“So your family has always been servants?”
“Or farmers, workers of the land.”
“They say my family descends from some ancient line of kings,” I offer, and act stung by the withering looks I receive.
“I’m related to Washington Irving, the guy who wrote ‘Sleepy Hollow,’ ” says Phoebe.
“That’s promising,” I say. “He wrote about a headless Hessian soldier. Was he the original Sangreçu?”
“Although . . .” Eleanor says and stops.
“What?” says Phoebe.
“I thought we’d sort of . . . we’d come around to the idea that your dad . . . that your stepdad is your true dad. That you’re an Arnaud, not an Irving.”
“Yeah,” she says. “It does kind of look that way.”
She stares over at Steven, who’s pressing a button on his watch to provide a small glow to see what time it is. Even he’s impatient for the fireworks now.
For the first time, I really get what that means to her. A man she loves, who was her dad when she was small, was betrayed by her mum. Which means a chink in her mum’s armor. Phoebe adores her. Admitting Steven is her biological dad means acknowledging her mum ran around on her husband. I try to imagine how I’d feel knowing my mum did that to my dad, or vice versa. It gives me an instant sick feeling in my stomach—or whatever passes for my stomach these days.
“So there’s clearly something in your heritage,” I say to Phoebe, hoping to move the conversation to objective rather than subjective grounds. “Royalty? Maybe Yolande or Giraude had an illegitimate child from one of the kings who lived here over the centuries?”
“You told us Athénaïs said she was the mistress of the king,” says Phoebe. “And that Yolande was asking for advice on how she seduced him. Maybe she crawled right into the royal bed.”
I feel kind of stupid saying this. “Which king do you think it is?”
Phoebe laughs lowly and I’m glad she’s moved on from thinking unpleasant things about her mum. “You’d think we should know. There were only three of them, right? All Louis . . . zes?” We all laugh. What is the plural of Louis pronounced Frenchly?
“All of them named Louis,” says Eleanor. God, she’s sharp.
“Based on what they’re wearing, we might be able to tell?”
“Yes, because I’m so up-to-date on ladies’ fashions of the past,” I say.
“Well, the first Louis was actually a medieval guy, right? Sixteen hundreds? Dammit, we should’ve listened better when my stepdad was reading from the guidebook and boring us all!”
Stepdad. I let it go.
“Excellent,” says Eleanor. “We should surely be able to distinguish medieval garb from later fashions. By the time of the last Louis and the Revolution, we were getting very close to my century.”
I try to remember what Giraude was wearing. Did she look more like someone who’d fall subject to the bubonic plague, or someone who ate bonbons off the same tray as Marie-Antoinette?
“But if Giraude never died, she must have adopted the dress of whatever court she was in, right? She would’ve wanted to fit in,” I point out.
“So then how was Athénaïs dressed when she talked about her . . . her . . . bedding the king?” Eleanor asks. She looks shyly at the ground.
“You’re asking the wrong person,” says Phoebe.
We’re not costume scholars or historians. “Well, maybe we should just guess and land in the middle. The middle Louis!” I say.
“The Fifteenth then,” says Eleanor.
“Which in Roman numerals is an X and then some other letters,” says Phoebe with mock authority, and we all grin.
“Many thanks to our Roman-numeral expert. Okay, so to recap: Phoebe might be lost royalty, the descendant of Louis the Fifteenth via his mistress. So Versailles actually belongs to her, and all the day’s admissions should go to her.”
“You know, they can keep it,” says Phoebe, waving her hand. “I’m already heir to this oversized manor back in England. I’m good.”
“I’ll take it,” says Eleanor.
“I’ll arm-wrestle you for it,” I say, rolling up my sleeves.
“I’m a serving girl who’s carried many a tray piled high with heavy platters and teapots,” says Eleanor. “These forearms are powerful.”
“So what are you implying about mine?”
I love flirting with her; she can’t handle it. She blushes as deep as . . . as someone can when they’ve been dead and cold for over a century.
“I believe the palace is large enough for you two to share,” says Phoebe.
“True words,” says Eleanor primly.
“Glad we settled that.”
I take a deep breath. It’s time to reveal the golden egg I’ve been sitting on this whole time.
“Would you two accompany me back to where I think the vials are?”
It’s so worth it to see the looks of shock on their faces.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The crypt at Picpus being a strange place, holding the scant consecrated bones that survived the Revolution by virtue of being embedded in stone. Not far from their harmonious rest, a mass grave filled until a second was required to be dug.
—Morbid Paris
“You know where the vials are?” Phoebe’s face is hard to describe. For a second, I can’t answer, too busy memorizing this arrangement of eyebrows and cheekbones and wide, wide eyes.
“I believe so. Pretty flash of me, eh?”
“And why then have we wasted valuable time chatting about kings and nonsense?” Eleanor’s face is compelling, too, but she has an element of scolding in her forehead that I’m not a huge fan of.
“Something to do?”
“You!” Eleanor turns her back on me, she’s so overcome. I guess this is an important moment. If we figure out the vials, we might be on our way to “graduation.”
“So who wants to go?”
Phoebe takes my hand. “This time I’m not stepping away from you so much as an inch.”
“Eleanor?”
She doesn’t turn around. “Maybe I should stay and keep an eye on Phoebe’s family.”
“No! Come on, the vials are everything we need to solve things for them.”
She turns around to face us, but keeps her eyes down. “I’m not meant to go with you two, or the magic would’ve taken me.”
“No!” I protest. “You weren’t close enough when one of us started going.”
“Very well,” she says.
We all three hold hands.
“Eleanor, come with us. We want you,” says Phoebe in a rhythmic way, as if she’s experimenting with communing with the invisible forces that hurl us around like Ping-Pong balls. Eleanor lifts her head and looks miserably at Phoebe. “We’re a team,” Phoebe adds.
“Okay, so use intention to return to the chapel at Picpus,” I say. “We can just meet up in the main part and then I’ll show you the staircase down to the crypt.”
Phoebe looks at me until I can’t help it, I smile. In spite of everything, I admire the hell out of her.
“So, let’s go,” she says. “Intention away!”
I feel time and geography pulling at me with their disastrous potency. I am nothing compared to this force. I have tamed it somewhat so that I can travel where I wish, but I’m like a single seed carried by a tornado. Phoebe’s hand tightens on mine, but Eleanor’s is instantly gone.
Phoebe and I stand in the chapel, with tourists circulating around us and even through us. That old familiar smell of ancient architecture and the sweat that put the stones in place.
“What happened?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Did she pull away or was she not allowed to come?”
“We should go back and check.”
We do, even though I can hear the song from the cellars drifting up . . . the vials are calling, or someone is calling us to the vials . . . but we are a team, like Phoebe said.
So we return to the Versailles grounds. I do a quick
headcount: three living people, one ghost in distress.
Eleanor’s sitting on the grass apart from the family, cross-legged, sobbing. I’ve never seen her sit in so modern, so casual a position. Her hand props up her forehead as she cries.
“Eleanor?” asks Phoebe gently, crouching down next to her.
She jolts. She hadn’t realized we were there. I feel embarrassed for her. “I couldn’t go,” she says. “I tried, but I’m just not meant to go with you.”
She immediately straightens up and adjusts her sitting position to kneeling. I crouch down, too, so we’re all down there together.
“You tried as hard as you could? I didn’t know if you had gotten scared and let go,” says Phoebe.
“No!”
“Sorry.”
“We are not equal,” says Eleanor in a voice steady despite being threaded through with tears. “You two are the ones of the prophecy. I’m just along for the ride.”
“It’s all three of us,” I insist. “I don’t know how it works, but you’re part of it.”
“I don’t think so. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it. I’m a ghost you two encountered during your travels through the Arnaud Manor, but I could’ve been anyone. Any ghost.”
“Stop it!” shouts Phoebe, her hands up in the air. “Oh my God! Are you forgetting what you did to release the servants? That was magic and you were part of it.”
“Yes, I agree with you on that,” says Eleanor. “But that was my role, to deal with servants only.”
“So why weren’t you released?” Phoebe demands.
“I don’t know.”
“Because you’re part of this team!”
“A team member who doesn’t have the same power as the other two.”
“Maybe you have the most power of all,” Phoebe says. “Maybe that’s why we go on these trips—you’re too important to go.”
“Wow, good point,” I say. It honestly had never occurred to me. Maybe we were “fetching and carrying” for her.
“That can’t be the case,” she says.
“Why not?” Phoebe asks. “Listen, the luck of why we get born into certain bodies and not in others . . . it’s random and it’s strange and maybe even meaningless. Why was I born in California with plenty of clean water flowing out of my faucet, while some poor baby is born in Uganda and her mom has to walk a mile to bring home a bucket of water?”
“Don’t get her started,” I say.
Eleanor kneels, listening to us, her eyes downcast.
“I lucked out, that’s why. Although some might say I didn’t luck out, because, look, I died when I was sixteen and I didn’t get to do much with my life . . . but anyway, the fact that you were born into a household where you had to go into service, it doesn’t mean anything about who you are.”
“I agree,” I say.
“Under other circumstances, you might’ve been born into incredible wealth and never had to lift a finger—servants would’ve served you—but you would still be Eleanor.”
“Your positions on social status certainly don’t match what I was raised with,” says Eleanor, and I laugh as I pull her in for a hug.
“The world is changing,” says Phoebe. “We all deserve the same chances, but we don’t get them.”
Eleanor squirms out of my arms, but with a grateful smile up at me.
“Thank you for all that, Phoebe,” she says.
“No, don’t thank me; it’s not some nice thing I’m bestowing on you because I like you. I mean, I do like you but even if I didn’t it’s still the truth that we should all be on equal footing.”
“I’m ready to vote Phoebe in as prime minister,” I say. Phoebe rolls her eyes at me.
“So, Eleanor, can I ask one favor of you?” she asks.
“Anything.”
“Please, can this be the last time you talk about yourself that way?”
Eleanor reaches over to put a hand on Phoebe’s shoulder. It looks awkward. She’s not used to reaching out in this way. I can see that she, too, knows it’s kind of wooden. But she’s making an effort.
“I’m going to try,” she says simply.
“I think in another life I was a sewerman,” I offer up.
“Miles, you are hereby ordered to shut up for the rest of the night,” says Phoebe.
“Well, that’s a fine way to speak to someone of equal standing!”
“Are you going to show me those damn vials or what?”
“Yes, go,” says Eleanor. She pulls Phoebe in for a quick, atta-girl hug and then lets go.
In another second, we’re back in the chapel, surrounded by stone and oldness, smelling the musty reek of the centuries. I hear the hum of the vials and look to see if Phoebe notices it, too. I can’t tell.
“I like all the things you said to Eleanor,” I say.
“She’s cool.”
“There’s cool and then there’s cool.” I let my gaze rest right into her eyes, strong and meaningful.
“I do think you care for me a bit,” she says in a plummy British accent.
“A Brit after an American?” I scoff.
“Stranger things have happened to guys who abandon their friend with beheaded people.”
“Let’s be honest,” I say. “There was only one beheaded individual.”
“Miles?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m so glad I met you.”
I fold her into my arms. We hug like it’s completely normal to have people walking through you, calling out things to others, and unzipping their fanny packs for their camera. I’m getting better at ignoring the living. For me, right now, the only thing that exists is Phoebe.
Finally, it’s a kid that gets us to pull apart. He’s about four and he’s had it with tromping through the cathedrals of Europe. He emits a squall of such volume that his parents rush to him, through us, and where my hips meet Phoebe’s becomes the site of a mum crouching to pick up her kid.
Yeah, kind of a moment killer.
Phoebe walks away, her face shining, her eyes blurred and her lids low. I follow her.
“We’re wasting time,” she says huskily.
“I like doing that.”
“I do, too.”
But she’s right. The pull of the vials is strong now . . . that buzzing clatter of so many voices . . . is it voices?
“Do you hear it?” I ask.
She listens. “It’s coming from below us?”
“Yeah.”
I lead her to the small door built for the statures of medieval people, and we enter the stairwell. A second door blocks the staircase that runs downward, and we step through it.
I take her down the dank uneven steps to the crypt. It feels like we’re in an upside-down boat, the ceiling curved and vaulted above us, each of the side passageways marked with an archway of stone. If there were windows, this would be an airy and open space, but since we are encased in stone, it feels secretive and the place where nightmares transpire.
“It’s really loud down here,” she says. She means the vials, calling to us, threading a thin sound through the silent crypt.
She leads me right to the faint carving in the stone. She reaches out and her fingers trace the limits of the dragon’s chamber. “Poor thing,” she says. “But I can feel it.” She lifts her eyes to me in triumph. “The stone lets me touch it.”
The song grows louder, as if in response to what she said.
“It recognizes you,” I say.
A surge of excitement rides my veins. It’s happening. She presses different parts of the etching. I hold my breath.
She leans in closer. “See the markings on its forehead?” she asks.
“No, they’re so small I didn’t see them before,” I say. They look like runes or ancient writing.
She touches the markings, and they are the trigger inlaid by some medieval artisan, a clockmaker who understood gears and pressure. A door coyly opens at just a slant.
The door is the size of a book.
She pulls it and looks, then she moves her head to the side so I can look, too.
One vial rests inside, held in an elaborate wire device intended to hold far more. The rack looks like something fashioned for Versailles, intricate twirls of metal and designs like the dragon’s winding tail in the emblem. The enchanting hum exudes from it like a medieval choir sending notes to the top of a cathedral to encircle the bell in its tower. It’s irresistible. It’s nothing I’ve ever heard before.
The vial is surprisingly small, made of thick, handblown glass. It looks like a specialty perfume from the most haute parfumier of Paris.
It holds a dark viscous liquid.
I immediately feel the fear that someone will take it from us. Greed arises, instant and nauseating. This belongs to me, and no one shall take it. We’re alone in the crypt, which is locked to the public, but I turn my head and survey the shadows anyway.
“This is it,” Phoebe says in a hushed, awed tone.
The vial lets off a babble of buzzing . . . it knows we’re looking at it.
She reaches into the space and delicately fastens her fingers around the bottle, which reaches a fever pitch of humming. She struggles to dislodge it from the metal rack it’s housed in. The dampness of the crypt seems to have made rust cling to the glass. She uses both hands and the vial leaps out unbroken.
We look at it in wonder. It’s singing its luscious, siren song. Is it ancestors, calling out memories and ancient deeds captured in blood? Is the blood a repository of all the long-ago lives?
We stare at it. I can’t move. I don’t want that glass to break.
Phoebe’s thumb and index finger pinch the tiny cork that sits in the bottle’s opening.
“No,” I say.
But her fingers continue to ease the cork up, and the humming gets so loud I know we both can’t stand it. She rocks the cork up until it tumbles onto the stone floor. She lifts the vial to her nose and inhales. A look of supreme gratification comes over her face.
She holds it out to me and I inhale, too. The scent goes to my brain, flooding it with pure ecstatic sensation. I’m somewhere else for a little bit, some memory of skin and water and warmth.
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