The Ghosts of Kerfol (4 page)

I remembered very well, of course, the young nobleman’s words at table that night, my first night in service at Kerfol.

Quiet. Quiet. You’ve had too much wine,
I wanted to plead into the roar of crickets. On the other hand, I wanted her to speak and tell me everything. I wanted to know what would become of me, of everyone in this doomed house. I wanted fair warning if she meant to turn the master’s wrath upon us all, but it was not my right. So I followed as she walked, holding her skirts like a peasant, as she wore herself out, danced her passion in the tall grass.

It wasn’t until we started back toward the courtyard that I noticed she wore no shoes, that she was tramping through the damp weeds with feet as white as porcelain. I think those bare feet frightened me most of all.

That night I lay alone on my narrow pallet remembering the big featherbed. It was Mama’s pride and joy when we were small —“the reason I married your father,” she would joke before Papa lost his commission and the hunger came. After the hunger, there were no jokes; the featherbed was sold like everything else to stop us starving. I remembered the safety of sun-and-lavender-scented sheets and how the center of the bed sagged. I remembered my leggy sisters all in a tangle and Grand-mère perched at the edge, gruffly singing. I remembered Papa blowing out the candle, the crinkling of his tired eyes as he smiled good night.

Good night, Perrette.

I whispered it into the dark like a prayer.

Stingy of heart and nature, Master still returned with costly gifts from Morlaix or Rennes or Quimper whenever he went away. No silk, gem, or linen was too fine, and though he showered her with favors like the diamond-and-sapphire necklace, none moved her.

Until the little dog.

When Master returned early that winter from a lengthy trip to Bordeaux, he brought from behind his back a velvet box. Never had I seen him so animated, even playful. His harsh features looked almost handsome in the firelight, or at least a shade more youthful — a hint of his nature before it was steeped and thickened in arrogance. He set the box on the hearth, opened the lid, and out sprang a little golden dog.

Milady gasped with pleasure as the creature bounded toward her. “Oh, how beautiful!” She lifted the dog, which propped his front paws on her shoulders to regard his new mistress with round, begging eyes.

After that, she never let him out of her sight, but petted and talked to him as if he were her child — and indeed, the little dog was the nearest thing she had to a child. Or would ever have.

Yves de Cornault was well pleased. A sailor had procured the animal from an East India merchantman, and the breed was much in demand at the French court at the time, so the baron had paid a steep price for it. But the dog made his wife so happy, he boasted, that he would have parted with twice the sum. He let her keep the creature with her always, even adorn it with the sapphire-and-diamond necklace — also, of course, a recent gift from her husband, one she had never much showcased till now — wound twice and tenderly round its throat.

One day as I was tidying her dressing table, Master came to her chamber door. She had fallen asleep in a chair with her bare feet resting on the little dog’s back. I stood as still as I could, feigning invisibility. As if sensing him in the room, Milady woke with a start to find him there, smiling strangely.

“You look like my great-grandmother, Juliane de Cornault,” he said, “who now lies in the chapel with her feet on a little dog.”

This seemed to chill Milady, who pulled her shawl close round her shoulders, but she laughed. “Well, when I am dead you must put me beside her, carved in marble, with my own dog at my feet.”

“Oh, we’ll see.” He laughed, but his black brows furrowed. “The dog is a symbol of loyalty.”

“And do you doubt my right to lie with mine at my feet?”

“When in doubt, I make inquiry. I’m not a young man,” he added, “and people say you lead a lonely life. But you will have your monument if you earn it.”

“And I will be faithful,” she replied, looking down at her hands, “if only to earn the prize of having my little dog at my feet.”

He noticed me then, and I saw fury in his eyes. “Stop your staring, slut, and get about your work.” He raised a hand to strike me, but I ducked and fled to the kitchen, to Maria, who fed me broth and smirked at my childish terror and trembling. “Did your papa never beat you?”

I sobbed, shaking my head, and swiped at a tear.

“Do you not see now . . . he has the right to do much worse? And exercises it. You’ll learn how to walk and where to stand. Where not to stand. The best of us, the wisest, are hidden in plain sight.”

“Like Youen, you mean?”

“I meant no such thing.” Maria eyed me suspiciously. “But I see what’s on your pea brain —”

I laughed through my tears.

“He’ll mock you till the cows come home, Youen, before he’ll spare you a smile.”

“He’s spared them.” I hoped I did not sound proud. “Once or twice. But Maria, he said he comes from a family of poachers. That Sire knows it.”

She shrugged.

“I don’t understand. Why would the baron hire the son of a poacher? One he knew about, I mean.”

Maria dabbed broth off my mouth with her sleeve. Her plump hand smelled of cloves. “What better way to keep an eye on him?”

“But Youen’s father —”

“What would you have his father do? And besides, I wager the old rogue behaves himself now. Sire’s rabbits are safe for once.”

I hung my head.

“You see how it is?” She lifted my chin, and I found the strength to nod.

Thankfully, the master went away again. He always did.

In the baron’s absence, his old aunt, the widow of a fellow nobleman, spent a night at Kerfol. She was a pious dame of great consequence, much respected by Yves de Cornault, so when the widow proposed that Anne visit Sainte-Barbe with her, how could she object? Now the lady’s established favorite — a dubious honor, at best — I went along, too.

It was at Sainte-Barbe that Milady spoke with Hervé de Lanrivain for the second time, at least to my knowing. They had not more than five minutes together under the chestnuts as the rest of the procession filed out of the chapel. Before the others came out, he said, “I pity you,” in a hoarse voice not without tenderness, a voice almost shy for all its bluster. Less angelic than I remembered, he was a princely creature all the same, innocent and arrogant both, lashy and beardless with dark, knowing eyes that had seen far shores yet did not once leave her face. There was no joy in a man like that, yet he was not stern like the baron. Milady, for her part, seemed surprised, perhaps that anyone outside our household knew enough to pity her.

He added, raising a hand with youthful bravado, as if to silence me or anyone else who might object, “Call for me when you need me,” and Milady smiled, just slightly.

I seemed to see her smiling more often after that, usually at the window, or on those rare Sunday carriage rides while Sire was away, and I wondered in my girlish way if she longed to be with Lanrivain. I would, were I Milady, though for myself, I preferred the easy grace of Youen’s nature. He was not bleak and burdened with history, not noble any more than a woodcock or a horse’s muzzle was noble, but more and more he shone in my thoughts the way a spider’s web shines at dawn with dew.

Here began Milady’s restlessness. First she had me root out and rescue her half-forgotten violin. I found it in the attic, twisted in moth-eaten velvet, and unwound the cloth slowly, for it seemed a living thing. When I plucked a dusty string, it shrieked, then snapped, and I shuddered, drawing the fabric tight again.

Milady sent the instrument to Quimper to be cleaned and restrung, and took to playing wild, mournful melodies — when her husband was away, of course — that filled the manor with black unrest.

One night I found her so, dressed in just a sleeveless linen shift, and I winced to see a bruise, purple-yellow and garish on her shoulder. I looked away, ashamed, as if I’d found her naked, and she did not sense me and turn with those large eyes in that too-pale face. She went on playing, swaying slowly in her labor like a snake in darkest India rising from a basket.

One day while Sire was abroad and I went out to lay linen on the lavender beds to dry, I stumbled across Milady and Hervé de Lanrivain in the flower garden. He must have walked in on the avenue, for I’d seen no strange horse in the stables earlier when I delivered Youen one of the miniature tarts Maria was baking for the lady’s tea. (She now let me steal away with the occasional treat. I had been warned, Maria said. Her work was done so long as I understood: at Kerfol, no crime was too small.)

Drawing back among the shrubs, I heard the young noble say that he would depart in the morning for a foreign land. His mission was not without peril and might detain him for months. When he begged for a remembrance, she glanced down shyly and sidled off after her little dog, returning with something held close to her chest. Though she concealed it from unseen eyes like mine, the necklace glinted in the sun like a blade. As he leaned forth to accept it, their two foreheads met, for just an instant, and the glare of gems was muffled.

When Master came home days later, he absently scooped up Milady’s pet from her feet to pat it. His broad hand hovered a moment, almost imperceptibly, over the place where the precious collar had become a fixture. Though he did not speak, his aspect changed, and the animal squirmed and whimpered to be let down.

Setting aside her embroidery, Milady reached out, but her husband withheld the poor creature. No one who hadn’t fearfully studied Sire’s manner would note a rebuff, but I did. Milady did.

“I’m afraid he lost it in the undergrowth of the park.” She did her desperate best to charm, to seem at ease, craning all the while toward the little dog in his arms. “Ask Perrette. We searched high and low.”

I must have winced to hear my name. Or did I nod calmly and carry on stitching like the other women in our fireside circle? Milady had indeed enlisted half the manor to search for an object she herself had “lost,” though I did not, would not, say that she had. Not to anyone. Certainly not to the baron. What’s more, her monstrous lie had bought us the better part of that morning in the sunshine while our chores languished. Youen’s hand had brushed mine as we hunted side by side in the rosemary, and the touch made me shudder and smile all day, constantly. Stupidly.

Sire had no mind for my or any view. He released the dog and watched intently as it trotted away.

His mood at dinner was bland. He talked at length, describing what he had seen and done at Rennes, pausing often to search his wife’s face with cold eyes. He went upstairs early and would not be accompanied or disturbed.

The mood below suffered.

Milady snapped at Cook and nagged Maria pointlessly over household matters she knew nothing about. When our mistress saw that she had strained their patience, she set off pacing the great hall at the front of the house. She ordered all the candles lit, though it was late and there were no guests to entertain. Once the candles blazed, she thought better of it and had them all snuffed out again. She opened doors and closed them again, but thankfully did not flee to the gardens or the forbidden orchard. She stared out at the black night. She stole looks at the stars. She mourned what was to come.

When at last she called for me to dress down her bed, we took the stairs slowly, carefully, like elderly women afraid of slipping or breaking a bone. We did not hurry, but we arrived all the same.

We found it.

The little dog lay dead on her pillow.

She did not scream, my mistress, or complain in the slightest. You might think she had expected it. But all the grace and power I knew her to possess in that slight frame seeped away then. Her shoulders stooped. She crept forth, confused, and we stood united in horror. The animal had been killed with the sapphire-and-diamond choker, the one Sire had given her in front of the entire household, the one I knew she had furtively given to Lanrivain in the hedge garden. The necklace was twisted thrice round the dog’s slender throat.

Milady scooped up the rigid, small form and unraveled the gems, which seemed to burn her fingers. She flung the necklace against the wall and thrust the little dog at me, as if I should know what to do. Waving us away, she lay lightly across the bed. Her shoulders — bruised, I knew, tender under fine fabric — moved with silent sobs.

With Youen, I buried the dog by candlelight behind the chapel. We did not speak. He would not look at me.

Horror had silenced us, and when I tried to tell him what I knew about the necklace, he hissed me quiet. He stepped hard on the dirt over the small grave to tamp it. He made a quick cross with his heel. He left me alone as the sky began to drizzle.

I followed him back. “And where is
justice
?” My naïve words echoed horribly through the stalls, the candlelight making our shadows garish. A gelding down the row answered with an indignant snort. Youen caught my wrist. “There is nothing just in this world, Perrette. In this house — and what more of the world belongs to me? To us?”

Lightly but with his whole body, he steered and pinned me against the inside of the mare’s stall, silencing my lips with his roving fingers, rubbing a scratchy cheek against my cheek as a bear rubs its back against a tree. I clutched the candle for dear life though the holder dropped in the hay. My cap slid down, and our breathing made a rhythm, and though I wished and feared he would, he did not kiss me.

The stamping mare recalled us, and he stood me back with eyes like a forest burning. He turned my shoulders, steering me round heaped manure toward the stable door, and whispered softly into the nape of my neck, “Good night, Perrette.”

Youen sent me forward as a child releases a butterfly, and I slept without dreaming.

When the baron went away, Milady hovered by windows or paced and made a sublime screeching with her violin. Had she heard from Hervé de Lanrivain? we wondered. Kerfol buzzed with gossip day and night. Would Master let his young rival live, knowing what he must know? Had he already killed Lanrivain? Or just deprived him of the necklace? The same necklace that had killed the dog. I’d scanned the floor and peeked under the bed the next morning but found no murderous glow or telltale shimmer. “Who would confront him if he had?” I wondered aloud.