“Neither had we,” Monsieur Serrone said. “Though we met you both. We never imagined you might be related.”
Madame Serrone nodded. “You may not remember, but you stayed with us after the first time you reported the wolves.” She knit her brow. “But – you told us a different last name.”
Marceau cleared his throat. “I don’t recall. But I know I wouldn’t have relished the thought of giving my real name and sent back to the orphanage.”
Madame Serrone nodded. “I understand. You were quite young.”
I swallowed. “I don’t know what happened. But one thing I’ve learned about Father Vestille is that he tends to –.” I blinked at the path ahead, hearing the rumble of an oncoming wagon. In flashes of moonlight, we saw its driver, Gerard Touraine. With Father Vestille seated beside him. “– surprise you.”
They pulled up before us, halting their team and jumping down from the coach. Father Vestille ran to us, beaming. “Helena! You’re all right. We were – were …!”
He slowed, then stopped, gaping at our driver. His face paled as he approached us slowly, staring. His voice trembling. “Marceau? – Marceau, is that you?” He seemed ready to jump onto our wagon. “I – I had a thought that perhaps you might – more of a hope, but – but it’s been so long, I – I didn’t dare to imagine –.” He choked off the rest.
Marceau bristled. “Is this penance, acting as a priest now?”
Father Vestille looked as though he had been punched. He knit his brows. “– What?”
“Instead of looking for me, you decided to help everyone else and make a name for yourself? Finding a way to fit in, like you always have?”
Father Vestille stared back with wounded eyes. “I searched for you,” he said. “For years. I heard a rumor, twenty years ago, that you had been taken to Asile de DeSarte. But when I went there, they insisted you weren’t an inmate. They showed me through the entire building.”
“All of it?” Marceau challenged.
Father Vestille’s face fell. “No,” he admitted. “They wouldn’t let me into certain sections. They claimed the inmates there were too dangerous.”
“And you believed them, of course. You played along and fit in, like you always do.”
“How was I to know? I was young. I knew nothing about the wolves or what they did.”
“Gentlemen,” Touraine broke in. “I suggest we continue this discussion after we’re safely away from DeSarte. We weren’t planning to stay long, remember?”
“A wise man,” Marceau said, snapping the whip again. We surged ahead suddenly, leaving Touraine and Father Vestille staring after us.
“Red!” Pierre called, waving from the rear of their coach.
“Pierre!” I called happily. Then I felt a sudden rage rise up inside. “Where have you been?” I demanded.
His face fell. Then he was gone, behind Dureau’s wagon that followed after us. I peered beyond it to see Touraine’s coach trying to turn about. After a few minutes’ struggle, he brought the coach around to follow from a distance.
They had come for me. Whether they figured out DuChard’s scheme or simply came to find me, they had all come. DuChard had miscalculated. I had not been forgotten. Not by those who cared most.
But Marceau couldn’t see it. Forcing the horses faster, he kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, his jaw clenched.
“You’re wrong about him,” I said.
Marceau shook his head. “He left me in that hole while he went on with his life and made himself comfortable and wellloved. What did I misunderstand?”
“Everything,” I said. “He wouldn’t abandon you.”
“And yet he did.”
“No,” I said. “I know you’re wrong about him. The same way I was.”
“Oh? Did he abandon you to a pit of death for the remainder of your life?”
I bit my lip, remembering my own bitterness in recent years. “I thought he did. I thought he didn’t care about my friends and family when the wolves killed them. That he was too busy to care. I only learned later that he was fighting for us the whole time, even before I started fighting them. Traveling to Burgundy, DeSarte, and other places to learn about the Lycanthru, so he could know how to stop them someday. Now I know he wasn’t just searching for a way to protect my family. He was searching for something even more important.”
“And what was that?” Marceau sneered.
“You,” I said. “He was searching for you.”
Marceau still refused to meet my gaze, but his eyes softened. “You’re only a child. How can you know that for certain?”
“Because I know him. He would never abandon anyone – let alone his own brother – if he knew a way to save them. And you know it, too. You know what he’s like.”
He swallowed. “He actually went looking for the Lycanthru?”
I nodded. “He must have heard about the wolf that killed your friend, if he heard you were put in the asylum. So he went searching for the wolves. To find out what happened to you.”
Marceau’s lip started to quiver. Then he steeled his features and straightened in the seat, driving the horses on. “We’ll be there in another thirty minutes,” he said, dismissing the topic. “Then we’ve got to prepare. The Lycanthru won’t let us go that easily. We need to find a place to hide.”
I smiled. “I know a good place.”
48.
Father Vestille continued laying down blankets along the floor of the underground longhouse, with Pierre and Touraine helping. The Serrones and the other escapees from Asile de DeSarte watched, shifting about to make room for one another as they waited to bed down for the night.
All twenty-six of them.
The underground longhouse didn’t seem so long anymore. I knew it was selfish, but I couldn’t help feeling as though everyone was invading my private home, even though it had been my idea to invite them. But it was a shared room designed to hide families, the way it hid my parents during the war. How could I claim any ownership of it? It belonged to refugees, anyone who needed to escape war and persecution. It belonged to all of us.
And to Crimson, who nestled in the straw at the far wall. He was almost as excited to see me as I was to see him, though I couldn’t do much more than hug his flanks and feed him some extra oats, with all the inmates pouring into the longhouse. I helped him settle and get used to the pressing crowd before retreating to my cot, where Pierre and Touraine now worked.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding all this time,” Touraine said, amused.
Pierre said nothing, but continued smoothing out blankets. He had kept silent ever since I revealed the secret entrance to my living quarters beneath Father Vestille’s hovel.
Marceau and Dureau kept out of the way, letting the others work. It must have seemed odd to them, receiving kind service after being treated so cruelly all these years.
“This should help you rest, at least for tonight,” Father Vestille said to the group. “Perhaps we can sneak in some extra cots tomorrow?”
Touraine nodded to him. “I’ll see what I can find.”
Pierre cleared his throat. “I may be able to find some, too. There’s, uh – there’s at least one above the shop.”
I glanced at my boots. Pierre let me stay in the spare room above his father’s shop after the wolves killed Mama and Suzette. He made it clear that I could stay there as long as I wished, but I only stayed one night. “Pierre,” I said, drawing him to a corner of the room to talk more quietly.
“What is it, Red?” He sounded subdued. Hurt.
I understood, but I had my own concerns, after being abandoned for two days in that oversized dungeon. “You never told me – what finally made you ride out to DeSarte?”
“Simonet,” he said. “Father Vestille realized that the body in the casket was some kind of copy, like a giant figurine made of material that looked and felt like flesh. Except they forgot to give him a pudgy belly, like he had when we saw him at La Maison. We realized that Simonet might
never have gained weight at all, but could have been wearing a false stomach, made of the same kind of material, to shield him and absorb your bolt. His phony stomach made the best target to fire at.”
Despite my anger, I couldn’t help but marvel at his genius. “That’s exactly right. DuChard set the whole thing up.”
Pierre nodded. “I also recognized the voice of the coach driver for Asile de DeSarte. The same driver from the carriage where you said you saw Simonet earlier. It was the same coach, dressed up to look like one for the asylum. It was all just illusions, which reminded me of the magic tricks Father DuChard showed us. When I mentioned it to Father Vestille, and how Father DuChard pulled my hair during it, he said that was probably how he put me under his spell to attack you. We knew LieutenantGeneral Vitton wouldn’t help, and was probably helping the Lycanthru himself. So we gathered Touraine to set out for DeSarte.”
I cocked my head at him with my fists on my hips. “And what on earth did you plan to do once you got there?”
“I don’t know. We were still trying to work that out when we found you on the road.” He shrugged. “So it worked out pretty well.”
“Yes, it did,” I admitted.
“But I had by blowgun, with some silver chards,” Pierre said. “And I gave Father Vestille another one to use. Touraine brought a silver knife, which he said should work better than a ladle, whatever that meant.”
I stifled a smile, remembering the soup ladle he started to hand me for a weapon when the wolves attacked him at La Maison. “But why did you wait so long to come after me? Why did you let them take me in the first place?”
“We couldn’t stop them from taking you, not without proof. Lieutenant-General Vitton was ready to arrest us all.”
“But why didn’t you believe me?”
“I did,” Pierre insisted. “We all did. In spite of –.”
“What?” I demanded.
Pierre sighed. “In spite of the way things looked. I mean, we had no legitimate reason to believe anything you said. The Lycanthru made sure your story looked bad, even impossible. And you weren’t helping your case any, getting so hot at everyone.”
I sucked in air, clenching my fists. I knew he was right, but I wasn’t ready to hear that now. “You should have fought harder,” I said in a fresh rise of anger. “You should have found a way before they stripped me! Before they locked me away from sight! Before they tortured me!”
Pierre swallowed, visibly shaking. “Red … I’m sorry … we tried.”
“You should have tried harder,” I said, seething. Once my anger started, I couldn’t stop it, like a boulder rolling down a hill. “If you actually loved me, you would have. But I’m just a nice girl to kiss until someone better comes along or things get too difficult, and then you forget all about me.”
He met me with a hard gaze. “That’s not true.”
I turned away from him. “Well, that’s hard to believe when you’re surrounded by wolves who want nothing more than to see you suffer.” I grit my teeth. “And there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
“I’m sorry, Red.”
I shrugged. “No need to be sorry. You can move on. I told you before, I’m not easy to be around, and you can find someone prettier, someone safer. Maybe that’s what you should do.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Then I wouldn’t have to depend on you to help me, or wonder if you’re coming. I’ll know you’re safe somewhere, with someone who dresses like a normal girl and who won’t endanger you or your family, or make you wonder if she’s gone mad.”
“I never thought that,” he said, a slight edge to his voice.
“You had doubts. We both know that.”
“All right, perhaps I did, but –.”
“So you didn’t actually believe me. And why should you come rescue me if I actually was insane? Why bother? Why not start up with someone else you can be safe with, whose word you can trust?”
“I don’t want to start up with anyone else, and you know that.”
“Well, maybe you should reconsider. Listen, Pierre, maybe you and are just aren’t meant to –.”
“No, you listen!” he said.
His tone was so forceful that I whirled on him, like I was battling one of the wolves.
He glared at me, looking genuinely enraged. “I’m sorry I wasn’t faster or smarter. I’m sorry I didn’t figure out what they were doing to you. But I did everything I could. And if you think I would do all that and then ignore you to go after some other girl, then you actually are crazy.”
I raised my chin. “Oh, so now you’re saying I’m –?”
“Wait, I’m not done!” he interrupted. “You’re right, I didn’t rescue you, and I didn’t stop them from taking you, because I didn’t know how. And of course I had doubts about your claims that you saw Simonet alive and that Father DuChard was one of the Lycanthru. I even wondered if something happened to you that made you start imagining things about the wolves. But you’re not using that as an excuse to get rid of me and go off complaining that nobody wants you, because I do! Now don’t hit me.”
I started to ask what he intended to do, but held my tongue. “… all right,” I said.
He grabbed me by my shoulders and kissed me. Hard at first, then tenderly, as I melted into his arms. After a few seconds, he leaned back, still holding me.
I felt warm and strangely relaxed. “You put up with a lot, don’t you?”
“By choice,” he said.
“I thought perhaps … I had become too much of a burden.”
His arms slid down to my waist, keeping me close. “Never.”
I stared into his blue eyes, sinking into them. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that Father Vestille was hiding me here.”
“I don’t understand why you didn’t trust me with it.”
“I didn’t want anyone to know. In case the Lycanthru tried to – tried to hurt the people I care most about.” I stroked his cheek. He held my hand there.
“I understand,” he said.
“Forgive me?”
“If you stop punching me.”
“Done,” I said. “So … you’ll always be there for me?”
“Always.”
“All right,” I said, smiling. “Then I’ll expect you sooner next time.”
“Fine.”
I looked around at the twenty-six inmates who had escaped with us. Our combined body heat had already raised the temperature about twenty degrees. “It’s going to get crowded in here,” I said.
“It is crowded in here,” Pierre said. “We’ll do what we can tomorrow to find other places for everyone to stay, once we know what the Lycanthru are up to. Right now, this is the only secret place to hide you all.”
“Helena.”
I turned to see Father Vestille. He looked as though I was still lost to him, trapped in that cruel asylum. I hugged him tight. “I’m all right,” I assured him.
“I was so frightened,” he rasped. “When they carted you away, and – when I realized you were being taken to – to DeSarte. I knew something was wrong. I ju st couldn’t figure it out at first.”
“But you did. And you came. That’s all that matters.”
A hand settled on Father Vestille’s shoulder. I looked up to see Marceau standing behind him. “Abier.”
Father Vestille broke our embrace and stared at his brother. Marceau’s face had softened and turned penitent.
“Marceau. I’m so sorry,” Father Vestille said. “All those years. If – If there’s anything I can do – to help you forgive me …”
Marceau swallowed. “I’m the one who needs to be forgiven,” he said. “I shouldn’t have doubted you. I’m sure you did all you could. I just –.” He paused. Swallowed, staring at a corner of the ceiling. “– I just kept hoping you would come sooner.”
They embraced. Awkwardly at first, then fiercely.
Father Vestille sniffed. “A day has not gone by without you in my thoughts and prayers.”
Marceau shut his eyes tight. “Let’s hope your prayers are finally being answered. Better late than never, right?”
Father Vestille laughed. Then wept. “Marceau! Marceau, I thought you were dead.”
“I was,” Marceau said, clutching Father Vestille closer. “Now I’m alive again.”
After nearly a minute, they pulled away from each other. Father Vestille turned to the crowd. “You’ll all need to get some rest, if you can. We’ll try to figure out something better for you all tomorrow.”
Dureau chuckled. “This already beats our previous living arrangements.”
Marceau and a few others laughed. Most of the inmates seemed too weak for jokes.
“I’ll see if I can round up some spare clothes, too,” Touraine said. “Quietly, of course.”
“Yes, we don’t want to attract too much attention to Abier’s hovel,” Marceau said. “Thank you all for doing this.”
Father Vestille smiled. “It’s the least we can do.” He held Marceau’s gaze another moment, then turned to Touraine and Pierre. “All right, Monsieurs. Let’s get upstairs. Gerard, you can escort Pierre safely home?”
Touraine nodded.
Pierre turned to follow them both up the ladder. Then he stopped and strode up to me. He paused, looking over his shoulder at the others surrounding us.
Then he grabbed me and kissed me again in front of everyone.
I wanted to melt into his arms and let everything else wash away like a bad dream.
“Goodnight, Red.”
I smiled. “Goodnight, Pierre.”
He followed Father Vestille and Touraine up the ladder as they tried to cover their smiles. I caught Marceau and Dureau smirking, too. They turned away quickly and busied themselves setting up their bedding.
I ignored them and led Madame Serrone to my cot. “Madame Serrone, you can sleep here. It’s where I’ve normally slept.”
“I can’t take your bed, Helena,” she protested.
“It’s not my bed. It’s a cot from Father Vestille to give refugees a place to sleep. So sleep. I’ll be fine on the floor.”
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