Betrayed

by Lynn Carthage

  “What?” calls Eleanor, but Phoebe—eagle-eyed for anything that has to do with her sister—is already ahead of me, dashing through the door and into the slender, interconnecting hallway.

  Part of my mind registers the fact that it’s pure dead brilliant to be able to go where people aren’t supposed to—just like with the queen’s house at the Hameau—but I’m also terrified about Tabby being separated from her parents. If she gets into trouble, none of us ghosts can help her. All we can do is watch.

  “Tabby!” Phoebe’s yelling but Tabby doesn’t react. How could she?

  We sprint after her. I’m surprised how fast her little legs can carry her. Down the hall, there’s no end in sight. Yet, out of the gloom a door opens.

  It’s Giraude, bearing a lamp.

  Tabby comes to a halt just in front of her and even though there’s a half second where I pause—because after all, she looks like Madame Arnaud—I catch up to her. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Phoebe bending down to pick up her sister, but her hands go through her.

  We keep forgetting.

  As Phoebe straightens, Giraude looks her full in the face. A look of hatred comes over her instantly.

  “You’re not the firstborn!” she screams at Phoebe.

  We all jump backward, and Tabby lets out a cry and begins running back toward Marie-Antoinette’s bedroom, a bright rectangle in the distance.

  “It was never to be yours!” Giraude continues, her eyes angry and intense.

  We run after Tabby, sprinting away from Giraude, although of course she can’t see me. I don’t know if she can see Tabby. I whip my head around to see if she follows us.

  In her confusion, Giraude drops the lamp and it shatters. A fire erupts in the pool of oil on the floor. I stop, thinking her skirts will catch fire. She dances backward. I’m distracted by the light changing, the hallway’s paint losing its luster.

  Phoebe’s mum is here in the secret passageway with us.

  We’re back in the present day.

  “Tabby! Oh my God!” says her mother. She scoops Tabby up and the little girl’s arms and legs go fiercely around her body. She’s clinging, terrified.

  “If it makes you feel better, she’s not the first child to find that door irresistible,” says a museum guard. He’s wearing a blue blazer with an official Versailles badge on the breast pocket. “I try to keep an eye out, but this one just moved too fast.” He speaks English with only a very light French accent. He’s been dealing with tourists for a long time, I gather.

  Behind him is Eleanor, her face serious and concerned, and behind her—actually occupying some of the same space as her—is Tabby’s dad.

  The parents retreat back to the public area of the chateau, leaving us teens in the dark, except for the light from the faraway door.

  “What was she yelling at me, Miles?” Phoebe asks, her voice ragged.

  “Who?” asks Eleanor. “I didn’t hear any yelling from the passageway.”

  “Our favorite seventeen hundreds twin,” I report. “And she was saying, ‘You’re not the firstborn.’ ”

  “But I am!” protests Phoebe.

  “And why on earth would she care?” asks Eleanor.

  I know exactly why she cares, but just as I’m about to say it, a more pressing thought darts into my mind.

  I turn and look back at where the lamp had been dropped. There’s no sign of it, the fire or the ashes or the shattered glass. It belonged to another time period.

  I’m remembering something else about that moment. Something disturbing. Something that will cause a lot of problems if it happens again. I see again that split second where Tabby reacted to Giraude and ran away at her roar of anger at Phoebe.

  “Tabby came back in time with us,” I say slowly.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The potted trees at the Orangerie provide a startling display of abundance, albeit confined and controlled.

  —Nooks and Crannies of Versailles

  It’s a terrifying thought, that Tabby is prey to hurtling through time like we are. What if she travels without us? What if she gets stuck?

  “Oh my God,” says Phoebe. “That’s not cool. That’s so not cool.” She walks forward a few steps, then pivots and comes back to us, pacing like a dog. I almost wish I hadn’t said it. But it’s something we need to be aware of.

  “A child goes, but I don’t,” mutters Eleanor.

  “She’s an Arnaud,” I point out. “Don’t take it personally.”

  “I wish you could go and not her!” snaps Phoebe. “Even if that’s Giraude and not Yolande, I don’t want Tabby anywhere near her!”

  “I’m so sorry, of course, of course,” soothes Eleanor. “It’s foolish to be jealous of such a dangerous ability.”

  “Is that what you think?” I ask, marveling. “It’s not an ability—it’s something that’s done to us.”

  I get it now. She’s not just jealous that Phoebe and I have a romantic thing going on. She thinks we’re more skilled somehow. Like we drew the lucky time-travel card and she got the seven of clubs.

  “It doesn’t feel good to not have control,” says Phoebe. As if unable to bear the thought, she starts walking down the hallway toward Marie-Antoinette’s bedchamber. “I want to stick tight to my sister.”

  She’s almost at the door where one portion of the thousands of people crowded into the palace today is squished, and she turns around to look at Eleanor and me with a frown. “What does Giraude care if I’m firstborn or not?”

  I resist the urge to glance at Eleanor. Phoebe has always challenged the truth that she looks like Madame Arnaud. I temper my voice to sound gentle. “She must have thought you were her sister. That you’d stolen her destiny, just as she was telling Athénaïs.”

  Phoebe stands stock-still. Behind her is so much commotion from the visitors shuffling around the room and trying to get a good camera angle of the bed, but there’s a sliver of quietude here in this secret passageway. “She thinks I’m Madame Arnaud?”

  I nod. “I think so, Phoebe. Although they’re twins, Giraude must’ve been born first.”

  “No wonder she looked at me like she hated me. So each time I trip, I’ll have to make sure she doesn’t see me. I don’t want to take the revenge that’s meant for somebody else.”

  She looks so reflective there, way older than the sixteen she was when she lost her life. Maybe I’m looking older now, too.

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “She can’t touch you. You’re . . .” My voice trails off.

  “I know that, Miles. I know what I am. I can even say it. You ready? Dead. That’s what I am. Dead dead dead.”

  I’m not prepared for the intensity radiating out of her. She’s someone else.

  “Can you say it? Can you visit your parents? Nope! You’re too busy denying it to pay them a visit.”

  “Phoebe, you’re saying things you don’t even mean,” says Eleanor in a low voice.

  “I’m dead,” I say flatly.

  “Oh, well, there you go,” Phoebe says. “You managed it. I’m dead, you’re dead, she’s dead. It’s like a festival of deadness. So you don’t need to remind me, Miles. I got it. Believe me, I got it.”

  “I’m thoroughly aware of that,” I say. I try to keep the coldness out of my voice.

  Unsuccessfully.

  “And since I know I’m dead, you don’t have to school me that Giraude isn’t supposed to be able to touch me. But the thing is, Miles, the rules keep changing on us. Things are upside down and tilted the wrong direction, so if one day Giraude happens to grab me and I feel it, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. You don’t know all the rules. You don’t know how this world operates, because it isn’t really operating. It’s gusting along however the hell it wants. All we can do is watch and try to keep our footing when the tilting starts.”

  “I never claimed I—” I begin angrily. I stop short when I see the tears glistening in her eyes. I hold both my hands up in the air, a gesture of submission. I step past her and Ele
anor into the vibrant press of people in Marie-Antoinette’s bedroom.

  Light streams through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Everything is golden. People here breathe, every moment their chests lightly lifting and falling. It’s a gift. It’s a bloody gift.

  I sense the tremendous pressure of their hearts. In every body, there’s something wild and yet restrained, following a rhythm as it throbs in absolute muscular power. Nothing is as strong as a heart for its consistent labor. Even as the bearer sleeps, it pounds out its cadence. It never stops from the moment it starts when we’re inside our mothers’ bodies . . . never stops.

  Until.

  It stops.

  She’s right.

  Eleanor’s right.

  I need to see my parents.

  Just as I imagined, the telly’s on. But as I walk closer to them in that warm, firelit room with the scent of peat I can just barely catch, I see that they’re not alone.

  Dad has given up his armchair to a visitor, joining Mom on the sofa. There’s an awkward silence. Why are they watching the television, not something you typically do with a visitor?

  I glide into the center of the room to see who it is. Their eyes stare through me to the screen beyond.

  It’s a girl my age. I don’t know her.

  Did they adopt her? A replacement for me? Who is this?

  She’s got long brown hair and an attractive face, but it’s set in an unpleasant sneer. I want to slap her. No one should be around my parents with that face.

  “Do you mind if I head upstairs and take a nap?” she asks.

  “Not at all; you’ll find everything you need up there, Raven,” says my mother, and I can hear the relief in her voice.

  As the girl leaves, I watch my parents’ faces. They share a long look with each other, and my father heaves a large sigh.

  “We won’t have to see Raven Gellerman again,” he says quietly.

  “Perhaps the one silver lining in Miles’s death,” says my mom.

  I wait to see if more tidbits of information arise, but they return to watching the telly, morose.

  I go upstairs, where the girl is in my room. A suitcase sits at the foot of my bed; she’s planning to spend the night.

  She walks over to my dresser and examines each of my things without touching them: swimming trophies, photographs, an Eiffel Tower model we bought in Paris. She lifts her eyes and looks at herself in my mirror.

  She looks for so long that I start to feel myself drifting back to Phoebe. But then she speaks.

  “Guess you weren’t the one we thought you were after all, Miles.”

  The room suddenly feels icy. Does she know I’m here?

  “All these years of checking up on you . . . and for nothing. You rolled your car and you’re a statistic in the churchyard now. So much for the prophecy.”

  The prophecy does involve me. I want to rip open the room, make her notice me, have her tell me. What is the prophecy?

  She glumly places her elbows on my dresser top, bends over, and puts her chin in her palms. “You were so cute, too!”

  “Hello?” I say.

  “Last trip to Grenshire for me,” she says.

  “Can you hear me?” I ask.

  “Farewell, Miles Whittleby. Congratulations on a very poor showing. I’ll report back that this lineage just isn’t working. Unless of course your parents happen to have another child.”

  I rear back, shocked.

  “But based on the shell-shocked lack of intimacy I see downstairs, I think this is a dead end. Literally.”

  “Are you aware of me?” I ask.

  She continues to stare into the mirror and begins to braid her hair, twisting her head slightly to watch her progress. Either she has no idea I’m here or she’s the most unselfconscious girl I’ve ever seen. When she reaches the bottom of the braid, she holds it in place for a moment, admiring. She lets go and the first part of it unravels, then she undoes it as swiftly as she did it. She puffs out her hair into a cloud of brown waves and makes a sexy face into the mirror.

  Yeah. She has no idea I’m here.

  “It’s the worst system ever, Miles, and maybe it let you down. Nobody’s really into secret societies dating back eons. It’s hard enough to get people to join the debate team, let alone our group.”

  I listen closely. She’s letting go of information now, things I need to hear. Was I supposed to be part of this society? Maybe when I turned eighteen? But she doesn’t look eighteen yet, either.

  “So we’re back to the beginning, back to paperwork and family trees. We must’ve missed something.”

  She turns away from the mirror and goes to my bed. Every ounce of me revolts when she pulls back the covers and gets in. That’s my bed.

  “Such high hopes,” she says as she turns off the bedside lamp and closes her eyes.

  I use intention to find Phoebe and return to Versailles. She’s back at the Orangerie with Eleanor, and her family is nowhere in sight. I instantly see why. Phoebe and Eleanor are sitting on the grass next to each other. Eleanor’s arm is around Phoebe, who’s crying. They’ve withdrawn because Phoebe was so upset.

  They both look up at me.

  “I’m so sorry, Miles,” says Phoebe. “I can’t believe the crappy things I said to you.”

  “I’m sorry as well,” says Eleanor. “I was the one who invented the upsetting proposal.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “Really.” I lean over and take Phoebe’s hand. “You were right. I was supposed to go check in. My parents are beyond sad, which I already knew . . . but I saw someone in our house, a stranger to me.”

  They straighten up, and Eleanor’s arm comes off Phoebe’s shoulders. “Tell us,” says Phoebe urgently.

  “Her name’s Raven Gellerman and she’s part of some secret society. She said that I was expected to be part of the prophecy, but apparently by dying I negated that. It must be the same prophecy Giraude was talking about.”

  “What is the society based on?”

  “No idea. She was our age. It was really strange. You’d expect an old, white-haired man to be part of a secret society.”

  Eleanor looks thoughtful. “I wonder if she is part of the group Austin’s family was part of.” Austin was a stableboy at the Arnaud Manor in the 1800s, and someone Eleanor had found—abbreviated—love with.

  “Tell us more about Austin,” Phoebe says.

  “His family was really interested in the pagan lore in Grenshire. They met with others, I think at times of the year harkening to the pagan calendar, like the solstices and such.”

  “Did they happen to meet on October twentieth?” I ask.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. To be honest, Miles, the centuries have passed with such slowness that I forgot things, specific tools the living use, like dates.”

  “Were you born on October twentieth?” I ask.

  There’s a long silence. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I ever knew or I knew and forgot. My family was poor to a degree you and Phoebe can’t understand. There were no cakes. There was no celebration.”

  I feel awful pressing, but I think it’s important. “Do you think you were born in the fall, at least? Do you have a sense of the time of year?”

  “My birthday was not marked,” she says. “My arrival was not cause for celebration for my family. As a girl, I was a burden, simply another mouth to feed. As soon as I was eligible for service, they thrust me out into the world.”

  I take her in my arms, and Phoebe hugs her, too. One strange mishmash of bodies on the grass.

  It is heartbreaking to have a loving family and lose them. It’s perhaps equally heartbreaking . . . maybe worse . . . to have a family that doesn’t love at all, and keep them.

  “It was dazzling the way Austin’s family treated me,” she said. “They loved their son, and they loved me. For the first time in my life, I felt wanted. I felt like I had some value.”

  I’m about to blurt that the value they may have seen in her was related to the prophecy, b
ut realize before I say it how cruel it would sound. They found value in her because she’s a good person. Because they liked her.

  Eleanor’s hands smooth out the apron across her lap, then she crinkles it all up.

  “I think sometimes what my life would have been like if I’d worked at a regular big house. Even a cruel mistress would have been fine. Austin and I could have married, and I could take on laundry or sewing or some other means of supporting our family. I’m sorry, your tragedies are so much more recent. I’ve been mulling over my loss for hundreds of years. But seeing you two and the way you feel about each other—it brings it back. It makes my pain fresh again.”

  “It’s all right,” I say. “We want to hear about it.”

  But I can feel myself growing distant. I don’t like it when people cry. I just . . . I have a hard time with it. But I want to be better about it. Girls show their emotion and that’s a good thing. It helps them work through hard stuff.

  “Austin was devastated,” she says. “I watched him grieve. I watched his family try to figure out how to move forward.”

  “Did he stay on as stableboy?” Phoebe asks gently.

  “Oh no! No one stayed on! They all left.”

  “Oh,” I say. “That’s how the manor house fell into disrepair and was abandoned.”

  “Yes, all but Madame Arnaud left.”

  “Did he marry someone else?” Phoebe asks.

  “If he did, I have blocked it out because it is too painful to contemplate,” says Eleanor.

  “How could he?” I ask. “After knowing Eleanor, he wouldn’t have been able to find anyone else to match her.”

  Eleanor squeezes me extra hard, and as if on a signal, we all disengage. We sit in a row watching the living come into the Orangerie and then leave. Like they’re a program on the telly we just can’t turn off.

  “We should get back to Tabby,” says Phoebe.

  We rejoin the family. They’re slogging through the chateau. It’s clear that Tabby’s runaway adventure stressed out her parents. Steven’s not reading from his guidebook, and his wife isn’t bothering to take photos. They’re just mechanically doing the tour. And Tabby’s bored. This isn’t really fun for kids unless they can jump on the monarchs’ beds and sit in the gilt chairs.