

  “Only at a price you’d be unwilling to pay,” I answered.

  “I’d pay with my soul,” he said, and at that moment my hate slipped away, and I felt sorry, so sorry for him that I could hardly bear the weight of it. I think I knew even more than he did exactly what he was saying.

  “Don’t ask Menander for anything,” I said. “He’s as evil as they come—he’ll twist your wish and spoil it. He destroys everyone who gets involved with him. The great Nostradamus told me once he was the open gate into Hell. I’ll—I’ll go with you to wherever they intend to meet each other for the duello, even if it puts my reputation in rags. I’ll beg Nicolas to betray his own honor for your sake. Just don’t make me guilty of showing another man to his ruin.”

  The old man turned and looked me full in the face, staring, silent, haggard. His eyes were full of fear and sorrow. Then, with resolute step, like a man marching to the gallows, he went into Auntie’s bedroom, where the open box of Menander the Undying lay upon an ornately carved, dark table by the window.

  “Well, well,” said Menander, his voice like the whisper of dry leaves, “another man anxious to shed himself of his soul. It’s dead weight, Monsieur Banker, and you’re bound to lose it anyway. Why not in good cause?” Monsieur Montvert walked back and forth before the table that held the open box, as if inspecting Menander from every angle, thinking, calculating.

  “Because now that I see your nasty little eye, I have no doubt that you’re a bigger cheat than the monarchs I lend money to. They never pay their interest, and rarely the principal. Have you ever paid off on your promises, Monsieur Evil Head?”

  “I always pay—exactly what my devotees wish, no more, no less. I am exact. Confide in me your desire, and you shall have it—come now, it’s so simple, and who sees a soul anyway? It is doubtless imaginary, and you’ll be missing nothing—” But instead of temptation and desire, the old banker’s face grew as hard as iron, and his lip curled with snobbery and disgust.

  “I’ve known people like you,” he said. “Hard dealers, sellers of repossessed goods and dead women’s hair. All’s fair, isn’t it?” The old banker
turned to me, his eyes assessing every shade and corner of my face. “Tell me, Demoiselle, when did you take up sorcery as a hobby? Did you call this thing to you with some evil spell? Or did you animate this leaving from the gibbet yourself?”

  “I didn’t. This thing was in the hands of a stranger, and attached itself to me by accident, and now I can’t get rid of it, though I’ve tried dozens of times. But the queen wants it for herself—so I keep it for her, and bring it to her when she wants to wish for something. I’m not allowed to travel far from her presence, just in case something comes up suddenly that she wants to wish on.”

  “So that is the secret. How far it is from what I imagined. And you, Madame Tournet, I apologize for my intrusion. I seem to have got everything backward. I know the Sieur de La Roque-aux-Bois, your brother, Madame—”

  “And you imagined his daughter to be as shameless as her father—a penniless adventuress who wormed her way into my good graces and then used me to go to court to make her fortune, and who now wanted a simpleminded husband as a cover for her affairs.”

  “Such things are not unheard of,” answered Montvert the banker. “Ambitious women are more numerous than honest ones in these wicked days.” He shrugged, as if to rid himself of old memories. “But now, since my son’s life is in danger, I must ask you a few questions. This unpleasant, living, mummified head grants wishes, I take it?”

  “If you recite the words on the box.”

  “And in bad spirit? That is, it takes your wish literally, and gives you precisely that?”

  “Yes, indeed. I recommend you be very careful with the wording. If you wish for your son’s life, he may be blinded. If you wish for his health, he may lose his mind. Menander’s game is to get you to make another wish to mend the first one, and so on, until you sink into your grave from horror and regret.”

  “So he not only takes your soul in trade, but is so greedy to collect that he hurries you to give it up to him ahead of time?”