Jacques raised his eyebrows, then nodded.
Esther pointed to the vial in her hand. “The recipe for the oils
were closely guarded by the priestly house of Avtinas but I discovered that the
Mishna
specifies the principal ingredients as kannabus, myrrh, balsam, Chinese cinnamon.” Esther pointed over her head. “I am a tool of Him whose name shall not escape my lips. We are all His vessels. As His instrument, I guide men through Jerusalem, a site sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims,” she said. “A purification, then. Shall we not seek the holiness of men and women?”
Esther did not wait for an answer. Taking one of the lit candles, she rose from the rug while Maimonides the parrot trilled a note and articulated several words.
“Is that Hebrew?” asked Jacques.
“My parrot speaks Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. And he’s an
extremely quick and able learner.”
“What? No Italian?”
“Not a word of that vulgar language,” Esther frowned. “And I
plainly forbid anyone to use Italian in my household. Need I be
clearer?”
Esther gestured to herself and her guests. “The four of us will
continue with our French.”
“As a Parisian, I agree with your sensible declaration,” smiled Dominique, who leaned toward the candles at the center of the rug, then glanced up at Jacques.
Jacques flapped his hand. “Positively no Italian.”
Tiptoeing toward the parrot, Esther took a piece of nearby fruit and placed it between her parted lips. She bent toward Maimonides, who flailed his wings several times before taking and swallowing it.
Crossing past Dominique to the small cook fire near her bed,
Esther
removed a burning ember and dropped it into the chute of the
mushroom-like ceramic. Carefully holding the vial, she poured its contents into a side hole of the ceramic. In a short while, smoke drifted from the ceramic stand.
This swirling smoke has an intriguing tang, yet I must be on my
guard.
Jacques took a peek at Dominique and Petrine situated on the matted rug, while Maimonides the parrot commenced a lilting
whistle.
Petrine waved at the bird and began to talk, but Esther placed her finger against her lips.
While thin smoke wisps lengthened and curled around the faces in the room, Jacques watched, amidst the cook fire, small bursts of flame leaping among the embers, sometimes orange, sometimes yellow, then blue and white and red.
Petrine, whose attention was fixed on the parrot, crawled toward
the bird. He was met at the foot of the table by Esther, who
supported the valet’s arm, then helped him to his feet. She sat him in the straw-backed chair before kneeling close to Maimonides—the diminutive bird maintaining a low and leisurely croon to which Esther added a trilling harmony, further sweetening the song.
The red-tail has prepared a lullaby
, thought Jacques,
for my Venetian
heart. His song echoes my homeland—the warm, sun-filled days, the
luscious, sensual nights
.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Jacques interlaced his fingers with Dominique’s while she lay down atop the strewn dried flowers.
On my life
,
I’ve never encountered such a feeling. My muscles repose, yet my mind, enervated, is alert to the moment.
Through the aromatic smoke, he saw the outline of Petrine, head bending forward to the table, then head in hands—his back heaving mightily. Esther stood and placed her fingers upon the servant’s head, stroking his hair slowly, steadily.
I know this pantomime
, thought Jacques, patting his own hair.
What each moment is to be before it happens.
Maimonides leered briefly and continued his song. The bird
pitched lower while Esther wrapped her arm about Petrine and led him toward the archway at the far wall, Petrine continuing his doleful sob. He and Esther disappeared behind the entry’s red drape while Maimonides weaved his small head in rhythm with his melody.
I’m in tune with the parrot’s whistle, like the pleasing of a lute
.
Jacques caressed the tender palm of Dominique, who stretched
before him in sensual innocence. Her hand had never revealed itself so willingly.
He felt the form and suppleness of each and every finger. He
coursed the paths that lined her hand.
Through the thin haze, Dominique raised herself to sit, then
leaned toward Jacques. “My lover, I sigh warm desire into your ear,” she
murmured. “And this gentle wish makes its presence known. In the service of the queen.” Dominique laid back, a curl of smoke swirling
round her.
“In the service of the queen,” mused Jacques as he studied her
green eyes, so much like emeralds
.
He smiled at Dominique, then
artfully lay down between her legs, the back of his head upon her stomach.
“Ahh,” she whispered.
“You are the sweetest of pillows, Fragoletta.”
Feeling the ebb and flow of her breathing Jacques paused to
consider
this essential of life—the breath. In and out it came and went, having a resolve of its own and yet always obeying the body wherein it
resided.
Jacques measured his breaths to coincide with Dominique’s. He
reached his hand above his head and placed it against her side,
feeling her ribs expand—ever in unison with her inhalations. The unhurried thumps of Dominique’s heartbeat seemed to inform Maimonides’ melody. All was in time with the inhalations and exhalations.
Hark, a concerto. Wondrous and strange
.
Jacques observed his thoughts encompassed in a colorful soap
bubble.
In the service of the queen
, he pondered.
This woman is the
queen. I serve her. And yet I breathe the same as the queen, I breathe with the queen. Maimonides breathes with the queen. Maimonides breathes and warbles and plays the lute.
Jacques lay rapt in awe at his fleecy soap bubbles and the myriad of thoughts they contained.
Dominique, Maimonides, and I—we are flesh and blood, yet breath and nothingness.
This is profound. This is paradox. This is absurdity!
Jacques’ fingers grazed Dominique’s ribcage. Her breath halted.
Her stomach stiffened—jostling Jacques’ head, bursting all the
colored soap bubbles. He laughed. And tickled her ribs.
She let out a hollow laugh. “No!”
“But tonight your quivering belly encourages me.” Jacques rolled over and with both hands pressed Dominique, touching and tickling. Struggling to escape, her shrill mirth increased the tempo of Maimonides’ tune.
Jacques’ eye caught the bird bobbing and weaving, now in time to Dominique’s gasps of laughter. He stopped his amusements and lay next to her face-to-face, too contented to move. They positioned their hands together. Their lips touched in a melting kiss. A simple hello from mouth to mouth.
They kissed again. Without passion but with desire. A desire to
connect, to be joined together, commingled. A desire to beget
sublimity,
tranquility, grace. A desire to discover a berth where two souls
might
greet in endless ethereal elopement. A desire for deliciousness to
dissolve expectation. For shared ecstasy to become eternal.
This lovers’ kiss—utter feeling
.
A kiss, an effortless kiss, becomes anew to me. I who claim pleasure as my game am now unfolded, unfettered. This is what we mortals seek. This especial kiss, this kiss of kisses. Oh, heavens. It’s this exalted kiss to which the world accords infinite compliment.
Now, beneath the caprices of seduction, I feel a weighty need: oh, let this be she. The she who takes me, connects me, fills me. Let her embrace be
the one to raise my hopes, keep me sure, stay my shame, renew our flesh,
release our dance, gift us time, ensure our glow. Let her caresses be those which prove the two of us endless
.
In an instant, Jacques’ lips left hers, and he invaded her eyes,
Dominique’s eyes.
Behold this helpless lamb
.
She who feels my secrets
.
He plunged toward the crook of her neck, her vulnerable neck,
and grunted his scalding breath on her flesh. He, stung to his
marrow
with a grim, cruel impulse, seized her suppleness with his sharp
teeth and prepared to consume her, to devour her.
As a fragile leaf yields to a potent wind, she offered herself up, freely, bravely.
His hot breath cooled. He loosened his bite. He knew:
in her
surrender, she becalms my vilest passion
.
Now frightened, Jacques nestled into Dominique’s side and
sensed
his heart reeling with questions long unasked, with answers never
dared.
***
A loud whistle broke the still morning air.
Jacques woke midsnore and wondered where he was. He pulled
his hands from between his knees and shaded his eyes from the
sliver of light spilling under the door. Rolling to his back, he looked up to find Esther the Israelite, tousled and towering, above him.
“Good morning,” Esther said.
A cold drip smacked Jacques squarely on the forehead. It fell from the fruit upon which Esther champed. She moved to the far side of the room.
Rousing himself, Jacques turned and saw Dominique behind him, sleeping on the mattress, hardly a wrinkle in her clothes or on her face. His arms felt shod in lead. He wondered at the things he’d experienced in the darkness of the long night.
“Pssst.”
Jacques turned toward Esther, who motioned him to table. He rose and, sweeping dried flowers from his shirt, approached. “As I don’t see Petrine, I suppose he, too, has been purified to exhaustion.”
Esther ignored the remark.
“You and the other two must gad about Jerusalem today,” said Esther in half voice. “Purchase the necessaries—small shovels and so forth—the things we discussed last night. Be prudent.”
“Yes.”
“You will meet me here at noon. We must spend the remainder of the day touring the city. I want us to be seen by the Ottoman authorities.” Esther slopped the last bit of fruit into her mouth and wiped her fingers. “Now, wake up your friends, take this veil for the woman, and haste you.” She tossed a bundle at Jacques and headed to the archway before squeezing past Petrine, who groped his way into the room.
“A pathetic entrance for a practiced actor,” laughed Jacques.
“You shame Thespis.”
“Water,” choked Petrine. “Some water.”
“The same, please.”
Soon the three were ready. Maimonides, preening and strutting, bid them adieu in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew just before they glided onto the ancient street into the early morning.
***
The white-hot sun stood at the top of the sky before Jacques
again knocked on Esther’s door.
Standing next to his master, the valet voiced his complaint.
“Esther the Israelite, I bake in this noonday heat.”
“Then you’ll be well cooked and ready to be eaten by supper,”
said the woman as she opened the door and invited her guests
inside.
“There is hardly a breath in all Jerusalem,” added Dominique, waving her hand in front of her face.
“And it will grow hotter,” Jacques said.
Esther spoke. “We’ll find cool comfort, especially in the Temple Mount.”
Esther dragged the trio through Jerusalem the entire afternoon, a
full tour, replete with rambling talk on local legends, politics,
philosophy, history.
The day proved trying, but at Esther’s, after a meager dinner, the real tour began. Jacques felt that his shrewd intelligence, coupled with Fragonard’s scroll, would unlock the secret of the stables and that a startling treasure would be his.
By midnight, the group was silently picking their way through
the rubble of the city’s east wall, using the sparse moonlight to
funnel
them to the mouth of the underground chamber, the Stables of Solomon.
Jacques patted his pockets to make certain his pistols were at hand. He felt for his dagger, glancing back every so often to make certain they had not been followed.
At the entrance, Esther handed them candles, then lit them. “We
can be reasonably confident of solitude from this spot on,” she
reassured
them. “At this late hour, no self-respecting Muslim would chance
meeting a demon here.”
“Demon?” asked Jacques.
“Yes, Muslims believe that evil jinn—demons—lurk among the dark pillars here.”
Jacques felt the hairs on his arm stand tall and straight. He
twisted
his head in each direction, then joined his companions hurrying
onward in the demidark.
A short time later, Esther lifted her candle overhead. The
adventurers mimicked their guide’s action.
Dominique gasped. “A forest of pillars. I’ve never seen such a huge place that’s so overwhelmingly brown.”
Esther chuckled. “Animals might have been tethered to these
eighty-eight pillars, which are divided into twelve rows.” Esther made her way around a massive column of stone. “Over the years, there have been numerous men who searched here. Dirt, rock, and the fetor of centuries are all anyone’s ever found. But perhaps you have unique wisdom or superior revelation.”
Jacques’ jaw clenched. “Perhaps.”
“A thousand years after Solomon,” Esther continued, “Herod built this grand vault to support the Temple esplanade that sits above us. What you see here below is mistakenly called Solomon’s Stables, but a Jewish monarch would never desecrate his Temple
above by stabling horses and camels so near. But then came a
contingent of
Christian
Crusaders who proceeded to use the chamber for just that. A stable. Those mangers over there,” she pointed, “belonged to the Templars. Twelfth century.”