The Vine Witch

by Smith, Luanne G.

  “It’s not magic, it’s a . . . what do you call it?”

  “It’s called a pH test, a way to measure the acidity in the grape to determine the best time to harvest.”

  “Ach, quatsch,” she said, her native language bleeding through. “What does science have to do with wine? The only way to know if a grape has reached its proper ripeness is to taste it, feel the juice run in the mouth, grind the bitter skin between the teeth, check the color of the seeds. After that it’s a matter of intuition. There’s only so much vine work Mother Nature can bear without the assistance of a witch. We’re the midwives of good wine, from conception to delivery.”

  Jean-Paul was just forming a retort in his mouth when Madame returned carrying a bottle of wine from the cellar. He held back his remark and then shrank a little inside, worried she might offer his most recent vintage out of some misguided sense of vineyard hospitality. He knew it was an inferior wine unfit for the palate of the great vigneron of Domaine du Monde. Madame uncorked the bottle, a sly smile forming in the corners of her mouth. He understood the old woman’s stubborn pride in thinking Château Renard was still one of the great vineyards in the valley, but he appreciated the enormous gap that stretched between his best effort so far and that of the man sitting across from him. And yet, as Madame well knew, etiquette demanded he offer Renard wine to his guests, so he must swallow his sour grapes with humility.

  And then he recognized the faded label on the bottle.

  She poured the garnet drink into crystal glasses, and he sat up a little straighter. The wine danced and sparkled in the glass as it passed from host to guest in front of the lamplight. Gerda accepted the wine graciously, a slight wrinkle forming between her brows. It deepened when her nose passed over the top of the offering. She gave the wine a swirl, and Jean-Paul knew if there was ever magic in the world it was in that glass of perfectly blended seven-year-old pinot noir. Madame knew it, too, as her perceptive eyes watched for the reaction.

  Gerda took the wine into her mouth. Her cheeks hollowed slightly as her tongue slid back and forth, tasting. An average customer sipping the wine for the first time would commonly raise his brows in surprise at this point and remark about its uncommon smoothness. A connoisseur would sniff and then describe the robust and complicated layers of velvety plums, smoke, and currants on the tongue. But the self-proclaimed vine witch said nothing. Not in words anyway. Yet her face betrayed that first moment of insecurity one feels when they know they’ve been outdone. If she could have spit it out, he believed she would have spewed the contents on the rug. She swallowed instead, as if it were a tadpole in her mouth rather than one of the finest wines ever produced in the valley. He was witnessing the taste of envy.

  Du Monde, on the other hand, approached his wine as a man forced to take his medicine. But as he swallowed, his tongue most certainly pressing against the soft palate in his mouth to be sure of what it had just tasted, he sheepishly avoided looking at his wife, as if he’d just been caught kissing another woman. He did, however, glance at Madame, who confirmed his suspicions with the slight upward flick of her eyebrow.

  “One of Château Renard’s finest vintages, madame.” Du Monde raised his glass in a gesture of admiration. He took another sip, nodded approvingly, and then set his glass down. “Thank you for serving this particular wine. In truth, it makes what I’m about to propose even more significant.”

  Madame straightened, holding her head at a tilt. Jean-Paul, too, tensed slightly, drawn in by the curious phrasing.

  “Monsieur Martel, as I’m sure you are aware, I am a businessman as well as a winemaker.” He paused to formulate his next words. “Perhaps providence stranded me outside your door today. You see, I remember this vintage distinctly. It bested my first solo entry in le Concours des Vins. That was the first time I understood what it meant to create something truly magnificent and have the world take notice. And, if I may be brutally honest, it may have been the last time Château Renard produced such an exquisite vintage.”

  “Bastien . . .” The word came out as a growl of warning in Madame’s throat.

  “Monsieur Martel, you are a lawyer by trade, if I’m not mistaken. A man who understands the art of negotiation.”

  “Please, call me Jean-Paul.”

  “Of course. Now that we have shared wine, we can be direct with one another. You have been in the wine business for three years, have you not? And in that time you have had, shall we say, three years of disappointing harvests.” Du Monde gave a slight shrug of his shoulders. “Surely we can agree it is not a forgiving trade for the novice.”

  Jean-Paul squirmed in his chair, wishing to defend his efforts at the vineyard but knowing in his heart the man across from him was telling the truth. He only wished the wife didn’t stare at him so intently. He swore he could feel her thoughts pressing in on his own.

  “And,” Du Monde continued, “I have it on good authority there is a law firm in the city that would eagerly like to see the return of one of its brightest associates.” He paused to see if his compliment had landed. It had. “So, given the balance of one against the other, I have a proposition for you.”

  Du Monde finished delivering his proposal, and the room went silent except for the sound of Madame’s glass hitting the table.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Elena crept up the stairs mindful of every creak underfoot. She hadn’t been in the attic since her return, but it was the farthest away she could get from the others without climbing on the roof. She opened the door, and the stagnant air swirled as if for the first time in years. Only a few bars of weak light filtered in through the vents under the eaves, giving the space an abandoned feel. The odor of wet wood met her as she pressed a hand against the exposed ribs of the angled ceiling to avoid hitting her head. A leak in the roof tiles perhaps. There was little money to spare for house repairs, but it was beyond her talents to stitch rotten wood back together. She set her star chart and astrolabe down atop a discarded chair and made a mental note to discuss it with Jean-Paul once the intruders had gone.

  Sweeping a cobweb from her forehead, she cursed Bastien for once again forcing her to squat in a dark and damp place she didn’t want to be. Why would he show up at the house unannounced? She pressed her nose to the vent and peeked at the car with the nose like a mechanical goose still wheezing in the courtyard below. White steam billowed up, but there was something false about the way it wafted, as if crafted by illusion. The artifice made her think of her hasty smoke spell, and she worried it wouldn’t be enough to rid the room of her aura’s imprint. Bierhexen were like bloodhounds, able to sniff out the faintest hint of magic. Was that the reason Bastien had brought Gerda? Elena’s heart pulsed harder. Did he already suspect she’d returned to the château? How could he know? Unless Jean-Paul had betrayed her. Would he? The thought made her ill, and she sank onto an old trunk, where she sat with her head in her hand.

  Below, the front door rattled shut. Muffled voices, smothered beneath two levels of house, echoed up between the walls, but the words disintegrated before she could make them out. And she couldn’t very well use her second sight to listen in on a witch as sensitive to magic as a bierhexe. She’d be discovered in an instant. Resigned to her confinement, she stewed a few moments in idle thought, wondering if there was at least a spell she could conjure to drop a chandelier on Bastien’s head. But even such thoughts were dangerous. The witch might easily pick up on the negative vibrations. No, she couldn’t risk the discovery. Not yet.

  Left alone, Elena shivered. It might not be a pond of black muck she found herself in this time, but the frost of betrayal felt eerily familiar. The curse had embedded a permanent chill in her skin that she couldn’t shake off, even in a room as stifling as an attic. Not willing to suffer one more second because of that man, she knelt on the floor and flipped the lid open on the trunk to look for a moth-eaten shawl or old blanket she could use. Instead she found a chipped cup and saucer wrapped in paper, a stack of old wine labels tied up with
string, and a pair of candlesticks with two malformed candles that had softened in storage. Seeing the wicks were still intact, she brought them out and set them on the floor. She risked a quick snap of her fingers to light them, then rubbed her hands over the heat of the flames before sorting through the items again.

  The trunk was full of Grand-Mère’s personal items—objects boxed up and put in storage to make room for the château’s new owner. She felt a tinge of guilt when she opened a book and discovered old photos of Grand-Mère and Joseph in intimate poses of early love. Arms around necks, lips pressed to cheeks, smiles shining on one another as only true love can project. When guilt began to turn to envy, she replaced the photos between the pages and closed the book.

  Pushing aside an old hatbox, she found a lace tablecloth with a wax stain that would do for a shawl. As she shook out the cloth, a colorful sheet of paper flew out. A handbill for a carnival. She wrapped the tablecloth around her shoulders, then tipped the paper to the candlelight to better see the details. Marked in bold red and gold ink, the advertisement promised exciting fire-eaters, knife-throwers, clowns and grotesques, and a woman who did somersaults on the back of a pony. And in small print at the bottom, beside the image of a mustached man in a striped turban, it highlighted the return of the “All-Seeing Fortuneteller to the Kings and Queens of the Continent.”

  It was an odd memento for Grand-Mère to hold on to. The old woman had never once taken her to a carnival as a child. And she’d done her share of begging when the acrobats and ponies showed up for that one precious week during the summer, as any child would. The oddity tugged at her instinct enough that she didn’t replace the flyer in the trunk right away, reading it again for a clue as to why an elderly woman would stow it alongside her other keepsakes.

  Two floors below, the voices grew more distinct. They’d moved to the main salon. Eager to know if she could hear more, Elena crept to the end of the attic where the chimney stood. The hollow interior, she discovered, made a remarkable conduit for sound. She closed her eyes and heard Jean-Paul direct his unannounced guests to sit in the leather chairs. They were directly below her in front of the fireplace. She pressed her ear full against the chimney and listened again. And then Bastien’s unmistakable bravado rose up through the brick and mortar, his voice reverberating off her tightly coiled emotions.

  As raw as the day he’d accused her of putting his needs second, his voice sent a shock wave of pain spiraling to her core. The man who’d stolen her life was sitting directly below her, bragging about his good harvest, his champion wine, and the unmatched talent of his vine witch.

  His wife.

  Like the building of any good spell, the pain began to churn inside her, mixing, binding, reforming. It stirred, waiting for her intent to hurl the flow of energy. Temptation warmed her fingertips. She could almost justify using the magic to harm him, but then the feeling fizzled. The heat subsided. The magic went damp inside her. The vigor gone.

  The carnival flyer sat crumpled in her hand. She shook her head and asked the All Knowing for patience. It wasn’t time yet. She wasn’t ready. Revenge would come as sweet as honeysuckle on the tongue when the moment was right. Until then, Bastien would have no hold over her. She would not allow it.

  She took a deep breath and leaned forward. With her ear to the bricks she clearly overheard a woman speaking about the ripeness of grapes. The bierhexe. Grudgingly, she agreed with the witch’s observations on midwifery.

  Then the voices quieted. The pause felt too long, too awkward for conversation. Grand-Mère must have brought out the wine. Yes, that was it. They were tasting. Swallowing. Forming critiques on their tongues. But what had Grand-Mère served? Certainly she wouldn’t pour them any of the swill Jean-Paul had produced. The man had good intentions, but his efforts were pitiful. The thought made her cringe with embarrassment for the château. But then she felt it, a tingle at the base of her neck, a finger-light frisson that spread along her hairline. It was something she only felt when someone tasted her wine in her presence.

  “Oh, Grand-Mère, you didn’t,” she whispered, though she smiled as she said it, remembering the last vintage she’d bottled. The grapes had been exquisite. Some said it was better than Grand-Père’s champion red.

  Eager to hear their reaction, she wrapped the tablecloth tight around her shoulders and pressed her ear even tighter against the brickwork. Her thumbnail firmly embedded between her teeth in anticipation, she listened and smiled with pride. Not a word out of the bierhexe. No criticism or praise, merely the reward of silent envy. It would have been enough to know it vexed her, but then Bastien spoke. His words were full of admiration. Praise. Humility. It confused her. Had she misheard? Misjudged him? Was it even possible? She missed what he said next, but then Grand-Mère cautioned him with a verbal warning in the form of his name. What look did he have in his eye to make her wary?

  Oh, but it wasn’t the look in his eye. It was the greed in his heart. His hunger to own and control everything. She could feel it coming. His sweet, luring words were nothing but vinegar in disguise. His aim in visiting, the reason the car had conveniently broken down—it was all done so he could turn out his pockets before a vulnerable Jean-Paul and negotiate for the one thing he’d always coveted. He wanted to own Château Renard.

  The proposition struck like a match to the wadding keeping her anger under wraps. Her temper caught and flared until she could no longer control it.

  With the tablecloth still wrapped around her shoulders, she climbed the ladder out of the attic and ran down the stairs, her heart pounding with fear, but determination too. What weak magic she commanded she used to shore up her confidence. Her hair flew back from her face as she stormed into the salon to confront Bastien and tell him Château Renard was not for sale. Not to him. Not ever. Not as long as she lived and breathed.

  But he was gone. The room was empty except for the scent of lilacs that trailed behind the woman. Outside, the automobile started up on the first try. Elena flew to the window in time to see the couple chug down the road as the light faded from the sky.

  With nowhere to hurl her swelling anger, her magic found the nearest inanimate object, shattering the half-empty bottle of wine on the table in front of Jean-Paul.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  He’d seen champagne bottles burst spontaneously before but never a wine bottle. And not one that was nearly empty. There must have been a flaw in the glass. A crack. Or perhaps the atmospheric pressure had dropped too quickly.

  Jean-Paul had also seen Elena fly off in anger before, but she looked near deranged as she stood at the window, wrapped in a tablecloth, her fist banging against the glass as Du Monde drove off. No consolation would allow her to believe the man had graciously left so that his offer might be given proper consideration without further unnecessary pressure.

  Then she turned on him.

  “You cannot sell Château Renard to that man. I won’t allow it.”

  He bent to collect the shards of glass. “You won’t allow it?” Du Monde’s offer had, in fact, rankled his pride, and he was in no mood for an argument with a woman over business. “It’s no longer your place to decide such a thing,” he said and hoped that would be the end of it.

  Elena shot across the room and scooped up the glass with her bare hands. “Oh, but it is my place.” She muttered some child’s verse under her breath, then tossed the broken pieces of glass into the fire. “And this vineyard is not for sale,” she countered. “Not to that man, not to anyone.”

  Too late, Grand-Mère raised her hand to stop Elena.

  The glass fizzled and turned to smoke in the flames, as if it weren’t glass at all. More evidence there was something inferior about how it was made, he decided. And also evidence there was something wrong with this woman. Who disposes of broken glass in a fireplace?

  “I don’t know what to make of you,” he said, finding the will for a fight after all. “You turn up on my doorstep dressed in rags after being gone for years, yet cla
im the château is the only home you know. You ask me to keep your presence here a secret, presumably from the man you just ran away and hid from, and yet you storm down the stairs to confront him the moment he shows up on the doorstep.” He took a step toward her. “Do you play me for a fool?”

  Elena narrowed her eyes at him. “I realize you’re limited in what you can see and understand—”

  “Oh, yes, by all means insult me too.”

  “But I am as much a part of this vineyard as the vines themselves. I do have a say.”

  He picked up his glass of wine. “Do you know why a man like Du Monde wants to buy Château Renard? For the terroir. To own grapes grown in soil capable of creating something this divine. It’s also why I bought the vineyard. Here, taste it. See what a real vigneron is capable of creating with this plot of soil.”

  “I don’t need to taste it.”

  He swallowed the wine after she refused, savoring the sensuous aftertaste, until the inevitable feeling of defeat followed. “But the grapes won’t yield,” he said. “Not for me. I don’t know how to re-create this. I don’t know if anyone can. So, yes, there are days I’m tempted to sell and admit I’m no winemaker. Maybe that time has come, but it’s for me to decide, not you.”

  “I can do it.”

  He looked her up and down full of doubt as she stood wrapped in an old tablecloth with a candle wax stain on it. “Yes, you’re supposed to know all the old master’s secrets. I’m sorry, Elena, but your bold promises are beginning to wear thin.”

  “Your problem isn’t a lack of knowledge. Or bad luck. Or even bad weather.” She picked up the fireplace tongs and sorted through the ash in the fire. “It’s a lack of vision,” she said and fished out a perfectly round piece of melted glass. A lens, really.

  Madame spoke up from her chair. “Elena, are you sure you want to do this?”