A Winter's Promise

by Christelle Dabos

  Gustave chuckled and left, with his hurried little steps. It wasn’t the first time the head butler had amused himself by playing that little game with Mime. Behind his oily manner, he took a sly pleasure in humiliating and bad-mouthing those of a lower rank. He was no example to anyone, with his wonky wig, badly attached dicky, and alcoholic breath, and yet, according to Fox, he’d already pushed some to suicide.

  Ophelia felt much too tired to protest. As she set off for the white boudoir, her scorched newspaper on a salver, she had the impression of wading through cotton wool. Between the dampness of her room, the deceptive mildness of the corridors, and the lack of sleep, she’d ended up catching tonsillitis. Her head ached, throat ached, nose ached, ears ached, eyes ached, and she was missing her old scarf. If she hadn’t given Fox all her sandglasses, she would have readily reported sick.

  Ophelia took advantage of the service corridor to scan the headlines on the scorched newspaper:

  COUNCIL OF MINISTERS AGAIN DELIVERS SQUIB

  POETRY COMPETITION—TO YOUR QUILLS, KIDS!

  CARRIAGE ‘DECAPITATED’ AT CLAIRDELUNE

  GREAT SPRING HUNT: DRAGONS SHARPEN CLAWS

  Spring, already? Time had flown by so fast . . . Ophelia turned the paper over to see the weather forecast. Minus twenty-five degrees. This ark’s thermometer seemed stuck at the same temperature, month after month. Would the weather be milder when the sun returned in the summer? She wasn’t that keen to find out, in fact: each day that went by brought her closer to the wedding, at the end of summer.

  With Berenilde’s frantic pace of life, Ophelia had rarely had time to think of Thorn. And if she was sure of one thing, it was that the same would be true of him. “Your fate is of real concern to me,” he’d said. Well, if he really was concerned about his fiancée’s fate, it was only from a distance. He’d never shown up again since the evening of their arrival at Clairdelune; Ophelia wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d totally forgotten her existence.

  A fit of coughing shook her chest. She waited for it to subside before pushing open the service door that led to the white boudoir. This feminine little lounge was the most comfortable and refined in the castle; it was all lace, cushions, softness, velvet. A poetic illusion made snowflakes fall from the ceiling, without ever reaching the carpet.

  Today, Berenilde and Archibald’s seven sisters had gathered in the white boudoir to admire Baron Melchior’s latest collection of hats. “This one shouldn’t fail to please you, young lady,” he said to Dulcie, passing her a leafy confection. “The roses open and bloom as the ball progresses, right up to the grand finale. I’ve named it ‘Evening Flowering.’”

  All the ladies applauded. Mirage right up to his majestic portliness, Baron Melchior had launched his own couture house. The illusory fabrics with which he embellished his creations outdid each other in originality. The more daring he was, the more successful he was. He was said to have “golden fingers.” Trousers whose pattern changed throughout the day, that was Melchior. Musical ties for big occasions, Melchior. Lingerie that became invisible upon the twelfth strike of midday, Melchior.

  “I really like that interior bonnet of silk tulle,” Berenilde complimented him. Even though her dresses were designed to camouflage her rounded stomach, her pregnancy was becoming increasingly obvious. Standing in a corner of the boudoir, Ophelia was observing her. She couldn’t understand how the widow managed to remain so beautiful and so radiant despite all her excesses.

  “You’re a connoisseur,” responded the baron, smoothing his waxed moustache. “I’ve always considered you to be an exception within your family. You have the good taste of the Mirages!”

  “Come, come, baron, don’t be insulting,” said Berenilde with her tinkling little laugh.

  “Ah, the news of the day!” exclaimed Joy, helping herself from Ophelia’s salver. The young girl sat elegantly on a wing chair, and then frowned. “It looks as if this paper has got a bit too close to the iron.”

  “Mime, you’ll be deprived of your break today,” declared Berenilde.

  Being under no illusions, Ophelia wouldn’t have expected any less of her. Aunt Rosaline, who was serving tea to all these ladies, stiffened with anger. She couldn’t forgive Berenilde for any of the punishments inflicted on her goddaughter.

  “Listen up, they’ve written about it!” said Joy, laughing, her pretty nose deep in the paper. “‘The carriage procession in the Clairdelune gardens has always succeeded in standing out from the rest. Yesterday evening, the hapless Countess Ingrid demonstrated that to her own cost. Did she request too imposing a carriage? Did she select stallions too vigorous for the occasion? Cracking the whip, tightening the reins, nothing worked: the countess sped along the large avenue like a cannonball, clamoring for help.’ Hold on, don’t laugh yet, the best is still to come! ‘Whether the carriage was too high, or the porch too low, the fact is that the vehicle saw its roof lopped off in less time than it takes to write it down. Happily, the wild ride ended well, and the countess got away with a big fright and a few bruises.’”

  “What a lamentable spectacle!” exclaimed Melody.

  “If being ridiculous could kill . . . ” sighed Grace, leaving her sentence hanging.

  “She’ll pick a more modest carriage in future,” reasoned Clarimond.

  “Or less impetuous stallions,” countered Relish.

  Archibald’s sisters laughed so hard they had to reach for their handkerchiefs. Ophelia’s head was buzzing like a hive; she found all this babbling terribly boring. Berenilde, who looked kindly upon such youthfulness, fluttered a fan in front of her neck. “Now, now, dear girls, don’t mock the mishaps of poor Ingrid too much.”

  “Well said,” Patience concurred, stiffly. “Control yourselves a little, now, silly girls. The countess is our guest.”

  Archibald’s sisters lived up to their names. Patience always showed levelheadedness; Joy made light of everything; Melody saw everything as a pretext for a work of art; Grace attached the utmost importance to appearances; Clarimond enlightened her audience with her sensible opinions; and Relish saw life as being all about sensuality. As for little Dulcie, she was so smooth that even the rudest words fell from her mouth as pearls.

  The Web. The clan’s name made total sense when one saw them all together. Despite their differences in age and temperament, the sisters seemed to form one and the same person. If one held out her hand, another immediately passed her powder compact, sugar tongs, gloves, without them even needing to consult each other. When one began a sentence, another finished it as naturally as anything. On some occasions, they all started to laugh at the same time for no apparent reason. On others, quite the opposite: they blushed with embarrassment and none of them could follow the conversation anymore. This generally happened when Archibald “visited” one of his guests in a castle bedroom.

  Archibald . . . Since the episode in the library, Ophelia could no longer stifle a feeling of some uneasiness. She felt as though she had put her finger on something essential, but she could speak about it to no one, especially not to Berenilde. The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that the favorite had orchestrated Thorn’s marriage to bolster her position with regards to Farouk.

  “Baron, may I have a quick look at your ribbons?” asked Dulcie in her beguiling voice. Baron Melchior put down his cup of tea and broke into a smile that lifted both sides of his moustache upright, like sticks. “I was waiting for you to ask me that, young lady. I thought especially of you for my new collection.”

  “Of me?” When the baron opened up his case, Dulcie squealed with delight. Against a black velvet backing, each colored ribbon had a butterfly on it, fluttering its wings. The young girl was determined to try every one of them. “Bring me the large mirror.”

  Dazed with tiredness, it took Ophelia a while to realize that the order was addressed to her.

  “It’s impolite to
appropriate someone else’s servant like that,” lectured Patience.

  “Use my staff as you please, my darling,” said Berenilde, affectionately stroking the little girl’s hair. “I don’t need them at the moment.”

  The large mirror weighed a ton, but Dulcie proved to be as ruthless as Berenilde. “Don’t put it down,” she ordered Ophelia. “Hold it like this so it’s at my height. No, don’t lean it over, bend your legs instead. Right, stay in that position.”

  Dulcie gave her orders in a caressing voice, as though doing a great favor. With long hair of incomparable fineness, a pearly complexion, and eyes like pure, deep pools, she already enjoyed exploiting her charms. Ophelia wasn’t very sensitive to them. Having already seen her throwing spectacular tantrums, she knew that these refined manners were but a varnish that cracked at the first aggravation. She sincerely pitied the man who would marry her.

  While Ophelia, gripping the mirror, battled an uncontrollable urge to sneeze, the ladies chatted, laughed, drank tea, tried on hats.

  “Madam Berenilde, you should dismiss your valet,” Melchior suddenly declared, putting a handkerchief to his nose. “He keeps coughing and sniffing, it’s utterly unpleasant.”

  If Ophelia had been able to speak, she’d have readily agreed with the baron, but a discreet knock at the door saved Berenilde from having to respond. “Go and open,” she told her.

  Stiff with cramps, Ophelia wasn’t sorry to put the mirror down for a moment. When she opened the door she was far too startled to bow. Two heads above her, rigid in his black uniform with epaulettes, thinner and gloomier than ever, Thorn was winding his watch.

  He entered without a glance at Ophelia. “Ladies,” he half-heartedly greeted them. A stunned silence had fallen on the little boudoir. Berenilde stopped fluttering her fan, Aunt Rosaline hiccupped with surprise, the sisters held their teacups in midair, and Dulcie ran to hide in the petticoats of the eldest. This huge, taciturn man shattered, merely by his presence, the feminine charm of the room. He was so tall that the fake snow fluttered down before his eyes like a swarm of white flies. Berenilde was the first to pull herself together.

  “You’ve got no manners!” she teased him in her lovely husky accent. “You should have announced your arrival, you’ve caught us off guard.”

  Thorn chose an armchair that wasn’t overflowing with either cushions or lace, and, bending his great wader’s legs, sat in it. “I had to drop off some files at the ambassador’s office. I’m taking advantage of my visit to check on how you’re feeling, aunt. I won’t stay long.”

  At this last sentence, all of Archibald’s sisters breathed a sigh of relief. For her part, Ophelia found it the hardest thing in the world to maintain her role, motionless in her corner, without being able to look Thorn in the face. She knew that he wasn’t very popular, but it was something else to observe it for herself. Did he know what Mime actually looked like? Did he have any idea that his fiancée was present in the room, a mute spectator of his unpopularity?

  Thorn seemed unconcerned about the chill his arrival had cast. He rested his briefcase on his knees and lit himself a pipe, despite the disapproving coughs all around him. With a frown he turned down the tea Aunt Rosaline offered him; out of the two of them, it was hard to decide whose lips were most pursed.

  “Mr. Treasurer!” exclaimed Baron Melchior with a smile. “I’m very pleased to see you; I’ve been requesting an audience for months!” Thorn gave him a steely look that would have put more than a few off, but the fat baron didn’t let it bother him. He rubbed his heavily ringed hands together, gleefully. “Your marriage is eagerly awaited, you know? Such a ceremony can’t just be thrown together at the last moment, as I’m sure a man as organized as you well knows. I undertake to concoct the most adorable wedding dress ever for your beloved!”

  Ophelia almost gave herself away with a sudden urge to cough.

  “I’ll see when the time comes,” declared Thorn, lugubriously.

  The baron plucked a notebook from his hat as a magician would a white rabbit. “It won’t take a minute. Could you give me the lady’s measurements?”

  It was without doubt the most embarrassing situation Ophelia had ever been in. She wished she could disappear under the carpet.

  “I’m not interested,” insisted Thorn, his voice thundery. Melchior’s heavily brilliantined moustache collapsed in tandem with his smile. His tattooed eyelids blinked several times, and he put his notebook away. “As you please, Mr. Treasurer,” he said with a fearsome sweetness. He closed his case of ribbons and piled all of his hats in a box. Ophelia was sure that Thorn had seriously offended him. “I bid you good day,” Melchior muttered to the ladies, and then left.

  An awkward silence returned to the boudoir. From the depths of the eldest’s petticoats, little Dulcie eyed Thorn’s scars with a pout of disgust.

  “You’ve lost weight again,” Berenilde chided. “With all those ministerial banquets, don’t you ever take the time to eat, then?”

  Relish winked at her sisters and approached Thorn’s chair, a mischievous smile on her lips. “We’re longing to meet your little Animist, Mr. Thorn,” she cooed. “You’re so secretive!”

  Ophelia was starting to worry about being the subject of all these conversations. She hoped her meeting with Archibald wasn’t about to be laid on the table. Since Thorn merely consulted his fob watch, Relish got bolder and leant towards him. Her little blonde curls wriggled with every movement of her head. “Could you at least tell us what she looks like?”

  Thorn fixed his ferrous eyes so abruptly on hers that Relish lost her smile. “I could tell you what she doesn’t look like.”

  Behind Mime’s impassive mask, Ophelia raised her eyebrows. What did he mean by that?

  “My Treasury needs me,” concluded Thorn, closing the cover of his watch. He rose and, in two long strides, was gone. Disconcerted, Ophelia closed the door behind him. It wasn’t really worth him coming by for so little . . .

  Conversations immediately resumed in the boudoir as though never interrupted: “Oh, Madam Berenilde! Would you accept to perform with us in the Spring Opera?”

  “You’d be perfect in the part of the beautiful Isolde!”

  “And Lord Farouk is to attend the performance. It will be a chance for you to give him your kind regards!”

  “Perhaps,” Berenilde replied, flapping her fan and paying barely any attention.

  As she blew her nose, Ophelia wondered whether Berenilde was angry. She only understood the cause much later, when Berenilde pointed to the floor with her fan: “What do I see there, on the carpet?” Ophelia crouched at the foot of the chair Thorn had sat in and picked up a lovely silver stamp.

  “It’s the seal of the Treasury,” observed Clarimond. “Your nephew must be very put out to have mislaid it.”

  Since Ophelia just stood there, arms dangling, Berenilde struck her with her fan. “Well,” she said, annoyed, “what are you waiting for to return it to him?”

  The Treasury

  Ophelia stared at the pale, flat figure of Mime in the mirror on the wall. Only she and an aristocrat remained in the waiting room, and he kept fiddling with his top hat and, every now and then, glancing impatiently at the office’s frosted-glass door. Ophelia watched him without appearing to, through the mirror. Like many Mirages, he was a healthy-looking man, almost bursting out of his jacket, and with both eyelids stamped with tattoos. Since his arrival, he had been continually checking the mantel clock. Nine twenty. Ten forty. Eleven fifty-five. Quarter past midnight.

  Ophelia stifled a sigh. At least he hadn’t been waiting since morning. Having got lost in countless lifts, she’d been standing here all day. She felt so tired that her vision was starting to blur, despite her glasses. Visitors were received in order of precedence, and valets were at the bottom of the list. Ophelia avoided looking at the many empty chairs, and the sideboard on which coffee and petits fou
rs had been served. She wasn’t allowed any of that.

  She would have been perfectly happy to drop the seal off at the office, but she knew she couldn’t. If Berenilde had been that annoyed, it was because Thorn had forgotten it deliberately, and if he’d forgotten it deliberately, it was because he’d wanted to instigate a meeting.

  The glass door finally opened. A man came out, politely tipping his hat at the colleague who remained in the waiting room. “Goodbye, Mr. Vice President,” said the secretary. “Mr. Councillor? If you’d care to follow me.”

  The Mirage went into the office with an irate grunt and Ophelia found herself alone. No longer able to resist, she grabbed a cup of coffee, dunked a petit four in it, and sat on the nearest chair. The coffee was cold and swallowing was painful, but she was famished. Ophelia gobbled up all the petits fours on the sideboard, blew her nose twice, and then instantly fell asleep.

  She had to stand up smartly when the door opened, an hour later. The Mirage councillor left, even more disgruntled than when he’d gone in. The secretary closed the glass door without a glance at Ophelia.

  Unsure, she waited a little, then knocked a few times to remind him of her presence. “What do you want?” he asked through the half-open door. Ophelia indicated that she was unable to speak, and pointed inside the office. She wanted to come in like the others, wasn’t that obvious?

  “The Treasurer needs some rest. I’m not disturbing him for a valet. If you have a message, give it to me.”

  Ophelia couldn’t believe it. She’d been stuck here for hours and she wasn’t even afforded the favor of an audience? She shook Mime’s head and pointed obstinately at the door the secretary was blocking with his foot.

  “Are you deaf as well as mute? Too bad.” He slammed the door in Ophelia’s face. She could have left the seal in the waiting room and gone back empty-handed, but she did nothing of the sort. Her mood was souring. Thorn had wanted to lure her over here? He would have to accept the consequences. She hammered at the door until the bewigged silhouette of the secretary reappeared behind the frosted glass. “Clear off or I’ll call the police!”