Page 66 of Chateau Reverie

‘You could give me some indication, surely? A simple clue. . .’

‘I might provide you with this, but nothing more.’

He hands her something: a familiar pocket watch. Ortiz’s, with its dark blue enamel case, the lovers embracing on its front now curiously familiar. ‘Use it to keep track of the hour. Otherwise, you must do this alone. You cannot give her cause to question the outcome of your search; no excuse to claim a victory. It is regrettable that it has come to this. I wish you success, although I fear it is not possible.’ He glances briefly, meaningfully, to the closed fan in her hand. ‘You have the means to see lies from truth. At the heart of it all, you may find the answer. Perhaps this shall be enough. I hope so. Now farewell, mademoiselle—I shall not keep you any longer. My mother calls for me.’

‘But—Orestes,’ Claire says, as he turns away. ‘Orestes—’

It is too late. He reaches the bottom of the steps, and as he does so, his form twitches and collapses into a cloud of iridescent beetles, swarming in the air, emerald and azure and gleaming. Claire shrieks and raises her arms above her head. When she drops them, all the beetles are gone.

Leander is afraid.

There is a great silence awaiting him. He can feel it watching, eyes in the darkness as the shadows gather. He can feel his skin growing colder and colder, his muscles stiff, his joints refusing to respond; he has closed his eyes, and now he can’t open them again.

He is afraid. All he has are memories, and he has so few of them. They are of this auction, of Claire, who has in three days become the majority of his life. He can recall her much more clearly than anyone or anything else. He draws a picture of her in his mind and counts each freckle on her face, although he knows he’ll count wrongly. He imagines a song in her voice.

My days have been so wondrous free; the little birds that fly;

the days, the birds, the waters glide. . .

and ask the breathing gales. . .

And ask the breathing gales. . .

And ask the breathing gales. . .

He can’t remember the lyrics. Not anymore.

Leander opens his eyes once more, expecting darkness. Instead, he sees a fissure of light in the earth before him, a scar of sun through a gap made in the dirt above him. He gasps in astonishment, a gasp ragged with relief and desperation, and then he stumbles forward to dig at the ceiling with his fingernails. The ceiling is of a height that he must get on his tiptoes to do so, but a clod of earth falls—then another, and another—and he can see a patch of blue sky.

He gasps again. Perhaps it’s a sob, really, although he refuses to admit it to himself. The sky is there, the soft light of dawn is there, but the gap is too high for him to crawl out of. He can only stare longingly at the outside. Another cruelty.

A face appears over the gap. A marble face, crowned by a carved mane, feline maw pulled back in a delighted sort of snarl.

Leander laughs. A tear tracks down one cheek. He reaches his arm upwards. ‘Please,’ he says.

The lion rumbles, and one giant paw pokes through the parted earth.

Claire looks at the watch. Fifty-five minutes remain. She tries the outer door again. It is open this time—she should realise, really, that this bodes ill—but she is too relieved to be cautious. Instead, she runs out the front door of the Château—

To find herself on her grandfather’s patio.

The gardens of Brambling House are verdant, bucolic, arranged in the half-wild manner so popular in England. Everywhere are sprays of heather and steeping willows, rolling hills, naturalistic but just pruned enough to show purpose. They are a country jig to Versailles’ elaborate minuet, and they smell of flowers, certainly, but also slightly of the rank fertiliser from distant fields, the damp mellowness of yesterday’s rain. There is noise here, too. Claire can hear the faint lowing of a cow, the rough tread of servants on the gravel, and the rhythmic cry of a wood pigeon. It only occurs to her now how eerily silent the gardens of the Château had been. When sound had occurred, such as the twittering of a songbird, it had felt like a rehearsed interjection.

Her grandfather sits at his table. Their breakfast awaits, scones with ruby jam and half-melted pats of butter, a jug of apple juice overlooked by a vase of daffodils. He smiles to hear her approach.

‘Genevieve,’ he says. ‘You have returned at last.’

Claire feels strange, her thoughts slipping from her mind as soon as she thinks them—how long has she been here? There is something she must do, she feels the urgency of it, but she cannot recall what it is. She looks at the scones. She is so very hungry, as if she has not eaten properly in days. A filigreed metal chair sits at an angle from the table so that she might sit down. As she watches him, her grandfather reaches forward and feels for the jug, the glass.

‘I can pour, Pépé,’ she says, and she does so. But she does not sit. For some curious reason, she feels as if she should not.

‘What are we reading today?’ he asks her. He always asks her this.

‘We have something we must finish,’ she replies, frowning. ‘I promised. . . I promised we would finish it upon my return.’

‘Shall we not begin something new, my dear? I tire of our previous tales.’

‘No,’ Claire says, too harshly, and his eyes widen at her anger. ‘I-forgive me, Pépé, but I feel that it is important.’