by Rose, M. J.
As Jac inspected them she saw they weren’t religious allegories but mythological scenes. Icarus and Daedalus on their ill-fated sun voyage, Leda and the seductive swan, the Minotaur in his labyrinth.
“Welcome to the Gaspard shrine to antiquity,” Theo said with some rancor, as if he resented his home.
“It’s astonishing. This house must have so many stories.”
“And my grandfather tried to collect them all. In fact he died searching for more.”
“Was he an artist?”
“No, a banker, but one of the few with a soul.”
“Theo?” A woman called out in a resounding voice. “It’s drafty in the hall. Do come in. I’m just making drinks.”
“Right there,” he said. Then he put his hand on Jac’s arm, holding her back for a moment. “I told them you were an old friend. I didn’t say anything yet about what you do for a living or that you’re going to help me search for a Druid ruin.”
There was no time for her to ask any questions. But she wondered why he’d kept her purpose here a secret.
As Jac and Theo walked into the great room, the white-haired woman seated at the harp ceased her playing. The final notes hung in the air. The reverb lingered. Only when they dissipated did she lift her head, rise from the small delicate gilt chair and walk toward her guests.
“Hello, you must be Jac L’Etoile,” she said, extending her hand. Her voice was reedy and her hand was thin and very small. The veins showed through her papery skin like a map of her life. Only about five feet tall, she walked with a slight limp. Her deep-set blue eyes matched her elfin features.
“This is my aunt Eva,” Theo said, introducing her.
“Welcome,” Eva said. “And this is my sister, Minerva.” She gestured toward the bar in the far corner of the room. Jac was surprised to see the woman from the ferry, holding a pitcher of what appeared to be martinis.
“Well, hello!” Minerva said. “I never asked your name, did I? But I should have guessed. How many young women would be coming to the island off-season?” She nodded toward the pitcher. “Now it’s my turn to offer you refreshments. Would you like a martini?”
“Yes, that sounds wonderful,” Jac said.
Minerva gave her a glass with a delicate stem and then proceeded to pour.
When everyone’s glass was filled, Minerva raised hers in a toast. “Welcome to Wells in Wood.”
The drink was iced perfectly and just dry enough. Jac enjoyed its first bite as she took in more of her surroundings.
Three of the walls were covered with a mélange of art. Drawings and paintings crammed side by side. No one piece was given more attention than the others, but when you studied them, you realized how really good they were. A small fortune hung on the walls, Jac thought. The fourth wall was all glass and faced the sea. Jac walked over and looked out. She felt as if she were hanging over the ocean and if she opened the windows she could dive down to the water. The sensation turned from fascination to fear almost instantly, and she stepped back quickly, retreating from the temptation.
Minerva was there instantly as if she’d sensed something. She took Jac by the arm and brought her back into the center of the room. “Come sit down,” Minerva said, gesturing to the seating area where two sea-green velvet couches faced each other. Jac settled into the soft cushions and realized that the room seemed to be arranged in sections.
In one corner a grand piano sat next to the harp. In another was an easel, a drafting table and a taboret overflowing with art supplies. In the third corner a loom was set up in front of shelves filled with a rainbow of colored yarns. The weaver was spinning a beautiful sea-blue cloth that shimmered in the lamplight. And in this corner, beside the couches, end tables were piled high with books, needlepoint projects and sketch pads.
“What a wonderful room,” Jac said.
“We spend most of our time here,” Eva answered. “The house is so very big, and since there were just the two of us here, we shut off quite a bit of it. Even with Theo here it’s still cavernous.”
“Can I look at the loom?” Jac had never seen one in person and was drawn to it.
“Of course, let me show you.” Eva got up and together they walked over.
“Are you the weaver?”
“Yes.” Eva nodded.
Jac wasn’t surprised. The harp and the loom seemed like extensions of each other.
“She’s very modest,” Minerva said. “My sister is well known in Jersey for her fabrics and is considered one of the island’s finest artists. She’s had shows in London.”
“I’m not surprised,” Jac said. She was mesmerized by how the threads wove in and out of each other. “This is so beautiful. Like you’ve turned the sea into fabric.”
“Thank you.” Eva beamed. “It’s a privilege to be able to make beautiful things.” Her eyes clouded a bit, her smile faded. “We need more of them. We can never have enough of them.”
Jac was disturbed by the dainty woman’s sudden melancholy. It had descended so quickly. “The house is lovely too. As are the grounds,” Jac said. “I can feel the past here . . . it’s very evocative.” And sad, she wanted to say but left out in deference to Eva.
But it was sad, she thought. If you looked for it you could see the sadness everywhere. In the cobalt color of the weave. In the worn navy rugs and pale robin’s-egg walls. The house was tinged with blue. It seeped through the stained-glass pieces and threw shadows on the floor. It was as if the house were in mourning. Without knowing it consciously, Jac had been aware of it since she walked in. Heard it in the harp music.
“Yes, there’s so much past here with us,” Minerva said. “These grounds have been inhabited for centuries. The monastery is so old. Many souls have passed through these rooms, and so many of their ghosts live here with us still. We can’t seem to clear them out.” She laughed.
Minerva had mentioned ghosts. Theo had mentioned them too.
Eva was quick to qualify her sister’s comment. “She didn’t mean literal ghosts, of course. Not real ghosts.” Eva was talking quickly as if she were sweeping away her sister’s comments. “We don’t have ghosts other than the figurative historical ones. You can’t take two steps or look in any corner of this house without bumping into someone’s past or their passion. Their portraits. Objects d’art. Their books. Their furniture. Everyone in the Gaspard family has an antipathy to throwing anything away.”
• • •
The dinner table was set with delicate Limoges plates decorated with a gilt, green leaf and violet pattern and heavy silverware Jac was certain was at least a hundred years old.
Eva acted as hostess and fussed over everything; the meal was served by a young woman with red hair named Claire, who wore a fresh white shirt and black slacks. This was the woman Theo had mentioned in his invitation to dinner.
The roast chicken was crispy, the potatoes buttery and the tomato, zucchini and garlic stew was piquant and sweet at the same time. The fine crystal glasses were kept filled with the robust burgundy. Chopin’s nocturnes played in the background.
On the wall facing Jac a mural depicted a bacchanalian Greek scene of a feast in the fields of Elysium. She recognized Hermes, Aphrodite, Athena and Apollo. The artist had rendered them in an aesthetic Pre-Raphaelite style and they were all a bit too tall and too beautiful with slightly removed and haunted expressions. But she was drawn to them.
“The murals are beautiful,” Jac said.
“We have a long history of artists in the family. My grandmother painted those,” Theo said.
“Before she went mad,” Eva said. “She was beautiful. And brilliant. But batty.”
Minerva shot her sister a reproachful glance. Jac guessed that as a therapist she didn’t appreciate the unprofessional idiom.
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” Eva defended herself.
“She had an associative personality disorder,” Minerva said. “You know that.”
“She was crazy,” Eva countered. “And she was
hardly the only one. Our family has had our share of disturbed relatives.”
“I’m not arguing that point. Just the choice of the word batty,” Minerva said.
Eva bristled. “Ever the academic.”
“The interesting thing about families,” Minerva said to Jac, “is how ingrained our childhood roles are. My sister and I are still really only eleven and thirteen. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“I do, a brother. Robbie’s two years younger than me. And we do that too. Argue about the same things in the same way we did when we were kids.”
Eva sighed. “It can be tiresome when you’ve been at it as long as we have.”
“So you and Theo are old friends,” Minerva said, obviously changing the subject. “How long have you known each other?” she asked Jac.
Unsure what she should or shouldn’t reveal, Jac looked over at Theo for a second, searching his face for a clue about what was okay to say and what wasn’t. But she couldn’t glean anything.
“We met the summer I was fourteen.”
“In Switzerland?” Minerva asked.
Jac understood the woman was being cautious by only saying Switzerland. If Jac hadn’t been at the clinic, Minerva wouldn’t have revealed anything about her nephew’s past. If she had, then she’d know what Minerva was referring to.
“Yes, at Blixer Rath.”
Eva leaned forward in her chair, an expression of concern on her face.
Jac wasn’t sure if it was compassion or worry that another “batty” soul was at her dinner table.
“Were you there long?” Eva asked.
“A little over a year.”
“We don’t need to talk about Switzerland,” Theo interrupted. “It’s long ago and far away.” His voice was strained. “Jac, why don’t you tell my aunts about what you do. I’m sure they’ll find it fascinating.”
Why didn’t Theo want her to discuss the clinic? She’d have to ask him later. Now she told them about Mythfinders.
“So that’s the work that’s brought you here?” Minerva asked once Jac had finished.
“Yes. If there is any actual proof of the Druids, anything, it would be quite a find. There’s so little we know about them that we can be sure of.” Jac wondered if Theo was going to step in now and explain more.
But it was Eva who spoke: “After dinner we’ll have to take you on a tour of the house. We have a lot of artwork here to interest a mythologist. We have all the great legends covered from ancient Egyptian, to Greek, Roman and Celt.”
“Our grandfather believed he was reincarnated from the Celts,” Minerva said.
Jac noticed Eva shrink back in her chair a bit. “Another example of our family’s peculiarities.”
“Reincarnation?” Jac asked.
“The family has been involved for decades. One of my ancestors was a major figure in the spiritualist movement in England,” Theo said. “Pierre Gaspard, the man who built this house. Didn’t you know that?”
“Why would I?”
“He was involved with what was at the time called the Phoenix Club, as was his son later on. I assumed Malachai Samuels would have told you. The Phoenix Club is the forerunner of the Phoenix Foundation.”
“I know that, but not that your family was involved with it,” Jac said.
“Malachai’s well aware of it. We talked about it at length when I was at Blixer. In fact that’s how I got there. Other families have connections to Oxford, we had connections to a mental clinic.”
“And to Oxford too,” Minerva said, then turned to Jac. “My ex-husband taught Malachai Samuels when he was a student there.”
Jac was confused. Why hadn’t Malachai mentioned anything about Theo’s family connections? He often talked about the cabal of men and women who’d started the Phoenix Club in the mid-1800s. Why leave out the fact there was a Gaspard in the mix?
“In fact most of our family has remained fascinated by reincarnation,” Minerva was saying. “My grandfather used to talk to me about it when I was a little girl. It’s what led me to Carl Jung and the psychology of the collective unconscious.”
“Not all of us are so fascinated with the past,” Eva said. “I prefer dwelling in the present.”
Jac was half listening while she tried to put all this information in context. While she was at Blixer, Jac hadn’t known Malachai was a reincarnationist. It was only later that her grandmother had told her. In fact it was why Grand-mère had lobbied for Jac to go to Blixer. None of the conventional treatments had helped stop Jac’s hallucinations. If there was any chance her granddaughter’s problems were related to a life before this one, Grand-mère was willing to give it a try.
Clearly in Theo’s case there had been no leap of faith in sending him to the unconventional clinic. Malachai was well known to the Gaspard family. Minerva’s husband had taught Malachai at Oxford.
So why hadn’t Malachai said something before she left? Why had he kept this family’s history and interests a secret?
Eleven
SEPTEMBER 15, 1855
JERSEY, CHANNEL ISLANDS, GREAT BRITAIN
As soon as dawn broke the next morning, dozens of men joined in the hunt for Lilly, the fishmonger’s missing child. There were no able-bodied men in St. Helier who didn’t come out to walk the beaches and forests, search in the caves and ruins. The plentiful rock temples and burial grounds on the island were old and many had crumbled in on themselves, creating perfect hiding places for a child. Or a child’s body.
The effort was made all the more difficult by a steady rain that started just as we set off and didn’t abate all morning. It cast a spell of gloom that wasn’t needed. We were already worried that the child had fallen off a cliff and been drowned. With so many rock shelves and such a voracious sea it was more likely than any other scenario. But no one wanted to give up hope and so we kept searching—fathers, sons and brothers—all secretly sharing a fear of dreaded discovery.
Trent and I were joined by six others who combed the shore, traipsing in and out of caves, exploring ancient rock formations and looking for somewhere she might have gotten trapped. Each time a large wave crashed we watched the beach to see what was deposited on the sand. None of us wanted to be the one to find her—hair matted with seaweed, cheeks scratched by sand.
Of all of us, I think I was most terrified by the idea of such a sight, for it would be the manifestation of the image I had been seeing in my mind for a decade of my drowned Didine.
“What would have made the child leave her bed?” one man asked another. “A barking dog should have scared her, not enticed her.”
It was a logical question, but I could picture a likely scenario. I saw the child going to bed in the room she shared with her sisters. Saw her close her eyes. Dark eyelashes a shadow on rosy skin. Saw the pale blue vein in her neck. Saw her little neck loll as she relaxed into the bedding. Watched the rise and fall of her chest slow. Heard her deep breaths. And then . . .
I saw the dog at the window. A dog with liquid topaz eyes that appeared almost human. A black creature, larger than most dogs, with a coat that gleamed in the moonlight. He probably looked hungry.
Children love animals. Lilly had grown up with dogs. This one’s barking could have concerned her. Why would she have been scared? There was a dog in her window with limpid eyes who looked like he was starving.
The tide was low and Trent suggested we walk out to Elizabeth Castle and search the ruin and its environs. While it was unlikely she was there, no area could be ignored. If she had been abducted, her captor could have taken her to the castle on a boat. If she was on her own and following the dog, she could have walked out across the sand bar last night when the tide was low and spent the night like us, camping out, sleeping, then waking and wandering around the castle. It was a favorite playground for island children. Exactly the kind of fairy-tale structure that excites their imagination. She might not even realize the havoc she was causing.
I’d meant to visit the cavernous ruin since I
arrived in Jersey. Abandoned and unused for centuries, it was a tourist destination and nothing else. Finally seeing it, I was surprised by how truly desolate it was.
Four of us walked through the great carcass of a building that morning. To this day I’ve never discussed what occurred at the end of that visit, for I cannot explain it. After I escaped from the castle—and yes, I use the word knowingly—and stood gulping in the fresh sea air, I decided it would be prudent not to speak of it lest people think I had gone mad. Perhaps I should have. Perhaps I might have avoided some of what came to pass.
As soon as we walked through that first stone archway, the damp took hold of me like a vise. Gripping me and wrapping around me. In Jersey the humidity permeates everything, but this was concentrated. As if the castle’s rocks had sucked up years of moisture and it were all leaking out now.
The fortifications were a meter thick and cut with long narrow slots that let in light and ventilated the rooms. Outside the sun intermittently broke through the clouds, and as we crossed the floors we cast long shadows. Some of the walls were partially covered with the tattered remnants of tapestries. Once they must have been beautiful, but they were now so threadbare they looked as if you could blow them away with one good breath. I could see ghostly bodies visible in the weavings. Faces, arms and legs, partially eaten away by the elements and moths. Like decomposing corpses, I thought, as if I needed another metaphor for what happens in the grave.
The only words we spoke as we ventured deeper into the shadows of the citadel were those we used to call out to Lilly. Her name echoed as we explored the wreckage.
Some of the roof was intact, other sections had rotted out. The furniture was in a pitiful state of decay. Wood that must have once gleamed was now worm-eaten and destroyed by the damp. The giant dining table was covered in dust. Its chairs overturned, their guts hanging out, perfect nests for mice. The drawers were missing from a large breakfront, the gaping holes black and deep.
Nature had taken over in a way that I wasn’t used to. In Paris or Naples or other important cities, the paucity of space can’t allow for large structures to languish and rot. Needs require they be rehabilitated, or if it they are beyond help, torn down and something new put up in their place.
