The Fortune Teller(52)

“He’s as old and weathered as a tree!”

“He is a musician,” her mother reminded her. “A good one.”

“He’s ancient!” Aishe began to sob. She could not believe her parents would marry her off to him.

“Milosh Badi will die soon and you will be a widow,” her mother said in her pragmatic way. “Your father has willed it so.”

“He is punishing me for the books.”

“You are never to speak of them or I will disown you myself!” her mother hissed. Then she left.

Aishe curled up on her blanket and felt her grandmother’s frail hand stroke her hair. Simza began to sing the same song again. Aishe closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, but her mind was full of wild thoughts. She must leave. She had to. Like the girl in the song, she would run away and start anew.

Simza was right. Aishe did know the song. She had known it all her life.

*

While everyone slept, Aishe gathered her things with the stealth of a thief. She moved to the edge of the tent and saw that her grandmother was watching her.

Simza sat up with the eeriness of a phantom. Aishe froze, not knowing what to do. Simza had the power to decide her fate. If her grandmother woke her father, no one would be able to spare Aishe from his retribution.

The two women locked eyes. Simza’s held the full weight of the cohalyi that she was. She picked up an object in the darkness and offered it to Aishe.

Through the faint streams of moonlight, Aishe saw that her grandmother was holding out Dinka’s chest.

Aishe took the gift. Then Simza draped two amulets around her neck and placed her favorite seashell in Aishe’s hand as a blessing. She motioned Aishe toward the wagon’s open door with a look that said, Go and live. I will always be with you.





The Hanged Man

Semele knew exactly the year that Simza had described in Dinka’s story. The plague had hit Northern Italy in 1629 and wiped out half of Milan’s population by 1630. Somehow Ionna had foretold those events over a thousand years before. It was just too incredible.

Semele closed her computer. She had been in the Beinecke reading room for hours and her eyes needed a rest. The day was winding down and she couldn’t put off calling her mother any longer. She gathered her things and left the building.

The brisk air hit her when she stepped outside. She buttoned her coat and walked over to Blue State Coffee to get an espresso. Depending on how fast she worked, she might be able to translate several more pages before heading to her mother’s. She wanted to find out what happened to Aishe and the cards.

She knew with striking certainty she needed to figure out how to locate them, and quickly, and she realized there was one person she could call: Sebastian Abbes, a card historian in the Netherlands. She had worked with him earlier in the year while dismantling a collection for a Dutch client who had several valuable decks. If anyone knew about Ionna’s deck, he would.

She checked her watch and quickly calculated the time difference. The Netherlands was six hours ahead. It was evening there now, but Sebastian wouldn’t mind. The man was a night owl and crazy to boot.

She fished her cell phone from her purse and saw she had four missed calls and three voice mails from Bren. She stared at the phone with a sinking heart, unable to listen to the messages and call him back—not yet, not when she didn’t know how to say what needed to be said. It felt like swimming upstream. Instead she sent him a text: At Mom’s dealing with some things. Will call you when I get back. She clicked send, feeling like a jerk, but she had to focus.

She forced Bren from her mind and called Sebastian. He answered on the second ring. “Madame Cavnow! Please tell me you are in Amsterdam.”

Even in her dismal state, Semele couldn’t help laughing. Sebastian was a terrible flirt and had asked her out on more than one occasion. “No, still in the States. Listen, I need to ask a favor for one of my clients. They’re interested in acquiring an antique tarot deck, fifteenth century or earlier. Have there been any finds?”

“We’ve had some exciting sixteenth-century finds, but not many cards older than that have survived.”

“I was curious…” She hesitated. “Where did tarot cards originate? Was it Egypt?”

Sebastian laughed so heartily, she felt embarrassed. “Semele. Don’t tell me you’ve been reading French Enlightenment manuscripts. No, the Egyptian notion is a complete myth,” he assured her. “A whimsical idea someone dreamed up in a Parisian salon.”

“Oh.” What else could she say? I’m reading an ancient seer’s memoir and I’ll get back to you?

“Playing cards came from the East and exploded on the scene in Europe during the 1400s. Think of them as the video games of the time. People were obsessed. The priests were up in arms.”

Sebastian was always animated whenever he talked about his favorite subject. Semele sipped her coffee while she listened.

“Cards went from being incredibly expensive works of art to being mass-produced on paper. Games usually involved gambling, which is why the church set laws, tried to ban them, burn them. It’s where the idea that cards were evil came from. No one wanted to do anything but play.”

“But where did the tarot come from?” Semele returned to her original question, the one he hadn’t answered. “Who was the first to make them?”