The Lost Castle

by Kristy Cambron

  “England? But who will defend your home if you leave? If there is insurrection in Paris and Liège, it will most certainly revisit the Loire Valley. What’s to become of the castle? And the vineyard? What of all the people here?”

  “My father lays claim to multiple estates, Aveline. This is merely one of them. I thought it was understood. This is a country château. An amiable place for a wedding no doubt, but not a permanent home. The vineyard is nothing but a . . . provincial amusement.”

  “It is not an amusement to the people whose livelihood is rooted in this land.”

  “And we will keep the land—Robert may work it for us, if it pleases him. We could even gift it to him one day, seeing as he has nothing to inherit on his own.”

  “How easily you discard your family.” Aveline felt her heart drop from her chest. “You never intended to set up residence here?”

  “No. And certainly not now that the only suitable residence is in ruin.” His gaze drifted to the castle spires and his jaw hardened, anger bleeding into the lines of his face. “It is a total loss. And a contempt to the king. But the people will pay.”

  “The people here?” Thoughts of hiding her infirmity from him faded, and she leaned in, challenging the cold affectations of his manner. “You mean the laborers in the vineyard? You don’t mean to seek reprisal against them. I do not believe it is their doing.”

  “I will seek justice against anyone I deem responsible.”

  “But what of rebuilding? The castle can be saved. I’ve been inside. Did Robert not tell you? We have been working together to help her rise again. It’s why you find me in the garden at this very moment.” She stepped to the wall, her scarred hand pressing over the stones like a lifeline. “This was your mother’s garden, was it not?”

  “I can’t say I remember her ever stepping outside for a jaunt through the woods to know of a garden or not. But you needn’t worry over such things. I’ve come to escort you away from this depravity, to see you to your new home. Your father and sister are waiting in the carriage at the castle gates. We will take you away from here. And once we are married, you and I needn’t come back to the place again. I will not allow this tragedy to haunt us.”

  Aveline turned her gaze up to the castle spires, the blackened but beautiful turret rising over the trees. Her family was but a few steps away. They were home, weren’t they? Or had the land around her—the ruins and a grove laden with fox, and the arbor rows teeming with the smiles and determination of laborers cultivating the land—become a home too?

  “But I do not feel haunted here.”

  “After the beastliness of that night and now with what is happening in Paris . . .” He shook his head. “We haven’t time to waste. What have you to take with you?”

  Aveline looked around, as if her meager possessions would be counted somewhere among the trees. “I haven’t much. A brush, a vanity stool, and a stack of books at the cottage. But everything else was lost in the fire.” She pressed her hand around the brooch, holding it like a lifeline. “Save for this, of course.”

  His brow edged up. “A brooch? That is of some consequence.”

  “The one you gave to me. The night of our engagement ball?”

  Philippe’s brow turned quizzical.

  Aveline looked to the stone wall, wishing to see if Robert’s eyes would contest that Phillipe had given the brooch that night. But he’d slipped away and the spot lay bare, covered over in earth and underbrush instead of a gentleman’s boots.

  “I know the note of warning was penned by Robert, but I just assumed the brooch was from you. A fox of gold and citrine . . . for the Renard family crest.” She slipped her hand into the depths of her apron pocket, burying the sentiment of such a gift.

  “Possibly. My betrothed would have any number of jewels at her disposal, selected from those of my mother’s family heirlooms. Who brought it to you?”

  “Well . . . it was a lady’s maid.”

  “There you are. She would have been instructed so by your mother.” Philippe reached for her hand—not the one that floated freely at her side, but the scarred one she’d buried in her apron.

  Aveline released the brooch as a deadweight in her pocket and allowed him to grasp her bare skin.

  “I’d have selected a tiara for you, as the future queen of this castle.” He didn’t shudder when he’d taken her hand and pressed scarred fingertips to his lips. “But I promise you’ll never have to wear the brooch here. This chapter will be buried and we can start anew.”

  The light kiss was meant to calm any misgivings she possessed. He’d shown intention with the move, a great generosity that he wouldn’t find her scars a revulsion.

  Philippe hooked her arm around his elbow, leading her back to the road. She turned for a farewell glance at the garden, the thought pricking her heart that the spade, too, was gone. Robert must have taken it from leaning against the garden wall.

  Aveline saw a carriage up ahead, a wheeled prison in which she, too, would be taken away—to till earth in another home.

  TWENTY-SIX

  PRESENT DAY

  RUE DU MARTRAY

  LOUDUN, FRANCE

  “To be in police custody is garde à vue over here, which means they could keep us for twenty-four hours if the owner of the property wanted to press charges for trespassin’.”

  Quinn opened the door for her, letting her swing through in front of him.

  “But they’re letting us go anyway?”

  He nodded, following her out into the sunshine. “Titus must have spoken up for us. Good thing, because the owner doesn’t want to press charges, apparently. So the prosecutor is lettin’ us off the hook with a warnin’. But what say we shake this off and go get breakfast? Maybe regroup on all this. I need some coffee and we can call Marcel over from the vineyard to pick us up at the café.”

  “That’d be heaven. Because I can’t think about anything but a strong cup of coffee at the moment.” Something told Ellie she’d just scored points for honesty and she turned, sending a tentative smile his way. “You?”

  “Praise be. Because I just wasn’t in the mood for French tourism right now.”

  Ellie gazed down the length of the street, a curve that rounded the hill with shops and businesses and a moderate bustle that kept patrons moving all the way down to an ancient stone gate at the end. A mounted plaque stood out along the way, the bronze corners shining in the early morning sun.

  She placed a hand on his elbow. “Quinn, what is this place?”

  “The gate is Porte du Martray. Historical landmark here in Loudun.”

  “I’ve read about it. But what is that—the plaque halfway down the hill? In front of the church? I’ve been looking through the historical records in Loudun, visiting every monument that might mention the castle. I didn’t find a thing. But I never came this far through the gate, so I missed that one.”

  “Ellie . . .” Quinn shook his head and sighed, kicking his shoe against a stone that dared cross his path on the sidewalk. “I must be mad, but let’s go then. Lucky for you the café’s on the corner behind it or I’d have said no.”

  The walk was bright. And Ellie felt a little drumbeat in her chest with each step along the sidewalk. Quinn had, in his own stubborn way, bought into the curiosity of the what and how in the castle’s story. He pretended to bristle of course, with hands buried in his pockets and reticent manner in place. Though if she had to judge, he just might have been a half step ahead of her the entire way.

  They reached it, and Quinn gave a rough translation. The plaque didn’t mention the castle, but Ellie ran her fingertips over the blue-green patina of the one engraving she did recognize: 1944.

  “It says a band of French resistance held off a German attack at the bridge to Loudun. This chapel was used as a hospital during the war, and for many months after the Allies liberated Paris in August 1944.” Quinn tipped his shoulders in a light shrug. “Well, there’s 1944. It’s worth a shot, isn’t it? That’s the year on y
our photo. Maybe they’ll know somethin’ about what happened to the castle. It’s not that far away.”

  Not far away . . . The thought sent fresh prickles of doubt to provoke her. To have been so close a number of times, yet so far away from the truth in the same breath—Ellie wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

  “What do you think? Should we go inside? It could be another dead end.”

  “And you won’t have any peace until you know for sure.” His smile was a gracious one, a sign he wanted to step through the doors maybe as much as she did—if only to make her happy. “That much I do know, Ellie Carver.”

  “I suppose I wouldn’t.”

  “And you didn’t come all this way to France just to get arrested, now, did ya?” He released a quick wink as he reached for the scrolled iron handle on the front door and opened it wide. “Come on then. I’ll see if we can find someone inside to answer your barrage of questions.”

  The chapel’s street-side façade was deceptive; it boasted a nave nearly three stories in height, with long, chair-lined alcoves on either side and a grand central altar set far down at the front. A rose window—impressive for the small provincial town it was—dispelled the color of light piercing through stained glass.

  While Quinn wandered to a tourist counter and began flying through an explanation in his quirky Irish-French accent, Ellie explored the wings at the back, looking over display cases with heirlooms of the chapel’s history: Relics for the Sacrament in silver and gold. Illuminated manuscripts, exquisite in their hand-tipped details and, if one could guess, quite old. There were a number of portraits of chapel patrons and stained-glass windows backdropping the arrangement with fractured color.

  “Quinn!”

  Ellie froze for the seconds it took to process the contents of the case at the end of the row. She turned, saw him trotting in her direction.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “She’s . . .” Ellie pressed her palm to the glass case. “Here.”

  Ellie pointed to photos—dozens of them, hung in neat rows behind plate glass.

  There was a straight razor and leather satchel. A 1940s Mycro brand camera and leather case. Even a rifle, the wood now aged. And there, smack-dab in the center of the display for the French Resistance in World War II, was the photo image of a British lady with ebony hair and a telltale dimple in her left cheek. There was a team huddled in front of a stone wall. A distinguished-looking man with a bow tie. A young girl with long, dark hair. Another photo of the team at the ruins of a castle, the majesty of its façade painted over with a garish V. And another of the group standing in the woods, weapons resting on shoulders or raised above their heads.

  “Quinn, look,” Ellie breathed out, her fingertips drifting from photo to photo, moving along the glass, as if she could reach out and grasp the memories. “It’s Grandma Vi. The dress she’s wearing here matches the photo I have. But the rest . . . I’ve never seen her like this. She’s poised for battle. How could my grandmother have fought in the French Resistance, and I knew nothing about it?”

  “You look so much like her. I wondered.” Quinn eased in beside her, his shoulder brushing against hers. “Well, you did it, Ellie. Look at all this. You found her.”

  “Did I really? She’s in these photos, but did I find her, or more questions? Because I’m no closer to the truth than the first day I came here. She’s a completely different person than the woman I know.”

  “But isn’t that your castle?” He pointed to a photo of a group of fighters posted in front of the Château des Doux-Rêves’ six-story tower.

  Ellie traced a faint V on the glass, following the lines on the photo. “I think it is. Yes.”

  “And that’s your grandmother standin’ in front of it, yeah?”

  “It’s her. There’s no question about it.”

  He sighed. “Then I’m sorry. It looks like we’re going to have to get our coffee to go. You want answers, then we need to go home and talk to the source.”

  Quinn eased his palm over hers, directed Ellie’s index finger to press the glass over the photo’s caption. “Because this one says the commander of the Maquis resistance at Château des Doux-Rêves was this man—by the name of Julien Vivay.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  JUNE 18, 1944

  LES TROIS-MOUTIERS

  LOIRE VALLEY, FRANCE

  The sound of planes flying overhead in the middle of the night couldn’t be drowned out, even from inside the bunker.

  Vi glanced up to the bulb in the corner.

  Dark . . .

  That was good. They had a protocol in place that unless it was an absolute emergency, they’d maintain radio silence and no one was to trip the cellar door. From there on out, the entrance to the bunker was to remain sealed, accessible only by means of the tunnel to the winemaker’s cottage.

  They’d been on edge, buried underground most days since the Allies had invaded the beaches to the north, Pascal and Vi working together to track the Allied armies’ progress through France. But the advance was slow. The battles, bloody. And the transmissions from inside the estate house cellar, discouraging at best.

  They watched the vulnerable bottom floor of the estate house, Julien tasking himself with keeping an eye on the vineyard hills below and sequestering the women and children behind the relative safety of locked doors. Brig had taken to sleeping in the grove, watching her bridge from the vantage point of the cottage. And Vi and Camille took turns in the bunker, listening to the transmissions come in, waiting for the call for Elder to draw the maquisard fighters out of hiding. And if a bomb blast hit them or, God help them, the Boches tried to overtake the house, the fight plan would be set in motion.

  Whoever was in the bunker at the time of attack would defend it at all costs.

  Vi breathed deep, listening through the deafening silence overhead. She checked her wristwatch—nearly midnight. A bomb blast railed somewhere up above and shook the estate house, raining down dust from the plank ceiling.

  The lights flickered and pulsed, the electricity threatening to plunge her into darkness.

  She glanced up.

  Still dark . . .

  A second blast screaming and tearing at the world above her sent Vi to her feet, regardless of whether the bulb came on or not. She’d already dressed in trousers and shirt, with a vest buttoned down the front and a Basque beret to hold her hair out of her eyes. Her oxfords she always kept on, even while she slept. Every day was spent in preparation for battle mode.

  Vi pulled her messenger bag over her head and crisscrossed two bandoliers of bullets across her chest, one resting on each shoulder. She reached for the Sten 9×19mm Julien had given her, and she raised it just as the bulb in the corner flicked on.

  Her breathing quickened and blood thundered through her veins.

  It was a far cry from waiting for a member of the SS to come into the chapel that first day. And she’d only had a board and two rusty nails to aid in her defense then. This time, she’d be ready for them. If the cellar door had been tripped, they’d find Lady, a stalwart maquisard fighter from the house of Vivay, instead of the former linguist named Viola Hart.

  Easing into the corner behind a shelf, Vi raised the submachine gun chest high and trained her eye on the door as more plane engines gutted the sky overhead.

  “Lady!”

  She could breathe again when she heard Julien’s voice carry down the tunnel.

  “Julien?” she called back, waiting for an answer that didn’t come.

  God help me . . .

  She blasted through the door, turning to both sides, expecting him to be there. The tunnel was dim as usual and deserted, but too bright at the end where the shelving unit should have blocked out the light.

  Vi eased out, slow and steady, the strap of her Sten wrapped tight around her flexed arm. “Julien?”

  “Lady! I need you!”

  The moments that followed passed in a blur.

  Vi tore up the stairs to find a hollow mad
e out of the farmhouse kitchen. A small fire ravaged the stone outside, sending smoke in a billow over her head. Sparks flew from a wire laid bare in the broken ceiling, stone and splintered wood tumbling down over itself. She shrieked, ducking under the pulse of electricity, spilling her hair about her cheeks when the beret went flying.

  Gut instinct told her to flee from the fire and smoke, so she fled around the corner, then slammed into a moving wall.

  “Lady.” Julien crushed her in an envelope of his arms. He pulled her back, hands pressing against her cheeks and brushing her hair back so he could look fully in her eyes.

  “Es-tu blessé?” Over and over he asked if she was hurt, pressing her in a kiss and then begging her again to tell him that she was whole.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I’m not hurt. See? I’m fine.”

  He absorbed her words, golden eyes stormy as they checked her limbs over, seeing that she’d escaped from whatever it was, unscathed. Unlike the library, the kitchen and the entire side of the estate house had been ravaged in one fell swoop.

  “What happened?”

  “There’s no time. Just listen to me—Pascal is dead. In the first blast.”

  Shock penetrated skull-deep.

  Vi’s mind kept calculating but numbed her from the inside out regardless. Words wouldn’t come, so she nodded feeble understanding, trying so badly not to want to retaliate with the Sten gun in her hand should she dare see a Nazi uniform.

  “And Marie?” She looked to the shell of the kitchen, sparks still pulsing. “The children?” Her hands shook as she gripped him, fingernails digging into his forearms. “Criquet! Where is she?”

  “They’re fine. In the mudroom. We’ve sustained a hit here, as you can see. And there will be more. So I need you to take the children down to the bunker.” He showed her the key, then pressed it into her vest pocket. “Lock the cellar door from the inside. It’s only plated in oak but it’s metal at the core, so it will hold back any fire. And keep the Sten with you.”