But I could see such concerns were far from her thoughts.
I pressed her further. I explained that the first and foremost rule of our order was that no one of us, regardless of his powers, would ever command a spirit for gain. “For there is an old rule in the world, Deborah, among all sorcerers and those who address powers unseen. That those who strive to use the invisible for evil purposes cannot but invite their own ruin.”
“But why is gain an evil thing, Petyr?” she said as if we were the same age, she and I. “Think of what you are saying! What is rich is not evil! Who has been hurt by what my devil brings to me? And all these in the household of Roelant have been helped.”
“There are dangers in what you do, Deborah! This thing grows stronger the more you speak to it-”
She hushed me. She had contempt for me now. Again, she pressed me to take the jewels. She told me bluntly I was a fool, for I did not know how to use my powers, and then she thanked me for having taken her to the perfect city for witches, and with an evil smile she laughed.
“Deborah, we do not believe in Satan,” I said, “but we believe in evil, and evil is what is destructive to mankind. I beg you beware of this spirit. Do not believe what it tells you of itself and its intentions. For no one knows what these beings really are.”
“Stop, you anger me, Petyr. What makes you think this spirit tells me anything? It is I who speak to it! Look to the demonologies, Petyr, the old books by the rabid clergy who do believe in devils, for those books contain more true knowledge of how to control these invisible beings than you might think. I saw them on your shelves. I knew that one word in Latin, demonology, for I have seen such books before.”
The books were full of truth and lies and I told her so. I drew back from her sadly. Once again she pressed me to take the jewels. I would not. She slipped them in my pocket and pressed her warm lips to my cheek. I went out of the house.
Roemer forbade me after that to see her. What he did with the gems I have never asked. The great treasure stores of the Talamasca have never been of much concern to me. I knew then only what I know now: that my debts are paid, my clothes are bought, I have the coins in my pockets I require.
Even when Roelant took ill, and this was not her doing, Stefan, I quite assure you, I was told I could not visit Deborah again.
But the strange thing was, that very often in odd places, Stefan, I beheld her, alone, or with one of Roelant’s sons in hand, watching me from afar. I saw her thus in the public streets, and once passing the house of the Talamasca, beneath my window, and when I went to call upon Rembrandt van Rijn, there she sat, sewing, with Roelant beside her, staring at me out of her sideways eye.
There were times even when I imagined that she pursued me. For I would be alone, walking and thinking of her, and remembering moments of our first beginning together when I had fed her and washed her like a child. I cannot pretend I thought of her as a child, however, when I thought of this. But all of a sudden, I would break my stride, turn, and there she would be, walking behind me in her rich velvet cloak and hood, and she would fix me with her eye before she turned down another lane.
Oh, Stefan, imagine what I suffered. And Roemer said, do not go to her. I forbid it. And Geertruid warned me over and over that this fiercesome power of hers would grow too strong for her to command.
The month before Roelant died, a young female painter of exquisite talent, Judith de Wilde, came to reside under his roof with Deborah, and to remain in the house with her aging father, Anton de Wilde, when Roelant was gone.
Roelant’s brothers took his sons home to the countryside, and the Widow Roelant and Judith de Wilde now together maintained the house, caring for the old man with great gentleness, but living a life of gaiety and many diversions as the rooms were thrown open all day and evening to the writers and poets and scholars and painters who chose to come there, and the students of Judith, who admired her as much as they admired any male painter, for she was just as fine, and had her membership in the Guild of St. Luke the same as a man.
Under Roemer’s edict, I could not enter. But many was the time I passed, and I swear to you, if I lingered long enough, Deborah would appear at the upstairs window, a shadow behind the glass. Sometimes I would see no more of her than a flashing light from the green emerald, and at other times she would open the window and beckon, in vain, for me to come inside.
Roemer himself went to see her, but she only sent him away.
“She thinks she knows more than we do,” he said sadly. “But she knows nothing or she would not play with this thing. This is always the mistake of the sorceress, you see, to imagine her power is complete over the unseen forces that do her bidding, when in fact, it is not. And what of her will, her conscience, and her ambition? How the thing does corrupt her! It is unnatural, Petyr, and dangerous, indeed.”
“Could I call such a thing, Roemer, if I chose to do it?”
“No one knows the answer, Petyr. If you tried perhaps you could. And perhaps you could not get rid of it, once you had called it, and therein lies the old trap. You will never call up such a thing with my blessings, Petyr. You are listening to my words?”
“Yes, Roemer,” I said, obedient as always. But he knew my heart had been corrupted and won over by Deborah, just as surely as if she had bewitched me, but it was not bewitching, it was stronger even than that.
“This woman is beyond our help now,” he said. “Turn your mind to other things.”
I did my best to obey the order. Yet I could not help but learn that Deborah was being courted by many a lord from England or France. Her wealth was so vast and solid that no one anymore thought to question the source of it, or to ask if there had been a time when she was not rich. Her education was proceeding with great speed, and she had a pure devotion to Judith de Wilde and her father, and so was in no hurry to marry, as she allowed the various suitors to call.
Well, one of those suitors finally took her away!
I never knew who it was that she married, or whence the marriage took place. I saw Deborah but once more, and I did not know then what I know now-that it was perhaps her last night before she left the place.
I was awakened in the dark by a sound at my window, and realizing that it was a steady tapping on the glass, such as could not be made by nature, I went to see if some knave had come over the roof. I was after all on the fifth story then, being still little more than a boy in the order, and given only a mean but very comfortable room.
The window was locked and undisturbed as it ought to be. But far below on the quay stood a lone woman in a garment of black cloth, who appeared to be gazing up at me, and when I opened the glass, she made a motion with her arm, which meant that I must come down.
I knew it was Deborah. But I was maddened, as if a succubus had come into my chamber and pulled the covers off me and gone to work with her mouth.
I crept out of the house so as to avoid all questions, and she stood waiting for me with the green emerald winking in the darkness, like a great eye about her neck. She took me with her through the back streets and into her house.
Now by this point, Stefan, I thought myself to be dreaming. But I did not wish for this dream to end. The lady had no maid or footman or anyone about her. She had come alone to me-which is not I must say so dangerous in Amsterdam as it might be someplace else-but it was enough to stir my blood to see her so unprotected and so deliberate and mysterious, and clinging to me and urging me to hurry along.
How rich were this lady’s furnishings, how thick her many rugs, how fine her parquet floors. And past silver and fine china behind glimmering glass, she drew me up the stairs to her private chamber, and there to a bed draped in green velvet.