Chateau of Secrets: A Novel

by Melanie Dobson

  I swirled my wine in its glass. “I’d like to hear about your documentary.”

  He ignored my snub. “I’m profiling the stories of some of the German soldiers.”

  His words took me aback. “The German soldiers?”

  He nodded.

  “But you’re in France.”

  “I’ve already done my filming in Berlin.”

  A breeze wafted through the open window and rustled the sleeve of my blouse. Something about the way he said it—or perhaps it was because he folded his arms across his chest—made it seem as if he were hiding something. I refused to be played again. “After all the Germans did, I don’t know why you want to do a documentary on them.”

  The fire in his green eyes relaxed in the flicker of the candlelight. “Hitler was an evil man, but not all the men in the Wehrmacht were evil.”

  “The Wehrmacht?”

  “The German army.”

  Outside the darkened window a streetlamp glimmered. It reminded me of the lamp in Narnia—the one that beckoned the Pevensie children and lit their path as they returned home. The children confronted evil, but not on their own. They needed the tools gifted to them. They needed one another, and in their darkest hours, they needed Aslan, but Aslan had seemed distant at times in the book.

  The novels were inspired, in part, by the three young evacuees C. S. Lewis’s family hosted during World War II. Perhaps it was Lewis’s own journey of trying to process all the evil that happened in Europe. By the end of his stories, good had triumphed over the evil, but the lives of good people were also lost in the battle. It was a tumultuous journey for those who clung to all that was good.

  When I looked back at Riley, he was watching me intently. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Narnia,” I replied. “My grandmother read the series to me when I was a girl, and I’ve read one of the books to my class each year.”

  “They were some of my favorite books as a kid too. We had a big wardrobe in my parents’ room, and I kept knocking on its back wall when I thought no one was around.”

  “What does your documentary have to do with the Château d’Epines?” I asked.

  “I’d like to talk to you about the German occupation.”

  Now I folded my arms. “I didn’t even know the Germans occupied the château until yesterday.”

  “I’ll have more general questions for you.” He nudged his empty soup bowl to the side of the table. “Then perhaps you can give me a tour.”

  “Why are you doing this—” I started to ask, but our waiter walked into the room. He cleared our bowls and replaced my soup with a plate of creamy chicken with baby potatoes, carrots, and leeks. In front of Riley, he set fillets of red snapper, the fish ornamented with sprigs of rosemary and wedges of lemon.

  The aroma was intoxicating, but I didn’t begin eating. “What inspired you to do a documentary about German soldiers?”

  “My grandfather flew a B-24 during World War II.” He glanced out the window at the streetlamp glowing across from us. “And I suppose I’ve always been intrigued as to what sacrifices people will make to protect themselves and those they love. It tells a lot about a person when you find out what or who they’re willing to die for.”

  When he smiled again, I wondered if he was always this cheerful.

  “I still don’t understand why you want to feature the Germans.”

  Riley’s head tilted left, confusion filling his eyes. “Why don’t we talk more about it tomorrow?”

  My knife slid through the chicken as smoothly as if it were softened butter, and the meat tasted as if it were soaked in butter as well. Ah, well, when in France . . .

  He held out his fork with a piece of baked fish on it. “You have to try this.”

  Wary, I eyed the oil puddled on his offering.

  He persisted. “It’s my clean fork.”

  In that moment, I realized that I was still playing for the cameras. Chloe Sauver, the candidate’s fiancée, would be obsessed with her image and how she portrayed her future husband and family for the documentary. She would never trounce through France wearing jeans and flip-flops. And she certainly wouldn’t eat a bite of fish off a stranger’s fork.

  But I was no longer the candidate’s fiancée. There were no cameras here and no one but me seemed to care a thing about image. No longer did I have to play by the campaign rules.

  I accepted his offering and enjoyed the tangy mixture of flavors on my tongue. Then I offered him a bite of the creamy chicken.

  “Are you interviewing anyone else in Normandy?” I asked.

  “A woman named Calvez,” he said. “She lived at the château during the occupation.”

  I put down my fork. “I tried to visit a Madame Calvez earlier today.”

  Riley’s face flooded with concern. “Did something happen?”

  I glanced out the window before looking back at him. “She refused to see me.”

  He didn’t seem surprised.

  Over our third course—an assortment of breads and cheeses—I tried to probe further into Madame Calvez’s story, but Riley refused to say anything else. It was for each person to tell their own story, he said, and his job to honor it. According to him, almost everyone wanted to share their story—eventually. When they were ready to talk, it was his job to share it with the world.

  Why had Mémé hidden part of her story from me, until it was too late for her to share it? If only Madame Calvez would talk to me as well as to Riley. It wasn’t too late for her to share her story.

  Chapter 27

  With Louise on her hip, Gisèle picked up the empty picnic basket and began to walk back across the yard from the chapelle. They would leave before lunch to cross the river and climb the hill, taking the path through the forest to find the orphanage. Somehow she would have to convince Sister Beatrice to keep Louise. If not, she feared the gendarmes would search for her here.

  “I will miss you,” she whispered to the little girl. She’d swept Louise’s curly brown hair up into a ponytail. Thankfully the child had her father’s blue eyes, the eyes of a national.

  Louise clutched a fistful of Gisèle’s hair in her hand. “Maman?”

  “She’ll be here soon,” Gisèle lied. She didn’t know what else to do. “In the meantime, you can stay with me.”

  “More milk,” she begged.

  “Of course, sweetheart. You may have all the milk you’d like.”

  She hummed to Louise as they moved across the morning shadows of the château, to the safety of the house.

  If Sister Beatrice refused to take Louise, perhaps she could get a pass to take a bus down to Lyon. When Tante Corinne saw Louise, she would surely take her in. No one needed to know her mother was born into a Jewish family.

  The low hum of an automobile startled her, and she turned around. Dust ballooned on the driveway, tires rumbling across the gravel, and she grasped Louise close to her as she squinted down at the brown cloud that obscured the vehicle.

  Had the gendarmes already come?

  She didn’t want to see anyone today, not while she held Louise in her arms. A black sedan rolled into the courtyard and stopped near her. She glanced wildly around her, searching for a crevice or rock or someplace to hide her empty basket. And stash a child.

  But it was too late.

  She knew most of the gendarmes in Saint-Lô. How could she explain away picnicking with a child who wasn’t hers?

  Louise pulled Gisèle’s hair as she swiftly calculated her options. There was nothing she could do except stand strong against whoever was in the sedan.

  Pushing back her shoulders, she tried to appear taller than her small height. No matter what happened, no matter who emerged from the car, she wouldn’t cower.

  When the driver’s door opened, a young German soldier stepped out, his uniform fitted snug over his slender shoulders. His hair was trimmed short, and he looked like he should be wearing knickers and knee socks.

  The soldier didn’t acknowledge her, re
aching instead for the handle of the door behind him and opening it. A much older man stepped out into the courtyard, his gold-tipped walking stick crushing the gravel beneath it. His uniform was decorated with ribbons and medals, and he had the air of a weathered officer who’d fought many battles. And won.

  Tapping his walking stick on the gravel, the officer surveyed the property—the fields laden with flax and wheat, the apple orchard and stone barn. He scanned the château and the chapelle, and then his steely gaze focused back on her and her basket. And her baby.

  Silently she petitioned Saint Michel for strength.

  Towering over her, the officer lifted his black stick and rapped it against his glove. She put her hand over Louise’s back, afraid he might poke her with it. “Who is this child?” he asked in German.

  She feigned ignorance. They needn’t know that Odette taught her the German language a long time ago.

  The officer mumbled something about the stupid French, and then he waved another man out of the car. This man’s eyes were on the ground, but she recognized the civilian clothing of a Frenchman.

  Traitor, she wanted to hiss, but she held her tongue.

  The German barked at the shorter man as if he were an animal who could only understand commands. Loud, harsh ones.

  The Frenchman faced her, and her heart filled with compassion when she saw the sorrow in his eyes. She had no idea what the Germans had done to him or his family.

  The officer continued to shout in the man’s ear. When the officer finally stopped, the Frenchman looked back up at her. A hint of amusement replaced the sorrow in his eyes. “The stupid German would like to know about the child in your arms.”

  “She is my daughter.” The lie slid off her lips as easily as the one she’d told Louise about seeing her mother.

  The Frenchman translated her words, and then they began to volley the translated words.

  “What is the name of your daughter?”

  She almost blurted out, “Louise,” and the way the major looked at her, it was as if he were waiting for her response in German as well. But she turned back to the Frenchman again. She had to take extra care in maintaining her ignorance. The French and possibly the Germans would be looking for Louise Batier.

  A name rolled off her lips in response. “Adeline,” she told him. “Her name is Adeline.”

  It was a name that reminded her of André and Nadine, a name that would honor both of them. In order to protect the child, she must pretend Adeline was hers, for as long as André and Nadine were gone.

  “And where is your husband?” the officer asked.

  Both of her parents—and the nuns at her boarding school—had impressed on her the virtues of an honest woman, but in the clarity of this thin moment, she knew she had to pretend with all that was within her that she had a husband. And that he had gone away.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maman?” Louise—Adeline said again, but the officer didn’t seem to hear the questioning in her voice.

  The officer scrutinized the basket in Gisèle’s hands and then looked up at the gray mantle in the sky. “Are you picnicking today?”

  After the Frenchman translated for her, she replied, “Please tell him I help feed people who have no food.”

  “Where are these people?” the German asked.

  “At the top of the hill,” she told the Frenchman. “In Agneaux.”

  And then she wished she hadn’t said that. What if he checked her story?

  “Why are you feeding them?” the officer demanded.

  “They are invalids,” she said. “If I don’t feed them, no one will.”

  The German officer looked over her shoulder as if he were trying to determine where she had come from.

  “Would the officer like me to take him there?” Her heart pounded with her words, but she needed to proceed with confidence, as feigned as it may have been. Surely one of the Frenchwomen would corroborate her story for her.

  The Frenchman spoke to the officer, stretching her story as he relayed it. “She said she would gladly take you there. They are all sickly people, but she said not to worry. Only a few of them are contagious.”

  The officer took a step back from her, as did his driver. “Perhaps we will go later.”

  “Certainly.” She put down the basket and switched the child to her other hip. Adeline seemed mesmerized by the decorations on their shoulders—or maybe she was afraid as well. As the two German officers conversed, she bent toward the Frenchman. “What is your name?”

  “Lucien.”

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I have no choice. My family tried to run from Paris when the bombing began, but the bombs killed my wife and daughter. When the Germans caught me, they almost killed me as well until they discovered I knew German.”

  “They killed my father during that raid.”

  Sorrow filled his eyes again. “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop talking,” the German officer snapped at them. “Tell her we have come to visit her house.”

  The Frenchman hesitated. It seemed as if he was unclear as to whether or not he was supposed to speak again. As she waited, a hundred questions raced through her mind. What did it mean for the German officer to visit? And how long did he plan to stay?

  “Tell her,” the officer demanded.

  The thought of having them in her house for even a moment revolted her. She didn’t want to let them inside the front door—their stench, she feared, would linger long after. And how could she entertain the Germans as she cared for Michel?

  “You have no choice,” Lucien said after he relayed the officer’s words.

  She stood tall again. Perhaps if she played hostess instead of victim, they would treat her as such. “Tell him if they intend to spend the night, there are empty rooms on the third floor of the servants’ quarters and in the west wing of the house.”

  They would probably take whatever rooms they wanted, but the thought of them sleeping in Papa’s room or even Michel’s room made her skin crawl. And she didn’t want them anywhere near her chamber.

  She pointed toward the house. “My servant and I will need an hour to prepare your rooms.”

  The officer ignored Lucien’s words, marching across the courtyard instead.

  She kissed Adeline’s head as the child played with her sleeve. She didn’t have any choice, did she? Not if she wanted to remain alive to care for Michel and the child in her arms. But what would Papa say to her allowing German officers inside?

  He would probably tell her to do what she could to survive. Her mother would tell her to demand respect. If they respected her, they wouldn’t harm her or Adeline.

  She rushed around the officer and put her hand on the doorknob before he touched it.

  Then she opened the front door and let the Germans inside.

  — CHAPTER 28 —

  GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE DUMPS FIANCÉE.

  I wanted to hurl my iPad across the room, but instead of throwing it, I clenched it in my hands, stared at the lie of a headline on the news site and the picture of Austin and me in front of the Byrd Theatre this past spring. His arm was around me, communicating to the world that we belonged together. Or at least that I belonged to him.

  Austin and Olivia and the rest of his staff had probably huddled together in his war room for hours, trying to concoct the best way to announce the end of our engagement. I could almost hear the indifference in their discussion—was it better for Austin to be the victim of a breakup or the instigator? Would he seem cruel to break up with me prior to an election? If he was a victim, it would make him look weak, though some might take pity on him.

  Austin wouldn’t want pity.

  Switching over to Austin’s campaign site, I read the statement on his front page, and it was much more nuanced than the news headline.

  Due to unforeseeable differences, my fiancée and I have mutually decided to postpone our wedding until after the election. A campaign is a
rigorous affair and I am focusing my attentions on preparing to become the best governor for Virginia. This is a private matter between Miss Sauver and me, and we both respectfully ask that you allow us time and space to focus first on the election.

  Mutual postponement, my foot.

  Austin and Olivia had gambled that I wouldn’t retaliate by dragging his reputation through the mud on the talk shows. And even if I decided to tell the truth, it seemed these days that even the career of a married politician survived an affair or two. My story might only benefit Austin in the end and pigeonhole me as a lunatic. A jealous lover’s rage over her handsome fiancé’s last fling. Some might even cheer him on.

  I skimmed the statement again. Ironic that he had used the word affair.

  Swiveling in the chair, I faced the dark windows. I needed to do something, anything, other than surf for news about the end of my engagement.

  Riley had researched me before he came to France, so it was fair game, I supposed, for me to search for more information on him as well. Hundreds of results came up on my screen. My mother was right—Riley had won a bunch of awards for his work, including an Oscar a few years ago. It seemed that he had a fascination for documenting the secrets of World War II, and an even greater fascination for the women he met along the way.

  I groaned as the first image filled my screen: Riley cradling a beer bottle in one hand, his arm wrapped around a blonde in a skimpy dress.

  I skipped to the next picture. And then the next. Multiple pictures showed him partying with women in various states of undress. A slightly older version, it seemed, of Austin’s brother. Or the secret life of my former fiancé.

  Riley might have come across as charming, but like Austin, Riley was hiding his true self from me. And, I suspected, he was hiding the real reason he was doing this documentary.

  I turned off my iPad and tossed it onto the bed.

  I was tired of people trying to hide things from me. Tired of lies.

  Instead of being angry at Austin’s deception, perhaps I should be thankful that he showed his true self before we married. I should be grateful that he had gotten careless—or cocky—and I caught a glimpse of the destruction of my future before we proceeded with our marriage.