The chain and the handle of the crop bit into Lillian’s hands.
Futile, futile dreams, these. For how could she ever dare lay hands on her stepmother, the woman her father had loved? Besides, she had been taught to heal, not to hurt. This she had done—with one exception.
Again, she threw a look over her shoulder, watched the man limping behind her. His left leg, it seemed, was giving him pain. Lillian wondered whether punishment had been applied to this part of his body or whether the limp was for other reasons.
The path now curved and wound, twisting like young Gérard on the table in front of Camille, his torso covered with fruit stains and chocolate scorches. A split opened in the greenery to reveal the statue of the half-naked lovers whom creepers had sealed together forevermore. Their hands were bare of whips or branding irons, their ankles free of chains and shackles. Sometimes Lillian wondered whether a love like that belonged to bygone ages, just like the statue itself.
Finally, Lillian and the prisoner reached the banks of a still lake, and Lillian followed the track around the slimy green water, where the grass had already been trampled down on earlier visits. What had been created to resemble nature by now had been devoured by nature. The trees stood tall and at places trunk by trunk, branches intertwining. The bushes and hedges had broken from their intended form and were now growing in wild abandon. In summer, when the air was hot enough to flimmer before one’s eyes, the meadows around the lake would be ablaze with grasses and flowers, the deep hum of wild bees the only sound in the new wilderness.
At the other end of the lake, near the hidden garden wall, an imposing formation of rocks rose out of the water to form the mouth of a cave. At its entrance stood two proud horses of stone, nostrils flaring, and two men, on their knees, were offering them bowls of water. The group, Nanette had said, might once have been part of a fountain because the men had fishtails where their legs should be and one of them was holding a large, winding shell on his lap The water would have flowed from the shell, perhaps, swirling around the horses’ feet before dropping over several dark stone steps into the lake. The only way to reach the mouth of the cave was to take the path of the stepping stones that lay scrambled in the water as if thrown there by accident. During heavy rainfalls, the slimy green liquid would rise to cover them completely. Lillian hoped to be spared the rain over the next few days.
She gestured to the man to step to a nearby tree. She wound his chain around the trunk and secured it with the snap link at its loose end. After she took off his gag, she sat down on a fallen log. While she considered which poison was best to use on him, she awaited the call of the thrush.
~*~
That evening, dinner served as another lesson.
Nataraj, who had once lived in India, where the air tasted of spices, was the one chosen to stand behind the mistress’s chair in his golden-brown glory. As the evening ritual demanded, his only garments were the golden breeches and the golden bands winding around his biceps. His hair as dark as night, his eyes coffee-brown, and his fingers swift and clever, he was another of Camille’s favorites. That explained why he was chosen to be the teacher in this.
Lillian sat straight and stiff, ever aware of the prisoner looming at her back. He was similarly adorned as Nataraj, though his hands were still shackled behind him. Camille did not yet consider him suitable to touch. Thus, he was here to watch and to learn.
The first course consisted of mushroom soup, thick and creamy. Spoon after spoon Lillian raised to her mouth. It could have been sour goat milk—it was all the same to her.
The hand-feeding began with the small pastries, filled with fish and herbs, that Gérard brought out next. Nataraj slid to his knees beside his mistress’s chair and made his fingers into plates for her pleasure. After each pastry, he would ensure that no crumbs remained to mar Camille’s perfection. Nibbling and licking, he removed all lingering traces from her chin and lips.
Lillian sat straight and chewed, even though, with the presence of the man behind her, his breath almost searing ne little hairs on her neck, she felt as if she were choking. Through that course and the next, all through the Russian caviar and the Laplander reindeer tongues, Lillian’s back remained erect.
After each course, Nataraj would wash his hands so as not to spoil Camille’s enjoyment of the different foods. She ate the curry rice from his palm and licked the caviar from his fingertips. Sometimes, when her teeth sank into his flesh, he would blink, but his smile never wavered. While she stroked his chest, he offered her the olives from Spain between his lips.
Lillian ate, her face expressionless, her fingers unfeeling.
On a large silver plate, Gérard brought in the last course, fruit and ginger-flavored cream. At the sight, Lillian’s stomach sank. Coldness washed over her—not the numbing cold she so often sought, but the sudden icy flow of despair. For between the juicy pieces of peach and pineapple and the bowls with cream lay one of Camille’s short whips. A whip with metal-adorned straps to draw blood at the first lash, which her stepmother only used to punish. So far, there had been no reason to punish Nataraj.
Camille moved her chair backwards, and, smiling over the rim of her wine-filled glass, she beckoned.
Lillian had to swallow hard, but then, turning her head a little, she said to the prisoner: “Go.” What else could she say? What else could she do, helplessly caught in Camille’s web, just like him, and surrounded by men loyal to her stepmother?
The man walked slowly over, his limp more pronounced than it had been in the garden.
It was enough to make Camille pout. “Has Gratien sold us damaged goods?”
Carefully, Lillian folded her hands in her lap. “As long as the service is good in other quarters…”
She met her stepmothers stare calmly, and after a moment Camille’s trilling laughter filled die room. “How right you are,
chérie
.” She toasted Lillian with her glass. “And now we shall begin to see how good it is.” This time, her smile was directed at the man, who had stopped at her end of the table.
Nataraj got to his feet and, following the silent command of his mistress, took the whip and stepped aside.
Leisurely, Camille’s gaze stroked over the man before her, lingered lovingly on the scorched flesh in the form of a lily, before, with a jerk of her chin, she ordered him to his knees. When he would not obey, out of stubbornness or perhaps because he had not understood, another, sideways jerk of her head made Nataraj shove him down. The first blow of the whip tore at skin still bearing the weals from the night before.
Camille reached out and took a piece of peach, obviously enjoying the feel and taste of the fruit. Only when she had licked the last drops of sticky juice from her lips did she lean forward. “Your hands are in bonds, but you may serve in other ways.”
Nataraj handed her a bowl of cream. Camille swirled her finger in the concoction, then licked it with relish. Next she dipped two fingers in the cream and proceeded to spread it on the pale expanse of her plunging neckline. While a smile of anticipation started to lift her lips, her hand snaked around the prisoner’s neck to draw him near. He would lick it from her.
He resisted, and the whip sounded a second time.
It took ten lashes to make him give up his resistance. By that time, the blood, Lillian saw, was streaming down his back. Regardless, Camille spread her hand over the man’s skin, dug her nails into his ravaged flesh. The smile bloomed on her face as she threw her head back, and Nataraj provided a steady supply of cream.
Soon, the white sweetness stained the top of her dress, traveling lower with each generous spread. It took another touch with the whip to make the man lower his head to her lap. Across the table, Lillian closed her eyes.
Chapter 3
The call came in the middle of the following week, on a cold afternoon when the sky was gray and the clouds hovered low with the promise of more rain. Three times the thrush called out in the long-awaited signal. Yet when Lillian rose from the damp tree trunk, her face was expressionless.
Chained to the other tree, the prisoner stood like a well-trained dog. For his obedience during the past two days or so, he had been spared the gag today.
Lillian turned and shook her head. They would not yet go back to the mansion.
Swiftly, she stepped onto the first stone in the water. The clacking of her shoes on the stones sounded unnaturally loud in the silence of the garden. However, she crossed the path to the mouth of the cave without hesitation. Only when she had climbed up to the statues of the men and their horses did she halt and, taking a deep breath, look back to the man on the banks of the lake. He stood so still that he could have been stone himself.
With a swirl of her coat, Lillian turned to enter the cave. A grotto, Nanette had said it was called. Perhaps the first lord of the mansion had used it for his secret dalliances. If so, his paramour had come from outside the manor.
In the cave, close to the niche with the statues of the horses and the men, but well hidden from unsuspecting view, Lillian felt for the flintbox and the candle. When her light flared up, it revealed the fantastic decorations, mythic beasts in stone springing from the walls and the ceiling. Then the light touched upon the metal door at the back, which might have once been concealed by a tapestry.
Lillian’s heart rose to her throat as her fingers skimmed the cool metal. But then, as its coolness seeped into her, she straightened her shoulders and slid the door’s bolt free.
On the other side, behind the curtain of creepers that had been thinned out weeks ago, stood a bedraggled boy with bare feet. At her sudden appearance he blinked. His eyes surveyed her from head to toe before he nodded briskly, his face suddenly that of a man. “Everything’s ready,” he said in the broad
patois
of the area. He smelled of the sea; perhaps he was a fisher’s son. A smuggler’s son.
“When?”
He raised his brows. “Now.” And he spat, carelessly. As if spitting was a sign of manliness. “Get your things,
madame
.”
“Now?” She had thought she would have time to prepare herself, time to gather a small bundle of her belongings.
“The tide’ll rise in a few hours.” He looked as if he considered spitting again. “We were told that you’d be ready.” All of a sudden, his expression became wary. Perhaps he suspected a trap. This was a risky enough enterprise as it was, defying the mistress of the manor. In the past, nobody had dared help. How Nanette had managed to find somebody willing this time, Lillian did not know.
To slip the net of control…
Her hands itched to snake around her body, to protect herself from the cold within. She had thought she would have a few hours. She would have packed a bundle with her herbs. She would have poisoned the man.
Her head jerked around as she remembered him, chained to the tree. How long would it take him to die out there? Three days? A week? More?
“
Madame
?” The boy sounded impatient now. Of course they needed to be on their way. The sea was not patient either; it would not wait for them.
“You.” Lillian turned around, her decision made even before she realized it. “I will be back. In a few minutes at most. Wait for me.”
Displeasure rumbled in the boy’s chest. “You better hurry.”
Lillian straightened her shoulders and gave him a haughty stare. “You will be paid well for this. Do not forget it.” With that, she swung around and stepped back into the grotto. Carefully, she closed the door behind her so the boy would not use the opportunity to nose around the cave. For if he found the purse with all the jewelry she had collected over the last few weeks, he might disappear like a morning mist.
Lillian felt her heart beating hard and fast against her ribs. How strange that the men and their horses still stood frozen at the entrance of the cave, covered with moss and lichen, when she herself seemed to have finally broken free. Across the lake, the man still stood as well.
Her foot slid and she slithered down onto the first step, her legs shaky, her breath a wheezing sound in her ears. Lillian clenched her fingers into fists until her nails bit into the tender skin of her palms. The pain helped her to concentrate, to make the tremors pass. She called upon the coolness of the water, upon the cold air that surrounded her, and let it soak into her skin and her whole being.
Steadily, she took the remaining steps down to lake level and walked over the stones back to the bank and to the prisoner. Her fingers, when they touched the chain to release the snap lock, were calm—as calm as her voice. “Come with me.”
The chains made it difficult for him to traverse the stepping stones, yet she did not dare loosen them at the moment. A caged animal turned free might well turn against anyone who was near.
The steps up to the cave presented even more of a challenge, but Lillian dragged him on without showing any mercy. There was no time for mercy now. No time at all for mercy at Château du Marais. She gathered the chill that emanated from the stones into herself, a core of ice to hold her upright through the next few hours.
Following the flickering light of the candle, the man’s gaze dashed over the grotto’s carved animals. Lillian stood on tiptoe and felt behind the wings of the gryphon. The purse she withdrew was heavy with jewelry, her own and some of Camille’s. She would need all of it tonight to pay the smugglers for their services. Lillian made it disappear inside her coat. “When we are outside”—she threw a look at him over her shoulder—“be quiet.” And she opened the door.
The boy’s eyes widened slightly when he caught sight of the man. “That was not the bargain,” he spluttered. “’Twas only you—”
“I know.” Ever careful, Lillian clicked the door shut. “He will not come the whole way. Do you wish to discuss this? I thought we had not much time.”
The boy ran his hands through his hair and muttered some vile curses, then finally led them to the place where he had left his cart. Of course it did not compare with Camille’s elegant carriage. It was a farmer’s cart, a smuggler’s cart, and the two ponies looked strong and sturdy. They remained quiet when the boy approached. Smugglers’ animals. A whinny at a wrong time could mean certain death for their owners.