Palais du Papillon—Chambres Jacinthe—112 feet below, 1789
They have separated me from my sisters. I cannot remember the moment it happened. Perhaps I went mad for a short while after meeting with Father, or perhaps I was simply too tired and battered with grief to notice, but they are gone now. I remember the dry click of our shoes on wooden floors, Delphine’s soft crying, and the swish of Charlotte’s and Bernadette’s skirts as they held hands and comforted each other. A door, creaking open and shut. Crawling into the cold sheets of a bed. When I woke, I was alone. I have been alone ever since.
Nine days since I have seen the sun.
Nine days since Mama died.
Nine nights in these close and muffled chambers.
Nine scratches on the wood behind the bed canopy.
I feel as though I have been buried alive.
My tomb is lovely. It consists of two rooms. The hyacinth rooms, so says a scroll above the door, the chambres jacinthe. There is a bedroom, lavish in colors of pale green and rose. There is a boudoir draped in blue silks, with a great curling fireplace of snowy marble. I tried to climb up the chimney on the second day, but there was a grate only four feet from the ground and no way to loosen it. I still wonder sometimes where it comes out, whether there are chimneys poking out of the earth in the middle of Péronne’s woods far above.
Or perhaps it is a fakery, like the mirror windows and the drapes. Perhaps it goes nowhere. I have never seen the fire lit.
My rooms are connected to each other by a tall gilt doorway. There is a small toilet through a panel by the bed, and the door from the boudoir leads to a hallway. That is all I know. The door to the hallway is always locked, and no one has entered or left by it since I arrived.
The servants do not use the doors. They have their own clever system and I never see them, even during the day when they bring me luncheon or tidy one of the rooms. Every night, I go to sleep determined to doze lightly and to wake at the smallest sound, but in the end I sleep like a rock, and in the morning my clothes are cleaned and the lamps have all been trimmed and there is breakfast waiting for me. I have discovered how they do it: when I move from the bedroom to the boudoir or vice-versa, the door will click shut behind me, locking. I can rattle and hammer as much as I please, but it will not open until it wants to; and when it wants to, the room beyond is always empty of anybody. I will find dishes of pastries and bowls of fruit, cups of thick cream, freshly starched petticoats, little pots of tea, and sometimes a new volume of poetry or tales. But the one who brings me these gifts is always gone.
Of course I looked for the secret panel that lets them in, and of course I found it. Two rooms can hold only so many secrets, and for only so long. But alas, the panel is locked from the other side. I pried at it until my fingers bled, and the next day there were bandages and a greasy brown salve on my nightstand.
I had half a mind to throw them across the room, another half to break my toes against the wall and scream until I was hoarse. I would have, had I thought it might help. But there is no use being childish. I have searched every nook and every cranny for a way to escape. I have left desperate notes, and shouted to be released, and I have cried all my tears away. No one is listening. I have nothing to do now but go mad. I feel I am accomplishing that, at least. I am becoming like the batty old dowagers at court, wandering from room to room or sitting half lost in the heaps of their finery with nothing to do but mutter and glance disapprovingly at the young, happy people they had once been, and wished they could be again.
Sometimes I write on the paper provided. Often I stare at my own reflection. It is poor company. During the first several days I would peer at the false windows and pretend I was speaking to Mama, would imagine the dry click of my sobs was her soft tutting and the swing of the clock hands were her fingers, running through my hair.
“Do you think we will get out?” I would say to the glass, and then I would answer in a lovely, foolish voice: “You will get out, Aurélie. You are clever and you are brave.”
I have stopped doing this. Not even the dowagers were quite so mad.
Last night I thought I heard Delphine crying. “Aurélie?” she wailed, somewhere faraway, and I sat straight up, listening until my ears rang, but I heard nothing more. I got out of bed and pressed my ear to the door. I woke on the floor nine hours later, and now I think that perhaps I dreamed it.
Today, I rise at my usual hour and dress behind the silk screen. It is nearly impossible to dress without a servant; I miss half the buttons, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t know why I bother anymore. Perhaps I will never see anyone again, and I might walk about in a sheet like a Roman princess. Perhaps I will die down here, an old spinster far underground, by then utterly delusional.
I am already having the strangest dreams. Flashes of teeth and butterfly wings, folding open and closed. Delphine with her hair grown wild and vast, tangled with silver forks and toy rocking horses. Mama, pulling a bullet from her breast.
Breakfast is waiting for me in the boudoir when I am finished dressing. Hot rolls and butter, honey in a crystal dish, and a bundle of glossy black grapes. The grapes taste of ashes. All the fruit here does. I wonder if Father grows them in little jars in a laboratory. Havriel said they sealed the palace, closed it up against the blood and ruin of the revolution, so I doubt they are coming from Lyon, as they used to. I pluck a few grapes and eat them. I sit down and butter a roll. The silverware makes soft clinking noises in the silence.
It is different down here, the sound of silence. On the surface, silence is a vast, full thing. It is alive, pulsing with the movement of the sky and the world and the stars. Here the silence is closed and tight. Everything is louder, every breath and every step. It makes it difficult to breathe and difficult to step, and perhaps that is the point. I throw down the roll after two bites and go to the writing table.
I am trying to escape, still. I have come to the conclusion that I have two options. One is to discover how the servants come in and out, which I have done, catch them in the act, beat them senseless, and escape through the secret panel. The second is to wait for someone—Havriel or Father—to come in the regular way, beat him senseless, and leave through the door.
I know the servants are only in one of the two rooms at a time, and that the doors lock whenever they are there, preventing me from ever stumbling upon them face-to-face. I know there is a panel in the boudoir and another in the bedroom through which they enter. They will not speak to me through the door. They will not answer my notes, no matter how kindly I write them and how many francs I promise them.
But I have a new idea. A servant will come again today to clear away the breakfast dishes, and this time I will be lying in wait.
I sit at my desk, dip my pen, and write a few words on a square of paper:
Roses
Viper
Whipped cream
I pause. Pretend I have forgotten something in the bedroom. Slip out of my chair and move toward the door. I take special care not to look at the mirror as I pass it. I doubt they are watching me through it, but I will not have them suspect. I go about the bedroom, singing to myself. I move away from the door, casually. Almost at once it begins to creak shut behind me, as if guided by invisible hands.
I wonder if it has something to do with the floor. Perhaps weight on the boards, or simply a watchful eye and a lever. It makes no difference. As soon as the door begins to close, I spin. A heavy wad of stationery is crumpled in my hand. I drop to the floor and jam it between the door and the frame.
The lock snaps out. It does not catch. Perfect.
I feel a thrill of fear as I press my back against the wall. There may be several servants; perhaps someone is standing guard, and I will be hopelessly outnumbered. But if I do not try, I will never know.
I hear the panel in the boudoir opening and footsteps padding across the floor. Slowly, I move forward to look through the crack between the door and the frame.
I see the boudoir, tr
anquil and empty, like a doll’s room. . . .
I wait, hardly daring to breathe. I do not see anyone, but I hear movement, the slide and tinkle of plates, the whisper of table linens. I reach for the heavy bronze vase in the corner next to the door. It is with this I plan to do the beating. It is too far away. I slide over the floor toward it.
When I return to the door, I see the servant. A leg. A hand. He is standing, facing the bedroom door.
I want to curse. Was I too quiet? Does he suspect, does he see that the door is unlatched?
The floor in the boudoir creaks. I glimpse a heel again, a leg. The servant is turning away, moving to another part of the chamber. I ease the door open, barely a fraction of an inch.
I see his back now. It is a man in fine livery, a waistcoat and white stockings. He is clearing away the breakfast dishes, replacing them with marbled wafers and candied fruits that have been cut into bright squares, like soft jewels. He is young. The slope of his shoulders is vaguely familiar to me, as are the brown curls on his head. Have I seen him before?
An unpleasant needling sensation besets my shin. I try to shift my position as delicately as possible. The floor gives the tiniest of creaks. When I look again, the servant is gone.
My eyes dart throughout the room. I did not hear the panel close. Has he gone? He must not escape. Not before I catch him. I wait, frozen in place, gathering the courage to burst into the room. I take a slow breath—
His face appears between the door and the frame, exactly level with my own. Our eyes lock. I rip the door wide and hit him hard across the side of his head with the vase.
He goes spinning to the side, loses his balance, and crashes to the floor. I lunge at him again. He raises an arm in defense. “Stop!” he shouts, and now he seems to remember himself, and says more quietly, urgently: “Stop, mademoiselle, please.”
I stare at him, wide-eyed. He is the guard. The young guard who tried to save Mama. He is not a day older than I am. I whirl and head for his secret panel. It is closed, but surely not locked.
I tug on it. It does not move.
I go back to the boy who is just starting to stand, wobbly on his legs. I raise the vase again.
“I don’t care who you are,” I say. “I don’t care what they told you. I am held prisoner here. My sisters are lost. You will help me find them.”
19
It’s a library. Long, dim—a shadowy gallery of books. It’s got that same faint ultraviolet glow that the hall full of razor wires had—just enough to see by, but still somehow pitch-black. The ceiling arches into a map of the heavenly bodies, gold-leaf planets and star creatures against a blue plane. Mahogany bookshelves reach all the way to Cassiopeia’s toes, twenty feet above us. At the end of the library is a massive marble fireplace. The floor is thick with pelts and furs.
Gross. It’s like a freaking Narnian battlefield in here. I swear one of them is a polar bear.
“The doors,” Will says, and we huddle around them, trying to get them locked up. A floor peg is jammed into its rut. That’s all we’ve got. All that’s standing between us and the outside.
“They’re coming!” Jules whispers, high-pitched and panicked, and Will and Lilly start dragging a massive table toward the doors. The noise is excruciating. I run over to help. We lift it the rest of the way and shove it crosswise against the wood. Jules hooks his fire poker through the handles.
We back up, our hands tight around our weapons. My head feels like it’s about to blow off like a firecracker.
I can’t hear anything from the other side of the doors. No footsteps. Nothing but that scratchy, almost subliminal whine. It’s like they stopped right outside the doors, or kept running. The pale man has turned into a weird statue again, his shoulders tense, fingers curled and posed like he’s trying to imitate one of the painted figures in the Sistine Room.
We wait, frozen. Minutes pass. My joints start to feel like chewed-up rubber.
“Are they gone?” Lilly whispers.
Or are they waiting right outside? I imagine them out there, inky figures standing like black pillars, silent and tense.
“I think they kept going,” Will says under his breath. “We should keep barricading the door. In case they come back.”
We break into frantic motion. The wood floor squeaks. Will stacks a few heavy chairs on top of the table. I climb up them and heave an eight-legged bureau with peacock mother-of-pearl reliefs on top. Then a leather-padded stepladder. A footstool. We climb higher, higher, until the entire twelve-foot-high doors are covered with a grid of furniture.
As I’m scrambling down I hear something from outside. An awful rough, grating sound, like claws on wood.
I freeze, clinging precariously to a chair, one foot dangling in the air. My eyes flick frantically toward Lilly on the other side of the stack.
The sound seems to go on forever, scrrrrtch-scrrrrtch, echoing in the hallway, so close to the other side of the door. Finally it breaks off. It doesn’t pass, doesn’t fade into the distance. It’s just gone.
I hop the rest of the way down, land quietly on the pelt of a wolf. Jules catches my arm and pulls me upright. Mutters in my ear, his breath hot: “You need to talk to him.” He cuts his eyes toward the pale man. “What was that outside? You need to ask him why they brought us down here.”
I nod. Will gestures toward the back of the library and we move farther in, our group splitting around side tables and sofas like water. My feet sink into fur and bristles, skin-crawlingly crunchy. The pale man stays close to me, still limping along, his wounded arm cradled against his chest.
We reach the huge marble fireplace and press ourselves into the shadows of one of its carved pillars. The library is silent. The pale man stands slightly apart from us, staring at the doors. I inch over to him.
“Hey,” I say. “Ecoutez-moi. We’ve been kidnapped. We’re American citizens, and we need to get out of here. We need to know what’s going on.”
My heart is pounding, ridiculously loud. The pale man doesn’t answer. Doesn’t look at me.
New tactic: “Je m’âppelle Anouk,” I say. “Et vous?” Psychology 101. Treat your subject like he’s a human being. Pleasantries before business. Better yet, business disguised as pleasantries.
“Moi?” the pale man rasps. Still watching the door. And again, softly: “Moi. Qui suis-je . . . ?”
Who am I . . . ?
His eyes widen. He looks lucid, frightened, like someone waking up from a nightmare. “Je suis perdu,” he says. “Perdu dans l’ombre.”
I turn to the others.
“He said he’s lost,” I say. “Lost in the shadows.”
“That’s a terrible name,” Jules says, and almost simultaneously Lilly twists her hands together and whispers, “Uh, fantastic, so are we.”
I turn back to the pale man. “Fine. You’re Perdu. Pleased to meet you. Were you kidnapped too? How do we get out of here?”
Perdu starts to giggle, his head tipping back. An ugly sound crawls out, like his throat is full of broken glass.
“You cannot leave,” he says. “You cannot leave!”
“Why is he laughing?” Jules says, eyes wide. “Shut him up!”
I feel sick. “We had a deal—” I start to say.
“Shhh,” Perdu whispers, and places a long thin finger to his lips. “He is close.”
Will stiffens. I look over my shoulder at the doors, my heart squeezing up into my throat.
“Who?” I prompt. “Dorf?”
“Non.” Perdu wraps his arms around his bony shoulders. He seems to shrink, twisting. And as he turns, he points down the length of the library to the closed doors, silent behind their cage of furniture. “L’homme papillon,” he says, in a guttural, piercing croak. “L’homme papillon!”
“What’s he saying?” Lilly hisses.
“The butterfly man.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ask him what we’re supposed to do!”
“
Perdu?” I whisper fiercely, and he jerks upright, jittering. “Perdu, what do you know? Who are you?”
20
Perdu rises slowly, facing us. “I crawl through the dark,” he says. “Through forests of gilt and crystal I wander. Friend to the friendless, rescuer of dead and broken things. I am the watcher in the treetops.”
I turn to the others. “He’s crazy.”
“Great,” Jules says. “No, really, that’s good to know now that we’re locked in here with him.”
I spin back to Perdu. “You said you would help us,” I say in French. “Does this room have another exit? Do you know the way out?”
Perdu’s watching me, wheezing. I can’t read his gaze. Usually I feel like all those books about deranged folk paid off and I have a really good idea of the depths of people’s depravity, but I can’t tell with him. I don’t know if that gaze is dangerous or imploring.
“If you leave now,” he says, and saliva flies between his lips with each breath, “you will die. You will step through those doors and he will see you. His eyes shall eat you like mouths, and you will lie on the floor, and ants and wasps and nits will crawl from your wounds like drops of night. Four little plums, all chewed up.”
He says that last sentence so casually that for a second I swear he’s sane. And now his hand swings around, smacking Will right in the temple, and he scuttles away, cramming himself into the space between a chair and the wall, like he’s trying to hide. He looks out at me from under the armrest, eyes glinting. “I am the only one you can trust,” he hisses.
I look over at Will. “You okay?”
He nods quickly, like he didn’t even feel it. “What was he saying?” he asks. “Prunes mâché, what does that mean?”
“That if we leave now we die.”
“All those words meant ‘You’re going to die’?” Jules says.
“Basically. Also, he seems to think there’s just one person out there now. And it’s a he.”
Lilly nudges me in the ribs. “He’s moving. What’s he doing?”
Perdu is out from behind the chair, standing up. Will is about to dive after him. I grab Will’s shoulder. “Wait.”
A Drop of Night Page 10