The Collector of Dying Breaths

Chapter 41

MARCH 25, 1573

BARBIZON, FRANCE

Isabeau became ill the following day. Her skin erupted with boils and lesions that caused her to scream out in agony. I never left her side except to mix up more of the poppy elixir to ease her pain.

On the second day of Isabeau’s illness, Catherine visited. The queen told me how terribly sorry she was. She said she believed the duke had discovered Isabeau was a spy and had punished her.

“I will find out who he hired to do this for him,” she said.

“I already know.” I told Catherine the name.

Hearing it, the queen became even more distraught and shortly thereafter left.

Several hours later, Catherine returned, dragging her daughter with her. Several of the court’s ladies-in-waiting were there, worried, trying to help, spending these last hours with one of their own. They moved aside as Catherine shoved her daughter toward Isabeau’s sickbed with so much force that Margaret tripped and fell.

“This is what you have done, you slut, you whore!” Catherine shrieked at her daughter. “Your handiwork. Look on it. Remember it. May it haunt you forever.”

It is one of the few moments of clarity that I have from those last days.

The princess was wearing a gown the color of rubies, with rubies in her hair and her ears. Her cheeks were rouged, but the effect was ruined by streaks of tears that washed away all enhancements. Margaret got up off the floor and turned away to walk out of the room, but Catherine grabbed her by the arm and kept her there.

“Speak to her,” Catherine ordered.

Margaret pursed her lips tighter together.

Catherine’s fingers gripped her daughter’s arm so hard they whitened. “How dare you take this woman’s life because she was looking out for my interests? She was not the one fornicating with de Guise, you were. What Isabeau did allowed me to protect you and your future and the future of this country. She is a hero, and this is not how she deserved to be rewarded. Make your peace with her, Margaret, or I swear you will live to regret it.”

The princess refused to speak.

Catherine demanded again.

Margaret remained silent.

Catherine slapped her, the sound echoing in the chamber like a cannon.

Margaret turned on her mother. “This lady betrayed me. She spied on me. And this is how one treats spies, Mother. Where do you think I learned that? From you. You dare call me a murderer? Well, if I am, so are you. And I will not apologize for doing what she deserved to have done to her.”

Margaret wrested her arm from her mother and stormed past her and out of the room. The door slammed behind her.

For a moment Catherine just stared at the door; then she turned and looked at me. Her eyes were full of unshed tears. “I will deal with her, I promise you.”

But it didn’t matter to me what she did or didn’t do to Margaret. Nothing mattered to me anymore.

For the next two days I did not eat or sleep or drink except when Catherine brought me goblets of fortified wine. She tended to me the way I and her ladies-in-waiting had tended to her in those terrible days when her beloved husband, the king, had lain dying.

Finally, on the fourth day, late in the afternoon, Catherine took my hand and told me it was time. “Now, René, I’ll stay here but you must go and get your bottles and capture Isabeau’s breaths.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll never find the solution.”

I had forgotten Catherine was my queen and my savior. She was just my friend in a moment when there was nothing any friend could do or say to ease the horror of what was happening.

Isabeau was being consumed, and all I could do was give her draughts of poppy syrup to make her sleep. Her slumber was so deep it was as if she had already died. I could not bear to lose her any sooner than I would have to, and so I would hold the syrup back every few hours so that I could talk to her. But then she could only speak a few words until the pain took hold again, and the only sounds she could make were moans that tore straight through me.

Hours later, while I sat watching Isabeau sleep, Catherine returned to my chamber followed by two of her ladies. I paid little attention until the women placed my breath-collecting apparatus on the bedside table.

I stared with surprise. The queen had gone to my laboratory and brought the tools I needed.

“You have to do this, René. There is a formula, and you will find it, and when you do, you’ll be able to bring her back… and bring my Henry back… and all the others whose breaths you have confined to the glass bottles.”

I hadn’t realized until that moment how much faith she had put into my laboratory experiments. Hope shone in her eyes. After all these years, despite his mistress, despite all that he’d withheld, Catherine loved her husband still.

“You must return to solving this puzzle, René. We’ve come so far and been together so long. I know how this hurts you. Believe me, I know how you feel, but you alone have the knowledge to beat back death. You must summon your strength and fight. You are one of my soldiers, and these”-she pointed to the bottles-“are your spears and lances, your shields and your armor.”

She was my queen. I knew I should obey, but I didn’t have the strength. I didn’t care anymore about the endless effort that in my heart I knew was futile. I’d worked on the experiments for years to no avail. There was no way to bring someone back from the dead through their breath. It was as ludicrous as the magic spells Ruggieri cast. Perfume and medicine were sciences, but this? It was just Serapino’s dream.

As if she could read my mind, Catherine shook her head. “It’s not a dream, René. It’s possible, and you are the only one who can make it happen. I saw it in the bowl of waters. You will figure it out.”

When I did not make any effort to work the bottles, it was Catherine who picked one up, held it close to Isabeau’s mouth, and then corked it and picked up the next bottle.

I reached out and, God forgive me, pulled it from her hand. “No, it’s too soon. She is not ready.” My voice was harsh, but Catherine didn’t chastise me for talking to her without the usual respect.

“She is, René, she is.”

I looked down at Isabeau, then leaned over her. I inhaled, expecting to smell flowers blooming, to smell that magical garden that was my lover’s body. But the scent was no longer of fresh flowers. I was smelling the stench of decaying flowers left to rot.

What was the secret to her body? How did she smell of flowers? Blooming when she was alive, dying when she was leaving this earth. What was the alchemy involved? I would have thought it was a trick of my grief had Catherine not mentioned it. She’d sniffed the air. Then looked around, searching for but not finding any source. Finally she’d asked one of her ladies to see if there were any bouquets of rotting flowers in the chamber.

I didn’t bother to tell them they wouldn’t find any. I didn’t want to share that secret about Isabeau, not with any of them.

“René?”

I turned to Catherine. She was holding out a bottle.

“You need to capture her breaths.”

But that would mean accepting that her end was near. I took Isabeau’s hands and held them. I whispered to her, “Wake up, please wake up. You have to live. For me… for us. Oh please.”

Isabeau didn’t open her eyes.

“My fault, all my fault,” I uttered.

Catherine put her hand on my shoulder and handed me a bottle. “It is not your fault. How were you to know that you were being tricked? It was a terrible thing that my daughter did to you, and she will be dealt with. But you can’t blame yourself, my dear friend. You mustn’t.”

The words floated around me. I heard without listening. I was too focused on the rise and fall of Isabeau’s breaths. Hard fought, every one. The queen had forced my fingers around the bottle. My hand was frozen in my lap. To reach out and hold the bottle in front of Isabeau’s lips would be to admit the most terrible thing I could imagine.

She had to recover. I had given her every antidote I could think of. Every formula the doctors said might cure her. None seemed to be working. Maybe more mercury?

Being alone had never frightened me, but that was before I had known Isabeau. I had gone a lifetime without grieving. Now I would spend the rest of my days mourning my loss.

Isabeau’s breathing demanded I listen. Refused to allow me any illusion. It was growing more and more shallow. The stench of dying flowers was growing in intensity.

Beside me, Catherine took another bottle and held it up to Isabeau’s lips, and after she exhaled, Catherine quickly corked the bottle and replaced it with another. Four times I watched in a stupor as she did the job I had once done for her father-in-law, then her husband and lastly her eldest son. Four times I cried out to her that it was too early-that she was wrong-that Isabeau was recovering.

The fifth time I tried to grab the bottle away, and it fell to the floor and broke. Surely the sound of shattering glass would awaken Isabeau. Surely she would open her eyes now and smile at me and show us that she was going to get better.

Catherine reached for another bottle and waited for the exhalation and then corked it and reached for a sixth.

There was no color in Isabeau’s face anymore. I couldn’t see her chest rising or falling.

She had stopped breathing. Which was her last breath?

But then I saw Catherine cork that bottle and reach for a seventh.

Isabeau was still alive.

There was something I had to tell her.

Leaning down low, I whispered, “It’s my fault. I did this to you. I made the gloves. They were soaked in poison. My own tricks were used on you. I am sorry, my love. I am so sorry.”

I buried my head in her neck, the faintest heartbeat sounding in my ear. I needed her to understand and to forgive me. To absolve me. But I had waited too late, hadn’t I? She couldn’t hear me anymore. The drugs had walled her away from me. Isabeau was so deep into her dream state that my voice couldn’t penetrate it. I knew it, but still, I couldn’t give up.

“It’s my fault,” I screamed. “Isabeau, it’s my fault, please forgive me. Please, I didn’t know. I didn’t know who they were going to give the gloves to.”

Panicked, I listened. Yes, her heart was still beating. Her breath was still coming. “It was my fault!” I shouted again. “Please, tell me that you forgive me.”

And then suddenly the scent of dying flowers was gone, and the wonderful perfume that I had smelled the first time I met her suffused the air. Isabeau’s garden was blooming around me. Inhaling deeply, I took in her lavender and lilacs, her lilies and violets, her orange blossoms and jasmine. I took in her wondrous roses. It was not words, but it was a gift. It was absolution.

Catherine picked up the eighth bottle. Gently, I took it from her fingers and held the cool glass up to the parched, pale and chapped lips that used to be red with blood and life and laughter. I held the bottle and let her breathe her last breath, and then I corked the bottle. Still holding it tightly in my fist, I fell to my knees, laid my head on the bed, and then, for the first time since I was a boy and watched Serapino breathe his last, I, René Bianco, master perfumer, who twice in my life had helped someone I loved to die, wept.