As I began to explore the shelves, I recognized a number of volumes from my late husband’s shop. There was a wide selection of theological volumes, from Papist devotional books to Saint Augustine’s Confessions and scholastic philosophers such as Aquinas, books on the doctrines of Jansen and the Molinists, and even a few old tracts on the Cathars and Vaudois. There were Jesuit, Calvinist, and Lutheran works, and an exhaustive collection of treatises on atheism and religious skepticism, as well as illuminated Bibles, books about the saints, books of hours, and grammars of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Assyrian, and other languages.
I saw shelves of scholarly books: philosophy, history, and geography; botany, physics, mathematics, anatomy, astronomy; books of magic and arcane learning, treating of spells and potions, poisons, and summoning, of demons and angels, mysticism, and freemasonry. There were books about musical notation and tuning, hymns and chants. Frivolous, silly, gossipy books about the lives of members of the royal courts of Europe, of nobles and high-ranking clerics. These were libelous books, illegal and dangerous to own in some countries, that used to fetch a good profit in the shop. There were political treatises, futuristic stories of utopias and dystopias, fables and nursery rhymes, and at last, belles lettres, essays, memoirs, novels, fairy tales, and poetry.
I was well-satisfied with the Marquis’s collection, but as sometimes used to happen when I browsed the books in my late husband’s shop, the dizzying sense washed over me that I would need a hundred lifetimes to read all these books. I was spoiled for choice and didn’t know where to begin, so I pulled out five books and piled them onto the table before the fireplace: a romantic novel about knights and ladies, a comic play by Molière, a luridly illustrated book about demons, a botanical guide to the flowers of the Genevois region, and a memoir about exploring the wild lands of Canada by a French soldier of fortune. I read in front of the fire until a grandfather clock struck three in the afternoon. By then I was starving, and my head ached.
I set my book down and went back out into the corridor. If I could find my way back to the great hall where I’d had my dinner the night before, there might be a chance of finding something to eat nearby. There were the stairs again, the entry hall, still without the door to the outside that should have been there. There again was the great hall, with a place set for one at the end of the long heavy wooden table with its twelve carved wooden chairs.
The invisible servants of the manor had left me a plate of cold food, which I fell upon greedily.
“Thank you,” I said aloud when I had eaten my fill. “I’m sorry to be late for my dinner. I was caught up in my reading.”
A torpor had stolen over me from the long morning of reading, the day of sitting still when I was accustomed to moving and working. Ordinarily at this time in the afternoon I would be only just be sitting down for the first time in the course of my daily chores, to give the children their lessons. I felt restless and dull at the same time.
“Could I possibly take a walk in the garden?” I asked the invisible powers that were. “I saw it from my window, but I haven’t seen a door leading out to it.”
There was no answer. I supposed they – whoever they were – feared I’d run away if I found the door that led to the outside. They weren’t wrong.
I got up and went back out of the great hall the way I had come in, out to the anteroom. I crossed it to go back upstairs to continue exploring the second floor. But as I placed my hand on the polished black wood of the stair railing, I stopped and stared at the back wall. It was a room meant for passing through, and it was easy to miss the small detail of such rooms. My impression of it the night before, in the light of M. du Herle’s lamp, was of nothing but paintings on the walls, a sofa, and a table or two with vases on them. Now it seemed to me that one of the round carved wooden rosettes set into the dark paneling on the back wall was in fact a door handle. I went to investigate and found that indeed, there was another set of double doors, paneled just like the wall around them and set so neatly and precisely into the wall that their outline was all but indistinguishable from it. Two of the carved rosettes could be rotated in place to open the doors.
They opened easily and soundlessly, swinging forward into the next room. It wasn’t so much a room as a long gallery, with candles in sconces along the walls interspersed with alcoves and narrow decorative tables. The candles weren’t lit, but light came from the end of the gallery – natural light, daylight. The light grew brighter as I moved forward and at the end I found a pair of unlocked doors made of panes of glass in wood frames, that led outside.
Standing on the steps outside the doors, I breathed in deeply. It was a beautiful day, the sky cloudless aquamarine and the air warm with just a hint of the chill mountain breeze stirring at its edges, redolent with the scent of flowers in bloom. From where I stood, expanding semicircles of stone steps descended to a gravel path bordered by patches of flowers, bushes, trees, and vines. They led to a far back wall where a fountain cascaded down from the opening of a spring set high into the stones above.
For several hours, in the pleasure of exploring the garden, I forgot I was all but a prisoner in this place. The garden seemed to grow and change as one walked down its paths, like an enchanted labyrinth. I found a small grove of fruit trees, and along the far wall of the house what appeared to be a charmingly designed kitchen garden with beds of herbs, vegetables, and berries. There were bowers, arbors, benches, birdbaths, a couple of smaller fountains, and a true labyrinth of hedges in which I nearly lost myself. An arch was set into the middle of each of the three stone walls that enclosed the garden. The left arch was gated in with high iron doors that were shut and locked, and I thought it must lead out to the stables. To the right was an open arched gate that led into an outer park of forested paths, enclosed by more stone walls. The small back arch under the fountain of the spring appeared to have been bricked in, and seemed almost to back up against the side of the mountain itself.
Someone with a keen eye for beauty had created this paradise. Was it one of the Marquis’s ancestors, or the Marquis himself, or some gifted gardener among the manor’s invisible servants? If I agreed to meet the Marquis, I could ask him. I could talk with him about the books in his library, ask which ones he’d read and what he thought of them, and which ones he thought I might like. Places have character, souls, it could be said, that often reflect something of the people who live in them. From what I had seen of this place so far, the manor, its library and gardens, there was a yearning to it, for knowledge, for beauty, for the transcendent – however old or ugly and deformed the Marquis himself might be.
At the same time, I felt a very practical mind had a role in the manor’s design. Doors often didn’t open, or even appear, until they were needed. The food I had eaten had been filling and good, and certainly superior to the country fare I was accustomed to. Yet so far it hadn’t been more than I could comfortably eat in one sitting, nor too rich. There were no mirrors, suggesting a lack of vanity. The tapestries and paintings were of scenes from nature, of plants and animals, myths, or hunting scenes, but I had found no prominently displayed wall of family portraits. There was a certain modesty and restraint amidst the opulence.
Still, as I trailed my fingers in the water of the fountain under the spring, I feared that if I agreed to meet the Marquis, it would be like opening a Pandora’s box of undreamt-of troubles, griefs, and complications. Once I had met him, I couldn’t un-meet him. The fairy tale or the nightmare, whichever type of story it was into which I had been cast by some unseen author’s hand, would become real then. And how would I even tell him I was willing to make his acquaintance? Should I tell it to the fire in the great hall? M. du Herle had said I could leave notes for the servants, and they would attend to my wishes. Perhaps I could write a note and ask for a meeting with the Marquis.
Still divided in my mind, I stood, clasped my hands behind my back, and headed back down the main path of the garden toward the glass-paned doors into the manor. The sun w
as setting, and my stomach rumbled. I wanted to wash up in the basin in my room, if I could find it again, and perhaps change out of my sweaty underclothes or my dress, which had become dusty from wandering amongst the greenery. As I went back into the cool dimness of the corridor and found the stairs in the entry hall again, I wondered whether I would ever meet another living soul here, if I didn’t agree to meet the Marquis. Would M. du Herle return as he had said he would? Was my choice between the Marquis and solitude? Did he mean to wear me down that way – to wait until I couldn’t bear the silence and the loneliness any longer? I shuddered at the thought of being not only a prisoner in this great gilded cage, but one consigned to solitary confinement unless or until I gave in.
I found my room tidied and the bed made, with fresh underclothes and a velvet gown laid out for me. However preoccupied I had been with my fears, I had to laugh at the absurdity of it.
“Very well,” I said. “I’ll dress up for no one and pretend to be a fine lady. Why not? It’s no stranger than anything else I’ve done in the past twenty-four hours.”
In response I sensed a certain winking of the light in the room, as if whatever presence had been observing me was laughing back. As I undressed and washed up in my small bathing room and dressed in the fresh new clothes, my unseen maid seemed less shy in helping me here and there with hooks and buttons. I was changed in a trice, but what to do with my hair, which felt sweaty and frizzy and bedraggled? I wished again I had a mirror to primp in front of, to subdue what felt like unruliness and disarray on top of my head. I sat down on the chair at the vanity table and surveyed the collection of hair pins, ornaments, jewelry, powders, and cosmetics. I felt a gentle hand smooth the side of my hair and jumped in fright. I turned around quickly, but of course no one was to be seen. Shaking my head, I turned back to look in front of me.
“If you can make something of my hair,” I said, “you’re welcome to try. Just, please, no wig.” I’d noticed an elegantly-dressed wig sitting on a stand next to the table. “I had to wear one for my wedding,” I explained, “and it was so hot and itchy.” Then it happened – the ghostly hands undid my hair and combed it out, so gently it hardly pulled or hurt at all, and then piled and pinned it atop my head. I felt a little tap on my shoulder, and this seemed to be the signal that my coiffure was complete. I felt my hair with my hands and wondered again how I looked. I stared curiously at the cosmetics, which had been strictly forbidden by the faith in which I was raised, although my sisters and I and the other girls of our village used to rouge our cheeks and lips sometimes with the juice of red berries. I dipped my finger into a pot of rouge and applied it sparingly to my lips and cheeks.
“Is it too much?” I asked.
The light winked again with laughter, and I took that as a no.
“Now I’ll faint with hunger if I don’t go down, like it or not.”
At the table in the great hall, another hot supper waited for me, delicious and filling. Again I finished my meal alone. Were silence and solitude really so bad? If only I could see Valentin and Aimée and hear how they’d spent their day. I imagined them playing happily with their cousins. Had they cried for me?
Apart from these thoughts, I confessed to myself that this day of exploration alone had felt peaceful and luxurious. If only I could be assured that the children were well, and knew I could go home and visit at will, I shouldn’t have minded a few more days like this one.
When I had finished my meal, I went back to the Book of the Rose, still sitting on the small table before the fire where I had left it the night before. Inside the front cover I found another note.
“My dear Madame Bergeret, I hope your first day here was a pleasant one. Would you care to meet me? Your most sincere and humble servant.” Again, the imprint of the signet with the stag’s antlers.
A quill and ink and a fresh sheet of paper had been left out on the table, presumably for my reply. I thought for a long while, staring at the fire, and then I wrote: “M. le marquis de Boisaulne, I hope you will forgive me if the answer is ‘not yet.’ I have been very comfortable and well-treated here so far. But I miss my children and worry over their welfare. All is strange to me here and I confess myself bewildered and unsure of what to think of the circumstances in which I find myself.”
I could think of no polite closing words I could be sure I wouldn’t later regret, so I left the note unsigned and with no valediction. Part of me wanted to vent fury at my benefactor, or jailer, but since I didn’t know which he was yet, I bit back the angry words gnawing at my tongue. I reflected that whatever I said couldn’t be unsaid, any more than a meeting with him could be undone, and therefore it behooved me to be prudent.
I returned to the library to fetch my pile of books for reading in bed, and as I sat down to examine them again, I heard music begin to play. At first it was only a violin. Then its lone melody was joined by a violincello, string bass, and harpsichord. It was slow, soothing music in a minor key, plaintive, but with lighter moments of playfulness. It sounded close by, as though it came through the wall of the room next door. I stood and walked toward the wall of the library where the music was louder and noticed that what I had taken for a broad alcove in the wood-paneled wall was, in fact, another set of hidden double-doors with handles that turned and opened inward into an adjoining room.
At first I didn’t realize it was a music room, dumbfounded as I was by what I beheld: an ensemble of instruments in the corner, playing themselves. The violin was suspended in midair, and its bow slid backward and forward across the strings, seemingly of its own volition. I watched for a long time, but the shock didn’t wear off. Until now, I had thought myself possessed of a certain degree of education. I was pleased with the neat arguments of Voltaire, Diderot, La Mettrie, and the Baron d’Holbach, in their books that condemned superstition and irrationality, and with the Englishman Sir Francis Bacon’s idea of a scientific method. But no experimenter could ever have arrived at this result by looking through the lens of a microscope or telescope, or by mixing vials of liquid chemicals, or documenting the humors of fauna. There seemed nothing to do but accept that there was no logical explanation, any more than there had been for the food that had appeared out of thin air, or the gentle hands that had arranged my hair.
Having resigned myself to wonder, I looked around the room as the music played on and slowly understood that it was devoted to various kinds of instruments and shelves with folios of sheet music. The paintings on the walls were still lifes depicting instruments and musical manuscripts, as well as fruits, flowers, skulls, and candles.
It appeared, then, this was to be the evening’s entertainment provided for me by the Marquis, or by the manor and its invisible servants – whatever will it was that guided and directed things here. At first I felt it somehow impolite to do anything but sit down facing the instruments, my hands folded across my lap, listening attentively. Then my mind began to wander, and when there was a pause in the music, I went back to the library, leaving the doors to the music room open. A new piece began to play, and the sound was nearly as good from the library as within the music room.
I took off my slippers, curled up on the sofa, and returned to my books. I set aside the romance and the Molière play I had begun to read that morning and turned to the book on demons. I didn’t believe in demons – at least, I thought I didn’t. But I liked looking at fantastical illustrations and found it interesting to read books that purported to be compendia of arcane knowledge. As a child, of course, I had believed in a whole host of these imaginary beings, angels, witches, devils, fairies, ghosts, and spirits, who populated the Bible stories my mother read to us and the tales she told to get us to go to sleep. Over time I had lost the faith of my childhood and had come to see myself as a Deist, like the philosophes whose books I admired. As I flipped through the pages of this anonymous author’s Dictionnaire des démons et des esprits maléfiques, illustré par la main d’un savant de toutes les matières alchimiques et démonologiques, I sto
pped at an entry that recounted the old legends of Doktor Faustus and his bargain with the demon Méphistophélès to sign away his soul in exchange for youth, beauty, riches, and the pleasures of the flesh. Méphistophélès was presented as a dapper gentleman clothed in the last century’s finery, hairy, horned, and hooved like a goat, with a forked tail. Had the Marquis also made some kind of a bargain with a devil, to obtain a place so full of magic and the aid of his invisible servants? I shivered and turned more pages. I stopped again when I came to a page depicting the legend that Madame Jacquenod in the village had alluded to, the roi des aulnes, the king of the alders. The Erl-king, or Erlkönig in German, sometimes also called the Elf-King in English. I’d thought it was only a local legend. The illustration was chilling, a tall, gaunt but muscular figure, like a man but wearing a mask made of the skull and horns of an enormous stag. He carried a bow and hunter’s horn in his gloved hands, and his long fingers were coated in dripping blood. Around him rose tall forbidding trees under a full moon.
No doubt the legend had been invented by some past nobleman who wanted to discourage villagers from poaching in his forest. Still, I shuddered. I closed the book and went upstairs to bed.
I fell asleep quickly in my luxurious bedding but woke again in the middle of the night. Somewhere else in the manor, perhaps a floor below in the library, a clock chimed midnight. The fire in my room had gone out completely. I wasn’t cold, but the darkness felt curiously intense and unrelieved, like being shut up in a cabinet. Not even the faintest glow of moonlight or starlight came in through the window. Yet a breeze stirred across my cheek with the softest of caresses. I listened intently to the silence, and within it, I seemed to hear someone, or something, breathing. Seized with terror, I lay perfectly still, hoping against hope it was only the blood rushing in my ears. At last there was the slightest sound of the floorboards shifting, as if from a soft tread of feet, and my door opening and closing. It felt as if whatever presence I had imagined there had gone. I breathed out, only then realizing I had been holding my breath. Gradually the racing of my heartbeat slowed, and I unclenched my muscles. My vigilance gave way to drowsiness, and I relaxed into the soft pillows and fell back asleep.
The Prisoner of the Castle of Enlightenment Page 5