Isabelle had to sit, for she was dizzy.
I cannot have children, but I can have her.
“That’s why the doctor said we should return to England,” Isabelle said after a long moment. “Thank goodness it’s not consumption—I was so worried! I think the doctor is right. That would be safest.” She forced herself to add, “I’ll have a brother or sister then. A blessing.” Yet something else scratched inside Isabelle. Something she couldn’t—no, wouldn’t—name.
The raven shifted on the rafter. A sole black feather fluttered to the floor. Beneath candlelight it shimmered a dark watery green.
Hugh said, “How was your walk? Do you think it will snow much longer?”
That night, Isabelle wept herself to sleep. In the morning she realized it wasn’t because she feared Ada dying. It was because she feared the baby living.
* * *
Two weeks after the New Year, most of the snow had melted. Hugh left Isabelle and Ada alone for two days. The raven accompanied him, abandoning the cottage for a forest of fir and spruce. “Take care of Ada,” Hugh had told Isabelle. Of course Isabelle would take care of Ada. She loved her more than she’d imagined possible. Hadn’t Ada taught her to play piano? Shown her the only affection she’d ever known? Isabelle should cherish this time alone with her. Soon she’d have a brother or a sister. (What would it be like to have a sibling? There had been other children at the doss-house. They’d either ridiculed or ignored Isabelle.)
Yet when Ada had felt too weary to rise, Isabelle had forgotten to bring her tea. She practiced piano scales when Ada was trying to sleep. For the first time ever, Ada snapped at her. “It’s my fault,” Isabelle had said when Ada complained her head ached. “I’m so sorry.” Deep inside she wasn’t.
When Hugh returned, he refused to reveal where he’d gone. “A surprise,” was all he’d say, frowning.
Isabelle grew dizzy again. It had to do with the baby. Maybe they were going to leave the Black Forest after all. Or maybe it had to do with her. Had Ada complained?
“Did you take good care of Ada?” he asked Isabelle.
“I-I tried my best.” Isabelle flushed, feeling he’d seen inside her soul.
That night, Isabelle saw Hugh whisper to Ada. Caress her belly.
Isabelle bit the flesh inside her mouth until she tasted blood.
* * *
“Get up,” Hugh whispered. “Now.”
A month later the raven watched Hugh try to wake Isabelle from sleep. The girl had stayed up late with Ada, forcing herself to discuss baby names. “If it’s a girl, you could name her Mathilde, after Uncle Hugh’s mother. Or Adelaide, after yours . . .” Isabelle was anxious to make amends; she’d spilled tea on the baby’s layette and left sheet music on the floor where Ada might have slipped. When Hugh scolded Isabelle, she’d claimed they’d been accidents. But were they really?
“Isabelle, get up,” Hugh said again, jostling her shoulder. There was a rare edge to his tone. “No time to waste.”
Isabelle forced her eyes open at last. The sky was violet with the promise of dawn, watery with fog. She thought it must be very early, far earlier than she usually woke. Once her sight adjusted to the gloom, she saw Hugh holding a knapsack she’d never seen before. It was tight and round and full. It reminded Isabelle of Ada’s womb; her stomach had swollen alarmingly of late, like a tick bloated with blood. The baby would be big.
Isabelle pulled herself up from her pallet. “Aunt Ada isn’t sick again?”
Hugh offered a crooked smile. His skin looked greyish, like he’d aged overnight. “We need to go to the village. Not for the doctor.”
“So early?”
“Yes.”
Isabelle dressed in silence. Hugh told her not to kiss Ada goodbye to avoid waking her.
Hugh was silent as they walked, the remaining snow sloshing against Isabelle’s boots—it had been a cold March. How different the trees looked in half-light, emerging from the fog! Isabelle never went into the forest when it was like this; it felt too much like being swaddled in cotton. Yet its allure was not lost on her. The firs, so tall and fragrant, especially reminded Isabelle of those months when it had just been the two of them at the sanitarium. Her eyes filled, yearning for days past. Isabelle’s fingers on the keyboard. Ada guiding her through the notes. “How fast you learn, my beauty! You’ve a true gift.” The Beethoven sonata. The C major. Ada had promised to teach it to her . . .
“Does she need medicine then?” Isabelle asked while they walked. Her toe snagged a rock hidden beneath leaves. Her stomach rumbled. She wished she’d insisted on breakfast before they’d left.
“No, Isabeauty,” he teased. Ada’s usual nickname for Isabelle was “my beauty”; the English for belle was “beauty.” Hugh in his usual teasing way had made a portmanteau of it.
“We’re fetching the doctor after all?”
“My brain is too sleepy to answer questions.” Hugh refused to meet her eyes; Isabelle wondered if he was still angry over the tea-stained layette. “Trust me, this is a nice surprise. It’s for the best.”
Isabelle’s hands clenched inside her muff. She’d learned early on that when someone said “it’s for the best” they meant “it’s not what you want.”
She matched Hugh’s silence while they walked. His uncommon reticence made her heart race. After a quarter hour of this, she began to wonder whether he’d forgotten her presence—he’d been so preoccupied of late. Sometimes she found him weeping when he didn’t know she was there, but he was prone to drama just as Ada was to stoicism. Maybe he wasn’t happy about the baby after all.
Or maybe he’s had enough of you and wants you gone.
She snuck a glance from beneath her bonnet, imagining Hugh a stranger leading her to her doom, rather than the reluctant father fond of puns and puzzles. Her dark fancies vanished when he handed her a knot of hard brown bread spread with sweet butter.
“I’d forgotten I’d brought this for you,” he said, his tone solicitous. “You must be starving. Forgive me.”
Isabelle ate. Guilt did funny things to a mind. Her mood lifted.
About a mile down the hill the fog cleared, the trees turned spare with deforestation. The village came into view, with dark wooden roofs laced with thick grey smoke, tainting the pure morning air. Isabelle wrinkled her nose. The smoke stank of dung. She was glad she’d eaten. Otherwise her stomach wouldn’t have been able to take it.
“We’re here,” was all Hugh said. He pointed his walking stick toward the village square in the valley, anemic sun glinting off the brass tip.
Isabelle followed him down the hill toward the village square. The raven must have spied prey, for it took off shrieking back into the forest; months later, Isabelle would consider this as much an omen as its return to the sanitarium had been.
She glanced at the church tower laden with medieval black letter. Seven in the morning. Isabelle yawned. The square was unnaturally empty—no sullen women wearing red pom-pomed bollenhuts on their heads, no industrious men dressed in thick wool lederhosen.
“What are we waiting for?” Isabelle asked. The nape of her neck prickled.
Hugh scanned the square, his mouth tight. “She must not have arrived.”
Isabelle’s foreboding spread from her neck to the tips of her fingers.
The silence was interrupted by a horse’s whinny. Isabelle’s eyes darted toward it. She saw a gleam of black wood, a crest of gold, on the edge of the square. Closer examination revealed an ebony carriage, partially obscured behind the remnant of a wooden military fortification.
Hugh said, “Come.”
He grasped the soft flesh of Isabelle’s arm. She winced as he led her toward the carriage.
And then all was made clear.
A grey-haired lady emerged from the black carriage. She was dressed in a fur-lined cape. She approached Hugh as though she was pressed for time. They spoke quickly in French. Their tone was too low for Isabelle to follow their conversation.
Aft
er several minutes of whispers, the lady offered Isabelle a supercilious smile. “You wrote she’s been playing less than two years. Is she really that talented?”
“Extremely,” Hugh responded, smiling. “Her talent is wasted here. My wife, a gifted musician herself, has taught her all she can. That’s why we were so eager for you to come.”
Isabelle immediately knew what was about to happen. She’d be leaving. Alone.
“No,” Isabelle cried. “No. I won’t go!”
She turned and ran back toward the forest. Toward Ada.
Hugh grabbed her more swiftly than she’d have expected.
“Let me go!” she screamed. “I’m sorry! So sorry!”
“It’s a fine music conservatory,” Hugh soothed. “The best in Brussels. I’ve made sure of it. One of the few for ladies. This lady will accompany you. She’s been paid generously to keep you safe.”
“You just want to be rid of me!”
Hugh’s arms tightened about her. “Don’t you want to become a better pianist? It’s just for a few months. Just until the baby’s born and settled.”
Isabelle stopped struggling.
“You promise to send for me immediately?”
“I promise, Isabeauty.”
No matter. Isabelle never saw Ada alive again.
* * *
Three months after Isabelle had left Ada, Hugh wrote: Nothing could be done for Ada or our baby. The baby was born with her cord about her neck. I gave her the name of Mathilde Adelaide. It was quite distressing. For now, it’s best you stay at the conservatory. I’ll write when I’m settled anew.
Isabelle’s tears soaked the letter.
But something could have been done, she thought. If I hadn’t been jealous, I wouldn’t have been sent away. I could have forced Ada to leave the Black Forest. I could have protected her. She and my sister might have lived.
* * *
Six months after Isabelle had left Ada, Hugh still hadn’t written since his last letter. Isabelle discovered her second white hair amid the red. It was the day after she mastered the slow movement of the Beethoven Sonata in C major, the one Ada was going to teach her. “Don’t be confused by the key signature,” Ada had said. “Remember that’s where you’ll find your sorrow.”
She’d been right.
* * *
Nine months after Isabelle had left Ada, Hugh could not be found. One cold night when Isabelle was combing her nearly white hair and mopping her eyes before bed—she still wept regularly—she heard a soft female voice drift behind her.
“Black bombazine for you, my beauty. You need wear it only for me.”
The voice was barely more than a whisper. Isabelle recognized it.
She whirled about. She saw no one. She decided she was mad with guilt.
Isabelle slept with her candle burning.
The following night Isabelle heard skirts rustling inside her room—the same stiff taffeta as the peach dress Hugh had bought Ada in Calais.
“Aunt?” she called, rising from her bed. “Are you there?”
“Why are you crying, my beauty?”
“Because I miss you,” Isabelle whispered. “Because I love you. Because there’s nothing I can do for you. Because . . .”
If I hadn’t been so jealous, you and my sister might have lived.
“Is that all?” Ada gave off a maidenish giggle; her scent was fetid, like leaves after an autumn rain.
“Yes,” Isabelle lied. “Where are you?”
“Step toward the mirror.”
Isabelle’s sight strained. After some minutes, Ada’s face appeared faint in the glass beyond. Isabelle’s eyes prickled with moisture. How beautiful she was, even after death.
“Well, there’s one last thing you can do for me. Promise?”
“Promise. Tell me. I’ll do it.”
“I want to know how my baby is faring.”
“Mathilde?” Isabelle asked. “Is she a ghost too?”
But Ada was already gone.
VII.
The following night, Isabelle wrote Dr. Engelsohn regarding the circumstances of Ada’s passing. As soon as the doctor answered, Isabelle left Brussels though her only valuable was Ada’s wedding ring, a deathbed bequest Hugh had sent. She sold it.
It took Isabelle over a year to find Hugh. She couldn’t imagine him returning to Weald House after Ada’s death, so she retraced the places they’d gone after they’d left Paris. When Isabelle finally arrived in the Black Forest, she found the little cottage abandoned by bird and human. The sanitarium in Fiesole, where Ada had hoped to recover her health, was inhabited by another consumptive, this one thinner and frailer than Ada at her worst. She suspected Hugh had returned to the Marais, to the rooms where she’d first come to him and Ada; he’d probably be ensconced there writing tearstained poems. By then Isabelle had run out of funds, but she wouldn’t turn back. The memory of Ada in the mirror wouldn’t let her.
Isabelle traveled on foot. She watched the forest darken into a summer so sultry that the sun singed the leaves into a growth no light could penetrate. Then autumn came, and the leaves dried brown and tumbled into the air before settling and crumbling underfoot. That year the ground frosted early in October as she traveled through the winter to Freiburg, Strasbourg, Avricourt, and beyond, tramping and stumbling toward Paris. Whenever she’d arrive at a town, she’d take in sewing or offer piano lessons until she had enough to continue. Neither brought much coin.
It was spring by the time Isabelle reached Paris, six months after Hugh had published The Lost History of Dreams, but she barely noticed the flowers blooming, the earth ripening. She’d seen the book everywhere during her travels. Isabelle immediately understood it was about Ada—how could it not be? In Germany it was titled Die verlorene Geschichte der Träume, in France L’Histoire Perdue de Rêves. Ada’s death had made Hugh more famous than anyone had a right to be. A biography claimed Mathilde had died at birth, unlike what Dr. Engelsohn had written. This only strengthened Isabelle’s resolve.
Once she arrived in Paris, she learned she’d been right: Hugh had returned, but he’d already left. His landlady in the Marais reported no sign of a child during his stay. However, he’d left an address on the rue de Rivoli near the Tuileries.
When Isabelle arrived at the address, she found herself before the door of the grandest hotel she’d ever seen: tall mirrors, marble floors, hushed voices, ceilings like a cathedral. Hugh was no longer the impoverished poet Ada had married. He was the bereft widower, the sorrowful father, the tragic poet beloved by literati.
At first the maître d’hôtel wouldn’t allow her in. “Monsieur de Bonne is not to be disturbed.” Isabelle refused to be turned away. “Please,” she begged. “I’m his niece. I’ve traveled far to find him.” He laughed, flicking his finger at her. “That’s what they all say, mademoiselle.” Isabelle didn’t understand then, but she didn’t question.
On the top floor, she found the door open to Hugh’s suite, the largest one in the entire hotel; she later learned a duchess had paid for it after reading The Lost History of Dreams upon her husband’s death. The foyer had a bronze fountain. Beyond the fountain, which had goldfish the size of a child’s fist swimming in it, there was a Louis XIV dining table with crystal vases of roses so dark a red they were nearly black. Abandoned platters of caviar and half-eaten lobsters. Beside those, petit fours and melting ice. Half-empty wine bottles.
The windows were shuttered. The air stank of oleaginous food. Rank sweat.
When no one responded to Isabelle’s knock, she made her way into the foyer and through the reception room. Past the fountain with those ridiculous goldfish, the white satin chaise, which was stained with what looked to be red wine. Her boot sent a bottle skittering across the black-and-white checkered marble floor.
“Hello?” she called, her voice tremulous. “Bonjour?”
No answer came.
Her heart pounded. What if she’d happened into the wrong chamber?
She arrived
at the bedroom, where one of the double doors was ajar. Inside was a grand four-poster, the satin sheets rumpled. And then she saw the back of Hugh’s head. She knew it was him—the rumpled curls of his auburn hair, the arrogant tilt of his head. He wasn’t in the bed. He was seated with his back toward her, his legs akimbo on a chair all gilded in gold, like something the Sun King would have reigned from.
“It’s me. Isabelle,” she said, her voice echoing against the marble floors, those high ceilings. “I don’t know how to say this, Hugh”—by then she’d fallen into calling him Hugh in her mind instead of Uncle or Father—“but I know you lied about my sister’s death. Where is she?”
And then she could say no more, for she was weeping. Any anger she felt about Mathilde had flown away, like those birds from the Black Forest cottage. How could she blame him? He was probably as wrecked as she’d been by Ada’s death.
Isabelle fell before him on that marble floor stinking of waste in that suite, which cost more for a night than most people made in a year. That’s when she saw her.
Isabelle knew what the woman was as soon as she saw her. The woman’s yellow curls were an even more unnatural shade than her red satin gown. Her hands were covered in black lace mitts. They rested on Hugh’s hips. Her head was settled between his thighs. Hugh was moaning, unable to even note Isabelle’s presence. Insensate.
Isabelle must have made some sound—a gasp, or a catch of her throat, or a scream—for he pushed the prostitute away, laughing, laughing. The prostitute protested, “Vous voulez qu’elle nous joigne? Vous devez payer plus pour ca.” And then she thrust out her purse for payment in anticipation of Isabelle joining their intimacies. “Non, non,” Hugh answered the wretched being. “C’est seulement ma fille. Ma fille qui revient de l’enfer.” Only my daughter returned from hell.
He turned his attention to Isabelle. “Mon dieu, you look rough. I almost didn’t recognize you with your hair so white. Like Marie Antoinette in prison. No one would know you as my blood now.”
The Lost History of Dreams Page 33