“They can’t see us,” I reassured as I led. “This hallway is the middle level, for clients of more importance. That down there is the Hall of Venus, though the Chevalier’s men call it the Flesh Pit. It’s the lower clients’ level. It’s all legal, carefully monitored and hygienic, guests and employees subject to strict health inspection and all that, and our doctors claim a weekly visit does as much for mind and body as a sensayer. It’s invitation only, word of mouth, but we get all sorts here. Of course, no one of any real consequence stays down in the Flesh Pit level for long.” I glanced back. “Are you familiar with the Eighteenth-Century author Voltaire?”
“Not really,” Thisbe answered, drowning Carlyle’s ‘yes.’
“They were the Patriarch of the Enlightenment,” I explained, “so influential they not only dominated literature but could virtually force the hand of royalty, the law, even the Church a bit. Voltaire was also a Deist, which means they believed that all religions are different understandings of the same universal God, Who made the world but doesn’t really care what name or names He’s called by.”
“Mycroft,” Thisbe interrupted, “why are you telling me this now?”
I did not have time to pause. “Late in life Voltaire built a small church on their estate. They put an inscription over the entrance, Deo Erexit Voltaire: built for God by Voltaire. After so many churches built to saints, they said, it was about time someone built one to God. In a sense it’s the high temple of Deism, strange as it sounds to say that a religion which combines most all religions could have a high temple.”
We had reached the center of the house, where the wall of doors and couches opened on our left to a grand staircase leading up to a level as far above ours as ours was above the Flesh Pit. A purple carpet led up beneath trickling chandeliers to a double door at the top, framed by a marble arch and the inscription: DEO EREXIT SADE.
We did not have time for shock and silence. “Immediately to our left,” I whispered, “is a small door leading to a secret stairway which will take you to the street. To our right is a very heavy candelabrum. If you club me over the head and run, you should make it out before anyone can follow.”
Thisbe stepped closer to me, and I prayed the blow would come. “The Marquis de Sade was from the Eighteenth Century too, weren’t they?”
“You’ll also need this,” I continued, letting them see a small envelope in my hand. “It’s a more powerful memory eraser than the one you use at home, Thisbe, very safe, no side effects, blanks seventy minutes thereabouts. You can’t just go now, with what you’ve seen, but if you both take this in the car on your way away from here then all this will never have happened. I’ll take care of the rest.”
I waited, counting my breaths and hoping I could count on Thisbe to do just the right amount of damage. I waited. Surely she would strike. Carlyle would not, of course. The sensayer had crossed Jehovah’s threshold; Carlyle, like Voltaire, will not trade knowledge for ignorance, not for all the happiness in the world. Thisbe, though … the threat of the Marquis might scare off even such a creature as Thisbe. I waited.
“I thought you said we didn’t have time to dawdle, Mycroft,” she said at last, her voice soft. “Which way to Madame and her answers?”
I did not have the heart to look at them. “This way.” I led them to a landing halfway up the stairs toward the inscription, then turned to a secondary stairwell on the right. A dainty flight of steps took us to a door paneled with pastoral scenes of courting gentry, and a vestibule beyond, with cherubs flirting in a painted sky. “I don’t intend to leave your sides at any time, but just in case I can’t avoid it, a few survival rules. Never allow yourself to be taken to a room where there is not at least one fully clothed woman, by which I mean someone dressed in female clothes, regardless of anatomy; the men here have to behave themselves when there are women present. Second, avoid residents wearing black. It is Dominic’s privilege to allow them to wear black, so the more black they wear the more Dominic likes them, which is usually a danger signal.”
“You forgot ‘never turn off your tracker,’ ” Thisbe added, doubtless shooting a glare at the Cousin, though I did not look to see.
I shook my head, the habit’s fabric rough against my neck. “They’re masters of this. They’d get you to take it off. If they tried they could even get you, Thisbe, to take it off.” I looked to Carlyle. I know when to surrender. “I was lying before about that stuff I said the Chevalier’s men would do to you. I was trying to scare you away. This place isn’t like that. The Chevalier wouldn’t have harmed you, he would never break his word to Sister Heloïse. And you’re right that they couldn’t rape and kidnap people without getting caught. They wouldn’t, either, it’s uncivilized. You’re standing in a bubble of the Eighteenth Century now; they pride themselves on being more civilized than the Twenty-Fifth.”
“What would they have done to me, then?” he asked after a pause.
“They would’ve kept bullying you a bit, then one would have played protector, stepping in to your rescue. Most Cousins love that. Your rescuer would have taken you aside and been the most tender and charismatic person you’d ever met, playing on your fear and gratitude while the others placed bets on whether or not you’d consent. My money, if I had any, says you would have consented, but if you refused they’d just have sent you packing with a tender warning to be good from now on, and curiosity would have had you back here within the day.”
“I wouldn’t have consented,” he insisted predictably. “I’m not that stupid”—the universal euphemism for ‘I’m not that easy’—“and even if I were, I don’t like boys.”
I shook my head. “That’s no impediment to them. Madame raised gentlemen of both sexes.”
“What would they have done with me?” Thisbe cut in. There was no fear in her voice, just collegial curiosity, as when a Western fencing master steps into an Eastern dōjō and detachedly admires a kindred art too different to be called competitor.
“Once they determined you were a person of some influence, they would have treated you very well, and done all in their power to tempt you into joining. You might like the club, actually, though it does tend to spoil your appetite for any other kind of sex.” I knocked twice on the inner door, painted with garlands almost moist enough to seem real. “It’s Mycroft, Madame. I’ve brought the guests.”
“Just a moment!”
In those last breaths I wondered if they would change their minds now, if wise, cold Thisbe would seize a vase from the pietra dura sideboard and strike and run at last. I stood just in front of her to make it easy. It was probably impossible for them make it out from here, but hope is always ready to stifle reason, even in me.
Only Carlyle spoke. “Mycroft, you didn’t answer before when I asked if you knew J.E.D.D. Mason’s full name.”
“Jehovah Epicurus Donatien D’Arouet M-Mason.” I always stumble somewhere in that name, as if part of me fears what would happen if I recited the full, unbroken invocation.
“Come in!”
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH
Madame D’Arouet
“Come in.”
I know the trick to opening that door without it squeaking; many do. False windows on the four walls of the chamber showed the seasons: spring blossoms, summer peaches drowning in emerald leaves, harvest wheat and grapes, ice-dusted evergreens, all painted, with painted birds and animals playing in the fields. There were painted children, too, life-sized so they seemed to stand with the viewer in the room, leaning out through the false windows, trying to catch birds, pluck fruit, sporting as seasons demanded, snowballs in winter, flirting in spring. The furnishings were delicate to the point of fragility: gilded candelabra fine as twining vines, couches on slender legs which curved like swans’ necks, tables with dainty seats ready for card players, and a harpsichord, petite like the runt of a litter of pianos. Did you expect a throne room, reader? Never. Madame is no queen but a hostess, and rules none but the guests in her salon.