The Secret Language of Stones (5 page)

Where am I?

I shook my head. “No, no . . . go away.”

I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn't move. My feet seemed cemented to the floor.

Please . . . Just tell me
.
Where am I?

I gave up. What else could I do? Maybe if I answered, he'd leave.

“I don't know where you are. On the battlefield where you died? In our shop? What can you see of where you are?” I whispered.

What would be worse? For him to answer or not to? I didn't know anymore.

When I received no response, I deluded myself that the episode was over. The breeze was even softer than before, wasn't it? In fact, I wasn't sure I could even feel it anymore. Yes, the episode was over. I willed my hands to stop trembling. I didn't need to put away my tools. I just needed to leave and go to bed.

You. I can see you.

Alarmed anew, I spun around. The workshop
was
empty. There was no doubt of it. There was no living being here with me. My head ached worse now. The powder hadn't helped. Yes, yes. That must be it. At last I'd figured it out. The entire episode was a manifestation of my headache. An exaggeration of my ability to hear the stones and an overactive imagination.

Yes, I seemed to receive messages for mourners. I tried to convince myself the communiqués were the product of my mind reading the mind of the woman who sat across the table from me, desperately wanting to hear the words I shared with her. I had almost talked myself into believing I was a mentalist, not a necromancer. That I spoke the words I sensed the woman needed to hear. Not that I really was picking up messages the dead soldiers left in the atmosphere for their families so they could move on.

And it was possible, wasn't it? Accounts of mentalists who were able to receive others' thoughts went back to the Old Testament and ancient Greeks. In 1882, Frederic W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, invented the word “telepathy.” But I preferred “mental radio” to explain the phenomena I experienced—
the theory being that, in the same way the newly invented radios in the news transmitted sound, our brains transmitted thoughts to one another.

Over and over, I told myself that's what I heard, what the noises were. Transmissions from people around me, in the same room, the next room, the street. That what I saw and experienced was no different from my father's ability to imagine a building, from Edith Wharton's ability to imagine a story, from Picasso's ability to imagine a painting.

But that night, speaking to a voice in the ether, I couldn't fool myself. I was the daughter of a woman who called herself a witch and who could spin spells to prevent aging, cure illness, or alter the thoughts in someone's mind.

What
was
my curse? Or my gift, as Anna insisted I refer to it. Yes, I spoke the language of gems and minerals. But I didn't just hear their energy and sense who had touched them last or what they'd been feeling. I received audible messages through the stones as well. Or, more accurately, I was able to sense the energy between stones and humans and sometimes receive messages from the dead. Yes, I'd heard the dead's cries in cemeteries, in the catacombs. And through the lockets I'd heard messages meant for their loved ones. But
I'd
never
spoken
to the dead before. I'd never known I was capable of doing that.

I remained sitting at my workbench, staring down at Madame Alouette's charm. A simple rock crystal egg in eight sections with a soldier's hair—her son's hair—sandwiched at its center.

I still felt ill, but I knew I couldn't stay in the workshop all night. Forcing myself to clean up, I swept the gold dust and scraps into the leather apron strung under my table. Nothing is wasted in a jeweler's workshop. A year's worth of scraps of the precious metal is worth a small fortune.

After putting away my tools, I picked up the crystal egg once more, this time intending to put it too away.

Surprised by its warmth, I closed my palm around it. An exotic and pungent scent tickled my senses. Lime and verbena with a hint of myrrh. I heard the wind again but warmer and calmer this time. And with it came a tangle of voices. I listened harder and heard, inside of them, a single voice. His voice whispering softly. I leaned forward, thinking the voice emanated from the egg. But I was wrong. He was all around me.

I'm not on the field.

“No?”

I was on the field. The last place I remember. I made a call. The wrong call.
What happened next was all my fault.

“What happened?”

My unit . . . all my men . . . all gone.

Did the voice belong to Madame Alouette's son? It had to. I'd been working on his talisman all night. And she'd told me he'd been in charge of his unit. Was it really him? And why was I scared to address him? Because he wasn't alive anymore? Because I was talking to—what? A spirit? A ghost? A fragment of a trapped soul needing to communicate before he moved on?

I'd heard other soldiers' voices before. But they were final thoughts left behind. A last sentence or two, preserved. Like an insect frozen in amber forever. Those soldiers weren't speaking to me. Not to Opaline Duplessi. But this one was.

It was never my mother's magick but rather my father's love that kept me feeling safe when I was a child. When she opened the door, her darkness and her secretive powers would overwhelm me, while my father's words and his touch would soothe me.

But that night I was alone in Paris. My father wasn't with me. He couldn't comfort me and convince me I had nothing to fear. And I was afraid. Somehow I'd opened a door of my own, and now I would have to live with what was on the other side.

Chapter 5

The next evening, once the shop closed, I followed my typical Saturday routine. I changed from my work clothes—a simple black midlength skirt and white blouse—into an mandarin orange sleeveless chemise, matching satin-heeled shoes, and opal earrings and necklace I'd designed. Ten minutes later I crossed the Pont du Carrousel to my great-grandmother's house. I would sleep there overnight, and we'd spend Sunday together before I went back to the store Monday morning. The normalcy of our time together would make me feel better, I was sure of it. Grand-mère discouraged exploration into the spiritual realm. My inner turmoil would calm, as it always did around her.

The sun hadn't yet set and an almost festive feeling blew in the breeze. Bertha hadn't dropped any bombs in two weeks, and a false sense of security was making all of Paris nearly giddy. As I strolled, I thought about how alone I was. I could have brought Grigori with me; he was always willing to accompany me to my great-­grandmother's. But I'd endured enough of his melancholy the night before.

My destination was located on a lane blocked off from rue des Saints-Pères by wide wooden double doors. One of a half dozen four-story mid-eighteenth-century stone houses, it shared a courtyard that backed up to rue du Dragon. Hidden clusters like this
were a common configuration in Paris, affording privacy within the bustling city. Usually the porte cochère was locked and one rang for the concierge, but on busy nights the heavy doors remained ajar and I didn't need to wait for service.

I stood on the stoop and lifted the hand-shaped bronze door knocker and then let it drop. All the noise emanating from inside muffled the sound. Dismayed but not surprised, I found Maison de la Lune more crowded than usual. In the salon, my great-grandmother entertained her visiting crop of soldiers with food and drink, music and conversation.

“I don't know how to turn any of them away,” she confided as she offered her cheek for me to kiss. “I hope you won't be too cross with me, Opaline, but I put two of them up in your bedroom and made up the daybed in my suite for you.”

Of course I was, even if I didn't show it. But I was never completely comfortable in this house anyway. It hardly mattered where I slept. The ancient maison was too old and there were too many secrets and too much history here. I always felt as if I'd just missed learning something about myself and my family that I needed to know. And the overflow of strangers—most of whom drank too much and enjoyed sex too loudly and took what I thought was advantage of my great-grandmother's largesse—made it feel even less like a home.

“You are cross with me. I see it in your face. Just like your mother, your anger pinches your eyes and, like me, flashes there.”

We were in the grand salon. The most opulent room, where my great-grandmother held court. The colors of the fabric wall coverings and carpets chosen to complement her coloring—dark red hair, peach skin, topaz eyes with fire opal highlights. The museum-quality furniture was ornate. The walls were crowded with paintings and the tabletops laden with treasures—all holding special significance for her.

I worried the visiting soldiers might be tempted to lift some of the objets d'art. It would be so easy. In between the windows stood
an almost full-size marble sculpture of Diana wearing her crescent-moon headpiece. The double string of gray pearls that hung around her neck was worth a fortune. My great-grandmother's favorite lover had put them there more than forty years before, and Grand-mère said she left them because they reminded her of him.

With just one gesture they could be off her neck and in someone's pocket. And the pearls weren't the only valuables to make off with. Enticing, curious oddities and fanciful amusements gleamed and shone from every corner.

A priceless collection of Japanese netsukes of men and women in erotic poses graced one table. Silver repoussé vases studded with onyx, turquoise, and amethyst and decorated with iridescent peacock feathers were tucked in corners. On the mantel were a half dozen birds' nests made from spun silver, each holding eggs carved out of precious stones. On the top of the grand Bösendorfer piano sat a collection of tiny enamel- and jewel-framed miniatures of women's eyes and breasts painted on ivory.

But my great-grandmother was too happy taking care of her
boys
to worry about losing a jade frog with ruby eyes or a salamander made of gold. She wasn't alone in her war efforts; she just offered more delights than most of the other
godmothers, or
marraines de guerre
, as they were known, women who wrote to soldiers at the front who had no family. Too many people had lost their homes because of the bombings and in the wake of the destruction had scattered and lost touch with their sons and brothers, fathers and husbands, at the front. The godmothers sent long letters and care packages and did wonders at keeping up the armed forces' morale.

Generously, my great-grandmother's letters to the boys always included an invitation to the Maison de la Lune when the soldiers came to Paris on leave. She opened the doors of her elaborate house, put them up, fed them, soothed them, and made sure there were lovely girls to offer them the kinds of entertainment they most craved.

The men fighting for France deserve nothing less than to be treated like the most wealthy industrialists and bankers who we have always catered to and lived off of, Grand-mère often told me. She thrived on what she did for the troops, and while I admired her for it, I hated being in the house with all the soldiers, all strangers, all trying to forget where they'd been and what they were required to go back to. Even if they bantered and joked, ate and drank and laughed and danced, I could see the suffering and fear in their eyes, the residue of the nightmares they'd lived. Their suffering overwhelmed me. I soaked it up like a sponge and became subdued, depressed, and haunted by it.

“They need your good cheer and smiles,” my great-grandmother would chide me. “Not your pity and tears.”

But I had nothing else to offer, so often, instead of dining with them in the overcrowded dining room, I asked for a tray to be brought to me in my grandmother's suite and went upstairs, past the haunting portraits of all the female descendants of the original sixteenth-century La Lune.

My great-grandmother's boudoir nestled in the far corner of the second floor. I opened the door and, for a moment, stood enthralled anew by its loveliness. Here too the fabrics and carpet were chosen to set off Grand-mère's red hair. But the murals captivated me the most. My father's friend, the celebrated artist Alphonse Mucha, had painted a pastiche of the four seasons covering the walls. In high Art Nouveau style, winter scenes segued into spring, then summer, and finally fall. Through each season, a woman wandered, a younger, stylized version of Grand-mère who could have been me with her long russet hair, almond fire opal eyes, and pale skin.

In the corner of the room, an ornate wrought iron staircase led up to my great-grandmother's private library. Beside the expected classics and volumes of exotic and provocative erotica, I'd been surprised to find shelves devoted to the occult as well as gothic and horror fiction. Ever trying to understand and come to terms with the storied
history of the house and our ancestors, she read everything, looking for clues and answers. Sharing her morbid fascination and equally curious, I'd made my way through Bram Stoker, Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe and Maurice Level and Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. I'd even stumbled on a book with my grandfather's ex libris plate pasted in the inside cover,
The Picture of Dorian Gray
. Seeing me reading it, my great-grandmother told me my mother had brought it with her when she'd first come to Paris.

While I ate my dinner, I read from a book of ghost stories by Edith Wharton. There was, for many of us, a great escape in reading about the fantastic and supernatural during wartime. Terrors more terrible than those we were living through gave us an outlet for our anxiety. Some found it strangely hopeful to read fiction suggesting there was more to our existence than what established religions suggested.

I fell asleep reading Wharton's
Tales of Men and Ghosts
. Some hours later, I woke up from a terrible dream. But it wasn't a dream. The sound of weeping was real. Lonely and anguished, these were the kind of tears that could only be shed in the darkest hour of the night. Could it be my great-grandmother? I looked over at her bed. No, she was quiet and calm. I should have known better. I'd never even seen her eyes fill. She'd told me once she'd used up her quota of tears when her son, my grandfather, died the year before I was born.

Tying my robe around my waist, I went out into the hall and followed the sound. When I reached the end of the corridor, it grew fainter. I retraced my steps. The hallway was dark and the house otherwise silent. Only the forlorn crying echoed. Concentrating, I tried to locate its direction. Was it coming from above? I climbed the steps to the third floor.

Yes, the sound was more pronounced. I walked down another long hallway, past rooms used by servants. At its end, in front of another staircase, I stopped to listen again. It seemed the weeping was still coming from above. Was that possible? Were soldiers sleeping even in the attic?

I followed the crying through a warren of storage rooms and a last ancient stone staircase leading to the bell tower, the one remaining structure from the sixteenth-century church that had once stood on this plot of land. This was where, in the late 1500s and early 1600s, my ancestor, the famous courtesan La Lune, entertained her paramours, including the king of France and the famous painter Cherubino Cellini, the man for whom she learned the dark arts in order to regain his love. After he died, she became a celebrated artist herself and lived, according to the family legend, into the 1700s while retaining the appearance of a forty-year-old woman.

As a little girl visiting, I'd been drawn to this very staircase. I would ask if I could go up and see the bell tower, but my great-grandmother insisted it wasn't safe. Too old and too fragile to hold the weight of a person.

“The steps are broken, and you could trip. Inside the tower is only scaffolding now,” she'd warned. “If you even tried to walk there, you would fall right through!”

My mother, overhearing this, would laugh.

“But what is funny, Maman?” I asked. “It sounds dangerous, no?”

“Your great-grandmother told me the same thing once upon a time. And I believed her too. But it's not true. You should see what is up there, it's part of your heritage.”

Over my great-grandmother's protestations, my mother took me up the last flight of steps. Yes, they were narrow and steep, but also sturdy and strong. My mother told me three hundred years of bell ringers had tramped up and down them and the tower they led to was constructed just as well.

At the top of the steps was a door carved with tiny bas-reliefs, each detailing an alchemical event and other amalgams of magick and religious symbols sprinkled through the rest of the house.

I tried the door, but it was locked. But when my mother put her hand on the knob, it opened for her. Inside was an artist's studio with marvelous murals of Cupid and Psyche on the wall. To an im
pressionable child their suggestiveness was titillating, but it was the book of spells, hidden in a concealed cabinet, that made the biggest impression on me.

“Why is it here if it's so valuable?” I asked my mother as she turned its old vellum pages.

“It's safer here than anywhere else. No one can enter this room except for a Daughter of La Lune,” she explained, telling me about the legend for the first time. But the way she told it frightened me, and I ran crying from the bell tower, down the steps, into the arms of my great-grandmother, who held me safe. Glaring at my mother, Grand-mère insisted the story wasn't true and that my mother was just indulging in make-believe.

That Saturday night, when I tried the door, it didn't open. I stood still, frustrated, listening to the sound of weeping coming from within. The soldier's plaintive cries sent chills through my body. I pulled my robe closer around me and leaned against the door.

“Can I help?” I called out softly, not wanting to disturb him, and at the same time feeling certain it was important I let him know someone was offering aid if he needed it.

There was no response.

Focusing, directing my energy the way I did when I read the talismans for my clients, I tried the knob. This time it turned, and with a single creak, I opened the door.

“Can I help?” I called out into the moonlit chamber.

No response.

I stepped over the threshold. Everything looked just as I remembered from when my mother had brought me here. The amazing murals, even when illuminated only by the lunar light, were still mesmerizing. The daybed, where I'd expected to find the soldier, was vacant, the silk coverlet and overstuffed pillows undisturbed.

The weeping ceased. The tower now was as quiet as it was empty. Confused, I stood in the middle of the chamber and waited. But why? I should go. There was nothing to discover here. Yet something kept me glued to the spot.

I'm not sure how many minutes I stood in the darkened tower, but it was long enough to become accustomed to the musty scent of a room untouched for years, to notice warps and bleached patches in the floorboards and crevices in each stone in the wall. As the moon progressed westward, lunar beams illuminated parts of the tower and I noticed a pattern on the southern wall that hadn't been visible before. By utilizing slightly darker and lighter rocks, some long-ago mason had designed a pentagram. At least as tall as me, the motif was totally invisible before the moonlight hit it at exactly the right angle. The path must have been calculated precisely.

Tracing the outline of the circle-enclosed star, I wondered what purpose it served. As I ran my hand over stones in the center of the star, I noticed they felt more uneven than those around them, with the rock dead center rougher still, prickly with points and clefts and crannies. My fingers found holds where they fit, almost as if the rock was sculpted to seem rough and natural but was anything but arbitrary. My curiosity aroused, I followed my intuition and pulled open what turned out to be a drawer.