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I DECIDED NOT TO TELL Sam. Maybe I’m a skeptic when it comes to women, but I didn’t entirely trust her not to bankrupt the chateau and run off to Brazil to finish her tan. Until it was all over, I thought the less she knew the better.
We lied to Henri and Pascaline about my physical condition and my departure from the hospital. Pascaline kissed me swiftly on the cheek then wobbled off toward her kitchen murmuring praise to some obscure saint. Henri nodded curtly and compressed his lips with tolerant resignation, all while dutifully watering a bush. I walked unaided until they could not see, then leaned heavily on Samantha, who deposited me directly into bed.
I was asleep before she had unpacked the paper bag.
When I awoke, it was four p.m. by the bedside clock.
I found Samantha sunbathing in a new navy-blue bikini–top in place–that contrasted handsomely with her blond hair. I lingered in the doorway admiring her and wishing–I don't know what I was wishing.
Samantha had set up a cushioned lounge in my favorite seaside garden, and when she caught me staring, she hopped off the chaise to make room for me. I accepted the offer, and she relocated to a striped towel on the nearby stone bench. Coquin lifted his head from the stone wall, flicked his tail at her disturbance, then flattened out again and fell back to sleep. Tempting.
"You slept four hours," Samantha commented. "Feel better?"
"Much. Were you bored?"
"I straightened up your room, then I went out." She faced the sea as she finished speaking, and I couldn’t see her expression.
"You went out?"
"Yes," she answered quickly. "To pick up some of my things. You want me to stay, don’t you?"
"Of course–if you don’t mind."
"No. Only...I’m wondering what we can do?"
"Tonight I’m hoping to deter George by just being here. In the meantime, let’s see if Pascaline has any iced tea. I hate to sunbathe without iced tea."
Samantha sat beside me and ran her hand down my cheek. "Do you really feel all right?" she asked.
"That depends on what you had in mind," I answered, taking hold of her hand and kissing her fingers. My wrist nudged hers in the process, and she quickly covered a flinch.
Trying not to show my alarm, I watched her eyes while holding her hand firmly in my lap. When it seemed natural enough to glance down, I noticed the dark red blotches of a new bruise on her forearm. Her glow from the sun’s warmth rendered the marks almost undetectable, but I knew they hadn’t been there earlier. A bruise more than four hours old would have already turned black and blue.
I had to release her arm when she stood.
"I’ll ask Pascaline about the tea," she said, slipping into a sheer cover-up with a sash. "Don’t move."
"Don't worry."
I didn’t keep my word. Coquin awakened, stretched, yawned, and jumped to the ground. Then he trotted past my apartment door. When I turned to see what he was up to, he had completely disappeared. Very twilight-zone. Very disconcerting. Could there be another entrance to my rooms? I got up to investigate.
What I found was a double cellar door almost totally obscured by a bush. Its wood was unpainted and rotting, and enough of the frame’s stone and mortar had crumbled to allow the cat to enter the basement. I lifted one of the doors with my good arm, but before I went any farther I needed a flashlight.
Back again, I entered the cellar with care. Its warm, damp smell bore no resemblance to the cool, earthy mold of England. Rough plastered hallways shot off at all angles from the main passage each with many small rooms. Most were empty, but some contained cast-off household items–an iron bedstead, assorted dishes, a broken barrel, in one a circular pile of rusted chain from a ship.
Along one hall the cubicles were so unpleasant and stark I thought they had been prison cells or torture chambers. Merely passing them raised duck bumps and made me wish I was back in the sunlight. When Coquin crossed my path in hot pursuit of a mouse, I nearly dropped my light.
Roughly beneath the middle of the chateau building, the main hallway widened and the walls became stone. An archway with a decoratively enclosed lightbulb only Hugh Marsford would have designed lured me closer. Here, the entrance to a large room was protected by iron grillwork similar to the back gate I secured with the bicycle lock. Flashing my light through its grid revealed long rows of racks, the remains of an extensive wine cellar.
The gleam of a reflection just left of the opening caught my eye. Directing my light onto the wall, I was amazed to find another a brass plaque. Rubbing off the brown oxidation with my sleeve, I was able to read the date 1949–the missing year.
I felt as if my luck had just changed. I even dared to hope this clue was mine alone, the location was so unlikely.
I whispered the words as I memorized the verse.
Treasure the Spirits, provider of mirth
Hidden like jewels in the bowels of the earth.
1949
"What the hell does that mean?" I asked the long-gone author.
Once again I flashed my light around the abandoned wine cellar, but there was nothing left but the racks. I had no way to open the gate and, at the moment, no ability to dig up the floor. Also, Samantha would think I’d been kidnapped or killed if I didn’t get back up there.
As I made my way back to Coquin’s broken door, I felt much as I’d felt as a child when I suspected adults of conspiring to keep me ignorant. I still remembered the heat of the blushes that crept up my neck when my mother's friends laughed at something I said, something that sounded simple and safe to me but must have been laced with a comical double meaning. As much as I hated the feeling then, I despised it more now. I would not have a half-crazy, irritatingly obtuse, arrogant sculptor laughing at me.
I stopped for a second, swore, then shook my head over the loss of my sense of humor. I probably needed food, iced tea, a bath, and another nap.
Coquin remained behind with the mouse he’d caught for dinner, so I broke out from behind the bush into the sunshine alone.
Samantha arrived just then carrying a tray loaded with the tea and a loaf of sesame bread still warm from the oven. She looked like an ad in a travel magazine offering me the world.
"Watering the bushes?" she asked crudely.
"Yes," seemed to be the simplest answer.