"It came whether or no?" she suggested; and when he nodded, "When?"
"Within this year. I had returned from my last intention at public honors—I had been invited to Lyon, as once before to Aix, where I did some service during the plague year. Coming back, I thought to consider worldly wealth and fame a vanity, and to live and study quietly. Then, it began. By chance, or by another will than mine, I did as the verse tells, after the manner of the soothsayers of the ancient Brancchi."
He explained that classical formula of action—the forked rod, the basin redolent of herbs, the moistening of the robe's hem, the tripod stool such as once accommodated the oracle at Delphi.
"By heaven, the ancients knew rare and curious things. Who can say that this wonder is not science? We once would have thought printing sheer magic, and eke gunpowder. Five hundred years gone, my medical studies would have seemed witchcraft. In any case, a vision came, of another time and place. Then others—but read."
He handed her another quatrain:
"A dubious mystery," said Anne, giving the paper back.
"Because I dare not set down plain what I see, or how," he replied. "What would be my shrift, if witch-finders like that vagabond Gigny should read a true account? I made the verse for my vision of an iron-grilled tomb, marked with a lion for coat-of-arms—"
"The lion of the Valois," said Anne at once. "Of our comely king, the Second Henry. I have been to court with my cousin, only three months gone, at his coronation. Henry is a stout rider and weaponer. He tilted bravely against the best of his nobles, wearing the lion upon his surcoat, and on his head a gold-visored helmet—"
"Gold visor!" interrupted Nostradame in his turn. "Heaven's grace, it is what I saw, and indeed only the king may wear such brave armor. Lady Anne, read this. I saw it at the dawn just past."
She read the quatrain he had written that day, and he told her more fully what the mist had drawn away to show him. Anne's slim young face was grave.
"Now, here's a sad wonder," said she when he had done. "It was foretold the king in his childhood that he would die in a duel. His mother scorned the word, for who would dare challenge a royal prince? But if it falls out as you say, in a joust or tourney—when will this happen?"
"I cannot tell. The visions come not in any order of time, though I see and set down things that help me decide. Perhaps the stars in the heavens are shown me, or I hear a word. For this one, I should say the king seemed older than now—a good forty years turned."
"And he is twenty-eight," supplied Anne. "Twelve years hence, or thereon. The year of 1589? And your other vision was of the death of his house at Valois. Will you tell him these sad things?"
"I would need to know him well before making so baleful a prophecy. Remember your cousin's rage at me. I have no fame or position—"
"But you will gain both," Anne told him, with an earnestness so great that it seemed to take her breath.
"You have prophecy for me."
"No, only faith. It is you who see everything and of every time. I am not skilled nor wise in magic. But I feel sure of your future."
"Child, your words make me feel sure, too." He took her hand, in an honest impulse of inspired comradeship. "Happy the man whom you love."
"I love none, messire. My father was gentle, but poor. On his death I came to live with the Lady Olande. Think you she listens to any talk of love save for herself?"
That was enough to sketch for him the life-picture of a poor relation in the home of a woman who ruled her dependents like a tyrant. Pitying Anne, Nostradame spoke of other glimpses he had caught into the future, and of what they seemed to tell of the world to come. Her interest was for France, and he spoke of the rise and fall of powers, of rebellions and defeats and triumphs; in particular of a strange little ruler, a sturdy short man who wore a great three-cornered hat, who for a time would hold all Europe but whose bloody rule would bring the world into arms against him, and finally cause his downfall.
"You speak of other centuries? How clearly do you see distant times?"
"Clearly. Too clearly. Child, it is a horror to see the wars of that far future. Fire from heaven, wasting away cities, the march of great engines and vehicles, guns as large as giant trees, the advance and retreat of armies as numerous as the generations. Hélas, that man cannot learn!"
"Man shall learn," said Anne, with her air of confidence. "Your prophecies shall teach them."
"How? The future is as rigidly set out as the past."
"Is it so? Perhaps you see but moments, and if men take warning they will be able to change other future moments, for the better."
The two of them could have talked for many hours, but Anne feared what her absence at the house of her cousin might bring. She told him good-day, and again he kissed her hand, which this time did not tremble but squeezed his. And when she was gone, the house and the study seemed to tremble in an afterglow of her presence.
Nostradame grinned ruefully in his beard. Was he falling in love, and with a slender girl, little more than a child? He had thought himself past such things, since the death of his wife. He had mourned her sincerely, that lost wife. She had been kind, loyal and loving, for all she had not once shown interest or even curiosity over his studies of magic and future-reading. Anne Poins Genelle, in two brief hours, had proven herself more understanding and sympathetic.
The afternoon occupied him with another series of patients. He fared out to visit two sick merchants, and found one of them surly, the other depressingly quiet and complaining. He came home to a simple evening meal, and with the fall of night repaired to his study. From the hiding into which the Lady Anne had thrust them he dragged stool, basin, diving rod and robe. Quickly he made preparations for the hour of sight.
He confessed himself weary from the day's adventures. Indeed, he sagged rather than sat on the tripod, but a vision was coming. In his ears rang a faint cry, the cry of a child, and then he saw Anne, as she might be a year or two older, holding in her arms a swaddled infant. She smiled and whispered, and the cries ceased. Then she turned her face upward, and lifted the baby to show it to someone. A figure stood beside her chair, and bent tenderly over mother and child. It was himself, in his doctor's gown and his mood of happiness—he, Nostradame, with a hand out to Anne's child in the gesture of a father, proud and joyous—
He started. That had been a dream, not a vision, for he had dozed on the tripod. For an instant he pondered that the ancients had found truth in dreams, too. And then the forked rod was trembling in his hands, and his every fiber grew taut and tense as, in the darkness, a screen of mist made itself.
This time he heard before he saw, a voice muttering a single word, muttering it again. He spoke the word in his turn—"Atoma . . ." Greek, ancient Greek. Atoma signifies that which does not divide. But the voice spoke again, adding another word, this time Latin:
"Atoma divisa…"
The mist was clearing, and Nostradame shuddered with a prescience of terror, he knew not what. And then it was gone, mist and voice and all, before completion. His mind had been snatched back to his study by the loud staccato of a knock from the front of the house.
Quickly he rose, doffing robe and laying down rod, and walked into his consulting chamber and to the front door.
CHAPTER III Pattern of the Future
Anne Poins Genelle was at the door, smiling from her hood.
"I am no soothsayer," said Nostradame. "You are the last person I thought to see."
"Because I am here on your concern. Your second sight is for others—not yourself." He opened the door for her to come in. "I am thought to be in my bed, but a cook in Lady Olande's kitchen is my trusty friend, and I left by the back door. Messire, my head has rung and whirled all this day with the things you told me."
"About days to come?"
"Aye, that. How think you you manage? Are you there indeed, in a time unborn?"
They sat, and he frowned over her question.
"More than anything, it is this: I move, by some great power, past a border or fringe. My sight and hearing are not clear. I see as one is said to see dead ghosts!"
"For example," said Anne, pushing back her hood, "did you make one of the company at the joust where the king died—where he will die, twelve years hence? Did none look at you?"
He shook his head. "Indeed, had I been visible, would any have eyes for me, when they saw their sovereign lord so sadly stricken?"
"Then you do not know."
"I cannot know. Those moments are full of wonder and dread. I speak to none, and none speaks to me."
"Sir," she said, "how if you had a comrade in those moments? One you can know and trust?" She was eager and shy in the same mood. But again he shook his head.
"I have not dared tell any, save only you."
"Then take me for your fellow—into the times to come."
It was his turn to be mystified.
"How that, child? I have told you how difficult and strange is the ancient ceremony—"
"Could not two perform it as well as one—better? Think!" Now she was bold, insistent. "It is an exploration more wondrous than any in history—more than Marco Polo, more than John Mandeville, than Christopher Columbus himself. Have you read the poems of Dante?"
"Aye, that. He saw amazements in hell and heaven, were he to be believed. But he was guided by Virgil."
"They were friends together. Two may prosper where one dare only linger on the threshold," she rose. "Come."
She led him to the study, as if it were her study and he was the guest. There Nostradame, converted to the spirit of her wish, rummaged in the closet and found for her another brass tripod stool like his, and a figured robe which he had discarded for its tatters a year before. From a laurel branch in a corner he cut a forked stick and showed her how to hold it.
"Now," he said.
They sat facing each other across the herb-fuming basin. He showed her how to moisten the fringe of the robe. Leaning across, he blew out the taper on the desk. They sat in silence darkness.
"I see light," she whispered, "or is it my fancy—"
"Hush," he bade her, his own eyes fixed on the faint glow that betokened the gathering of the mist.
For once his hands did not tremble, he did not feel the touch of fear. He would have glanced at Anne to see if she, too, faced the adventure with courage, but feared to break the spell. Through the haze came strange noises, a rhythmic clatter of metal and something like a deep, long shout, but also with something of metal in it, like the blast of a great horn. Would this glimpse grant the solution to that two-tongued paradox, atoma divisa? . . . The mist was clearing.
He saw a platform, lighted brilliantly but artificially, for it was distantly walled and loftily roofed, a great shed that would house an army. To either side of where he seemed to stand ran a strange metal affair the purpose of which he could not guess— parallel bars of bright iron or steel, in pairs and running into dark arched tunnels at a distance. Each pair of bars was supported upon a series of stout timbers, set crosswise and close together. And foggy figures began to make themselves clear, moving onto the platform opposite him, amid a jabber of many voices, shrill and excited and with no joyous note to them.
"Children," said Anne's soft voice beside him. "See to them, herded like cattle. Are they prisoners?"