The Secret of the Chateau

by Kathleen McGurl

  ‘Claudette, if I picked him up, would it hurt him, do you think?’

  The servant, who was crying openly too, shook her head. ‘No, Madame. I do not think it would hurt. I think he would like to feel his maman’s arms about him, in his … final hours.’ She whispered the last words, as though scared that saying them would make it all true.

  Catherine didn’t respond. Instead she scooped up her son, tucking a shawl around him, and sat in an armchair cradling him, the child’s head against her heart. She marvelled at his beautiful, even features, the delicate curve of his cheek, the exquisite eyelashes against his milky-white skin. He was perfect. Too perfect for this world. His breathing was laboured now, and the gaps between each breath were growing. Claudette knelt at her feet, and stroked Louis’s face. She’d loved the child as though he were her own, Catherine realised. Claudette may only be a servant, but she had been a good nursemaid and Catherine had trusted her with that most precious of things – her child’s well-being. She forced herself to smile at the other woman.

  ‘It won’t be long now. I – I must thank you. For everything you did for him.’

  ‘It was my job, Madame. And I – I love him, truly. So much.’ Claudette’s voice broke on the last words. Despite herself, despite the gulf between their stations in life, Catherine’s heart went out to her and she adjusted Louis’s position on her lap so she could reach out and place her hand on the other woman’s shoulder. Claudette twisted and leaned slightly, so that her face rested against Catherine’s forearm, and there they sat, keeping vigil over the last minutes of little Louis’s life.

  At last, with a little gurgle, Louis took his last breath and then all was still and silent, save for the sound of birdsong outside. Catherine didn’t move. Let her have these last few moments holding her son, while he was still warm. She had not held him enough while he lived, she realised. She had spent no more than an hour a day with him, leaving him to Claudette’s care the rest of the time. How she wished she could go back and change all that! If only she’d realised how precious and fragile his life was, she would have spent every waking minute with her child. She could have been the one to feed him, bathe him, dress him, play with him. Claudette had done a fine job, but she, Catherine, had been Louis’s mother, and she should have done more for him.

  She pulled the body of her baby close, and buried her face in the shawl that he no longer needed for warmth. And at last she gave in to her grief, sobbing uncontrollably, only vaguely aware of Claudette getting to her feet and leaving the room, no doubt to inform Pierre of his son’s death.

  Catherine sat with the body of her darling Louis for several hours, unable to bear the idea of leaving him, of covering his face with a shawl, of giving him up to the undertaker to put him in a box. How could this have happened, to her son, her only child, for whom she had waited so long? It was Pierre’s fault. He was old, less virile, less able to give her a child. And the child he’d finally managed to plant in her had been sickly and was now lying dead in her arms. Pierre had come in briefly, looking grey and older than ever, and had touched his son’s forehead and then her shoulder, before leaving her alone again.

  She was roused from her mourning only by Claudette rushing in. ‘Madame, I am sorry to disturb, but please come …’

  ‘What? What can be so important?’

  ‘It is Monsieur Aubert – he has been taken ill. Oh, Madame, so soon after losing little Louis … The physician has been called for, so has the priest … again …’

  Catherine stared at her, barely taking in what she was saying. Claudette rushed forward, taking the body of the child from her, gently, cooing at him as though he were still alive. ‘Go, Madame, to his chamber. He needs you.’

  As if in a trance she left the room, and then hurried along the corridor to his room. There, Pierre was lying on the bed, half undressed, his face greyer than ever. The physician was standing over him, and the priest was waiting in attendance.

  ‘Madame, I had not yet left after attending your son. When Monsieur Aubert was taken ill I thought I had best stay … I have not said the last rites yet. The physician says there is hope. Do you want—’

  ‘No. Not yet. What is happening?’

  ‘It is his heart,’ the physician said. ‘I believe he will live, if he rests. The shock of losing your son has brought on a minor heart attack, but with care he will make a full recovery. You will need to nurse him. I have left instructions with your servant.’ He packed some items in his bag and left.

  Père Debroux stayed a while longer, offering prayer and comfort, but Catherine felt too numbed by the events of the day to be able to respond. It was Claudette who took charge. Catherine was vaguely aware of her bustling in and out, speaking in hushed tones to the priest, making arrangements, checking on Pierre, holding a glass of water for him to sip and arranging his pillows, fetching refreshments for Catherine. Thank God for Claudette, Catherine thought. It felt like her first rational thought since Louis had died. She caught hold of Claudette’s arm as she passed by.

  ‘Thank you.’ Her voice emerged as a whisper, but she knew her eyes showed the intensity of her gratitude.

  ‘It is my duty, Madame.’ Claudette bowed her head, and then unexpectedly put a hand on Catherine’s shoulder, much as Catherine had done when she was cradling Louis’s body. The gesture lent Catherine strength. She rallied herself and took over at Pierre’s side.

  The days wore on. Pierre improved enough to be able to attend Louis’s funeral service. The tiny coffin was placed in the Aubert family tomb in the cemetery. But Pierre was weakened from his heart attack and could do little more than walk around the château, take naps in the drawing room, and haul himself up the stairs at the end of each day. Catherine did everything for him.

  ‘It seems so unfair,’ she confided in Claudette. ‘To lose my child, and then be denied the chance to grieve him properly because I must nurse my husband.’

  ‘Monsieur Aubert is regaining his strength,’ Claudette said. ‘Soon he will not need much care. You miss Louis so much, don’t you?’

  Catherine’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I do. I think you do, too.’

  Claudette nodded, biting her lip.

  The only tiny good thing to have come out of all this, Catherine thought, was that she now felt she had a friend. Claudette had worked for her for years, but now their relationship had changed. It was no longer one of mistress and servant, but subtly shifting to one in which they were more equal. Perhaps this was the way of things now – the new, post-revolution way.

  Chapter 15

  Lu

  On the morning of Tom’s departure, I followed him up to the tower room, peering at the walls around the top of the spiral staircase.

  ‘There must have been some continuation of this staircase, up to the space above,’ I said, but I couldn’t see any evidence of it. The stairs were built into the thick wall of the tower and stopped at the door to the room. There was no indication at all that they’d ever gone further up, or that they’d been walled up.

  ‘It’s weird, isn’t it?’ Tom said, stuffing his clothes into his rucksack. ‘Oh, and Mum, be careful in here. Under the rug the floorboards seem a bit loose – just here, it seems to give a little when you walk on it.’

  ‘Thanks. We’re unlikely to use this room much, to be honest.’ Although I was planning to come up and have a good look at the ceiling. Perhaps there’d once been a hatch to the floor above. If I brought up a stool to stand on, I’d be able to inspect the ceiling closely for clues.

  Tom went over to the window, opened it and leaned out, twisting round to try to see above. ‘I’ve tried this already, Mum. Can’t see the higher window from here as it’s too far around the curve of the wall. Hope you’ll be able to solve the mystery somehow. I need to know what’s up there!’

  I laughed. ‘Probably nothing other than dead spiders. Just attic space as Steve said. But yes, I’ll do my best to find out.’

  I drove Tom to Nice airport later and decided
to call in at the museum that the mayor had mentioned, on my way back. Might as well get started on the research straight away, rather than sitting around moping now that Tom had left. It was a smallish regional museum, that covered everything about the local area from its geology and stone age inhabitants, the Romans, the Revolution, and the nineteenth and twentieth-century artists who’d made their homes here. I made a whistle-stop tour of all of it, but focused my attention mostly on the eighteenth century and later displays.

  The museum’s displays were all in French, but with a bit of effort I could translate enough to get the gist of each information board. In one corner was the most interesting part (for me) – a series of paintings of local landscapes, from the 1700s. A couple showed mountain ranges that were familiar – the hills above the Verais valley. One showed the village of Saint-Michel-sur-Verais from an elevated viewpoint somewhere up a mountainside. I enjoyed picking out the buildings I knew that still existed – the church, the mairie, a line of cottages on the road up the valley.

  But the best was a painting of Château d’Aubert, dated 1770, with a note saying it had been commissioned by Victor Aubert. Maybe it had even hung in the château at one time? It showed the full château – with its now-burned-down eighteenth-century additions as well as the older parts that we lived in all still intact. It had been very grand in those days! I took a photo on my phone of the painting to show the others. There was the tower, the front door looking much the same as it did now, a line of lavender bushes flanking the entrance.

  ‘Imagine living there,’ I whispered to myself. ‘Oh, actually I do!’ I still needed to pinch myself on occasion to realise it was all true, we really had moved to the south of France, we really were living in an ancient château.

  And then I noticed something odd. In the painting, the tower had a different number of windows. There were the windows that now corresponded to our kitchen and first- and second-floor bedrooms, and there was the little window of the tower room that Tom had slept in. But that was all. There was no window above the tower room – the mysterious window Tom had pointed out, that we still did not know how to reach. That one was not depicted in the painting.

  Had the artist left it out for a reason – perhaps he’d thought the tower looked better balanced without that window? Yet every other detail was, as far as I could tell, completely accurate. So the window must have been added at some point after 1770. It seemed odd – I would have thought it more likely that a window would be bricked up than put in, especially one in an unreachable attic, as I supposed this must be. It was a mystery. I wondered if we’d need to pull down the ceiling in the tower room, perhaps, to discover what was above it. Seemed a bit destructive though, and it wasn’t as though we needed the extra space.

  My next port of call in my investigations, a day or two later, was to call at the small library in the village and ask to see their archives, as Madame la Maire had suggested. The librarian was delighted to help, and pulled out maps of the area and a few legal documents about the château. I had my phone with the Google Translate app at the ready to help me understand what was written. Most of the documents related to purchase and sale of land, sale of produce from the château’s land, etc, and were not very informative. But in among the maps was one from 1795 that I found fascinating.

  It showed the château clearly, and marked the burned parts and the still-standing parts. It seemed the burned-out sections had not been demolished until some later date, but clearly the fire had occurred between 1770 when the painting was completed and 1795 when this map was drawn. Possibly during the French Revolution? I could trace the paths from the château to the village – the lower one beside the river, the mid-level one I’d walked many times and a higher one that contoured around the hillside before dropping down in a series of zig-zags into the village. I knew of the existence of this, but it was so overgrown I had not yet tried to walk it. A job for the future, I decided, was to rope the others into helping me clear the path and bring it back into use.

  But this map showed something else. Not far from the château, the path was shown as crossing a small stream that ran down the mountainside into the river at the valley bottom. A small bridge was marked, and then just beyond, a few buildings, labelled la ferme miniature. The miniature farm. Intriguing! I recalled a visit to Versailles a few years back, where we had also toured the Petit Trianon palace and its nearby hamlet, that Marie Antoinette had built so she could ‘play’ at being a shepherdess. Could this miniature farm be something similar? It seemed unlikely. Well, there was something else I needed to explore – as soon as we had the path clear enough to walk, I wanted to search for any remains of these buildings and see if I could work out what they really were. This seemed to be one of those projects – the more I looked into things, the more mysteries there were to resolve.

  The day after my visit to the library I decided to start trying to clear the path towards the spot where the miniature farm had been marked on that old map. I’d had no luck persuading anyone else to help, though Phil had said he might help. I went to find him in the garden, to see if he’d come, and found him having a goat-milking lesson from Clarabel’s previous owner, Monsieur Giron, watched over by the rest of the crew.

  Phil was sitting at the goat’s side, while Monsieur Giron held her harness tightly. As I watched, Clarabel twisted out of Phil’s grip and turned to glare at him.

  ‘Sorry, old girl,’ he said, and offered her a handful of potato peelings from a bucket at his side.

  ‘Leetle more doucement,’ said Monsieur Giron.

  ‘Yes, oui, bien sûr,’ Phil replied, looking a little sheepish, if you can look sheepish when dealing with a goat. He had another go, and this time Clarabel stood still, munching her peelings, as a jet of milk splashed into the bucket beneath her.

  ‘Vairy good, you ’ave it now. Keep going, I not need come again.’ Monsieur Giron stood up and scratched the goat’s head. ‘Au revoir, ma chèrie. Be ’appy.’

  ‘Thanks so much,’ Phil said, shaking the man’s hand. He looked nervous at the prospect of being in sole charge of Clarabel now, but also pleased to have had the praise. He walked Monsieur Giron to the door and then returned, to find Clarabel with her nose in the bucket of peelings. ‘Hey, those were supposed to be your dinner!’

  ‘Aw, leave her, she must be hungry,’ Gray said.

  ‘She’s always hungry.’ Phil stroked her, lovingly.

  I refused to be jealous of a goat, but it was obvious Phil was not going to be able to help me clear the path today so I set off alone, armed with gardening gloves and a pair of secateurs in my back pocket, hoping I’d be able to fight my way through far enough.

  In places it wasn’t too bad. The path had clearly been in use in the not too distant past. Maybe when the château was an auberge the owners might have kept the path clear to provide their guests with a selection of easy local walks. I’d always tended to head the other way, further up the valley away from the village. There were other ruins in that direction – what looked like small farm-worker’s cottages.

  I was able to cut back brambles and break off a few small branches of saplings growing near the path, and with a bit of effort I managed to trace the path a few hundred metres. Not quite as far as I wanted to – I had not reached the stream or bridge which were before the little farm. But it was a good start.

  I returned from my exertions to find Madame la Maire in our sitting room, sipping tea. Gray was sitting opposite her, and the others were also in the room.

  ‘Hey! How did you get on?’ Phil said, as I entered and leaned over him to kiss him.

  ‘Pretty good, thanks. It’s not as bad as I thought it might be. Hi,’ I said to the maire, as she rose to air-kiss me on both sides as usual. I felt I’d never get used to this, but at least I managed to remember to go to the left first to avoid a nose-bump.

  ‘Hello, Madame Marlow. You like to walk, yes?’

  ‘Please, call me Lu.’ She sat down again, and I sat beside her. ‘I d
o love walking, yes. And it is such a beautiful area. I’ve been clearing the old path that leads along the hillside to the village today.’

  She smiled. ‘Ah, yes, no one has gone that way for years, since the auberge closed.’

  ‘We’re hoping to bring it back into use. Usually I go the other way, up the valley and then up to the top of the mountain. Fantastic view from there. Have you been up it?’

  Madame la Maire grimaced slightly. ‘I climbed it once. Only once. So high! I do not like to walk up hills.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Gray, ‘but you can’t keep our Lu away from them. I prefer cycling.’

  ‘Ah yes, on a bicycle. I like that, as long as the roads are flat.’ The maire smiled, and Gray grinned at her.

  ‘Nothing nicer than a pootle along flat country lanes, with a picnic in your bicycle basket, is there?’ he said. And unless I was seeing things, I do believe he winked at her. Gray, winking at the maire? Was it acceptable to wink at a mayor in France? Manda had clocked it too, and raised her eyebrows at me. I had an insane urge to giggle.

  ‘Lu wants to get a dog,’ Steve said. ‘To accompany her on her walks. You can’t take a dog on a bike ride.’

  ‘Ah you can, though,’ Gray said. ‘Either take a small one in a basket, or a large one on a lead running alongside.’ He turned to the maire. ‘Is that allowed, in France?’

  ‘I think so.’ Her expression was thoughtful. ‘Madame Marlow, ah, excuse me, Lu – you want a dog, yes?’

  ‘I’d love one. Company on my walks!’

  ‘There is a dog … he is four years old and he is a very good dog, but his owner is in hospital. He has broken his, what is it in English?’ She tapped her upper leg on the side.

  ‘Thigh? Hip?’ I offered.

  ‘Hip, yes. He is an old man, he has fallen and now has to have the operation. I have the dog at my house for now, but I don’t like to walk, not like you. The dog needs to exercise. Perhaps you take the dog as a test? When Monsieur Baudin is out from the hospital the dog can go back to him. It is a good plan, is it not?’