“I suppose she could have been. I never knew what became of her after I was sent away to school.”
“I enjoyed the tale,” the Scotsman said. “Only I’d have liked to know more about what happened to the daughter after she ran away to the woods.”
“It’s true,” said Clio. “We hear a lot about the roi des aulnes in the beginning, so it would be nice to hear more about what he does in the middle of the story too.”
“Very well,” said Aurore. “I’ll think about putting more detail into the middle.”
From outside came a clamor of several dogs barking. Then, as if in answer, an unnerving howl pierced the air, a cross between the call of a wolf and a bear’s roar, ending in a snarl that echoed through the woods. My hairs stood on end and I traded nervous glances with the others. It was just like something out of Aurore’s story.
The Marquise ignored it and said, “It’s obvious someone made up the story about the ogre long ago to frighten people out of going into the woods. There’s an old story, too, about the Grand Veneur of the forest of Fontainebleau. He’s supposed to be a devilish, ghostly figure who rides through the forest at night, hunting with his hell-hounds. It’s all so much superstition and rubbish. I’ve been on several hunts in that forest, and no one I’ve met with has ever seen the Grand Veneur with his own eyes.”
As she spoke, there were steps outside the room in the gallery, and my heart leapt into my throat. The dogs barking …
Donatien walked in. For a moment I was too shocked to do anything but stare.
He flashed an easy smile at us. “Your gate was locked, and no one came when I called, so I had the dog boys help me up over the wall and let myself in at the back. I hope you don’t mind. Good evening, Madame la marquise, Abbé, mesdames et messieurs. Harlequin, it seems our little misunderstanding’s been resolved, eh? No hard feelings.”
The Marquise rose to her feet and went to him, holding out her hands, which he took in his. “Donatien, what a pleasure to see you so soon after all. We thought we might not see you for another day or two.”
He bowed his head to kiss her right hand, and then let her hands go. “The pleasure’s all mine. You’ll be happy to know the hounds took to the journey quite well. We’ll get them settled into their kennels and the dog boys can sleep in the stable with them. Then we can have you out on a hunt as soon as you like. I’ve even brought a little present for you, a musket engraved with flowers, just right for a lady such as yourself.”
The Marquise clapped her hands. “Oh, but how gallant. You’re wonderful.”
Donatien looked past her and caught my eye. I had half risen from my ottoman. My instinct screamed within me to fly from the room and hide. But it was too late. He cocked his head.
“Belle-me, you’re still here? Ma foi, the Marquise is remarkably forgiving. You’re looking very well. Perhaps we can have a tête-à-tête later on and pick up where we left off.”
The Marquise looked up sharply to stare at me, her features contorting with hatred and rage. I willed myself not to faint, though all the blood seemed to rush from my head to fill my heart nearly to bursting. Then I was too weak to stand after all and fell back down onto my seat from my half-crouching position.
“That’s her? This is the girl?” she asked.
“What, didn’t you know? Yes, of course, that’s Belle-me, the one who was the cause of it all.”
The Marquise raised her eyes to the ceiling for a moment, as though seeking divine aid. Then she strode forward, bearing down on me, and slapped me across the cheek with a blow that knocked me off my seat onto the floor. For a second I saw stars before my eyes and my ears rang. I got up onto my hands and knees, shaking my head as if to clear it. I was dimly aware that some of the others had risen from their seats and were standing around us.
“Slut,” the Marquise bellowed. “Sow. I knew it. It had to be you, you pox-ridden piece of filth. How dare you?”
Before I could stumble to my feet, before anyone could restrain her, the Marquise kicked me in the side with a force that sent me sprawling. The pain stole my breath away. The others gasped and cried out in shock. In a sweep of skirts Aurore rushed to my side and put her arms around me. I looked up to see a tussle, as Clio and Tristan both laid hands on the Marquise to pull her back. She shrugged and twisted her broad shoulders, struggling to shake them off, while the Abbé tried to drag Tristan away to free her. Thérion, my love, closed his eyes. His face was as though a hand had passed over it, wiping all the expression from his features, as if he had fallen asleep. He crumpled like a dropped handkerchief, hitting his head on the floor with a terrible thump.
For a moment there was silence, but for the sounds of labored breathing. The Marquise stood still before me and the others let go of her and each other. I caught my breath and drew in great gulps of air.
“Get out,” the Marquise said. “Out of my house this instant. Now, or I’ll set those hounds on you. Do you think I’m joking?”
Aurore helped me to my feet. The Marquise took a step toward me, her eyes blazing. I broke free of Aurore’s arm around me and darted forward, around the Marquise, and ran out of the room. Outside the door, I paused only for a moment to catch my breath, and then I ran again, down the gallery toward the stairs, and down the stairs to the ground floor. I tugged at the front door, but it was locked, and I didn’t know how to unlock it from the inside.
Where could I hide? I couldn’t survive another night in the forest, with the howling of the wolves around me, without a lantern or a cloak, without food or water, save from the stream where I had nearly drowned before. I would have to stay out in the garden till dawn, protected within its walls, and then make my way safely out through the grotto and into the village in the morning.
I ran the length of the gallery to the glass doors at the end and went out into the sharp cold air of the mountain night. If I had to, I would walk the garden paths all night to stay warm. If only I could have brought more with me. I felt in my pockets. Besides my medallion, which had done me so little good as a luck charm in the forest, I had only a handkerchief, a couple of hairpins, and a folded-up scrap of paper on which I had scribbled a few lines of a poem. Donatien’s hounds barked and howled from the other side of the garden wall, and again, an eerie answering howl-roar from the woods quieted them to whimpering and snarling.
I had hardly been walking in the garden for five minutes when I heard voices. I froze, conscious of the noise of my shoes on the gravel. There was the clunk of a large key turning in the side gate’s lock and the scream of rusty hinges as the great iron door opened. The dogs’ barking erupted again, louder and closer.
“Do you see her?” said the Marquise over their din.
“I can’t see a thing,” Donatien shouted. “It’s the way she would have gone though. He keeps the front door locked from the inside.”
“Go on then, let them loose.”
“Are you sure you really want to do this? They’ll tear out her throat, unless she can get up a tree first. It’s how they’ve been trained. It’ll make a bloody mess.”
“I’m sure. It’ll teach them all a lesson. Her blood will be on my husband’s hands.”
There was a pause. “I suppose,” Donatien yelled doubtfully over the barking.
“She’s nothing but a stupid village girl. The Comte de Charolais used to hunt peasants for sport and no one ever bothered him about it.”
“Funny you mention the Comte de Charolais. He was my hero, growing up, but more for what he did with the peasant girls.”
“You’re joking, I know. The Comte de Charolais was depraved. I mean he never got in trouble, even though he was evil. But I’m doing it for my husband’s good, to save him from himself.”
“Oh, but of course, I meant it – tongue in cheek. Well then, if you’re sure. Belle-me,” he yelled louder, “if you’re out there, you’d better run now. Cerbère, Charon, go kill! Good boys, good boys. Get her!”
The sounds of his last commands were indistinc
t, drowned out by the noise of the gravel under my feet as I set off sprinting for the fountain at the back of the garden with every last ounce of my strength, faster than I ever thought I could run. My eyes had grown used to the dark, enough to stay within the path’s borders, but by the time I reached the fountain and flung myself onto the stone mermaid figure, the dogs were already at my feet. One tried to bite my leg through my skirts and tore the fabric, just as the brick gate rumbled open. Faint green luminescence shone from the opening. The other dog leapt up on me and snapped at my arm, but I pulled away too quickly for his jaws to close on my flesh. I squeezed myself through the opening and went down into the grotto.
My ears, unblocked, took in the entrancing music from the bejeweled tunnel as before, and my eyes were momentarily dazzled by the glamour of the lights and sparkling stones. Then the dogs leapt in through the opening after me before I could push it shut, and all I heard was their growling and snarling, as I backed up in terror against the threshold of the illuminated tunnel. They had cornered me and crouched to strike. In the shifting colors of the gem-lights their eyes and the saliva around their jaws gleamed.
Desperately I looked behind me into the tunnel where the music played, its lilting melody promising peace and safety. One of the dogs leapt at my throat and I jumped backward and tumbled head over heels down through the opening. Down, down, down I fell, through black nothingness, and the noise of their snarling faded.
XVIII
I came to a halt on dry ground, painlessly, upright on my feet, as though I had floated down like a leaf on a gentle wind from the opening in the grotto. I opened my eyes, which had been clenched tightly shut, and blinked at the brilliance before me. I was in a grand chamber, the walls paneled in silver, white silk, and mirrors, the floor of polished parquet. In front of me was a low platform with a tall-backed silver throne, upholstered in lilac velvet padding and cushions. On the throne sat a delicate, diminutive blonde woman in a white dress. To one side of her a sumptuous banquet was laid on a long table. To the other side a group of musicians played music, and beyond them a small crowd of men and women in courtly dress milled around, talking as if at a royal reception.
I might have thought I was looking at a painting of one of the royal courts of Europe were it not for the fact that all the people, including the demoiselle on her throne, had iridescent wings protruding from their backs, like beautiful insects. The wings flickered and fluttered from time to time as they conversed with one another, like ladies’ fans. The demoiselle-queen had a youthful, heart-shaped face framed by long pale hair, atop which she wore a silver diadem encrusted with diamonds and amethysts. She leaned forward in her seat and peered intently at me as though trying to ascertain what manner of creature I was. Her musicians, courtiers, and ladies all wore coats and gowns of lustrous satin or velvet in pastel shades, with gleaming trims of silver braid, embroidered flowers, pearl buttons, and jewels. The queen caught one of the musicians’ eye and gave a nod so the players fell silent. The other guests gradually noticed and stopped speaking, until the room was quiet and all eyes were upon me.
“Welcome,” the queen said to me. “It’s a long time since we had a guest from up there.”
I tried to speak but found my throat had closed up from terror and astonishment. I wished to say, “Thank you,” but the only sound I could get out was a kind of terrible croaking, punctuated by coughs, like a strangled frog.
“Poor dear,” said the queen. “Someone get her a drink, quickly.”
A goblet was placed in my hand by an unseen helper. I coughed again and pretended to take a drink from it. It looked and smelled like water, but I remembered all the stories warning against accepting food or drink from fairies, so I didn’t allow any of the liquid to pass my lips. When I had pretended to drink a long draught, the goblet was taken from me. I took deep breaths, trying to calm myself, then cleared my throat.
“Thank you, your Majesty,” I croaked. “Excuse me, it’s as though I had a frog in my throat.”
She looked taken aback, as though I had insulted her, and I sensed a wave of surprise and disapprobation wash over the assembly. Whatever I had said to offend her, after a moment the queen shrugged it off.
“But tell us, how did you come here? We do love hearing human tales. Some of us write them down in books, and we tell them to our young to put them to sleep at night.”
“Well, I …”
“Start from the beginning and leave out no detail.”
I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. I tried to think where to begin. If they liked hearing “human tales” as much we enjoyed our fairy tales, I had to take care in how I told it. It couldn’t be too short or too long, and I had to leave out what might bore them and build to an exciting end. So I started with my father telling me I had to go to live with the Marquis de Boisaulne, and I ended with his wife setting the dogs on me. The queen seemed pleased with my tale.
“My goodness, chased by dogs like a hind! But never fear, you can stay down here with us as long as you like. And you really met the roi des aulnes? Fascinating.”
“But truthfully, I might only have dreamt of meeting him. I was ill, delirious and half-frozen from falling into the stream.” The mention of the roi des aulnes reminded me of the Cernunnos medallion in my pocket, and without thinking I slid my hand into the pocket to rub the silver metal with my thumb and reassure myself it was still there. The moment I touched the medallion, everything changed before my eyes, and I stumbled backward.
It all appeared before me now in double vision. The scene and ensemble of figures was just the same as before, but I saw another, entirely different scene superimposed over it. It was as if I had two sets of eyes and two separate minds to see it with, while having yet a single soul receiving both impressions. It was such a strange sensation that I feared I might go mad, so I took my hand off the medallion, and once again saw only the gleaming fairy court. But I knew what I had seen. Underneath the exquisite facade, there was no white-and-silver mirrored throne room, but a murky cave with black slime on the walls and a mud floor. There was no throne with a radiant fairy queen seated on it, but only an enormously fat, wart-covered toad crouching in the black-green muck in a coating of her own mucus, regarding me with protruding eyes and croaking with a noise like deep belches. What I had taken to be the assembly of the fairy court was a pulsing mass of common frogs in a patchwork blanket of dull dark grays and greens covering the rocks, flicking their long tongues in and out and puffing out their sides with croaks. What had appeared to be the banquet table laid with shining silver and porcelain, bearing heaps of mouth-watering roasts and mounds of perfectly ripe sweet fruit, was in fact a wide slippery sinkhole, a lightless abyss I couldn’t see to the bottom of.
“But if you saw him as a stag, even if he only revealed himself to you in a dream, you must be highly favored of him,” the fairy queen said.
I remembered now that the fairy in Aurore’s tale had a grudge against the roi des aulnes. “But nay, Queen, the tales I hear of him describe him as a cruel, bloody-handed ogre. I only hope never to see the monster again.”
The queen nodded thoughtfully, as though only partially satisfied by my answer. “Come then, my dear, you must be tired and hungry. Sit down at my banquet table and refresh yourself.” She swept an imperious hand toward the table.
I touched the medallion for an instant again. The yawning void of the sinkhole was still visible where she had gestured that I ought to sit down. Involuntarily I took a step back. “Thank you for the kind offer, your Highness, but I already ate a large supper tonight.”
The queen’s eyes narrowed. “You have something in your hand. Something precious. Show me.”
Panic flooded me. “N-no, your Majesty, it’s nothing, just an old token I found. It soothes me to touch it, like a smooth pebble.”
“You have the second sight. You see things as they are. Give me the token.” Her voice turned to wheedling like a little girl. “I just want to see it. I don’t even wan
t to keep it. The second sight will drive you mad if you use it too much. I just want to see myself as I truly am. Then I’ll give it back to you, I promise. We never break our promises, you know. We can’t. It’s against our laws.”
I took another step back. “No.”
“I’ll give you something in return. I can help you. You’re in desperate straits. Help me, and I’ll help you. That’s the law of the humans, isn’t it? Tell me, what do you desire?”
“I just want to go back, to my own world up above. Safely.”
“Is that all?”
“If there’s more I could ask for, it’s that … I wish for my beloved to be safe, and for both of us to be together.”
“Hmm, it’s not a small thing you’re asking for. Even we fairies have our limits. But I’ll see what I can do. Only let me hold the token.”
I could see no better alternative, and no other means of escaping this cave, so I slowly stepped forward and approached the queen. I reached into my pocket, grasped the ribbon, and drew the medallion out by it without touching the metal to my skin. I placed it around my neck so that it hung down over the fabric of the stomacher that covered my stays in front, and leaned forward so the queen could put her hand to it without it leaving my possession. The queen eyed it eagerly, reached out her slim white hand, and wrapped her long fingers around the horned figure of Cernunnos.
She screamed. It was a long, high-pitched cry of anguish, fear, and rage. She let go, and I fell back as though she had pushed me. For a long moment she stared at me, her breath heaving in and out, her eyes alight with fury.
The Prisoner of the Castle of Enlightenment Page 24