The weather, of course, has taken a turn for the atmospheric when we turn onto the private drive guarded by spiky golden gates. Clouds hang so low and heavy that they make the last stretch of the journey feel claustrophobic, as if we are being pressed into the earth, squeezed into our smallest selves in preparation for the castle.
At first hidden by ancient woods, D’Arvor reveals itself all at once like a jump scare. It is both familiar and awesome to me, a breathtaking sight, and at once I am seven again and drenched in pond water and half-drowned, the castle luring me in.
Camille, you’re an expert. You are returned a grown, professional woman. To focus, I tell myself the history of the building, a medieval fortress with moat “modernized” in the fifteenth century as a hunting lodge, then extended in the mid-1800s, with new wings and elegant white turrets wrapped around its fortified, austere core. The moat was filled in and the river artificially diverted to loop around the castle at some distance, pouring into the lake at the edge of the woods.
France is littered with castles, but D’Arvor is different. It has always been lived in, always hidden from the public; its heart has not been diluted or lost. It is alive, arrogant, magnificent, violent, and in love, and its turrets impale the sky like the thorny tails of dragons. The chain of its echoes is unbroken: the steps of the knights who defended it, the horns of hunting parties, the cries of the revolution, the balls that the Foucaults still sometimes host. And its grounds are perfect, ever-changing depending on where your eyes land, like the castle itself, moving seamlessly from sweet summer meadows to the dark thorny woods of Brocéliande.
Now that I’m an adult, I realize it is no more a princess castle to me, but something darker. Perhaps it is all the years I have spent refining my gift; this castle is full of the hands who made it, twitching and scratching; I trained myself to ignore those, to be more selective about what I tap into—only the finest. But here, the finest is everywhere, it was built on suffering, and I am porous to it.
You’re tired from the journey. It’s only a headache.
Anaïs drives the car almost right up to the front door, then turns, the gravel crunching under the wheels, to park around the side of the building. Her driving is more timid here: crawling, as if trying to stay silent. I half expect her to cover the car in hay to hide it.
“We’re here.”
Neither of us move.
I’ve seen hundreds of castles in my time. I’ve been in many houses that most would consider the height of luxury. Always a stranger, like here. Always someone who comes in wearing silent shoes, picking up trinket after trinket, replacing them exactly where they were found. D’Arvor is different. Firstly, its history has been preserved; I know I will find no hypermodern renovations inside, no chrome kitchens or walk-in showers. The bare layers of its age are its unsurpassed luxury.
Secondly, it knows me. It speaks to me. As I take it in, I know my love for this soul of stone started that day it nearly took me, deep into my childhood; and now, finally back, finally grown up, I am begging for it to love me.
Anaïs springs to life first. “Are you coming?” She unbuckles and gets out to open the trunk.
I grab my suitcase and follow her around the castle, fighting hard to keep out the cries and aches of the chiseling masons. I have to stay in control.
We walk up the steps leading to the entrance, resplendent in white mortar and stained glass, and with what feels like an intake of breath, it swallows us into the cool darkness of the castle. The floor is laid with striking black and white checkerboard marble tiles; it is grand, yet a glimpse into the turret on the side reveals it as a mudroom, wellies and coats piling through the door ajar. This castle is a lived-in beast.
“The family is not yet available. Would you like some refreshments?” Anaïs asks, indicating that I should leave my suitcase in the hall.
I want to be alone—being back almost thirty years later is more overwhelming than I thought. I want some time to reset my weariness into the giddiness I yearn for, to plead with the chorus of past voices to leave me alone. “I’d love a cup of tea.”
“Of course,” she says, with the hint of a knowing smile. “Please take a seat in the yellow salon—second door on the left.”
When Constance walked in battered and bruised by Paris, this entrance hall might have smelled of fresh plaster and paint. Channel Constance. She’ll make you feel right where you belong. I place my hand on the banister, searching for the remnants of her touch, as she walked in single, filled with a renewed confidence in her own creation, taking the reins of her own fate away from Boisseau.
The castle belonged to some remote cousins, Raymond Foucault and his much younger wife, Anne. Raymond’s grandfather had bought it after it was seized during the revolution. What I know of Raymond was that he was harsh, sullen, respected, and feared. Anne was more progressive than her husband; we still have her letter inviting Constance to stay, despite her bruised reputation. Constance had had an affair with one of the most famous married men in France. A very public affair—her sculptures disclosed her unapologetic passion for him to the world. When the relationship broke down, he was unscathed, and she lost every bit of respect and reputation she had worked so hard to build. When she stormed into D’Arvor and immediately set out to order kilos of clay, it must have been a shock to its inhabitants.
Constance’s feet walked on the stones I’m standing on. She came in, doused with rain, on a moody August day, defiant, faking the confidence I am trying to tap into now. I set off down the corridor, admiring the decor as I go, following her ghost. She became happy here. I hear her boots knocking off droplets of rain on the marble. I caress the wallpaper, faded like a dry rose, reach for the tips of her fingers probing mine at the edges of the walls. Here she was free from the expectations bestowed on women in their late twenties. D’Arvor was remote; she barely had to engage with anything except her own inner world. The castle held her like a live-in secret.
Then what happened to her here? The thought that I’m closer to finding out, that she might tell me, makes me hold my breath as I continue walking, entirely absorbed in my search for her. Then there’s a noise suddenly—something at the corner of my perception. It is piercing, an animalistic wail, just out of reach…
The kitchen at the end of the corridor takes me by surprise. It is a big homely space, the appliances old-fashioned and low to the ground. A Persian rug is thrown on the flagstone floor. Orchids stand in the window. I remember a letter where Constance mentioned stealing poached pears…
“Wrong room.”
I startle as it isn’t Constance that is half-bent into the gaping fridge, but Anaïs. She doesn’t look best pleased with my interruption, a spoon in hand, a hint of chocolate at the corner of her lips. I consider for a moment that we might all be reduced to little girls here, breaking into forbidden spaces. Some longing beats in my chest, then settles into a headache. I’ve been getting headaches a lot recently.
“Do you have a cat?” I ask, thinking about the noise, but it is gone now.
She stares at me like I’m mad. “Are you all right?” She asks eventually, putting the spoon down.
I nod. “Can I please have some water?”
The clink of a glass, while the tap goes, glugs, then stops.
“Thank you.”
“There was water in the salon. I even went to the trouble of cutting cucumber and lemon. Quite refreshing.” She appraises me, her arms folded, eyes sharp between smoky eyelids. “Hmm. I don’t think water is going to cut it.” She beckons me to the fridge. “Over here.”
I do as I’m told, fearing that she’ll brandish some kind of extortionate champagne, but also dying to get a rare glimpse into the domesticity of the Foucaults. There’s nothing better to reveal a human’s true nature than the contents of their fridge. We both peer into the old appliance, which starts buzzing and rumbling raucously. The light makes Anaïs’s cheeks glow gold, scatters glitter in her eyes. She’s also excited, I notice, and only half managing to hide it.
“They always keep the leftovers here and, of course, the cheese.” She gestures to the dairy treasures within: a big terracotta bowl of chocolate mousse on the middle shelf, into which serving spoons, including hers, have already carved round hollows; a small plate of profiteroles, cut in half to reveal an ooze of crème anglaise; some fromage blanc in a family-sized plastic tub; slabs of butter. And cheeses on the shelf below, individually wrapped in gingham wax paper, all in distinctive shapes like a child’s wooden block puzzle. The fridge smells like a cheesemonger’s, like Maman’s fridge just before Christmas.
Anaïs follows my eyes, takes the plate of profiteroles. “Go on,” she says, just the way Maxime’s grandmother encouraged me twenty-five years ago with her caramels.
No, Camille. We don’t take charity. I shake my head, sipping water.
“Up to you.” Her eyes close as she savors the pastry. “Delicious.” I envy her boldness to take what she wants. “A definite perk of being here,” she says. “I’ll never take it for granted.”
Noticing for the first time the expensive cut and materials of her clothes, how her white T-shirt hugs her slender hips, silky and uncreased, her Chanel ballerina flats absorbing the sound of her steps, I think that her own fridge can’t have lacked any of those treats. I’m not naive; I know that being Maxime’s assistant would only be accessible to someone from a privileged background, someone whose parents are paying the rent while you’re gaining experience for prestige and a fraction of the price of your skills. The art world is full of people like that.
But there’s something different about Anaïs. I want to know more about the contrast between her clothes and her car, her guardedness on the journey and spontaneity in the presence of food, but she speaks first: “They all have their favorites. Marie-Laure likes hard cheeses, crumbly, made with alpine milk. This is Maxime’s.”
I peer at the wheel she’s pointing at, pink like a skin and rimmed in thin wood. “Vacherin Mont-D’Or. Divisive,” I say.
It’s the strongest cheese I remember having. Thick and oozy with a taste of dark cellar and musty barrels. Not for the fainthearted, even French.
“Yes,” Anaïs says. “Not a fan myself. I told him I’m not going anywhere near him after he’s had some. I can tolerate a lot, but not Vacherin.”
What she is alluding to sounds so intimate—going near him, yet it is so deliberately ambiguous. I feel like she means to confuse me; she definitely meant for it to sound territorial. “I’m sorry—what do you mean?” I stammer as she slams the fridge’s door shut. But she’s walking out of the kitchen and I run after her, looking at her from head to toe, for clues that I’ve missed. What is the nature of her relationship with Maxime, exactly?
“Come on,” she beckons. “If you’re going to snoop around, I might as well show you your room before dinner.”
As I follow her up the grand staircase, I try to push my questions about the present to the side. Who cares about Maxime, when you get to be so close to Constance? The weight of history is real, a thick blanket on my shoulders, weaved with the threads of those who lived and died within these walls. I try to shake it off, admire all its grandeur objectively, but I feel more porous, less able to shut them out, as if what happened at Courtenay left me with an open wound. Or it’s just down to the particular makeup of this place, the way it whispers directly to my heart. I’m still shaken and scared at the prospect of the dark pond opening in my mind, the water lapping at my ankles and running down the steps in a murky waterfall, taking with it my grip on reality, my self-control. What will happen when Maxime needs me to engage with the works and it all goes wrong? If I collapse, or worse—if I damage something, someone? My suitcase catches on the stairs as we ascend; in a blink, I lose my balance, fall backward. Anaïs catches me.
False alarm. You’re fine. You’re absolutely fine.
“All good.” I snap, snatching my arm away from her.
We continue down the corridor. I expected to be tucked under the eaves, in an old nursery, but the door she opens is right in the middle.
“Here,” she says. “This is the room she stayed in.”
“Hmm?”
As soon as I walk in, it starts pulling me in. Something calling my subconscious. I’m trying to stay grounded, to focus on what makes the room so charming, the concrete beats of its architecture and furniture: huge windows from floor to ceiling flanked with silver brocade curtains, opening onto the beautiful French garden. The headboard is an ancient gilded wooden frame. A pattern of twisting ferns, not so much drawn as textured, creeps up the wallpaper, catching the late sunlight. The Versailles parquet glows like a pool of honey. A door at the far end of the room reveals an old-fashioned en suite with a roll-top bath.
“Constance Sorel.” Anaïs stands in the doorway watching me as I come to a halt in the middle of the room. If I progress any further, I’ll be gone. Many of these objects she has touched, handled. “This was her room here.”
“Has it changed much?”
“I’m not sure. I think they had been decorating when she came. Legend has it she made some of the finishing touches.” She waves her hand around vaguely.
Constance’s presence floods into me as if through a cracked dam. She is in the room, examining it as I did, her striped travel dress shuffling around her; she pats, like I do, the heavy silkiness of the curtains, imagining what sculpture would best adorn the gardens; then she throws her hat off onto the Louis XV desk and falls onto the bed backward, and she feels…
When I open my eyes, it is Anaïs who is lying on the bed, grinning, her eyes closed. An expression that I haven’t seen on her face before, of complete and utter relief, of excitement…
“I’m in love,” she says.
I stare at her, brought back to this reality by this sudden change, by the brazenness and familiarity of her move; her eyes fling open and she darts off the bed as if she has been stung. “I’m so sorry. I was—I don’t know what I—”
What is happening? Is this some kind of joke? Then I catch some unease on her face, a flicker of the woman in the Hepburn dress.
Oh no. Have Constance’s emotions I was feeling…leaked out of me again? Impossible. I wasn’t even in Avalon. Anaïs must be messing with me. I clinch my fists tight, close my eyes, try to reset. “It’s fine,” I tell her, forcing my voice to be light. Nothing to see here. I won’t be playing your game, whatever it is. “I understand the feeling. It’s an amazing room.”
“Yes. Well, it’s an amazing place.” Her face slides shut. “Careful though. It’s near-impossible to leave.”
I don’t want to ever leave it. Why would I? Whether at my parents’ house in Reading, my flat in London, Lowen’s family home, or our halls of residence, I’ve been a guest, willing or unwilling, wanted or unwanted, all my life. D’Arvor is the place I’ve been desperately saving my heart for. I want it to adopt me and never let me go.
“You won’t tell Max, will you?” Anaïs’s voice asks behind me, bringing me back.
“Tell him what?”
She’s in the doorway, her long black hair falling in curls along her bare arms, crossed on her chest more in protection than defiance. After her childish move of throwing herself onto the bed, she seems much younger and unsure. “That I was late picking you up from the station. That I took my crappy car. That I just acted like I was an eight-year-old at a sleepover.”
I can’t help but smile. “We’re in France. Beds are comfortable and lateness is fashionable.”
She smiles too. “Thank you. Dinner is at eight. I’ll see you then.”
“What should I expect? I haven’t got a clue about how to behave here.” I’m surprised I’ve come out and admitted it—especially to her. But there’s something vulnerable about her right now that invites confidence.
“Don’t worry. You’ll soon learn the rules,” she says before shutting the bedroom door.