Lavender in Bloom

by Lily Velez

  “It’s a lavender festival!” Camilla exclaimed. “It must be one of the last of the season. We must stop and see.”

  It was a boisterous affair with activity every which way. Noah opted to remain at a water trough with the horses and wagon while Jeremie and Camilla ventured into the crush of people to further explore the merrymaking.

  “You’re sure you don’t wish to accompany us?” Jeremie asked.

  It was the first thing he’d spoken to Noah all day, and Noah realized it was also the first thing he’d said to him in weeks. He was so taken aback by it, by this blatant recognition, that he didn’t answer immediately, couldn’t. He faltered, righting his thoughts. Then, once he’d gathered his bearings, he managed a headshake. No, he would remain here.

  As the horses slaked their thirst, he turned to absorbing the festival. The stone building had turned out to be a monastery: Saint-Paul-de-Mausole. Upon discovering its name, Jeremie had fallen awestruck.

  “Nostradamus wrote of this very place on several occasions,” he’d said, his voice nearly a whisper.

  Along the monastery’s walls, vendors had staged tables to exhibit their many wares. The only requirement? All commodities had to have included lavender in their assembly. And so there were candles, incense, soaps, nosegays—all made with lavender. Lavender made an appearance in edible forms as well: in teas, honey, biscuits, chocolates, ice cream and sorbet, apéritifs, and more. Everywhere a person turned, he was overcome with the fresh, summery scent of lavender, a smell like crushed berries. It perfumed every breeze and was at once calming and rejuvenating, which is probably how Noah, who’d earlier pressed the horses on at an admirable pace in hopes of reaching the Perreault estate by nightfall, found he was no longer the slightest bit in a hurry.

  He relaxed at the trough, sitting, and continued watching the festival-goers. He didn’t think he’d ever seen happier people. They were carefree, lighthearted. They enjoyed their meals leisurely and basked in the sunlight. A group of young girls danced in a circle around a garland-festooned pole, each holding a different color ribbon in her hand, giggling as they wove around each other in a skip, their ribbons wrapping around the pole.

  His thoughts eventually strayed to Jeremie. He considered what Camilla had said. You’ve treated him horrendously ever since he first called on me. Had he? Noah had only reciprocated the manner in which Jeremie had acted toward him, but now he wondered if that was so.

  If, for instance, he’d indeed misread what had happened in the bookshop and it’d been nothing more than something of a friendly gesture, hard as that was to believe, and yet Noah had bolted off the way he had, perhaps Jeremie’s behavior following the incident could’ve been nothing more than his hesitation and fear, his assumption that Noah was upset with him for having so offended him. In response, Jeremie had thereby given him his space, and since Noah had never voiced objection, so it’d remained.

  If that was so, perhaps they both could stand accused of the dissolution of their friendship.

  He wrestled with himself over the notion. In truth, there was a surprising absence in his days as of late. He’d grown so accustomed to Jeremie’s company, to his ceaseless questions and readings and tales, that to be suddenly robbed of it had awoken something of a famine in him. If Camilla was speaking truthfully and Jeremie did in fact wish to repair their friendship, then Noah wondered why he shouldn’t permit him to do just that. It was perhaps possible he hadn’t been using Noah in the least bit. Even if his intentions had always been to call on Camilla, it didn’t reduce his friendship with Noah to anything less than what it’d previously been.

  He mulled it over while he gazed at the limestone peaks of the Alpilles mountain range. From so far away, they looked like nothing more than a row of harmless anthills. After some time, he arrived at a decision. If his own actions had conveyed a desire for distance, he’d behave otherwise starting this very moment. He’d then measure Jeremie’s response and sift truth from fiction once and for all. Resolved to this, he heaved himself to his feet and wandered about the festival in search of Jeremie and Camilla.

  It didn’t take very long to find them. They were strolling through the lavender fields. He selected a path two rows down from them and shuffled along its length, carrying his fingers across the thick bushes of lavender spikes. They tickled his skin. He recalled his mother’s hands as they carefully prepared lavender one afternoon years ago to soothe a sore throat that had besieged him.

  “Your mother has healing hands,” his father had said, and it was true. Her ministrations remedied aches and ailments of any strain without fail.

  In the lavender fields, Jeremie was the first to mark Noah. Their eyes crashed together like lightning against the earth. Noah paused but then carried forward, steps slowing only slightly. He continued dragging his hand along the lavender, eyes stuck on Jeremie, Jeremie’s eyes following him. Then Jeremie’s gaze flashed away at something Camilla said.

  “Noah, there you are.” Noticing Jeremie’s was attention directed elsewhere, she’d turned around. “I thought you’d remain on the fringes of the celebration forever. Apparently, there’s even more to see inside the monastery. A book fair, art exhibits, crafts. Then after sundown, there’ll be stories around a fire. We absolutely must stay for it.”

  At one point inside the monastery, after Camilla had pulled Jeremie away from the book fair, which didn’t interest her in the least, they happened upon a crafts table buried under lavender wreaths.

  “These are beautiful,” Camilla said. “Perhaps I should bring one as a gift for your mother and father.”

  “A kind gesture,” Jeremie said, “but I assure you it’s unnecessary.”

  “Nonsense. Our mother always taught us never to visit a home empty-handed.”

  “There are these as well,” the vendor said then, extending a smaller wreath to Jeremie. “For the festival.” Noah saw it was the same adornment numerous women had worn upon their heads all afternoon. A crown of lavender, with long, satin ribbons trailing from the circlet.

  “I should think I’d feel like a princess wearing such a thing,” Camilla said, turning toward Jeremie as if expecting him to crown her.

  Noah pretended to find interest in the woodwork of a neighboring table. As it were, there was no need for this.

  Jeremie only extended the crown toward Camilla’s hands. “If you like it, I’ll be happy to purchase it for you,” he said. Then he let her take the circlet from him, and she rested it atop her head herself, and as she did, Jeremie’s eyes shifted to Noah, but Noah promptly looked back to the woodwork, handling a birdhouse as if he’d seen nothing.

  In the evening, the festival-goers yet remaining gathered around a blazing bonfire just outside the monastery, this despite the low roar of thunder stalking closer from the horizon. By the time Noah had returned from seeing to the horses, there was only space enough to stand at the edge of the cluster of people. Jeremie and Camilla sat on a log across the way.

  The flames of the bonfire snapped and swayed, their heat pressing against Noah’s face despite his distance. An ancient-looking man, hunched over as if carrying the world’s secrets, tossed what looked like flour into the fire, and the flames flashed brighter, reached taller. The man reached for a walking stick then and switched his weight against it. He had spotted skin and a scar cut across one eye like the tail of a shooting star. For the next hour, he shared folktales and other such myths, his voice low and rasping, as if he hadn’t spoken in decades.

  “My final story,” he said as the evening drew to a close, “is a tragic tale, but it’s one that reminds us of how lavender first came into bloom here in France.

  “Many years ago, when the dawn was yet young and the age of iron reigned across our world, a Celtic people known as the Gauls ruled these lands. They were a people of great pride and strength. It was said a whole multitude of foreign invaders would make no match for a single Gaul. They invaded territories, defeated rulers and other such forces, and expanded their infl
uence throughout Europe.

  “But with war comes sacrifice, as the prince of one such Gallic tribe was soon to learn. During a raid, his very sword-brother had fallen in battle, struck by a poisoned arrowhead. The venom spread through him quickly and without mercy, but the healers could do nothing.

  “The prince became distraught. He and his sword-brother had been friends since childhood, and he loved the young man as he did his own soul. Determined to save his companion from death by any means necessary, he traveled to the enchanted woods on the outskirts of his kingdom.

  “It was there that he met with the Queen of the Bees, who was said to grant any wish in a courageous man’s heart. Genuflecting before her, the prince humbly requested that the Queen send her workers all throughout Gaul in search of an antidote to the poison. The Queen was happy to oblige, but not without a price.

  “‘When the time comes’, she said. ‘A request will be made of you. Do you vow to honor it?’

  “The prince gave her his word, and she instructed him to return to the woods in three days’ time. At the appointed time, the prince returned and the Queen presented him with two vials, each containing a strange, violet liquid. She explained that one vial was for the friend the prince loved, and the other for the prince himself.

  “‘Now we will see if you honor your vow,’ said the Queen. ‘Nature cannot exist without balance. For a life to be given, a life must be taken in kind.’ The elixirs contained within the vials would bind the souls of the two friends. The sword-brother would return to full health, but he would drain the life force of the prince to do so.

  “The prince returned home, heavy-hearted. He knelt before his sword-brother’s deathbed and presented him with the vial. ‘I’ve found your cure, my friend,’ the prince said. ‘You may rest easy now. All will be well.’ When the friend drank, so too did the prince, turning away so that the other wouldn’t notice.

  “They spent the evening speaking, the sword-brother none the wiser that with every word and action, the prince was bidding his farewell. As the hours passed, the prince grew weaker and weaker, his friend stronger and healthier, and eventually the prince could hardly keep his eyes open. He lay beside his sword-brother, spent, knowing his time had come.

  “By sunrise the next morning, he had entered into the eternal sleep, and the empty vial discovered on his person made clear his actions. The whole kingdom grieved. The sword-brother was devastated. As for the prince, he was buried in the wild fields where he and his sword-brother had played as children, and it wasn’t long before the most peculiar violet flowers began to blossom from his grave. Generations later, the flowers would come to be called ‘lavender’, from the Latin lavare, meaning ‘to wash’, for the prince had washed clean the stain of death from his friend with his great sacrifice.

  “Over time, lavender spread throughout all the lands, and it was said that wherever it bloomed, love was present. To this day, you see the seas of violet cover France every summer to commemorate the prince’s sacrifice, and so too do you see the bees take to the flowers and their kin, whispering the story of a selfless love.”

  When the man finished his tale, a hush fell upon those gathered. Noah recognized the story was only a fable, but something about it bit at his bones as the storm breeze grew stronger. Without meaning to, his eyes lifted to find Jeremie.

  Jeremie was staring back at him.

  This time, Noah didn’t look away.

  25

  To shelter themselves from the storm, they doubled back to the nearest town and slept the night in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, each to his and her own room.

  After boarding the horses in the adjacent stable, Noah withdrew to his room with a restless mind. He’d lain in bed but couldn’t sleep as he pondered the day’s events. This nature of insomnia had afflicted him for the better part of an hour when there came a gentle knock at his door.

  He stilled, thinking it a boarder returned from the back house, fumbling from door to door in the dark. A few moments later, however, the knock came again, and when Noah finally answered the door, away flew his words.

  Jeremie stood before him, carrying the oil lantern with which each room was outfitted. The lamp’s flames glowed in his dark eyes. Gone was his easy, jovial expression, the one everyone knew him for. His face now was serious, solemn.

  “Did I wake you?”

  Noah shook his head slowly. It was all he could accomplish as he stepped into the entryway, fingers clasped tightly around the brass doorknob.

  “Good.” There was a shadow of a smile at the corners of his mouth, but it was a doleful smile, a smile that had lived too long and seen too much. “I’d hoped we might speak. It’s been some time since we have.”

  Beyond Jeremie, the corridor was cast in blackness, arming one with the feel of being the only soul in all the universe, but the inn remedied this with walls as thin as parchment paper. A boarder three doors off snored loud enough to rival the thunder from the storm. In another room, a couple quarreled as an infant wailed. The place was congested with any number of men, women, and children, each bearing their own story, their own frustrations, their own fears. In the end, people were more alike than they’d ever know.

  “I can’t imagine what you must think of me,” Jeremie said then.

  Before Noah could respond—indeed, before he could even react to the words—the neighboring door yawned opened and emitted a frowning Camilla. She peeked around the edge of the doorway, and then at the sight of the two, she straightened. “I thought I heard a familiar voice. Is all the commotion keeping the two of you awake as well? My word. I have every mind to issue a complaint to the innkeeper.”

  Noah stared at her, his jaw nearly slackened, unable to forgive her ill timing, willing that she’d turn around and see herself straight back to her room.

  She didn’t, of course. “Jeremie, do you think you could fetch me some oil for my lamp? So long as I’m awake, I might as well write home.”

  “Certainly,” he said. “I’ll speak with the innkeeper at once.”

  Afterward, Noah waited inside his room, a part of him wanting Jeremie to knock once more, and another part desiring otherwise. Otherwise, as he feared Jeremie might say something unanswerable. What? He couldn’t tell.

  The remnants of the storyteller’s fable still beset him, however, coloring his thoughts. Something else tugged at him, too. He had corrected his behavior as planned, and Jeremie had certainly responded as far as he could tell, but then what did that mean? And those moments when their eyes had caught on each other, what were the intimations therein?

  Outside, the stars had long gone out. The rain pummeled the earth in torrents, as if grieving at the world. It cleared the refuse from the cobblestone streets and drummed on the taut awnings of storefronts like a thousand fired mullet balls.

  As it tapped against Noah’s window, he strained to hear any indication of Jeremie’s return. Then there it was—Camilla’s door opening, accompanied by a brief exchange of words. Her door closed, and then the groan of floorboards grew louder and closer to Noah’s door. They stopped. He dared not breathe.

  Silence. For one heartbeat. Two. A third.

  He grasped the doorknob, ready. He waited. He waited and waited, but when a sound did finally arise, it wasn’t the knock on the door he’d anticipated. It was that of quiet, defeated footsteps retreating to their room.

  In the morning, invigorated perhaps by the fresh smell of rain in the air, Jeremie had suggested spending a day or two more in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence as they strode about its peaceful roads. It’d stormed all through the night, and even now, the trees and awnings were still dripping.

  “I’ve always wished to sojourn here.” He claimed he’d almost set up his bookshop in the small, charming commune but hadn’t been able to secure an available space. “I continued north until I found Avignon.”

  “And we’re so glad you did,” Camilla said. She also insisted they continue on as to not keep Jeremie’s mother and father waiting, which both
ered Noah, but he didn’t protest.

  As the Perreault estate came into view hours later, the sun dipping into the horizon, dragging a cornucopia of colors across the sky with it, it was like watching a sleeping, stone giant wake, stir, and eventually rise to its full stature. It was beyond anything Noah had fathomed. He’d known Jeremie to hail from wealth, but the place in view looked to be where monarchs summered.

  It was colossal, a beastly, neoclassical work of art that stood three levels high, crowned by a triangular front plate that bore a coat of arms. It held itself proudly amid a green landscape that stretched so far and wide, it was as if the Perreaults owned all the earth. Woods and sloping hills filled in the chateau’s backdrop, and a bridle path extended from its side like a long, curving tail. In the colors of the sunset, and with a ribbon of silver mist clinging to its grounds, the place looked nothing short of magical, as if it’d emerged from one of the fairytales Noah’s mother used to tell him when he was but a child and new to the family.

  As they passed under an arched, iron gateway dripping with wisteria, he kept waiting for Jeremie to indicate a new direction, to say his actual home was just beyond the chateau. Beside him, Camilla stared in silence, and then she reached for Noah’s hand and squeezed it. He was taken aback by the gesture, but all the same, it was somewhat comforting to know he wasn’t the only one stunned by the grandeur before them.

  “Camilla, Noah,” Jeremie said. “Allow me to formally welcome you to Chateau de Perreault.”

  The entry path was paved in stone and rounded about a small, oblong lawn with a regal, three-tier fountain at its center featuring sculpted stallions with ferocious looks and women in Athenian gowns. The splash of the water was a soothing sound and the shrubbery that surrounded it swayed in the breeze. At the chateau’s towering front doors, a footman in stockings and ivory breeches greeted them and helped to unload their things before assuming control of the horses and wagon. Noah hesitated, but Jeremie assured him the animals would be under the best care.