The Prisoner of the Castle of Enlightenment

by Therese Doucet

  “It was always the plan for me to go back alone,” I said. “The only difference is that I was going to ride on Zéphyr. But we hardly went more than walking pace most of the way the first time, so it won’t take much longer on foot. The Marquis trusted me to come back safely. And I will.”

  Father sighed. “We’ll at least drive you as far as Hortense’s in the buggy. You can sit on top of the luggage in back. We’ll let you off at the lane and you can go on from there.”

  

  I waved goodbye to Father and Edmée from the lane just beyond Hortense’s farm. As I started out along the road, my satchel with the lantern and knife and round of bread felt light, but I stumbled under the weight of my fears. It had been a terrible mistake to delay writing to Thérion and to have stayed away so long. Now something awful must have happened, I knew it. Perhaps he was angry with me for what I had said about Donatien, or for not writing sooner, so that Clio, too, had been put at risk. Perhaps he hadn’t even received my letters and thought I meant to stay away for good. He wrote that he was sick and low with missing me. What if he had really fallen ill or met with some accident?

  I supposed I hadn’t taken it seriously, that he could really miss me so very much. He had never once said he loved me, after all. As a child I was taught to examine my faults every day, to avoid the sin of pride. When I began to read, I often thought of the words of a lady author I admired, Madame Pringy, who wrote, “To know much, one must love oneself little.” I wished to know much, so I tried to love myself little. Those habits of mind had made it easy to convince myself that when Thérion called me beautiful, intelligent, and good, he was only saying it to be kind and flatter me. I hadn’t minded loving him more than he loved me; I had only thought myself lucky to receive his attentions. But suppose all along his feelings were as deep as mine, or deeper, and now I had truly hurt him?

  The thought of losing him was like a hole torn in my chest, a gaping wound the size and shape of my book. The ache came in waves, swelling until it almost overwhelmed me, then receding, like the labor pains I’d had when my children were born. Above me the clouds thickened and grew feathery at the edges, and it began to mist and sprinkle. Following the lane, I passed beyond the cleared lands around the village houses as the path wound into the woods. By the time the misting rain had cleared and the sun burst through the clouds in blinding streaks of light an hour or two later, I realized I had gone too far and had missed the trail that led off into the woods. I turned around and retraced my steps, keeping my eyes fixed on the side of the lane for some familiar mark or sign.

  Was it here that Harlequin and I had left the path when he came to fetch me, this cathedral-like arch between two alder trees? It felt right and looked like the game trail I remembered. I squeezed the medallion in my pocket for good luck. But as I left the lane and began to walk along the muddy trail, it seemed my fear had drained the world of color, and what had been a wood of richly-shimmering sunlit green leaves when I passed through in June now looked gray, barren, and rocky. My limbs felt leaden, as though I were pushing forward through a waist-high snowbank or leaning into the headwind of a gale.

  At midday I sat on a boulder and rested for an hour to eat my bread. It tasted of nothing and I had to force myself to chew through mouthfuls, nauseated with anxiety. Nothing had looked familiar since shortly after I had left the lane, and I believed I was lost. If only I saw any animals, like the galloping chamois I remembered from before, I could at least follow them to a stream, because they would have to drink eventually. And if I found the stream again, I could follow it to the village. But the woods were silent and empty, without so much as a birdsong chirruping through the branches. What were the animals afraid of that had driven them into hiding in their holes and nests?

  When night began to drape itself around the treetops like thick smoke, I knew with certainty I was lost. The tinder in my satchel was damp and smoked when I held it over the sparks from the flint. By the time I managed to get the wick in the lantern lit, the stars were winking into view in the blackness above me. At least there were stars. Relief washed over me as I recognized a constellation of them, three close together, three more spread out beyond them in a perpendicular line. A sword extending from a hilt. It reminded me of the silver sword Harlequin wore at his side and it pointed east, in the direction of Boisaulne.

  I stepped forward with new determination, now that I had the stars to lead me. I would find Thérion, and if he was ill, I would nurse him back to health. If he was in despair, I would comfort him. If he was angry with me, I would plead for forgiveness. If he was in danger, I would do all I could to rescue him. But suppose he was simply tired of me and had fallen in love with someone else? Suppose all along he had been visiting others besides me at night in the Castle of Enlightenment? But if that was so, it was better that I should know it instead of being tormented by fears of unknown disasters.

  I began to stumble over roots and brambles in the darkness as the undergrowth thickened, and my confidence faltered. Owls hooted back and forth to each other in the branches above my head. Signs of life in the night forest at last; but then what else might come alive in the dark? My chest seized up with terror at the thought. The wind rose and the pines and elms and alders swayed against the stars, bowing to me, or perhaps menacing me like bullies drawing back fists to strike. Something rustled in the bushes around me, and little feet pattered quickly over the ground. It could be squirrels, mice, chipmunks, marmots, rabbits … then there were heavier footfalls and louder rustling that could be deer or chamois. Or something worse.

  I found myself whispering desperate prayers, though I had long ago decided the only God I could believe in was one who comprised all being and nature, and not a God to whom it made any sense to pray.

  “Please, please, don’t let me be eaten by a bear this night. Please don’t let that noise be a lynx or a boar. I’ve always been kind to your animals. The birds of Boisaulne could tell you how I’ve fed them and sung to them. I even helped your beetles when they fell over onto their backs and couldn’t get up again. I complimented your spiders on their beautiful webs and never broke a single one if I could help it.”

  But perhaps it wasn’t the clockwork God of the Deists I was praying to. Perhaps it was the old pagans’ Cernunnos, the stag-god whose image was stamped on my medallion. The alder-king, whose power was strongest in the heart of his sacred alder wood.

  The hours passed, and I pressed on through the terrors of the looming trees and stones. I was cold and shivering under my cloak, my feet were blistered and aching, and my throat was dry. At last I heard the sound of rushing water and hurried toward it. The stream! I must be close now.

  I stopped at the muddy bank and held my lantern out. The water spread black and opaque below it like polished obsidian. The stream hadn’t been nearly as deep either time I had crossed it before with Zéphyr, but the heavy rains had swollen it to a flood. If I tried to cross it here I would be swept away, and I didn’t know how to swim.

  I tried to piece together my fragmented memories of the stream and the village and the forest. With Harlequin, we had forded the water and gone uphill alongside the stream to reach Maisnie-la-Forêt, but then further uphill we’d had to cross back over the bridge to reach the château. When I escaped with Zéphyr, the night Donatien attacked me, it seemed we had forded the stream in the other direction. If Boisaulne was a real place, and not just some imaginary fairy palace I had dreamt up for myself, it had to lie between two branches of the river that joined downstream before the village. I could follow the water upstream for a ways and if I came to a place where the waters divided, at least I would know I had gone in the right direction and was nearer to Boisaulne.

  I followed the stream, but my lantern cast too little light to see across to the other side, and I couldn’t tell if I had gone too far or passed a divide. I came to a place where a fallen tree made a natural bridge over the water. I kicked hard at the log with the toe of my shoe. It didn’t budge. St
able enough – and who knew when I’d find a better spot to cross?

  I had taken only a few steps forward over the water, holding my lantern out to one side and my satchel of provisions to the other for balance, when I realized I hadn’t counted on the log being so smooth, wet, and slippery. My old shoes with their worn soles gave way, and I plunged into icy black water, scraping my hip, bruising my elbow, and pulling a muscle in my shoulder as I let go of my lantern and satchel and frantically tried to grab the slippery log, to no avail. My heart nearly stopped from the shock of the cold, and the wall of the current pushed me backward, downstream, away from Boisaulne.

  For a split second in the freezing watery chaos that enveloped me, time seemed to stand still, and I thought to myself, curiously serene, So this is how I die. I drown. This is my end.

  Then in a burst of energy I struck out with both legs and both arms at once, kicking and paddling furiously, spitting out water, feeling warmer air on my face. I sucked in a great gasp of breath. Something slammed hard into my hip and arm, so hard I thought my bones had broken. I had hit a rock. I reached out with my fingers, and something reed-like, slimy, and hard sliced into them. Despite the pain, I tightened my grasp. I must be holding on to thin tree branches or roots that trailed into the river. Between the rock and the roots, I resisted the pull of the current long enough to be able to scramble up onto the bank through a layer of mud and pebbles that scraped up my cut fingers still further.

  I curled up on my side in a pile of damp pine needles, panting and shivering. My lantern and satchel were gone. I was soaking wet, coated in mud, bleeding, and in pain. I didn’t know anymore which side of the river I was on or how far downstream it had carried me. I couldn’t find the sword of stars anymore in the sky, though the moon had risen and shone faintly through the clouds. My shivering turned to shaking. I lurched dizzily onto my feet. If I didn’t keep moving, the cold would be the end of me.

  I didn’t know if I had broken any bones, but my bruised hip hurt with every step. I limped forward, trying to think through the daze of my pain, shock, and cold. Uphill. Boisaulne and its grounds would lie uphill, set into a broad flat terrace on the mountainside. I must go where the ground sloped upward. I held my scraped-up hands out to feel my way forward. Trees, spider webs, more trees, more webs. Forgive me, friends, I didn’t mean to harm your webs.

  In the distance, the howling of wolves. The sound I had been dreading. My heart nearly beat its way out of my sore, bruised chest. Surely there must be better prey for them than me on this mountain. I stumbled faster, still blindly, from tree to tree. Was I going uphill? Would I live to see the morning? More howling. Closer.

  “Please, oh please,” I breathed aloud through my chattering teeth. I pushed my hand into my wet pocket and found the silver medallion was still there. I wrapped my bleeding fingers around it. “Cernunnos, alder-king, help me. I need to stay alive. I need to find Thérion again. They say he’s your descendant, your grandson’s grandson. Your power runs through his veins. I love him. Help me find him, please. Help me find Boisaulne.”

  I was nearly delirious now, dreaming on my feet. The wolves had caught my scent and were approaching. I couldn’t see them in the darkness, but I could sense their presence, the amber eyes, foul breath, snarling lips, cruel teeth, flecks of saliva glinting in the moonlight. In my mind’s eye, I saw one of them crouch to spring on me and bring me down, to unleash the depravity of his hunger on me as I struggled under his inexorable weight and he tore into me with his teeth and claws.

  I tripped over a tree root and fell to the ground, gasping in pain and terror. When I opened my eyes again and looked up from where I lay with my hands and face in the dirt, something glimmered faintly through the trees. It shone like the ghostly white of birch branches, only smaller, thinner, a thicket of curved and vertical upstretched claws, like the lacy stonework on the cathedral of Annecy. Antlers, a swaying, gothic chandelier of them balanced gracefully on either side of a white stag skull, glowing palely in the night and moving through the branches.

  It was the roi des aulnes, come to fetch me to his kingdom of death. As he stalked closer, the tall, gaunt man’s figure dark beneath the bleached stag skull mask, the wolves bent their necks down toward the ground and began to edge backward, whimpering and slinking away, gradually disappearing into the depths of the woods. I watched the ogre stride toward me and was paralyzed, entranced, appalled. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, waiting to be torn to pieces. Then I felt a gentle, moist nudge against my forehead. I opened my eyes again and saw a giant stag with a towering rack of antlers kneeling before me, nudging me with his round black muzzle, in place of the horrible vision of the roi des aulnes. The gleaming silver iris of his eye, blinking a hand’s breadth away from mine, reflected the moonlight like a silver coin. Warm puffs of breath from his nostrils stirred the loose hairs on my forehead. They smelled of lilies of the valley.

  He wished me to mount onto his back, I understood somehow, as though he had sent the image into my mind. I found I was able to stand up without my bruised side and shoulders hurting too much, and I climbed onto his back, my wet skirt and petticoat bunched between my legs.

  He lurched up off the ground and I leaned down and hugged tightly around his neck to keep from falling off. Then we were leaping through the moonlit forest with a grace and speed glorious and terrifying. We went uphill, up and up, the trees flying past us, I didn’t know for how long, until suddenly at last a familiar outline took shape before me. It was the standing stone outside the entrance to the grotto.

  The forest king who had carried me there brought our mad ride to a halt next to the stone. I reached my arms around the stone, hugged it, and slid off the stag’s back, until my feet came to rest on the ground. In a flick of moon-silvered hooves pounding over the ground, he was gone. For a long time I clung to the stone, fearing I would lose my balance again and fall if I let go. Dim light came from inside the grotto, and now the strains of fairy music reached my ears, as before.

  I let go of the standing stone, plugged both my ears with my fingers, and tottered forward over the uneven ground, down into the entrance. One elbow brushed against the cold smooth side of the tunnel wall as I went, and I squeezed my eyes tightly shut against the vision of glowing jewels, letting the wall guide me. I moved carefully and slowly, feeling the way forward with my shoes still squelching out water from the stream. After what seemed an eternity, I felt the steps under my feet that led up to the door of the arch. I shoved against the door with my shoulder, keeping my ears plugged, until it opened wide enough to let me through. Quickly I tumbled out through the opening and felt along the wall next to the fountain to find the lever of the mermaid statuette. I pushed it upward to close the door again before the music could draw me back in.

  For a moment, my ears rang from the sudden silencing of the music, as if the closing of the gate had deafened me, and I swayed on my feet in the dark foredawn. The stars and moon were completely hidden by clouds now. The fountain of the spring splashed merrily, and the birds began to chirp and chitter to each other about dawn being on its way.

  “I’m here,” I whispered hoarsely. “I’ve come back to Boisaulne.” I tried to take another step forward, but I shivered too violently in the morning breeze. My knees crumpled under me, and I lost consciousness.

  XIV

  “Violaine, Violaine,” Thérion said in the darkness. His lips pressed against my forehead, my cheeks, my lips. I moaned and my body convulsed with shivers. A warm coat was wrapped around me. “Thank God you’re alive.”

  “Thérion,” I murmured. “Is it really you?” I placed my trembling hand against his cheek to feel the familiar outline of his jaw.

  “Shhh,” he said, and I was lifted off the ground and wrapped in his warm arms, carried like a child. “My God, you hardly weigh anything.”

  My eyelids fluttered open. The day had dawned under a clouded sky, and in its light, for the first time, I saw my lover’s face.

  “Harlequin.
I knew it was you all along. Thérion, my Beast. I love you.”

  “Shhh. You must never tell anyone. I love you, too. More than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything. But for your own safety and that of your children, you must pretend you don’t know me. I’ll say … good God, what will I say? That you’re a village girl … you were lost in the forest and wandered in here … I don’t know.”

  “But why? What’s happened?”

  “We’ve been found out.” He was carrying me through the garden now. “It was Donatien. He got his vengeance on me by telling my wife how to reach Boisaulne. She never knew it existed.”

  “Your wife?” I said through my chattering teeth. “Then you believed me about Donatien.”

  “Of course I believed you. I’d already decided before I got your reply, that Clio had to be telling the truth and it was wrong of us to doubt her.”

  “If only I’d written sooner, she might have been spared.”

  “She wasn’t harmed, thank God. And it happened before he attacked you.”

  “It did?”

  “That was what made me doubt her story at first. If it really happened, why wouldn’t she have told someone at once? But she’s so young. It took her a while to get up the courage. And when you left she was worried for you and felt she ought to say something, in case Donatien had attacked you too and that was why you left.”

  “But thank God she wasn’t hurt. Your letter made me think …”