by M. J. Rose
“The ghosts of those good souls and the promise of their hidden treasures cast great shadows over the land. You’re sensing them. You’re a shadow seer even without your blindfold.”
I had finished my coffee but lifted my cup to my lips to see if I could eke out one last drop, and then I put down the cup. Always hesitant to discuss my gift, I just nodded.
“That day on the bridge, you saw my shadow, didn’t you?” he asked.
“I saw someone else’s shadow, not yours.”
“And you saw him in danger?”
“Yes.”
Gaspard leaned close to me. “Listen to your instincts.”
“You mean stop looking for Madame Calvé’s treasure?” I asked.
“Some mysteries are destroyed if solved. Some confidences, once buried, shouldn’t be disturbed. If a secret is hidden, revealing it could prove dangerous. There are reasons we can’t always know.”
He was speaking in riddles that could have been applied to any one of a dozen things. My feelings for Mathieu. The secrets I exhumed for pay. My being here working for Madame.
“Tell that to Madame Calvé. She’s determined,” I said.
“She’s always been determined. But she never succeeds. You might be the one to change that after all these years.”
“And you don’t think I should? You don’t think the past should be disturbed?” And then I realized something and was certain of it. I blurted out my next question. “Are you protecting whatever it is?”
“With all the people Madame has brought here to try to divine the secrets, there have been so many talentless fakes. It’s amazing how easy it is to believe when you are desperate. And she has been desperate. But with you, she finally stumbled on the real thing.”
“I’m afraid I’m the one who’s been stumbling. Both literally and figuratively. You are protecting the secret. Who are you?”
“If I asked you to stop trying to suss out the location of that cave you keep drawing, just enjoy the company in the château until the roads clear, and then let your brother drive you away, would you?”
“If you could give me a good reason, I might.”
“The best reason. To protect you. To keep you safe. Stop looking, Delphine. Don’t meddle in thousands of years of history.”
“But what if I’m the one who is supposed to be meddling?”
Chapter 43
I slowly climbed the stairs, trying to decipher the puzzle Gaspard had left me with. I felt as though I were facing a blank canvas, with only a glimmer of an idea of what I wanted to paint.
When I opened the door to my studio, I found Sebastian looking through my sketches. “I was hoping I might assist in decoding your drawing,” he explained.
“How? Even Madame doesn’t recognize the markers. I went outside to try to find something but still have absolutely no idea of where it might be.”
My brother held up one of the sketches. “Why is the background so dark in these drawings?”
“No one has turned on the lights? It’s not electrified? There are no windows? It was built five or six centuries ago? I have no idea.”
Sebastian looked at me. “Something’s changed. What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure. I saw Gaspard just now when I was out walking, and he got me thinking. All along, we’ve assumed we’re aiding in an innocent search for an ancient book, but we really don’t know what the book contains. Only what Madame Calvé believes it contains.”
Now it was my turn to read my brother’s face. His light expression turned dark and concerned. “What do you mean?”
“Madame said the book contains Nicolas Flamel’s secret to immortality.”
He nodded.
“Which you and I and our sisters and mother and father know is at least partly possible. Our mother and great-grandmother may not be immortal, but there’s no doubt their chemistry has been altered. Grand-mère is almost ninety, and everyone thinks she’s sixty. And Maman? She’s past fifty. Do you ever think about that when you look at her? She and I look like sisters. Papa, too. Once people become adults, no one in our family ages in real time.”
“We all know about the spell she found in the ancient grimoire that belonged to the original La Lune. Maman can slow down time. It’s amazing, but what does it have to do with Flamel’s book?” Sebastian asked.
“Maman’s spell only performs for her. None of us, not one of the La Lune family of daughters, can activate it. We can only activate our own spells.”
“Your point?”
“The spell to slow aging has a limited value. Only Maman can use it. But what if the formula in the Nicolas Flamel book could be mobilized by anyone?”
Sebastian’s eyes flashed with a reaction I couldn’t read.
“What are you thinking?” I asked him.
“Nothing. Why?”
“When I was talking just now, about the Flamel formula, you looked—I don’t know …”
He cocked his head and changed his voice, affecting a deep, accented baritone. “Did I turn into the creature from the hills?”
When we were children, Sebastian and I often had the same nightmares. A curiosity that both delighted and scared us at different times. To chase them away, our mother had us imagine a monster made of tree bark, worms, bats, ants, spiders, dead leaves, and mushrooms. Together we invented a story that he came from a cave we’d visited in the Fontainebleau forest and made up rules for when and how he traveled to us. Sometimes Sebastian would even pretend to be the creature, squinting his eyes into slits, disguising his voice. Almost scaring me but not quite.
There was a clap of thunder right over our heads and a flash of lightning. The lights flickered and went out.
“Don’t worry,” Sebastian said, his voice soothing me. He had, of course, anticipated and understood my reaction to the dark.
After a few moments, I heard the scrape of a match and smelled sulfur, and Sebastian’s face emerged in candlelight.
“The storm must have blown out the electricity,” he said, holding the silver candlestick out to me. I took it, and he lit the second one for himself.
Given my fear of the dark, I was grateful that Madame had candles at the ready. Thunderstorms were frequent in the summer in this part of the country and were no friends to modern conveniences.
“There’s a candelabra here on the mantel,” I said, as I walked toward it.
I struck a match and lit the first candle, and then, as I’d seen my great-grandmother do during the Jewish holidays, lit each of the other candles using that first one. I’d never performed the ritual, and as the flames illuminated the room, I wondered what the ceremony meant to her.
The wicks burned brightly, casting odd shadows on the wall. Sebastian’s was long and thin and strangely ominous.
For the second time that afternoon, I looked at my brother with concern. What did I know about my twin? Was I really sure of his heart’s desire? We had spent almost five years apart, and we acted as if nothing had changed. But it had. He was twenty-six years old now, far too handsome and wealthy to want for much, but he was heavily in debt and desperate to keep that from my parents. Since childhood, he’d always burned to be a success, but now that ambition seemed to be exaggerated and colored by frustration. And anger. I’d noticed it before but not really focused on it. Sebastian was as unhappy as I was, wasn’t he? The gambling was just an outward manifestation of an internal crisis. I knew what had happened to me in the last five years to make me cynical and lovelorn. But what had happened to him?
I wasn’t sure what to ask. Where to start. But it seemed imperative that I do something. A long time ago, he’d saved me from a turbulent sea. He’d come to New York to pull me out of that morass, too. Now it was my turn. My brother was going to drown unless I figured out how to help him.
Chapter 44
Sheets of water continued to fall from the heavens at a steady, frightening pace. We had a lunch of thinly pounded veal with a vegetable terrine and drank more rosé than usual. A
t the table, we all tried our best to entertain one another, but we were nervous and distracted. The rain was too heavy. The storm was continuing for too long. Other than Sebastian and me, no one had planned on staying over Sunday night, and everyone was restless to get home. Only Mathieu seemed unperturbed at being marooned. Did I dare think it was because of me? More likely, it was because he’d been spending his time in Madame’s library sorting through her collection of arcane books about the dark arts. I’d overheard her ask him to make an inventory of what important works he thought she was missing so he could look for them when he returned to Paris.
Around two o’clock, I went up to my room to try, for what I hoped was the last time, to solve the puzzle that eluded me.
I had settled myself in the studio and spread the drawings out all around me when there was a knock on the door, and I called out, “Entrée.”
It was Mathieu.
“Oh,” I said, startled. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I don’t imagine you were. I’m sorry for surprising you.”
“No, I meant that I expected one of the servants. Madame always sends up a pot of tea when I come up here to work.”
“Yes, she sent me up with libations. Right here.” He went back out into the hall and returned holding a fully loaded tray. “I put the tray down to knock.”
As he settled it on a low coffee table by the couch, I saw it held two glasses and a bottle of wine, deep red, the same color as my blindfold.
“Now, that’s not tea.”
“No, I switched it. I thought wine would be a better idea.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t like tea. And if I remember, you also prefer wine to tea.”
“Not when I’m working, which is what I was doing.” I didn’t like the idea of being alone with him in my suite.
“That’s convenient. I’m actually here to talk to you about work.” I must have let my surprise show on my face, because he said, “Really, I am. We do have work to discuss.”
“What work could that be?”
“I mentioned that Emma’s commissioned me to make a book of your drawings when you are done?”
I nodded.
“I’d like to see the size of the paper you are using so I can prepare the leathers.”
It seemed a fairly harmless request, and I opened my arms to indicate the spread of paper around me. “Take your pick.”
Mathieu picked up one of my drawings and then another. “This is a very detailed chamber.”
“Yes, I saw it very clearly.”
“Your style has evolved so much. Your lines are even surer than they were before, and this is just a sketch. I’d love to see your paintings.”
I lowered my head and looked down at my hands to escape his eyes. My insides were roiling. Being alone with Mathieu wasn’t a good idea. I needed to get up and run, out of the room, out of the house, away from Millau. Away from Mathieu. Away from what I wanted. What I’d always wanted. What I couldn’t have. I couldn’t be the artist my mother was. Or have the man I loved by my side. I couldn’t find peace with my gift. I couldn’t save people from the secrets that gave them so much pain. I couldn’t stop being a victim of my own making.
Mathieu pulled the cork out of the wine and poured it. He handed me a crystal goblet. Taking it from him, I was careful not to let our hands touch. He held his glass up to make a toast. But he didn’t say anything, only clinked his glass with mine, and then he drank. As did I. The wine tasted of blackberries and coffee. A sensual, dark flavor that surprised me with its intensity.
“That’s delicious,” I said. Discussing the wine seemed a safe enough topic.
“I chose it from Emma’s extensive cellar. It’s quite amazing.”
“Have you ever been here before?”
“Not for a long time.”
“What a coincidence that you are here now.” I sipped the wine. “I wish you weren’t.”
He ignored my comment. “Delphine, I know that the little scene you set up in Paris was a fake. That you weren’t having an affair with that man I supposedly caught you with in the restaurant.”
I was stunned at the turn in the conversation. “I was seeing him. He was a fellow student. We fell in love. I was meeting him behind your back.”
Mathieu laughed. “You’re really a terrible liar. At first, I was so stunned and hurt. I believed you were cheating on me and that you’d betrayed me. But once you left Paris, something didn’t seem right. It was one thing for you to be with another man, but why leave Paris? School? Your family? I did some sleuthing, and I found the gentleman, who was happy to answer my questions for a bit more money than you had paid him. He confessed.”
“He did?”
“I wrote to you about it.”
He was looking at me, waiting for a response.
“I didn’t read your letters,” I whispered.
“I wrote so many. I even tried to write you a poem.”
“Did you? Have you started writing poetry again?”
“Only three lines, over and over. I can’t move past them. And I don’t even completely understand them.”
“Will you tell me?”
“Being with me, you kept me alive. Leaving, you killed me. Let me die with you rather than live without you.”
I understood the lines. Every word. “It’s beautiful.”
“No. It’s awkward and unfinished. But I …” He shook his head. “I need to know. Why did you create such an elaborate ruse? If you wanted to end things with me, why didn’t you just tell me to my face? And if you did want to end things, why are you still wearing my ring?”
What to tell him? I didn’t know. I hadn’t expected this confrontation.
Mathieu put his glass down, got up, and came to sit down beside me on the couch. He took my glass out of my hand, put it on the coffee table, and then leaned forward and kissed me.
I thought I had remembered what it felt like to be in Mathieu’s arms. But I’d forgotten so much. How his kisses lit little fires wherever they touched. Those flames now licking my lips, my forehead, my neck, each of my fingertips, the space where my collarbones joined, behind my ear, where my shoulder met my neck. I lost any ability to think clearly. All I knew was that I was with Mathieu, was smelling Mathieu, was tasting wine on his lips and inhaling his scent, was slipping and sliding into a place of velvet smoothness and honey thickness, as long, languorous waves of sensation took me and rocked me and stroked me. One by one, he removed pieces of my clothing, as I removed his, so that more and more of our bodies could touch, and more and more of our naked skin could press together, and my consciousness warned me less and less that this was dangerous, because danger didn’t matter anymore, only the delicious wantonness of being in his arms and having him in mine. Of feeling him all around me. Of taking him in. Of giving in. Of living out this dream that I had dreamed for the last six thousand days. This was my nighttime secret that I shared with no one. Mathieu reaching my innermost core. This was Mathieu, and as he touched me and I touched him, I remembered something else I’d forced myself to forget. He was more than the man I loved; he was the man for whom my body had been made, the man whose body had been made for mine. As if once there had been …
And then he began to whisper the story he’d told me the first time we’d been together like this.
“Once there was a single being, a complete whole, a man and a woman as one entity in paradise. As a punishment, they were cleaved apart. And for eternity forced to spend their lives trying to find their perfect puzzle other half. When you find your perfect puzzle other half, Delphine, it is blasphemy to walk way, to deny the pleasure that is due you. You can’t leave me again. It will kill me if you do. And I don’t want to die. I want to live. I want to live with you.”
And with that, with that one passionate whisper in the dark, with the rain beating on the windows and the wine on our lips and our bodies wet with our lust pressed together and the sheets dank beneath us … with that one plea, Math
ieu ruined everything. He made me focus on the danger. Made me remember fully and with clarity that I was his poison. He couldn’t be with me. To do so was to invite his own demise. I could love him, but I could not be with him. To do so was to put the period at the end of his death sentence. I knew what had happened to the other men whom other daughters of La Lune had loved. It was too risky. My father had almost died for my mother. La Lune’s own lover had been killed. There was always a slim chance that we could fight the curse. But a greater chance that we could not.
“Don’t cry,” Mathieu said, wiping away tears I had not realized I’d begun to shed. “We’re finally together now.”
I shook my head. I had to tell him that we weren’t and couldn’t ever be. But not right away. Surely I could steal just one afternoon. One more day to write about in my Book of Hours. One new set of memories to survive on for all the empty years ahead of me.
Chapter 45
At six that evening, everyone convened in the living room for cocktails, accompanied by puff pastry hors d’oeuvres filled with either salmon pâté or cheese. Anna and Jules retired to the card table for a game of chess. Eugène sat at the piano but didn’t play. He turned his body from us and stared out the darkened window into the rain.
“This could turn out to be a surrealistic nightmare,” Picasso mused, as he sipped his gin, “if this storm never ends and we are all trapped here forever.”
“What a fabulous idea for a play,” Cocteau said. “The Endless Weekend. Ten very different people trapped in a castle. Ten small acts. The séance. The mudslide. The flooding. The hidden treasure. Picasso, imagine the sets.”
“I’ll get paper and pencils.” Madame shot up. “How exciting to create our very own drama out of our unfortunate circumstance.”
The idea of a play occupied everyone for the next forty-five minutes. All but Eugène got involved in plotting out the action, which mimicked what had occurred so far in the château.
When it came time to recreate the séance, Eugène finally stood up and joined the party.
