Daughters of Babylon (40 page)

“So why are you here?” she asked Blythe. “You must have a million things on your plate at home.”

“Gav called me as soon as you disappeared. I took the next flight to Paris.”

“You’ve been here since…?” She gestured vaguely. Time still felt flimsy, like a cardboard sign stapled to a stick that people agreed to carry around. Her day and night reclimatizing in a shepherd’s hut at 2600 meters felt like a month at the Riviera, and the time before that? No such thing, though memories, thank God, of all she’d seen there and here seemed intact.

“Since Sunday. I’m staying at the winery B&B. It’s gorgeous! We talked about that way back when La Croix du Cinq was almost unknown.” She laughed. “Toinelle and her brother were still in diapers then.”

Her friend’s lightness of spirit was wonderful to see, but Silvina knew she hadn’t come all this way to await the return of a missing employee. “Blythe, while I was gone, I encountered someone.” She waited for the pain she’d witnessed so often to rise. Instead, Blythe’s expression grew even more vibrant.

“Did you see Viv?”

“No, I saw Thomas.”

Hands flew to her mouth. “You saw Thomas! I wondered if that might happen. How old was he? What was he wearing?”

“Erm…about seven. Striped T-shirt, high-tops.”

“Blue and yellow, red laces, exactly what he wore the day he went missing.” The light in her eyes faded some, and she looked away. “We could be so thoughtless, at times. None of us realized how literally kids take things. I’d been scribbling poems for months, long complex things that seemed to lay out a new economy or an old one, we didn’t know which. Viv and Tar, they were the researchers, the mad and fearless scouts. They wanted to find evidence of the people we were dreaming about, a Galician knight, an Irish jester—Wiley was my favourite. I felt sometimes like he and I shared the same backbone, pumped from the same heart. You know, of course, that Eleanor of Aquitaine is beloved like no one in these parts, and locals believe that
Reine du Ciel
was part of the network of her famous Court of Love. But historians claim there’s no evidence, it’s just a legend.” Blythe looked down at her hands folded in her lap. “And one night, when I thought Thomas was asleep, I said to Viv and the others, wouldn’t it be nice if we could find one piece of incontrovertible evidence that the Court of Love was real? I went to check on him later, and…” She shook her head. “Beauty and joy died for me that night, Sil. I never wrote another poem, never read one…left everything I’d created here.”

And then she told Silvina of her drive to create a multi-million dollar business, a unique creative school based on recent developments in brain theory, so that she could post a standing million dollar reward for information that led to her missing son. Thomas Haggerty’s picture had been on milk cartons in North America for years; on Interpol files; she hired teams of private detectives who brought her hundreds of false leads.

“Then, two nights ago, walking along the river at St. Jacques, I get a phone call from Sydney,” Blythe said. “The man asked if I was Blythe Haggerty. I said yes. Were you once a Daughter of Babylon? In forty years, no one has ever asked me that question. That’s when I knew.” She turned the laptop around on the small table so they could both see the screen with a stopped video of a handsome bearded man on a tall-masted sailing ship with two smiling children.

“Oh my gosh, what a gorgeous family!” Silvie said.

“Thank you. Thomas grew up in Australia with foster parents. He had a different name and no memory of anything that happened before the age of seven. Then, when he turned twenty-one, he changed his name legally to Thomas Haggerty, not really knowing why. He’s a software developer, has his own company, divorced, two children. This video was shot yesterday, two days after Thomas picked up
Fortune
magazine in the tall ship lounge and read about Tri-Partite Academy.” She clicked on the Play button, handed Silvie a box of tissues, and the YouTube came to life.

“Hi, Grandma, we’re having a great time,” said the boy, who looked about nine. “Dad wants to catch a marlin, but if he does, Rayna wants him to let it go.” A girl, maybe two years younger, mugged for the camera with thumbs in her ears, fingers wiggling. “We can’t wait to meet you, Grams. Love you!” Then Thomas, fully grown, came on screen and said a few words, an arm hooked playfully around each of his children. Silvina couldn’t take her eyes off the man he had become. His eyes were blue-gray, he had a wicked sense of humour—things a camera can’t always pick up, but a heart with open memory knows.

“Their names are James and Rayna,” Blythe said, when the video ended. “Can you believe it? I’m a Grandma.”

And before Silvina could gather the sodden tissues from her lap or think of anything to say beyond, “Congratulations!”, Blythe’s phone rang.

She checked the caller ID. “Oops, gotta take this.”

Gavriel strolled into the parlour, the shepherds having gone their way, and sat at the flagstone hearth, elbows on knees, looking every bit the relaxed conspirator.

“Yes, she’s here—looking great…well, maybe, a little stunned. I wouldn’t ask her what day it is.” She placed a hand over the phone. “Silvie, I’m sure you’d like to shower and nap, but the third Daughter of Babylon would really like to meet you, and she has a great dinner planned for this evening.”

“There were three Daughters?”

“Yep. Viv, me and Karin Albrechtsson—redhead, brunette, and blonde. Scots, Canadian, Swedish.”

“Um…holy cow.”
Enjoyment, appreciation, enjoyment, appreciation
. The spectral loop had kept Silvie conscious, sane and grounded for immeasurable stretches of No Time; they could do the same for her now on a random, inconceivable Wednesday.

A few hours later, Silvie was filling the small dipper at the sink when Gavriel came into the
foganha
carrying a bulging leather satchel. “Sorry, I’m a little late with this.” He thumped it down onto the counter. “I got waylaid in Aragón. Go ahead,” he said. “Open it.”

Blythe came up behind him and watched Silvina open the flap and, scarcely breathing, slide out sheets of parchment, centuries old, of poetry written in contemporary dialects of Aquitainian, French, English, and Galician. The documents from Eleanor’s Court of Love felt soft and pliable. She could almost smell the ink. She could, most definitely, hear the joy, especially from the page that read, in a smattering of tongues that Silvina, for the moment, could read with no effort:
Abbot Suger came to visit me in the turret today. Of course, he is not really AS who has been dead for years, and anyone who reads this will be certain I am mad.

“Where did you find these?”

Gavriel pointed to the hole in the wall. “Wrapped in oiled cloth and tucked in a niche…behind the bigger dipper.”

Blythe grinned. “It seems you have inherited an ally.”

Karin Albrechtsson, the proprietor of La Sorcière de Miel, had closed the restaurant for the party of four that included herself. Students from Lycée Professionel de Cerabornes dressed in formal catering attire served crudités and fresh bread sticks while Gavriel and Blythe studied the menu and Karin studied Silvina. Not in a disconcerting, judgmental manner, but in the way that one might observe a guest who’d just returned from six months orbiting the Moon.

The fine-boned, pretty blonde known for serving the best food in Cerabornes didn’t look anywhere near mid-sixties, which was about the youngest she could have been as Blythe and Viv’s peer. She sat across from Silvie with Gavriel and Blythe on either side. The scrutiny felt odd, too, because Silvie had grown accustomed to being vaguely snubbed running errands in the village, a hold-over, she assumed, from angry investors who’d built a cable car and silk-screened
Reine du Ciel
tea towels for a boom that went bust. Karin wore a smile that appeared to be an effort to hold in.

“Viv and I had always intended to sort the poems,” she said, dipping a celery spear into garlic dip. “We got as far as wrapping them with elastics. Blythe, of course, leaped straight into financial wizardry and hasn’t had time to pull the trail up behind her, as the nagual used to say.”

“Aah, the nagual,” Blythe said. “I haven’t heard you mention him in decades. What was his name—Cuco?”

“Lupo. The Nagual Lupo Sanchez.”

“Is he still alive, have you kept in touch?”

“Oh, yes. His son Ívano is the new nagual, but Lupo, nearly ninety, is spry as ever—they all are…and since we’re on the topic, I have a confession.”

Gavriel looked up from his menu.

“While I’m proud and grateful to be a Daughter of Babylon and a prime shareholder in TPA, I am not actually Karin Albrechtsson. My name is Malvine Lavendrye. I am Mexican of French descent and a member of the party of
brujas
of Lupo Sanchez.” Her grin broadened. “I’m also not a natural blonde.”

“What?” Blythe set down her breadstick. Gavriel’s eyebrows rose. Silvina felt as though someone had plugged her feet into electrical sockets.

“Karin and I exchanged identities in 1972. She came to Mexico with a professor on sabbatical and after a rough start, showed a flair for
brujería
, and I’d always wanted to see Europe. The nagual, meanwhile, had been asked by his mentor, La Pantera Negra—” She paused and turned to Gavriel. “I believe she visits your dreaming, now and then.”

“She does.” He smiled ruefully. “She is relentless.”

Malvine returned his smile. “The nagual was asked to launch a
maniobra
, a sorcerer’s maneuver of extraordinary complexity—I’m quite sure nothing like this has been attempted in thousands of years—in response to a queen imprisoned by her husband in the 12th century.”

“This was Eleanor’s doing?” Blythe asked.

“It was all of us. You can pick up the thread anywhere, including the chance meeting of flower children in the seventies and a nagual in Mexico who nearly lost the love of his life in collision with a donkey.”

While her guests enjoyed quail bisque, Malvine explained how the intention of a
maniobra
by an impeccable nagual produces results across time and space that can, in effect, link Creation to Infinity with entirely new configurations.

“So that’s why we had three harvests every year and Europe’s biggest zuccinis?” Blythe said.

“And why poetry flowed from you like a volcano, yes.”

“Then why did we fail?”

“We didn’t. Viv enjoyed a stellar career on film and stage, Tar found his beloved Bab-El, and look at you, happy Mom, who is now a Grandma.”

“A
maniobra
continues,” Gavriel said, tearing a cheese brioche in two. “Once launched, the unfolding maneuver becomes as permanent as a galaxy and like the Universe, continuously expands.”

“Well said,” said Malvine. “And if you haven’t already guessed, you and Silvina are the next generation of an ongoing strategy of pure intent. Which brings me to the next topic.” She signaled to one of the wait staff who delivered a zippered leather briefcase.

“Oh my God, not another satchel,” Blythe joked. “Please, don’t tell me you’re selling your shares.”

“Never. TPA is the best investment I’ve ever made.” Malvine took out a laptop, a computer tablet and cell phone. “I know you’ve been looking for these, Silvina. They belonged to Viv. As soon as I learned of her death and how it happened, I removed them from the house to reduce the chances of it being overwhelmed by inorganic beings. I know it sounds like
bruja
crazy talk, but djinns can manipulate technology like you wouldn’t believe.”

“I have no problem with
bruja
crazy talk,” Silvie said.

“You’re welcome to take them if you believe your ally is truly on your side.”

“We’ll see over time, I suppose, but I don’t need to poke through any more of Vivian’s life. I’m nearly done with what I came to do.”

“In one sense, yes, but now we come to the most important piece.” Malvine pulled out a large, thick manila envelope. “You’ve been readying the house, as you know, for new owners who were scheduled to take possession in the fall. You have far exceeded expectations on that score.” She turned to Gavriel. “Acceptance of your offer to buy the house has been conditional on your ability to build a bridge.”