The Lost Castle

by Kristy Cambron

  “And you have no idea how dangerous that something might end up to be. My advice is to take solace in what you’re doing for the people here in London, by rebuilding the library at the RES. No one would dare ask for more than that, not after what you’ve already been through. Your building took a direct hit, Vi. You took it—from a two-ton explosive bomb that landed clean on the lot of you. Haven’t you been through enough?”

  “What I’ve been through? It is nothing,” she said, gritting her teeth and meaning it.

  Vi clamped hold of his forearm, begging him to meet her gaze, to look back in her eyes and feel her pain.

  “Do you hear me? Nothing. Carole will never walk again because of what happened at the RES that night. And the young man? The waiter who was burned alive in that dining hall? I shall never forget his cries. Not as long as I live. They . . . haunt . . . me. So please do not tell me that a cut on the hand and a nice, safe job reshelving books means I’ve done my duty for king and country. Don’t you dare overlook what is burning right before our eyes because you’re scared. This is my life, and I must be able to choose how the story is going to play out.”

  He wavered, his eyes searching her face. She prayed they met stone.

  Vi needed him to see her resolve. And more than anything, she needed his will to ease, just enough to give her the name of the man who’d approached her at Cambridge that one sunny afternoon more than a year before.

  The man in the trench coat and Bogart hat had approached her on a street corner, given her his card, and told Vi that he was an acquaintance of Andrew’s. He’d asked her to telephone him, that he’d seen her work and might have a job for her in wartime service. But she’d thrown it away. The whole idea of a prolonged war had sounded quite far away and too fanciful at the time. Who’d want to talk to a woman studying at Cambridge, especially for what was in her mind? It was laughable.

  Vi had brushed it off at the time, thinking only that it was a unique approach for a gent to ask a lady for a date. But now that one encounter burned in her memory.

  These were not the sidewalks and classrooms of Cambridge any longer. She’d grown up in a year’s time. They all had. They stood in a new place—still the streets and sidewalks of old London, but a world that was burning all around them. Andrew needed to see that she was serious. And if he looked back in her rare violet-gray eyes, she prayed he’d see a determination just as notable.

  “Give me the address.”

  “Vi . . . If you do this, there is no turning back.”

  She swallowed hard, the bitter root of fear being shoved back down to her midsection. “I know that. And I pray that God will never allow me to go back to who I was before—even to those few weeks ago. I must move forward. I don’t care if there’s no risk, all risk, or something in between. I still desire peace and an end to this war. But sometimes, peace must be earned with the sacrifices of those willing to run into the fight, not away from it.”

  He sighed, stared down at the tips of his shoes.

  “Please. Something in me says I have to do this.”

  Always, he’d give in.

  Whether she’d begged him to read to her as a child . . . to go out on just one date with a gal named Mae, her friend who had a crush on him . . . or now, as the little sister who was stubborn enough to stand on a cracked sidewalk and demand he acquiesce just once more—for the most important time in their lives.

  Andrew took a pencil from his pocket, scrawled something on the corner of the magazine cover. “You know Mum and Dad will have my hide if anything happens to you.”

  She held her breath. “I’m well aware of that.”

  He halved the bathing beauty with a rip and held the torn cover just out of her grasp. “And that my wife will likely have me sleep in the Anderson shelter for weeks, regardless of whether these ghastly bombings continue or not.”

  Vi stuffed a laugh. “I’ll apologize in my first letter to Mae, I swear it. Just as soon as I’m settled.”

  “Sixty-Four Baker Street. Ask for a man named Garrick Moran—tell him you’re one of the ‘Baker Street Irregulars,’ and you’ll get a meeting. No promises, mind. That’s the best I can do.” Andrew handed her the scrap, then crushed her in a hug before she could read it. He leaned down, whispering in her ear, “Just come back to us, Vi. Do you hear me? Or I will never forgive either one of us for this.”

  “I will.”

  Tears, the real kind—the ones that meant everything was about to change and she must weather it all with newfound courage—refused to leave them be. She clamped her eyes shut, blocking out the view of the smoldering Alexandra, and a brother not too proud to cry over it all.

  “I promise. I’ll come home.”

  APRIL 25, 1944

  LES TROIS-MOUTIERS

  LOIRE VALLEY, FRANCE

  As far as underground armies were concerned, Julien’s idea of resistance seemed raggle-taggle at best. He didn’t appear dissuaded by humble means though and ran Vi through a dossier of their condition in each area of the estate house, from upper-floor chambers to the ground-floor halls.

  They passed a library at the bottom of the stairs, the door cracked enough for Vi to peek in. It was curiously void of furniture or nearly any books on its shelves—unlike any library she’d ever seen. It boasted the curious addition of a rather remarkable painting, a woman in full eighteenth-century dress, watching over the room from a tucked-away alcove.

  A dining room stretched out at the end of the hall, and Julien led her in, stopping just inside. An iron chandelier towered overhead; a grand hearth and fireplace, adorned with a filigree fox crest carved into the marble above the mantel, took up one wall; and farmhouse tables with long benches stretched two to a side.

  Vi sighed, looking around the hall, knowing it would fill to brimming with bone-weary vineyard workers and children altered by war, like Criquet, surviving on meager fare, when it should have been a grand hall for celebratory feasting. It matched the rest of the rooms she’d seen in the estate house—the stark contrast of one-time elegance and humbling barrenness existing in the same space.

  “As you can see, we’ve evolved into a makeshift l’auberge.”

  Devoid of many furnishings, the open spaces and high ceiling carried Julien’s voice against the walls with a noticeable echo.

  “We’d call those inns back home. Or public houses. But I believe they were commonly inhabited by highwaymen at one time, and not usually women and children.”

  “Back home in Vercors?” He smiled, testing the effect of an affable nature and the hint of a smile against somber surroundings.

  Vi ignored his cheek. “It’s a relief to be past that cover story. But for now, that’s all I’ll give you.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t discount the people here. Marie keeps things orderly in the kitchen. And we manage to keep everyone fed, which is a minor miracle these days.”

  “If that is true, then I applaud you. But, Julien, I look in rooms like this and I have to wonder what you expect of me. You’ve shown me some of what you have here. A roof over your heads and relative safety, as long as you keep employing the people who supply wine to your enemies. And while I haven’t seen the food larders, I’d assume you boast some semblance of provision because you have a dining space laid out, which is remarkable considering the state of much in France. That’s what I do see, that everything has a purpose here. But what I don’t see is mine.”

  “We’ll get to that. I’ve something in mind for you while you’re with us.” He tilted his head and kept on down the hall, the sound of his shoe sliding every other step. “This way.”

  Julien owned an assured nature, so much that Vi had almost forgotten about the limp until that very moment. She could guess it provided the reason for his absence from the frontlines but was curious that he didn’t speak of it. And he didn’t seem impeded from running the entire enterprise. On the contrary, he was both worker and master, capable more than any two men might have been together.

  It set h
er to wonder for the first time, though, where the rest of the men were.

  Julien stopped, pointing toward a brick arch and open room splayed with sunlight at the end.

  “The kitchen is in the back, down that hall. We’ll go through in a moment. But first—the mudroom and a connected water closet.” He eased into the bath and flipped a switch on the wall to illuminate the space. “Don’t get too excited. It’s communal. But we’re grateful for running water as long as we have it, even if it is ice cold.”

  He pointed to the corner of the room. The light shone upon a window, blackout shade pulled and barred from the inside, and a row of three heavy dead bolts spaced down the length of the portal.

  “And in the mudroom—a back door to the outside and a hall leading to the cellar. Both watched around the clock.”

  “By whom?”

  “We all take a shift.”

  “Does that include the rest of the men?”

  He sighed, a measure of cynicism weighting the exhale on a slight laugh. “You’re looking at most of that list, I’m afraid, if you’re counting men in the house who are over fifteen and under sixty.”

  Julien flipped the light off again and began walking on toward the kitchen. “If we had any others left, they’d last about five minutes here. As it is, even I’m accosted when a new unit comes through Loudun. The Boches see me in the vineyards and think I should be conscripted into one of their factories or sentenced to a starvation death in a Nazi POW camp for being French, able-bodied, and male. I have to show my work papers and explain each time. It’s tiring.” He patted his leg. “Good thing this talks for me. Never thought the leg would be a savior until now.”

  “Because it keeps you from fighting?” Vi nearly cringed from behind him—sorry for how the words sounded the moment they’d left her lips. She’d been curious only.

  Julien slowed to a stop, turning to her beneath a stone archway that opened to the kitchen. If she could judge a face at all, it appeared to pain him that he couldn’t be a part of the fight. And she’d asked a question, unthinking, that chided him for it.

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “No. It’s alright. You’re allowed to ask. I simply meant the leg is a savior in that it’s kept at least one of us here to watch over our family. I take it to heart that God has given me a responsibility here.”

  “You speak of Marie’s husband, your brother, not being here to watch over your family?”

  Julien nodded, his brow fixed in a deep crease, and gave a sideways glance into the kitchen. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “My older brother is gone from here, yes. Six months now. There’s fear he’s dead or withstanding the horrors in a Nazi POW camp. To be honest, I don’t know which fate would be worse. But we owe it to him to see that his child is given a chance in this life, and to protect the people on this land. We’re determined to cling to hope.”

  Vi, too, looked toward the kitchen, though she couldn’t see in fully past the archway.

  The sounds of muffled activity and the conversation of women at work melded with shadows cutting across the sun-drenched floor. Marie must have been in there, and out of respect Julien dropped his voice to save her from hearing the worst presumptions about her husband’s fate.

  “Then that’s why . . .” No wonder Marie had been indignant at their first meeting. Vi’s heart sank. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “How could you? If anyone could change it, we would. This place is a haven, Lady, for the widows of every man, even before they’re lost. This is our resistance—a workhouse of redemption. And the castle ruins out there? It’s our memorial to them. A reminder that to work, to defend the land and cling to hope, is to fight back. Even if it’s through forced labor. If it’s wine we make that is stolen in the end, it is still our job to endure. And we lie in wait until the moment we can rise up. It’s the hope that day is coming that keeps us going.”

  His tribute was moving. Real and steadfast—not like anything she’d expected from a leader as young as he.

  “So wine is both a luxury and a necessity.”

  “Yes. It is everything.” Julien opened a heavy slatted-oak door to an oversized butler’s pantry and spread his arm wide, inviting her in. “And it’s where your job comes in.”

  Vi issued a sidelong glance, doubting.

  “After you,” he offered. “But only if you trust me, of course.”

  She did, somehow, feel a connection to the land and the people already—even to him. There was some kind of unflinching quality to him that stirred her to trust. And so she obeyed. He followed, clicking the door closed behind them, then crossed the room to the back and flipped a wall switch.

  The hum of electric lights illuminated a passageway down a set of cellar stairs. He descended into a common larder with a single lightbulb hanging from the timber ceiling and wooden shelves lining the walls. Save for a few rows of canned goods, unmarked barrels, stacked wine bottles, and crates of root vegetables, the larder stood at near empty, painfully devoid of excess.

  “Let me guess, you’re putting the resident pear-stealer to work down here, to fill the shelves?”

  Julien did smile then, his grin sharp. “Actually, that’s one of my jobs. But while I wouldn’t turn you away if you had designs on replenishing our stock, I thought we’d give you an assignment that might better fit your skills.”

  “And you have an understanding of my skills?”

  He stepped over to a shelf in the corner and, with great effort, tugged it away from the wall.

  Vi yelped at the sound, so unexpected and jarring it was to hear wood scraping against the stone floor by a shelving unit that should have stayed against the wall. But just like that, the false front swung open, revealing another round-top, sturdy oak door. He turned a key in the lock and swung it open, then stepped back, allowing her to peer into the void behind.

  A dark hollow with stone floors and timber ceiling extended far back, with little to make out save for a dim light that glowed from under a door near to the complete blackness at the end. “What is this?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and tipped an eyebrow, satisfied that in whatever he had to show her, she’d most certainly have interest.

  “Why don’t you come back and find out? The team’s been waiting for you.”

  SIXTEEN

  APRIL 20, 1789

  FAUBOURG SAINT-HONORÉ

  PARIS, FRANCE

  Aveline jammed her fingers against the piano keys, frustration sending her part of the duet to a screeching halt.

  She could bear it no longer. Resentment for their purposeless recline in the salon was bound to occur at some point. Days of mindless tune playing and dress fittings for her sister’s impending nuptials had left Aveline’s spirits raw and fingers unable to find even half the notes to keep up with the music’s cadence.

  Another matter plagued her; the gardens were coming back to life after winter, and soon would be in full bloom. She could see them, splashes of color beginning to peek from their buds in arbors outside the salon windows. They turned to violets burning in her memory, with the image of a pauper’s funeral she’d witnessed the spring prior. Soon, reams of violets would burst to life outside the windows and would torture her with remembrance once again.

  “Why do we not pay taxes?” she asked, her voice echoing about the high ceilings.

  Félicité had continued a lilting melody on her harp but looked up, fingers fumbling on the strings, the astonishment outlined on her face marking the question an intrusion of their music tutorial. Her fingers drew silent against the strings.

  “Aveline, now is not the time,” she whispered, shaking her head ever so softly. “Let us return to the gaiety of our practice.”

  “If not now, then when is the proper time?” Aveline shot back.

  “What’s this, petite fille?” Évrard drew his attention away from his book, seemingly alerted by his daughters’ indiscriminate whispering.

  Aveline sat up straig
ht on the piano seat, eyeing him with a softness she hoped would read as virtuousness. Though she still sat in the most demanding pose she owned, summoning the courage to ask about what truly plagued her. “I inquire after our taxes, Papa.”

  “Taxes? What have you to care of such menial things?” He snorted, then slammed his book closed on a laugh.

  “It is curious that we engage in profitable enterprises of goods, yet we do not pay the local douane tariffs on such specialty items that we produce and sell. We own property, which should also be taxed. And as wheat is produced on some of those estate lands and we sell at the Les Halles market, I am curious to know whether we are subject to the octroi tax levied on products entering the city for sale at the fairs and markets. It is all quite complicated, and I thought perhaps you could instruct me on our enterprises.”

  He leaned forward on the parlor settee, the wood creaking with his girth. “This is your Gérard’s influence, Félicité?”

  “Certainly not, Papa. My fiancé would never dishonor you, or bore me, by plaguing our conversation with matters of taxation or politics. I should think that the responsibility of the king and the gentlemen of the assembly, is it not?”

  “Quite right.” He nodded, then turned his attention back to Aveline. “Then what is this, Aveline? Someone has stirred your concern where it should not exist?”

  “No. Not exactly.” She swallowed hard. “What if I died? Would you be required to pay a tax for my death, either to the church or to the benefit of the king?”

  “What if you died? Here, here now . . . These are ill tidings indeed.” He waved her off with a swat and a chuckle rumbling from deep within his satin vest. “You’ve been listening to the gentlemen at dinner. Or lingering at the door to my study again. Someone has been jesting with you, complicating matters with ruinous facts and figures to weigh on your feminine sympathies. I shall inform Gérard and the rest of the gentlemen who visit this house to temper their tongues around you from now on. I fear you, petite fille, are too examining of matters beyond your depth.”