by M. J. Rose
“Now that you mention it, you hardly ever use the words witch or witchcraft.”
I nodded.
“But you can, you know, with me. In private. I’m not scared of it.” He smiled. “In fact,” he said, touching his finger to my lips, “you can say anything you want to me.”
He put his arm around my shoulders before leaning in to kiss me. I leaned forward and kissed him back.
“I’ve imagined you here in my room,” I whispered. “Does that shock you?”
He laughed. “No, it delights me. Tell me what you imagined.”
And I did. I told him that sometimes after we’d spent too many days apart, I would wake up having dreamed of being with him and stay in my bed, conjuring his image, the feel and the scent of his skin, and how I’d use my hand between my legs, mimicking what he did to me, until I managed an explosion on my own.
“Show me,” he whispered.
Suddenly, I felt shy. He sensed it and urged me on. “I want to see what you do when you are by yourself. I can’t imagine how beautiful you must look lying in your bed, touching yourself, thinking of me.”
With seductive words of encouragement, he persuaded me to get undressed and into my bed. I lay down on my stomach, my head buried in my pillow, my hand between my legs, and I began to stroke myself.
He only lasted a few minutes before he replaced my fingers with his own, and I felt his body join mine. Our lovemaking was slow and languorous. Both of us enjoyed the surprise of the new position we’d discovered.
Afterward, he fell asleep, and I watched him for a while. His body was so beautiful. Like one of the graceful marbles in the Louvre. Without disturbing him, I reached for this Book of Hours and my silver pencil and began to sketch his long lines and lean form, wincing as I used the side of the graphite to shadow his skin, capturing the brutal battle scars that marred it. What had happened to him in the attack? Why was he still living half a life because of it?
I moved on, and when I reached his thighs, I didn’t shy away from drawing his still slightly tumescent penis.
This was so unlike drawing live nude models in class. Their nakedness was impersonal and removed. Mathieu’s was redolent with our lovemaking and passion.
“I hope that’s going to be flattering,” he said.
“I didn’t realize you were awake.”
“I haven’t been for long.”
I showed him the drawing and saw his eyes take in the delineated scars.
“Mathieu, please, let me put on the blindfold and draw you again. Maybe I can see—”
“No,” he interrupted.
“Don’t you trust me?”
“Of course, I do, but I don’t think you should use your power that way.”
“But it’s who I am. It’s what I do. If you want to be with me, you have to let me try to help you remember what happened.”
Despite himself, maybe because of how I’d couched it, Mathieu reluctantly acquiesced.
I gathered up a proper sketch pad and pencil. I knew his face so well that I didn’t have to study him first. I simply put the blindfold on, placed my hand on the edge of the sketch pad, and allowed my fingers to take flight.
I saw a scene at the battlefront. The same one I’d seen in the reflective surface of the pond in the Luxembourg Gardens. Mathieu was about to be attacked by the Hun. I saw the German soldier slash Mathieu’s arm with his bayonet. Blood soaked through Mathieu’s sleeve and then dripped down his hand and onto the ground. I could smell its sweet metallic scent. And the stench of the German soldier’s uniform. And the loamy fragrance of the earth and pine needles as the man’s boots crushed them. The Hun pulled out the blade. Pointed the gun at the back of Mathieu’s head.
Suddenly, a third man leaped out from between the trees and jumped on the German, grabbing him around the neck. Pulling him off of Mathieu. The German fought back, trying to push his thumbs into the Frenchman’s eyes and disarm him.
“Max, no!” Mathieu cried.
What? Was the other French soldier Mathieu’s brother?
The German and the Frenchman had each other in death grips. Then the German got the upper hand. Then Max. Mathieu lay there, his eyes filled with terror. Unable to move, all he could do was watch his brother fight the enemy on the blood-soaked ground. And then there was an extraordinary sound, louder than any scream, as the air all around us exploded in a piercing, metallic shriek.
The blast was massive, dislodging rocks and earth, blowing leaves off trees, felling branches. In the smoke, I lost sight of the three men. The earth reverberated under my feet. What was happening? Pushing through the vapors and debris, I moved ahead in time, until the smoke had cleared. All three men lay on the ground. None of them moving. Three corpses. Or so it appeared, until one of them groaned. Which one?
I walked among them. Mathieu was still alive. His groans turning into cries. And then the cries turned into shouts.
I pushed ahead further in time. Two soldiers bent over Mathieu, lifted him, and moved him onto a stretcher.
Another soldier hovered above Max, prodding him, then treating his body with less grace and care once he realized there was no hope left for him.
I knew how hard this would be to tell Mathieu. How painful these pictures would be for him to see. But I’d discovered the secret he’d pushed so far down that it was paralyzing him.
Max had died saving Mathieu’s life. Died doing what he’d been trained to do. Surely Mathieu would come to realize that he would have done the same for his brother had he been the one under attack. Once he accepted that and stopped blaming himself for Max’s death, even if he wasn’t conscious of doing it, he’d be able to let go of the crippling guilt that was blocking his ability to write.
I thought I was done. I wanted to be finished. Because the blindfold was wet, I knew I’d been crying. But there was one more image in the shadows. Just up ahead, at the end of a trail of blood leading away from Mathieu’s body through the trees. Tentatively, I peered into the gray fog there. Dim, gloomy light barely illuminated the scene. Mathieu lay on the ground again. But not in uniform. He looked a few years older. He was lying on a stone floor. Faceup.
I stopped drawing. I couldn’t bear what I was seeing. There was a knife in Mathieu’s arm. A hunting knife this time. And around it a hand. A woman’s hand, pushing the blade down, down into his flesh. I recognized the ring on the hand. My ring. Mathieu’s blood and my murdering hand.
I dropped the pencil. Heard it hit the floor.
“Delphine?” Mathieu said.
I didn’t answer, couldn’t. Now I was the one who was paralyzed. Still wearing the blindfold, I ripped the paper off the sketch pad and tore it. Once, twice, three times. A hundred times. Shredded the drawing. Thinking foolishly in that moment that I still hadn’t seen it. Not really. I was still blinded by the silk mask. Maybe I’d been wrong. And if I destroyed the drawing, it would only exist in my mind’s eye. I could deny it. Pretend I’d never seen it.
“Delphine? What is it?”
Mathieu removed the blindfold. He looked at me and saw my tears. He wiped them away with his fingers, as he asked me again and again what was wrong. Why was I crying?
How could I tell him what I’d seen? How could I explain? And then I knew. I wouldn’t tell him. Not all of it. I’d show him the first set of drawings. Of him and his brother. Help him understand what had occurred at the front. How Max had saved his life. How he, Mathieu, would have done the same thing if their positions were reversed. I would try to ease his guilt and give him absolution. And then I would do the only thing left to me. Let him live his life. Even if it meant leaving him.
Chapter 36
The next day’s highlight was giving Nicky an art lesson. Gaspard brought him over as promised, and we had a picnic in the gazebo amid the wildflower field, feasting on ham and cheese baguettes with cold cider. I showed Nicky some tricks, and Gaspard watched, proud of how quickly his son picked up on what I taught him.
I told Gaspard that I was surprised by how
much I enjoyed being with his son, as I’d never spent any time with children.
“Nicky feels connected to you, I can tell. He senses the same thing in you that I do.”
“And what is that?”
“You’ve lost someone, haven’t you?”
I nodded.
“And for a time, it broke you.”
“It did.” I felt my voice crack as my eyes filled with tears.
“We have, too … we’ve been broken as well.”
“But we healed up,” Nicky interjected. Of course, he’d been listening. I just wouldn’t have guessed a six-year-old would understand. “We still have scars, though. Invisible ones, but Papa can see mine, and I can see his. They have Maman’s name on them. And at night when I’m asleep, she flies into my room and kisses them so every day they hurt a little less.”
Over his head, I looked at Gaspard. I’d never really healed, had I? And until that moment, I hadn’t realized it. That’s why I read and reread my journal. As if by going over and over every moment I’d spent with Mathieu, I’d wear down the memories, until they disappeared.
“Love isn’t like that,” Nicky said.
“Isn’t like what?” I asked the little boy. I hadn’t spoken out loud.
“It won’t go away.”
“How did you know what I was thinking?” I asked him, trying to keep my voice light, when, in fact, I was afraid he’d read my mind. No one, not even my mother, had ever done that.
“Sometimes what people are thinking just flies into my head.”
“Thought butterflies?” I tried to keep him engaged and not pressure him.
“Thought butterflies,” he repeated with delight, and turned to his father. “Thought butterflies. Can we call them that from now on?”
Gaspard nodded and tousled Nicky’s hair. “Of course, and we will always remember the afternoon we spent with Mademoiselle Duplessi whenever we talk about them.”
Tears sprang to my eyes again. The idea that I wouldn’t see him or Nicky again saddened me.
“I don’t live far from here. We can see each other again, can’t we?” I asked, surprised at my own boldness.
“We very well might,” Gaspard said. “I’d like for that to happen.”
There it was again, the sense that he knew something he wasn’t telling me. I was about to ask about it when we were interrupted by Sebastian, who’d come out to fetch me. Madame was hoping I could try one more set of drawings before the guests began arriving.
I spent the afternoon in an exhausting effort to draw my way out of the castle. Finally, at five o’clock, I gave up and gave in to the inevitability that I was going to have to attend Madame Calvé’s soiree.
I hadn’t brought a dress with me, but Madame lent me one of hers from when she was younger and slimmer. It was a simple black sheath made of a fine diaphanous material. In the right light, it shone with a purple-blue sheen, and the sleeves fluttered like butterfly wings. The shoulders were cut out, and my bare skin peeked through.
I slipped on a pair of my own sandals with tiny straps across the instep and a little crescent-moon-shaped button holding them closed. They were daytime shoes but delicate enough to work with the dress.
I only had one piece of jewelry with me, the ring Mathieu had given me. Although I never wore it on my finger, I always kept it on a chain around my neck. Perhaps I’d put it on my finger, since I didn’t have anything else in the slightest bit festive.
I wished I’d packed the bangle my sister Opaline had made for me. It was a wide rose-gold bracelet studded with rubies, amethysts, and garnets set in star shapes. I wore it high up on my arm, above my elbow, to hide my birthmark whenever I bared my arms in a sleeveless frock.
I had always been moved by La Lune’s story, about a woman so desperate to feel love again that she searched for almost three hundred years to find a strong enough descendant to host her. All that suffering so she could experience passion. And pain. For there is never one without the other, I thought. All that so she could feel again what she had felt for the man she’d lost. And she finally succeeded on the day my mother saved my father’s life and in doing so incorporated La Lune into her soul.
The mark on my upper arm was so clear and precise that I preferred to hide it rather than entertain questions about it. When I was a child, my mother made sure my dresses had sleeves. When I was older, Opaline created the disguising bracelet in solidarity, for she understood as well as anyone what a burden and a curse our gift was. A lithomancer who could hold gems and learn through them, hear the dead through them, she’d also had her share of pain because of her ability.
I looked at my paints, tempted to use them to cover up the crescent. But they were oils and wouldn’t dry, and if I got flesh-toned paint on Madame Calvé’s dress, I’d be mortified.
Music was drifting up the stairs, inviting me down. I felt a jolt of anticipation. I reminded myself that I could relax. Madame had reassured me that I wasn’t going to be a party favor this time. I wondered, however, if Sebastian had other plans. My strong need to save him seemed to match my growing distrust of him.
It wasn’t the time to think about that. I was due downstairs. As I walked to the door, the heel of my sandal caught in the rug, and I went sprawling. Only when I sat up, rubbing the spot above my right eyebrow, did I realized how much damage I might have done to my sight if I’d hit one of the table’s clawed feet from a different angle.
I wet a towel in the bathroom and sat for a few moments while pressing the cold cloth to my forehead. Once the pain subsided and I felt more composed, I left my suite and, on slightly wobbly legs, walked down the stairs to the main floor, prepared to meet Madame’s guests.
I felt the quickening that sometimes accompanied a revelation, not sure why I was experiencing it. It was the fall, I supposed.
Below me in the foyer, I saw Sebastian, looking up at me, waiting for me, smiling. Then the front door opened. A crush of people hurried in, escaping the rain that had started. With the rest of them hidden under umbrellas, I could only see three sets of trousered legs.
The men had their backs to me as the butler moved among them, divesting them of their raincoats and umbrellas. Just as one turned, Madame bustled past and blocked my view. Her voice rose over the wind that blew her words away.
“Eugène, welcome. I’m sorry about the storm. It must have been madness driving here in all that rain. And Yves, it’s so wonderful to see you,” Madame greeted them.
I was holding my breath, waiting to hear her address the last man in the group.
“And Mathieu. Be still, my heart, to have so many handsome men arrive at once,” Madame said, with a lovely, flirty laugh in her voice.
My hand tightened on the banister. I stopped moving. It wasn’t possible. Except, like a train rushing toward a certain destination, I’d known this would happen since I’d first arrived. And then it occurred to me that there must be thousands of men with that name. This Mathieu wasn’t necessarily the one I’d known and loved. How embarrassing that I’d just assumed it was. How pathetic a creature I was.
In New York, at a party, I’d once overheard a conversation between two women. One was talking about a man she’d just met, whom she might be falling in love with. The other, an older woman, asked her why she’d do that. “Love is the very worst way to punish yourself.”
I’d never forgotten what she’d said. It certainly was true for me. The worst pain I’d ever endured was a result of the greatest love I’d ever felt.
I shook myself out of my reverie and resumed descending the stairs. Almost relaxed, thinking myself foolish to have believed that the one man I had run away from, had left France to avoid, would be here in the château and I’d have to see him.
Sebastian called out to me.
Hearing him, Madame turned and looked up. “Delphine, you look lovely. And to think I once fit in that dress. What age does … what age does … Come, you’re just in time to meet my guests.”
One of the men stepp
ed forward, blocking one of the others. Madame was blocking the third.
“Eugène Leverau, this is Delphine Duplessi.”
He took my hand and kissed it.
“Eugène has been in Egypt on an archaeological dig since his fiancée’s death,” Madame said to me, and then turned to him. “Delphine is a fine young painter.”
A frown creased his brow for a fraction of a moment and then disappeared. “A pleasure,” he said, a bit stiffly, and moved away.
My view of the second man was now clear.
“And this is Yves Villant, the director of the Paris Opera,” Madame introduced us.
As Villant bent to kiss my hand, Madame stepped aside. With a mixture of horror and deep visceral pleasure, I saw the man I’d run away from almost five years before, standing just inside the door, his beautiful blue-gray-violet eyes staring up at me, and I felt as if I were seeing stars in the night sky, sparkling for the very first time.
Chapter 37
I must have stood there paralyzed, speechless, for a full minute. A flush rose from my chest, warming my cheeks. My heart beat so audibly in my own ears that I worried everyone else might hear it, too. I felt pain I didn’t understand, until I realized that the shank of my ring—the ring he’d given me—was digging into my flesh because I was gripping the stair rail too tightly.
What I’d both feared and longed for had materialized. Mathieu Roubine was here. A horrible and wonderful accident of fate had brought him to Emma Calvé’s house during the week I was staying there.
I saw and heard Madame Calvé introduce Sebastian to Mathieu and tried to make sense of what I was watching. My brother and my lover, shaking hands. Exchanging pleasantries while I looked on.
Ever since I’d arrived and stepped over Madame’s threshold, I’d been at war. Wanting to stay and wanting to go. Feeling welcomed and unwanted. Enjoying Gaspard and made uncomfortable by his distance. My instincts on the staircase were also opposites. I wanted to turn and run and lock myself inside my bedroom and at the same time rush down the stairs and throw myself at Mathieu, feel his arms encircle me, smell his familiar, sensuous burnt-vanilla, honey, and amber scent.