Clio put her hands on her cheeks. “The poor man. It’s monstrous.”
“What we really need,” said Séléné, “is a good hunting accident.”
Everyone stared at her. She looked around at our shocked faces and laughed. “Oh, but come now, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m no murderess. My late husband’s gun misfired, fair and square. He was thrown from his horse, broke his neck, and then was trampled on by the horses, too. Dead as you like, with no one guilty but himself for being an arsehole who enjoyed killing defenseless creatures by the cruelest methods.”
“The Marquise certainly seems keen on hunting,” the Scotsman conceded. “But for one thing, death by hunting accident seems rather a harsh sentence for a woman we all merely dislike intensely. For another thing, plenty of bloodthirsty numbskulls go hunting all the time and live to tell the tale. We can’t count on being so lucky, if you call it that. Good Lord, I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation.”
“Suppose we simply made it very disagreeable for her here,” said Clio. “If it’s very dull, or if she thought there were ghosts, or if we played pranks on her. Perhaps we could drive her away.”
“I think she’d be more likely to expel us all,” Aurore said. “After all, she’s the lady of the manor. It’s her château. We’re merely her guests.”
“Much as I hate to say it,” I said, “I think we’d probably do best by trying to stay on her good side. At least then we can be there for Harlequin. If he’s this despairing and driven to drink with us here, imagine if we abandon him.”
“We don’t have much longer here anyway,” Aurore reminded me. “Normally we all go back home at the end of August.”
I shrugged. “Who knows what will happen to him then? But for now, at least we still have some chance of helping.”
“Oh, but it sounds like there’s no hope,” said Clio. “What can any of us do?”
“If only I could talk more with him,” I said. “Alone, without arousing the Marquise’s suspicions.”
The Scotsman shook his head. “I don’t think she or the Abbé have left him alone for more than five minutes at a time since they got here. Not that I’ve seen.”
“But he rescued me,” I said. “When I came back through the woods and the back gate. I’d fainted by the fountain of the spring. He carried me back inside and spoke to me a little.”
“This morning?”
“I suppose it was. It all seems so long ago already.” I suppressed a yawn, beginning to feel drowsy again.
“That was when they went to chapel with Aurore in the village,” the Scotsman said.
Ulysse chuckled. “I think our dear Marquise and her Abbé were rather irked that the rest of us stayed home. I shouldn’t have liked to draw down lightning bolts on that picturesque little chapel, which I’d surely have done by setting foot in it.”
“Perhaps if they go to chapel again before the end of the week,” Aurore said. “You could speak to him then.”
“But there’s no telling whether they’ll do that,” I said in dismay.
“No,” said Clio, “but I’ve a brilliant idea. We’ll convince her to let me paint her portrait. If she’s vain enough to agree to it – and it seems she is.”
Séléné nodded vigorously. “That could work. Ulysse, you’re charming. Convince her. If anyone here has the gift of persuading ladies, it’s you.”
Ulysse waved a hand to deny it, but his eyes had lit up.
I clapped my hands together. “Oh, thank you, both of you. It’s worth a try, isn’t it? But –” I knitted my brows together – “what about the Abbé? How do we keep him occupied?”
“Nothing could be simpler,” the Scotsman said. “We’ve already made plans to gather botanical samples and fauna specimens in the forest tomorrow.”
“It’s perfect,” Séléné said. “It’ll work.”
The Scotsman and Tristan left with the Abbé before sunrise on their expedition to gather specimens in the forest. At breakfast in the morning room, Thérion was absent.
“My dear husband is still sleeping,” the Marquise said in a sugary tone that betrayed her annoyance.
Ulysse, coming into the room behind her and overhearing, mimicked drinking from a bottle, to imply Harlequin was hung over. Séléné tittered, and the Marquise whipped around to see the cause of the merriment. Ulysse bowed to her with a flourish and winked.
“We must endeavor to amuse you this morning,” he said, “since your husband’s been so remiss as to leave you alone.” He slid into the seat next to her.
The Marquise looked Ulysse up and down, seeming mollified. She nearly simpered as she asked, “What shall we do? Perhaps a game of cards?”
“Er, by your leave,” said Clio, “I have an idea. I thought perhaps you might indulge me by allowing me to sketch you. You have such fine fair skin and pretty features.”
“Why, that’s a capital idea,” Ulysse said. “Indeed, you absolutely must sketch the Marquise.”
The Marquise demurred coyly, shrugging with her double chin tucked into her shoulder. “Oh, I hardly think so.”
“No, but really. She could paint you as Diana, goddess of the hunt. It would be so attractive, imagine it. You could be dressed in Grecian robes, wearing a laurel crown, with a bow and a quiver of arrows.”
Clio clapped her hands together. “Oh yes, that’s brilliant. What could be more perfect? Won’t you?”
The Marquise pursed her lips and tapped her chin, pretending to consider it, though it was already clear she meant to accept. “Would I need to sit quite still for a very long time though?”
“I could do a preliminary sketch for a larger painting in just an hour or two,” Clio said. “And perhaps someone would be kind enough to read a story aloud to keep you entertained while I do it. Ulysse is a wonderful reader.”
“Say no more,” Ulysse said. “I’d be delighted. Have you a favorite author?”
The Marquise frowned and thought for a long time. “I don’t mind Madame Riccoboni’s novels. They’re usually decent.”
The color drained from Ulysse’s face, even as his smile widened so that his dark pink lips strained over his teeth. Only the week before last, he’d spent a couple of hours one afternoon telling us all the reasons why Madame Riccoboni’s novels were dreadful, worthless treacle. Aurore and I glanced at each other and barely suppressed our giggles, while Séléné raised her eyebrows in mute sympathy.
“Wonderful,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “I quite adore her novels myself. You have such good taste, my lady.”
When breakfast was finished, Ulysse, Clio, and the Marquise left for the library to find the novel the Marquise wished to hear read. Aurore, Séléné, and I followed them, and we stayed behind in the library after they had left for Clio’s studio upstairs with the book. I had hoped to find Thérion there, as he sometimes spent mornings writing letters or sketching caricatures at one of the writing desks.
“I suppose he must be still asleep,” I said. “Perhaps our cleverness will all be for naught.”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” Séléné said. “Go and wake him.”
“I don’t even know where he sleeps. He always came to me in my room at night. But wait, I think I have an idea.” I went out into the gallery, and Aurore and Séléné trailed after me to watch. I remembered the day he’d had blood on his sleeve, the day we had looked into the chest of antiquities and I had taken the Cernunnos medallion from it. Afterward he had walked down the hall … he had pulled aside a tapestry, opened a door …
I moved forward, letting memory guide me, almost to the end of the hall. Was this the tapestry? I pulled it aside and groped for the concealed handle. Something pushed inward with a click, and the door opened. I waved to Aurore and Séléné and went in.
Inside, I wrinkled my nose at the close, sweaty smell of the room, which had clearly been too seldom aired. Little light entered from the large window, which was covered by heavy black
velvet drapes and shuttered where the drapes narrowly parted. The room was dimly lit by candles on a large writing desk and a fire flickering in the grate of a curious octagonal iron stove that gave off generous heat. It was part study, part bedchamber, with a wide bed on a platform draped in black velvet like the window. Next to the writing desk was a cabinet of drawers, and on the other side a set of shelves filled with books.
A rustling came from the bed as Thérion emerged from behind the bed curtains. He stood barefoot in his long, wrinkled shirt, unshaven, looking at me.
“Violaine?”
“Psyché,” I reminded him.
He looked down, as though ashamed of his appearance, and then back up at me. His eyes were wide, anguished, pleading.
I couldn’t help myself and began to cry.
“Oh, Thérion.” I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.
“We’ll be in terrible trouble if she finds us here.” He stood stock-still, and his voice was soft and strangled with fear.
“But it’s safe. We came up with a stratagem. Clio convinced her to sit for a picture. And the Abbé will be gone till dusk.”
He breathed out and his rigid posture relaxed. He stepped forward and I came to meet him, and our arms twined round each other, but his embrace was weak and restrained. He let go of me quickly and stepped back.
“If she catches you here, she’ll realize you’re the Violaine of the poems, and she’ll find a way to exact retribution on you and your family. She was already suspicious when you arrived yesterday. Your children may be in danger. Your villages already are.”
“I’m not afraid of her. We’re not in France. Savoy has laws and courts, and she’s a foreigner.”
“All she’d have to do is send a letter to the governor and mention her father’s name. It would be nothing to her to buy off the police, and she can well afford it. Your father could find himself accused of fraud, arrested, and sent to the galleys. Your children – she’d find a way to see they’re taken from you. She could have you placed in an insane asylum. It’s the sort of thing she’d do.”
I put my hands on my hips. “But even if she really meant to do us so much harm, how would she find them out?”
“I have account books I keep here, and now she has access to all of them. She already noticed the transfers of funds to your father and questioned them. I told her he was a business associate, but I don’t know if she was really convinced. Thank God I managed to burn the contract we signed in the stove before she found it.”
If the contract that bound me to Thérion had been burnt, did that mean I was free? But I no longer wished to be free. I wanted nothing so badly as to remain a prisoner of the Castle of Enlightenment forever.
“But what makes you think she’d do such things?” I asked. “Has she destroyed others in the past?”
He turned his face away from me as though I had landed a fist on his cheek. Slowly, stumbling, he backed away and sat down on the end of the bed between the curtains.
“My child. She destroyed my child.” He didn’t look at me. His eyes gazed forward as if into darkness, unseeing.
I sat down next to him an arm’s length apart. I had never felt further away from him. “You had a child with her?”
He shook his head. “She had some sort of herb or drug the Abbé gave her that she used to avoid becoming enceinte with any child of mine. In private she used to say how much she despised children. But I wanted to have one with her, very badly. When we first married, if you can believe it, I was attracted to Léonore, and hoped to convince her. Perhaps I was even in love with her. I didn’t mind that she wasn’t well-read, or that she had a temper, or that she was taller than I was. I admired her strength and confidence. And I was touched that she fell in love with me and wanted to marry me, even though I had nothing.
“I don’t know at what point exactly I fell out of love with her. She lied about things, twisted the truth. The more distant I became, the more bitter and spiteful she was. Then I fell in love with someone else. Renée. She was only a barmaid, but she was beautiful, and kind, and one of the most intelligent people I’d ever met, though she had little education. We had a daughter together …”
He broke down weeping, but managed to choke out, “Charlotte. She was only a few weeks old when Léonore found out. Renée had recovered so well from the birth, and Charlotte was the healthiest, prettiest baby. She would have lived. But Léonore had her sent away to a wet-nurse and ensured she was neglected. A week later … I had to bury her. I wanted an inquest. I wanted the nurse put in prison. So Léonore admitted it was on her orders, and I’d be wasting my time, because the police wouldn’t care.”
My stomach felt as if it had dropped to the floor. So many mysteries began to make terrible sense now. “That’s why you forbade talk of children at Boisaulne.”
He nodded, tears streaming down his cheeks, his eyes fixed on the ground. He said softly, “In another life, I’d have liked to have your children here, to be a father to them. I couldn’t bear it if any harm came to them. It was dangerous and selfish enough of me to bring you here, the only place I could hide from Léonore. So long as she lives, I’ll never have a child around me, or let one come within a hundred paces of her, if I can help it. A child’s no safer here than in the lair of the ogre-king of the forest.”
I wanted to weep for him, but my horror was too deep for tears, and my eyes were dry now.
When his sobs subsided, I asked, “How did you manage to keep Boisaulne hidden from her?”
“I told you how I was sent off very young to school in Paris, after my parents passed away. My school friends thought all Savoyards were filthy chimney sweeps, and no one knew my family, so I pretended to be French and never told anyone I was born in Savoy. Everything here was boarded up and falling into dust, anyway, and I couldn’t have afforded to keep it up. When I married Léonore I never mentioned it. All she and her father cared about was my title and estate in Picardy, even though it was little more than a ruin with some woods and pastures attached. My grandfather bought them and named the place Le Herle when he first made his fortune on the stock market, in the days of the Duc d’Orléans’s regency.”
“And then you started coming here after … after this all happened. Through the tunnel of the grotto?”
“No, I only found the tunnel later. When I came at first, it was through a drawing.” Seeing my questioning look, he explained further, “When I was at a low point, I started to draw sketches from my childhood memories of summers at Boisaulne. One day I had a strange feeling as I drew. It’s hard to describe it. My longing was so intense to be here, to be away from the dullness and constant irritations and the underlying horror and misery of my life with Léonore. It was like the drawing felt alive under my hands. I was sketching the fountain at the end of the garden. I looked at it for a long time, feeling that strange sense of aliveness, and then it was as though I was looking into it. It was alive. It was real, not merely a drawing. And then I was there, by the fountain. I found I could travel back and forth to and from Boisaulne that way in an instant, by looking at the drawing and making the wish to be there. To return to my study in Paris, I only had to look into the fountain and make the wish to return.
“So I spent as much time away from Léonore as I could get away with, either at Boisaulne, or with my friends and at their salon gatherings. It was always understood that if I ever betrayed Léonore again, if I even carried on so much as a flirtation, she’d find the cruelest way of punishing her rival, and I’d bring down disaster on whomever I loved. Léonore had informants, and I knew word would get back to her no matter how careful I was. It’s clear now that Donatien was meant to be spying on me all along.”
The memory came back to me of Donatien in the garden, trying to get me to admit I loved Harlequin. He must have begun watching us after that, if not before. And he’d had no fear of punishment for attacking me, since he knew he’d be able to accuse me to Harlequin’s wife afterward. A flame of anger spurted up in
my chest.
“And you brought me here, knowing I’d be in danger.”
He covered his face with his hands. “I was so alone. I was so ashamed of what I’d done. You’re the first person I’ve ever told. It doesn’t justify what I did to you. Nothing can. When I first had your book and your poems, I used to dream of you, imagine a life together with you. I thought sometimes of committing suicide, but I lived for those daydreams of you.”
He set his hands back in his lap, and I reached out to take one of them in mine and held it tightly. I was in tears again. “But you made me happier than I ever imagined I could be. Perhaps I shouldn’t forgive you, but I do. I love you. You opened up worlds to me. Even if she finds me out and punishes me, perhaps it was worth it. If only I could keep the children and my father safe. What happened to … to the barmaid you loved? To Renée?”
He heaved a great sigh. “Losing Charlotte was too much for her to bear. She disappeared and I never heard from her again.”
“You don’t know whether Léonore did anything to persecute her further?”
“I don’t know. I hoped to God there was nothing of the kind. I imagined every manner of catastrophe.”
“But listen, the others and I, your friends, we want to help you, in any way we can. We met as a council last night. A kind of war council.”
He took his hand out of mine and set it back in his lap. “I told you, there’s nothing to be done. All I can do is endure it, and stay as far away from you as possible, so as not to bring down ruin on you and your family. If you love me, you’ll leave Boisaulne with the others at the end of the week. That would be the best way to help me, to let me see you safely away from here.”
“But you can’t. I can’t. You shouldn’t have to live the rest of your life like this. The others were quite inventive trying to think what could be done. Séléné seemed to be hinting she wanted to arrange for a hunting accident.”
The Prisoner of the Castle of Enlightenment Page 21