He leaned against the stone of his house and closed his eyes. I studied his face. The long beard, the high brow and aquiline nose. The deep lines etched around his eyes. His eyes that had seen more fiendish sights and catastrophes than any one person should see.
‘I believe that I will not be alive much longer on this earth.’
On an impulse I placed my hand on his.
‘You’ve known since last year,’ I said to him. ‘How could you bear it?’
Nostradamus turned his head. His face, on a level with my own, bore a look of supreme sadness. ‘It is not given to everyone to know the date of their death, although every year we pass that date as surely as we pass the date of our birth.’
This thought was a new concept to me and one I did not like.
‘It’s not something to fear too much,’ he comforted me. ‘Soon I will either know nothing or I will know all. For me, now, there is relief in contemplating that.’
‘If you already knew of your own death then why did you ask me what I had seen in the great hall of Cherboucy Palace?’ I asked.
‘I suspected that my allotted time in this world was running out, but I wanted verification.’ Nostradamus’s voice was calm. The tone was tinged with regret but there was no fear in it.
‘What made you think that I would be able to confirm it?’ My thoughts were drawing to a conclusion that I wanted to avoid.
‘I am still seeking insight into the pattern of your life course, Mélisande,’ he replied. ‘If you recall when you first spoke to me you said you too had seen the wings of the Angel of Death spread out over the great hall at Cherboucy.’
‘No!’ I whispered. I would not accept what he was trying to tell me, that what I had seen was a premonition. I did not want this gift, this curse. I did not want to be like Nostradamus, who had no time of his own to reflect and enjoy life, whose days were living nightmares of confused visions. ‘I saw only the shadow cast by the chandelier! I don’t have the ability to foresee the future!’
‘Perhaps not.’ He laid his hand on my shoulder. ‘I cannot state whether you do have the ability to prophesy or not. Though if you have, know this, you cannot gainsay it by force of will.’ He turned to me on the bench and said very seriously, ‘I will tell you what I do know. You were sent here for a reason. And that reason was not only to tell me that which I already suspected, that I am soon to die. There is some other reason that our lines in life have met and merged. You have a purpose to fulfil and I am to guide you to do it.’
‘My purpose is to rescue my father.’ I broke down and began to sob. ‘That is my only wish.’
‘It may be that you can accomplish that,’ Nostradamus replied. ‘Nothing in my divinations indicate that you should not pursue that course, but there is yet another mission that you may undertake.’
‘What is it?’ I cried. ‘Tell me then what I must do!’
‘It is not clear to me,’ he said wearily. ‘I need more time to find out.’
As he got up from the bench we exchanged looks of anxiety. We both knew that time was the one thing he did not have.
Chapter Thirty-five
DESPITE HIS WIFE’S protests, Nostradamus insisted on another consultation with me late one morning during the following week.
Giorgio’s curiosity was piqued enough for him to enquire as to the reason I would be absent from my duties in assisting him. He stared at me for a moment when I brushed his question away.
‘It is a trifling matter,’ I said. ‘I asked the prophet about the stars. When I did not understand his answer he said he would talk to me further about it.’
‘It must be a difficult question indeed that you, Mélisande, require it to be explained twice,’ Giorgio said as I hurried from the apothecary shop.
I went upstairs to the top floor and the inner room. There a space had been cleared. In the centre of this Nostradamus had positioned a tripod stool which he invited me to sit upon.
‘This stool is similar to the one used by the oracle at Delphi,’ he told me. ‘As the hour of noon approaches I will light a bowl of incense and put it at your feet.’
I sat where the prophet instructed me, under the depiction of the sun blazing across the ceiling, with flames of fire radiating from the closed circle. As I tipped my head back to look up, heat struck me, like a physical force upon my upturned face.
But that was impossible.
Hot though the day was, we were inside.
A finger of white light pierced my eyeballs. Crying out in pain, I bent my head and squeezed my eyelids closed tightly. My vision splintered into dazzling, spinning red stars. I held my hands over my face and then slowly opened my eyes again. My gaze came level with a mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not noticed it before. Larger than all the rest, its surface was not clear, the reflection muted.
‘I see that you have found the mirror, Mélisande, without any guidance from me,’ said Nostradamus in approval. ‘I unearthed it many years ago in the ancient ruins around Salon. It has special properties which even I have not fully discovered. Usually I keep it covered, but today we will allow the merciless light of midday to fall upon it through you, and see what may be revealed to us.’
The ache in my eyes lessened and I peered at the looking glass.
I was a shadow only.
‘We have tried scrying by water and by the light of the moon,’ said Nostradamus. ‘It is now the turn of the sun to burn out the truth.’
He tugged at a cord hanging by the window. There must have been a hidden pulley, for the heat over my head increased, and I thought then that some aperture to the roof existed there that he was able to open and close as he wished.
Nostradamus stepped forward and placed a round, flat plate of burnished copper into my left hand. ‘Hold it thus.’ He showed me how to tilt the disc so that the light from above was caught there and directed towards my reflected image.
I recalled seeing myself in the mirror at Cherboucy and how it had shimmered as I looked into it.
The tenebrous surface of the mirror before me lightened.
‘Look!’ said Nostradamus. ‘The veil is lifting!’
Within the gloom, an image of myself appeared. I stared at this Mélisande, at the contours of her face, her mouth, her eyes, her hair . . .
I reached up and pulled off my headscarf to let my hair fall free.
The very pulse of my life became muted.
The objects in the room where I sat seemed to recede. The passage of time became liquid, a constant flowing around me. I moved my head. My mirror image was slow to follow. Was it because of the profound lethargy I sensed overwhelming me?
Nostradamus was beside me. He held his wand of rowan root in his hand. He gestured with it to my reflection.
‘You may speak aloud whatever comes into your mind.’
‘She is some years older than I am,’ I said, ‘that Mélisande.’
‘Which Mélisande?’
‘The one there, in the mirror.’
I tried to lift my hand to point but felt such languor in my bones that I could not.
The Mélisande in the mirror looked back at me with great staring eyes. She had seen more than I had seen in my younger life. My breathing became faster.
Ah! This Mélisande sees horror, unspeakable horror.
Behind her, two figures in the shadows. One of them steps forward.
‘Papa!’ I whispered.
I rose from the stool.
‘Do not go close.’ Nostradamus’s voice was sharp with warning.
‘Speak!’ he commanded my image that was not my image.
But this Mélisande did not speak.
She shook her head slowly and I found that I too was shaking mine.
The disc of burnished copper fell from my grasp.
Nostradamus went to stand at his desk.
‘Does it reassure you to see your father there, in the future, when you have become a young woman?’
‘It gives me hope,’ I said. ‘But wha
t year was it and where was I?’
‘I cannot tell you the date,’ said Nostradamus, ‘but I believe that you are in Paris. My dreams of a massacre there when the king himself may perish have haunted me for three years now, since the summer solstice of 1563. You will note that is three years ago. In each dream and divination I have had of this dreadful happening, it is the number three that is always constant. Three or a multiple of three.’
‘Three is a magical number.’ I repeated the words Catherine de’ Medici had uttered in the king’s bedchamber at Cherboucy.
Nostradamus inclined his head. ‘You have walked in these dreams with me, Mélisande, and when we met at Cherboucy I was aware that your life and mine were fated to mingle. Now’ – Nostradamus waved his hand at the paper on his desk – ‘I begin your horoscope and every entry I make brings you closer to the prophecy. You were born on the fifteenth day of the first month in the year of 1553—’
‘I was born in 1554,’ I corrected him.
Nostradamus started. ‘At Cherboucy I asked you how old you were and you replied that you were in your thirteenth year.’
‘Like any young person, I wish to appear older than I am,’ I explained. ‘I am in my thirteenth year but I have only had twelve birthdays.’
‘12,’ Nostradamus muttered. ‘Again a multiple of 3. You would have been nine then when my dreams began. Yet another multiple of 3.’
He took his pen and altered my year of birth on the horoscope and read it aloud. ‘1554.
‘1554,’ he repeated.
He bent over the chart and I came to stand beside him.
‘Three to make fifteen in the circle of one.’
He raised his head and his eyes had become fixed. ‘The planets falter in their courses but the numbers do not. Numbers cannot lie.
‘The year you were born, therefore, was 1554. The sum of that year’s numbers totals 15. The year my visions of the terrible slaughter began is 1563. The sum of that year’s numbers also total 15.’
He made a simple calculation.
‘The next configuration of the century to give the number 15 would be 1572.
‘Six years from now, again a multiple of 3.
‘1572.
‘The numbers add up,’ he whispered. ‘For the first time in the many months that these visions have haunted me, the numbers add up.’
‘What numbers?’ I asked him.
He wrote out the numerals in his elegant script.
‘Six years from now is 1572. 1572,’ he said again. ‘Not only does it total 15. If we read each numeral from right to left, subtracting as we do . . . See! See the result!’
‘Take 2 from 7 leaves 5.
‘5 from 5 leaves 0.
‘0 from 1 leaves 1.
‘Do you realize what this means, Mélisande?’ Nostradamus pointed with trembling finger at the single number written on the page.
‘One!’
‘It is confirmed,’ he intoned. ‘There will be one who will be The One.’
I watched as the prophet worked on, calibrating the numbers.
He bent over his desk, pausing from time to time to pull out another manuscript or consult an ancient chart from its place on a shelf. I could see that he was weary. But now that he believed he might deduce an understanding, a strange burning energy throbbed within him, part disturbing, part fascinating.
Could Nostradamus be right? Was I destined to save the king – the person anointed by God over his subjects here on Earth to keep them safe and tend to their well being? Was I to be an instrument in protecting his holy personage?
I spoke my thoughts aloud. ‘If what you say is true then I should go as soon as I can and warn the king.’
‘You saw what happened when I tried to do this,’ Nostradamus replied. ‘And I’d already spoken to the queen regent, Catherine de’ Medici, when she visited me here in Salon in 1564, the year following my first vision of this kind.’
‘The queen regent would want to know that you have discovered more,’ I said.
‘Yet I hold back.’ Nostradamus stared at me. ‘A sense of dread compels me to wait, a foretaste of doom that says Catherine de’ Medici should not know of this until after you have been given the chance to save the king’s life. It will be revealed to me through the numbers when the time is right for you to act.’
‘Why then did you go to Cherboucy to deliver your warning?’ I asked him.
‘Even though I had no specific information, I thought that Catherine de’ Medici and her son might pay heed to me. But although the queen regent listened, the king laughed and would not mind me. I became convinced the reason I was moved to journey from my home to Cherboucy was not, in fact, to speak my prophecy, but so that our life lines, yours and mine, Mélisande, should merge. As I am now convinced that the time to act will be in 1572, six years from now.’
‘Six years!’ I wailed. ‘I will not wait so long to save my father. I wish you to write me a letter to take to the queen regent and the king to tell them that my father and I are innocent of any crime.’
‘Would you desert the king in his need to go to your father?’
‘Yes,’ I cried out. ‘Yes, I would!’
A shudder went through Nostradamus. He stepped back and raised both hands in the air.
‘In 1572 a vile pestilence sweeps through Paris. The Moon falls in the house of Death, in trine with fiery Mars. The great King of France faces certain death. There he stands, defenceless, against the powers that threaten to overcome him. It is for the good of the people and for his subjects that he must be saved.’
‘I cannot wait so long to see my father again.’ I began to weep.
‘Would you not wait so long to see him alive?’
‘I don’t understand,’ I sobbed. ‘What are you saying to me?’
‘I am saying that I believe that you will both be together again, alive, in 1572.’
‘But not before?’
Nostradamus shook his head.
I studied his face more closely. ‘You saw more than I did in the mirror. What was it? What did you see?’
‘I saw King Charles by a window in the Louvre in Paris. You were there, Mélisande.’ Nostradamus paused and he smiled at me. ‘I saw you, Mélisande, with your father by your side. Believe me, if you save the life of her son, the queen regent will thank you. She will ensure that you and your father are pardoned for any offence that you may have caused.’
I sniffed and began to wipe away my tears.
‘But remember,’ said Nostradamus. ‘None of this takes place until the next year of fifteen, which is 1572.’
‘I need more,’ I said. ‘There must be more, surely. How do I get to Paris? How do I meet up once again with my father?’
‘The planets speak strongly,’ Nostradamus declared. ‘I will endeavour to discover the way that your fate is entwined with their energies. However, there is something I must tell you.’
He turned and placed his hands upon each of my shoulders.
‘I believe that you are the one, Mélisande.’ Nostradamus spoke solemnly. ‘And I believe that there is a particular path that you might follow to do a great deed. But I must give you warning. The person who does this takes Death by the hand.’
Chapter Thirty-six
AS THE MONTH of June progressed Nostradamus worked feverishly on his charts and divinations. The weather became oppressively hot. And with the heat came the Plague.
It began in the streets near where the canal from the north entered the city. These were the dwellings of the poorest people, those with barely enough to eat and certainly no spare money to buy medicine of any kind. The first fatalities were five children from the same family, all under the age of eight. As soon as he heard of it, Giorgio sent a box of expensive rose tablets to be distributed to the households in the afflicted area. It was a generous act, for when word got out that the Plague was in Salon we lost a lot of the income from our richer clients. No one who could avoid it would risk travelling into a town where it was know
n there were Plague victims. From the first weeks of June we had very few visitors of distinction or affluence, and even our ordinary customers came less often. People stayed indoors and the streets became quieter. But Giorgio and I worked day and night making the precious tablets that Nostradamus believed could stave off this most dreaded illness.
Berthe brought the news one day that the Lord Thierry had ordered the gates of the town closed.
‘He means us all to die shut up in here while he stays safe at Valbonnes,’ she complained as she washed the empty breakfast bowls in the kitchen sink.
‘The Lord Thierry has written to Master Nostradamus,’ Mistress Anne told her curtly, ‘to say that he is taking up residence in the Château Emperi until this crisis is over. He will deal with it directly. You would do well to mind to your work, and not make false accusations against a respected nobleman.’
‘It wasn’t me saying these things, mistress,’ Berthe replied. ‘The Duke of Marcy was proclaiming it in the town square. He states that Lord Thierry is an agent of the Reformers and an enemy of the true Catholic Church. There is to be a procession today organized by the friars of the Cloise monastery, to seek atonement and beg God to spare the town.’ She glanced at Mistress Anne. ‘All devout worshippers are to come to their house doors and kneel and pray as the holy men pass by.’
I returned to the shop and relayed this message to Giorgio. ‘The bishop means to sprinkle sacred water in the canal,’ I told him.
‘They should boil the water rather than bless it,’ he observed wryly. ‘I’d put more faith in the bats’-blood cure that the pedlars are selling in the market place just now.’
‘Be quiet, Giorgio!’ Mistress Anne had entered the shop from the house so suddenly that we had no warning of her coming.
I had never heard her speak in this manner to Giorgio. It was clear that she was harassed and anxious. Even though Master Nostradamus had directed me to tell no one of his belief that he was soon to die, his wife must know that her husband’s health was failing. As she had been wedded to him for so many years and borne him six children, she would also sense his gloomy mindset.
The Nostradamus Prophecy Page 17