The Book of Shadows (33 page)

I
HAD JUST
come home from a stay of some length at le Raincy, where I had painted a royal niece, some lesser princess, at full-length and to great profit. Awaiting me was a letter from Téotocchi.

Much time had passed since Venice, but still I thought longingly and often of my days there. Knowing my nature had changed my life little. I was as I'd always been, more or less, except now there was a word—
witch
—to explain the distance between myself and others. I found myself, for better or worse, defined. Still, I was not to be seen late at night in my studio toiling over a brass cauldron, slicing the hearts of hummingbirds or plucking the eyes from newts. I cast few spells. It's true: there'd been bouts of unbidden clairvoyance now and again, but nothing to speak of. As for my “talents,” I had come to appreciate only those that applied to my art, and since returning to Paris, my output had been prodigious—this despite a quite active social calendar.

How thrilling—Téotocchi was coming to Paris. Her three-line letter said little else.

Within the week I received two more packages from Téotocchi. The first—too wicked—was a long letter all in cipher. The second package contained a popular novel of the seventies,
Paul et Virginie,
and the cipher's code. The letter was little more than a listing of numbers corresponding first to pages in the novel, then lines, and finally words. Distilling sense from Téotocchi's letter took me whole days. Word by word, filling with guesswork what gaps existed. Only when I read the letter entire did I stop cursing my sister, for I understood why she'd gone to such lengths to conceal its contents.

The letter contained the names and addresses of eleven witches. I was to write to them all, using the same cipher, summoning them to my home.

According to Téotocchi's letter, a new witch must, within the first few years of discovering her nature, host her Soror Mystica, her first sister and discoverer, as well as eleven other witches loosely affiliated by geography, interest, or affection. The new witch summons these sisters, hosting them for a period not to exceed one and one-half days.

Téotocchi wrote that the eleven sisters—with addresses ranging from Paris to Angers to Brest, from the Auvergne to the Cambrésis, Corsica, Naples—would all have a copy of
Paul et Virginie
. I need only write a brief letter of introduction; in it I should state that Téotocchi was my Soror Mystica. I was then to copy the letter into cipher eleven times. Finally, my original, unciphered letter burned, I was to post my invitations and plan my party. No, no, no—let me say here that Téotocchi never referred to this esbat as a “party”; all she said in her letter was that its purpose was threefold: to thank my Soror Mystica, to meet the witches of my coven, and most important, to learn. It was I who thought it would be a party…. It was not.

Téotocchi had set the date for the esbat in her letter. Samhain, or All Hallow's Eve. The 31st of October. The year: 1788.

When finally I'd deciphered Téotocchi's letter, and composed, copied, and posted eleven of my own, it was already mid-September. I'd little more than a month! And I was determined that this would be the esbat to end all esbats! (I was a
fool
indeed.). I wanted my
party
to be as grand as any Parisian soirée, as any storied sabbat of the Burning Days.

Plans had to be made, immediately. Of course, I could not confide in my corps of servants. So what to do? I had hosted heads of state, kings and queens, artists of the first order, but surely
other
rules applied when one opened one's doors to a coven. A coven. I'd only ever met Téotocchi; and here I was, set to meet eleven other witches.

Weeks passed; still I had no plan. Finally, I woke one night in early October to find my blue silk sheets slick with perspiration. I sent for Narcise, a friend, a fixture at the finest suppers, something of a mascot to the Elite.

Narcise, of course, came without question. Darling, dark, diminutive Narcise…

Long ago, a traveler returning from Africa, desperately currying favor with the Dutch Queen, presented that lady with a black child, snatched off a Senegalese beach as though he were a shell. This child was Narcise's grandfather. As a child, and later as a man, he moved from court to court with the Queen, unequal to the royals but superior in station to everyone else. His only duty was to delight the Queen. He was taught to read, and he read well; he became the Royal
Lecteur,
renowned for his strangeness and grace as well as the deep, deep voice that belied his stature. (The Queen, it was said, had her stunted man stand beside her at state ceremonies so that she might rest a jeweled hand on his turbaned head.) Narcise's grandfather lived and died at the Dutch Court, conferring upon his heirs a strange cachet, one that faded within years of that man's death. If there were bequeathed a title or a royal pension, Narcise—who'd long ago left the Dutch—knew nothing of it.

Narcise was a poet by vocation, or so he would say. In truth, he read much and wrote little. He scratched out short, insipid sketches of his lovers. Dependent on the kindness of a bevy of mistresses, he was a flatterer
par excellence;
with no money of his own, he managed to live quite well. Quite well, indeed. His carriage was noble, his name was known, and his favors—favors of
all
sorts—were widely sought.

“Surely,
mon vieux,
” said I when he arrived in a bit of a huff, “this is not the first time you've been summoned to someone's parlor in the middle of the night?”

“Indeed not; but it has always been for a far better reason than hostess anxiety.” Narcise then produced two bottles of esteemed red wine, gotten, he said, from the cellars of Madame de X——; and he took from the pocket of his waistcoat his own corkscrew. “My dear,” said he, “there are tools a society man must carry in addition to his own,” and with that he pulled both corks. “But now tell me,
what
in the name of Christ on Calvary has you so troubled?”

That night, as I told Narcise all I could of my predicament, he stood to pace the floor. He hummed, scratched at his stubbled chin, mopped his furrowed brow with a pink silk kerchief. He
exerted
himself, all for my benefit. Finally, removing his waistcoat and tossing it across the foot of my bed, where the green and gold brocade shone in the firelight like the scaled skin of a fish, he asked why this particular soirée had me so upset; I'd hosted scores of such suppers. I lied, saying that I worried like this before each supper, that
each
of my suppers had to be perfect (as indeed they were) and he let the topic fall, taking a seat and turning instead to the guest list. I batted the topic away with a wave. “Every hostess,” said I, “knows the list to be secondary to the theme,
mon petit homme
.”

That long night my friend and I considered and dismissed one idea after another. Finally, I despaired.

It was well past midnight—yes, the hour was small, perhaps two or three—when Narcise and I decamped to the plush plane of a golden-blond divan, for my bed was ridden with the debris of our late-night snack—apple cores, rinds of cheese, a small Chinese bowl half-f of pits sucked from grapes and black olives. And, of course, the two empty bottles of wine.

A perfectly pale and opalescent moon slid from behind a bank of clouds, its light overtaking that of my candelabrum and my fireplace. “Sleep,” I said. “I need sleep.” I reclined, sank into a bank of pillows. “Recite something, anything. Lull me with one of your poems.” For that I received a pinch.

Narcise took from his pocket a copy of “Anacharsis,” and, though I was half-asleep already, when my friend got to the part in the poem wherein a Greek supper is described—specifically, that part which touches upon the preparation of sauces—I bolted up to exclaim,
“Voilà! C'est ça!”

“Woman,” asked a startled Narcise, “what's gotten into you?”

“Go on!” I commanded. “Read!”

And read he did, not knowing what possessed me. I took up paper, pen, and ink from my nightstand and scribbled away. “Again,” I would say, when he'd read all the way through a certain passage. “Repeat it, please!” And he would. A perfect angel, so compliant! I am sure he thought I'd lost my mind, for it was some time before I calmed enough to explain my plan, which was, of course, to host the esbat as a Greek supper.

Inside of an hour the details were done.

I wondered, would my sisters take to the idea of an Athenian evening, a Hellenistic honoring of our sororal alliance? Suddenly nothing less grand would do. What a
show
I'd make of it!

In the days following this inspiration, I combed countless markets and finally found thirteen suitably simple chairs, which I arranged seven versus six at the table. Behind the chairs I set up tall screens, and looped white cloth at intervals (you've seen the same in Poussin's pictures). I fashioned thirteen wreaths of laurel. A neighbor, the Comte de P——, had a superb collection of Etruscan pottery; I persuaded him to loan me drinking cups and vases, which I arranged on my long mahogany table. A hanging lamp lit the scene.

I cleared my kitchen to practice my sauces in private. And perfection they were—one for fowl, one for fish, and the most exquisite for the eels my fishmonger swore he could secure.

For music, I converted an old guitar into a gilded lyre. It was Narcise who suggested Gluck's “The God of Pathos.” (But who would play it? On any other evening, I'd have had a stable of fine musicians to choose from.) Narcise was my partner in planning the party, and this of course posed a problem: I knew all the while that he could not attend.

On 29 October, I summoned my friend. “Darling,” I lied, clasping him to my bosom, “something has come up, something I should have anticipated but did not. You must help me! You
must
!” I told him that some months back I'd executed a commission from a Mrs. Jameson W——of London. I had completed the portrait and then I'd simply forgotten to arrange for its delivery. “Now it seems her newly refurbished London home is ready for guests, and a party had been planned to unveil the portrait! The lady”—allied by secret affections, said I, to the Prince of Wales—“has been most patient, but if the portrait is not hanging in her home by the first of November I will be ruined! Finished forever among the English elite!” I then produced a tightly rolled, sealed canvas (it was, in fact, a throw-away study of Skavronsky) and begged,
begged,
Narcise to deliver it for me.

Narcise left the next day for London. I gave him money enough to keep him across the Channel a month or more. I'd already written an agent in London, one whom I'd used in the past, telling him that my man would be arriving from Paris on the thirtieth with a portrait which, for reasons I could not detail,
had
to be secreted out of France. I asked would he hold it for me; as far as I know he's holding it still, these long years later. All in all, it was a costly and distracting scheme.

Finally, the last day of October arrived. All was in readiness. I finished the cooking and laid the table myself. I'd dismissed my staff with a week's wages, telling them that I was readying to paint a large group portrait (“The First Supper,” I called it) and had no need of their help.

As the hour approached, I decanted the bottles of Cypress wine I'd bought at considerable expense. I baked honey-flavored cakes crowded with Corinthian raisins. I saw to the details of the table, set with my finest china and crystal. I lit the beeswax tapers. I dressed. And I was nearly sick to my stomach. To see my beloved Téotocchi again! To meet the other sisters, from whom I would learn—
finally!
—so much…. Yes, after this night my life would never be the same.

As my mantel clock struck the appointed hour, there came a knock at the door. I answered in my mock-Athenian garb, laurel wreath in place atop my piled hair, and immediately I felt the fool. Téotocchi looked me over, head to toe: one eyebrow arched, a slow smile slid onto her lips. Finally, flatly, she said, “Oh my…” and simply slipped past me into my home.

I was stunned to see Nicolo at her side: I'd thought these esbats were the strict province of women, and to Téotocchi I managed to say as much.

“Ah, him,” said she, shoving my beautiful friend forward, “he is here to…to fill a void.” Nicolo—and he was somehow different from the boy I'd known in Venice—hid behind his mistress, showed little more than one black-suited leg and a tall riding boot, mud-splattered. He would not meet my gaze; he turned from me, shyly, as I moved to embrace him. I stopped.

“Surely,” said I, “having shared what we shared, shyness seems hardly appropriate to—”

Only then did he raise his face to mine, and I saw that it was not shyness but shame that worked within him. At first, I did not notice, for I did not look
at
his eyes but into them, searching for the smile I'd always found there. But when Téotocchi stepped aside, and the light in the foyer shifted just so, I saw that Nicolo's eyes had turned the color of perfect, palest topaz. These were irises unknown to the human spectrum.

“Mais non!”
I rather indelicately exclaimed—I was shocked, not repulsed; the color seemed only to set his darkly beautiful features in greater relief. Finally I managed to ask, “Whatever has happened to your—”

“Go outside,” commanded Téotocchi to the boy, who proceeded to do just that; here was mindless obeisance the likes of which I'd not seen from him in Venice. “Prepare yourself for the Maiden,” said Téotocchi, further. Nicolo nodded: even he, it seemed, knew more about what would transpire that night than I.

With the boy outside—we watched as he removed his short-waisted jacket, rolled his blousy cuffs, and launched into calisthenics with Spartan ardor—I asked of my Mystic Sister, “What have you done to him?” Was I angered? Protective, perhaps, for I continued to consider Nico a boy, though he was but a few years younger than I.