The Fruit Thereof Dust

TW: mention of abuse, poisoning.

For the crown of our life as it closes

      Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust;

No thorns go as deep as a rose's,

      And love is more cruel than lust.

Time turns the old days to derision,

      Our loves into corpses or wives;

And marriage and death and division

      Make barren our lives.

– Algernon Charles Swinburne

Un

The rain beat a slow, irregular tempo against the windows of the Musée des Archives Nationales, tinting the late afternoon light a very Parisian grey.  Maria stifled a yawn and tried to stretch discreetly, reaching her arms across the splayed manuscripts in front of her.  The docent, ever watchful, cut his eyes at her, but before he could scold her again– les papiers, elles sont friable!  Sois prudent!-- Maria stood and signaled that she was finished.  The archive would be closing soon anyway, and she was starving.

Outside, Maria half-walked, half-ran to the metro station at Filles du Cavaire, her lack of umbrella (forgotten at the hotel) and her undignified gait marking her as clearly American to any Parisians who cared to look.  But the raindrops were fat and icy and overcame her desire to blend in.

She just caught the next departing train, shivering as the doors slid closed behind her.  The train was nearly full, workers heading home, and Maria found herself wedged between a tired-looking woman in her forties and a man of indeterminate age wearing a ridiculous bowler hat.  The man gave off a damp, tweedy heat that smelled of Gauloise cigarettes and lime cologne that Maria was surprised to find rather pleasant.

The Hotel Bastille was three stops south, so it wasn’t long before Maria was murmuring “excuse-moi” as she wormed her way to the platform.  She’d chosen the hotel for its proximity to the metro, and because it was cheaper by far than staying in the Marais.  Academia didn’t pay exorbitant wages, especially when your area of expertise happened to be the ethnography of merchant-class marriages in seventeenth-century France.

Back in her small but comfortable room, Maria stripped off her wet clothing and hopped into a hot shower.  The water pressure wasn’t great, but she stood until the steam fogged up the room and the water grew tepid.  She dried herself hurriedly and got into her flannel pajamas.  It was only five-thirty, but she was tired.  So tired from spending all day looking through merchant logs and a sea-captain’s correspondence with his wife in Rheims that she didn’t want to go back out again.  Her stomach growled loudly in protest, and she grabbed the half-baguette she’d been gnawing on for breakfast.  Even though she’d wrapped it tightly in paper and left it on her bedside table, it was already a bit stale.  

She ate it anyway, contemplating her life choices as she chewed.  She had spent the last of her mediocre savings on this trip, convinced that being able to research in person would be the catalyst for her to finally finish her dissertation.  Success had so far eluded her, over thirty-seven torturous months.  Maria thought her advisor secretly hated her.

Today’s efforts had yielded little; the sea captain’s letters were surprisingly affectionate in tone for the era, but were vague as to how his household was run in his absence.  One included a brief directive to sell four sheep, but no detail regarding why, to whom, or for how much.

The rest of the evening passed in a blur of Dix Pour Cent reruns and a half bottle of red wine.  It was unironically thinking about sheep that finally had Maria drifting off to sleep.  She dreamed of being lost at sea.

Deux

The next morning broke bright and cold.  Maria grabbed a new, still-warm baguette from the boulangerie Ble Sucre and slathered it with approximately a quarter pound of salted butter.  The taste was transcendent– I went to Paris to finish my dissertation and all I got was an extra ten pounds, Maria thought.  When she got to the archives, she wrapped the remaining third back up, brushed the acre of crumbs off of her shirt, and entered with grim determination.

Four hours later, she’d finished reviewing the last of the sea captain’s correspondence.  Her back was stiff from leaning over with a magnifying glass, working to parse out the spidery ink.  A different docent was working today, a pleasant older woman who smiled when Maria asked if she could keep her spot at the reading table if she went to grab a bite of lunch.

It was on her way to the elevator that something caught Maria’s eye.  A large tapestry hung on a west wall.  She’d seen it yesterday, but hadn’t paid much attention to the life-sized woman depicted there.  Now she took in the pale expanse of forehead, the faded grey eyes looking back at her with apparent amusement.  The woman was dressed simply, in a cream and ochre gown that appeared more like the garb of a merchant’s wife than a noblewoman.  That was odd, Maria thought– usually tapestries were commissioned by the wealthy.

Further inspection revealed that the woman held a stoppered vial.  Silver thread glinted inside the vial, portraying a clear and shimmering liquid caught in the glass.  The hand holding the vial sported a ring with a small oval, red-orange gemstone carved intaglio with a bird.  The detail was so finely wrought that without thinking, Maria reached out to touch it.

Realizing belatedly that she was pawing a priceless antique, she jerked her hand back– but not before she felt a smooth dome hidden underneath the fabric.  Despite the voice in her head telling her that this was a bad idea, Maria reached out again to touch the ring.  There was definitely something under it.  Something like...a button.

She pressed it, and felt the blood drain from her face as a near-silent mechanism caught and slid open behind the covering tapestry.  A quick glance around showed no one in the corridor.  A frisson of fear danced down her spine, but curiosity won out, and Maria slipped behind the tapestry.

Trois

It was pitch-dark, and Maria pulled out her phone.  After a brief fumble, she managed to get the flashlight on, revealing a short stone hallway that ended in a rightward turn.  In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought, and walked slowly down the hallway, her phone aloft.

The light showed a bare hallway coated with a thick layer of dust and a lacing of cobwebs at the corners.  Clearly, no one had been here in a very long time.  Maria’s inner voice started to nag that it would be best to go back, you aren’t supposed to be here, what if you get caught, they’ll kick you out, you’ll never finish your dissertation–

–she turned the corner, and her breath caught in her throat.

It was a tiny library.

Tucked into an arched alcove, a heavily carved ebony bookshelf stood.  Leather-bound books with crumbling edges filled all but the top shelf.  There, Maria saw a single book, bound in black, held pride of place.

Propping her phone up on the top shelf, she pulled an alcohol hand wipe from her purse and cleaned her hands.  There was no way of knowing yet just how old the books were, but the answer was surely “very”, and Maria didn’t want to take any chances with the oils on her fingers and the delicate pages.

Precautions taken, she turned her attention to the lone volume on the top shelf.  The binding was simple, with no inscribed title.  She opened it to the first page and peered at the faded ink.  A single sentence was there: Trouvez ici les moyens de la liberté.  Herein find the means to freedom.  Maria turned the page, and there was nothing.  Nothing on the next pages, either– the rest of the book was blank.

Her phone dimmed, and Maria remembered that the battery was low.  Not wanting to be stuck here in the dark, she made a quick decision and stashed the black book in her messenger bag and made her way back to the tapestry.

Again, no one was in the corridor when she peeked out, and once she stepped out, the door slid quietly shut behind her.  She returned to the main reading room and told the docent she’d changed her mind and would be leaving for the day.

Back at her hotel, all thoughts of lunch vanished, Maria stared at the book before her on the white bedspread.  It was a puzzle, to be sure.  The leather was precisely sewn and excellent quality; the book’s position on the shelf– accident, or highlight?  If so, why were the pages blank?  It wasn’t a journal, as far as she knew.  Most journals of the period were written on the seventeenth-century equivalent of a spiral notebook, with cheap paper and binding.

A thought occurred to her; did she dare?  Maria hopped up and went to her suitcase.  After rummaging around for a minute she found the lighter she used to light candles in her room and brought it over to the bed.

I will be careful.  Very, very careful, she thought,  Let’s just see if my hunch is right.

Maria flicked the lighter on, and held the second page of the book open over it, keeping the antique paper a good distance away from the dancing flame.  Sure enough, words began to appear.  She remembered learning that spies in the seventeenth century used the juice of artichokes to make invisible ink; this must have been what was used to fill the book.  Maria read with growing astonishment, translating the antiquated French as she went:

A recipe to leave your marriage

Take ye the following: four ounces of water.  Place into a lead pot.  Over a low flame, add ye one ounce of arsenic and the crushed leaves, stems, and flowers of two stems of belladonna.

Cover the pot and let it simmer for two hours.  Let cool, and strain the liquid through a fine cloth.

Be careful not to breathe the vapor.  It is best to have a window open.  

When you are ready, stir in one teaspoon into your husband's drink. There will be no smell or taste. This will make him sick, but will not kill him.  The next day, give him another teaspoon, and his condition will worsen.  He will be loose at the bowels, and vomit, and complain of a burning in his guts. On the third day, give him another teaspoon.  Finally, on the fourth day, give him the last teaspoon,  and he will die.  You may then assert with confidence that there should be an autopsy; they will find nothing.

This was not possible; she read it again.

Yes, it was.  This was the long-lost recipe for Aqua Tofana, the poison created by Giulia Tofana in seventeenth century Italy to help wives escape abusive marriages.  The poison was concealed as a cosmetic, and therefore went unnoticed on women’s dressing tables, noblewomen and commoners alike.  Although scholars knew the ingredients, the exact method had been lost.

At least, until now.  More surprising still– Maria knew that there had never been a confirmed record of the poison’s use outside of Italy; and yet, here was proof that it had been known in France.  Her brain was firing at ninety miles a minute.

A whole new view opened to her, of long-ago women exerting their power and agency in a world that tried to suppress it.  Yes, certainly, murder was wrong– but one could argue desperate times called for desperate measures.  The voices of the women, trapped, abused, ignored, yet surviving sang to her across the centuries.  Maria couldn’t wait to read everything in the secret library, and find out what else they had to say.  And then she couldn’t wait to write about it.

She would finish her dissertation after all.