Читать книгу All That Glitters - Martine Desjardins - Страница 15

IX

CÆSTRE STANDS AT A CROSSROADS, long the source of its strategic importance. Under the Roman Empire, if one is to believe Peakes, it was a fortress—a castrum, hence its name. Later, it was the site of the largest of the Templars’ Flemish commanderies. But now that our soldiers were bivouacked there, grand strategy had given way to games of chance: the town was transformed into a seething cauldron of debauchery. Even the meanest hut had become a gambling den. Tip-the-cork, cock fights, fox-terrier racing: there was nothing one could not bet on, and everyone was constantly placing bets, including the children. Sic transit gloria mundi, as the lieutenant put it.

I myself became a steady customer at a watering hole where one could play perudo, passe-dix, cabriolet and more varieties of zanzi than I’d ever imagined existed. The walls were studded with horseshoes, while bunches of rabbits’ feet hung from the ceiling. The customers drank straight from their dice cups. It goes without saying that the place attracted the worst kind of people—gangs of petty thieves with loaded dice who were liable to end up with a bullet in the back on the battlefield if ever they were caught red-handed.

Playing with cheaters was a matter of indifference to me: one way or another, I always ended up the winner. It was not long before I managed to clean up on the entire town, which did not stop new contenders from presenting themselves at my table with all the foolhardiness of those spindly battlers who love to provoke men twice their size. It is only human nature to want to test oneself against the unassailable.

When I stepped into the pothouse that midday, the regulars were milling around the rear table. Among them I noticed Lieutenant Peakes, who was watching the game with an anxious look on his face.

“Where have you been, Dulac? They’re down to the last throw.”

“What are they playing?”

“Snakes.”

“Never heard of it. Do they play with three dice?”

“The object is to roll three of a kind. Any threesome is worth five points. Except three aces, snake-eyes—that wipes out all your winnings.”

Four scar-faced ruffians, the sort one would not dare lend an ear to for fear of losing it forever, were seated at the table. With them was a lady friend who, inexplicably, was sitting with her back to the game. Those fidgeting shoulders, the coif that seemed to float above the loose blond hairs around her neck … Well, well. What have we here? If it wasn’t my little bluebird.

Peakes muttered under his breath, “It’s she! Miss Nell!”

“She seems to be doing penance.”

“She is trying to outwit bad luck by casting the dice over her shoulder, as if they were salt.”

“Is it working?”

“She’s already lost a good thirty dollars. And now she’s playing double or nothing.”

“Her chances of winning are … what? One in two hundred and fifty? Not a great risk.”

“For someone like you, who defies all odds, no. But for her, it’s madness. A jinx has fallen upon her.”

“We’ll soon see. It’s her turn to cast.”

“Go and stand behind her, maybe that will bring her good luck.”

Too late. The dice tumbled through the air like a bridal bouquet, then fell to the table where they scattered.

One. One. One. Snake-eyes.

Peakes caught me by the sleeve.

“I cannot stand to see her humiliated like this, in front of everyone.”

Humiliated? He hadn’t been looking. Cheeks ablaze, the loser watched with a tremulous smile on her lips as the bettors’ hands grabbed for the money piled in the middle of the table.

I knew that expression well. It was the smile of the gambler for whom the pleasure of being wiped out has become more intense than that of winning.

Meanwhile, Peakes had drawn his paybook from his pocket.

“Do you know what those men are likely to do to her when they find out she cannot make good? I’ve put sixty dollars aside. Along with what I have in my pocket, I can easily help her out of her predicament.”

It was a magnanimous gesture in defence of a damsel in distress, one that would never have occurred to me. To my credit, I knew that my bluebird had other ways of settling her gambling debts. I could have so informed the lieutenant, but I was not about to destroy his illusions. So I simply shook my head.

“You disapprove, Dulac? You must think I’m hoping to purchase her favours. Don’t worry. Nell will never suspect. Keep an eye on her. Meanwhile, I shall settle matters discreetly with these gentlemen.”

He strode up to the table and motioned to one of the men to follow him. I waited until they’d gone outside, then sat down beside the nurse.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Duluck.”

“You remember my name?”

“All the gamblers of Cæstre curse it. I’m surprised you’re still alive.”

She stood up to leave.

“Where are you going in such a hurry?”

“To ask Lieutenant Peakes to loan me a bit of money. I don’t even have enough to buy a drink.”

“I’m afraid he’s gone on an errand.”

Her look of surprise betrayed no disappointment, which in turn emboldened me to lead her out into the pothouse yard. She followed with dainty steps, which revealed the bobbins of her heels.

We sat in the shade of an elm-tree and the alewife, a garrulous sort wearing heavy clogs, came over carrying two glasses half-full of a gall-coloured liquid, a bowl of sugar and a pitcher of water.

“Enjoy it while you can, lads and lasses. Tomorrow, the green goddess will be off limits. Blunts the ardour of the troops, so it seems.”

Never in my life had I tasted absinthe, but Nell apparently knew it well. I watched her execute a careful succession of rapid, precise, small movements, and did my best to imitate them. But for all my efforts, I could not contrive to balance the spoon on the edge of my glass. Frankly, I have no patience with games of skill. In an outburst of exasperation, I let the sugar cube drop into the alcohol without setting it alight, then doused the whole mixture with water.

The beverage slowly turned cloudy. From time to time, it threw off a toxic glint that certainly augured no good.

“I’ve never seen such an unappetizing colour.”

“Absinthe contains copper sulfate—the celebrated ‘sympathetic powder’ that has the ability to heal wounds from a distance—or so it was thought.”

“And that licorice smell … It reminds me of the cakes my Irish grandmother used to bake.”

“Go on, drink. It won’t kill you.”

I had no intention of doing as the heron in the fable had done. I raised my glass and bowed slightly.

“Come what may!”

How could I describe my first swallow of absinthe? It was like a strip of gauze impregnated with chloroform that quickly evaporated, leaving a ghostly bitterness on the palate. Hardly extraordinary, but not unpleasant enough to cause me to stop.

“Dice, absinthe … Hardly the diversions of a nursing sister.”

“I strive to maintain a proper balance of flaws to strengthen my character.”

“Some might claim you are cultivating vices.”

“Vices are the flaws of others.”

A rejoinder that would have been inappropriate came to mind, but I managed to restrain myself in time. I had drunk a bit too rapidly, and to avoid letting it show, I drained my glass. Nell, who had already finished hers, observed me with a mischievous look. I’d begun to find her a bit shady—perhaps because my eyes were looking in two directions at once.

“Besides, I also have some quite acceptable pastimes.”

“I am not sure that your skin embroidery could be considered a parlour trick.”

“They are sutures, not embroidery. I’ve already told you that.”

“So you say. But have the surgeons come around to your point of view?”

Her eyebrows arched, and in the blink of an eye her smile vanished.

“Surgeons, surgeons. Were you at Armentières, Dulac? The sector was supposedly quiet, the men were meant only to be on a reconnaissance mission, yet they returned with wounds larger than your hand. The surgeons had never seen anything like it. They had no idea where to start stitching.”

“You believe your method would have produced better results?”

“To close a gaping wound? Hardly. But I believe I have discovered another method for mending human flesh.”

On her way through Angers, Nell had stopped off to visit the cathedral. It was Ash Wednesday, and for the occasion the great tapestry of the Angels of the Apocalypse was on display—an immense wall-hanging made of seventy woven panels, three hundred and thirty feet long. Nell had been transfixed by the tableau representing the Lord enthroned before seven gold candelabra; a sword protruded from his mouth, and his left hand bore the mark of seven red stars. What had most astonished her was the way the master weavers had so faithfully reproduced the skin of the characters therein depicted, with its delicate shades, its shadows and highlights. Could this effect not be related to the extraordinary resemblance between human flesh and the texture of this particular tapestry? Were one to apply the same technique to sutures, would it not be possible not only to close wounds, but to reconstitute torn tissue? For endless hours, Nell had attempted to grasp how threads of different colours had been overlayed—for naught, for as she finally understood, the key to the mystery was to be found on the back of the tapestry.

“Did you turn it over, then?”

“I waited until the cathedral was empty. When I was certain no one was watching, I stepped up to the tapestry. Just as I was about to lift one corner, a feeling of dread welled up in me. I felt as if I was committing a sacrilege, and that my fingers were burning. I fled from the cathedral as fast as I could.”

I’d begun my second glass. As vacuum thrives on vacuum, absinthe thrives on absinthe. I observed Nell through the mourning band of my swollen eyelids. She was absent-mindedly fingering a cube of sugar. On her left hand, the embroidered feather had given way to a satiny scar that traced a paraph on her skin. I found myself wondering if it would be pleasing to the touch.

“Well, if I were standing before a treasure, I wouldn’t hesitate to touch it. Sacrilege or no.”

“Oh, you … You have nothing to lose, since your soul is already damned. And in any event, you will find nothing precious here.”

“Put no store in appearances. Behind these walls, beneath these trees, a fortune may be slumbering.”

That was where I should have let matters lie. But the absinthe had loosened my tongue, and I could not stop myself from saying aloud what I should have kept to myself.

“Everyone knows that wherever the Templars went, they left buried treasure behind them.”

I blurted it all out: in this very place, in Cæstre, the Order of the Temple had once established a bank, where pilgrims departing for the Holy Land could deposit their precious effects. When the knightly monks were accused of heresy in 1307, the King’s commissioners had sought to confiscate their treasury. They found the vault and its coffers empty. Yet only the previous day, their servants had seen chests overflowing with piles of gold marks.

“Despite the years of searching, those riches were never found. They have not evaporated. They must still be here, in the vicinity, somewhere deep beneath the earth. I intend to find them.”

As she listened, Nell removed one of the pins that held her coif in place and begun embossing dots on her sugar cube. She was transforming it into a die. This girl was nothing if not consistent, and that was not the least of her charms.

“That’s all well and good! But just how do you propose to go about it?”

“My method cannot fail. I shall proceed haphazardly, and whatever chance throws across my path I shall consider as the clues I need to discover where the treasure is hidden.”

“You call that a method? You are leaving everything to chance.”

“What of it?”

I snatched the sugar-cube die from her hands and cast it. Naturally, it came up six. Nell brought her face closer to mine; I could feel her gaze turning in mine like a key in a keyhole.

“I shall find out your secret.”

“I do not use loaded dice, as you can see. And in any case, cheating requires the kind of dexterity I do not possess.”

“Then you must have a good-luck charm.”

Once again I threw the die. Again it came up six.

“Nothing in my hands, nothing in my pockets. I’ve already told you, I’m not superstitious.”

“But you do have your little rituals.”

She put on the airs of an innocent girl, which promptly aroused my suspicions.

“Don’t deny it, Duluck. I’ve been watching you. You begin by hefting the dice, you toss them in your hand, you stroke them as you roll them between your fingers. Then you shake them, but not in haste. You let them slide down into the deepest part of your palm. The wrist gradually accelerates the to-and-fro movement, until it is shaking them frenetically. Only when you’ve excited chance to a fever pitch do they shoot forth. For you, gambling is what I would call, in polite terms, a solitary pleasure.”

When I heard that, I all but choked, and as I did, snuffed absinthe into my nose.

“How can you possibly mouth such improprieties without blushing?”

“One can allow oneself intimacy with an adversary.”

“Since we have become so intimate, allow me to escort you to your quarters.”

“You could never travel the distance on foot.”

“Is it far?”

“A bit outside Cæstre.”

“Let us go.”

The road was a long one. Nell kept stopping to gather plants for her tinctures, each of which she identified for my benefit. There was woad, which contains the same colouring substance as indigo; coltsfoot, which produces a tender, green sap; weld, a member of the acacia family, which the locals call “dyer’s rocket”; garancine, whose bright red root was long used to dye infantry uniforms, and which stains the sheep who crop it right to the bone. Set a woman loose in a flowering meadow, and she will squander your entire afternoon.

Finally, we reached a near-abandoned hamlet. The nursing sisters’ quarters, Nell informed me, were just beyond.

“They’ve billeted us in a place called Rouge-Croix. A strange coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”

Indeed, I mused as I returned to camp. A very strange coincidence.