Miramont's Ghost (10 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

W
inds
rushed down from the mountains, filling the canyons, moaning, keening. They whipped the trees and whistled through the eaves. Icy pellets of snow smashed against the windows and the roof. Tree branches scraped against the windows, like fingernails, as if the trees were trying to claw their way inside.

Inside the castle, the silence was heavy. It weighed like stone on the shoulders of everyone there: servants, Lucie, Genevieve, Adrienne. Everyone moved about in hushed seriousness. The comte lay dying. What had started as a small sniffle had worked its way into his lungs. His fever soared. His cough was wrenching. His skin was pale and clammy.

The doctor, who had been to the château every day for a week now, straightened and stood. He took the stethoscope from his ears and turned to Genevieve, a few feet behind him in the dim light. He shook his head.

Genevieve clamped her knuckle between her teeth and fought back tears. The doctor laid his tools in his leather bag and touched the comte gently on his upper arm. The comte grimaced but did not open his eyes.

The doctor swallowed and let his hand rest on the comte’s arm for a moment. Then he turned, took Genevieve’s elbow, and guided her toward the door. “The fluid from the pneumonia is getting worse.” His eyes traveled back to the comte, propped against several pillows. “I don’t imagine it will be long now. You might want to send for the priest.”

Genevieve swallowed. Her eyes filled; her face glistened in the pale gray light from the windows. She brushed at the moisture on her face, and nodded.

“I would stay, if I could,” he whispered. “But Mademoiselle Fro—a young lady in the village is in labor, and I do not think she will have an easy time of it.”

“Yes. Yes, I understand.
Merci, docteur.
”

“I am sorry, madame. He is a wonderful man, your father.” He looked back at the frail old man on the bed. “It is hard to imagine Beaulieu without him in it.” He touched Genevieve’s shoulder and walked away. The door closed behind him with a soft click.

Genevieve stood, trying to breathe, watching her father as he lay there, his chest heaving with the effort of breathing. She turned and opened the door. Lucie and Adrienne sat on stiff chairs in the hallway, facing the doorway. Adrienne had situated her chair so that she might catch a glimpse of her grand-père whenever the door opened.

Genevieve glanced at her and then turned her eyes to Lucie. “Lucie, could you ask Renault to prepare to go to Nice? We will need to send a telegram to Marie and Julien.” She stepped into the hallway, turning her shoulders to block Adrienne, and whispered to the governess, who was now standing. “And send someone else for the priest.” Genevieve bit her lip and turned back to the sickroom.

“Oui, madame.”
Lucie curtsied, her eyes growing dark and clouded. “I’ll be right back, Adrienne. I need to do a few things for your maman.”

Genevieve closed the bedroom door behind her and went to her father’s bedside. The day was so dark and gray; she had kept the bedside lamp burning long past the night. She dipped the washcloth into a pan of water on the table and brushed her father’s brow and his cheeks with the cool cloth.

She sat down in the chair beside his bed and pulled her rosary from her skirt. “Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.” She whispered the words, which threatened to choke her, to make her gag.

The light of the gas lamp flickered, casting amber spirits into the gray gloom. The comte began to cough, his whole body wrenching from the effort, jerking up from the pillows as he tried to expel the fluid in his lungs. Genevieve stood and held a cup beneath his mouth. He spat several times and leaned back.

His eyes were open. She looked into their blue depths, the same blue that shone in her own eyes, and in Adrienne’s. She couldn’t imagine a world without those twin lakes of wisdom and calm, watching over all of them.

“Adrienne . . .” he muttered. “Bring her to me.”

Genevieve helped him lie back against the pillows and nodded. She opened the door and looked at her daughter, sitting stiff and fearful on the chair across the hall. Adrienne tipped her head, caught a glimpse of Grand-père on the bed behind Genevieve. Adrienne’s eyes swept up to her mother’s face.

“He wants to see you, Adrienne,” Genevieve whispered. She was so exhausted she could barely stand.

Adrienne slid off the chair. She turned and placed her rosary on the cushion she’d just vacated. She pressed her lips together and tiptoed through the door to Grand-père’s room.

“Not too close, dear.” Genevieve’s voice was soft. She laid a gentle hand on Adrienne’s back as the girl crept forward.

Adrienne forgot to breathe. She inched forward, petrified at what she might find. She stopped near the foot of the bed. Her hands hung at her sides. She stared at her grand-père. His eyes were closed. He was thin, frail, delicate, and fragile like the finest bone china. She could almost see through his skin, to the bones underneath his face, the bones in his hand, resting lightly on the cover. He reminded her of a delicate white bird, like the dove she had found one morning, after a storm, its slender body broken and smashed against the ground. She shook her head, trying to rid it of the image.

The room was gray, filled with the dimness of the storm outside. The bedclothes looked gray and dingy in the dim light. Grand-père, too, was gray.

She shuffled another step forward, let her hand creep over the covers to find his own. She pressed it softly. The comte opened his eyes and let out a long sigh, as if the sight of her was a tonic, the one thing he’d been waiting for.

“Adrienne,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.
“Ma cherie.”
He began to cough, and pulled his hand away from hers to cover his mouth. It took several moments before he lay back against the pillows, and the coughing quieted. Genevieve stood at the opposite side of the bed, holding his shoulders as he spasmed.

He turned his eyes back to Adrienne, drew in a long, careful breath. “Be careful, my girl. Be careful what you say. Even when you know you are right . . . no matter what it may be . . . be careful.” His hands lay on the cover. “There are some things better left unsaid. Your aunt Marie . . .”

Adrienne swallowed. Her throat burned, as if she had swallowed broken glass. She stood perfectly still.

He reached for her hand, and squeezed it gently. “Promise me? That you will keep what you see to yourself?”

Adrienne nodded. Her voice was soft. “I promise, Grand-père.” Tears slid down her face. She did not want to cry in front of him. But she did not want to move her hand to brush away the moisture, to draw his attention to it. She stood still, her small hand inside his, and nodded again. She met his eyes through the curtain of her tears.

He smiled, and squeezed her hand once more. “That’s my girl,” he whispered.

His eyes closed and he began coughing again. He pulled his hand away, his body strained with the force of the cough. Genevieve held him, held the cup in front of his mouth as he spat and choked, the phlegm spotted with blood.

“You’d better go now, Adrienne.” She motioned toward the door with her head.

Adrienne backed away, her tears warping everything she saw. She stopped at the foot of his bed. Waited. When his cough had subsided, and he lay back again, exhausted, she put her hands on the wooden foot rail at the end of his bed. “Grand-père,” she whispered, leaning over the rail. “I love you.”

He did not open his eyes.

“Adrienne, go. Please.” Genevieve’s voice was sharp.

The door to the bedroom opened, and Père Henri moved inside, Lucie right behind him. Adrienne stared as the priest lit a candle, took out his oil, and made the sign of the cross on the comte’s forehead. The oil caught the light and made a shiny reflection on his skin.

“Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in his love and mercy help you, with the grace of the Holy Spirit.” The words hung in the air, heavy and full. Genevieve stood to one side, her hand pressed to her mouth, her handkerchief wadded inside her palm.

“May all the saints and elect of God, who, on earth, suffered for the sake of Christ, intercede for him.” Père Henri moved slowly around the bed. “So that, when freed from the prison of his body, he may be admitted into the kingdom of heaven.”

Adrienne felt the pressure of Lucie’s hand on her shoulder and looked up. Lucie guided the girl to the hallway.

The words of the priest could still be heard. “Through the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, world without end. Amen.”

Servants lined the hallway, up and down outside the comte’s door. They were coming up the stairs, moving into the hall, quiet and somber. They knelt. They took out their beads. Mimi, the cook who had been with the comte for sixty years, knelt by a chair, her head down, her beads in hand. Her face was shining and wet in the gray light. “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death,” she whispered.

All of the servants were dropping to their knees, whispering the words of the prayers they had been saying their entire lives. Many of them were crying.

Adrienne felt the sting of her own tears. “No,” she cried, trying to see her way between all the kneeling bodies and feet. The words of their prayers pressed against her on all sides. “No!” she said louder. She held her hands to her ears. “No. Stop it!” She shook her head back and forth, pressed hard against her own ears, as if, by stopping their voices, she could make this whole ordeal end, make the comte be well again.

Lucie stopped and knelt in front of the little girl. “Adrienne . . .” Her own eyes filled. “You must . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence. She knelt in front of the little girl, her hands on each of the girl’s arms. Her eyes sought Adrienne’s, pleaded with her.

Adrienne threw her arms around Lucie’s neck. Henriette, kneeling nearby, reached over and put her hand on the child’s back. She rubbed small circles into Adrienne’s dress.

Lucie pulled Adrienne back. She stood and led the girl down the hall to her own bedroom. Adrienne climbed onto her bed, on top of the covers, her face turned toward the gray window. Snow and sleet hit the glass and slid down, just like tears. As if the house itself were crying.

She would do as Grand-père had asked. No matter what she saw in her visions, no matter what voices she heard in her mind—she would never say another thing. She would bite her lip. She would refuse to listen to what the voices told her. She would erase the pictures. She would never again give voice to her knowledge.

She pressed her lips together, and a tear escaped from the corner of her eye and traveled a long, slow path to the pillow, forming a pool of darkness on the linen. “Oh, Grand-père,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me.”

The storm wailed and thrashed against the walls of the castle. The wind sighed, picked up force again, keening and moaning as if it were the mother of a child, lost in the cold and darkness. As Adrienne lay weeping, the comte exhaled for the last time. Adrienne spoke only to his spirit.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Beaulieu, France—1896

A
utumn flamed on the hillsides. The chestnuts, beech, English ivy were all decked out in fiery jewels of carnelian, amber, coral, and amethyst. They decorated the hillsides, like ladies at a ball. The air was filled with their perfume, the sweet scent of decaying leaves. The yellow plums had dropped from the trees, and birds sang as they picked at the remains.

Sixteen-year-old Adrienne knelt at Grand-père’s grave in the cemetery on the hill. Sunlight flickered through the leaves of the oak tree, casting lacy shadows on the graves of Grand-père, his wife, and their infant son. A breeze played with the curls at Adrienne’s face and neck as she knelt to her work.

She had brought a trowel, and toiled at removing the grass that had grown up around his stone. She laid the trowel aside, brushed the hair from her face with the back of her hand, and swept the dried leaves away. She turned and reached for the bouquet she had brought him: crimson mums, yellow birch leaves, bright orange berries from the bittersweet vine. The best of autumn’s color.

Adrienne slumped to one side, moving her knees out from under her. She loosened the tie of the brown velvet cloak around her neck. She stared at his stone. “She’s coming back again, Grand-père,” Adrienne whispered.

Marie had been back a few times in the years since the comte had passed. Julien had come only once. Each time, Adrienne felt her stomach clench and flip. Her throat tightened. Her head pounded. She forced herself to be vigilant, on guard, so wary of visions and voices that she could smell her own sweat.

“I’ve done it, Grand-père. Exactly what you asked. I’ve kept quiet.” Adrienne let her head drop. She toyed with her skirt.

The silence had other consequences, and she herself did not understand the connection. But here she was, sixteen years old, and there were huge pieces of the past nine years that had disappeared from her consciousness completely. It was as if, in her effort to still the voices and visions that tried to come through, she had erased everything—even the memories of those events she had actually lived.

One day melted into the next, a somber pool of brown water. She rarely went anywhere, not even to the village. Her weekly trips to church were horrid, and she dreaded Sundays. She could almost hear the whispers of the townspeople, feel their eyes boring into the back of her head and neck. She couldn’t meet their gazes. She kept her eyes down and her mouth closed. She rarely spoke. She often feigned illness just to avoid the whole ordeal.

Lucie spent most of her time with Emelie and Antoine, the son Genevieve had given birth to after the death of the comte. Adrienne was left to herself: to her books, her paints, her music. She took long walks on the hillside. The loneliness weighed heavily on her. It kept the corners of her mouth down, her gait measured and somber, as if she were an old woman, and not a girl of sixteen. She could not remember the little girl who had run and skipped down the hill with her grand-père, the girl who chased butterflies and dragonflies, and tried to imitate the wrens. This Adrienne did not run, did not skip. She rarely smiled. She rarely spoke.

Adrienne stood and dusted off her skirt. She gathered her tools into a basket and closed the wrought-iron gate behind her. It creaked, and she heard the click as the bolt slid into place. She turned and started back toward the castle. The whole countryside was bathed in gold. The dried yellow grasses were gilded with the softened light of shorter days. Leaves flickered like jewels, bright colors catching the sun. Adrienne topped a hill and started down the incline to the house.

Twelve-year-old Emelie ran through the tall meadow grass at the back of the castle, her hair flashing like metal in the sunlight. Antoine, now a boisterous nine, ran behind her, screaming and laughing as he waved a snake at his sister.

The scene brought back a snippet of memory, a picnic, one or two summers ago. Time seemed so hazy and nebulous to Adrienne. But she could remember sitting on a hillside, under the shade of a chestnut tree. She and Lucie were sitting on a blanket, the remains of their picnic lunch spread at their feet: grapes, apples, bread, a block of cheese. The picnic basket was open, cloth napkins tossed carelessly over the sides.

Antoine and Emelie were standing in the grass, just as they were now. In the memory, though, Antoine was smaller, no more than seven years old. He had found a frog, and he and Emelie were bent over it, studying the creature. Suddenly Emelie screamed, and Antoine started chasing her, frog held out in front of him. Every time Emelie stopped running for a moment, he raised the frog high in the air and made screeching noises.

Adrienne remembered how her spirits had lifted, watching the two of them. Antoine had been terrorizing his sister since the age of two. Most of the time, it was exasperating, but on this particular day Adrienne could tell from the way Emelie screamed and ran and laughed that she was enjoying this caper just as much as he was.

“I wish that could be you, Adrienne,” Lucie had said, sitting quietly on the blanket beside her.

“The one with the frog, or the one being chased?” Adrienne asked.

Lucie smiled. “Laughing, having fun. I haven’t seen you doing that since . . . since you were very young.”

Adrienne’s smile, her momentary joy at the two children playing, evaporated. She felt as if she’d been stabbed in the lung; for a moment, she lost the ability to breathe. She had a vague memory of running after a butterfly, in a field much like this one, Grand-père not far behind her.

Adrienne looked away, to the hills on her left.

“Do you still have them, Adrienne? The visions?” Lucie’s voice was soft and low; she kept her eyes on the children in the grass.

In all the years since the comte had died, Adrienne had not spoken of any visions. Adrienne swallowed hard and picked at the fuzz on the blanket. It was a coarse gray wool; leaf shadows from the chestnut tree danced over its surface, over the skirts of the two females, legs stretched out in front of them.

Adrienne pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “Sometimes,” she murmured.

Lucie sat up straight and turned to look at the girl, trying to read what might lie hidden in her silence. “I wondered if maybe they had stopped. You never talk about them anymore.” Much of the tension that had vibrated through the air back then had disappeared. With Marie gone most of the time, and Adrienne no longer sharing startling stories, even the servants had relaxed. And truthfully, Lucie, too, was relieved that the stories had stopped. Since that moment, years ago, when she had overheard the servants talking about the death of the comtesse, Lucie had felt a thread of apprehension running through her. The thought of what might become of the little girl had always stayed in the back of her mind.

But she wasn’t convinced that this silence was any better. She had watched Adrienne change before her eyes—from a little girl who was natural and light and full of joy to one who rarely smiled, never laughed, and seemed to hold herself rigid and straight and carefully in check at all times.

When she spoke, Adrienne looked away, as if she had caught a glimpse of Lucie’s thoughts. “What is there to talk about? Visions are nothing but trouble. No one really wants to know.”

“I do. I want to know what you see.” Lucie meant what she said. She had always been fascinated by Adrienne’s uncanny abilities. Yes, it was frightening sometimes, and yes, she worried about what would become of the girl. But it was intriguing to hear the things that she could see.

“Why? It only makes people angry. Or afraid. Or they think I’m some kind of—” Adrienne stopped, and drew in a sharp, quick breath. “Some kind of lunatic.”

“Joan of Arc had visions. She became a heroine because of them.”

Adrienne’s eyes met Lucie’s. “A
dead
heroine. Burned at the stake for all her trouble.” Adrienne’s words stabbed the air. “It’s dangerous to be different. To know secrets.”

Lucie sighed. “She saw things that were important. Things that helped her country. Not everyone can do it, Adrienne, and it seems to me that you might have visions for a reason. I guess I just wondered if you still had them, or if they had gone away.”

Adrienne turned her head away. Yes, she still had visions. And she hated them. Hated them in a way that she could never explain. Just a few days before, she had been gazing out the window, staring out over the vineyards, and had spied Renault in the drive, returning from a trip to buy supplies in Lyons. Renault was the driver of the coach; he took care of the horses. His wife, Madeline, was an upstairs maid. They had married two years before, and she was about to give birth to their first child. Both of them had been glowing with anticipation and happiness.

Adrienne felt her shoulders and neck go stiff with the thought. Lucie and Madeline had become friends. Lucie was as excited about this child as the parents-to-be. She had seen Renault smiling as he worked in the stables, whistling as he went about his chores.

Adrienne turned and met Lucie’s eyes. “Yes, I still have visions. But believe me, no one wants to know what I see.
You
do not want to know what I see. What good does it do to see the future if one can do nothing to change it?”

Lucie exhaled slowly. She shuddered.

“My visions have nothing to do with saving France,” Adrienne said, turning her face away from her governess, away from the questions that filled the young woman’s eyes. “My visions have nothing to do with saving anyone.” Adrienne swallowed, the taste of her own knowledge bitter and sharp in her throat.

Lucie stood on the terrace, picking up the books the younger children had been working on. She stopped and watched as Adrienne walked toward her. It was obvious from the basket of tools and Adrienne’s somber expression that she had been up to the cemetery again. Lucie still missed the young Adrienne, the one who had smiled and laughed and skipped after butterflies and inhaled the nectar of the flowers. That younger version had been easy and light. She lit up the room when she entered.

Now, when Lucie looked into Adrienne’s eyes, she saw only the melancholy notes of loneliness, the heavy oppression of silence. Lucie understood it now, the burden of Adrienne’s ability to see the future. Since that day at their picnic over two years ago, since that day when her friend Madeline had bled to death in childbirth, Lucie had felt the misery of Adrienne’s visions, of her differences, almost as much as the girl herself did. Adrienne had been almost as distraught at the death of the young maid as Lucie or Renault. She blamed herself; she confessed to Lucie what she had seen in her visions. Adrienne felt enormous guilt for not having spoken up. She could not stop wondering if perhaps she had spoken, if the doctor had been sent for sooner, Madeline might still be living.

Lucie sighed. “Nice walk, Adrienne?”

Adrienne nodded. Her cheeks flushed red; her hair strayed from its bun, from the exertion of her walk.

“Come. Let’s work on the Schubert piece.”

Adrienne slipped her cloak from her shoulders and dropped it on the divan. She and Lucie sat down at the pianoforte. Adrienne stretched her fingers, and they began to play. Adrienne’s fingers were clumsy and lumbering, as if frozen. She hit two keys at once, unable to stay on the appropriate note.

Lucie, too, was making mistakes. Apprehension about Marie’s visit sat on both of their shoulders like a dark cloud; it ran down their arms and into their fingers, forcing both women to stumble. Adrienne had not divulged any secrets at any of Marie’s other visits. All the whispering and speculation that had followed the girl when she was younger had quieted. But they both sensed that all the gossip and conjecture about Adrienne and her sanity had only gone underground. With a little wind, it could easily flame into a full-scale fire once again.

Antoine plopped on the sofa and held his hands over his ears.
“
Yecchhh!
It sounds like you’re torturing the cat! Spare us, Adrienne! Spare us!”

Adrienne stopped playing and focused on her little brother. She stuck out her tongue. He grinned. Adrienne glared at him. Antoine pulled his mouth into a grimace, rolled his eyes back in his head. He pretended to fall over dead on the carpet.

The sounds of the horses’ hooves clopping on the gravel and the wheels of the carriage in the drive made everyone in the room freeze for a moment. All eyes turned toward the front hall. Antoine got up off the floor and brushed at the dust on his pants.

Her voice reached them through the open door. “Be careful with those trunks, Renault. They’ve been in the family for years—I don’t want them scratched.”

Marie swept into the castle, and servants moved quickly to take her hat and cloak, to carry her bags.

Marie turned. “Stefan? Bring tea into the parlor. And light a fire. It’s much too chilly in here.”

Lucie met Adrienne’s eyes. She watched as Adrienne tried to swallow, but her whole body had tensed with Marie’s appearance. Lucie saw Adrienne’s jaw tighten. She sensed the veil of silence that fell over Adrienne’s features, as if she were deliberately numbing herself.