The Collector of Dying Breaths

Chapter 23

THE PRESENT

It was almost five PM. Griffin and Jac sat side by side in the small hidden laboratory behind the wine racks. He was poring over the notations in René’s notebook. Jac had brought him back to the château after dinner to show him what she’d found and to introduce him to Melinoe and Serge. Melinoe been thrilled that the translator had arrived and welcomed Griffin, asking him what he’d already deciphered from the silver bells. Griffin said that he’d only begun to work on them, and they appeared to be incantations of some kind, but there was still so much he hadn’t been able to figure out because of the combinations of ancient dead languages and arcane symbols.

Though she was clearly disappointed, she rallied and invited him to stay at the château to give him more time to continue his work in concert with Jac. But he declined, saying he was fine at the small hotel in town.

Jac was also disappointed that he hadn’t agreed to move in, more than she would have imagined. Had she unconsciously been anticipating a midnight tryst? That didn’t make sense. If that was the case, she could certainly go back with him to his hotel.

No. This was something else. Jac felt that it was imperative Griffin be here. In the château. That he belonged here. Seeing him sitting at René’s worktable, hunched over the perfumer’s papers, Jac had one of the strongest feelings of déjà vu she had ever experienced. And then, while she was watching him, she felt a physical push toward him, as though someone was actually pressing on her shoulders. She even turned around.

For a second she thought she saw Robbie behind her. His hands poised to push her again. Laughing as he lunged.

Despite trying to resist, she fell into Griffin.

He looked up.

“Sorry,” she said, not wanting to explain. Not now.

Griffin brushed a lock of his salt-and-pepper hair out of his eyes with a familiar gesture. The moment was surreal. Being in the château, feeling the past so alive, sensing the perfumer who’d lived here almost five hundred years ago, and at the same time aware of Robbie’s unreal presence and the reality of Griffin’s as he sat here helping her. And helping do what? Search for a formula to bring the dead back to life. It was all too fantastic.

“These first ten pages are all ingredients,” Griffin said. “I assume you got that far and know what they are?”

“I recognized some of them-spikenard, frankincense, myrrh, ambergris, civet, lemon-but not all of them. And not the formulas themselves. I’m sure it’s written in Latin, but I’m hardly fluent.”

“It’s fifteenth- or sixteenth-century Latin. I’ll do my best.” He read for a few minutes. “He says that the most important thing is the quality of the ingredients,” Griffin said, then read more. After a few seconds, he pulled out his phone.

“What are you doing?”

“I have an ancient Latin dictionary app.”

“On a twenty-first-century cell phone. Of course.”

He smiled. “But it doesn’t matter since the phone doesn’t seem to work down here.” He went back to the notebook. “I think these are saffron, cinnamon and pepper, but I’ll need to check when I can get online.”

“Those are all easy enough to find,” Jac said.

“Dragon’s blood. Aloewood. Tutty,” he continued, working from René’s notes. “Have you ever heard of them?”

“Some of them. Aloewood is also called agarwood. And it’s a very important perfume ingredient. Most of us refer to it as oud. It’s actually a resinous heartwood that forms in evergreens from Asia when they become infected with a certain type of mold.”

“Did you ever wonder who was the first person who thought, Hmm, if I mix a tree fungus with an orange blossom oil, it might smell good?”

“All the time. Robbie and I used to make up scenarios and enact them. Like the moment someone decided to use whale vomit in a perfume.”

“What kind of tree does aloewood come from?”

“It’s called heartwood. It’s light-colored and doesn’t have much of an aroma. But once infected, the tree produces an aromatic resin as a response to the attack. It’s very rare and was highly prized and important in many religious ceremonies going back to ancient times. It’s even mentioned in the Sanskrit Vedas. Since the mid-1990s the trees have been listed as an endangered species, but some countries have created whole plantations of them.”

“Off the top of your head… you just happen to know all that?”

“Robbie knew it… The past year working with him has been an amazing education…” Her voice drifted off.

“How about tutty and momie. Have you ever heard of them?”

Jac shook her head. “No, but there were a lot of ingredients used in the Renaissance that we don’t use anymore. I have some books upstairs from my grandfather’s library that Robbie was using to research this project. I’m not sure-but maybe we’ll be able to find them there. Only one of the books is written in English. The other two are copies of Italian texts from the sixteenth century.”

“And people wonder why studying a dead language like Latin is so important.”

By the time Jac came back downstairs with the books, Griffin had translated more of the notes. “I’m certain this was René’s workbook. Each of these lists varies only slightly from the others. As if he was refining one formula. At the end of the book here”-he showed her a page-“is a more formal recipe that features aloewood, tutty, momie, black henbane, honey, ambergris and musk pods.”

“In Greek mythology henbane is called the plant of forgetfulness. It’s a powerful hallucinogenic,” Jac said. “Greek oracles burned it to help them go into trances. And a beer made from henbane was often left with the dead to help them pass over and was also drunk by mourners to ease their pain.”

Griffin was riffling through one of the books. “This fits too. Listen.” He read: “ ‘Henbane was part of every ancient alchemical laboratory. It’s been found at Celtic Neolithic burial sites. According to the historian Albertus Magnus, sorcerers burned it and then searched for demons in its smoke. Mixtures of henbane and barley were found in ritual funerary drinking vessels, probably drunk by shamans to help the dead’s passage to the next life. Zoroastrians reported that a man could drink it and spend a week in the afterlife.’ ”

“So its been associated with magic rituals going all the way back through history,” Jac said.

“Now let’s see what we can find out about the other ingredients.”

For a half hour Griffin worked on the Latin text and Jac searched through the texts written in English. She loved the old and yellowed books. Loved the feel of the leather covers. Loved knowing that her grandfather had pored over them, and his father before him.

“Dragon’s blood,” Jac said. “Got it.” And she read: “ ‘A botanical extracted from Dracaena, D. cinnabari, it was used as a medicine, incense and a red dye.’ According to this book it was important in medieval ritual magic and alchemy.”

“So much of what was called alchemy is what we would refer to today as science rather than magic.”

They both went back to reading. Fifteen minutes passed in silence. Here, deep underground, the only light from an electric lantern, Jac felt as if she were in the netherworld of her beloved Greek myths. She looked up to tell Griffin-but stopped, struck by a vision of sorts.

Jac sensed great sadness in the room. The emotion seemed to be perfuming the air. Hovering over Griffin like a cloud. She was looking at him but was seeing the ancient perfumer. His head bowed low. His shoulders slumped in misery. Working on his notes. Bereft.

“Here’s something else,” Griffin said.

The scene wavered, and Jac was seeing Griffin again. René was gone.

“I found a mention of tutty,” Griffin continued. “It’s in this copy of a fourteenth-century book, Francesco Pegolotti’s La Pratica Della Mercatura. Translated it means The Merchant’s Handbook. Tutty, Pegolotti wrote, was the charred scrapings from inside chimneys. It was imported from Alexandria and described as a very expensive nonperishable fragrance.”

“The wood burned then would have different properties from wood burned now, as would the chimneys themselves. We can try, though.”

They both returned to their reading. After a few minutes Melinoe interrupted them. “Would you like to come up for dinner?”

Jac hadn’t realized how much time had passed. She looked at Griffin. “I’d just as soon keep going-you? I’d be happy with a sandwich later.”

“We can do better than sandwiches. Just come up when you are done. Are you getting anywhere?”

“I think so,” Jac said.

“How soon until you can mix something up?” she asked.

“Oh, we’re nowhere near that close,” Jac said. “We’ve only just identified what we think is René’s final formula and are working on his lists of ingredients. The problem is this was written over four centuries ago. I’m not familiar with some of what he used or even if it’s available anymore.” Jac felt a wave of frustration. What if she had the formula but never could find the right ingredients? Or what if she did but they never figured out what to do with the mixture?

As if reading her mind, Griffin asked both women, “Do you know what’s supposed to happen with this substance? How it is used to reanimate the breath?”

“No,” Jac said. Melinoe shook her head.

“Robbie told me he thought that the potion would be mixed with the breath and then if a newborn inhaled it, the deceased’s breath would take root… The baby would host the old soul. Integrate. You’d live on in this new life,” Griffin said.

“Yes, that’s what Robbie and I constructed from what Thomas Edison and Henry Ford believed. They were fanatical about the idea of reanimating a dying breath,” Melinoe said. “But surely it has to be in René’s notes.”

“It’s written in fifteenth-century Latin, so it’s going slowly and we’re working it in sections.”

“Can’t you look ahead? Is there at least some mention of how to make whatever it is-a tincture, a formula?” Melinoe asked impatiently. “Are the incantations on the silver coverings a spell that’s said when you use the elixir?”

“We just don’t know anything yet,” Griffin said as he carefully turned the pages of the book, scanning each one. “Wait…” He looked at Jac. “You didn’t even skim through it when you found it, did you?”

“It’s in Latin,” she said, not understanding why he was repeating Melinoe’s question. “There was no point.”

“Well, this part isn’t in Latin. It’s in French.” He handed it to Jac, who read it for a few moments in silence.

“It’s a formula for a perfume called Soul Water…” She read it out loud haltingly, translating into English as she went.

Take of good brandy, a half of a gallon; of the best virgin honey and coriander seeds, each a half of a pound; cloves and henbane, an ounce and a half; nutmegs, aloewood and dragon’s blood, an ounce; tutty and momie, of each an ounce; benilloes, number four; the yellow rind of three large lemons. Bruise the cloves, nutmegs; cut the benilloes into small pieces; put all into a cucurbit and pour the brandy on to them. After they have digested twenty-four hours, distill off the spirit in balneo-mariae.

To a gallon of this water, add damask rose and orange flower water, of each a pint and a half; of China musk and ambergris, of each five grains; first grind the musk and ambergris with some of the water, and afterward put all into a large matrass, shake them well together, and let them circulate three days and nights in a gentle heat. Then, letting the water cool, filter and keep it for use in a bottle well stopped.

“A cucurbit? A balneo-mariae? Benilloes? What are these things?” Melinoe asked.

“The first is a still, the second is a double boiler. A matrass is a vessel for digesting and distilling. Benilloes are vanilla beans.”

“And things like dragon’s blood and tutty? Do you know what all those ingredients are?” Melinoe asked. She had come closer to Jac and stood behind her. She was wearing an expensive perfume that day, which Jac recognized as Golconda by JAR. Carnation and cinnamon. An unusual scent-one that, at over eight hundred dollars a bottle, very few women in the world wore. It suited her.

“No. I’ve never heard of quite a few of them. We’re working on that challenge now.”

“Aren’t they here?” Melinoe asked as she pointed to the shelves.

“No,” Jac said. “That’s one of the mysteries we’ve encountered so far. The supplies here are rather pedestrian. The more exotic ones are almost too conspicuously absent.”

“Why do you think?” Melinoe asked.

“Maybe René destroyed them… Maybe the experiments went wrong and he didn’t want anyone to try and re-create them,” Jac said. And then shivered. She didn’t know why, but the thought frightened her.

“But you’ll be able to find what’s not here once you can figure out what it is?”

“Even if we do figure it out, the problem will be whether or not the mixture will be the same if we use modern-day equivalents,” Jac explained.

“Yes, you mentioned that before,” Melinoe said.

“Why wouldn’t it be the same?” Griffin asked.

“Each item grew or was extracted from plants or herbs or woods under circumstances we can’t re-create. Ancient ambergris, for instance. The whales in the sixteenth century had a different diet. The environment has so radically changed that the way the ingredients’ odors mix today will result in an altogether alternate fragrance. If it even was a fragrance. That’s just a guess. We don’t know for sure how this was intended to mix with the breath-and then how to use it? Drink it? Apply it to the skin? We’re still really in the dark.”

Melinoe shook her head. Like a petulant child, Jac thought. “No. We are not. We can’t be. We’ve come this far, and all this effort will not go to waste. Your brother’s lifetime will not go to waste.”

Jac winced. What Melinoe was saying was too personal to hear coming from a stranger.

“What if there are samples of these ingredients somewhere?” Melinoe looked at Jac. “Are there museums that would keep ingredients?”

“There are two fragrance museums, one in Grasse and one near Versailles, but I don’t think they have ancient ingredients. And if they do, I doubt they’ll relinquish what they have.”

“Money,” Melinoe said, “has amazing properties too. Institutions and collectors often want items they don’t have and are willing to deaccession one in order to purchase another. You don’t need great quantities of any single item, do you?”

“No, but even an ounce of ancient ambergris could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars if you actually could find it.”

Melinoe shrugged as if the amount were as insignificant as the dust on the shelves. “You leave the acquisitions to me. Just figure out what we need and make a list.” She walked toward the door and then stopped.

The low light exaggerated the wing-shaped white streaks of hair on either side of her forehead. She was wearing all black. A tight-fitting sweater. A long pencil skirt made of black lace. High-heeled black boots with stiletto heels. Today her fingers were stacked with diamond and emerald rings, and she had a pair of pear-shaped emeralds hanging from her earlobes. She emanated energy and resolve. A diminutive lightning bolt.

Jac was certain that Melinoe meant every word she said. If the ingredients existed, she would find them and pay for them. But first they had to know what they were searching for.

Once Melinoe left, Jac and Griffin returned to their research, and it was more than forty-five minutes before either of them found a mention of what they were looking for-the most obscure ingredient on the perfumer’s list.

“You aren’t going to believe this,” Griffin said in a voice that belied his excitement.

“What?”

“Wait-let me just cross-reference it.”

“Don’t make me wait.”

He ignored her as he flipped back to a page in another book. Jac glimpsed an illustration of an Egyptian mummy.

“You mean ‘momie’ as in ‘mummy’? Really?”

“Yes. This is amazing, Jac. First from Pegolotti. He lists momie as a medicinal spice collected from the tombs of the dead. Collected from embalmed but not totally dried-out corpses. According to him, it was imported from Egypt and the Eastern regions. And here is another mention in the Livre des Simples Médecines, written in the fifteenth century…”

Momie is a spice or confection found in the tombs of the people who have been embalmed, as they used to do in ancient times, and as the pagans near Babylon still do. This momie is found near the brain and the spine. You should choose that which is shining, black, strong-smelling, and firm. On the other hand, the white kind, which is rather opaque, does not stick, is not firm and easily crumbles to powder, must be refused.

Momie has binding qualities. If a compress is made of it and the juice of shepherd’s purse herb, it stops excessive nasal bleeding. Furthermore, to treat spitting of blood through the mouth because of a wound or a malady of the respiratory organs, make some pills with momie, mastic powder, and water in which gum Arabic has been dissolved and let the patient keep these pills under the tongue until they have melted, then let him swallow them.

Jac shivered. “An ingredient taken from the spines and brains of mummies…” she whispered, almost afraid to say it out loud. Where and how would they ever collect such a thing?