The curse of Kalaan (27 page)

But it wasn’t only the clement weather that motivated their little outing. It was also because they could no longer stand the Duchess Delatour’s screams of agony. The ancient aristocrat took to her bed shortly after the dinner and ever since, her screams traveled through the walls, echoing from room to room and floor to floor.

At first Amélie was distraught by the patient’s condition, but the village doctor assured her it was all just an act.

“I wanted to give her some relief from the pain,” he said stiffly, “but Her Grace did not wish to be treated by me. She asked for
Monsieur
Borgas!”

“But he’s at sea since this morning, with her grandson. They’ve gone fishing for the day!” Amélie exclaimed, raising her voice to cover yet another scream.

“In that case, we will have to await their return to see the end of the horrible shrieking. I did succeed in giving her a sedative. It was colorless and tasteless, so I dissolved it in water. But I could do nothing more, short of, knocking her senseless. I wish you strength Madame,” he added before leaving as quickly as he could.

“Did he really suggest knocking her senseless?” Isabelle asked before breaking into laughter.

“Yes! Those were his exact words!”

“Would you like me to take care of that for you, Auntie?” Catherine offered. Her eyes sparkling with humor turned back to Virginie who seemed miles away, lost in her thoughts.

However, when Isabelle suddenly started shouting and waving her arm in another direction, the young woman was shaken from her reverie.

“Yoo-hoo! Monsieur Salaamm!”

“Isabelle!”Amélie tried to hush her daughter. “That is not acceptable behavior for a young lady! Please, show some dignity!”

In response, Isabelle simply pinched her lips and shrugged her shoulders, without turning away from the Tuareg and Jaouen who were some distance away, in the broken circle. Salam must have heard her shout. Who on the isle was deaf enough not to have heard her calling Salam? And yet, he did not show any reaction.

“But...” Isabelle grumbled, perplexed. “Why is he snubbing me?”

“Because he’s a gentleman and he has proper manners.” Catherine replied.

“Hmph…” Isabelle sounded irritated. “Did he have proper manners when he left the breakfast table before we’d finished eating, without even excusing himself to ma… I mean to my mother?”

“Perhaps he was ill as well?” Virginie’s soft voice joined in the conversation for the first time since they’d left the castle. She was petting the husky who’d come over to greet her before running up to Catherine.

“He seems to be well enough right now!” Isabelle riposted indignantly before turning back to her walk next to Virginie. Amélie and Catherine were several feet ahead, speaking in hushed voices.

“Look at the two of them acting like conspirators.” Isabelle observed to her friend. Virginie looked up for a moment as if to confirm what her friend said, then went back to looking at her feet.

“You seem preoccupied Ginny, my dear. Do you wish to discuss whatever is worrying you?”

“No!” Virginie exclaimed, somewhat too energetically. Then she smiled and continued in a softer tone, “Anyway, ‘tis your fault Salam left the table early this morning.”

She preferred to change the subject than to try to explain the whirlwind of thoughts in her mind. Isabelle raised her chin in mock surprise and sniffed.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Izzy!” Virginie said exclaimed, caught up in her friend’s good mood, and pinching her teasingly on the arm. “You know he’s interested in you.”

“Who? Salam?”

“He can’t keep his eyes off of you. He follows your every gesture and always tries to sit next to you.”

“That’s what you say; but whenever I turn my attention to him, his is always somewhere else.”

Virginie giggled.

“That’s so you won’t notice him!”

“I know that, Ginny, I do.” Isabelle confessed blushing. “That’s why I blandished
[65]
the young priest to be.”

“I thought as much. But you must admit you went a little too far. You didn’t have lean over so far, right under his nose. The poor man had no choice but to look at your low neckline. I thought Salam was going to skin him alive!”

“Really?” Isabelle’s eyes opened wide in surprise. She was so thrilled she could hardly keep still.

“Oh, yes!” Virginie assured her, laughing. Then, as Amélie and Catherine looked back at them intrigued, she put her finger to her lips. “Shh, Charles-Louis was really quite shaken; the poor man. He didn’t want to go fishing with Darius after that.”

“Let’s not speak of that man, Ginny, my dear. I do not care much for him and I’m very grateful that Kalaan could organize a fishing expedition for the seminarian and him. We’re rid of them until this evening.”

On hearing Kalaan’s name, Virginie withdrew to her silence, while Isabelle continued to turn her head in the direction where she’d seen Salam and the druid, whose silhouettes were slowly disappearing behind the standing stones of the broken circle.

Virginie was worried about the man she loved spending time with her father’s assassin. She knew that Kalaan was surrounded by his crew, and had nothing to fear from Darius, but what worried her was that he might actually do what he threatened and put Darius in a case to send him to the ends of the earth… or the bottom of the sea.

She did not want Kalaan to become a murderer because he could be caught and his life would end on the guillotine.

Virginie tried to think of something else, but all that came to her mind were memories of her first night of love and how she’d just bolted to her room when Kalaan brought her back to the castle.

She could have given herself to him again and again, until sunrise, and even until the end of time. But when he stopped her, pulling back from her advances, when she wanted him to make love to her again, and he’d behaved like a gentleman, something broke inside her.

She wasn’t in love with the gentleman, but with the buccaneer, the pirate who followed no rules, and cared not about whether something was good or bad, but only about justice. She loved the man who wouldn’t feel he owed her something because he’d taken her virginity and never gave in to social conventions and wouldn’t feel he had to marry her because of what had happened between them last night.

Virginie wanted him to love her, and to come to her only because he loved her, not to pay for something he thought was an error. Yes, he’d said all the right words, the tender, loving words that made her heart beat quicken.
“We cannot pretend that nothing has happened between us. Ma kariadez, we have made love and it was not simply a trifle for me.”
But he did not say he loved her!

She was annoyed with herself for being such a ninny! People hardly ever marry for love! Such a dreamer she was.

“Why are you grumbling to yourself?” Isabelle asked, bringing her back to the present.

“What does
Ma kariadez
mean?”

Isabelle looked at her with surprise before replying, “’Tis a Breton expression and it means ‘my cherished one’. Where did you hear that?”

“Oh? Hmm… I overheard a couple in the village, I think. Or maybe it was on the levee. I can’t really remember.”

“Is that so?” Isabelle asked innocently with a little smile on her face. She looked strangely at Catherine, who kept turning around to look at them while trying to calm Skedaddle down. The dog was becoming more and more agitated by the minute for no apparent reason.

Virginie, thinking her friend was mistakenly thinking of the feelings she’d confessed for Catherine turned beet-red and exclaimed, “No, no! Catherine isn’t the person who said it!”

“Who else then?”

“I, well, Isabelle… I can’t…”

“Can’t what? Tell me? We’re friends, aren’t we? We have no secret from each either!”
Or almost none
, thought Isabelle, to herself.

“Good heavens!” Virginie’s violent reaction made Isabelle laugh. “I was talking about Ka…”

“Madame! You mustn’t come near!” a man’s voice suddenly shouted out of breath. He was running across the field toward Amélie and Catherine. The poor man’s face was distorted with fear or worry; they couldn’t really tell which.

The husky who was barking loudly bared his teeth and growled before letting out a long howl.

“Be good Skedaddle, quiet!” scolded Catherine, who sensed that something was very wrong.

The ladies stopped walking when Virginie and Isabelle caught up with the other two. They were about three hundred feet from the forest, not too far from the beehives, and were going to take the track that led down to the
Lenn Emrodenn
[66]
.

“Who is it?” Virginie asked Catherine who’d come near her, a worried expression on her face.

“He’s one of the beekeepers, Jean Marrick.”

In the distance, they could see more men standing in a circle around something lying on the grass hidden by the greenery.

“Please, my ladies, do not come any closer,” the beekeeper called out again as he passed a trembling hand through his dark hair and sidestepped the husky, growling at the circle of men further away.

“What’s happened, Marrick?” Catherine asked in a demanding tone as she walked towards him.

“You… you’re…you’re...” he stammered, staring at the young woman.

“Yes,” she said, taking the beekeeper aside, putting a safe distance between them and the ladies, “Your cousin,
La Gouelle,
told you everything when he was drunk again, am I right?” Her tone was harsh.

“
Ya
,” He admitted, still not believing his eyes. “I didn’t want to believe him, but now…”

“You will be quiet about this and keep the secret!”

“I’ll be silent as the grave!”

“Come with me!” Catherine ordered as she headed towards the group, and signaling her fearless sister not to follow.

Skedaddle ran on ahead and stood stock still near the men, growling. The closer Kalaan got to the men, the tenser he could feel Marrick getting. Something told him that he would not like what he was about to see, but he was far from imagining the shock he would feel on discovering the macabre scene.

“Mademoiselle, you really shouldn’t be here,” said one of the older men standing there, nervously playing with his hat.

“It’s all right,” the beekeeper explained. “She’s the pirate. She can take it.”

Kalaan made a face, when he heard the nickname they’d given him, but also because of what Marrick said. Take it? Really? When he saw what the men were standing around, he felt sick to his stomach and wanted to throw up, but gritted his teeth instead and managed to control it. There, before his eyes, was the corpse of a sheep, or what had once been one. The poor animal had been horribly mutilated and his wool stained by coagulated blood, which proved that the crime had been committed quite some time earlier.

However, what struck Kalaan the most was the manner in which the animal had been slaughtered. His throat had been slit and he’d been stabbed, eviscerated and dismembered. Only a monster would do this sort of thing and one name jumped immediately to mind, Darius!

Who else could have done something like this? Who, other than him could have murdered Virginie’s father? Who else could have killed the detective and this sheep in the same manner?

“Burn it! And not a word to the ladies,” he ordered the men who nodded. One turned quickly and ran to the bushes to throw up.

“
Ya
! At your orders cap.. uh... Mademoiselle pirate” Marrick affirmed.

“Catherine, not pirate, nor buccaneer!” Kalaan corrected before returning to the ladies who were waiting to learn what the commotion was about. He called Skedaddle to follow him; he was making the beekeepers nervous with his wolf-like behavior.

“You know who did this too, don’t you?” Kalaan asked the husky, who whined as if to say yes and we will get him! Skedaddle barked once and then trotted at his new master’s side.

“What’s happening?” Amélie anxiously asked.

“Nothing of importance.” Kalaan lied, avoiding everyone’s eyes. “A sheep came to die near the forest. The men didn’t want us to be shocked discovering his carcass.”

“Oh…!” gasped Amélie looking back at the group who was setting fire to the branches they’d placed around the sheep. “I would like to return to the castle, if you don’t mind, young ladies.”

“Yes, of course mother.” Isabelle followed Amélie back towards the path along the stone walls.

As for Virginie, she was white as a sheet and looked in horror at Kalaan’s feet. He looked down and swore under his breath when he saw his boots and the hem of his dress stained with blood. He shouldn’t have gotten so close to the sheep. Now Virginie was going to imagine all sorts of horrible things and she wouldn’t be wrong.

“Virginie!” Kalaan called out to her and took her hand to pull her close.

“No!” she cried out, slowly backing away. She pulled her hand from his and looked at it, disturbed. She then raised her face to his. “Your touch… you make me think of... I feel…! Oh, Lord! I’m losing my mind…and all this blood!”

Virginie started running back to the castle as if all the demons in the world were after her and Kalaan took off after her, calling her name. If he had been a man, he could have caught up with her in no time, but in Catherine’s skin and clothes, it was impossible! The volume and length of her dress hindered the movement of her legs and her high-heeled boots prevented her from running without twisting an ankle.

The husky ran ahead so he commanded the dog to stop the young woman, but rather than follow her, Skedaddle turned off onto a track that led straight to the village.

“Skedaddle, come here!” Kalaan shouted, but he was wasting his breath.

“Catherine!” his mother called out to him as he reached her and Isabelle.

They both stopped in their tracks, highly disconcerted by the sight of an extremely upset Virginie racing past them as if she hadn’t seen them.

“What happened? Did you tell her everything?” Isabelle asked, pale with worry.

“No, but she saw the blood on my dress and shoes, and when I took her hand something incredible happened.”

“What blood?” Amélie asked, as her trembling hands went straight to her heart in horror.
Oh! What a blunder!
Kalaan admonished himself for letting that out.

“The sheep, mother. I will explain everything later, but for now the two of you should return to the castle. I must find Virginie as quickly as possible.”

“Come, mother.” Isabelle took Amélie, who was very distressed, by the arm and led her back home.

Kalaan entered the castle by the French windows and went through the sitting room, into the hall and up the stairs to Virginie’s room, but she wasn’t there. He searched the building from top to bottom, and asked all the servants if they had seen the young marchioness, but the answer was always negative. So, he left and went back towards the longhouse hoping she’d thought to find him back there, him, Kalaan as the man he wouldn’t be for another hour or so.

On the way, just as he passed an old, condemned well, he heard Clovis call out to him. And the butler’s words petrified him.

“
Monsieur
? My lord? Is that you?”

Clovis was standing behind Kalaan who closed his eyes and breathed deeply to calm down before turning to face the old butler’s sharp eyes.

“Yes, it is indeed you, in the appearance of a woman.” Clovis murmured.

“You’re imagining things my friend!” Kalaan tried to make light of the situation, by exaggerating his falsetto voice and batting his eyelashes.

“Your secret is safe with me,
Monsieur
. I am now and always have been on your side, as I was with your father before you. You speak and act in the same manner as he does, because you are he. You are Kalaan Phoebus, Count of Croz.”