LeMerle winked at me and I was reassured. If this was one of his games, I thought, then I could play it with the best of them; certainly it looked as though the others were familiar with the rules. The three of spades fell to Hermine, to Cateau the jack of clubs, and to Demiselle the ace of diamonds until at last each of us had been given the name of a playing card-even the dwarves-and this to ribald laughter, though I was far from understanding why. We danced then; first some comic acrobatics and then a simplified version of the Ballet des Gueux-the Beggars’ Ballet, which had earned such a success at Court.
From time to time I was aware as I danced of playing cards being tossed into the center of the table, but the dance was a strenuous one and my attention could not be spared. It was only when it came to an end, and four winners rose to claim their prizes, that I realized the purpose of the game-and the stakes. Comic cursing from the losers, who were left with the dwarves. As I was led up the broad stairway toward the bedchambers, feeling trapped and stupid, I heard LeMerle behind me calmly suggesting a rubber of piquet.
I half turned at the sound of his voice. Hermine caught my eye and frowned-she alone of the four dancers understood what was going on. In the golden light from the sconce I thought she looked old, her painted cheekbones shining with grease. Her eyes were hard and blue and very patient. Their expression told me everything I needed to know.
The rose-pink gentleman seemed to notice my hesitation. “Fair’s fair, sweetheart,” he said. “I won, didn’t I?”
LeMerle knew I was watching him. He’d gambled on my reaction as well as on the turn of the card, and for a second I was an unknown quantity to him, a thing of passing interest. Then he turned away, already intent upon the new game, and I hated him. Oh, not for the brief moment of inconvenience on the couch. I’d had worse; and the lordling was quickly spent. No, it was the game, as if I, and the others, had been nothing more to him than the cards in his hand, to be played or set aside as the game dictated.
Of course, I would forgive him. “But Juliette, do you think I wanted to do it? I did it for you. For all of you. Do you think I would have let you starve to safeguard my own delicacy?”
I had taken out my knife, its dark blade sharpened to a sliver. My fingers throbbed with the urge to bleed him. “It didn’t have to be that way,” I said. “If only you’d told me-” It was true; if he had told me of his plans I would have accepted: for his sake.
His eyes fixed mine and I saw the knowledge there. “You could have refused,” he said. “I wouldn’t have forced you, Juliette.”
“You sold us.” My voice was trembling. “You tricked us and you sold us for money!” He knew I could not have refused. If we had withheld our favors that night it would have been to see LeMerle in the pillory-or worse-the following morning. “You used us, Guy. You used me.”
I could see him measuring the situation. I was a little overwrought, but my anger wouldn’t last. It wasn’t as if I were a virgin, after all. Nothing was really lost. Gold clinked between his fingers. “Juliette, listen to me-”
It was the wrong time for cajolery. As he reached out toward me I slashed at him with the knife. I only meant to keep him at a distance, but my movement was too quick for him to evade and my blade sliced cruelly across his outstretched palms.
“Next time, LeMerle.” I was shaking, but the knife was steady. “Next time I’ll take your face right off.”
Any other man would have glanced at his wounded hands-instinct demands it-but not LeMerle. There was no fear at all in his eyes, no pain. Instead, there was surprise, fascination, delight, as if at some unexpected discovery. It was a look I had seen on his face before, at the card table, or in front of an angry mob, or flushed with triumph in the gleam of the footlights. I held his gaze defiantly. Blood dripped from his fists onto the ground between us, and neither of us looked down.
“Why, sweetheart,” he said. “I believe you would.”
“Try me.”
Now blood was the only color about him; against his black coat, his face was ash. He took a step toward me and stumbled; without thinking, I caught him as he collapsed. “You’re right, Juliette,” he said. “I should have told you.”
That disarmed me, as he had known it would. Then, still smiling, he passed out.
I bandaged his hands myself with betony and fresh linen. Then I found him brandy and stood over him while he drank it, mentally replaying the scene as I did so until it seemed to me almost as if he had sacrificed himself for us instead of the other way around. The greatest risk had been his, of course. Besides the gold paid for the performance-public and private-LeMerle fleeced the young cardplayers with shameless expertise whilst Bouffon and Le Borgne searched the house for valuables, standing up fully five hundred livres richer than when he arrived.
When his victims finally understood the imposture he had perpetrated upon them, it was too late. The troupe had already left town, although reports and rumors of LeMerle’s deception followed us all the way to La Rochelle and beyond. It was the beginning of a long chain of impostures and deceits, and for the next six months we traveled under many colors, many names. Our notoriety dogged us for longer than we had expected, but in spite of the risks and the continued efforts for our capture, we felt little anxiety. LeMerle had begun to take on an almost supernatural character in our minds. He seemed invulnerable-and so, by association, were we all. If they had caught him, they would certainly have hanged him, and probably the rest of us for good measure. But traveling players were not uncommon in the West, and we were now the Théâtre de la Poule au Pot, a group of jongleurs from Aquitaine. As far as anyone could tell, the Théâtre du Grand Carnaval had vanished into smoke. And so we escaped from the encounter-and others of the same kind-and I forgave LeMerle for a time, because I was young, and because I believed in those innocent days that there was good in everyone, and that one day, perhaps even he could be redeemed.
It has been more than five years since I saw him last. Too long, to be sure, for me to be so deeply troubled at these long-ago recollections. He may even be dead by now-after Épinal, there’s reason enough to believe it. But I do not. All these years I have dragged the memory and the pain of him behind me like a dog with a stone tied to its tail, and I would know if I were free of him.
Today we must bury the Reverend Mother. It has to be today. The sky is pitiless in its clarity, promising wide blue spaces, scorching sun. No one wants to take responsibility, I know; but the corpse in the chapel is already overripe, liquefying in its bath of spices. No one wants to bury her before her successor arrives. But someone has to make the decision. And it has to be today.
I have not slept since yesterday night. My herbs are no comfort: neither geranium nor rosemary brings me any respite, and lavender fails to clear my head. Belladonna, brewed strong, might show me something worth seeing, but I have had enough of visions for the present. What I need is rest. From the high window I can see the first sliver of dawn as it opens up the sky like an oyster. Fleur sleeps beside me, her doll tucked under her arm and a thumb lodged comfortingly in her mouth, but for me, in spite of my exhaustion, sleep is a distant land. I put out my hand to touch her. I do this often, for my own comfort as well as hers, and she responds sleepily, curling into the half circle of my body with a blurry sigh. She smells of biscuit and warm bread dough. I put my nose into the baby hair at the nape of her neck, which is sweetness and joy and now a kind of anguish, as if at the anticipation of some unimaginable future loss.
Arms around my daughter, I close my eyes again. But my peace is gone. Five years of peace dispelled like smoke in an instant-and for what? A bird, a memory, a glimpse of something from the corner of my eye? And yet the Reverend Mother died. What of it? She was old. Her life was over. There is no reason to believe that he is in any way linked to this. And yet, Giordano taught me that all life is linked; that all terrestrial things are made from the same elemental clay; man, woman, stone, water, tree, bird. It was heresy. But Giordano believed it. One day he would find it, he told me; the philosopher’s stone, which would prove his theory right; the recipe for all matter, the elixir of the Nine Worlds. Everything is linked; the world is in motion around the sun; everything returns, and every act, however small, has a thousand repercussions. I can feel them now, coming at me like ripples from a stone flung into a lake.