by Maia Chance
A door crashed open. Gabriel shot to his feet, keeping hold of the drawing. He spun around to see a man barreling towards him with an upswung hammer.
23
The man with the upswung hammer was presumably the blacksmith Marcel.
“What in hell are you doing in my house?” Marcel bellowed in French. “I will crush your skull!”
“I came to reclaim my drawing,” Gabriel said, waving the paper.
Marcel stopped, and the hammer fell to his side. He panted. “What do you mean? That is not yours.”
“It is. I suppose you got it from the zoologist, Tolbert?”
A pause. “No. Well, yes. He gave it to my wife. She took a foolish fancy to it. He called upon her yesterday, said he had learned of her sighting of the beast. He wished to ask her if the beast matched the creature in his picture.”
“And did it?”
“Why in hell should I tell you?” Marcel hefted the hammer.
Gabriel tensed. He still had his Webley tucked in his jacket, but he would not use it on a man in his own home. “Why tell me? Because, as I said, this drawing is stolen property. Or perhaps I should request the police to assist me.”
“I could bash your skull in now and bury you in the woods.”
“Oh? The woods are rather bustling at the moment.”
“I know places those damned woodcutters do not. Secret places.” Marcel lifted the hammer and lunged.
Gabriel dodged to the side, feeling the breeze of the hammer. It hit the hutch, and pottery crashed and splintered. Marcel bellowed.
Gabriel was at the back door, and he picked up a small wooden stool. Marcel was making another Spanish bull’s charge with the hammer.
“Oh, go on and keep the damned thing, then,” Gabriel said, and allowed the drawing to drift to the floor.
Just as Marcel was upon him, Gabriel swung the stool and whacked him under the chin. Marcel crashed to the floor, and the hammer skidded into a corner. Gabriel snatched it up, now wielding the hammer and the stool. He was the same height as Marcel, but far outbulked.
Marcel crawled to the drawing and grabbed it. Bright blood dripped from his lip and spattered across the paper. “Meddling outsiders,” he said. “Everything was fine until you lot arrived.”
“So you say, man, but it seems that at least one of us meddling outsiders—Tolbert—has given you something to treasure.”
“This?” Marcel wadded up the drawing. “I care nothing for this. Tolbert is a lunatic, a snob, his Paris ways! Bothering my wife. She has a baby to mind and women to help.”
“Well then, if the picture means nothing to you, why don’t you burn it and be done with it?” Gabriel gestured to the smoldering ashes in the fireplace. “Go on.”
Marcel hesitated, but then got stiffly to his feet. He tossed the drawing onto the ashes, and after a few seconds, it blazed up and, blackening, curled upon itself.
If that drawing had been meaningful to him, he did not show it.
Marcel grabbed a pewter pitcher from the mantel and came barging towards Gabriel.
Dash it all.
Gabriel slipped out the back door, tossing aside the hammer and stool as he tore through the garden, around the cottage, and onto the main village track. What had Marcel meant about meddling outsiders? Why had his wife kept—and hidden—the picture of the skeleton? One thing was certain: The tension in this valley was tightening as surely as a hand at the throat.
On the track, he slowed to a brisk walk, and he didn’t look back until he reached the château gates.
* * *
Gabriel stopped in the château only briefly, to fetch a roll of paper, pencils, a gas lamp, and matches. He stuffed it all into a satchel. It was time to document the animals in the cave, before it was too late. If the villagers hadn’t known about the cave before, well, they probably did now, and the woodcutters moved ever closer, too.
Passing through an upper corridor, Gabriel glimpsed, through a cracked door, Banks abed. He paused to look in. Banks’s face was like grayish rubber, his eyes sealed shut, his chest rising and falling too quickly beneath the covers. A sick nurse sat in a chair beside the bed. When she saw Gabriel, she tapped a finger to her chest—his lungs, did she mean?—and shook her head.
Twenty minutes later, Gabriel arrived, panting and sweating, at the bottom of the slope below the painted cave. The woodcutters’ hacking echoed off the cliffs. He started up through the rocks and wet brambles. Patches of snow remained in the shade. He saw boar’s footprints stamped across one patch, and what he fancied were a chillingly large wolf’s prints in another.
At the mouth of the cave, Gabriel lit his lamp and ducked inside. Even inside, cool and damp, axe hits scrambled the air, but as he followed the cave deeper into the earth, all sounds thinned out until he was immersed in flat, primeval silence.
When the lamp illuminated the shrine before the boar-man painting, Gabriel’s heart faltered and then sped.
A bone leaned against the wall of the cave. The bone, the jawbone—or, properly speaking, one half of a jawbone—at once human and tusked. Along with the jawbone, a fresh rose floated in a bowl of water, and new sweets and plump, shiny belladonna berries filled the other dishes. Yet those other things blurred into the darkness; to Gabriel’s eyes the jawbone alone seemed to glow with a holy light.
He picked it up carefully, and pain thrilled up his arms. Fossilized. How old was it? Old enough for tooth and bone to have rotted and been remade, bit by bit, in stone.
He turned it over, studying it from every angle. It could not be a hoax; he could see the striations of the natural stone. This was a priceless specimen, precious to science, to human history, to posterity. What had Tolbert been thinking, leaving it in a cave like this? A wild animal could carry it off, and it would be lost forever.
Tolbert was mad. Mad, and dangerous.
Gabriel wrapped the jawbone in a clean handkerchief and slid it into his satchel. Then he unrolled blank paper, took out a pencil, and got to work.
* * *
When Ophelia and Forthwith alighted from the carriage in front of Château Vézère’s stables, it was to see Bernadette laboriously mounting a horse.
“Hunting? Splendid,” Forthwith muttered to himself, pushing open the door. “Hello, there, Mademoiselle Gavage,” he called. “Going to the forest to meet Mr. Larsen? Shall I accompany you?”
Ophelia clenched her teeth. Forthwith wished to show Larsen those soap labels immediately, and she felt powerless to stop him. Because if Forthwith tattled on her . . .
“Oh, that is not necessary.” Bernadette arranged her riding skirts over her side saddle. The rust-colored velvet flowed over her chestnut horse, making Bernadette and horse appear as one, like one of those satyr critters.
Ophelia stepped down from the carriage. When Bernadette saw her, her expression cooled.
“Blasting a gun at innocent animals will soon set my mood to rights,” Forthwith said.
Bernadette’s lips made an O. “Excuse me?”
“I meant, you don’t intend to ride alone in the woods, Mademoiselle Gavage, with beasts and beastly woodcutters both roving about?”
“I wish to bring luncheon to Monsieur Larsen and my brother.”
“Are they hunting?” Ophelia asked.
“Monsieur Larsen is hunting, yes, and Garon is overseeing the woodcutting. Join us later, Monsieur and Mademoiselle Stonewall, after you have changed into your hunting costumes—it will not be difficult to find us, I think. Monsieur Larsen and Garon said they would stay on the creek trail until I joined them, so we will wait for you.”
“All right, then.” Forthwith, hugging his torn parcel, went towards the château.
Ophelia hesitated. Would it be mad to quiz Bernadette about poison tablets and cheese?
Bernadette ignored the way Ophelia was loitering and called, “Georges,
le panier.”
Le panier? That meant “basket.”
Georges, a manservant, came forward with a small wicker basket, and he and Bernadette fussed until it was tied to her saddle horn with a ribbon. “Luncheon for the gentlemen,” Bernadette said to Ophelia in a distant tone. “Only a little wine and meat and my brother’s favorite cheese, cabécou.”
Cheese. Oh. Mercy.
Bernadette continued, “You must remember, since you will be his wife and must look after these sorts of things. Goodness knows what you mean to do with sorry old me. Garon enjoys his cabécou with a little honey, and walnuts.”
“Cabécou. I’ll remember.”
Georges started towards the château.
“Will you remember?” Bernadette looked down her nose at Ophelia as she nudged her horse into motion. “My brother tells me you have not given him reason to believe you will be a tractable wife.” Bernadette swung her horse around, and it clip-clopped across the side court, towards the path to the vineyard and the woods.
Forget about scary Griffe and his even scarier sister—although, how wrong Ophelia had been about them. No—Ophelia hitched up her skirts and followed Georges—the more pressing matter, the maybe life-and-death matter—was the cheese in that basket.
* * *
Bernadette was out of sight by the time Ophelia caught up to Georges.
“Excuse me,” Ophelia said, breathless.
Georges stopped, brow furrowed. “Je ne parle pas anglais,” he said. He did not speak English.
Drat.
She must find a translator. The kitchen, maybe. Ophelia beckoned Georges to follow her. He made a snooty, Crazy American lady face, but followed as Ophelia led him to the kitchen.
The kitchen stank of sour milk. The fire was out. A mountain of copper pots, dirty china, and decayed vegetables filled the sink.
Where had the servants gone?
But there was Abel, slumped at the table, still in his striped nightshirt, eating honey straight out of the jar.
“Master Christy! Would you help me?” Ophelia said. “I’ve got to ask this manservant here, Georges, a question. I need a translator.”
“I suppose,” Abel said with a listless shrug. He licked the dripping honey dipper, staring blankly into space.
“Where have all the kitchen servants gone?” Ophelia asked.
“They’ve quit. Angry about the woodcutting.” Abel dipped for more honey.
“What’s the matter with you?” Ophelia asked.
Georges shifted with impatience.
“The matter?” Abel said. “What is the reason for this brief flash that is human life? We are but ants beneath the crushing foot of the divine, we are a flutter of an eyelash amid the vast waste of the cosmos—”
“Never mind, there isn’t time—tell me later.”
“My, how feeling of you.” A drop of honey slid down Abel’s chin. “You could not even begin to comprehend the melancholy that has descended upon me.”
“You might be surprised. Now. Would you ask Georges if he recalls Bernadette—Mademoiselle Gavage—doing anything peculiar with bits of cheese two mornings ago, before we all went out hunting?”
Abel asked him.
Georges looked surprised and then wary. He said something.
“Well?” Ophelia said.
“He says Mademoiselle Gavage did pack a basket of cheese and asked him to add it to the hamper, but she said he was not to touch it under any circumstance after that, as it was special cheese for her, only.”
“Have the hunting dogs gone out today with the Count de Griffe and Mr. Larsen?”
Abel inquired.
“Oui,” Georges said.
Mercy, mercy, mercy. If Bernadette was taking poisoned cheese out to the woods today, it could be meant for a pack of dogs. But it might also be meant for Griffe or Larsen.
“Come with me, Master Christy—I need you to translate for me some more,” Ophelia said. “Let’s go to the stables—hurry.”
Abel stood—he wore small shiny boots and knee socks under his striped nightshirt. “What is happening?”
“No time to explain.”
Georges watched Ophelia and Abel crash out the kitchen door.
They raced around the château to the stables. “Ask the stable boy to saddle me a horse,” Ophelia said breathlessly.
Abel translated, and the stable boy nodded and beckoned them to a stall, where two horses were already saddled. “He says he’ll just change one of these for a lady’s saddle and—”
“For pity’s sake, there isn’t any time.” Ophelia yanked open the stall door, coaxed the horse out by its bridle, and mounted astride. The stable boy gawked.
“I shall come, too,” Abel said, unlatching the other stall.
“You’re in your pajamas—you’ll freeze!” Ophelia’s horse pranced in place.
“I’ll have you know, I’m an excellent rider,” Abel said. “Here, I’ll just put on this smelly coat.” He pulled a work coat from a peg—several sizes too large—and shrugged into it. He led an enormous black stallion out of its stall and struggled to get his foot in the high stirrup. The stable boy lifted Abel by the waist and plopped him into the saddle.
Ophelia nudged her horse’s flanks, and they were off.
* * *
Ten minutes later, Ophelia and Abel were trotting along the creek trail. Red woodsmen’s caps and glinting axe blades flashed. Chopping echoed. A great tree groaned as it gave way and crashed through the underbrush. All the birds had fled. A sense of doomsday twined through the trees.
Bernadette and her basket of cheese had gotten a good head start. What if someone else died? Ivy had told Ophelia about Bernadette poisoning the cheese hours and hours ago, and Ophelia hadn’t acted. In truth, she hadn’t quite believed Ivy; Ivy seemed prone to exaggeration.
As a way to distract herself, Ophelia asked Abel, “What is the matter with you, Master Christy, still in your nightshirt and plowing through the honey?”
Abel clung to the saddle horn, sliding from side to side. “It is all your fault.”
“Go along!”
“It’s all because of you and that pompous professor in the library last night.”
“So that was you hiding behind the drapes and eating cake.”
“That is entirely beside the point.”
“What is the point?”
“Sir Percival Christy is my father.”
“Yes. You hadn’t mentioned it—”
“Because I didn’t know! He never told me. All these years—all my life—he led me to believe he was merely my protector and that my deceased father had been a prince. But now, well . . . Miss Stonewall, I will not blame you if you do not wish to associate with me any longer when I tell you that . . . Sir Christy is not married to my mother. Mother is very grand and beautiful, you know, but she isn’t of royal blood.”
“I don’t care a jot about royal blood. You are still the same person you were yesterday—and so is Sir Christy, and so is your mother. I am sorry that you heard the news in that fashion, and that it came as a shock, but you’ll be all right. Now you know who your father is.”
“I’ll be all right?” Abel snorted. “No. Now I’m merely—merely one of your sort. A commoner. I’ll never be king. My blood’s not blue. It’s red. I feel as though I’ve died.”
“Buck up, Abel. You’ll soon realize that life will go on as before.”
24
Ophelia let Abel wallow. The trail had grown rougher and she needed to concentrate on riding.
After another ten minutes or so, Ophelia saw three horses with three people astride, farther up the trail. She recognized Bernadette’s rust-colored habit and Griffe’s flowing mane of hair, and she heard Larsen’s guffaw. Spotted hunting dogs milled around the horses’ legs.
Thank goodness; the dogs we
re alive and kicking, and so were Larsen and Griffe. So far. Ophelia urged her horse faster. Behind her, Abel oofed and panted with exertion.
Bernadette, Larsen, and Griffe looked surprised to see Ophelia and Abel. They were stopped close to the stream, no trees obstructing the view of gray, churning water. This was just below the painted cave, Ophelia realized.
“Mademoiselle Stonewall, I did not realize you would be joining us,” Griffe said. He held his rifle across his saddle, and his eyes were guarded. Hurt. As though he had a right to look hurt when he’d thrust himself upon her that morning. “And who is this? Young Master Christy?”
“By God, the lad is in his pajamas under that coat!” Larsen bellowed. “This is earnest hunting, not child’s play. Return to the château at once!”
“I do not mean to hunt.” Abel lifted his brows. “It’s a bit, well, barbaric, don’t you think? What about capturing the creatures instead of slaying them? Then you might study them from a scientific perspective.”
“What is he saying?” Larsen asked no one in particular.
“Cheese, Bernadette,” Ophelia said, drawing her horse up. Bernadette balanced her cheese basket against the saddle horn. “Special cheese? Not for your brother’s luncheon, though. For the dogs.”
Bernadette tucked her chin back.
“What is this?” Griffe asked. “Cheese for the dogs?” He turned to Bernadette. “You do not feed cheese to the dogs, do you? They must have meat, only meat.”
“What ho,” Abel murmured, dismounting. “What have we here?” He toddled off towards the trees.
Bernadette’s eyes were locked on Ophelia. “I know not what you mean about cheese, dearest sister-to-be. Do you require a lie-down?”
“Do you mean to say that there’s nothing funny about the cheese in that basket?” Ophelia asked.
“French cheese is always a bit funny,” Larsen said. “Chunks and lumps of mold—”
“I will have you know,” Griffe said, “all of the cheese we eat is made in our château’s own creamery, not—”