Capodimonte, Italy
1604
Henri spins a fine tale to the duke and the cardinal: of the pull of his savage roots toward the open air, toward sprawling vistas, toward mountains. My kind do so much better in the countryside than we do cooped in the city. My father thrives, now; we are meant for fresh air; for fresh water.
And the duke and his brother, charmed, offer him a house in Capodimonte; and, months later, when he has fixed his eye upon a beautiful girl from the village, the duke offers to pay two hundred scudi for her dowry, to which the cardinal adds a number of jewels—a fine price for the daughter of a bricklayer, and no matter that she is rumored to be in love with another man.
A year or so later, Henri charms the duke into relinquishing Madeleine and her husband, that the entire hairy family might be together in the countryside; that they might not wither.
It is only Antoinette whose absence mars Petrus’s happiness. When he wakes, shouting, for the third night in a row from a dream of sea monsters, he pads down the stairs and opens the front door, breathing in the night air. This dream has not tormented him for many years; but it makes sense, he supposes, that it would return now, when his child has been stolen away. When he allowed the stealing.
His greatest fear, realized. And yet somehow, that day when Antoinette was nearly taken in Basel seems more true than the day she left holding the marchesa’s soft, beringed hand. He can still feel the thump and jolt of his heart as he searched for her; the animal fury when he found her, as a stranger tried to lead her away. But this—this new taking happened so gently—a word from the duke, a reluctant nod from Petrus, and then a smiling noblewoman taking his child by the hand. He can almost forget, sometimes, that it happened at all. Forget that his daughter is not here with them.
In the groves where she loved to run, he imagines he sees her, sometimes, a haunting, the swish of her skirt, the flash of the ribbons in her hair. Sometimes he thinks he feels her curling about his neck like a ruff; tucking herself between him and Catherine in their bed. He hears her voice, raised in childish song, among the placid cows and between rows of vines. She is there, sometimes, he is certain; the sounds so close, the sensations so true. She is there, just there—
But when he puts out a hand to touch her, when he chases the ghost of her through the vineyards, she never is.