As they flew, their host pointed out an enormous pile of white rock that he identified as Château Chantilly. Phoebe remembered seeing it in a James Bond film. When she excitedly said, “James Bond,” Mr. Brissac laughed and had an exchange with J.J. that had them both laughing.
J.J. translated what Mr. Brissac was saying, “The Petit Château was built in 1560 for Constable Anne de Montmorency. Now it’s an art museum.”
Phoebe didn’t understand what exactly there was about the monstrous place that was petite, but she decided to let it go. She asked for clarification on the second part of the sentence. “They let a woman be a constable? Is that what you were laughing about?”
“No, we were laughing because Anne, which can be either a man’s or a woman’s name in French, would be spinning in his grave to know that the name of a character from a fictional story was more famous than his own, and is now what we associate with his house rather than himself.”
Oh. Yet another bombastic French nobleman. Megalomania abounded in France. Phoebe refrained from commenting any further and focused on enjoying the grand panoramas of the most beautiful city on earth as they zoomed across it. A few minutes later, the helicopter swooped down to land on the immaculate lawn of a gorgeous château.
“Esclimont,” said Mr. Brissac to Phoebe. Apparently that was the name of the place. Brissac and J.J. exchanged a few brief sentences. J.J. said merci and non several times very politely and held up his hands to refuse something, but then he gave in to accept whatever the offer was and the men shook hands.
Phoebe was already beyond impressed with getting to ride in the flying squirrel and with the landing at a castle, but then a couple of uniformed bellmen ran out from the fairytale château carrying a set of portable stairs which they placed outside the chopper to aid Mr. B in dismounting.
He left them, crossed a patch of lawn and stepped up onto a wide terrace outside a row of tall French doors that ran the length of an entire wing of the house. Before he went inside, he turned and waved. J.J. and Phoebe waved back as the helicopter lifted off the ground.
“Wow,” Phoebe said, “I knew things like this happened to other people, but I never thought it would happen to me.”
“He likes to come here for lunch,” J.J. said. “The château is a luxury hotel now, with a Michelin two-star restaurant.”
“He takes a helicopter to lunch?”
“Well, from his perspective he’s merely going home to eat.”
Phoebe was agog. “Home?”
“Yes, he owns this place. What does it look like? Is it nice? I just assumed, what with the helicopter…. Why aren’t you answering?”
Phoebe was so shocked she couldn’t speak. She’d just ridden across Paris in a squirrel owned by a man who owned a castle. Maybe she’d fallen and hit her head and all this was a dream she was having while she was laying in a hospital in a coma on a respirator.
“I hope I didn’t make a mistake by accepting his offer,” J.J. said nervously.
“What offer?”
“I thought it would be a good way to save some money. He offered us lunch and dinner and a room for the night. I turned down the lunch because we have to work, but I accepted the dinner and room. That’s got to be worth something, I hope.”
“I’d say it’s worth a coupla thousand dollars,” said Phoebe, then described the palatial residence to him.
Chapter 8.
Phoebe hadn’t really thought ahead. How could she? Why bother? She tried to relax and go with the flow as the helicopter swooped toward the epicenter of the effete world. Ground zero of interior decoration. As soon as it landed she hopped out of the squirrel and then helped J.J. They ran a safe distance away and then waved enthusiastically as the pilot lifted off again.
Her commute from White Oak, Tennessee was now complete. Phoebe was standing in the most famous backyard in the world. They were in the spectacular gardens to the southwest of the Château of Versailles. Surprise!
Phoebe suspected it caused the Boss fewer problems if he could send people to GPS coordinates instead of having to reveal any specifics like, “I’d like you to fly west for 4,500 miles and go half way out across the Pacific Ocean to a tiny island and pick up a total stranger, then fly back east, and continue right over the top of your house and for an additional 4,200 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, and go to the most famous castle in the world aside from the one at Disneyland.”
* * *
This mission was conceived when the Boss got a call from the Chief Curator of the Château of Versailles. Renovations that had been planned for decades, but never undertaken on account of the exorbitant cost, had suddenly been funded by a Russian oligarch.
The Boss was given a warning by the Chief Curator, a friend of The School for Mysteries, that if anything special had been stored anywhere on the grounds, stored being a euphemism for hidden, it should be retrieved forthwith. There would be only a short time to locate and remove any such items before they might be accidentally destroyed, or found, and make their way into the wrong hands.
Phoebe knew The School for Mysteries was not interested in the objects for their material value, they were simply seeking to protect religious artifacts, things with positive spiritual mojo. Any writings that CR, a.k.a. Christian Rosenkreutz, might’ve left behind contained major mojo.
Of all the millions of people who’d streamed in and out of the great house, Versailles had long been famous, or infamous in certain circles, for this one particular guest. He’d visited the château many times over several decades under the alias of the Comte de Saint-Germain.
CR had come to Versailles to visit an extremely famous person—Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, chief mistress of Louis XV, also called Reinette, or the Little Queen. Madame P was a great historical figure for several reasons. She was one of the most famous art patrons of history and an influential person even after health concerns prevented her from being the king’s girlfriend. She remained his closest and dearest friend until the end of her life.
J.J. had a list from contemporaneous letters and memoirs of every place the Comte had been seen. Phoebe’s task was to scope out these places and see if she got any vibes. Most of the sightings had CR in private meetings with Madame P, so J.J. suggested they begin their quest in the rooms where she had lived.
He thought they should start in the first set of private apartments given to her by the king. The suite was in the attic of the main block of Versailles, just above the king’s bedroom and study. After they’d searched the attic they planned to move down to the ground floor rooms where she’d lived in after the relationship became platonic.
* * *
It was cold out in the vast gardens. Phoebe stopped and she and J.J. buttoned up the thigh length sheepskin coats, and donned lined leather gloves, cashmere scarves, and knitted caps. That helped.
They walked across the immense lawn and began the climb to the higher ground where the château loomed. They mounted the grand 100-step staircase near the Orangery. As they got closer, the size of the house became more apparent. Phoebe realized you could only understand what you were seeing from the mid-distance. You didn’t want to get too close, because then you couldn’t take in the entire width of the garden facade in one glance, but if you were too far away you lost the scale of the place and didn’t realize how big it actually was.
Phoebe scanned the neatly typed instructions from Arabella Devilin-Forrest. They were to go to the main reception kiosk and ask for the Chief Curator, Marc d'Orléans-Bourbon. Phoebe wondered if the town of New Orleans had been named for this guy’s family. She thought particularly of the intersection of Bourbon and Orleans streets and then realized that was probably stupid. She loved that city, though. It was one of her very favorite places. She wondered if the person they were about to meet would be as hospitable and charming as the residents of South Louisiana.
They waited in line and when it was her turn Phoebe asked for Mr. Orleans. The lady in the glass booth gave her
a disapproving look. J.J. could hear that Phoebe was getting no response, so he offered a long flowery apology in perfect French and pronounced the name correctly.
“Ahhh, oui!” the woman said and picked up a phone to summon him.
While they waited Phoebe scanned the paragraph in Arabella’s instructions explaining who the guy was. She read it aloud to J.J. mangling the pronunciation of nearly every word. “The guy’s full name is: Marc Foulques Thibaut Eudes Jean Marie d'Orléans-Bourbon. His Titles, Styles and Honours are: prince d'Orléans, prince d’Bourbon, duc d'Aumale, duc d’Touraine, duc d’Anjou, comte d'Eu, comte d’Paris, comte d’Chambord, Grand Master of the Order of the Holy Spirit, Grand Master of the Order of Saint Michael, and Grand Master of the Order of Saint Louis.”
Good Lord.
Phoebe wondered what someone with such grand and terrifying lineage would look like. In less than ten minutes she found out.
He was about thirty years old, a couple of inches taller than her, fit, trim, athletic, graceful, and elegant. He had a perfectly-trimmed black stubble to highlight his chiseled cheekbones and light blue eyes.
He was immaculately turned out in a dark blue suit, white shirt, and dark orange Hermes tie. Phoebe had learned to recognize Hermes silks on her whirlwind tour of rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré with Christophe six months earlier.
Mr. Orleans was gorgeous. And there was a lively energy and air of mischief about him. Even in exquisitely tailored modern day clothing he gave the impression of being a gentleman pirate. She could picture him wearing a sumptuous doublet and leather boots that came above the knee.
Phoebe was trying to articulate his look when she realized that what the guy looked like was, basically, a prince. He looked like someone who knew how to ride and use a sword. She tried not to drool. At a minimum, she was too old for him. She was also too poor and too …. Phoebe decided to stop her train of thought before it got any worse.
The prince held out a hand to her and introduced himself simply as Marc. How humble he was, how charming. And just as Phoebe had imagined, he smiled like a pirate. Phoebe’s worries about the mission suddenly vanished and she realized this job was going to be fun. This guy was definitely Mr. Laissez le Bon Temps Rouler—New Orleans incarnate.
The Prince led the way toward a private entrance to the château. “Try not to throw yourself on him,” J.J. murmured in Phoebe’s ear.
“Wha…?” she said, in surprise. How did he know?
“Oh please,” he whispered. “Your breathing is giving you away. And don’t bother trying to hold your breath now,” he hissed. “It’s too late.”
“Excuse me for being winded after that long climb,” she murmured.
He blew an intentionally audible puff of air in the French version of liar liar pants on fire.
* * *
Marc, the pirate price, gave them a VIP guided tour of the main part of the château as they passed through some of the most famous rooms in the world during the long walk to the Pompadour apartments in the attic.
“This is the world’s largest palace,” he said. “It has over 700,000 square feet of interior floor space, 2,300 rooms, 2,153 windows, and 67 staircases.”
It was certainly huge, but it didn’t seem fair to view grand palaces this way. It was like seeing a very old woman who’d been a famous beauty. You knew her current state wasn’t the way she’d always looked, but the best you could do was try to imagine her in her prime. Phoebe knew she was only seeing a stripped, faded, and desiccated husk of what this place had once been.
And some of the areas she was seeing, the behind the scenes places that needed restoration, were even worse. Touring those rooms was like seeing the body of an accident victim before it had been washed and prepared for viewing.
There was no life here, no King, no Little Queen. Madame Pompadour had been the greatest art patron of her age. Many experts believed she was the greatest art patron of any age. Now, there was almost nothing left of her renowned wit, charm, beauty, or brilliant good taste.
* * *
Phoebe held her silly American questions as long as she could stand it, which was about fifteen minutes. “Do you mind explaining all your names and titles to me? We don’t have any of that in the U.S.”
“You are fortunate,” he said. “It is nothing. It means nothing.”
“No really, I’m interested. I never met a prince before.”
“I am not a prince. Not a real one anyway. I am simply the oldest living son in a long line of social climbers.”
Phoebe laughed. He was such a doll.
She pulled out her crib sheet from Arabella and said, “It says here you’re the prince of two places, Bourbon and Orleans.”
He nodded. “Technically, in my genetic heritage I carry the bloodline of two great families who quarreled over France. I am considered a prince du sang,” he said.
Phoebe was beginning to understand a little bit of French, it was all in the cadence and the vowel sounds, like understanding Appalachian speech. She was also a nurse and if there was one thing nurses were familiar with it was sang. That meant blood.
She was pretty sure in the old days a prince du sang had to be real careful or he got turned into an ex-prince by being ex-sanguinated. By sword, or more recently by guillotine. The people of France had made quite the bold statement in dealing with their one-percenters when the national wage gap got out of hand. The Revolution decimated the nobility.
Because her new job involved working with a bunch of French people, Phoebe had been reading up on the famous families and their big houses. She thought that Chantilly, the place they’d flown over, had been owned by the Most Serene House of Condé.
Being serene sounded like wishful thinking on their part, just like it did for the royal family of Monaco. She thought the Condé line might’ve been started by a Protestant. Good luck with finding any serenity in France as a Protestant back in the old days.
She had trouble remembering the difference in a Condé and a Conti. She thought both families were big deals, but she didn’t remember why. Unfortunately, life for both families had been hard—really, really hard. She was pretty sure both hereditary lines were now considered extinguished, to use the polite euphemism.
She tried to think of a gentle way to ask Marc about this and was stuttering out a question. He read her expression and said, “Let’s just say if things had gone differently, if there had been no Revolution, this would’ve been my room.”
They were in the King’s formal bedroom. Phoebe looked around at the splendor. How strange to have so many people hanging around in your bedroom that you needed a gilded wooden fence around your mattress to keep rowdy visitors from jumping in bed with you. It must’ve been a rough life in some ways.
The prince saw how Phoebe was looking at him.
“Believe me,” Marc said, looking around at the huge chamber, “I’m content with dusting and inventorying the old pile. Honestly. I wouldn’t want any more responsibility than that.” He fluttered his hands, “It’s too much.”
Phoebe could tell he meant it.
Chapter 9.
They continued upwards toward the attic and Marc gave information on the rooms and objects they saw along the way. He seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the house. Of course he would, he was the Chief Curator. She looked at him standing near a portrait of a foxhunt.
Noblemen, in so far as Phoebe knew, seemed to spend inordinate amounts of time hunting. Time spent around hunting dogs might be the only thing she had in common with a French prince. Or any other kind of prince.
Phoebe had grown up around hunting dogs. Her father loved Coonhounds. Over the years they’d owned Blueticks, Redbones, Treeing Walker, Black and Tan, and various other mixes. Friends and neighbors raised Bloodhounds, Plotts, and English or French Foxhounds. Hounds were a noisy bunch, but not mean or dangerous.
There was a lot of teamwork required to work with hounds effectively. Both the dog and the handler had to be well-trained. They had t
o become familiar with each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Sort of like she and J.J. were doing.
There were different kinds of hounds, two of the biggest distinctions being sight hounds versus scent hounds. Scent hounds were slower and easier to deal with because they weren’t as prone to rocketing off after something they’d caught a glimpse of, and chasing it over the horizon, never to be seen again.
The world of scent hounds was filled with its own unique jargon, too. For example, there was a term for dogs with exceptional scenting abilities. A hound that could sniff out the faintest of odors was said to have a cold nose. A typical hunting dog had a hot nose, which meant it could detect the fresh smells that came from recently used paths. But an extremely good dog could locate even an old trail and follow it.
The phrase for this rare talent of finding and following a trail that hadn’t been used recently was striking a cold trail. Phoebe had her own version of this talent. This was especially surprising since never in her wildest dreams had she ever imagined she would be of any use in tracking anything. She couldn’t even manage to follow the progress of a t-shirt coming from Lands End with a UPS tracking number and a live link.
But that’s precisely what she was being asked to do now—to strike a cold trail. She’d only recently learned she had peculiar talent for being a cold nose tracker. Like a bloodhound, she was particularly gifted at tracking men.
She had a bizarre genius for tracking one man in particular, CR, a mysterious personage who’d last been seen over 250 years ago. An extremely narrow and intense affinity for CR, a guy she’d never even heard of before, combined with her romantic obsession with the long dead handsome genius Nikola Tesla, helped explain why Phoebe was an old maid. But since this eccentric skill was the only one she had, she didn’t want to drop the ball on her task of finding whatever the guy might’ve left in a secret stash somewhere.
What were the odds anyone else would hire her for something like that? Okay, so she was supposed to locate and follow spiritual contrails laid down in the mid-1700s by a man whose exalted nature was mired in a hopeless muddle of myth, legend, misunderstanding, and speculation of the dumbest kind. There were worse jobs.
Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 03 - The School for Psychics Page 5
