IX
I slept through to mid-morning and took my coffee in the pale blue and white morning room. The Scotsman had just sat down when I came in, and Tristan arrived a few minutes after me. Neither of them commented on my disappearance with Séléné the night before. They both spoke of what a remarkable place Boisaulne was, and how charming the party of the previous evening had been.
Over breakfast, the Scotsman told me he was curious as to the avenues of education in Savoy compared to his own country, and so I told him what I could, that it was a country of devout Catholic faith with a few small pockets of other forms of belief, with very limited opportunities sometimes in the mountain villages. I described to him my own education and autodidactic efforts and, forgetting the rules of the château for a moment, explained how my son had gone away to school amongst the Catholics in Annecy and had to hide his Vaudois faith, while my daughter was being educated by a governess who had come from Lyon to live with my sister’s family on their farm. I didn’t mention that I only knew how my children were being educated because Thérion told me the news he received from my father.
“But I know Annecy well,” Tristan said. “I lived there nine years, and much of my own education took place there.”
“Did you go to school there?” I asked.
“I studied music there for a time. I was born in Genève, and my father was my earliest teacher. We used to read books aloud together – all through the night sometimes. Then I was sent away to an apprenticeship in a printer’s house, where I was miserable – they starved us and we had no rest, and I had no time to read, though I was surrounded by books. So I ran away and crossed the border into Savoy. I’d befriended a priest, though I was raised a Calvinist, and he introduced me to a wealthy lady he had converted, who lived in Annecy. It was agreed she would take me in and provide for my education if I agreed to be baptized a Catholic, which I did. Converting was a practical expedient and didn’t matter so much to me. In my heart I’ve always had my own faith in natural religion, independent of dogma or creed.”
“That’s quite a story,” the Scotsman said. “And then you chose music for a profession?”
“It was a while before I settled on anything,” Tristan said. “My benefactress entertained educated men and women who came to visit, and all of her friends were keen to help me find a suitable profession. I gained an interest in botany at her house, since the lady was a great believer in the powers of herbs and had an expert gardener who taught me the varieties of plants and their properties. I didn’t see a living in botany, though. Working as a gardener seemed too menial. Then it was found I had a talent for singing, so I studied music and learned enough to make my living as a teacher and copyist and composer.”
“A most unusual upbringing,” the Scotsman said. “But a good way to feed a wide-ranging and curious mind. You ought to write your memoirs one day. For my part I just went to school in Edinburgh and liked to study, so I kept at it and ended up by writing books.”
“Are you thinking of writing a book on education?” I asked.
The Scotsman shrugged. “Oh, probably not a whole book. An essay maybe.”
“The challenge of education,” said Tristan, “is that men are born in harmony with nature. Our Maker endows us with natural goodness, but society has a degenerating effect on us – on all things, really.”
“The view of man in the world fallen from grace,” the Scotsman said. “Which some might debate, but if that view were granted, what would you see as the implication for schooling?”
Tristan chewed his bread thoughtfully, swallowed it down with coffee, and answered, “The key thing is that learning shouldn’t extinguish the natural light that’s in us, but nurture it. Yet it must still prepare us for life in society with its corrupting influences. The aim should be to balance the need of society to form good citizens, by shaping us for civil and cooperative life, against the need for the individual to live for himself by the light of his own good nature and reason.”
The Scotsman took a breath and was about to reply when a crash of thunder struck outside. Our eyes were drawn to the window, which now framed black clouds sweeping in over the mountains. Rain began to pour down on the château, its grounds, and the surrounding forest.
“Ah, what a shame,” said Tristan. “I hope it doesn’t last. I wanted to see the gardens later. I hear they’re quite lovely. I’d promised to meet Clio for walk there in the afternoon.” He blushed a little as he said it, and the Scotsman looked stern for a moment, then shrugged.
“Who knows how long it could last? One might need an ark to survive this deluge. But I suppose it’s as good a day as any to take care of some correspondence I need to write.”
“But one can take a pleasant walk inside the château,” I said. “It’s bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside. In the library alone you could amuse yourselves for days on end. And there are curiosity cabinets in several of the rooms. Scotsman, in fact you might be interested in a chest of local antique artifacts. I haven’t found it yet, but Harlequin mentioned there was one, and I think I saw a chest the other day that might have been it. We could look for it and see if it’s unlocked or ask Harlequin if he has a key.”
“Exploring for treasure,” said the Scotsman. “Why not? Could be a right adventure.”
We finished our breakfast and set off together in search of the chest. I discovered it half-hidden under a table in a smaller room with cabinets of clocks, sundials, astrolabes, and compasses in curious designs, some with precious stones or metals worked in, some with enamelwork in deep jewel-like colors, some in the form of ships, owls, or dragons. The chest was large and made of heavy dark wood, so Tristan, the Scotsman, and I heaved together to pull it out from under the table. It was unlocked and filled with smaller chests, bags made of cloth and leather, and objects tied up with ribbons or twine, some with labels written on strips of vellum. Just as Harlequin had told me the night I arrived at Boisaulne, the artifacts ranged from coins and spearheads to amulets made of bone or copper crusted over with the green of age. There were wood and stone fragments with carved inscriptions in Latin, and a few that looked even older, in patterns the Scotsman recognized with excitement.
“Extraordinary. They appear to be something like runic symbols. These would have been created prior to the widespread diffusion of Christianity through the region. For all we know even prior to the Roman conquests. They’re not unlike the remnants of the old pagan Celts one can sometimes find in ancient barrows in the countryside in the British Isles.”
Reverently he pulled out another small box and opened it. I gasped. It was a large round medallion on a plain black ribbon, made of tarnished silver with a figure stamped on it, a man wearing a great antlered mask made of a stag’s skull.
“But it’s him!” I cried, forgetting myself in my astonishment. “I saw him last night in the forest.” I leaned over the box in the Scotsman’s hands to examine it more closely. At the base of the figure, in Latin capitals, the word CERNUNNOS was inscribed.
“Who? Who is it? What did you see?” said a deep voice behind us. I turned and realized Harlequin had come into the room and had been watching us examine the contents of the chest. He took a few steps closer and saw what I was looking at.
“Did you go outside the garden?” he asked me quietly.
For a moment I was too stunned to respond. Then I recovered my composure enough to shake my head and pretend to laugh at myself.
“It was just a dream I had last night. I dreamt I saw a figure very like this one, striding through the forest. I was just surprised by it, that’s all.”
Harlequin regarded me contemplatively.
“I asked a few of the villagers about some of the objects,” he said, “whether they could help identify them. The priest was rather frightened of that one. He said it was an old devilish symbol, a forest god who once was worshiped in these parts. I had to promise him it would be destroyed. Of course I did no such thing. I assume Cernunnos was the name of the deity.”
Tristan had already gone back to looking at other artifacts in the chest, but the Scotsman nodded and said, “Perhaps from Latin cornuos, horn. It might be a co-mingling with the Roman Pan, or a kind of satyr figure.”
“Perhaps,” Harlequin said.
The Scotsman closed the box with the medallion and returned it to the chest. Later, when no one was looking, I quickly reached under the lid of the box, took the medallion, and slipped it into my pocket. I didn’t mean to steal it, but only to borrow it to look at more closely when I was alone. After we’d gone through the rest of the trunk, Tristan excused himself, eager, I suspected, to go in search of Clio to revise their plan for a walk in the garden. The Scotsman withdrew to write his letters, and I was left alone with Harlequin. We walked out to the gallery together.
“Belle-Âme,” he said, “tell me truly, did you go outside the garden last night?”
I blushed at his kind tone, patient as though he were a father questioning a lying child.
“I did, but I wasn’t alone.”
“Who were you with?”
“Séléné showed me the way through the grotto from behind the fountain of the spring, but we didn’t even go into the forest. We stayed just outside by the standing stone.”
“You must never go that way alone at night. Will you promise me that?”
I nodded. He looked stern for a moment, but then his serious expression relaxed. Slowly he began to laugh. “Did Séléné get to you so soon? You can be flattered, you know, that she made you her very first conquest. Are you blushing?”
I hadn’t thought it possible for my face to get any redder. I felt sweat trickle down from under my arm.
“I thought there was a rule,” I stuttered. “We don’t talk in the day of the things we do in the night.”
He pursed his lips, holding back laughter.
“Don’t feel bad. Nearly anyone worth pursuing succumbs to her at some point. It just shows you’re not ugly or dull. She might seduce someone boring if they’re attractive, or someone ugly and interesting, but never anyone both dull and plain.”
“You mean to say she has many lovers.”
“It’s nothing to take seriously. I don’t believe she takes it seriously.”
“And you? Have you been with her?”
“Me? No,” he said flatly. “I’m ugly and dull.”
“You’re reserved, but not dull. And I don’t think you’re ugly.”
He shrugged but didn’t seem unhappy. “And did you enjoy it?”
“I – I’d had so much wine. I’m not accustomed to it.” I lowered my eyes, and then gasped. On the white of Harlequin’s shirt-sleeve that protruded from his jacket cuff, there appeared to be a large dark bloodstain. “Are you injured?” I pointed to his sleeve.
He quickly tucked the hand with the bloody sleeve into the bosom of his waistcoat. “It’s nothing.” He avoided my eyes. “The wagoner came from the village to deliver supplies, and there were fresh skins and carcasses in the courtyard that I helped him load into the cart to take back. I must have gotten some of the blood on me. I’ll go and change my shirt.”
He strode off toward the far end of the gallery, pulled aside a hanging tapestry, and opened a hidden door behind it that he went through and pulled shut after him.
I shook my head, wondering. It struck me he didn’t seem to think the Marquis would be angry with me for what I had done at the edge of the woods with Séléné. It was imprudent of me to tell him, but wouldn’t he have let me know if he thought I had done the Marquis a grave wrong?
In the late afternoon I was saved from boredom by taking tea and a light meal with Aurore and Clio. I admitted to them I had drunk too much the night before and had a headache. Aurore worriedly felt my brow with the back of her hand, and her motherly touch and manner soothed me.
“I just hope it’s nothing worse,” Aurore said. “It’d be too much of a shame to fall ill here at Boisaulne.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing.” I closed my eyes for a moment. “I think the tea will help.”
“I’m exhausted, too,” Clio said. “I’m so glad it rained. I’d made rather too many plans for today, and it was good to have an excuse to stay in my room and set up my painting supplies.”
“Do you mean to paint while you’re here?” Aurore asked.
“But of course. A day in which I don’t do any painting feels wasted to me. And I have to keep practicing what I’ve learned or else I’ll forget the techniques.”
Aurore plopped a sugar lump into her tea and passed the bowl to me. “Have you learned painting from anyone besides your father?” she asked Clio.
“I’m to begin an apprenticeship in the fall with a lady painter who takes young women as students. I admire her work a good deal and I think she’ll be a fine teacher. I shouldn’t like to disappoint her by forgetting too much before then in idleness.”
“Do you have enough room in your chamber to paint?” I asked.
“It’s a perfect space,” Clio said. “If the sun ever comes out again, it’ll have excellent light. I’m a bit fanatical about light.”
“Donatien calls this place the Castle of Enlightenment, the Forteresse des Lumières,” I said. “I suppose if there’s any place to be fanatical about light, it’s here.”
Clio laughed “But I hope there’s not too much light. I need plenty of shadows too, or else nothing will work. I’ve experimented with two different ways of painting. One way is you start with a light-colored background, and then you put in the pastels and grays, and over that you add a layer of the bright colors, and last of all the shading, the darker colors, dark grays, and black. Another way, that’s harder and uses more paint, is to start with a black background, and paint the dark and then the bright colors over it, and last of all the lightest colors and bits of pure white, as highlights and glints of light. Leonardo da Vinci claimed it was the true way to paint, to begin every canvas with a wash of black, since all things in nature are dark except where exposed to the light. Papa never used that method, but I prefer it. Either way, it makes you see everything differently, in your mind to be always calculating how you’d paint it. In the sunniest meadow landscape, or the fairest skin for a portrait, you see the black. And in the night, your eye picks out the white.”
Aurore nodded agreement. “I like the way you describe it. I should like to see your paintings.”
“I’d like to paint you – to paint everyone here, in fact. But I wouldn’t ask it of you, or the others. It’s a lot of dull work, sitting for a portrait, and most are here to amuse themselves, I think.”
“I bet any of the gentlemen would sit for you,” I couldn’t resist saying. “I think you’re very admired. They’d be glad to have an excuse to talk with you and pay their regards.”
Clio looked at me quizzically, as if examining my remark for any hint of jealousy or malice.
“But I don’t think they’d be very pleased if they tried it,” she said. “When I paint, I’m all business. I don’t like to talk much since I’m concentrating on my work. I find if people talk there’s a temptation to accompany their speech with gestures, which spoils the pose.”
“Well, I’d sit for you,” Aurore said. “I’d be flattered to have my portrait painted.”
“What if I read aloud to you sometimes while you sat for it?” I asked. “Perhaps that would help make it less tedious. Clio, would it distract you too much?”
“Not at all. I won’t hold you to it if you change your mind,” Clio said, “but I’d like that very much. If it pleases you, we could start tomorrow morning. It’ll be far more amusing for me than painting still lifes.”
“Only don’t read me anything too funny,” Aurore cautioned me. “Not The Indiscreet Jewels, or any books by Voltaire, or Molière plays. Or else I’ll come out looking like a gargoyle from laughing the whole time.”
“Very well,” I said, “only serious and lofty things that give you a faraway noble look in your eye.”
She nods solemnly. “Racine tragedies.”
“Perhaps a scientific tract of Bouffon, or a d’Alembert essay on mathematics,” I suggested.
“If you mean for me to look constipated,” Aurore said, “then certainly.”
Clio had to swallow to avoid spitting out her tea before she burst out laughing. “But you know, if you’d like a quicker portrait in ink or charcoal, you could always ask Harlequin to sketch you. He’s not bad, unless he’s trying to make a caricature of someone on purpose.”
“Harlequin draws too?” I asked.
“Didn’t you know? Of course his style’s as different as could be from mine. He doesn’t work in oils much but does drawings in ink on paper. His alter ego’s rather notorious in Paris. If the authorities found out who he was, I bet they’d throw him into prison in the tower of Vincennes.”
“Why? Are the drawings obscene?”
Clio laughed. “No. Well, mostly not. They’re political.”
Aurore nodded. “My friend’s gazette publishes his caricatures. They can be quite cutting toward the ministers and courtiers. It’s a good thing he signs them Harlequin, instead of his real name, or there could be trouble. But most of the gazette’s authors write under noms de plume to be on the safe side. A woman I know whose father is in the book policing ministry told me the gazette is on the list of the most illegal titles, but as long as it’s all anonymous, they can’t do much more than confiscate the copies wherever they find them.”
I remembered the police raid on my late husband’s bookshop and shuddered.
Since our tea was almost a light supper and my headache was only just beginning to recede, I skipped going down to the evening meal in the great hall and resolved to go to bed early. I blushed, too, at the thought of seeing Séléné at dinner and preferred to avoid her, at least for the day. I dozed off quickly in my room before it was even quite dark.
I woke again in the night. I lay there a while, trying to fall back asleep, thinking of Thérion and missing his arms around me. I heard the clock strike half past something. If he was coming to me that night, I didn’t know how much longer I still had to wait for him. But I was wide awake, restless, impatient, anxious I wouldn’t see him.
I put on my slippers and tied my dressing gown around me. The hall was dark, so I lit a candle and took it with me. My pacing brought me to the end of the hall (was it really the end or was there another hidden door behind it?) and I turned around and paced back to the morning room. Back and forth, from one end of the floor to the other I went, several more times, until a sound from one of the rooms stopped me.
It was the sound of someone slapping someone, of skin striking skin. As I came closer to one of the doors in the hall the sound grew louder. Light came out of a large keyhole in the door. I crouched down, peered through the keyhole, and found it gave a full enough view of the inside of the room to see the source of the noise. It was Donatien and Séléné. Séléné was naked except for her stockings and ribbon-trimmed garters. Donatien wore only his shirt, which was bunched up around his waist as he perched on the bed with one foot on the floor. Séléné’s hands had been bound to the bed post by cords, and she knelt on her elbows and knees with her face to the wall. Donatien was slapping her bottom with the flat of his palm. With each slap she cried out, with what sounded like pleasure as much as pain. I was horrified, embarrassed, and aroused, and I couldn’t look away.
Finally Donatien lay off beating her and began to copulate with her violently from behind. She groaned and cried, begging him for more. I stood up, hot-faced, and went back down the hall, back to my own room, and climbed back into my bed. I curled up with my knees under my chin.
“Oh, Thérion, where are you?” I said aloud.
“I’m here,” said a voice from the sofa by the fireplace where the fire had gone out. I might have guessed he was there from how the room had gone completely dark.
“I missed you.”
I heard the tread of his shoes across the wooden floor and felt his weight settle onto the side of the bed as he sat and removed his shoes. I sat up and reached out and found his shoulders wrapped in his coat. I pushed the coat off him and began to undress him. At last he was naked, and I pulled off my chemise as he climbed into the bed next to me and wrapped his body around mine. I let out a sob of relief and longing. He kissed my eyes and cheeks and tasted the salt of my tears.
“Violaine, what’s wrong? It’s only two nights since I saw you last. Are you unwell?”
I told him about the night before, about all that had happened with Séléné, seeing the alder-king in the woods, and what I’d just now witnessed taking place between Séléné and Donatien. As I talked he caressed me, and when I left off speaking, he kissed me and made love to me, more roughly than before. My pleasure in it was intense, and I did as I had seen Séléné do, crying out loudly and asking for more. When it was finished, we lay in each other’s arms and he asked me how I had felt with Séléné, and when I had watched her with Donatien, whether I had felt afraid, ashamed, or aroused. I admitted I had felt all of those things.
“I know these people,” he said, “or I feel as if I do from what Harlequin has told me of his guests.”
I was quiet. One thing I wouldn’t tell Thérion was that while he had made love to me, I had imagined him as Harlequin.
He went on, “I told you from the beginning, my purpose in bringing you here was to make you more free. It’s for you to choose whether and with whom you make love. I can’t begrudge you any pleasure, though it’d be a lie to say I’m not envious of Séléné enjoying your charms. I suppose I take some consolation from the circumstances, that perhaps it was only a passing pleasure – one mad night of dancing and drinking, rather than a strong and deep liaison that might replace me. It would grieve me greatly if it were the latter.”
“It was no more than that, I swear it. I’d never want to grieve you. I care for you very much. I was so frightened you’d stay away and I wouldn’t see you again, or you’d be angry with me. I was so happy you’d granted my wish to see other people here during the day, but I worried the cost might be losing my nights with you.”
“I was going to tell Harlequin he couldn’t invite guests this summer, as he has in the past, until you said you wished for friends. I wasn’t sure you’d want anyone else intruding on your solitude here – I feared enough to do it myself until you called for me. But Harlequin draws talented and interesting people to himself. I’m glad you’re happy. There’s nothing I love more than seeing you that way.”
“Aurore told me Harlequin had made a habit in the past of introducing young women to that man Ulysse, and that Ulysse takes them under his wing and makes them his protégées. I wondered if that had anything to do with his finding me and arranging for me to come here. I thought perhaps … perhaps once you’d had me, you wouldn’t want me anymore, and I was to be passed on to Ulysse.”
He chuckled. “I have my opinion of Ulysse, but I won’t try to influence you for or against him. You should be free to form your own judgment as to what you think of him.”
“I’ve barely spoken with him so far, though we danced together a few times. He doesn’t seem interested in me, but he has the air of a rake, I think – a man who’s larger than life. He paid a lot of attention to Clio. She’s an artist, like Harlequin, and very young, but intelligent.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about Clio too. It sounds as though no one ought to underestimate her, even if she looks like an ingénue. But listen, you mustn’t doubt, I want you more than ever. You should never imagine I mean to cast you off, just because Harlequin likes to play the role of matchmaker, like an old grandmother from one of your mountain villages.”
“Is that really all it is? He’s not some kind of pimp or procurer?”
“I respect his privacy too much to tell you all I know of him. Suffice it to say he’s one of those men who’s kinder to others than he is to himself.”
Now, more than ever, I was convinced in my heart that Harlequin and Thérion were one and the same, but something held me back from pressing him on it. If I loved him – and I believed I did – would it be kind of me to unmask this man who for whatever reason felt it necessary to play these games of hiding in the dark? If it was truly him, he must have his reasons for keeping me at the distance of night and blindness. And suppose I was wrong? Would it do me any good to learn he wasn’t the man I had pictured when we made love? Didn’t it increase my pleasure to imagine him as the one to whom I was most attracted, of all those I had seen? I was aware that I owed this pleasure to the darkness and to his gift of remaining mysterious to me. And so I became a willing participant in my own blinding.