Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [173]
‘Not to my knowledge,’ said Philippa thinly.
‘I am glad to hear it. You have a somewhat ready tongue. If there is any doubt in the matter, you may turn right when you leave the building and confess yourself in the Chapel of Saint-Marie-Egyptienne. Many do.’
Above her head, the winter light waned from the skylight. Snow. Philippa wondered what Célie was doing. The reeking pan, vaporous blue, hardly illuminated the floor sufficiently to let the elderly doctor trace his marks on his knees. The black hat travelled over the floor, and the plump hand with the chalk.
Philippa said, ‘Would you like me to light you some candles?’ and proceeded to ignite a spill and carry it round before he could stop her. A half skull, resting on the top of a cupboard, looked back at her in alarm and created a reaction of such amused irritation that she remembered her cold and paused to deal with a resurgence. She did not therefore hear Master Nostradamus return and was suitably shocked when he reappeared, white as a Turkish headstone in the flickering gloom, booted, turbanned and robed in chaste folds of unblemished linen.
He made her kneel on the ground by the brazier while, cross-legged on the tripod, he stared at the bowl and the key hanging over it. He had put saffron this time on the charcoal. Through eyewatering fumes, she could catch parts of the Invocation. He had a strong Provence accent.
‘Venez, Anäel: venez, et que ce soit votre bon plaisir d’être en moi par votre volonté, au nom du Père Tout-Puissant, au nom de Fils très sage, au nom du Saint Ésprit très aimable. Venez, Anäel, par la vertu de l’immortel Elohim. Venez, Anäel, par le bras du tout-puissant Mittatron. Venez à moi, Nostradamus, et commandez à vos sujets qu’avec amour, joie et paix, ils fassent voir à mes yeux les choses qui me sont cachées. Amen.’
The silence tightened. For one trembling moment, Philippa could not tell whether he was going to intone a psalm or burst out naked and dance like the three crazy daughters of Proetus. He looked up and glared sharply at her and she gazed back, stunned, with glazed features. Then he took a sprig of green stuff like verbena and with it, touched the long silken thread.
The key trembled, stirred, and then shaking itself, began, uncertainly, to drift over its twin in the lissom dark skin of the water. The little clang of the rim when it homed made Philippa’s downy skin start like a hedgehog.
‘P,’ said Nostradamus, in a flat voice.
The key swung spelling for fifteen minutes, and produced the same sequence of six letters twice. It was not, as such experiments go, quite without fault, but since in no Mappamundi could they find any village called PLARIS, there seemed no ultimate doubt of its message.
‘Marvellous,’ said Philippa at last, who was feeling cold and extremely tired and wanted to rise from her knees. ‘That is, there is a population of five hundred thousand. Do we take the key round them all?’
Which was frivolous, for of course, one simply made the Invocation again, and then asked the key to spell out the street name.
This time, unfortunately, it spelt out CLERASI.
‘There isn’t any such street,’ Philippa finally said, lifting her aching head from the map he had produced and spread out for her. ‘I’ve made a list of the C’s. The Quai des Célestins? The Châtelet? The rue Calandre, the rue du Centier, the rue sans Clef, the rue Chassemidi … de la Chaise … des Trois Chandelliers … du Cigne … Clopin … Cocqueron.… Hopeless. The nearest is Clopin, and surely even an imbecile like Anäel couldn’t turn that into Clerasi? Let’s try again.’
Master Nostradamus was remarkably amenable. They tried again, and got the same answer. ‘It doesn’t even sound French,’ Philippa said; then lifted her nose of a sudden out of her handkerchief. ‘It isn’t French.