by Rose, M. J.
I could smell it too, the scent of land as opposed to the salty treacherous sea.
We followed our noses toward the earthy odor until we found the field. Trent looked like a blind man with his hands out in front of him, taking baby steps, being careful. I must have looked the same.
“There’s a wall over here, Monsieur Hugo,” he called out. “It will provide some shelter. Come, follow my voice.”
Once we had settled down and were safely tucked into a turn of the stone wall, protected a bit from the wind, I asked him to tell me what he knew about the castle. I’d seen it often enough but hadn’t explored it yet. Was it a place a child might hide? Would she be safe there overnight?
“Elizabeth Castle was named after the queen and built in 1590. It sits on the site of the hermitage where our patron, Saint Helier, lived in the sixth century. Our history books say it was first inhabited by Sir Walter Raleigh when he was governor of Jersey and then later by the future Charles the Second himself, who was seeking refuge during the English Civil War. There have been quite a few accidents since I’ve been a policeman. Tourists who aren’t fit enough get brave and try to climb the turrets or battlements. But if she’s there she should be safe enough.”
“As long as there aren’t any ghosts?”
“Monsieur Hugo, this isn’t a night for talk of that kind of thing.”
“Actually it’s a perfect night for it.”
“A well-educated man like yourself,” he said, “you don’t believe in ghosts, do you?”
I almost answered with the truth and told him that a few weeks ago I would have said no, of course not. But not anymore. “There are many things, Connétable, about which we cannot be certain.”
“In any case, I should think you’d be the one telling me the stories.”
“But I know all my own stories.”
He laughed. It was a pleasant enough sound for the moment, but then an odd thing happened. It seemed to ricochet off the wall and echo back. But now it was hollow and pensive and full of worry. I’m sure he heard it as well as I did. But neither of us said anything. Instead he apologized for not being able to entertain me.
“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know any ghost stories to tell.”
I’m not sure why I didn’t believe him. Was there a hesitance in his voice? But I was certain gothic tales were hiding in the castle’s stones, waiting to be exposed. Convinced you’d find one behind each granite rock you pulled out of the façade.
With both of us silent, the night’s noises, almost inaudible minutes ago, became raucous. Waves crashed on the rocks, owls hooted, far-off dogs howled, crickets screamed and a lonely wind did battle with every structure in its path. While the symphony of sound assaulted me, Trent fell asleep.
Men who work as hard as he does sometimes develop the knack of dropping off swiftly regardless of where they are and how uncomfortable their surroundings. I was not as blessed, so I sat back against the damp stones, listening to noises of the night, straining to hear a young girl’s cries and imagining her parents’ terror.
To be a decent writer you must have both empathy and imagination. While these attributes aid your art, they can plague your soul. You don’t simply suffer your own sadness, experience your own longing and worry about your own wife and children, you are burdened with experiencing the emotional states of multitudes of others you don’t know.
I have only to learn about someone else’s misfortune and I run, stumbling into their mind, buffeted by their pain, assaulted by their ills. Their turmoil becomes mine to bear. Their worry becomes my burden.
For me, escape is hard-won and most often found only in a woman’s arms. In that very different kind of fog, I can give up, let go, become lost in the pleasure that wipes out all else.
Oh, for the distraction of a woman’s smell or touch, I thought as I sat in the dark, suffering a melancholy spell that I feared would keep me in its grip till morning. It was difficult for me to remain sitting against the rocks while the night picked at my sleeve and tempted me the way a vixen might. I shut my eyes, trying to force myself to relax, to put myself to sleep. But with my eyes shut, my hearing became even more attuned. The barking dog seemed suddenly closer. His yowling more urgent. More specific. As if there was a precise communiqué in his baying. Was this the same dog I’d been hearing for days? What was he trying to say?
And then suddenly I felt a presence nearby, and I smelled smoke and incense and something else that reminded me of ancient objects that had not been disturbed for a long time. It was an odd aroma to smell outdoors so near the sea.
Thoughts of you, Fantine, came to me then. I meandered through the story about your family’s perfume business as if it were a warren of streets. I peeked into windows and saw scenes you had only hinted at. Meeting your lover for the first time. You working in the perfumerie. Your father dying. Your uncle casting you out. What it had been like, to be a woman suddenly adrift, alone after a lifetime of security.
A sudden urge to see you seized me. Why at that moment? What about your story was so compelling to me? I didn’t know then. But I think I do now. It was your emptiness that attracted me and made me so curious. I had never met a woman who was as empty emotionally and accepting of it as you were. Who was as dead inside and so at peace with it.
When I only know one part of someone’s story, the missing pieces can plague me. I yearn to fill in the gaps. And so it was for me with you. Who was your lover? Why had he abandoned you? Had he known you were with child?
I wanted more. I wanted all the details, wanted the entire tale. It seemed more than idle curiosity. My need was urgent. But why?
You want to possess her soul so you can heal your own.
It was not my thought, but I heard it in my mind. An idea planted there by someone or something else. It surfaced the same way the words of the spirits do when they speak to me.
“No,” I argued back, but silently in my mind. “I have no desire to possess anyone’s soul. I am no monster.”
Ah, but you are. All men are. Accepting that is the first step.
“To what?” His response had been so real, I’d answered aloud this time.
Trent was sleeping lightly, and hearing me, woke quickly.
“Has something happened?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, I dozed off too,” I lied, “and fear I was talking in my sleep.”
I was afraid, but of something much more serious and alarming. Had one of the spirits from the séance followed me out of the house? Had some entity called up by our parlor games not returned to the netherworld but remained with me? Had he just engaged me in a conversation so real I had responded?
Nine
THE PRESENT
JERSEY, CHANNEL ISLANDS, GREAT BRITAIN
Most people would have found the room in the Webber Inn welcoming. The walls were covered with cabbage rose and ivy vine paper, slightly faded but in the most charming way. The wicker furniture’s cushions were covered in a matching fabric that gave the room a cozy feeling. The Victorian bed offered thick down pillows and a comforter, and the floor was covered with a plush forest-green carpet.
But Jac preferred sleek and modern over antique and charming. White towels, not pink ones with lace edging. Her work was all about history. The dust of the centuries was always in her hair. She craved clean and simple when she was aboveground.
As Jac unpacked she thought about the ferry ride. Traveling through fog, without being able to see in any direction had been peculiar. The feel of the mist on her face was like moving through spiderwebs. And the odd woman who had guessed too much about her was curious.
It was as if the ferry had done more than cross the channel but had crossed some invisible barrier and deposited her somewhere out of time. She couldn’t even get a sense of what Jersey looked like because the island too was shrouded in fog. There hadn’t been anything exotic about the few glimpses of streets and buildings, cars or people she passed during the twenty-minute taxi ride here.
She knew from studying maps how remote this island was. How cut off they were. She couldn’t just leave if she wanted to. She’d need to wait for a boat to get away—one way to England, the other to France.
Jac put the last of her clothes in the closet, stowed the suitcase and sat down at the desk, where a jug overflowed with old-fashioned damask roses. These were perfumers’ favorites, grown since ancient times for their fragrance. Lowering her head, burying her nose in their velvet petals, Jac inhaled their sweet perfume.
Few modern scents captured the true intoxicating beauty of the flower the way her family’s Rouge did. It was the only rose-based perfume Jac ever wore. But even Rouge didn’t compare to the flower itself.
When she lifted her head, she noticed that outside the window it appeared the fog was lifting. It was only six o’clock and would be light out for another two hours at least, and she wasn’t expected at Wells in Wood till seven thirty. Theo Gaspard had emailed earlier that week inviting her to dinner her first night in Jersey.
As long as you’re not too tired, he’d written. And asked her to please feel free to call and cancel if she was. Don’t feel pressured, he’d added. We have to dine with you or without you. So other than picking up one place setting, Claire won’t be too put out.
Who was Claire? Housekeeper? Sister?
The only thing Jac knew for sure was that she wasn’t Theo’s wife, since he’d written he was a widower.
Jac wasn’t tired. After the last few days in London, her jet lag was gone. But even if she had been feeling any effects from the journey, she was too anxious to meet Theo again to wait. She was also intrigued to see the house he’d described as an ancient monastery built on what were believed to be Celtic ruins. Other than saying there was a funeral mound on the grounds as well as several other ancient ruins, he had kept his description vague.
I don’t want to spoil it for you, Theo had written. You’ll have plenty of time to explore. I’d rather be vague and let you be surprised.
Even though the scent of the roses was lovely, Jac reached for the travel candle she’d brought with her and lit it. This was her ritual whenever she arrived at a new place. Infusing hotel rooms with the scent of Noir settled her. As the fragrance filled the corners and seeped into the fabrics, it transformed a strange room into a familiar one. With so few constants in her life, and so much of her family gone, scent was how she remembered and kept herself sane.
Jac showered and changed. She’d learned the art of dressing from her grandmother who was French to the core. As much as Grand-mère loved her daughter-in-law, she never appreciated the insouciance of Audrey’s blue jeans and boots, worn leather jackets, T-shirts and Indian beads, and neither did Jac. She admired her grandmother’s style and adopted it as her own. The principle was simple. You buy the best there is, even if it means only one good piece a year.
Jac stepped into a pair of black gabardine slacks. Then pulled a round-necked, cream-colored cashmere sweater over her head. She didn’t like wearing colors. Her mother had been wearing a bright green blouse when Jac had found her. Like an abstract canvas, it had been spattered with perfume oils that stained the fabric.
Jac slipped her feet into ankle-high black suede boots and zipped them up. She shrugged on a black and cream tweed jacket. Vintage Chanel that had belonged to her grandmother. The last touch was a matching cream cardigan sweater, tied around her neck like a scarf.
In her ears, Jac wore the small but brilliant diamond studs her grandparents had given her on her twentieth birthday. Her only other accessory was her mother’s Cartier watch. White gold, it hung loose around Jac’s wrist like a bracelet. The tiny diamonds on the 12, 3, 6 and 9 were so small you only knew they were there if you looked for them. There was more jewelry in the vault in Paris, but Jac had never claimed it. Generations of pieces that had passed down from mother to daughter, daughter to son stayed locked away. Jac felt encumbered by those jewels. As if the stories and dreams attached to them weighed too heavily on her when she wore any of them.
But her mother’s watch was different. Sometimes she imagined the ticking was her mother’s heart, still going, still beating. Even more than Jac mourned and missed her, she hurt for her. Audrey hadn’t been able to fight her demons.
It was a failure that had profound effects on the twelve-year-old son and fourteen-year-old daughter she left behind, the full scope of which Jac would never really know. Who would she have been if not for the tragedy that sculpted so much of her personality?
Jac grabbed her bag, another vintage piece that had belonged to her grandmother, and left her room.
“Forty-five minutes, as long as the fog doesn’t creep back again,” Noreen O’Neil said as she unfolded a map to show Jac the way to Wells in Wood on foot. “And you can’t be sure it won’t.” The proprietress had stylish auburn hair cut to frame an oval face. In her sixties, her skin was creamy and she carried her age well. Wearing navy slacks with a white sweater and simple strand of pearls, she was dressed to impart graciousness but not outshine any of her guests.
“You start here and follow this path, which will give you a lovely view of the sea. But then it’s uphill for quite a ways,” Mrs. O’Neil said as she pointed to a pathway with a gnawed wooden pencil. “And here you’ll have to go through some woods. I don’t recommend it this late in the day. It’s not lit for nighttime strolls and some of the paths border the cliffs. If you dawdle and it gets dark, you could seriously hurt yourself.”
But Jac had hiked and trekked all over the world. She’d gone underground in Egypt and above the clouds in Peru and had never gotten lost. She had a compass on her cell phone, the phone itself and the hotel’s number as well as the number of the Gaspard house.
“Thank you. I won’t dawdle, so I should be all right.” She reached out and took the map.
“But mind you, you can’t come back that way. Not at night. Not under any circumstances. The house is up there on the rocks. It’s a lonely place. The old man made sure of that. Nothing could be built on it that wasn’t already there. He wanted it left rough the way he’d found it.”
“Made sure?”
“One of the grandsons wanted to develop some of the estate. But Alexander Gaspard had protected it in a trust. No one can build a stick of a structure on it for the next hundred years. No matter how good his intentions, he’s controlling that family from the grave.” She shook her head. “It’s wonderful the land is protected, but wills that cause strife among the living aren’t good things.”
Jac wanted to find out more about the Gaspards, but being too nosy her first day there wasn’t smart. Jersey was obviously a small island. A few too many questions before Jac knew all the players and where they stood could backfire. She was, after all, a guest of the Gaspards.
“We can come and get you after your dinner,” Mrs. O’Neil said as she handed Jac a card. “We have a service, my son is the driver. And a very good one,” she added, and smiled.
Jac thanked her and pocketed the card.
Outside, the breeze ruffled the map as Jac consulted it. Four routes were marked in different colors. In her room she had a more complicated topographical map downloaded to her tablet, but for the walk she was glad to have a simple printed foldout.
The path Mrs. O’Neil had pointed out was easily marked and led her around the back of the hotel and along a cliff walk with an unobstructed view. Patches of fog still clung to rocks and hovered over the water, but there was more than enough visibility to see the shoreline, and the distant lighthouse. The horizon was out of focus, and the sky seemed to just melt into the sea. In the mist the vista looked like an impressionist painting, both atmospheric and suggestive.
As she stood and stared, Jac breathed in and sniffed. The salty air reminded her of summers with her brother and her grandmother in the south of France. No matter how often she talked to Robbie on the phone, it wasn’t the same as spending time with him. When this excursion was over, she planned to go to Paris for a few days to be with h
im before returning to New York. Robbie was her stanchest protector and champion. And the only other person in their family who loved the water as much as she did.
Malachai had once joked that Jac must have been a mermaid in another life. She wasn’t sure which point to argue—that there were no mermaids or that there was no such thing as reincarnation. She’d done neither. Issues and conflicts, strong likes and dislikes could be manifestations of a myriad of things. Not necessarily ever, as Malachai suggested, residual leftovers of previous life traumas.
“If you could just grasp one thread of who you’ve been—of what you’ve lived—you’d be able to reel that past in and learn from all your different souls,” he’d said to her. “Your career is all about learning from the past. Why are you so resistant to this?”
Stubborn, her mother had called her. Robbie often teased her about that aspect of her personality too and told her that objects that were too rigid had a greater propensity to break than those that could bend. He was an artist with scent and a practicing Buddhist who brought his Zen sensibilities to the family perfume business.
The path curved around a clump of trees and then brought Jac back to a different view of the island’s coast. She could see a wide stretch of beach where the shore met the rock. In the shadows of the cliffs were openings to caves. There were over two hundred of them, she’d read. More than had ever been counted or could be, since fallen rocks and land shifts over the years obscured openings.
While most of the caves had already been explored, Theo had written there were still some undiscovered. But what were the chances that the one he’d alluded to hadn’t already been found and stripped? What clues did he have? He hadn’t really revealed anything.
Jac climbed as the path rose up an incline, and then after hugging the edge of the cliff for a few hundred feet, she followed its turn, heading inland.