Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 03 - The School for Psychics (17 page)

Chapter
27.

J.J. translated
more of the guide’s lecture and explained that after the Revolution, the Abbey became a prison for the next 150 years. Members of the French Resistance had been shot there during World War II. After the war the buildings were repurposed yet again and opened to the public. A lot of good and a lot of bad things had happened at this place. And, judging by her trip to the vault, a lot of secrets were kept here.
What happens at Abbaye Fontevraud, stays at Abbaye Fontevraud
, she said to herself.

There was a plaque on the wall listing the most famous of the
thirty-six abbesses, Phoebe could read enough of it to see that a lot of them were related to kings, both legitimately and otherwise. She scanned down the list the noticing names that had cropped up during this trip—names like Montmorency, d'Orléans, and de Bourbon.

Good grief
, she thought,
them
again.

J.J.
explained that the Order of Fontevraud had been founded in 1099 as a Benedictine house. The jumble of buildings was actually a group of monasteries. Saint-Marie housed nuns, Saint-Lazare lepers, Saint-Benoit the sick, La Madeleine was for battered women and penitent prostitutes, and Saint-Jean de l'Habit housed the monks.

On their way out, Phoebe picked up a
brochure in English and read the summary aloud to J.J. “They created an ideal in the exaltation of faith, where men and women, rich and poor, noble and outcasts, came together in a community dedicated to God, praying and working in silence, abstinence, and poverty.” She sighed to think of such a thing ever being real.

“Do you think it worked?” she asked.

“To an extent,” J.J. said. “And, to an extent, it still
is
working here. It’s just more low-key now.”

Phoebe resumed reading, “
The monastery complex was sited at the junction of the estates of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II. The founder of the Abbey, Robert of Arbrissel, wanted a woman to rule the men as a mother ruled her sons. And the sons must serve and protect her.

“
Robert required that Fontevraud’s abbess must have lived in the world before coming to the Abbey and gained experience managing practical business matters, so they would be capable of directing a religious institution.”

That explained allowing royal harlots run the place.

Phoebe took a last look around. The dream had lasted for seven hundred years, then been swept away during the Revolution. Phoebe was disappointed the idea hadn’t caught on. She wondered if women would do a better job than men at ruling the world. It would be interesting to see what they’d do.

At a minimum, i
f women were in charge they might allow other women to contribute as human beings and not just as maids and hookers. That one simple mercy would result in a massive increase to world resources.

* * *

Phoebe’s ankle was killing her. She didn’t want to have to take any pain medicine, so she decided her tour of the Abbey was over. She’d seen enough. They ambled back toward the hotel.

“It’s been fun,” J.J. said.
“But I’m afraid I have to get back to my real life now.”

“
Awww,” Phoebe said. “No more playing
The Avengers
?”

“
I suspect we’re more
Get Smart
than
The Avengers
.”

Phoebe laughed.

“Brother Matthieu
is arranging things. He’s gone to the airport already with my luggage. He’s going to come back to Hawaii with me for a while to act as a sort of monk-nurse-Special Forces combo. He says he’s always wanted try surfing.”
Phoebe tried to imagine a man in a monk’s robe, hanging ten. She wasn’t sure how the rules worked. Maybe they’d let him wear shorts.

“
I was hoping you’d consent to drive me to the airport. Matthieu
said to give you these.” J.J. took a set of car keys out of his pocket.

Phoebe flinched when she saw them. It was the
set she’d removed from the Prince. The logo was unmistakable. “Matthieu
said the car had already been brought over, so it’s sitting here somewhere.”

Phoebe looked at the cars sitting along the
curved driveway. “Oh no,” she mumbled. “Oh no, please.”

She pushed a button on the key fob, hoping it wasn’t the alarm and the headlights on the car flashed. “
Pu-leeze!”

“What?” J.J. said, smiling. Clearly he knew
what
.

“You know
this car has a clutch, right?”

“That’s my understanding.”

“And I have a broken ankle.”

“Shall I drive and you steer?”

Phoebe snorted.

“Let’s go,” he said, and took her arm and urged her forward.

Phoebe leaned heavily on her crutches as she limped toward the Bugatti.

* * *

It was nearly impossible to get into the beast. She carefully shoehorned J.J. into the passenger side, set her crutches behind the seat and then basically fell into the driver’s side. The car was painted matte black and had a stunning tangerine leather interior.

She
had no idea how to start it so she had to lean across and take the manual out of the glove compartment. Enclosed with the manual was a lease agreement and the original window sticker. “It’s leased,” she said derisively. “He didn’t buy it outright.”

She unfolded the sticker and nearly fainted. The car was a Bugatti Veyron 16.4 that
cost $1.5 million. Now that was some serious sticker shock. You could die from that kinda sticker shock.

She wondered how much
the Prince would’ve saved if he’d gotten the $20 Consumer Reports bargaining kit. But maybe they didn’t have things like that in France.

“It gets eight miles a gallon in the city and fourteen on the highway
,” she told J.J. “Oh, and don’t worry about poor driving conditions, because it has 1,001 horsepower all-wheel drive.” Phoebe flipped through the manual, “I didn’t realize any cars got 4-digit horsepower. I suppose that means it can climb walls.

“
Blah, blah blah … accelerates from 0-62 mph in 2.5 seconds. And in 5 more seconds, it will be at 125 mph. Top speed is 253 miles an hour.”

She snorted, “This second key
on the fob isn’t to the trunk, like I thought. This car may not even have a trunk. It’s for something called
top-speed mode
. Like launching a nuclear missile apparently. It ‘allows the car to adjust for minimum ground clearance and maximum aerodynamics.’

“Don’t worry,
” she said, “we’ll confine today’s outing to a single-key adventure.”

“Will you be able to manage the clutch?”
J.J. asked.

“Would you mind if we went the whole way in first gear? Just kidding.
To be honest, the clutch is a minor issue since I don’t know what half the stuff on the dash and console are for. But everything will be okay in a few minutes, I swallowed a pill right after I saw the 4-digit horsepower.”

“That’s reassuring,” he said, his tone implied otherwise.

Phoebe pushed the start button and the motor growled to life instantly. “What are the odds I can get this out of the parking lot without hitting anything?” she mumbled to herself.

J.J.
smiled, then winced because his face hurt. Then he had to wince again because wincing hurt, too. It was a vicious cycle.

“Do you think this car has any sort of tracking device on it? I mean are we going to get pulled over and arrested? Or kidnapped
, again?” Phoebe wrestled with the heavy pressure required to turn the steering wheel and crept along the access road at something less than normal human walking speed.

“It definitely had a tracking device, but I’m told it was removed and the car is no longer locatable.”

“If you could see the way this car looks you wouldn’t say that. We’re not exactly flying under the radar here.”

“We’re not exactly flying,” J.J. said.

“Was that a complaint? Hold onto your hat!” Phoebe said, and pressed carefully on what she hoped was the accelerator.

* * *

It was an alternately fun and frightening ride to the local private airport, but they made it. The Bugatti was a too much like a wild-eyed, doped up, thoroughbred racehorse for Phoebe’s taste. And getting out of it was going to require the intervention of at least one very strong man, possibly more.

A private jet was waiting and Brother
Matthieu
was standing in the doorway, beaming. Phoebe was sorry she was going to miss the ultimate in long distance transportation, but her job wasn’t quite finished.

“I think we’re friends now, aren’t we?” asked Phoebe. “At least I hope we are.”

“Of course we are. As we always have been through the ages.”

“I meant
real
friends.”

“So did I.”

“You mean like past lives?”

“From
what we’ve just been through, that would seem highly likely.”

“Reincarnation? Or that we’ve been friends before.”

“Both.”

“Oh.”

Phoebe thought about it, or tried to think about it, but nothing happened in her brain. When she looked at him, though, she felt as if she knew him through and through. Probably more than she should, even after what they’d recently experienced. So maybe he was right.

“I’m
gonna miss having someone to carry me around whenever I don’t feel like walking.”

He smiled.

“And having a passenger who never complains about my driving.”

He laughed, “
Imagine how much I’m going to miss having someone who doesn’t complain about
my
driving!”

Phoebe cracked up at that
. Then she took a deep breath and looked at him longingly. “Can I hug you? I won’t mash hard.”

“Of course, please,” he said and opened his arms
, one in a bright blue cast. She leaned across the console of the ridiculous car and held him very gingerly, as he did her. They were both still very sore. Phoebe tried not to cry, but failed.

This wasn’t the hardest part of her new job—
the hardest part would be running for her life from mysterious angry people in strange countries where she didn’t speak the language or really understand anything about what was going on—but it tore something in her to get to know someone wonderful like J.J. and then have to say goodbye so soon afterwards, and maybe forever.

She blubbered, “Will we ever get to see each other again?”

“You can be certain of it,” he whispered in her ear, “If not soon, then later. But if it’s later, remember I will probably be a girl and you a boy. So try to keep an open mind. Incarnations tend to alternate genders like that.”

Phoebe trie
d to imagine them with reversed genders, but as usual, came up with nothing. But, if J.J. thought it was true, she’d try to believe it. She trusted him completely. “You’ll make a great girl,” she sighed.

“Thank you, I think,” J.J. mumbled. “And you’ll make a great guy.”

“Now the hug is getting weird, isn’t it?” Phoebe said.

“Very.”

“Let’s forget we said that last bit, okay?”

“Agreed. Now I can kiss you,
” And he did.

* * *

Phoebe miraculously managed to get back to L’Hôtel without injuring herself or the Bugatti. She wished she was already on her way back home with J.J., but she had one last thing to do.

She called Sister
Émilie and asked her to pick up the car. The nun asked for Phoebe’s home address and said they would have it shipped to her. Phoebe was shocked at the idea. Apparently they were
exceedingly
grateful for what she and J.J. had delivered to the vault.

There was nowhere
in the Smokies to drive a car with the low ground clearance of a Bugatti. When she hit the first pothole it would be all over. Phoebe thought about what the CR had said in his six rules of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross about certain types of work needing to be done for free. She asked if it would be okay to donate the car for the Abbey’s use. Émilie laughed and said a monastery had no use for it, but they could sell it and donate the proceeds to whatever charity she wished. Phoebe said she’d leave it up to The Brotherhood.

Émilie
took Phoebe to Tours to catch the TGV, the high-speed train. She gave her a ticket and handed her a wad of euros, a debit card, and a new phone. Phoebe found a seat where she could look out the window and was in Paris in ninety minutes. From the Montparnasse station she took a fifteen-minute taxi ride to Place Vendome.

Chapter 28.

Phoebe
had hoped to stay at the Ritz but it was closed. The cab driver told her it was shuttered for two years for renovation. Phoebe couldn’t believe it. The place had been open for over 100 years, but it was closed when she finally managed to show up. She’d hoped to get at least a peek inside and a modest snack. But it wasn’t to be.

Her driver
added that the Crillion was closed for renovation as well. Okay, that put the two most famous hotels in Paris out of the realm of possibility. She’d have to slum it at the Plaza Athénée, but of course, she’d always wanted to see that one, too. It would’ve been sorta spooky to stay at the Ritz anyway, since Princess Diana had eaten her last meal there and Pamela Harriman had died of a stroke in the pool.

She would’ve preferred to have J.J.’s help with this last task, but she now trusted her own skills enough to undertake the last bit of work by herself. She’d confirmed with J.J. that there were two low probability places to dowse, just in case anything might register. One was the site of Madame P’s grave at the
Capucine Convent. The second was her brother’s apartment at No. 8 Place Vendome.

She wanted to throw a brick through the window of the Prince’s house while she was there, but she wasn’t sure which one it was—and you’d hate to make a mistake with something like that.

Phoebe looked around the extraordinary plaza. To say it was elegant was an understatement. It was a large rectangle with some of the corners canted slightly, making it almost octagonal. The square was ringed with matching townhouses, vast mansions with common walls. Except for the entrance and exit via the rue de la Paix, the buildings were adjacent to each other with no spaces between them.

Phoebe had done her research
on the way. It was built between 1702 and 1720, designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the same architect who designed Versailles, and had looked roughly the same for more than two hundred fifty years.

The Ritz, at No. 15, was on the northwest side of the square.

The Capucine Convent had taken up a large portion of what was now the north side of the plaza back when Madame P had requested to be buried there. The convent had been damaged, though, once during the Revolution, and then again to build the Rue de la Paix.             

These days no one
knew for sure where her body was. That was sort of sad, but Phoebe didn’t attach much significance to old corpses. She thought human bodies should be treated with decency and respect, the recently dead were so vulnerable and utterly dependent on us to manage their husks, but she didn’t believe in spending a lot of money or wasting a lot of space to preserve the organic matter that remained behind after the spirit was done using it.

She
used her crutches to make her way out of the north end of the square, and along the Boulevard des Capucines for a couple of blocks in each direction, but noticed nothing. Then she returned to the enclosed area of the square from the north and continued her clockwise stroll.

Talk about your energy v
ortex! Place Vendome felt like the point where matter and anti-matter met. Great extremes had frequently collided there.

O
ne such moment was depicted in a painting by Jacques-Louis David, now lost, but known from copies and engravings. It was similar to his famous
Death of Marat
, but showed the body of a different martyr of the French Revolution being displayed in the middle of the square—Louis-Michel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, a handsome young man from a powerful family.

Saint-
Fargeau had been killed the day after casting the deciding vote to guillotine Louis XVI. He was stabbed with a sword while eating out at the Palais Royale. His body was then carried to Place Vendome to be seen.

The David image
showed Saint-Fargeau’s nude and bloody body laid in graceful repose at the foot of the statue of Louis XIV, modestly covered with a simple white sheet drawn back just enough to display the fatal wound. Saint-Fargeau was only thirty-two years old. He had a beautiful face and a lean, muscular body. His hair, powdered white, was combed back from his forehead.

Scenes like that
were played out all over the world, across thousands of years—from the body of Patroclus at Troy, to the fire department chaplain who’d been placed at the foot of an altar on 911. It was barbaric, but a body on display gave people a chance to take a moment and consider what the heck was going on and think about how they wanted to go forward.

Unfortunately it was human nature to
ignore most of the opportunities to calm down and to get het up instead and take action that would lead to an endless cycle of tit-for-tat destruction.

Phoebe
sighed and turned away from the center of the square and focused on the individual townhouses. High-end jewelers, famous fashion houses, and perfumers occupied most of the shops in the square. This was some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. At first she hadn’t understood how the numbering worked, but now she saw that all the even numbers were on the opposite side from the Ritz.

She
walked toward No. 12, a storefront in a corner of the square. At ground level the building had a tall arcade. The floor above it had grand French doors and ornate wrought iron balconies. The third floor was similar, but with lower ceilings, and then there was an attic floor with round or arched windows under a copper roof.

No. 12 housed Dior
Joaillerie. Phoebe looked the word up. It didn’t mean
jewelry
in general, as she had supposed. It meant a special kind of luxury gems—what the grand auction houses would refer to as
important
pieces.

She saw
a woman reflected in the glass of the shop window. Only when she saw the crutches did she recognize the image as herself. She was wearing clothes she never could’ve afforded, on loan from the communal closet at the monastery. Christophe had probably gotten them from stores near here.

She checked the notes from her conversation with J.J. This
house, No. 12, was currently known as hôtel Baudard de Saint-James. Christophe’s last name was Saint-James. She wondered if it was owned by a relative of his. She’d have to ask him if she ever saw him again.

Then she noticed the plaque. Goodness
, this was where Chopin had died. He’d had rooms here. His apartment had been on the ground floor and mezzanine level. Phoebe loved Chopin above all the other composers. She said a heartfelt prayer for him as she stood there.

Chopin had
spent his last days here, consumed by a terror of being buried alive and suffocating to death underground. It was an understandable anxiety in a high-strung man who was suffocating to death above ground, coughing and choking in the final stages of tuberculosis. The poor fellow’s last request had been to be cut open before burial, so to make certain he was dead.

Phoebe
hoped they’d honored his pitiful request. What an extraordinary soul. She stood still, trying to absorb whatever traces of beauty he’d left behind. Then she slowly continued around to No. 8.

This
was where Madame Pompadour’s brother had lived, one of several residences he had in Paris. The townhouse was in the south corner of Place Vendome. As it turned out, she’d taken the long way around. That was hard on her ankle, but she’d gotten to see more of the architecture that way.

She stood in front of the lovely building and tried to purge herself of her feeling
s of grief for Chopin’s short life and his prolonged death. She shook herself to loosen the tension in her body. She felt a slight tingle emanating from No. 8, but nothing more. There was nothing significant left inside.

Phoebe knew
Marigny’s soul lingered at Menars. He’d waited there for over two hundred years, watching over the valuables he’d hidden in the château, until their arrival. He knew their location had been lost at his death. He’d been stricken so suddenly he hadn’t had time to transfer the information.

J.J.
shared with Phoebe that Marigny, too, had been an
Archiviste
. She was pleased that Mr. Botsaris, J.J., and the others had been able to set right Marigny’s accidental fumble. Phoebe hoped he could rest peacefully now.

* * *

She was done. There was nothing else here for Phoebe. She was satisfied she’d done her best for CR, Madame P, and Marigny. Now it was time for her to go home.

I
t wasn’t much fun being here alone anyway. Phoebe didn’t like being on vacations by herself. It got boring pretty quick. Of course the food in Paris was a lot better than at home, but the irregular hours of her wacky job meant she’d missed a lot of meals.

She had to admit to herself that missing some meals
was actually a good thing. She needed to lose some poundage and could never have done it by relying on her nonexistent will power. But the stair climbing and wall climbing in these huge old buildings, and running away from psycho-killers, was helping her lose weight.

She’d already lost ten pounds. To be honest, she need to lose twenty more, but dreaded what that was going to take.
The only bad part of her new job, aside from the occasional rude slap or broken ankle, was that she made these great friends but then, at the end of the task, they all went their separate ways. She wondered if the
School for Mysteries
or the
School for Psychics
ever had reunions or conventions so she could see them again.

The friends you made on a job like this were
close
. Phoebe figured it was like people who served together in the military.
We few, we happy few
—a band of extremely eccentric brothers and sisters.

Phoebe still wasn’t exactly sure what she’d gotten herself into w
ith the new job. She loved her boss, but she didn’t really understand who these people were. Oh well, beggars couldn’t be choosers. Most male bosses were afraid to hire women her age. She reminded them too much of their mother.

It was amazing to
Phoebe that more than half the world was still comprehensively underestimated and routinely abused. And she was blessed to live in one of the best places! God help the women in the third world and countries where various religions or cultures allowed horrible, unimaginable things to go on—and even encouraged them. How did the women cope?

They
were tough, obviously. So were men, but men got credit for it. Women were expected to suffer in silence. The arc of being female was certainly a challenge. When they were young, they were preyed upon. When they aged, they were ignored or discarded.

It had nothing to do with her personally
, she knew that. She’d experienced the full spectrum during her nearly sixty years. She’d been super-attractive as a tall, slender, blonde. That lasted until she was almost fifty, or until the man realized she was smart.

The drop in her perceived
attractiveness was shocking when her hair darkened to brown during menopause. A gay friend had said to her one day in mock horror, “Oh. My. God. You have the not-blonde-hair disorder!!”

Brown hair alone was a serious handicap, but being overweight and sweaty was disastrous. When she began to break out in sweats and gained a lot of weight she became invisible, if not repulsive.

But then, when she’d thought all was lost, she’d gotten this great job out of the blue and they liked her. The Boss treasured her talents and seemed to know more about her abilities than she did herself. He found things for her to do that really mattered and helped people. It was amazing. Life was such an adventure.

R
eentry into White Oak was going to be a rude shock. Phoebe was looking for a taxi when her new phone rang. It was the fancy one Sister Émilie had given her.  She wondered who could possibly have her number. “Hello?” she said, mystified.

“Miss
MacFarland,” a familiar said. Oh, it was the Boss’s Executive Assistant, the redoubtable Arabella Devlin-Forrest.

“Yes?”

“
Le Seigneur
asked me to contact you, now that your tasks are complete, and relay a bit of information he believed you would find significant. It’s an address.

Arabella
was Phoebe’s dispatcher. She was a terribly efficient British woman, but this call just plain scared her. It had been less than thirty seconds since she’d decided she was finished with her work. That was downright freaky. The Boss had to be behind a coincidence like that.

“D
o you have a writing instrument at hand?” Arabella asked.

“No, sorry, I don’t
.”

‘”Then I
shall transmit the information by text.”

Arabella
hung up. Phoebe’s phone chimed and she looked at the address.

Nicolas de
Lalande

Château
-Saint-Germain-de-Livet

14100 Saint-
Germain-de-Livet, France

+33 2 31
31 00 03

* * *

Phoebe hailed a taxi, but instead of going to a hotel or the airport, she asked to be taken to the nearest ÉuroCar rental location. She’d decided to visit Nick, the accidental partner from her previous mission. He’d said he might renovate his family home in Normandy. Now that she knew where he was, she thought it might be fun to see the house and her friend.