The Ghosts of Kerfol

by Deborah Noyes

  After that, she never let him out of her sight, but petted and talked to him as if he were her child — and indeed, the little dog was the nearest thing she had to a child. Or would ever have.

  Yves de Cornault was well pleased. A sailor had procured the animal from an East India merchantman, and the breed was much in demand at the French court at the time, so the baron had paid a steep price for it. But the dog made his wife so happy, he boasted, that he would have parted with twice the sum. He let her keep the creature with her always, even adorn it with the sapphire-and-diamond necklace — also, of course, a recent gift from her husband, one she had never much showcased till now — wound twice and tenderly round its throat.

  One day as I was tidying her dressing table, Master came to her chamber door. She had fallen asleep in a chair with her bare feet resting on the little dog’s back. I stood as still as I could, feigning invisibility. As if sensing him in the room, Milady woke with a start to find him there, smiling strangely.

  “You look like my great-grandmother, Juliane de Cornault,” he said, “who now lies in the chapel with her feet on a little dog.”

  This seemed to chill Milady, who pulled her shawl close round her shoulders, but she laughed. “Well, when I am dead you must put me beside her, carved in marble, with my own dog at my feet.”

  “Oh, we’ll see.” He laughed, but his black brows furrowed. “The dog is a symbol of loyalty.”

  “And do you doubt my right to lie with mine at my feet?”

  “When in doubt, I make inquiry. I’m not a young man,” he added, “and people say you lead a lonely life. But you will have your monument if you earn it.”

  “And I will be faithful,” she replied, looking down at her hands, “if only to earn the prize of having my little dog at my feet.”

  He noticed me then, and I saw fury in his eyes. “Stop your staring, slut, and get about your work.” He raised a hand to strike me, but I ducked and fled to the kitchen, to Maria, who fed me broth and smirked at my childish terror and trembling. “Did your papa never beat you?”

  I sobbed, shaking my head, and swiped at a tear.

  “Do you not see now . . . he has the right to do much worse? And exercises it. You’ll learn how to walk and where to stand. Where not to stand. The best of us, the wisest, are hidden in plain sight.”

  “Like Youen, you mean?”

  “I meant no such thing.” Maria eyed me suspiciously. “But I see what’s on your pea brain —”

  I laughed through my tears.

  “He’ll mock you till the cows come home, Youen, before he’ll spare you a smile.”

  “He’s spared them.” I hoped I did not sound proud. “Once or twice. But Maria, he said he comes from a family of poachers. That Sire knows it.”

  She shrugged.

  “I don’t understand. Why would the baron hire the son of a poacher? One he knew about, I mean.”

  Maria dabbed broth off my mouth with her sleeve. Her plump hand smelled of cloves. “What better way to keep an eye on him?”

  “But Youen’s father —”

  “What would you have his father do? And besides, I wager the old rogue behaves himself now. Sire’s rabbits are safe for once.”

  I hung my head.

  “You see how it is?” She lifted my chin, and I found the strength to nod.

  Thankfully, the master went away again. He always did.

  In the baron’s absence, his old aunt, the widow of a fellow nobleman, spent a night at Kerfol. She was a pious dame of great consequence, much respected by Yves de Cornault, so when the widow proposed that Anne visit Sainte-Barbe with her, how could she object? Now the lady’s established favorite — a dubious honor, at best — I went along, too.

  It was at Sainte-Barbe that Milady spoke with Hervé de Lanrivain for the second time, at least to my knowing. They had not more than five minutes together under the chestnuts as the rest of the procession filed out of the chapel. Before the others came out, he said, “I pity you,” in a hoarse voice not without tenderness, a voice almost shy for all its bluster. Less angelic than I remembered, he was a princely creature all the same, innocent and arrogant both, lashy and beardless with dark, knowing eyes that had seen far shores yet did not once leave her face. There was no joy in a man like that, yet he was not stern like the baron. Milady, for her part, seemed surprised, perhaps that anyone outside our household knew enough to pity her.

  He added, raising a hand with youthful bravado, as if to silence me or anyone else who might object, “Call for me when you need me,” and Milady smiled, just slightly.

  I seemed to see her smiling more often after that, usually at the window, or on those rare Sunday carriage rides while Sire was away, and I wondered in my girlish way if she longed to be with Lanrivain. I would, were I Milady, though for myself, I preferred the easy grace of Youen’s nature. He was not bleak and burdened with history, not noble any more than a woodcock or a horse’s muzzle was noble, but more and more he shone in my thoughts the way a spider’s web shines at dawn with dew.

  Here began Milady’s restlessness. First she had me root out and rescue her half-forgotten violin. I found it in the attic, twisted in moth-eaten velvet, and unwound the cloth slowly, for it seemed a living thing. When I plucked a dusty string, it shrieked, then snapped, and I shuddered, drawing the fabric tight again.

  Milady sent the instrument to Quimper to be cleaned and restrung, and took to playing wild, mournful melodies — when her husband was away, of course — that filled the manor with black unrest.

  One night I found her so, dressed in just a sleeveless linen shift, and I winced to see a bruise, purple-yellow and garish on her shoulder. I looked away, ashamed, as if I’d found her naked, and she did not sense me and turn with those large eyes in that too-pale face. She went on playing, swaying slowly in her labor like a snake in darkest India rising from a basket.

  One day while Sire was abroad and I went out to lay linen on the lavender beds to dry, I stumbled across Milady and Hervé de Lanrivain in the flower garden. He must have walked in on the avenue, for I’d seen no strange horse in the stables earlier when I delivered Youen one of the miniature tarts Maria was baking for the lady’s tea. (She now let me steal away with the occasional treat. I had been warned, Maria said. Her work was done so long as I understood: at Kerfol, no crime was too small.)

  Drawing back among the shrubs, I heard the young noble say that he would depart in the morning for a foreign land. His mission was not without peril and might detain him for months. When he begged for a remembrance, she glanced down shyly and sidled off after her little dog, returning with something held close to her chest. Though she concealed it from unseen eyes like mine, the necklace glinted in the sun like a blade. As he leaned forth to accept it, their two foreheads met, for just an instant, and the glare of gems was muffled.

  When Master came home days later, he absently scooped up Milady’s pet from her feet to pat it. His broad hand hovered a moment, almost imperceptibly, over the place where the precious collar had become a fixture. Though he did not speak, his aspect changed, and the animal squirmed and whimpered to be let down.

  Setting aside her embroidery, Milady reached out, but her husband withheld the poor creature. No one who hadn’t fearfully studied Sire’s manner would note a rebuff, but I did. Milady did.

  “I’m afraid he lost it in the undergrowth of the park.” She did her desperate best to charm, to seem at ease, craning all the while toward the little dog in his arms. “Ask Perrette. We searched high and low.”

  I must have winced to hear my name. Or did I nod calmly and carry on stitching like the other women in our fireside circle? Milady had indeed enlisted half the manor to search for an object she herself had “lost,” though I did not, would not, say that she had. Not to anyone. Certainly not to the baron. What’s more, her monstrous lie had bought us the better part of that morning in the sunshine while our chores languished. Youen’s hand had brushed mine as we hunted side by side in the r
osemary, and the touch made me shudder and smile all day, constantly. Stupidly.

  Sire had no mind for my or any view. He released the dog and watched intently as it trotted away.

  His mood at dinner was bland. He talked at length, describing what he had seen and done at Rennes, pausing often to search his wife’s face with cold eyes. He went upstairs early and would not be accompanied or disturbed.

  The mood below suffered.

  Milady snapped at Cook and nagged Maria pointlessly over household matters she knew nothing about. When our mistress saw that she had strained their patience, she set off pacing the great hall at the front of the house. She ordered all the candles lit, though it was late and there were no guests to entertain. Once the candles blazed, she thought better of it and had them all snuffed out again. She opened doors and closed them again, but thankfully did not flee to the gardens or the forbidden orchard. She stared out at the black night. She stole looks at the stars. She mourned what was to come.

  When at last she called for me to dress down her bed, we took the stairs slowly, carefully, like elderly women afraid of slipping or breaking a bone. We did not hurry, but we arrived all the same.

  We found it.

  The little dog lay dead on her pillow.

  She did not scream, my mistress, or complain in the slightest. You might think she had expected it. But all the grace and power I knew her to possess in that slight frame seeped away then. Her shoulders stooped. She crept forth, confused, and we stood united in horror. The animal had been killed with the sapphire-and-diamond choker, the one Sire had given her in front of the entire household, the one I knew she had furtively given to Lanrivain in the hedge garden. The necklace was twisted thrice round the dog’s slender throat.

  Milady scooped up the rigid, small form and unraveled the gems, which seemed to burn her fingers. She flung the necklace against the wall and thrust the little dog at me, as if I should know what to do. Waving us away, she lay lightly across the bed. Her shoulders — bruised, I knew, tender under fine fabric — moved with silent sobs.

  With Youen, I buried the dog by candlelight behind the chapel. We did not speak. He would not look at me.

  Horror had silenced us, and when I tried to tell him what I knew about the necklace, he hissed me quiet. He stepped hard on the dirt over the small grave to tamp it. He made a quick cross with his heel. He left me alone as the sky began to drizzle.

  I followed him back. “And where is justice?” My naïve words echoed horribly through the stalls, the candlelight making our shadows garish. A gelding down the row answered with an indignant snort. Youen caught my wrist. “There is nothing just in this world, Perrette. In this house — and what more of the world belongs to me? To us?”

  Lightly but with his whole body, he steered and pinned me against the inside of the mare’s stall, silencing my lips with his roving fingers, rubbing a scratchy cheek against my cheek as a bear rubs its back against a tree. I clutched the candle for dear life though the holder dropped in the hay. My cap slid down, and our breathing made a rhythm, and though I wished and feared he would, he did not kiss me.

  The stamping mare recalled us, and he stood me back with eyes like a forest burning. He turned my shoulders, steering me round heaped manure toward the stable door, and whispered softly into the nape of my neck, “Good night, Perrette.”

  Youen sent me forward as a child releases a butterfly, and I slept without dreaming.

  When the baron went away, Milady hovered by windows or paced and made a sublime screeching with her violin. Had she heard from Hervé de Lanrivain? we wondered. Kerfol buzzed with gossip day and night. Would Master let his young rival live, knowing what he must know? Had he already killed Lanrivain? Or just deprived him of the necklace? The same necklace that had killed the dog. I’d scanned the floor and peeked under the bed the next morning but found no murderous glow or telltale shimmer. “Who would confront him if he had?” I wondered aloud.

  Day after day, as Milady sat stitching by the hearth with us, night after night alone in bed, she must have wondered these things, too, and anguished, and against my instincts, I ached for her. Questions lapped at my lips like a tide some days, and to hold them back brought a kind of nausea.

  As I stood brushing her hair one night, I noticed that she had not worn her silken robe over her shift to conceal the bruise. I touched it with my forefinger, tentatively, and she caught my hand — and then she kissed the hand, almost gratefully, and I fought the urge to draw it back.

  “I am not very much older than you are, Perrette.”

  I nodded in the mirror, feeling suddenly wise and very old indeed. I looked a stranger in the glass, while Milady looked familiar. I seemed to know her now.

  “I used to think there was no fate worse than not being loved,” she told me — told herself — in the looking glass. “But now I know there are worse things.”

  When Master was home evenings and smiled across the table at her, I saw that she would not solicit news of her friend or send a trusted servant with a letter. Sire was sure to find out if she did. I imagined — I’m sure we all did — that he could find out anything.

  That winter was black and long and rainy.

  Youen grew increasingly drawn and distant, taking his meals alone in the stables. He didn’t speak when I brought them, only grunted thanks and stalked away into the mare’s stall. He would sit among the dung and flies rather than with us. Rather than speak. And what could we do? What could I do? Some selfish, disbelieving part of me drew away from Youen in turn, because I did not fathom, could not fathom, what he might need, what might heal him, and failing shamed me.

  What girlish innocence I still had thrilled when minstrels arrived at Kerfol with a troop of performing dogs. Overjoyed and forgetful, as lovers are forgetful, and with Sire away, Milady bought the smallest and cleverest, a white, feathery dog with one blue eye and one brown, and sat with it on her lap through supper, feeding it scraps.

  But when her husband returned from his travels, she came from her bath one night and found that dog, too, strangled on her pillow.

  On yet another evening, Youen found a poor, lean greyhound whining at the gate in the bitter cold. Against his advice, Milady took possession of the dog and hid him in a room that no one went to, surprising us all by smuggling food there from her own plate. But Yves de Cornault was not long recalled from business when we found the greyhound stiff and strangled, a tiny wisp of blood on the pillow by its mouth.

  Another time, when his wife had merely stooped to pat the chaplain’s watchdog, a grave old pointer who slept in an anteroom of the little church, the baron happened up the path unexpectedly, and by nightfall, the pointer, too, was gone from Kerfol.

  “Who next?” our ranks whispered. “What now?”

  When Youen graced us with his sullen presence at all, usually only at Sunday’s meal, he refused to comment on the dogs. He would get up and leave the room if pressed. He was never one for gossip, Maria said, but he also had more feeling for animals than most. Once Sire nearly beat to death a young horse he was breaking, and Youen had lunged for the whip. The master struck him hard that time with a ringed knuckle, and the cut on Youen’s brow had shone an angry cinnamon for days.

  Milady mourned her losses bitterly, vowing to me never to bring another dog into the manor, no matter what. But longing lasts, while memory is short. Yves de Cornault was on business in Rennes that endless winter when a brindled pup was found in the snowy wood out behind the chapel, its leg mangled in a trap. She warmed and fed it, wrapped its leg, and hid the animal in the west wing until the blacksmith came on an errand. Milady paid handsomely for his confidence, and the good man agreed to bring the dog back to the village and care for it.

  But that night we heard whining and scratching at the door, and when Milady opened it the lame puppy jumped at her with frantic little barks, drenched and shivering. We hid him in her bed till morning — when Master’s carriage wheels sounded on the gravel.

  Sh
e closed the dog in a wardrobe, closed me in the room with the dog, and drew a finger to her lips as she backed out and shut the door. I listened to the coachman leading the horses out back. I strained to hear the soft bustle of servants gathering downstairs to receive him, and Milady’s voice — too high for a moment, until it found its liar’s pitch.

  The puppy in the wardrobe began to bark.

  Frozen, I pleaded in my thoughts for it to stop, and for just a moment, as if Fate would tease me with her wit, it did. But all sound below, too, had ceased. The house held its breath. I cracked the wardrobe door and the dog snuffled and nudged under my hand. I heard footfalls on the steps and eased the door shut again, but it was Youen who came. “Where is it?”

  I pointed.

  He went and like a magician put his hands on the dog, silencing it with his strokes. He leaned over to shield and muffle it, and at length crawled in and pulled the pup between his raised knees, still stroking and soothing. “Perrette,” he hissed, for I was still frozen. “Shut the wardrobe door.”

  “But —”

  “The door. When he’s at table with his wine, tap once at the chamber door, and I’ll smuggle this down and out through the buttery.”

  “He’ll —”

  “He’ll not hear me.” He nodded helpfully. “Shut it.”

  I did tap, and Master did not hear Youen sneak the creature down and out to the stables. Or so we thought.

  But when I went with Milady to turn down the bed, we found the animal like the others, dead on her pillow. She moaned and blinked, incredulous, while I, not awaiting her order, wrapped it in the blanket. I ran with my burden banging against my back down the stairs and out through the twisted trees in the orchard, where I left the bundle under the stars for the crows before racing back to the stables.

  Youen did not move when I tried to rouse him from the straw. He could not. His ribs were broken. I knelt and turned his face to me, and one side was bruised like the darkened side of the moon. His inner ear was caked with blood. I stroked his fine, fiery hair, and he groaned, so I ran for Cook, who could nurse Youen and ply him with herbs.