Daughters of Babylon (13 page)

“Lupo, Lupo, wake up!”

“
La Cérida, axúdanos! Chingada
, what the fu—?” Even half asleep and disoriented, Lupo crossed himself and apologized to Mother.

“You’re waking up the household, possibly the village.”

He rolled onto his side and into the milk-sweet valley of Dely’s breasts. “
Mmmffwwh,
what was I saying? Mmm,
delicada, deliciosa
…”

Lightly, Dely slapped his groping hand and giggled with the girlishness that grew him like a corn stalk every time. She slid her hand across his cheek, dipping her thumb into his mouth—“The milk is not for you,” she chided, while taking hold of his manhood with her other hand. “You were hollering, crying out strange words…”

“Why would I holler? The dream was beautiful.”

“It didn’t sound like a happy dream.”

“Tell me the words.”

“I’ve never heard them, but they sounded like ‘cel,
chuk
, cel,
chuk
!’”

Lupo rolled onto his back to enjoy the gentle manipulation. And even as desire filled him, tears poured in hot rivulets down his cheeks and into the whorls of his ears. “There was a boy, just a lad, he was running and running, so proud one moment, happy, and then—” His voice broke. “I cannot scrub the image...I do not want to see this.”

“You shouldn’t have gone to the cave. You know these things happen.”

“This was different. The cave, the toloache, they sing of these lands, our lands, the tribulation and savagery of the soil beneath our own
huaraches
…but this was something else, Dely. An entire world cracked open and bleeding, every layer like the skins of a putrified onion. I don’t know how to peel back this world, I don’t know how to help.”

“What makes you think you’re supposed to?”

“I am nagual. For what other purpose am I here?”

Tiny squeaks and smackings of tongue and lip drifted from the hammock strung crosswise near their feet. Dely got out of bed and lifted the baby from his. Gently, she laid Ívano into his father’s arms. “It is time for me to make tortillas. Rest with your son, Lupo. He will soothe your nightmares.”

La Cérida, axúdanos!
Lupo Sanchez was fluent in six languages. Of this one, he could catch the drift: “Someone, help us!” That was all he knew.

The Crusade

If you could hear

the stillness

of the footsteps of my lover

when she comes

to me at night,

you’d draw your sword,

you’d plunder

for a glimpse

or for an echo.

—Arturo de Padrón of the Royal Order
of the Knights of St. James,
Year of Our Lord, 1152

Prieuré de Reine du Ciel,
Pyrenees, southern France
PRESENT DAY

Silvina leaned the single speed bike that she’d walked more than pedaled against a lamp post in front of a shop called LB & O. There were neon-coloured plastic lawn chairs stacked beside the door, and the sign on the window still read Louis-Bernard et Orsine in beautiful, flowing cursive, but
Bijouterie
on the stone façade had been painted over, replaced by
Quincaillerie
, hardware store, although the original letters still bled through.

Vivian, in her late sixties, had cycled to the village at least three times a week. Cerabornes was only a mile and a quarter from the house, not a steep ride but a continuous uphill at an already hefty elevation. Silvina held the lamp post and slowly raised one knee and then the other until her thigh muscles stopped seizing.

Small French cars were parked bumper to bumper on both sides of the narrow main street, but there were no more than a dozen people on the sidewalks. Most of the shops were three-storey stucco with graystone facades. A pair of oval-shaped older women in floral cotton dresses and handknit cardigans eyed Silvina keenly as they passed. One of them pulled her carrier bag closer, as if the foreigner might otherwise grab her carrots by their feathery green tops. A group of teenagers with multiple piercings and Koolaid-bright hair were gathered outside Chez Guillemette,
Salon de Beauté
, texting on handhelds. Silvie hadn’t thought to bring her BlackBerry. She wondered if the teens had cornered Cerabornes’s only hot spot.

A bell jingled above her head when she entered LB & O. A long, glass-fronted display counter ran along the left wall, and to her right, high rows of utilitarian metal shelves displayed nuts, bolts, washers, and nails. No one appeared in response to the bell. The plank floors worn to concave groaned beneath her feet. Inside the display case were thick leather gloves, hand-held tools that looked like portable vacuums, and shears with blades like butcher knives. There were posters with jaunty looking men in Australian drover hats that read, “
Ne vous fiez pas votre tonte des moutons à rien de moins que WhittierMD
.” Don’t trust your sheep shearing to anything less than Whittier.

A linen curtain in the back rippled, and a man stepped through. He regarded her a moment before greeting her in French, not Occitan, the dialect of the region. “
Bonjour, comment allez vous?
”

“
Bonjour, très bien, merci
.”

He went around to the back of the display case and, planting his hands wide apart in an inverted V on the counter, said, “How may I be of assistance?”

Back of the counter, retail etiquette from 1860, amazing! He looked to be about Silvie’s age, mid-to-late thirties, but the plaid flannel shirt and suspenders added twenty years to his appearance. No part of his slender body smiled.

“I’m here from Canada,” she continued in French, “and staying in the area awhile. I’ve been asked to pass along greetings from a friend to Louis-Bernard and his wife Orsine. Are they here, by any chance?”

“Louis-Bernard passed away over twenty years ago, and my grandmother, sadly, only last spring. I am their grandson, Olivier.”

“I’m sorry to hear of your loss. Please accept my condolences.”

“
Merci
.”

He picked up a rag and began to polish the glass top of the display case. Whether shy or rude, he did not seem inclined to chat, so she asked him when the jewelry store had converted to hardware.

“The early nineties. My parents ran the
bijouterie
. My family have been silversmiths and jewelers since the Second Crusade. I was learning the craft myself. But Cerabornes, we’re less than four hundred souls now, and with St. Jacques taking what little business we have, not to mention
l’Internet
…” He shrugged in the Gallic way.
This is how it goes.

“That must have been difficult. When my friend lived here, Cerabornes was enjoying something of a revival.”

“Aah,
oui
? What years were those?”

“Mid-seventies.”

His expression, though hardly chipper at the start, folded in on itself like a crumpled wrapper. He muttered something that seemed to go on and on.

“I’m sorry,” Silvie said, “my Occitan is dreadful.”

He rattled off a fusillade of idiomatic alternatives:
“Nid de la mare, le bunco, le flim-flam
…we have many names for
le cozenage
that destroyed the lives of many, including my grandparents.”

If Sylvie had brought her handheld, she’d be jockeying the teens for their wifi spot to ask Blythe why she’d not mentioned that their years of growing giant zucchini were a sore spot with the locals. “I didn’t know, I’m sorry.” She looked around for a packet of seeds, something she could buy, but the counter top was bare, and she had no need for sheep shears.

“So why are you here?” Olivier asked.

“I’m a friend of Vivian Lansdowne who lived at
Reine du Ciel
. I’m staying at her house and organizing her effects.”

At last, the fleeting passage of a smile. “Madame Lansdowne was
très gentile
. We talked often of ways to revive my family’s craft. I was sad to hear what happened.”

She waited for him to say more; he didn’t.

“Do people talk about how she died?” Silvie asked.

“Of course, they talk. We are a small town. Are you here to ask questions? We have told everything to the police.”

“I haven’t come to ask questions, but I was a friend of Vivian’s. I’m getting her house ready for new tenants. If there’s anyone who might be willing to talk to me, I’d appreciate your spreading the word.” She hadn’t mentioned staying at the house, but Silvie was already wondering if she’d said too much.

Olivier tossed the cleaning rag from one hand to the other. “People do not like to talk about
Reine de Ciel
, even though she has many secrets that would bring in tourists of a certain kind…as it did once before.”

“If tourists came again, would you want to resume silversmithing?”

“Very much.” He dropped the rag and examined his palms. “Madame Lansdowne told me I have a gift, and I should not be selling shovels and plastic rakes.”

“She told me the same thing once, long ago.” Silvina reached into her purse and brought out a business card. “I offer a course in Toulouse for people who’ve been diverted from their passions. We’re starting up again in the fall.”

“Full Spectrum Training. I don’t have money.”

“We offer sliding rates and scholarships.”

“
Merci
.” He tucked the card into his shirt pocket. “And this friend who knew my grandparents, what is her name?”

Silvina decided to skirt the question. Blythe Pendaris was a billionaire—“Blythe Pendaris, Billionairess” as certain tabloids had been known to taunt. Extreme success, when accompanied by wealth, tended to trouble people, especially those who nursed disappointment like hot house orchids. It was one of the reasons downsized and scandalized CEOs and other executives felt comfortable in her FST sessions alongside musicians, artists, and entrepreneurs. They suffered and felt loss like everyone else, but no one was telling them, “You’ve got millions. Why aren’t you on a beach somewhere?”

“She was someone who lived here when she was young, and who appreciated your grandparents’ kindness. I’ll pass her the sad news, and once again, my sympathies.” She walked to the door, thought a moment, and turned. “Olivier, I know I’ve missed lunch and I’m too early for dinner, but are there any restaurants or cafés in Cerabornes that might be open?”

“On Mondays? The only place would be
La Sorcière du Miel
, two doors down. She may not offer table service at this hour, but she keeps sandwiches and pastries on hand. Everything is organic and quite delicious.”

Silvina thanked him and walked to the store she’d passed when pedalling into the village.
La Sorcière du Miel
, that was the card in the gift basket, which, for all she knew, was left over from Viv’s funeral. The restaurant had no graystone frontage but was all stucco, painted a pretty shade of apricot. There’d been a couple sitting at the table in the bay window. She remembered because they’d been framed by lace curtains, and the man wore black and she, a blonde, was in some frothy shade, and they looked, with their heads inclined toward each other, like a painting by Renoir. And Silvie had felt an ache when she saw them, the kind of ache that 16-hour work days generally kept at bay.

It was 3:40 p.m., and the sign in the window read,
Ouvert
, but the door was firmly locked. She sidled over to the bay window where the couple had been sitting. Tea accoutrements were still on the table, but the people were gone and there was no sign of activity in the café. A feeling of lassitude like thick jellied drippings poured over her. She shouldn’t have waited this long to buy food. She walked Vivian’s bicycle to the grocery store where Claire-Elise’s parents, probably long gone too, had once helped a group of flower children sell the fruits of their labour. There seemed to be no point in asking the bored cashier or the lady with the worry lines who was slicing cheese, “Did you used to know…?” Silvie bought brie, eggs, butter, milk, fresh basil, mushrooms, and a baguette, and cycled home.

Phrygian Mountains
Anatolia, Asia Minor
DECEMBER, A.D. 1147

On the morning of the slaughter, three days shy of his seventeenth birthday, Arturo de Padrón awoke before dawn. He lay huddled in wool and sacking on the frozen ground and gazed up at a clear, bright sky of constellated star ships, heroes and guardian beasts. The belt of Orion, great hunter, still prone these winter months, hid behind snow-capped peaks. He watched shooting stars arc across the heavens like flame-tipped arrows, like sweat from a steed shaking off a hard ride.