XV
Aurore and I undressed and got ready for bed, but before we could blow out the candles, there was a quiet knock on the door.
“It’s Clio. May I come in?”
Hurriedly we put on dressing gowns, and I opened the door. Clio came in and sat down at the foot of my narrow bed. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, there was another knock. This time Aurore rose to answer it. It was the Scotsman.
“Ladies, good evening. I’m so terribly sorry to bother you. I hate to intrude on your privacy, but I wanted to have a word …”
There was another knock at the door.
“Ach,” said the Scotsman. “This is rather embarrassing.”
Aurore shook her head. “No matter. Would you be so kind as to see who it is?”
He opened the door and let in Séléné and Ulysse, who looked around the room and laughed.
“I see we’re not the only ones who thought it was time to have a talk about things,” said Séléné.
“We’re only missing Tristan,” said Ulysse. “Shall I go and fetch him? Our would-be knight might think it’s unchivalrous to go knocking on ladies’ doors at night.”
“Would you mind?” said Aurore gently. Ulysse disappeared and came back a few minutes later with Tristan.
Despite the somber nature of our gathering, it had the air of children’s party or a costume fête, with all of us in our dressing gowns. One by one, our visitors found seats on the sofa or the armchairs or one of the beds.
Ulysse tipped his tasseled, Oriental-style embroidered nightcap to us in salute and said, “I suppose we’re all thinking along similar lines. This is a crisis situation, is it not?”
“These people are horrible,” Clio said. “They’re going to ruin Boisaulne for everyone if we don’t do something.”
Séléné folded her arms across her chest. “Not only that, but Harlequin’s a dear friend, and this woman’s going to kill him. He’s done nothing but drink since she got here. Who can blame him? She’d make me want to drink myself to death too.”
“And this priest makes me want to set something on fire,” Ulysse said. “Like maybe that hideous wig and collar of his.”
“The priest – I mean, the Abbé – is Donatien’s uncle,” Clio said. Her round freckled cheeks were pink with anger.
“What?” My mouth gaped open in shock.
“So he told me, yesterday. He blames me, and you, for seducing Donatien and tempting him. Of course he doesn’t know you’re you, Belle-Âme, since we switched to calling you Psyché. This afternoon when they got back from going to church with Aurore, he pulled me aside and said he wanted to talk to me about it. He led me into a corner of the library and sat down too close to me on the sofa – like this –” She scooted over next to me to show us how uncomfortable the distance was, and then moved back. “He took both my hands in his. He said I ought to seek forgiveness from the Lord, and beg Donatien’s forgiveness too.”
I shook my head. “But that’s disgusting.”
“Oh, it got worse. He said his nephew was so generous and forgiving, he wanted to become my patron, and I ought to accept the offer and ‘submit’ to him and let him guide my career.” She shook her head. “What a repulsive piece of …”
“That’s an astonishing hypocrisy. What did you say?”
“Well, I pulled my hands away as if I’d touched a manure pile. I ought to have told him to … to go and fuck himself. But I was too stunned to say anything. I just jumped up walked away without a word.”
Tristan looked grave and pale with fury on Clio’s behalf.
“And the Marquise,” I asked, “how is he connected with her?”
The Scotsman said, “It appears the Abbé’s been her spiritual advisor for some time. Harlequin must have known him, but I don’t think anyone realized he was a relative of Donatien’s.”
“I’d practically forgotten what Harlequin’s wife even looked like,” said Séléné. “They move in such different circles. I’d seen her once or twice at Madame Dufaud’s salon, long ago. But she’s no great intellect, obviously, so I can only imagine salons would bore her. I tried asking what she’d read, and she looked at me like she’d bitten a lemon. I can only think she must be a vulgar, ignorant creature, devoid of culture.”
Ulysse snorted. “No better way to fit in at court. La Pompadour’s the only one with any polish there.”
“But it isn’t any wonder now,” Aurore said, “why Harlequin was always so silent on the subject of his marriage.”
“Perhaps,” Tristan observed, “that was the real reason all along for the rule of not talking about families at Boisaulne. I admired Harlequin’s attempts to take philosophical stances in favor of Enlightenment, but that rule always struck me as strange. After all, every philosopher through the ages has discussed the family at some point.”
“I think you’re right,” the Scotsman said.
“Do you know though,” said Ulysse, “going back to the subject of Donatien, I’d heard some rumors about him, now that I think about it.”
“What rumors?” Clio asked.
“Something about him getting into trouble with the law over mistreating some prostitutes. Everyone wrote it off as nothing or laughed at it. Now I wish I’d said something. But he’d always been a friend of my family’s – his father knew mine. And the rumors sounded silly, something about giving the women pastilles with Spanish Fly that made them sick, flogging them, and making them piss on a crucifix. Of course I wasn’t bothered about the crucifix – ‘Écrasez l’infâme,’ and all.”
“It’s rather ironic then,” the Scotsman said, “that he’s got such a Catholic uncle.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said. “They’re two sides of the same coin.” Given the cruel persecutions of my Vaudois forbears, this was a subject on which I felt entitled to speak with authority.
“How so?” the Scotsman asked.
“It’s a wish to dominate, in both cases,” I explained. “Didn’t you get the sense the Abbé’s interest in Christianity was more for the sake of its political uses than any love of Christian principles for their own sake?”
“You’ve put your finger right on it. Bright girl,” Ulysse said.
“Anyway,” Clio said, turning to me, “now you’re back, and you see how things are. Boisaulne is ruined. Should we all just leave and go home early? Or is there anything we can do?”
“I think we need to rescue Harlequin,” Séléné said. “We need to come up with a plan.”
“There’s something I should tell you all,” I said. Suddenly, all eyes were on me and the room went quiet. Quickly I got up out of bed and went to the door, opened it, and peered out into the hall, just to make sure no one was listening. The corridor was empty. To make sure we weren’t overheard, I took a handkerchief from Aurore’s vanity table and stuffed it into the keyhole. I got back into bed, under the covers, and then I said, “Harlequin and I were lovers.”
Ulysse looked both amused and pleased. Tristan’s eyes widened. Aurore nodded thoughtfully, and Séléné’s mouth rounded into a silent Oh. The Scotsman cocked his head, Clio frowned and looked struck. From her reaction, I was seized by a sudden fear.
“Am I the only one?” I asked, my voice choking up a little.
The others all looked inquiringly at each other. I met Clio’s eyes, and there was a tense moment of silence. “Clio?” I asked. I ought to be brave. I ought to be willing to face the truth. “Did you sleep with him, too?”
She drooped and looked down at her hands in her lap. “No. I – well, I wanted to. I kissed him once, on the lips.” Her cheeks were flushed, and I was so relieved, I found it charming. “He pushed me away. He wasn’t unkind, but he said he was much too old for me, and besides, he was a married man.”
I looked around at the rest of their faces. “Am I the only one, then?”
There were a few nods, and Aurore said gently, “I told you, I’d never heard of him doing anything of the kind. He always had a great reputation for fidelity.”
“I figured he must be one of those odd people who don’t care for lovemaking at all,” Séléné said. “He has no children. I thought perhaps he was simply a cold fish, as they say. Or perhaps he liked gentlemen, though I’d never heard of him indulging in that preference, either. I certainly tried with him a time or two. But no.”
“So the Marquise was right to be jealous of you,” Aurore said. There was only the slightest hint of a reproach in her tone.
I swallowed. “She was. I was his mistress. He didn’t want anyone to know, not even his friends, because he was afraid of the Marquise finding out. For a long time he kept his true identity a secret even from me.”
I didn’t have the heart to try to defend myself any further, to tell them my father had sold me to Thérion to pay his debts, or that I couldn’t help falling in love with my master and jailer when he came to me in the dark; or how the Marquise had always seemed so far away, more dreamlike and unreal than any of the magical things at Boisaulne. I had never imagined I would have to meet her face to face, that she would intrude on our joys, sever our bond, and destroy my book and our peace. I had all but forgotten that in the eyes of the rest of the world, the man I loved was an adulterer, and I was the fallen woman he had sinned with. It had seemed to me love justified us and bound us together in a way no marriage ever could, by a law as ancient as the roi des aulnes’s woods.
“My dear girl,” said Ulysse, “I don’t think any one of us is really in a position to cast the first stone. I, for one, love Séléné, and she’d sooner skewer me in a duel than marry me.”
Séléné looked up at him from her seat on the sofa, blinking. He was perched on the arm of the sofa next to her, half standing. Were there tears in her eyes? There were. She wiped them away with the heel of her hand and smiled. “But darling, you never even asked.”
“You’d have said no, wouldn’t you?”
“True. Still, it’s sweet of you to think of it. I’d shack up with you, if you liked.”
“I’d like that very much.”
The two of them looked tenderly at each other. He placed a hand on her cheek and stroked it, and she rested her head against his hand.
Tristan said, “Can we return to the subject at hand? Ulysse and I rarely agree on anything, but he’s right that we can’t cast stones. And this woman is no less horrid for being his lawfully-wedded wife.”
“But it’s not as though there’s anything we can do about it,” the Scotsman said. “There’s no legal divorce in your Catholic lands, even for kings.”
“Oh, shove it in our faces, why don’t you,” grumbled Ulysse.
“He could convert and flee to Genève,” said Tristan. “The lady who took me in when I came to Annecy did it the reverse way. She emigrated to Savoy and became a Catholic so her marriage could be annulled. It might work in both directions.”
“Shouldn’t that be for him to decide?” said Aurore. “Anyway, I think it’d be quite difficult to throw away everything you have and leave your home and friends forever. He’d be penniless there, and a fugitive from the law if he ever came back. Her father’s a fermier général. All that’s needed is a lettre de cachet against him, and she and her father will control all his goods, in essence.”
“And it’s just what she’s threatened,” I said. “She can expose him for the cartoons he’s published. He’s not safe even in Savoy because her father knows the governor and could have him sent to Miolans. My own husband was locked up there, in the dungeon of Miolans, and they only let him out to come home to die when he got sick.”
Clio put her hands on her cheeks. “The poor man. It’s monstrous.”
“What we really need,” said Séléné, “is a good hunting accident.”
Everyone stared at her. She looked around at our shocked faces and laughed. “Oh, but come now, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m no murderess. My late husband’s gun misfired, fair and square. He was thrown from his horse, broke his neck, and then was trampled on by the horses, too. Dead as you like, with no one guilty but himself for being an arsehole who enjoyed killing defenseless creatures by the cruelest methods.”
“The Marquise certainly seems keen on hunting,” the Scotsman conceded. “But for one thing, death by hunting accident seems rather a harsh sentence for a woman we all merely dislike intensely. For another thing, plenty of bloodthirsty numbskulls go hunting all the time and live to tell the tale. We can’t count on being so lucky, if you call it that. Good Lord, I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation.”
“Suppose we simply made it very disagreeable for her here,” said Clio. “If it’s very dull, or if she thought there were ghosts, or if we played pranks on her. Perhaps we could drive her away.”
“I think she’d be more likely to expel us all,” Aurore said. “After all, she’s the lady of the manor. It’s her château. We’re merely her guests.”
“Much as I hate to say it,” I said, “I think we’d probably do best by trying to stay on her good side. At least then we can be there for Harlequin. If he’s this despairing and driven to drink with us here, imagine if we abandon him.”
“We don’t have much longer here anyway,” Aurore reminded me. “Normally we all go back home at the end of August.”
I shrugged. “Who knows what will happen to him then? But for now, at least we still have some chance of helping.”
“Oh, but it sounds like there’s no hope,” said Clio. “What can any of us do?”
“If only I could talk more with him,” I said. “Alone, without arousing the Marquise’s suspicions.”
The Scotsman shook his head. “I don’t think she or the Abbé have left him alone for more than five minutes at a time since they got here. Not that I’ve seen.”
“But he rescued me,” I said. “When I came back through the woods and the back gate. I’d fainted by the fountain of the spring. He carried me back inside and spoke to me a little.”
“This morning?”
“I suppose it was. It all seems so long ago already.” I suppressed a yawn, beginning to feel drowsy again.
“That was when they went to chapel with Aurore in the village,” the Scotsman said.
Ulysse chuckled. “I think our dear Marquise and her Abbé were rather irked that the rest of us stayed home. I shouldn’t have liked to draw down lightning bolts on that picturesque little chapel, which I’d surely have done by setting foot in it.”
“Perhaps if they go to chapel again before the end of the week,” Aurore said. “You could speak to him then.”
“But there’s no telling whether they’ll do that,” I said in dismay.
“No,” said Clio, “but I’ve a brilliant idea. We’ll convince her to let me paint her portrait. If she’s vain enough to agree to it – and it seems she is.”
Séléné nodded vigorously. “That could work. Ulysse, you’re charming. Convince her. If anyone here has the gift of persuading ladies, it’s you.”
Ulysse waved a hand to deny it, but his eyes had lit up.
I clapped my hands together. “Oh, thank you, both of you. It’s worth a try, isn’t it? But –” I knitted my brows together – “what about the Abbé? How do we keep him occupied?”
“Nothing could be simpler,” the Scotsman said. “We’ve already made plans to gather botanical samples and fauna specimens in the forest tomorrow.”
“It’s perfect,” Séléné said. “It’ll work.”
The Scotsman and Tristan left with the Abbé before sunrise on their expedition to gather specimens in the forest. At breakfast in the morning room, Thérion was absent.
“My dear husband is still sleeping,” the Marquise said in a sugary tone that betrayed her annoyance.
Ulysse, coming into the room behind her and overhearing, mimicked drinking from a bottle, to imply Harlequin was hung over. Séléné tittered, and the Marquise whipped around to see the cause of the merriment. Ulysse bowed to her with a flourish and winked.
“We must endeavor to amuse you this morning,” he said, “since your husband’s been so remiss as to leave you alone.” He slid into the seat next to her.
The Marquise looked Ulysse up and down, seeming mollified. She nearly simpered as she asked, “What shall we do? Perhaps a game of cards?”
“Er, by your leave,” said Clio, “I have an idea. I thought perhaps you might indulge me by allowing me to sketch you. You have such fine fair skin and pretty features.”
“Why, that’s a capital idea,” Ulysse said. “Indeed, you absolutely must sketch the Marquise.”
The Marquise demurred coyly, shrugging with her double chin tucked into her shoulder. “Oh, I hardly think so.”
“No, but really. She could paint you as Diana, goddess of the hunt. It would be so attractive, imagine it. You could be dressed in Grecian robes, wearing a laurel crown, with a bow and a quiver of arrows.”
Clio clapped her hands together. “Oh yes, that’s brilliant. What could be more perfect? Won’t you?”
The Marquise pursed her lips and tapped her chin, pretending to consider it, though it was already clear she meant to accept. “Would I need to sit quite still for a very long time though?”
“I could do a preliminary sketch for a larger painting in just an hour or two,” Clio said. “And perhaps someone would be kind enough to read a story aloud to keep you entertained while I do it. Ulysse is a wonderful reader.”
“Say no more,” Ulysse said. “I’d be delighted. Have you a favorite author?”
The Marquise frowned and thought for a long time. “I don’t mind Madame Riccoboni’s novels. They’re usually decent.”
The color drained from Ulysse’s face, even as his smile widened so that his dark pink lips strained over his teeth. Only the week before last, he’d spent a couple of hours one afternoon telling us all the reasons why Madame Riccoboni’s novels were dreadful, worthless treacle. Aurore and I glanced at each other and barely suppressed our giggles, while Séléné raised her eyebrows in mute sympathy.
“Wonderful,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “I quite adore her novels myself. You have such good taste, my lady.”
When breakfast was finished, Ulysse, Clio, and the Marquise left for the library to find the novel the Marquise wished to hear read. Aurore, Séléné, and I followed them, and we stayed behind in the library after they had left for Clio’s studio upstairs with the book. I had hoped to find Thérion there, as he sometimes spent mornings writing letters or sketching caricatures at one of the writing desks.
“I suppose he must be still asleep,” I said. “Perhaps our cleverness will all be for naught.”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” Séléné said. “Go and wake him.”
“I don’t even know where he sleeps. He always came to me in my room at night. But wait, I think I have an idea.” I went out into the gallery, and Aurore and Séléné trailed after me to watch. I remembered the day he’d had blood on his sleeve, the day we had looked into the chest of antiquities and I had taken the Cernunnos medallion from it. Afterward he had walked down the hall … he had pulled aside a tapestry, opened a door …
I moved forward, letting memory guide me, almost to the end of the hall. Was this the tapestry? I pulled it aside and groped for the concealed handle. Something pushed inward with a click, and the door opened. I waved to Aurore and Séléné and went in.
Inside, I wrinkled my nose at the close, sweaty smell of the room, which had clearly been too seldom aired. Little light entered from the large window, which was covered by heavy black velvet drapes and shuttered where the drapes narrowly parted. The room was dimly lit by candles on a large writing desk and a fire flickering in the grate of a curious octagonal iron stove that gave off generous heat. It was part study, part bedchamber, with a wide bed on a platform draped in black velvet like the window. Next to the writing desk was a cabinet of drawers, and on the other side a set of shelves filled with books.
A rustling came from the bed as Thérion emerged from behind the bed curtains. He stood barefoot in his long, wrinkled shirt, unshaven, looking at me.
“Violaine?”
“Psyché,” I reminded him.
He looked down, as though ashamed of his appearance, and then back up at me. His eyes were wide, anguished, pleading.
I couldn’t help myself and began to cry.
“Oh, Thérion.” I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.
“We’ll be in terrible trouble if she finds us here.” He stood stock-still, and his voice was soft and strangled with fear.
“But it’s safe. We came up with a stratagem. Clio convinced her to sit for a picture. And the Abbé will be gone till dusk.”
He breathed out and his rigid posture relaxed. He stepped forward and I came to meet him, and our arms twined round each other, but his embrace was weak and restrained. He let go of me quickly and stepped back.
“If she catches you here, she’ll realize you’re the Violaine of the poems, and she’ll find a way to exact retribution on you and your family. She was already suspicious when you arrived yesterday. Your children may be in danger. Your villages already are.”
“I’m not afraid of her. We’re not in France. Savoy has laws and courts, and she’s a foreigner.”
“All she’d have to do is send a letter to the governor and mention her father’s name. It would be nothing to her to buy off the police, and she can well afford it. Your father could find himself accused of fraud, arrested, and sent to the galleys. Your children – she’d find a way to see they’re taken from you. She could have you placed in an insane asylum. It’s the sort of thing she’d do.”
I put my hands on my hips. “But even if she really meant to do us so much harm, how would she find them out?”
“I have account books I keep here, and now she has access to all of them. She already noticed the transfers of funds to your father and questioned them. I told her he was a business associate, but I don’t know if she was really convinced. Thank God I managed to burn the contract we signed in the stove before she found it.”
If the contract that bound me to Thérion had been burnt, did that mean I was free? But I no longer wished to be free. I wanted nothing so badly as to remain a prisoner of the Castle of Enlightenment forever.
“But what makes you think she’d do such things?” I asked. “Has she destroyed others in the past?”
He turned his face away from me as though I had landed a fist on his cheek. Slowly, stumbling, he backed away and sat down on the end of the bed between the curtains.
“My child. She destroyed my child.” He didn’t look at me. His eyes gazed forward as if into darkness, unseeing.
I sat down next to him an arm’s length apart. I had never felt further away from him. “You had a child with her?”
He shook his head. “She had some sort of herb or drug the Abbé gave her that she used to avoid becoming enceinte with any child of mine. In private she used to say how much she despised children. But I wanted to have one with her, very badly. When we first married, if you can believe it, I was attracted to Léonore, and hoped to convince her. Perhaps I was even in love with her. I didn’t mind that she wasn’t well-read, or that she had a temper, or that she was taller than I was. I admired her strength and confidence. And I was touched that she fell in love with me and wanted to marry me, even though I had nothing.
“I don’t know at what point exactly I fell out of love with her. She lied about things, twisted the truth. The more distant I became, the more bitter and spiteful she was. Then I fell in love with someone else. Renée. She was only a barmaid, but she was beautiful, and kind, and one of the most intelligent people I’d ever met, though she had little education. We had a daughter together …”
He broke down weeping, but managed to choke out, “Charlotte. She was only a few weeks old when Léonore found out. Renée had recovered so well from the birth, and Charlotte was the healthiest, prettiest baby. She would have lived. But Léonore had her sent away to a wet-nurse and ensured she was neglected. A week later … I had to bury her. I wanted an inquest. I wanted the nurse put in prison. So Léonore admitted it was on her orders, and I’d be wasting my time, because the police wouldn’t care.”
My stomach felt as if it had dropped to the floor. So many mysteries began to make terrible sense now. “That’s why you forbade talk of children at Boisaulne.”
He nodded, tears streaming down his cheeks, his eyes fixed on the ground. He said softly, “In another life, I’d have liked to have your children here, to be a father to them. I couldn’t bear it if any harm came to them. It was dangerous and selfish enough of me to bring you here, the only place I could hide from Léonore. So long as she lives, I’ll never have a child around me, or let one come within a hundred paces of her, if I can help it. A child’s no safer here than in the lair of the ogre-king of the forest.”
I wanted to weep for him, but my horror was too deep for tears, and my eyes were dry now.
When his sobs subsided, I asked, “How did you manage to keep Boisaulne hidden from her?”
“I told you how I was sent off very young to school in Paris, after my parents passed away. My school friends thought all Savoyards were filthy chimney sweeps, and no one knew my family, so I pretended to be French and never told anyone I was born in Savoy. Everything here was boarded up and falling into dust, anyway, and I couldn’t have afforded to keep it up. When I married Léonore I never mentioned it. All she and her father cared about was my title and estate in Picardy, even though it was little more than a ruin with some woods and pastures attached. My grandfather bought them and named the place Le Herle when he first made his fortune on the stock market, in the days of the Duc d’Orléans’s regency.”
“And then you started coming here after … after this all happened. Through the tunnel of the grotto?”
“No, I only found the tunnel later. When I came at first, it was through a drawing.” Seeing my questioning look, he explained further, “When I was at a low point, I started to draw sketches from my childhood memories of summers at Boisaulne. One day I had a strange feeling as I drew. It’s hard to describe it. My longing was so intense to be here, to be away from the dullness and constant irritations and the underlying horror and misery of my life with Léonore. It was like the drawing felt alive under my hands. I was sketching the fountain at the end of the garden. I looked at it for a long time, feeling that strange sense of aliveness, and then it was as though I was looking into it. It was alive. It was real, not merely a drawing. And then I was there, by the fountain. I found I could travel back and forth to and from Boisaulne that way in an instant, by looking at the drawing and making the wish to be there. To return to my study in Paris, I only had to look into the fountain and make the wish to return.
“So I spent as much time away from Léonore as I could get away with, either at Boisaulne, or with my friends and at their salon gatherings. It was always understood that if I ever betrayed Léonore again, if I even carried on so much as a flirtation, she’d find the cruelest way of punishing her rival, and I’d bring down disaster on whomever I loved. Léonore had informants, and I knew word would get back to her no matter how careful I was. It’s clear now that Donatien was meant to be spying on me all along.”
The memory came back to me of Donatien in the garden, trying to get me to admit I loved Harlequin. He must have begun watching us after that, if not before. And he’d had no fear of punishment for attacking me, since he knew he’d be able to accuse me to Harlequin’s wife afterward. A flame of anger spurted up in my chest.
“And you brought me here, knowing I’d be in danger.”
He covered his face with his hands. “I was so alone. I was so ashamed of what I’d done. You’re the first person I’ve ever told. It doesn’t justify what I did to you. Nothing can. When I first had your book and your poems, I used to dream of you, imagine a life together with you. I thought sometimes of committing suicide, but I lived for those daydreams of you.”
He set his hands back in his lap, and I reached out to take one of them in mine and held it tightly. I was in tears again. “But you made me happier than I ever imagined I could be. Perhaps I shouldn’t forgive you, but I do. I love you. You opened up worlds to me. Even if she finds me out and punishes me, perhaps it was worth it. If only I could keep the children and my father safe. What happened to … to the barmaid you loved? To Renée?”
He heaved a great sigh. “Losing Charlotte was too much for her to bear. She disappeared and I never heard from her again.”
“You don’t know whether Léonore did anything to persecute her further?”
“I don’t know. I hoped to God there was nothing of the kind. I imagined every manner of catastrophe.”
“But listen, the others and I, your friends, we want to help you, in any way we can. We met as a council last night. A kind of war council.”
He took his hand out of mine and set it back in his lap. “I told you, there’s nothing to be done. All I can do is endure it, and stay as far away from you as possible, so as not to bring down ruin on you and your family. If you love me, you’ll leave Boisaulne with the others at the end of the week. That would be the best way to help me, to let me see you safely away from here.”
“But you can’t. I can’t. You shouldn’t have to live the rest of your life like this. The others were quite inventive trying to think what could be done. Séléné seemed to be hinting she wanted to arrange for a hunting accident.”
He made a dry sound, nearly a laugh. “Wasn’t the creature talking about going hunting last night? There’s a lot I don’t remember.”
“Yes. Your wife went on about it for quite some time. She seemed passionately keen on the notion of shooting something with a musket.”
“Somehow I’ve got to talk her out of it. Perhaps that’s one way you could help. Ask the others to help me persuade her to give up the idea or distract her from it.”
“Why? Are you afraid of a real accident?”
He shook his head. “Just the old tradition. No one hunts this side of the river. The forest here belongs to the roi des aulnes.”
“Do you believe in him?”
He nodded. “I still wonder sometimes whether I become him. I dream of him often, of hunting and darkness and blood.”
“Have you ever seen him?”
“No. But you have, haven’t you? Didn’t you tell me you’d had a vision of him?”
“Twice now. Or maybe I was half-mad. Delirious from my fall into the stream.”
“Perhaps he only shows himself to the pure in heart,” he said with a wry smile.
“But what do you think would happen if someone hunted in the alder-king’s woods?”
“I don’t want to find out. Perhaps Boisaulne would be cursed then and lose its magic. Perhaps the village would lose its protections and cease to prosper.”
“Maybe you could poison her,” I said, only half joking.
He shook his head and answered seriously. “I’m not a god. I’m not a master over life and death as they say the alder-king is. If I can’t bear to take the life of a stag, do you think I could kill a woman?”
“Even a woman who’s a murderer herself?”
“Even such a woman as that. Besides, the Abbé would know if she was poisoned. He’s an expert when it comes to every kind of herb. I’d have to flee the law. We all would.”
I nodded.
He lowered his head and wiped tears from his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. “I must seem so weak to you. Not being able to find my way out of this. I must disgust you.”
“Don’t speak that way.” He raised his eyes, and I found and held his gaze. “You’re not weak. You’ve survived terrible things and you’ve kept your kind heart and your noble mind. Only a strong person could do that. There’s hope …”
A sharp knock sounded on the door to the study, and we both jumped.
“She’s come back,” he said, his eyes wide with terror.