The Cloisters(52)

He pointed up at the screen behind him.

“Tarot card?”

An expectant hush had settled over the audience. Diebold shook his head.

“Alas, I found no such record of a tarot reading in the municipal archives that summer. Nothing in the surrounding towns, either. But then I returned to my trusty Latin dictionary and began to trace the roots of the word oraculum. It turns out it comes from orare, which means to pray or beseech. And I went back to the line in the arrest record, the one that I thought might indicate the Duchess of Ferrara had an oracle, and I realized it could also be read as someone outside of the court overhearing, or being told about, the duchess’s prayers. And it was then that I realized how thin the line is that separates what we know as fate and what we think of as choice—just an interpretation, really. Nothing more.”

Herb Diebold went on for the next thirty minutes, explaining that even if they weren’t used for divination, it was time art historians gave the iconography of tarot cards their due. He compared cards from the fifteenth century to examples of Roman and Greek statues, to frescos and mosaics in Ravenna. When he finished to applause, and the lights in the room came up, Rachel and I simply looked at each other, long enough that people in the neighboring seats began to brush up against our knees, asking us to move out of the way.

We lilted back up the stairs to the atrium but were split up by the crowds and spun into separate orbits. The planned coffee break had tea sandwiches and macarons, but I wasn’t hungry. I wanted to hold the card in my hand, to know, tactilely, just how wrong Herb Diebold had been. That not only did the duchess have an oraculum, not only had she passed it down to her daughter, but that we had found it; the deck of tarot cards was her oraculum.

Laure came up alongside me and said, “Do you want to go outside and have a cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“You can enjoy the fresh air then.”

“Actually,” I said, looking around to where Patrick and Diebold were standing together near the stairs, Patrick gesturing forcefully, frantically, while Diebold rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, “I’d love some air.”

We walked down a set of stairs that led to Madison Avenue, where the maples planted in front of the Morgan were heavy with waxy green leaves, the day having grown so hot that even the breeze from passing cars was a relief. As at all academic symposiums, there were several dozen people outside smoking. Laure took a pack of cloves from her bag and tapped one out. Even unlit, their sticky sweet scent was cloying in the heat.

“Okay,” she said, fixing her gaze on me, “how do you know Rachel Mondray?”

I was hoping that we would catch up or even chat about what happened with my applications, have a minute of commiseration about the heat—I did not expect her to talk about Rachel. She hadn’t even acknowledged her in the lecture hall.

“I work with her at The Cloisters.”

“Just the two of you?”

“And Patrick.”

“Mmm.” Laure cupped her hand in front of her face and deftly lit her cigarette. “How long have you been working together?”

“Since June.”

She took a drag and then let her arm drop to her side. The other arm folded under her breasts; she looked like a figure in a Balthus painting, wan and very thin.

“And what has happened? I mean, what has happened at The Cloisters since you started working with her?”

“Nothing. We just work. How do you know her?”

In a previous life, I would have confided everything in Laure. I would have told her about the card. About moving into Rachel’s apartment. About Ketch Antiques and the late nights at The Cloisters. About how uncanny it was to work among aging skeletons and people who believed in the persistence of the occult. But I was a different person, one who had learned the importance of keeping a secret, the value of information.

“I met her last year,” Laure said. “She was sitting in on one of my graduate seminars. Most of the grad students found it really frustrating, but the professor made a big fuss about how good she was. It’s clear Rachel was a thing for them—talented, you know.” She made a circle with her hand, a wisp of smoke tracing the shape.

I nodded because I knew exactly what she meant.

“And she was nice enough. It was pretty clear that Yale wanted her to stay, but she went with Harvard.”

“That’s what I heard.”

Laure looked at me appraisingly. “Did she say anything else?” Around us, people were beginning to make their way back into the building.

“Like—”

“Do you want to get brunch with me?” Laure interrupted with an edge of urgency in her voice, stubbing her cigarette out beneath her shoes, a pair of tasteful leather flats.

“I’d love that.”

“Good,” said Laure. She slung an arm over my shoulder as we walked back into the atrium. “I want you to take care of yourself, okay?”

I looked up at the facade of the Morgan rising above us—centuries of treasures collected and preserved within its walls.

“Okay,” I said, although I felt confident that I was already doing a better job taking care of myself than Laure would have, given the chance.



* * *



When the symposium was over, I waited for Rachel on the steps of the Morgan, leaning against one of the nineteenth-century concrete urns that had been planted with white, trailing annuals. She had been detained inside by Marcel, who wanted to be sure she had an opportunity to meet some of the presenters. I longed to be the kind of scholar people cornered at the end of events to introduce their students to, if only so I could make excuses as to why I had to leave: lunch with the director of the Frick, a waiting town car, a library full of books desperate to be read. Rachel, it was clear, was going to become one of those people.