Page 45 of Chateau Reverie

Together, they look at the portrait.

Kramarov says, ‘You are a curious creature, Leander Sterne. There is something about you that is not quite there. It is as if I only ever see you from the corner of my eye. Who are you really?’

Leander replies, ‘I can’t remember.’

She taps her nails on the arm of her chair. ‘Memory,’ she says, ‘is a blessing, and a curse. I believe there has already been a point in my life when I ceased to live. All I remember before then is myself, my reality; all beyond is simply the aftermath. I loved so much; I grieved so much. This is my great weakness. I think it will destroy me.’

‘I don’t know if I’ve ever truly lived,’ Leander said. ‘If I did once, the memory of that has been taken from me. Is it wrong to want something I’ve never had?’

Kramarov intones, as though reciting, ‘If I am not for myself, who will I be? And when I am for myself, what am I?’

‘And if not now, then when?’ Leander says. He has read this phrase somewhere before. He doesn’t know where.

‘There is the future, there is the past,’ Kramarov tells him, with a small smile. ‘But, ach, Leander Sterne, here we are. We have breath in our lungs and blood in our veins. You are alive, whether you believe so or not.’ She looks back at the painting, white-knuckle gripping her seat. ‘Do you know what my wish was? What I wrote on my invitation? I wrote, To see Petro again. And here he is.’

Leander looks at the blurred figure on the canvas, the paint streaked as if left wet beneath rain. He wishes he could see the man’s face, if only to make greater sense of Madame Kramarov’s expression. She looks blissfully happy, unbearably sad; it should be impossible, such a contrary palette of emotion, but on her it is beautiful and earnest. It is the sort of truth the Company would never be capable of capturing, not if they had a thousand auctions with a thousand guests attending each.

‘The Company is merciful,’ he says to her. He intends it as sarcasm, but instead he sounds resigned.

‘The Company is merciful,’ she agrees. ‘Take courage, Leander Sterne. You have found something beautiful in this place, and it would be a shame to surrender it.’

A shame to surrender it. He thinks of the dancers onstage, of the woman with the black hair who has taken his hand and led him out of the dark. Her eyes meeting his, her smile. Her terror and her bravery, despite it all. To want, to yearn, to save herself. To snuff that light out—he would never forgive himself. Whatever came after, it would not be worth living.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It would be.’

Leander knows what he must do.

Genevieve is awakened at sundown by the maids. Limp and pliant as a child’s rag doll, she lets them sit her at the dressing table and watches them as they busy themselves with her wardrobe. She recalls Saliha Sultan in her apron, and she wonders whether these girls once came to this auction together; whether they themselves had fallen afoul of Lady Reverie’s peculiar sort of ‘mercy’; and whether, spared the jaws of the lion, they had been consigned instead to blank-eyed servitude. But she knows, even as the thought comes, that it will not be worth asking them if her suspicions are true. The maids, like all other servants in this house, are intact but empty. In their curious nature, both cold and obliging, Genevieve can still see the cracks where they were put back together.

Genevieve too has been emptied, reglued, made a facsimile of a woman who was now dead. The horrors of this place, the cruel spectacle of the ballet, has only confirmed what she already knew. Since she came to England, Genevieve’s grandfather has often remarked on the difference in her character, how much weight she has lost, how even her voice has taken on a higher cadence than it once had: as if she now wills her own words to go unheard. He calls her haunted, but Genevieve knows that is not true, for one cannot have ghosts if one is a ghost herself.

At least, in her desperation, she had found some roots in Devon to ground her to the earth: books and music; dresses of lace and beads and pink-tinted feathers; leading her grandfather round the gardens and describing the sky to him. This morning, Grandfather, the clouds meet the ground as if they have fallen onto it. Today, Grandfather, the sky is as a geode, grey as stone, but with seams of brightest blue. This evening, Grandfather, the night is so complete, and the dark so dark, it is a sort of relief. We are together, you and I, in our blindness, and as I am invisible, I am transformed.

She misses him. She misses the version of herself who arrived at this Château two days ago, who still had some hope of returning. Now she has been made quiet and frightened. That creature within her, the one that always howled and clawed and begged to be remembered—where has it gone? She almost misses it as well. It is extraordinary, but she does. She would rather feel that pain than this resigned numbness, as if she has been made empty as a seashell.

‘We have prepared your gown for the banquet, mademoiselle,’ one of her maids says to her. The piece is extraordinary, of course—when has anything at Château Reverie ever been otherwise?—more a work of art than a dress: a silver gown with poppies embroidered at the hem, each tall enough to reach her waist, with a matching shawl of red silk. A second maid presents scarlet shoes to complete the ensemble, as well as a reticule and a choker of moonstones and diamonds.

As they dress her, Genevieve notices the embroidered poppies move upon the skirt, as if being rustled in a breeze. It all fits her perfectly—as to be expected—and her hair is curled and braided with more moonstones, more diamonds, before being crowned with a circlet of porcelain flowers so delicate in construction they look quite perfectly real. It is not the fashion, it has not been for years, but they stain Genevieve’s lips red with a thin liquid that tastes faintly of berries and blood. They do not powder her face but leave it as it is, tanned and freckled. The shawl settles over her shoulders, the silk thin as spider’s webs. The shoes are lower-heeled than the mules of the previous evening, and Genevieve is at least relieved that she is less likely to stumble.

She looks at herself in the mirror. She has never been so lovely, and yet she finds she cannot smile. It feels as if she is wearing the wrong skin. These are the sorts of clothes Genevieve has always worn; the sort of beauty she has always aspired to. It feels so empty now.

‘You are now prepared for the banquet, mademoiselle,’ one of the servants proclaims.

Genevieve swallows around the bile in her throat. ‘Thank you,’ she replies.

She bids them remain there as she makes her way to the banquet. Past Saliha Sultan’s suite, now empty; down the steps, to the place where Ortiz ticks within his clock; past the lion at the fountain, its mouth still stained with Kurki’s blood.

She pauses to address the creature, feeling faintly ludicrous; it looks like nothing more than a marble statue now, its great maw spitting water towards the sunset. ‘Thank you for saving me,’ she says, with a small curtsey.

It does not move, but its eyes swivel in their sockets to regard her.

She continues. Past the hedge maze, she sees Missah standing at the arch of the entrance, peering into the darkness beyond. He is wearing a marvellous coat in a gradient of orange to yellow, embroidered with a rising sun and thousands of tiny pearls—clearly dressed for the banquet, as she is.

‘Monsieur,’ she greets him, and he smiles in response. He seems distracted, his eyes flickering back and forth between the hedges. ‘Are you to attend the dancing?’

‘Perhaps later,’ he murmurs. ‘You see, mademoiselle, I had an epiphany. Having now mapped this place as best I can, when one considers the grounds, mountainside, and gardens as well as the building, the centre of this maze is in fact the centre of the entire estate. It is the heart of it all.’

She blinks at him in confusion. ‘I see.’