King of Swords

'Yeah, I heard about her,' Max said. He remembered the incident, but not well. It was deemed a spectacular suicide, given the location, but a suicide nonetheless. A deranged woman who'd died alone. It made a change from the two most common kinds of death in Miami at the time — cocaine cowboys killing each other and everyone in-between, and South Beach retirees checking out of God's waiting room — but those were the only things about Kathleen Reveaux's death that had registered. He hadn't even known her name until now.

'I spoke to her a few days before,' Phyllis said. 'Kathleen told me the cards were speaking to her, compelling her to … to kill herself.'

'She heard voices?' Max asked.

'Just like psychotics do, I know.'

'What kind of voices?'

'Actually it was just the one voice. A man's voice. She said he had a French accent. And every day the voice got louder and louder, until I presume it was all she could hear and all she could listen to.'

She broke off and stared out of the window into the darkness outside.

'Who was this de Villeneuve?' Max asked, bringing her gaze and attention back to the photographs on the table.

'A lot of rumour and conjecture surrounds him,' Phyllis began. 'What is known for sure is that he was a painter in

the court of the eighteenth-century French king, Louis XVI.

He made a good living painting flattering portraits of the nobility. He was a favourite of Marie-Antoinette, Louis'

wife. Some claimed he was also her lover. But there was another side to him. He was a reputed devil worshipper, and — unlike Crowley — he was said to be the real deal, capable of summoning Lucifer himself from the depths.

'The story went that Lucifer granted him the power to change his appearance. He could become whoever he wanted, male or female. He had the power to walk through any wall and open any door. He made a lot of use of this to further his position and influence in court, taking on the appearance of husbands, wives and mistresses, hearing every dirty little secret in the realm, which he passed on to Marie Antoinette.

'But, as with all pacts, there was a downside, a price to pay. Every month de Villeneuve had to make a human sacrifice to retain his powers. Young women — young girls, actually, because the Devil would only accept virgins. He killed several society women, some say up to ten or twelve before he was caught. The bodies would be found with their throats cut ear to ear, and there'd be a brand over their hearts - a long upright, medieval sword, very similar to the one in the card. The hearts would be missing, although no one knew how because the only injuries the victims had were to their necks.'

'How d'he get caught?' Max asked.

'Well, one day, the king decided to honour de Villeneuve by exhibiting his favourite paintings of himself and his cronies. The portraits were hung in the Grand Trianon - an outbuilding in the Palace of Versailles. Hundreds of guests were invited. They wined, dined and danced in the main palace ballroom and then Louis led them over to see the portraits. There they got the shock of their lives. Instead of seeing portraits of the monarch and themselves, they saw

what looked to be a hundred variations of the same painting: a naked young girl, sitting in a chair with her feet in a bucket and her hands tied behind her back. A man in black robes was standing behind her with a raised sword. And all around them, in a circle stood these very tall men with dead-white faces.

'No one knew how the paintings got in there, or what had happened to the original portraits. Then one of the nobles recognized the girl in one of the paintings as his murdered daughter. And then another nobleman saw his child in another of the paintings.

'They arrested de Villeneuve and put him in the Bastille, but he escaped. That was in 1785. In 1789 the French monarchy was overthrown and de Villeneuve resurfaced, this time in Haiti.

'Haiti was then a French slave colony. No one knows how, but de Villeneuve had become a wealthy plantation owner; coffee and cane were his main trade. He owned over a hundred African slaves, although, for the times, he was enlightened. He treated them well and gave them a kind of freedom. He paid them and even built a village for them away from his estate. Of course, there was a reason for this.

At night, the slaves practised their religion.'

'Voodoo?' Max suggested, mentioning one of the four things he knew about Haiti, outside of Papa and Baby Doc, and the fact that the island was a hundred miles away from Miami.

'No. De Villeneuve's slaves practised black magic, a series of rituals revolving around human sacrifice and the conjuring up of evil spirits. The high priest of the slave village was a man called Boukman. He was said to have all kinds of supernatural powers, including the ability to see far into the future. He used playing cards in his divination.

'De Villeneuve used to attend the ceremonies, both as participant and painter. He and Boukman were good friends,