The Witch of Painted Sorrows

Chapter 29

I returned to Maison de la Lune with a purpose. I told Alice that no, I didn’t want coffee or chocolat chaud, and yes, I’d call her later if I changed my mind.

“Do you want the telegram that arrived?” she asked, holding out a silver tray with a single slim envelope in its center.

I took it with trepidation. Mr. Lissauer’s communiqués never contained good news.

The lawyer wrote that the longer the search to find me continued, the more Benjamin became convinced I was in hiding because I had information that could destroy him. In addition, rumors were now circulating in the business community that my husband had become so obsessed with the fruitless efforts, he was becoming unhinged.

Benjamin believing I was dangerous to him was the worst possible news I could have received. I ripped the offending correspondence in half and then in quarters, and finally ripped each of those sections to shreds. When I couldn’t rip them into any smaller pieces, I left the mound of paper on the silver tray.

I was halfway up the stairs when I realized I’d come home with a purpose and that I could not allow Benjamin to deter me. That would be giving him power and I was determined never to do that again.

Starting from the bottom of the staircase once more, I walked up slowly, taking the time to examine each of the portraits. A deep-red-and-midnight-blue Persian runner covered the center of the steps. If I kept to the rug, I’d be too far from the paintings to examine them carefully, so I walked on the marble, aware of every footfall ringing out on the stone, like solemn chimes marking time.

I’d been painting at the École for more than two months and knew so much more than I had when I first arrived in Paris, and yet for all this time I’d paid almost no attention to these remarkable paintings that were right here in my own home. They were masterful and evocative, but familiarity, or something more dangerous, had prevented me from really studying them as I did now.

There were six life-size portraits climbing up the stairs, each of a woman sitting in the same room, a room in this very house. My grandmother called the small square room that protruded out into the courtyard the jewel chapel because three of its walls were stained glass. All day long sunlight streamed in and illuminated the glass masterpieces. While it did have the feel of a chapel, there was no religious iconography in the window’s illustrations-rather, all the symbolism celebrated the secret and the sensual. If it was a temple, it was a temple to the senses.

The windows were bordered with mother-of-pearl frames painted with runes, numbers, mystical symbols, and signs that I’d recognized in Dujols’s store. Each of the three distinct panels illustrated a different scene. On the left a sun set over a stone circle, the sky suffused with the violets of twilight. In the middle, a midnight-blue night sky shone with stars, the full moon magical and heavy, glowing silver-white. On the far right panel, the sun rose over an idyllic lake, a rustic waterfall in the distance. The pastel rose and peach colors of early morning reflected on the water.

A chandelier of amethyst and ruby glass teardrops hung down over an altar in the center of the room. Instead of a religious icon in its center, there was a row of bronze sculptures of lithe, naked women in suggestive poses. Beside them, silver censers used to burn incense.

There was a divan covered with a chinchilla fur against the far wall. Next to it an Indian hookah sat on the floor, exotic and strange. Deep plush chairs upholstered in violet mohair were scattered on a thick carpet of black and purple flowers on green verdant stems heavy with leaves.

Each portrait had been painted in that room, the light streaming in from the windows creating an aura of incandescent color behind the women. Mysterious studies, all of them were truly masterpieces. And puzzles.

Puzzles that I now knew also contained clues.

After examining all of them for their similarities, I began to study each one for its differences. Every painting had a painted trompe l’oeil scroll on the lower arm of the frame. Only one did not have an end date next to her name.

Lunette

1580

Eugenie

1664-1694

Marguerite

1705-1728

Simone

1734-1777

Camille

1782-1814

Clothilde

1800-1832

It appeared the hand that had painted the names and dates was the same.

When I’d stayed here the summer I was fifteen, I’d asked my grandmother about these women who didn’t have last names and stared out at me as if trying to tell me a secret.

Grand-mère had told me they were all my ancestors, women who had lived in this house during the last three centuries.

And there was a family resemblance. They all had fiery red in their hair-some extreme like my grandmother’s, others subtle like mine. They all had almond-shaped topaz eyes, too, some with more golden-orange flecks than others. Haunting eyes, I thought as I considered them. They all had hands like mine with very long fingers and tapering nails. Piano fingers, my father used to call them.

But there were other things to notice now that I was really scrutinizing them. Odd things.

Since they each stood at a different angle in the little temple, the focus was on different symbols in the stained glass behind them. I wondered if the symbols appeared in some kind of specific order? Was there a message here? The choice of where to place the woman couldn’t have been an accident. I’d need to get a piece of paper and make some notes.

Each woman was wearing the same beautiful burnt-orange silk robe, embroidered with russet and cream flowers and green dragons. The dark coral was the color of embers burning in a grate. Of fall leaves when they are at their most colorful. A sensual, suggestive color-too strong and too powerful for it to be anything but a promise. Each woman held a rose, not in full bloom but just a day past, when its lush scent was at its most provocative. Beautiful, but too heavy. When the scent wasn’t any longer a perfume but a drug.

I could smell it so strongly that I looked around for a vase of the flowers, but there was none there. When I turned back to the portraits, I noticed something I’d certainly been aware of but had never thought much about. None of the women’s full, almost pouting lips were finished. The color wasn’t quite filled in, and the shading hadn’t been completed. Unlike the gowns, the roses, the stained glass, the hair, the fingers, and the evocative eyes… the mouths were still in progress. I’d told Julien I used to think they’d been kissed too many times.

Now, it seemed to me that the artist had somehow, magically, let the viewer know that each woman had a story to tell, but the time had not yet come for her to tell it.

I studied the color of their lips. I could mix that specific red on my palette. Use a tiny bit of cobalt with cadmium to create that color… the color of blood. The same red in the stained glass behind each women and in the stones of the ruby necklace that each wore. The identical necklace that hung around my neck.

I heard my father’s voice telling me about the ring he had given my husband to use as my engagement ring.

“Inside of every ruby is a drop of blood, suspended, petrified, and if we could but learn how to release it, it would lead us to the secret of immortality,” my father had said.

I walked back down the stairs, found my sketchbook in my reticule, returned to the portraits, and copied down the strange letters and symbols. It was time to go back to the Librairie du Merveilleux and ask Dujols for another favor.