Silent

by David Mellon

  Her feet were pulled up onto the seat, her head curled into her shoulder. Though she had tied her hair into a loose knot, it swirled about her face, more auburn than black in the bright sun. She slept like a child, her lips parted, her hands about her face. For the first time George got to see the girl without an expression of anguish or suspicion. She was really rather . . .

  He jerked the wheels back onto the road, nearly swerving into the ditch.

  Dammit, George! You want to kill the girl?

  He kept his eyes on the road, shook his head.

  Well, what else was I supposed to do? Just leave her sitting at the table, staring up at me with those big green eyes?

  He slowed over a bumpy patch in the road.

  Yeah. Well, I probably should have.

  George was not entirely unaware of his penchant for getting tangled up in other people’s troubles, especially women. Especially when he was bored. And he certainly had been that.

  This is all your fault, Augustin! “One more drink before the train.” Ha!

  He rubbed the heel of his hand into his temple, wondering again how exactly he’d ended up in that field.

  I’m just assuming Augustin made it to the station. Might be in a ditch somewhere.

  At a milepost rendered unreadable by moss and ivy, George downshifted and turned off the main road.

  Thomas will have a fit! Thomas is going to have a fit anyway, I might as well give him something to chew on. As a matter of fact, this might work out pretty well. Something to make lunch tolerable. Maybe.

  The car proceeded along a curving road lined with gnarled beech trees and summer green wheat fields.

  “Alcmene!” cried George out of the blue. Adi woke, pulled herself up in her seat.

  “Sorry,” he said, over the sound of the car. “Just remembered something! Greek mythology. Alcmene. She got tricked by Zeus. One of many. Someone’s mother. Someone—Heracles! Heracles’ mother! Almost positive. I think.”

  George held his fist to his lips, thinking furiously, gripping the wheel with his other hand. Adi just held on.

  “Read me the rest of the riddle,” he said. Adi opened her mouth. And then shut it again.

  “Right. Forgot.”

  George, slamming on the brakes, came to a stop right in the middle of the road, startling a drove of sheep dozing beneath a nearby tree.

  Adi handed him the watch.

  “All right,” he said, “I guess we’re doing this here.” He slid his goggles down and pulled his glasses out of his coat pocket. Opening the watch, he found the riddle and read aloud,

  “ ‘Were there a hundred sons of Alcmene,’

  “Alcmene!” said George, “Heracles’ mother!”

  ‘each one wielding an olive tree,

  seeking weeds to be worn,

  as naked as a baby born,

  t’would not be enough

  no matter how tough,

  to quarry the beast of stone in the east.’ ”

  Adi looked over at him hopefully.

  “If there were a hundred Heracles . . . each one with an olive tree. As a club? He’s always carrying a big club. Made from an olive branch? Maybe? Whatever. It wouldn’t ‘be enough, no matter how tough’ to—what? ‘To quarry the beast of stone in the east?’ ”

  He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel.

  “No wait. The middle part. About ‘naked as a baby.’ ” He moved his glasses down a little to squint at the watch. “ ‘Seeking weeds to be worn.’ Weeds?”

  Adi pulled at the sleeve of her dress.

  “Clothes! Right. Like . . . Midsummer Night’s Dream. Oberon says, ‘weeds of Athens he doth wear.’ ”

  Adi didn’t care, just then, if the young man was a drunkard. Or that they were stopped in the middle of the road. It was the first time in two days that she’d not felt as if she were falling down a well. She could have kissed him. She blushed at the thought.

  Reaching over, she tapped on the watch with her finger.

  “Right,” he continued, collecting his thoughts. “Clothes. Seeking clothes. But what did Heracles ever wear but a lion skin?”

  Adi nodded.

  “So. Even if there were a hundred Heracles, looking for lion skins,” he said, “it wouldn’t be enough to . . . quarry the beast of stone? How do you quarry a beast? Why is it in the east? East of what?”

  Adi watched the sheep all settle back into a lazy slumber beneath the tree. The lion will lie down with the lamb. She recalled the marble lion in front of the boys’ school.

  She raised her hand, like a schoolgirl.

  “Yes?” he said.

  Adi considered for a moment, and then held up two fingers.

  “Two, what?” asked George. Then he caught on. “Charades. Right. Okay. Two words.”

  Adi nodded. One finger up.

  “First word. How many syllables?”

  One finger. She pantomimed a heavy thing in her palm. Threw it. Pointed to the thing.

  “Rock?”

  Adi indicated close. Almost.

  “Stone?” he said.

  Adi touched her nose. Right. Two fingers up, twice.

  “Second word,” George said. “Two syllables.”

  Adi mimed lying down, hands together on the side of her face.

  “Sleep.”

  No.

  “Lie.”

  Right.

  She indicated a surface.

  “Lie. Upon . . . ?”

  She pushed her hands together.

  “Lie. On? Lie-on? Lion!” said George. “First word. Stone. Stone lion! Stone lion?”

  Adi pointed to the watch.

  “A stone lion,” he mused. “Quarry the beast. A big stone lion. In the east. Too big even for a hundred—

  “Ha!” he hooted. “Belfort!” he yelled, the sheep scattering again. “The Lion of Belfort!”

  Adi held her hands out, questioningly.

  “Fifty miles away, north of here,” said George, pointing off. “A great stone lion. Like, twenty meters high. Carved into the cliffside. It’s huge! The French made it, after the Franco-Prussian War. Belfort,” said George, settling down a little.

  “So, what does that get us?” he said. “Unless! The answers to the riddles are all places?”

  Adi turned to the last disk, pointed to the tiny line at the bottom.

  George adjusted his glasses and recited, “ ‘Clues you can’t ignore, you may find the fifth, if you plot the four.’ ”

  He pulled at his bottom lip. “ ‘Plot the four.’ So if you have four points, on the map, say.” He poked at the air, “One, two, three, four. And then draw a cross between them. You get—” he placed his finger in the center—“the fifth.”

  Chapter 10

  After George had started the motor going again and they’d left the sheep far behind, the excitement of solving one of the riddles evaporated. The conversation, what there was of it, faltered.

  “Not much farther,” George offered. They smiled at each other. Adi pretended to be more interested in the scenery than she was. George picked up the pace.

  Past farm and field they flew. Barley and corn and oats, rapeseed and sunflower, still turned out in summer green. Across the valley they were headed toward a mountain range, serrated like a row of teeth, with one great fang rising in the center.

  Winding through a small village, they scattered the churchgoers coming out of the front doors. “Sorry, sorry,” George said, after, though it only slowed him down for a moment. Adi, by turns terrified and distraught, tried to find something to hold on to.

  Where were they going, anyway?

  Young women picking cherries, in wide-brimmed straw hats, turned atop their tall ladders and waved as the automobile sped through the orchard.

  George finally slowed down, turning onto an arching stone bridge. On the far side, an old sign, nearly covered in morning glory, appeared to read La Maison Chinoise. The Chinese House. What does that mean? she thought.

 
To their left, she spotted a gated driveway leading to a large, beautiful house with several outbuildings and a verdant lawn. She pointed.

  “That’s the head gardener’s cottage,” George said. “We’re, umm, going over here.” As they came through the trees, he directed Adi’s attention to the other side of the road.

  Built above the river, leading all the way up to the cliffs, was an amazing assemblage of structures. A huge central house with turrets and domes, elegant steep-pitched roofs, and windows beyond count. This branched off in all directions around cloisters and a campanile to a row of a dozen or so identical residences, the backs of which were right up against the sheer wall of the mountain. It was all surrounded by gardens and vast lawns. And that was only the part she could see; the whole of it, like a small city, was circled by an enormous, high stone wall.

  She turned and looked at George. He just grinned.

  They sped across the bridge and through towering wrought-iron gates, black with elaborate gold-painted adornments. They zoomed past horses and stables and an ancient, beautiful round brick chapel. Through another archway they pulled onto a cobblestone courtyard backed by an open garage large enough to hold a half dozen automobiles, which it did.

  A man in overalls looked up from a shiny orange motorbike with which he was occupied.

  “Samuel,” said George, killing the engine. “Tell me you haven’t been working on that since I saw you?”

  “No, Your Grace,” he replied, wiping his hands on a rag. “Though it feels like it.” He pointed to the light mounted on the front. “The bike is perfect. But I would be grateful to you if you would run this thing over with your car.”

  “I’m sure you’ll fix it, Sam.” Samuel didn’t look so sure.

  Adi turned to George. What had that man called him?

  But George was looking up toward the house, at a young man making a beeline toward them down the vast steps.

  Slight, in a charcoal suit, with nearly white-blond hair, he looked pleasant enough, though as he got closer Adi could see there was a storm brewing under his brow. It darkened when he noticed that George was not alone.

  George held the car door open for Adi. The young man planted himself before the couple.

  “Your Grace. Mademoiselle,” he said, with a small bow in Adi’s direction.

  “Thomas,” replied George.

  “Your Grace.”

  “Thomas.”

  They stared at each other; Adi looked confused, though that had been her expression since they arrived.

  Reaching an impasse, George folded first.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Thomas. I’m sorry, all right?”

  “You promised, George!” said Thomas. “You only had to make it through the rest of the day!”

  “I know, I know!” cried George, “I just couldn’t bring myself to face another hour of those pompous, condescending—uh, they have left, haven’t they?”

  “Yes. Just. After I assured them that they would be informed in the event of your body being found.”

  “That’s funny, Thomas.” He leaned to Adi. “Portuguese ambassador. Very unpleasant man.”

  Back to Thomas, “Anyway, sorry. I know I put you in a bad spot. Augustin suggested we have a drink, to steel ourselves for the afternoon. It ended up being a drink in town.”

  Thomas looked as though he had no trouble believing this. “And where has Monsieur Canclaux disappeared to?”

  “No idea,” said George, vaguely. “There may have been a train station at some point.”

  Utterly baffled, Adi looked back and forth between the two men, wondering what could possibly explain the seesawing nature of their relationship.

  Evidently having resolved the issue, Thomas turned to Adi.

  “Oh,” said George. “Thomas, Adi. Adi, Thomas Hast.”

  Thomas bowed. “A pleasure, mademoiselle. Welcome to La Maison Chinoise.”

  Adi managed a wan smile and waited for George to explain her lack of response.

  “Oh, right. The young woman can’t talk. Well, at any rate, she isn’t talking.”

  Thomas took this in, along with the young woman’s lack of footwear, with remarkable equanimity.

  “And, unless I’m mistaken,” George continued, “it’s Sunday. It is Sunday, isn’t it?”

  “I’m afraid so, sir.”

  George said to Adi, “By the way. You’re having lunch with everyone. My, um, stepmother and such.”

  Adi looked appropriately alarmed. Thomas appeared slightly pained, but said nothing.

  “Don’t worry, she’ll do fine,” said George.

  Suddenly he remembered more important things that needed considering. He said to Thomas, “I’ll fill you in on the particulars, but we’re going to need to get hold of—what’s his name? Lendt, to talk about a missing persons matter. Soon as you can get him here. In the meantime, Adi will be staying with us. For—?”

  He looked to Adi. She was at a loss. “For a few days at least, perhaps longer. And, she’ll be needing—”

  “Of course, Your Grace.”

  They looked over to see two figures approaching.

  “Speak of the devil,” said George.

  A woman with a tiny dog on a leash and a strapping young man of about twenty in a swimming costume, a single rowing scull balanced on his shoulder, were coming up the stairs from the garden. Spotting George and a visitor, they changed direction and headed toward them.

  “I’ll take care of it,” said Thomas. “If you’ll come with me, mademoiselle.” Adi looked back at George as Thomas led her away. Where was she going now?

  “George,” said his stepmother as she approached. “Who is that young woman?”

  “Hello, Mother. Halick.”

  George’s stepbrother, Halick, wiped the sweat from his short cropped hair and watched as Thomas led the girl up the walk toward the house. The weight of his boat and oars didn’t appear to bother him in the slightest.

  “Her name is Adi,” said George, turning to the duchess. “She’s a . . . cousin of Augustin.”

  “But it appeared she had no shoes?”

  “Yes. She has no shoes,” said George. Then reconsidering, he said, “Actually, I’ve no idea who she is.”

  The duchess studied George from under her shadowed brow.

  “She’s from India. I met her in town,” he said. “She’ll be staying for a few days. And joining us for lunch, if that’s all right.”

  The duchess pulled up hard on the leash to keep the dog from wandering into the roses. “Bouton! Stop that!”

  “She can’t speak, by the way,” said George.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Sweetheart,” she said, turning to Halick. “Put that thing away. It’s dripping all over the walk.”

  “Yes, Mother,” said Halick. He watched as Thomas and the girl disappeared into the house and then he headed off.

  The duchess leaned over to pick up the dog. “Come on, Bouton. Time for your bath,” she murmured as she walked away.

  Chapter 11

  Thomas and Adi passed through a seemingly endless number of rooms and passageways on the way to her quarters. The whole time, Thomas kept up a steady monologue about the history of the house and its occupants. He began with the curious name.

  In the 1790s, during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, when most of the family resided in Paris, the decision was made to flee east to a recently purchased property in Alorainn: a medieval castle that had been reconstructed after the Thirty Years’ War. It was referred to in secret as “the house in the east,” translated as “La Maison de l’Orient.” In time it became La Maison Chinoise, the Chinese House.

  This was rather ironic, as over the years, having escaped the Revolution, the family grew less inclined to engage in any sort of risky activities. Not only had none of them been to China, some of them scarcely traveled outside the walls of the estate.

  Up a grand staircase they went, through enormous rooms, their footsteps muff
led by carpets or tapping upon elaborate wood and marble floors. There were elegant furnishings high and low, and fireplaces large enough for a man to stand in. Everywhere she looked, the walls were covered with paintings, of men and horses and ships and Madonnas in blue.

  Somehow, as they moved through the house, Thomas managed, with only the occasional gesture, to organize things. When they arrived at Adi’s room, spacious and airy with a huge canopied bed and doors opening onto a balcony, there were maidservants waiting for them. Thomas made introductions, gave instructions, and, with a bow to Adi, left her to their care.

  • • •

  She sat in her bath drinking tea and eating toast. She looked at her little cup. It was impossibly thin and fine, with delicate pink rosebuds, its tiny porcelain handle in the shape of a braided vine. It might have been the most beautiful thing she had ever seen and it made her feel terrible.

  She couldn’t stop hearing the boys crying out to her. Coal said they were safe, that they would be fine. What did that mean coming from this man? She clung to the words nonetheless. It was the only thing keeping her from climbing out of her skin.

  Listening to the soap bubbles popping about her head, she considered her options.

  It wasn’t doing her any good to keep knocking on doors, accosting strangers. Much as she hated to admit it, she knew George was right about that.

  George.

  Those men called him “Your Grace.”

  What did that mean exactly? This hung-over young man with stains on his shirt. Royalty. It made her realize how little she knew about this place she and her brothers had come to.

  Alorainn. It had just been another one of those names on a map, different only in that it was where their grandmother had lived. And in that it was very small—this was endlessly fascinating to Xander and Xavier.

  “You could walk across the whole place in a day,” Xavier had said. “We’ve got cities back home larger than this whole country!”

  A principality, a man on the ship had called it. Adi was not even sure what that meant. Something to do with a prince? Had she somehow managed to stumble onto the Royal Family of Alorainn? Her eyes opened wide.

  Was she having lunch with the Royal Family of Alorainn?