The Collector of Dying Breaths

Chapter 15

THE PRESENT

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19

BARBIZON, FRANCE

“We’re putting you in a different suite than the one your brother had,” Serge said as he led Jac up the château’s grand staircase.

“Thank you,” Jac said. “That’s very thoughtful.”

Actually Jac would have much preferred to stay at the inn in town and drive up to the château every day, but René le Florentin had lived here in these rooms, walked these halls, looked out at this view. And she felt she should forgo her need for privacy to absorb as much of the atmosphere of this place as she could while she worked on the collection.

“Here we are.” Serge opened the door into a soft lemon-colored sitting room decorated in pale-yellow silk and light blue-and-yellow curtains that pooled on the thick carpet. A beautiful bouquet of yellow tulips and blue delphiniums graced the desk. Large windows looked out on a small lake surrounded by forest. One door led to a black-and-white-marbled bathroom. A second door opened into a bedroom.

“I’ll let you settle in. I’ll be downstairs in the library if you need anything,” Serge said and left the room, shutting the door quietly after him.

The bedroom contained a curtained king-size bed and a window seat filled with pale blue-and-yellow needlepoint pillows. A perfect place to curl up and read, Jac thought, though she didn’t think there would be much time for doing that. Her stay didn’t have an end date, but Jac had packed for no more than a week.

Barbizon was certainly within commuting distance to Paris-an hour each way without traffic-and it would be easy enough to drive home if she needed anything. But she didn’t want to go before the week was up. Jac needed a break from her paranoid fantasies that Robbie had been killed and that his killer was now after her. The episode in the park, she now thought, after several days of deliberation, had to be her imagination on overdrive. But as she unpacked, she could still remember her fear. She was too susceptible. Too fragile. She needed some distraction. She hadn’t felt her brother’s presence in Paris. And that had bothered her too. The last time she’d sensed him was here. And that was another reason to come back.

Jac opened her suitcase. The first thing she took out was a travel candle and lit it. This was her ritual whenever she arrived at a new place. Infusing her surroundings with the scent of L’Etoile’s signature Noir settled her. As the fragrance filled the corners and seeped into the fabrics, it transformed a strange room into a familiar one. With so little constancy in her life, and so much of her family gone, now more than ever, scent was important.

She sniffed the air and returned to unpacking. Jac hung up black jeans and a black skirt. Her grandmother’s vintage black Chanel jacket-which went everywhere with her and was the most versatile piece of clothing she owned.

The bouclé jacket, with the gold chain stitched into the hem to make sure the jacket hung correctly, was her staple and signature.

“Always buy the very best, Jac, even if it means buying far less. Trust me, you’ll treasure each piece if it is a classic and well made,” Grand-mère had told her.

Smoothing out a black cashmere sweater and then refolding it, Jac thought about how much of her style came from her grandmother. How little from Audrey, her mother, who’d never abandoned the hippie look of her American youth and never adapted to French fashion.

Done with unpacking, Jac went downstairs to the room Robbie had turned into a workroom. She’d brought all the books and papers back with her and now rearranged them on the desk.

Once that was completed, she sat down at the makeshift perfumer’s organ Robbie had created and scanned the four dozen bottles of essences and absolutes. And then her eyes rested on the armoire. Melinoe had given Jac the key, and now she opened it and looked at the dozen silver bells. Each with its odd combination of letters and symbols.

She shivered with excitement and knew this was just what Robbie must have felt at the prospect of solving this puzzle. Yes, it was an astonishing proposition made even more complex by the mechanics of the concept. If there was a formula to reanimating the breaths, how would it work? Would the soul of the departed become one with the person who inhaled the breath? Or did you have to find an infant in which to implant the soul?

The Renaissance perfumer must have made notes-every perfumer did. Somewhere René had to have left behind a record of what he was doing… what he was thinking.

Melinoe said none of her research had yielded any specifics, and she had been counting on Robbie’s intuitive skills and the translations.

How far had Robbie gotten in his understanding of the process?

Jac had not yet read Robbie’s notes, though she’d brought them home with her. She’d sat in the studio, his notebook in her hands. Stared down at it. Examined it. But had been frightened to open it and see his handwriting. She was too worried that it would bring on a fresh spate of missing him.

That was before she’d decided to come here and try to finish what he’d begun. Now she had no choice. She had to know where his experiments had started, where they’d taken him and where he’d left off.

Robbie’s handwriting slanted to the right and was difficult to read. Her brother, who was so aware of beauty, wrote with a spidery, narrow hand. His style was very similar to their father’s. Jac wondered if his handwriting was inherited or if Robbie had copied it-emulating him just the way Jac had changed her handwriting completely in the tenth grade to emulate her English teacher Mrs. Wein.

Rather than being upset, she felt closer to Robbie and missed him less as she read through his first two pages of notes. He’d listed the ingredients he’d brought to La Belle Fleur with notations about the history of each and when it had been introduced to perfume making. Clearly, he’d been attempting to re-create a laboratory from the Middle Ages. Most of the items were familiar and still used. Sandalwood, spikenard, frankincense, myrrh, violet, mint, civet, rose, lavender and musk. A few were more obscure like white poppy and black poppy, goose blood and sap from a cherry tree.

But there were no ideas as to what to do with them or how an elixir might work. Had Robbie only gotten as far as reading ancient texts about sixteenth-century perfumers while waiting for Griffin’s translations? She couldn’t call and ask him and felt a flurry of frustration that there was so little to go on and anger that his notes were so spare.

She got up and inspected the bells. Lifting the first, she exposed the pale-blue bottle. That wasn’t what interested her now. It was the bell she wanted to understand. Running her fingers over the symbols, she wondered if this was nothing but another Voynich manuscript. The centuries-old book had been baffling scientists and historians for years. Written in an unknown language, it was, some believed, an ancient code not yet deciphered, while others were convinced it was nothing but a hoax.

Jac studied the symbols, shapes and words, some clearly Greek, Hebrew, or Egyptian, others unrecognizable. The thought that Griffin was working on them now-perhaps at this very moment-made her breathe in sharply.

As an ancient language scholar, he’d be fascinated by these. He was an Egyptologist, an expert on the Book of the Dead, but had an almost supernatural ability with other ancient languages, including the Semitic language of the Akkadians and Babylonians of ancient Mesopotamia as well as Aramaic and the Sumerian and Ugaritic languages.

“Have you settled in?” Melinoe was at the door.

She was wearing a flowing tunic of claret velvet with black leggings and high-heeled suede boots. Stacks of ruby and diamond bands adorned her fingers. Ancient-looking earrings in the shape of exotic birds with ruby eyes hung down past her chin. Her lips were the same color as the tunic. As she crossed the room to see what Jac was doing at the desk, her wrist-fulls of enameled bangle bracelets jingled. The cloud of gardenia-and-pepper perfume that emanated from her was too strong but still incredibly appealing and very sensual.

She moved like a cat, Jac thought. Part Chimera, part Siren, part feline, she could play the heroine in so many of the Greek tragedies Jac had read.

“Yes, my room is lovely. Thank you for the flowers.”

Melinoe pulled up a chair and sat down. “I want you to be comfortable here. Anything you need, just ask me or Serge or any of the help.” She gestured to the armoire. “Anything you need. If you can help unlock the secret to how these work, there’s nothing I won’t do for you.”

“Well, the first step is getting the translations, and I spoke to the man who’s working on them, and he’s sending me some preliminary findings later today. I was looking through my brother’s notes, and there’s not much there. Did he tell you anything about the progress he was making?”

“Nothing in particular, no.”

“Before Robbie, had you shown the bells to many other people? Did you get any other opinions? Anything in writing?”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid I’ve been a bit paranoid about them since I bought them. When Sotheby’s put them up for sale, they didn’t garner much attention and I wanted to keep it that way.” She paused, then leaned forward, as if she were going to share a secret with Jac. “Do you believe in signs?”

Jac flashed on Malachai. He always insisted that there were no coincidences. That everything that seemed to be coincidental was really a sign of synchronicity. Her brother believed that too. “I don’t think I do, but Robbie certainly did.”

“I have an aunt who is an astrologer…” Melinoe said. “She’s been reading my cards all my life, and I’ve always followed her advice. My father didn’t. If he had, he might not have died…” Melinoe paused. She was worrying the heavy gold snake ring on her right forefinger. Jac had noticed the jeweled serpent with its glinting ruby eyes the first time she’d been at the château too.

Melinoe continued: “It was my aunt who told me not to try to solve the puzzle of the bell jars until I was able to buy this house and move in. She said I would not be able to find the answers I was looking for anywhere but here and only when I was ready to hear them.”

Jac had studied the ancient skill of reading charts and the lives of the great astrologers throughout history. She’d seen amazing monuments at Stonehenge and on the Isle of Jersey, and others scattered through the rest of the United Kingdom and the Middle East. These mystic arts were as old as recorded time and still today, no one completely understood them.

“And so you were able to refrain from doing any research until you bought, then renovated the house? Until you finally moved in? What patience,” Jac asked.

Melinoe smiled, her two pointy eyeteeth giving her that slightly feral and ferocious look. She nodded toward the silver bell in Jac’s hands. “You know that in ancient Greece the belief that the soul passes from body to body in one life after another dates back to an Orphic sect?”

Jac nodded. “Yes, and that Pythagoras followed their teachings and developed them even further.”

“My family traces our roots to that sect.”

Jac was fascinated. “How amazing that you can follow it back that far.”

“I have a collection of ancient Greek sculpture, pottery and jewels that has been passed down from generation to generation, for over four thousand years. Surely I could be patient for four more.”

Jac smiled. “Is the collection here?” she asked. She was itching to see it.

“Everything but this one piece of jewelry is in Greece…” She held out her hand. “If you’d like to examine the whole collection, I’d be happy to show you when we are done here in France. I read your book. There might be a story you’d want to tell based on what you find.”

“Is it on display? In a museum?”

“No, it’s in my villa.”

Jac had a hundred questions. “I’d love to talk to you about it more.”

“So would I. One of the things that makes me so pleased about you being here is not just that you are going to continue on with Robbie’s work but that you are also a mythologist. I have a lot to discuss with you. Serge and I are hoping that you’ll take your meals with us-even though you are more than welcome to have them brought to your room. In the evenings we often screen movies. Sometimes I have soirees, and friends come. I want you to feel free to join in all the festivities. Not feel as if you are an employee; you are our guest.”

“That’s very gracious of you.” Jac was a loner, but she was also curious and smart enough to know that psychologically it wasn’t a good idea for her to isolate herself now. She needed to be around people and stay busy. Continuing her brother’s work might have been questionable to some-immersing herself in his world only kept him front and center in her mind-but she knew that she would be less despondent if she was busy doing what he wanted her to do.

And so Jac ate lunch that afternoon with Melinoe and Serge. The three of them all sat at one end of the table. Like his sister, Serge was well educated, and Jac found herself enjoying the conversation more than she’d expected. Despite that, there was something about the dynamic between the two of them that struck her as odd. What was she responding to? What was it about them? There was nothing obvious.

They appeared to be very different from each other. Melinoe spoke with a British accent, was exaggerated and theatrical, excessive and sensual, dark and mysterious. A pale woman with mother-of-pearl skin and the accessories and accoutrements of a modern-day princess.

Serge’s accent was French, and he was quite gracious, charming and intellectual. But not as grand as his stepsister.

Yet they both seemed damaged. Jac assumed it was the tragedy they’d survived. She could almost imagine that she could see faint cracks where they each had been glued back together, and it was along those fault lines the two of them came together in order to survive.

After lunch, Melinoe retired to her office, and Serge asked Jac if she wanted to take a walk. “To see the grounds. In case you want to set off on your own, I thought you might like to know where you are.”

She said she would, and he further asked if she rode. She said she did but wasn’t well trained. Serge assured her that their mares were gentle, and she agreed to go on horseback. In the stable he pointed out Melinoe’s horse, a large white stallion with the same self-assured look in his eye as his mistress had.

“He looks powerful and not altogether kind,” she said.

“Good call. She named him Ares, and he lives up to his name.”

“The Greek god of war, violence and courage.”

Serge nodded in the horse’s direction. “If anyone but Melinoe rides him, he’s a monster. She’s never broken a horse, but she manages to control them no matter what their temperament.”

There was a tone of compassion in his voice. For Melinoe? Or, Jac wondered, for the horse?

Serge helped Jac mount the brown mare named Pandora, and then mounted his own, another white steed who was much gentler looking than his stepsister’s horse. More beautiful too. He introduced her as Psyche.

Jac smiled. “All named for Greek gods and goddesses?”

“All of them,” he said and then asked if she needed any reminders on which way to pull on the reins.

“No. I grew up riding with my uncle in Central Park on the weekends when I lived in New York. And we still go occasionally. I just meant I wasn’t an expert.”

“Okay then, let me show you the best part of La Belle Fleur,” he said and took off at a gentle gallop.

They crossed a large emerald-green field, passed an apple orchard filled with trees whose trunks and limbs were ancient and gnarled, and then took a trail that wound deep into thick woods. It smelled so green and resinous Jac reacted instantly. This was a scent of mystery and magic to her, and had been since she was a child and their grandfather took her and Robbie to Médoc, where the family had a country home in the midst of a forest.

“It’s about nine kilometers straight across to Fontainebleau castle,” Serge was saying. “Two hundred and eighty square kilometers of woods.”

Jac pulled back from her memories to return to the present.

“Five times the size of Manhattan,” she said.

“Except, unlike your island, this forest is virtually uninhabited. Have you ever been here before?”

“No, but I’ve always meant to come and see it. I haven’t spent a lot of time in France since I was a teenager.”

“I thought you grew up in Paris.”

“Until I was fourteen. And then I moved to New York.”

“But Robbie talked about being a teenager in Paris.” Serge was confused.

“After our mother killed herself…”

“Yes, I remember now, Robbie told me,” Serge said sympathetically.

“I had some problems,” Jac acknowledged, “and it seemed that New York, without all the memories, was a healthier environment for me. Robbie stayed in Paris.”

“You say it as if it wasn’t the right choice. Didn’t you want to go?”

“I wanted to very much. I’m just not sure now that it was the best way to deal with the situation.”

“Because it was running away?”

“That’s what Robbie used to say,” Jac said.

“Robbie and I talked a lot when he was here. He was worried about you. He said he wanted you to learn to stay in the moment.”

Jac was angry at her brother. Probably for the first time since he’d died. If he wanted to be so open about his own life, that was fine, but she never liked it when he talked to other people about her.

“He said that he always wondered whether, if you’d stayed in Paris, you might have worked out your mother’s death in a manner that was more beneficial.”

Jac didn’t say anything. She really wasn’t sure how to respond. Before she could figure it out, he continued.

“Your brother loved you more than anyone…” Serge said. Hesitated. Then continued. “In the most wonderful way.”

Jac wasn’t angry anymore. Rather she was ineffably moved. For a few moments they rode on together in silence. And then, as if it were a refrain from a song repeating over and over in her mind, she heard his words again.

In the most wonderful way.

When wouldn’t loving your sister-or your stepsister-be wonderful?

The horses approached a gigantic boulder.

“Let’s stop here. I’d like to show you this,” Serge said as he pulled his reins, and Jac followed.

They dismounted and approached the rounded stone that was easily twice as tall as she was.

“This is one of the famous Bleau boulders,” he said.

Jac reached out to touch the rough stone that climbers came from all over to tackle.

Back on their horses, as they continued on, Serge told the history of the magical forest. “Until the mid-nineteenth century the area was virtually unmapped. Kings and noblemen hunted here, of course, but rumors and legends kept most people at bay. Even criminals who escaped from nearby prisons were frightened of what they might find and stayed away.”

“Is it haunted? Are there monsters?” Jac asked.

“The legend I heard was about a monster-a giant predator who lived here and guarded his domain. As a result the forest and its thousands of caves remained untouched and uncharted for centuries.”

“But some of them have been explored more recently-haven’t I read that?”

“Yes, and the historians found prehistoric drawings dating back thirty thousand years.”

“Do you know where those are?”

“I do. Melinoe is funding some of the ongoing archaeological research on a cave that’s filled with cuneiforms that no one has been able to decipher yet. Some are simple lines etched into sandstone rock. Others are much more complex markings that suggest men who lived here were writing far before the year 3300 BCE, when man supposedly invented writing in Sumer.”

Jac was fascinated. By the stories. By the purple shadows and dark-green leaves. By the loamy scents and the twists on the bridle path that suddenly revealed idyllic settings. She was familiar with how this forest had inspired first the Barbizon school of painters and later photographers. Had they defied the unfriendly spirits hiding here? Or just been oblivious to the spirits trying to chase them away? They couldn’t have ignored the tension she was feeling in these woods. Their work was so tranquil. Or was she sensing what those artists had not?

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Serge asked as they rounded a corner and came upon a stream, some smaller boulders, and a copse of beech trees.

“Beautiful but disturbing.”

“Really? Why do you find it disturbing?”

“I’m not sure.”

But she was afraid she did have an idea of what was bothering her. It was the waves of an episode coming at her as if out of the darkest part of the forest. The metallic smell that presaged a hallucination seeping out of the bark on the trees.

Jac immediately went into survival mode, following her sanity commandments.

Silently, she intoned them now.

Take long, concentrated breaths. Count… two… three… four.

Jac inhaled. Counted… two… three… four. Did it again. And again.

Give yourself a task.

She tried to identify and name the trees and shrubs they were passing. Scotch pine. European beech. Juniper.

Take deep breaths. Concentrate.

It wasn’t working… She was seeing a kind of double exposure… the present forest and a shimmer behind it; a parade of ghosts who’d passed through, from kings to princesses to peasants.

“Jac?”

“There’s so much history here,” she managed. “And sometimes I find the history of a place can be overwhelming.” She hoped he’d accept her explanation. It was still an effort to focus, but she concentrated on the horse trotting beneath her. On a shaft of light breaking through tree branches. On Serge’s profile.

It was working. The episode was passing.

She was surprised to realize Serge was talking, and she’d missed the first part of what he’d said. But she listened now.

“… and I once saw an art gallery installation where the artist had painted flat cardboard cutouts of all the people who had walked in and out of the room in the last six months. You had to traverse through narrow paths between the facsimiles of the hundreds who had come and gone. It was a visual history of the room. All those people who had left nothing of themselves but the fact of their presence.”

“That’s exactly what I’m sensing-I wouldn’t be surprised to see a nobleman from another century ride past us.”

“I’m sure you could guess this given her other interests, but Melinoe is fascinated with time warps,” he said.

There it was again… that timbre in his voice that fitted the way he had looked at Melinoe-no, gazed at her. Up till now Jac had thought it was awe. But now she guessed that it was lust. She heard it so clearly now in his tone. It was in every syllable of how he spoke her name. His voice deepened around the word, which slid out as if he were forming it carefully, feeling every syllable with his tongue.

Jac looked over at him. At how his hands caressed the leather reins. How his thighs strained against his pants. He was a vital, sensuous man. What was he doing living with Melinoe in a château in Barbizon?

“Do you live here all the time?” she asked.

“No, we travel quite a bit. There’s a manor house outside of London, a house in Marrakesh, an apartment in New York City and a yacht that spends most of its time in Saint-Tropez. And of course the villa in Greece, Melinoe’s father’s family home.”

“Do you have a big family?” She hoped she didn’t sound as if she was prying.

“No. Just the two of us.”

“Melinoe never had children?”

“Several marriages, but no children.” Then he laughed, almost cruelly. “Her husbands were poor saps. None lasted long.”

“Why’s that?”

“They couldn’t in the end, any of them, accept her conditions.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“I suppose it is. Some people think Melinoe is a psychic vampire. Do you know the term? It’s someone who sucks people dry, exhausts them emotionally. She has a knack for making men think she’s inviting them on the adventure of their lifetimes.” He laughed again. “I suppose it was ego… but each of her husbands thought he was the one who could tame her. She led them to believe that-to trap them. In the end, none of them lasted more than a couple of years. And when they left, each was quite damaged.” He said that last part with sympathy.

No, Jac thought, it was more than sympathy; it was empathy.

“You make her sound like a character out of a nineteenth-century novel.”

“You’ve met her-does that surprise you? Melinoe is not one woman. She is not one color. She’s part of every era, every time. There is no one like her.”

Jac felt his passion. His words, coming at her in the gloom of the forest, were somehow arousing her. Not that she wanted Serge, but she wanted a man to talk about her that way.

“Have you ever been married?” she asked.

“I’ve never left Melinoe.”

It was a non sequitur. It didn’t answer the question. Or maybe it did.

They had reached a large outcropping of rocks that appeared to form the entrance to a cave when Jac’s horse let out a long whinny and stopped. Following suit, Serge’s horse did also. The two beasts stood pawing the ground and snorting.

“What is it?” Jac asked.

“I don’t know. The horses don’t seem to want to pass by these rocks.”

“No, they don’t. Should we see what’s inside?”

Jac felt the pull of the rocks, of the entrance to the cave. She dismounted and tied the reins to a nearby tree. At the opening to the cave she peered in.

“I think this is one of the Neolithic sites you told me about. There are carvings in the wall. Odd shapes and symbols.” She peered at them. Some were older than others. The very ancient ones were indecipherable, but there were pentagrams she recognized.

He got off his horse, tied her up and joined Jac.

Together the two stepped inside. The air was cooler here. She sniffed it. Rotten eggs. Reaching out, she traced the carvings with her fingers. Some were cut deeper into the stone than others, but all their edges were smooth. Jac had been on enough digs to know what she was feeling.

“Even the most recent etchings go back at least five hundred years,” she said.

Taking another few steps, she went deeper into the cave. The scent grew stronger. The darkness became forbidding.

Jac was thinking about the pentagrams. Five hundred years ago royals had spent summers at Fontainebleau, moving their whole court for a few months until they depleted the food and supplies in that castle and then moving on to the next. Catherine de Medici had been among them. And she was rumored to have dabbled in black magic.

The scent of sulfur was overwhelming now. It was a putrid smell often associated with the devil. Jac felt the all too familiar waving as air moved around her. What had happened in this cave?

Behind them, one of the horses whinnied again. Then snorted. The other joined in.

She and Serge both turned in time to see his horse jerk away with such force she broke the branch her reins were tied to and took off.

“What the hell?” Serge said as Jac’s horse followed suit. He ran off after the horses but gave up quickly.

“They’re too fast,” he said as he returned. His face was flushed and he looked annoyed.

“I wonder if the sulfur frightened them? It has a lot of strange properties,” Jac said.

“Do you use it in perfume?”

“No. It was sometimes incorporated into skin creams but never proved effective,” Jac said. “Its most popular usage was in black magic to create protection and aid in breaking spells. They say the devil smells of sulfur.”

“Maybe that’s who scared away our ride back to the château.” Serge smiled at her and then took out his phone. “Let me send a boy from the stables out looking for them. Do you want to walk back-we’re only about a half hour away-or do you want someone to come get us with more horses?”

Jac had been looking back, toward the cave, thinking about the malevolence she’d sensed emanating from deep inside. “Sure, we can walk… That’s fine.”

He finished with his call, then looked around. “It shouldn’t be hard to get back. Once I figure out…” He peered to the right, then to the left. “I have to admit I’m a little turned around and not sure where we are, but it can’t be too far. We were headed south and followed a fairly straight path… We just need to make sure we’re heading north…”

Jac pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket. “I have a compass on here.” She clicked on the application. “Don’t worry. I get lost a lot, but never stay lost for long.”

But that wasn’t really true, she thought. She’d lost part of herself when Griffin first left, and she’d never really found it again.