Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 03 - The School for Psychics

by Carolyn Jourdan

  And even this wacky situation made a kind of sense. The Boss had done exactly what any hunter would do with his dog. He transported her to the last known location of the great man and unleashed her, metaphorically speaking, hoping she’d be able to strike a cold trail from there.

  She looked at J.J. What a team they made—a human hound and a blind man who could see through walls. If Phoebe could manage to locate anything, J.J. would be able to pinpoint any secret places inside walls or underneath floors, even caches that had been plastered or bricked over. J.J. also carried a huge reference file of important objects in his expansive memory. That would help, too.

  She hoped it would be enough. She didn’t want to let the Boss down.

  * * *

  Eventually they made it up to the attic on the third floor. The windows in this part of the palace were round, like portholes about three feet in diameter. They gave a view down onto the Marble Courtyard, the entrance to the oldest part of Louis XIII’s relatively modest hunting lodge before it was upgraded and added onto by Louis XIV, XV, and XVI and became the most fabulous dwelling on the planet.

  They stood in Madame P’s first apartment. “Where should we start?” Phoebe whispered. “Here?”

  “This room is as good as any,” J.J. said, smiling, commiserating with her. They spoke in vague terms so as not to alert the Prince to their particular skills. They figured he knew something was up, since he knew Le Seigneur and had been the one to notify him of the impending renovations, but there was no reason to give him any details.

  They slowly made their way through the interconnecting attic rooms that made up the original apartment. J.J. stopped at one point and touched a door built into the paneling.

  “That is the lift,” Marc said. “It was called a flying chair. It is a private chairlift from the King’s apartment, which is directly beneath us on the floor below. It is a bit like a dumbwaiter. It was built so they could visit each other in privacy without needing to take the public stairs. It is thought to be the first elevator in the world.”

  “Does it still work?” J.J. asked.

  “I believe so, but I do not know when it was last used. It would not be safe to try to ride it.”

  J.J. felt along the panel until it sprang open. There was a tiny room with a padded bench. Phoebe described the interior to him. A rope ran down through the center of the car from a circular opening in the ceiling to a matching opening in the floor.

  “It is fitted with counterweights and pulleys so a lady could easily travel without needing much physical strength,” Marc added.

  J.J. turned toward Phoebe and asked, “Anything?”

  She stood in the doorway and tried to sense any vibes, but there were none of the sort she was looking for. “No, nothing,” she said.

  J.J. closed the panel gently. “May we visit the apartments she occupied when she left here, the ones on the ground floor?”

  “Of course,” Marc said. “Unfortunately, they have been extensively remodeled, to the point that I am afraid there is nothing of left of her there.”

  Marc took them down two flights of stairs to the ground floor and to the apartments Madame Pompadour occupied after a new mistress was moved into the attic apartments.

  There was no residue of anything in any of the rooms aside from sadness. Jean Poisson had died here of tuberculosis at the age of forty-two. Her body had been removed from the palace immediately, according to custom. The King was not allowed to reside in the same place as a dead body. Records from the time indicated that it was raining on the day of her death and that the King cried as he watched her body being taken away to the sprawling Capuchin Convent in Place Vendome for interment, as she had requested in her will.

  Marc was right. Neither Phoebe nor J.J. could detect anything of interest.

  “What now?” J.J. asked Phoebe.

  * * *

  “I’d like to tour the grounds,” said Phoebe.

  “They are quite extensive,” warned Marc. “There are more than 200 acres of gardens and the entire estate encompasses over 2,000 acres.”

  “Oh!” Phoebe said. “Well then, we’ll leave you to your work.” They thanked Marc, he gallantly helped Phoebe with her coat, they said their goodbyes, and left the Prince standing just outside the palace that employed him.

  * * *

  J.J. and Phoebe headed northwest. The helicopter had dropped them off on the south side of the grand axis that bisected the enormous grounds and they’d walked along it on the way to the palace. Now they decided to check out the opposite side.

  Phoebe kept taking looks back over her shoulder as they got farther and farther away from the château. It really was something. It was a singular experience. The main building was much larger than she’d ever imagined and far more majestic.

  It made her feel small, not just in her body, but in every way. She realized that even in her wildest dreams, she could never have imagined it. It was too much in every way. Just seeing the garden facade made you want to kneel, or cower.

  “What’s wrong?” J.J. asked, softly. “Is someone following us?”

  “No, I’m just looking at the house. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen or even dreamed of. It exists in its own separate universe. It’s amazing and terrifying at the same time.”

  “It was meant to be,” he said.

  They continued down a long pea gravel walkway between tall clipped hedges and a row of marble statues and urns set on pedestals. “I’m just a hick and in a place like this my rube-ness highlighted even more,” Phoebe said, laughing.

  “Not at all,” J.J. said. “Being here with you like this helps me understand something Le Seigneur told me years ago. My family is French, obviously. He said that really good psychics could see if a person had had a past incarnation as a Frenchman. He said it was a unique trait of the French—that they are the only ethnic group on earth for whom this is the case. Their souls retain a tincture of Frenchness even in subsequent lives. And this tincture is visible to people who can clearly discern auras.”

  “Frenchness?” Phoebe asked.

  “I think it’s what you’re feeling from the château. It’s that quality of pride that the French believe is deserved, which has been earned by the careful refinement of aesthetic judgment over many generations, but it is also what is so irksome to non-French people. It’s what reactive people perceive as arrogance and vanity. They feel insulted by it. They aren’t sensitive to the nuance. They don’t recognize the cultural basis of the aesthete.”

  “That’s interesting,” said Phoebe. “A place like this creates cognitive dissonance. It’s a massive display of size and power and yet at the same time it’s the ultimate in delicate refinement. It’s transgender or androgyny in architecture.”

  “A cross-dressing castle?” J.J. suggested.

  “Exactement,” said Phoebe.

  Chapter 10.

  “How far should we go?” Phoebe asked. “The yard here goes on for a loooong way.”

  “It’s your call,” said J.J. “What works best for you?”

  “I guess we should stay on this main pathway down the long axis of the grounds and see if I can pick up anything. If not, then try a perpendicular axis. The paths aren’t laid out on true compass points. It’s on a grid, but the layout is rotated about forty-five degrees so the long axis runs from the château at the southeast through the fancy part of the gardens, past huge expanses of lawns, and then to the more forested and less maintained areas at the northwest end. We may have to do some backtracking, too. A huge stretch of the grounds is bisected by a long skinny lake, which makes it hard to cross from one side of the gardens to the other.”

  “Lead on,” he said. “I’m content to walk as long as you’d like.”

  “I don’t really know what I’m doing,” Phoebe confessed.

  “That’s a good sign in this kind of work,” J.J. said. “You have to feel your way as you go with no preconceptions. It’s been my experience that the people who know things in advan
ce are almost always wrong.”

  They walked arm-in-arm down the packed stone pathway. Thank goodness they were dressed warmly. The place was beautiful, but very cold. There were people in sight in every direction, but not many of them.

  They didn’t speak as they walked along. Phoebe tried to blank her mind, let it wander, not fastening on any particular topic. They walked a long way before she got any signal at all. When she felt it, she stopped so suddenly she actually skidded slightly on the gravel. J. J. was too sensitive to her movements to slam into her, though. He stopped and stood next to her quietly.

  She looked around. They were at an intersection of several walkways. Trails went out in four different directions. And there was even a fifth choice—a small path went off into the woods at a forty-five degree angle, headed almost due north.

  She didn’t move. She let herself feel all the directions. Something was pinging against her skin from the north. She shook herself slightly to loosen any tension, the way the Boss had taught her. Then she waited. Yes, something was coming toward her from the north. She didn’t speak for fear of losing the delicate connection.

  The trail leading through the woods was good, but not quite right. She started out on it, but soon veered off to the left, taking them through the leaf-strewn forest. The signal got stronger when she did that. She lifted her head and homed in on the direction. She began to sense something speaking to her. She wanted to speed up, but didn’t dare because the ground was uneven and bare branches snatched at them from all sides. Moving quickly would be difficult for J.J.

  “Come to me,” someone said. She heard it as plainly as if it had been spoken aloud. She knew it hadn’t been, but it certainly got her attention. She’d rarely had a full-blown auditory communication like that. It was what some people might call an auditory hallucination and she was wary whenever it happened. It was essential to stay grounded in the real world.

  Then she heard it again, loud and clear, a man’s voice saying, “Come to me.”

  Holy moly, it was all she could do not to break into a run, but she restrained herself. She led J.J. through the forest. They topped a rise and then she saw it—a tiny white masonry pavilion sitting in the middle of a small formal garden. She gasped. Whatever it was, whoever he was, he was in there.

  She stood looking at the building from fifty yards away, shivering and jerking slightly. She realized she couldn’t make herself go any closer. She felt as if she was being held in place. Uh oh. She knew from experience that when she lost muscle control, get ready, she was about to be shown something—a little internal movie would start soon.

  She stood rooted to the spot, waiting for it, then she began to have a vision of activity occurring inside the pavilion. She was seeing the events from a different angle than from where she was actually standing.

  It was of a man with white hair tied back with a ribbon into a short ponytail. It might’ve been powdered hair, or maybe a wig. He was dressed in a jacket and knee britches in a medium shade of blue silk. He flopped down on a long chair and began to untie his white cravat. A woman in an elaborate silk gown and taller white wig walked toward him. She bent down toward the man.

  Then the scene faded.

  “Found it,” she whispered. “Don’t know what it is, but it’s here—or was here at one time. And I’ve seen some people. I don’t recognize them, but at least I know what they look like.”

  “Tell me.”

  “There’s a small but exquisite domed garden pavilion in front of us. Inside it is … was … a man with powdered hair or a wig, dressed in blue knee britches, and a lady with powdered hair and a fancy gown. I can feel what the man was feeling, but nothing in relation to what the woman was experiencing.

  “The man was here to relax in a way that was not possible anywhere else and his only wish was to sit in this building with her and be alone for a while. That’s what this place was built for. He loved her. She was his friend.”

  Phoebe wanted to cry at the warmth of feeling between the man and woman. She wished she’d ever had such a close and deep friendship with a man. It was what she’d been looking for all her life.

  “How old are they?”

  “The white hair makes it hard to say. Not old. Neither of them is fifty yet. He’s somewhere in his late thirties or early forties, I guess. She’s younger, her early thirties maybe. But that’s just a guess.”

  “Any sense of who they are?”

  “Yes, but I don’t trust it. The color of blue he’s wearing makes me think the man might be Louis XV. He’s exhausted and desperate for some peace and quiet, like someone who’s shy and has to submit himself to crowds frequently. But whenever I use my brain to say who it is, I’m just guessing.

  “All I know for sure is that this is a really important man, there is a great deal of warmth and love radiating from him, and the lady is very attentive to him and trying to help him any way she can. Maybe it’s CR and Madame P.”

  “Describe the furniture,” J.J. said.

  “I only saw one small area. The man sat down and put his feet up.”

  “Was the chair made in one piece or two? Was it a long chair, a chaise longue, or did it have a separate foot stool, a duchesse brisée?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Shall we go in?” he asked. He had to urge her to move. He could tell she was reluctant to go any closer.

  Phoebe sighed and moved at his instigation. The emotion around the place was overwhelming. Great love and tragic loss. The couple, whoever they were, weren’t permitted to have as much time together as they might’ve. Something sad had come between them.

  “Great sadness here, grief,” Phoebe said. “It’s coming from him. It’s hard to bear it.”

  “Is it all coming from what’s in front of you? Or is some of it coming from behind and to our left?”

  Phoebe looked around her and realized for the first time that they were close to a fancy house. She’d been so homed in on the signal from CR, she hadn’t been aware of anything else.

  She turned to face the grand building, but she got almost nothing from it.

  “Maybe a little, but not much time spent in there. That’s a woman’s house,” she said, turning back toward the pavilion. “But something very important happened in this little place. This is where he was himself. The guy I’m supposed to find was here for sure. I’m certain.”

  “Take me to it,” he said.

  Phoebe walked J.J. down one of the narrow gravel paths that led to the tiny jewel box of a building. Then she led him up three wide, shallow stairs to a set of French doors. “The place is shaped like a stubby cross that radiates out from a large central room.” She shaded her eyes and leaned forward to peer though the glass.

  “The main room is round, or octagonal really, with a domed ceiling. There are four small rooms off this large central room. They’re evenly spaced to jut out toward the east, west, north, and south. It’s the most perfectly proportioned building I’ve ever seen.”

  “Try the door.”

  Phoebe did. It was locked.

  “There are four sets of tall entrance doors,” she explained. “French doors, that give access to the interior. They’re equally spaced around the central room. And each of the four small rooms off the central area has three sets of long French windows.” She closed her eyes and counted to herself. “That’s sixteen sets of long windows if you count the exterior doors. It’s stunning. We’re at what I assume is the main entrance since it faces the garden and the path and the other house.”

  “There’s something small and made of metal to your right about two and a half feet off the ground,” said J.J. “What is it?”

  Two large planters sat beside the doors, one on either side, each containing an ornamental tree. Phoebe went to the one on the right and felt around in the dirt behind the trunk of the tree. There was small box jammed into the loose soil. She pulled it out and opened it. Inside it was a key. She laughed and told J.J. what she’d found.

 
“It’s the same the world over,” J.J. said. Then he quoted from Shakespeare’s Henry V, “What have kings that commons have not, too, save ceremony?”

  She used the antique key to unlock the door and they went inside, closing the door behind them. It was a lot warmer once they were out of the wind. She described the building to J.J. “There’s an elaborate marble floor with different colors of stone radiating in a pointy pattern almost like the face of a compass. I think this might be the floor in the book the Boss showed me, but I’m not sure.

  “The walls and ceiling are painted white and have a lot of gilded carving. There’s a great deal of decorative trim. It’s all gold leaf or painted gold.” Phoebe tilted her head, there was something wrong about the way the place looked.

  “It’s strange, but I know this room used to be green. It was a garden room, for eating lunch and hiding out in peace. I think it must’ve been redecorated by Marie Antoinette. It has a Louis XVI feel to it now. It’s fabulous, but I think they might’ve overshot the mark a little with the white and gold. It’s a bit too formal, a sort of rigid inhuman perfection. It’s not a place you could chillax in any more.”

  J.J. made a slow circuit of the main room inspecting the walls.

  “Can you imagine becoming king of France at the age of five like Louis XV did?” he said. “He was the great grandson of Louis XIV. All of the intermediate heirs had predeceased the great king. They say Louis XV loved cats and, as a little boy, he carried his cat with him into the highest-level government meetings. They had to make his cat a Cabinet Minister because only Ministers were allowed in the meetings.”

  They both smiled at the brief insight into the vulnerable humanity of a little boy who would never know a normal life.

  “There’s no furniture in here at all,” said Phoebe. “The whole place is empty, but the walls and floor and ceiling are so highly decorated, you hardly notice it.” They walked into each of the side rooms in turn. “There’s a fireplace with a mirror over the mantle on the far wall of this room, so what appears on the outside to be long windows are fake somehow.”