All That Glitters. Martine Desjardins
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eyebrows arched, and in the blink of an eye her smile vanished.
“Surgeons, surgeons. Were you at Armentières, Dulac? The sector was supposedly quiet, the men were meant only to be on a reconnaissance mission, yet they returned with wounds larger than your hand. The surgeons had never seen anything like it. They had no idea where to start stitching.”
“You believe your method would have produced better results?”
“To close a gaping wound? Hardly. But I believe I have discovered another method for mending human flesh.”
On her way through Angers, Nell had stopped off to visit the cathedral. It was Ash Wednesday, and for the occasion the great tapestry of the Angels of the Apocalypse was on display—an immense wall-hanging made of seventy woven panels, three hundred and thirty feet long. Nell had been transfixed by the tableau representing the Lord enthroned before seven gold candelabra; a sword protruded from his mouth, and his left hand bore the mark of seven red stars. What had most astonished her was the way the master weavers had so faithfully reproduced the skin of the characters therein depicted, with its delicate shades, its shadows and highlights. Could this effect not be related to the extraordinary resemblance between human flesh and the texture of this particular tapestry? Were one to apply the same technique to sutures, would it not be possible not only to close wounds, but to reconstitute torn tissue? For endless hours, Nell had attempted to grasp how threads of different colours had been overlayed—for naught, for as she finally understood, the key to the mystery was to be found on the back of the tapestry.
“Did you turn it over, then?”
“I waited until the cathedral was empty. When I was certain no one was watching, I stepped up to the tapestry. Just as I was about to lift one corner, a feeling of dread welled up in me. I felt as if I was committing a sacrilege, and that my fingers were burning. I fled from the cathedral as fast as I could.”
I’d begun my second glass. As vacuum thrives on vacuum, absinthe thrives on absinthe. I observed Nell through the mourning band of my swollen eyelids. She was absent-mindedly fingering a cube of sugar. On her left hand, the embroidered feather had given way to a satiny scar that traced a paraph on her skin. I found myself wondering if it would be pleasing to the touch.
“Well, if I were standing before a treasure, I wouldn’t hesitate to touch it. Sacrilege or no.”
“Oh, you … You have nothing to lose, since your soul is already damned. And in any event, you will find nothing precious here.”
“Put no store in appearances. Behind these walls, beneath these trees, a fortune may be slumbering.”
That was where I should have let matters lie. But the absinthe had loosened my tongue, and I could not stop myself from saying aloud what I should have kept to myself.
“Everyone knows that wherever the Templars went, they left buried treasure behind them.”
I blurted it all out: in this very place, in Cæstre, the Order of the Temple had once established a bank, where pilgrims departing for the Holy Land could deposit their precious effects. When the knightly monks were accused of heresy in 1307, the King’s commissioners had sought to confiscate their treasury. They found the vault and its coffers empty. Yet only the previous day, their servants had seen chests overflowing with piles of gold marks.
“Despite the years of searching, those riches were never found. They have not evaporated. They must still be here, in the vicinity, somewhere deep beneath the earth. I intend to find them.”
As she listened, Nell removed one of the pins that held her coif in place and begun embossing dots on her sugar cube. She was transforming it into a die. This girl was nothing if not consistent, and that was not the least of her charms.
“That’s all well and good! But just how do you propose to go about it?”
“My method cannot fail. I shall proceed haphazardly, and whatever chance throws across my path I shall consider as the clues I need to discover where the treasure is hidden.”
“You call that a method? You are leaving everything to chance.”
“What of it?”
I snatched the sugar-cube die from her hands and cast it. Naturally, it came up six. Nell brought her face closer to mine; I could feel her gaze turning in mine like a key in a keyhole.
“I shall find out your secret.”
“I do not use loaded dice, as you can see. And in any case, cheating requires the kind of dexterity I do not possess.”
“Then you must have a good-luck charm.”
Once again I threw the die. Again it came up six.
“Nothing in my hands, nothing in my pockets. I’ve already told you, I’m not superstitious.”
“But you do have your little rituals.”
She put on the airs of an innocent girl, which promptly aroused my suspicions.
“Don’t deny it, Duluck. I’ve been watching you. You begin by hefting the dice, you toss them in your hand, you stroke them as you roll them between your fingers. Then you shake them, but not in haste. You let them slide down into the deepest part of your palm. The wrist gradually accelerates the to-and-fro movement, until it is shaking them frenetically. Only when you’ve excited chance to a fever pitch do they shoot forth. For you, gambling is what I would call, in polite terms, a solitary pleasure.”
When I heard that, I all but choked, and as I did, snuffed absinthe into my nose.
“How can you possibly mouth such improprieties without blushing?”
“One can allow oneself intimacy with an adversary.”
“Since we have become so intimate, allow me to escort you to your quarters.”
“You could never travel the distance on foot.”
“Is it far?”
“A bit outside Cæstre.”
“Let us go.”
The road was a long one. Nell kept stopping to gather plants for her tinctures, each of which she identified for my benefit. There was woad, which contains the same colouring substance as indigo; coltsfoot, which produces a tender, green sap; weld, a member of the acacia family, which the locals call “dyer’s rocket”; garancine, whose bright red root was long used to dye infantry uniforms, and which stains the sheep who crop it right to the bone. Set a woman loose in a flowering meadow, and she will squander your entire afternoon.
Finally, we reached a near-abandoned hamlet. The nursing sisters’ quarters, Nell informed me, were just beyond.
“They’ve billeted us in a place called Rouge-Croix. A strange coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
Indeed, I mused as I returned to camp. A very strange coincidence.
X
HE WHO WOULD SEEK to formulate a scientific theory of chance would do well to admit, as a first postulate, that coincidences may be predicted, and that they never occur singly.
So it was that the “red cross” whose name this tiny hamlet bore stood not only as the symbol adopted by all humanitarian societies since the adoption of the first Geneva Convention in 1864. All good Catholics know it is emblazoned on the shield of Saint George, patron of soldiers, and on the banner of Saint Ursula, protectress of textile workers. One legend holds that the Merovingian kings, from Clovis to Childeric, were born with a birthmark in the shape of a cross on their left shoulder. The distinctive mark may have been transmitted to their most illustrious descendant, Godefroy de Bouillon, the great hero of the First Crusade. Pilgrims, crusaders and the Hospitallers of Saint John—all adopted the red cross as a distinguishing mark, but none wore it quite so fervently as the Knights Templar. The Templar cross-crosslets were sewn upon their white cloaks, their tunics, their coats of arms, and were embroidered upon their every undergarment.