The Witchery, page 12
He’d brought his face forward but then threw back the hood of the burnous as well, showing features that were still handsome; or rather, more handsome than not. Most markedly, he’d a wide mouth and ready smile; but his was a smile that never reassured me. It had, in fact, the opposite effect; for his smile disclosed wide-spaced teeth and a tongue both of which seemed, or were…golden. How better to say it? That smile of his seemed to glow, as had the gold overspilling the bowls below, and the guano on the steps, all of it…elemental in some way, at once natural and noisome.
“Ah, yes,” said the monk when a moment more had passed, “you speak of the French witch.” If his English were accented, no one word betrayed it. It was as though each word he spoke had been turned, tumbled in his mouth till it came forth clean, shorn of all ornament. It was discomfiting, that…that cleanliness. “She has not come, no, but I trust she will, sí and certes.” And so certain, so portentously certain was he of Sebastiana’s coming, he’d seen fit to utter affirmations in two tongues, adding a third when he said again: “Sí, certes, and oui, she will come.”
Had I expected Sebastiana to be there? I think not. I knew better than to expect things of my Mystic Sister. But I’d hoped, yes; and something inside me sank at hearing she’d not shown, such that I blinked back tears as I said, apropos of I knew not what:
“Meanwhile…” It was a word, c’est tout; but had I not spoken, then, I’d have begun to cry, si, certes and oui. And this I knew: If a woman sheds tears when first she meets a man, she stands little chance of ever having the upper hand.
“Meanwhile,” mocked the monk, “she has sent you.”
“And why is this? Do you know where she is, or why she—?”
He held his hands out toward me, palms pushing at the air—great pale planks, these seemed—as one does to slow a horse or quiet a colicky child. Then, slowly, he tipped them palm up. “Your questions fall as fast as the rain,” observed he; and indeed I was wet, though I’d not felt the fall of rain, not since climbing to stand beside Brù on the assoltaire. “No doubt you could match a query to each drop.”
“No doubt I could, yes.”
“But,” said he—showing that most disconcerting smile—“if all the rain were to fall at once, we’d drown beneath its weight, would we not? You must hold your questions some while, as a cloud holds its rain.” To which sophistic claptrap I thought to append, Ah, but a cloud grown weighty with rain is a cloud inclined to storm, non?
Instead, I said nothing; and when Brù sought shelter from that steadying rain, I followed.
Up a rope ladder we went, from the assoltaire onto the roof of one of those squat, daubed constructions and into the largest of three tents hidden high atop the city, well above any neighboring abode. These tents were five-poled affairs—poles at the four corners, of course, with a fifth giving the tent its pitch—and sewn of a colorless canvas seeming better suited to the Sahara than the heart of Havana. There were side panels which one could untie and let fall; this Brù did that night, against the rain, whilst I took in our surrounds by the light of oil lanterns hung at the corners of the tent and giving a glow to all I saw:
The canvas walls—billowing now, as the winds began to blow—bore black handprints; and by the uncommon length and splay of the fingers I saw that these had been made by Brù. (Qui d’autre? I rightly assumed Brù had no companions save for that light-bred brood of his.) Alongside these prints were words written in a language I recognized—Arabic—but did not know well enough to read: “b’ism’illah ma’sha’llah,” as it was written; and the purpose of the inscription was plain: They’d been placed there, along with the prints, for protection; more specifically, to placate the afreets. May God avert evil, were the words. And Q. had hung skins, too, from the tent poles, as the patriarchs of Israel and Assur had hung teraphim from the skins of their tents. So: Was this Queverdo Brù a priest of African or Near Eastern provenance?
I asked, of course.
“If a priest be he who labors at holy questions, then yes, I am a priest”; which told me nothing at all; for all of us labor at questions that might be called holy, non? But in fact, by night’s end, I’d know what Brù was, and know, too, that he was African.
This last fact he let slip when I asked about his favored burnous, that unfitted, hooded robe that I’d only ever seen in traveler’s sketches of desert dwellers. Said he, such attire was commonly seen in the city of his youth: Alexandria. And with his faded, sun-grilled robe and sandals, Queverdo Brù did seem like a monk; or rather, would have, had it not been for his various…accoutrements. Indeed, so accessorized was he it seemed doubtful he dressed himself each day. Stranger, though, to think he lay down to sleep in all that he wore; for:
Yes, he was well adorned. This I remarked as I watched him at work upon the tent walls, tying their unfurled panels into place. I saw now that his every finger of his left hand was ringed—some doubly so—though his right hand was plain. The rings caught the lantern light, and shone as precious stones will. Two golden, Moresque bands glinted upon his thumb. And the belt which held fast his burnous, this, too, was jeweled in its way: from it there hung crystals, ores, and other talismanic trinkets, all of them spaced between short iron rods, like ribs, that served no purpose I could discern. Too, there hung a knife, its hilt and half its argentine blade showing above a sheath of tooled leather. Holier things, requisite to the everyday exorcisms of my own abandoned faith, were evident as well: a crucifix of carved ebony; a Saint Benedict badge; and, of course, a rosary beaded with balls of silver filigree, its Christ carved of jade. At the apex of this rosary—rather, that point at which the circle joins—there was set the desiccate skull of a rodent. A rat, perhaps. Or a cat. Or the fetal skull of…of some higher species.
If Brù were a priest, he partook of no religion I knew. Doubtless his powers exceeded those of any standard priest—whose powers are, after all, ordained by the Church unto mere men; for something had led him into the Shadows and the acquaintance of us witches. Perhaps he was a priest of all and no religions, as it were: bref: a shaman.
“Are you…” I began; but I finished rather more emphatically:
“What are you?”
Not turning from his work—the last panel was nearly secured, and the unvented tent now shuddered in the wind—he laughed, lightly so; and the sound might have soothed, had it not been for the accompanying smile. Regardless, a laugh was no answer; and so:
“Are you a witch-man, or warlock?” I’d never met one, but had heard tell of a very few. “Can you work the Craft?”
“Nostrum non est opificium, sed opus naturae; which means…”
“Yes, yes: ‘Ours is not a craft, but the work of nature.’” I’d not be bested by this Brù. “…Are you a scholar, then?”
“If a scholar be he who studies poetry, parable, sophistry, and science.”
Mon Dieu, how he frustrated me! And so I all but demanded:
“Tell me how it is you know my—” but I stopped myself; for the possessive pronoun would have told of my love, and my loss. I calmed, and the question came: “How do you know Sebastiana d’Azur?”
“I do not know her at all,” said he, “save for a very few letters that have sailed that way and this.” Here he turned to me, finally, hood down, and the lantern nearest where he stood showed eyes seeming too pale, and scars upon his neck, unhealed, set there as if by a rake of four tines. They were empurpled, leech-like; and—as the lantern light caught them before Brù could conceal them with his hood—suppurating still. Here were new wounds. “When first I heard about you, I wrote her. I invited her here, but…”
“But she’s not come?”
“No, she has not come. Soon, I should think,” but his voice wavered on these last words, such that they were not at all the assurance he’d intended. “I await her arrival with an anticipation equal to yours.”
This I doubted; but now there was a more pressing matter:
“‘Heard’ about me, you say? From whom?”
The tent tied down, the tapers and lanterns all lit, he came to me where I stood. “Sit,” said he, motioning toward two sofas set face-à-face beside the tent’s central pole, atop a worn rug of Oriental origin.
“I see no reason to sit, to stay, if Sebastiana is not—”
“Sit,” said he, again; and though the word was not the command one throws down at a dog, still—and I record this relieved of all pride—I soon found myself sunken deep into one of those downy sofas. So deeply, in fact, it seemed a trap; and I wondered if Brù hadn’t stuffed those sofas with the feathers that fell so profusely from off his hummingbirds (of which—blessedly—there was no sign at all). To extricate myself from that sofa—still I worried that I might need to flee, somehow, though the tent was tied down now—…to flee, I say, would have required an effort more athletic than my sopping skirt would have easily allowed. Witch-work might be wanted; and so I sat at the ready. Still, from this new vantage point, I took in more of that tent wherein East met West: a hookah pipe rose to my right, whilst in a far corner there sat un petit secrétaire worthy of Versailles. Elsewhere, there was little art but much craft—craft of the ordinary kind—scattered about: masks and totems and such, all carved of hardwoods and with intricate inlay…. But it was that secretary that intrigued me most: Too easily I imagined Q. folding those long legs of his beneath its burnished wood to write to Sebastiana. How I burned, burned to know the nature of their correspondence. I wondered, might my sister’s letters be near? If so, what would I make of their contents? Presently, it seemed Sebastiana had some explaining to do.
With rain slashing at the tent, with lightning illumining the whole rather too often for my comfort, Q. took the sofa opposite mine. Spreading his arms over the sofa’s curved back and crossing his legs, he seemed to fill its span. And I saw now the truth of what I’d supposed: Brù wore nothing beneath the burnous. His legs showed bare to the hip, and the robe split to show a concavity of chest in which the business end of multiple necklaces sat, rather like treasure buried in an ebon chest of another sort. Ivory and gold, much gold, glowed upon his skin. Too, I thought I saw a monocle of thin-sliced emerald, such as Nero is said to have worn, the better to see those debaucheries done at his command upon the jeweled floors of the Domus Aurea, his house made all of gold. Gold, too, was Brù’s house; rather, gold was everywhere.
Supposing my too-direct inquiries would be rebuffed, I took another tack and observed, “Your rings. They are…lovely.” Vapid, yes; indeed, here was converse one might hear in the company of England’s teen-age queen, Victoria, talk of whose showy ascension had filled the pages of the last newspaper I’d bothered to read, some months prior. Mais hélas, I was never one for parlor talk. But neither was Queverdo Brù, whose speech was more pedantic than polite; as per:
“You have read Philostratus Jarchus.” Realizing this was a question, I said no, I had not. Further, I made the mistake of asking:
“Ought I to?”
“Philostratus Jarchus tells of the magus Apollonius, to whom, in the first century anno domini, a Hindu prince bequeathed seven rings inscribed with the signatures of the regnant planets.”
“Indeed?”…I tried to summon patience; for here sat the only man in Havana who knew of my Sebastiana, whose letters—wherein I’d read of her whereabouts myself, merci bien—I imagined tucked in the drawer of that secretary across the tent. And so I said, “Tell me more,” when in fact I longed not for information—certainly not information pertaining to Philo-who’s-it or a magus other than he who sat before me—but rather the shuttered confines of my room at the Hotel de Luz. There I hoped to wake the next morning refreshed and ready to renew my search for Calixto and Sebastiana both. Oh, but now the rain fell heavily, running in rivers from the tent’s center to splash off its sides. And storm or no storm, I was not ready to leave. Not truly. Not yet.
“These rings,” said Q., stripping them from off his fingers, “these are the rings of Apollonius, who vowed to wear them in sequence and—”
“Surely those are not the same rings.” Gold? Many hundred years old?
“No, witch,” said he, “but I cast these myself in a similar spirit.” And he stripped himself of the rings, one by one. Rings off, Q. leaned forward. No: in fact, he half stood with the help of a staff of entwined snakes, a caduceus I’d not seen leaning against the sofa’s side. Reaching, reaching, he dropped into my cupped hands the seven very heavy rings. The largest accommodated my first and second fingers, and would have been a bracelet on a child. These were exquisite, indeed. Was he a goldsmith, then?
Q. continued: “Apollonius wore them in sequence, as directed by the prince; and in so doing he lived beyond a hundred years whilst losing none of his comeliness.”
Q. was, to my eyes, rather less than comely—the more so as every second passed—but was he one hundred? Wondering this, I sickened deep inside. Had I happened upon another Shadowist bent upon immortality? I’d met such a one before, in the Never-Glade, and had no intention of suffering someone similar, here in Havana, no indeed; and so I stood to take my leave. Rather, tried to stand.
In struggling to stand, to extricate myself from the sofa with hands inutile—full as they were of the seven rings—I found myself seated upon the sofa’s edge; whereupon I saw the floor of the tent for the first time since sinking into the sofa. And there, upon that rug of Eastern arabesques, there sat a snake. A python, light-bright and coiled, its tail tucked into its mouth. Lightning lit the tent. (Leastways, it lights my memory of the moment.) And Q., with his sandaled foot, pushed nearer the python’s mouth a saucer full of shimmering milk. “Ourobouros,” said he. This I supposed to be an introduction. “Fear not,” added Brù, to no effect; for already I feared.
The snake would have stretched its whiteness ten, twelve feet. Uncoiled, it surely would have spread across the tent from corner to corner. It was still now, busy with its milk, but how had it come between us so stealthily, so silently? That was what frightened me more as I sat back upon the sofa, tucking my booted feet beneath the bell of my skirt…. Bien, I’d sit and listen. And so I did, holding all the while to those rings that had conferred a century unto Apollonius.
“I seek,” said Q., “an elevated estate.” I knew he referred not to that aerie, that rooftop tent in which we sat as a storm came ever closer; but it would be hours later before I understood. Moon and sun, Luna and Sol, would swap sky-heights before Queverdo Brù made it plain: The elevated estate to which he aspired was…enfin, it was Perfection. Or so he called it.
To explain: Brù was all I’d supposed him to be: equal parts priest, scholar, shaman, smith, and magus; for he was an alchemist. Which fact I would learn in the course of the catechism that followed.
Through the long hours of a stormy night and morn, we sat upon those twin sofas and Queverdo Brù spoke like a man accustomed to silence. And confusing words they were, too, as the age-old alchemical creed is, of course, obscurum per obscurius, ignotum per ignotius. The obscure by the more obscure, the unknown by the more unknown…. They were a clan that did not prize clarity. Secrecy? Yes. Clarity, no.
Indeed, Q. urged my accession to an oath of silence; which I took, all the while staring at that snake which had let go its tail to lap, lap like a cat at its saucer of milk. Milk that was white, yes, but somehow…constellated: Something twinkled in the milk, and twinkled upon the split tip of the snake’s tongue, too. But I did not wonder overlong at this: Best not to peer down at the python, I told myself. What’s more: Already I’d raised my left hand to repeat that oath, so laughably prolix:
“I swear by heaven, by earth, by light, by shadow…. I swear by fire, by air, by water, by earth…. I swear by the height of the heavens, by the depths of the sea, and by the abyss of Tartarus…. I swear by Mercury and by Anubis, by the braying of the dragon Chercourobouros, and the three-headed dog Cerberus, guardian of Hell…. I swear by the ferryman Charon, and by the three Fates, and the Furies, and the bludgeon never to reveal these words to anyone who is not my noble and charming son,” et cetera.
At oath’s end I could not help adding, “Had I a son—or daughter—I’d like to think they’d be both noble and charming; however, having no heirs, I suppose myself the lockbox of your secrets, señor.” Further, as I wondered if Q. had been apprised of my…particularities, I ventured, “And, as I am unlikely to spawn or sire any offspring…”
He stayed me with a raised hand, pale as the in-curl of a conch. Too, it seemed he’d hissed. Or had this been his Ourobouros?
Alors, I took his strange oath. And here—upon this page, pen in this putrefying hand—I shall break it, forthwith, and spill those secrets that would lead, years hence, to my own…Elevation? Perfection? What else can I call it? Words can confuse things so. And the state itself is simple, or rather it was, is to one who…lives it, shall I say, though it be death I reference?
Having ascertained what Q. knew of Sebastiana (little, or so he said) and Calixto (nothing, of course), I settled into the sofa to listen, to learn, all the while watching for the angular head of a snake to appear…somewhere. Time pleasantly spent? Assuredly not. But here was the promise of secrets centuries old, and though I’d heard such things before—promises and secrets both—it seemed the wiser course to stay, to wait out both the storm and the snake, the former breaking overhead, the latter now gone from sight, having slithered…where? I wondered.
In truth, I had only a slight interest in and no urge toward the alchemical trades. Unlike the witch-lore I’d learned, I saw no application for it, no use suited to its cryptosecrets. More: My head began to ache as Brù spoke on; for alchemy is so deeply steeped in secrecy, the sense of it must be sifted for, its texts and treatises sieved for their metaphoric gold.
Gold. Yes: It was on that very subject that Q. began his disquisition.
He’d slipped from the tent despite the storm, leaving me in possession of those rings, and wondering should I, could I take my leave unseen, should I, could I slip across the tent to rifle the drawers of the secrétaire? But the presence of the python stilled me, and there I sat upon the sofa, as in a stockade. Brù soon returned, soaked yet seeming not to know it, and bearing a tray laden with a light supper of sorts. Such hospitality did not suit him: He looked like a simian charged with the care of a sheet of eggs. Nor do I recall those small courses served. However, I do recall the tray and utensils; for—and I knew this the minute I felt the balance of the fork, and the heft of the rudely hammered bowl—here was gold, unalloyed and true. Each piece was precious, surely. And Q., seeing me observing same, re-launched his lecture; thusly:
