Of course, my main thought is to be alone with Maxime again so we can continue our conversation, but he has to go to Rennes for a meeting. He promises that Frédéric will set up my “office” for tomorrow morning and leaves me alone in D’Arvor’s dining room, where someone (I assume Marie-Laure, or perhaps the servants of the Beast) has left an inviting spread of salad, cold meat, and cheeses. I help myself and eat lunch alone, wondering where they all are, but grateful for a bit of quiet.
Maxime is absent at dinner again. After observing them for twenty-four hours, I’m feeling a little more involved in the routine of the family; I get up every time Lila is asked to fetch something in the kitchen and Marie-Laure is starting to let me help, as if I am another surrogate daughter, or maybe the poor cousin invited to stay. Lila is watching me somewhat warily and I wonder what she saw of the scene with Maxime earlier. It’s a moment my heart keeps returning to, sending small electric jolts through me. I’m both galvanized and absent-minded in my conversations with Marie-Laure and Frédéric.
“I’ll set up the little room for you after dinner,” Frédéric says.
“What for, dear?” Marie-Laure asks.
“Maxime wants me to move the sculptures to where Ms. Leray can have a better look at them. What kind of lighting do you need?”
“To be honest, anything would be better than the attic’s,” I say.
“We have some kind of pedestal lamp somewhere. Do you remember, Maman? Maxime and I used to use it for our pretend plays.”
“Pretend plays?” Lila asks, looking up from her new potatoes.
“That would do the trick,” he continues. “If I can find it.”
“That’s nice,” I say. “Playing together as boys.”
He snorts.
“Frédéric,” Marie-Laure scolds him.
He turns to me and smiles. “Maxime takes pretending very seriously. Playing with him wasn’t always much fun.”
Then I see his eyes meet Marie-Laure’s; there’s an awkward silence. I look to Lila, but she is busy stacking up our empty plates. In my book, she is the one who plays tricks. I wonder what she made of finding Maxime and me in the attic earlier. I can’t read her, and she unsettles me. All I know is she doesn’t like having me here.
As I toss and turn in bed this second night, I know there’s no way on earth that I’m going to fall asleep. My brain is restless, one moment wondering what Maxime was about to say about the girl he showed Viviane to—about me (I’m thrilled he remembers, hardly dare to let myself consider it might have meant something to him too), then my brain dips into fear again remembering how unwell I became just from being near the sculptures and how unable I was to control what spoke to me.
I just want to know what we have.
Was the authentic Night Swimming among the sculptures? I didn’t think so—but I looked so quickly, my brain distracted by fighting the dread… I need to find it—it would save my career—but I also need to know what happened to Constance. However, will I be able to do this now that the grip I have on reality is starting to escape me?
The room is dark, holding its breath. I’m not going mad. My gift is real, but I have built everything else on research, on being rational, knowledgeable. It was so stressful in the attic earlier, with Maxime watching me, that years of my accumulated emotions got the better of me. It must have been stage fright. I need to be alone with the sculptures, try to read them again. I need to delve in, really focus, away from personal distractions. That will reassure me that I can still do it.
I get up, throw my dressing gown on, and grab my phone to use as a light. I hope Frédéric has moved the sculptures like he said he would; skulking about the attic at night would be too eerie for my liking. I open my door and pad down the carpeted corridor as quietly as possible, to the service staircase.
It’s 3:00 a.m. The quietest time of night, too late for night owls and too early for early risers. Except the castle never sleeps. I thought it was a cliché, because the two-bed council house in Reading I grew up in was porous and silent as if it was made of cardboard, but it’s true. Cracks and thumps accompany me every step of the way. The staircase is narrow and pitch-black. To reassure myself, I think of bakers. I think of all of the ones who are up already, cutting and shaping the dough. I think of Lowen in the warmth of his dad’s bakery on Fore Street, the steamed windows, the golden light of the back room, where he is shaping bread rolls. It makes the ominous night of the castle feel kinder.
When I get to the old nursery’s door, my future office, it is ajar. A long table resting on skinny trestles stands bare in the moonlight. I jump out of my skin when I catch a glimpse of someone in the room, a thin silhouette with a drooped head in the corner…but it’s the lamp Frédéric was talking about at dinner.
The sculptures are still in the attic, then. Damn. I breathe in and make my way to the door, considering briefly whether turning the light bulb on will make it more or less scary altogether. I decide it is better to know what I’m facing and put off anything that would relish skulking in the darkness. The light doesn’t make a big difference to my part of the room, but at least reveals there are no demons sitting in a circle, nothing hanging from the ceiling. I take some time to remind myself I’m here for Constance, and nobody else. I just need to shut all the other voices out. It’s not perfect, but it does feel a little easier this time. I keep my jaw clenched, my eyes focused, ignore the soldiers, the hunters, and the babies. I turn my phone flashlight up and approach the sculptures standing on the table in a semicircle.
They really are stunning, about thirty centimeters high, all representing couples. Constance had that way of capturing intense life, bottling it up in her compositions. They are electric, their hands reaching out, their bodies perched precariously on the tipping point of gravity. She loved merging human flesh with landscape: rocks weighing down the skirts of her women, preventing them from taking flight; the sensual curve of long hair meeting a wave, pulled back. I come closer to the sculptures, trying to focus on their stylistic qualities, whereas their emotions, like the volume of a stereo turned up, up, up, scream me in.
You can do this, Camille. You’re in charge.
I don’t want to go in. Not yet. And it’s a tiny bit easier now, at 3 a.m., to fight it. It’s quieter, I feel more prepared having been here earlier today. And also…
She’s here. Excitement takes over as I realize I know these sculptures from research, that I had presumed them lost. Sorel mentioned them in the rare letters she sent to her former Parisian benefactors, when she was trying to obtain commissions to cast her plasters in bronze. She was still hoping to make it, to become a respected sculptor in her own right. Although a few other works did get cast, now mostly tucked away in the Boisseau Museum’s storage room, I wasn’t aware that these plasters had survived. I know them by heart, being described or sketched in her letters, and now they’re real. In front of me.
I can’t believe they’ve been sleeping here all this time; that the Foucaults have literally been sitting under them, drinking champagne.
The four couples in front of me all come from Arthurian legend. Merlin and Morgane, as well as Uther and Igerna, and Yvain and Laudine, but the one that immediately stands out to me is Guinevere and Lancelot.
Sorel joined Boisseau’s workshop in Paris because she wanted to work with him. She knew his genius and admired him deeply; in his fifties, he had risen to unprecedented notoriety. He was much older, widely acclaimed; his craft and productivity were unsurpassed. A rock star of clay and bronze, physically imposing, handsome, tormented by genius but charmingly shy when it came to romance.
His creations were selling so fast he had a whole team working for him. He also took on students, some women traveling from abroad, who’d come to Paris for the thrill of a couple of lessons from the master. Sculpture is physical work—it requires heavy lifting, twisting wires and creating armatures, and mixing plaster and ferrying heavy lumps of clay. It was an art that was deemed manly and that women, at the time, were frowned upon for tackling in any serious manner. They had better stick to watercolor or embroidery, and keep their delicate fingers clean and their arms weak.
But Sorel was always contrary. Sure of her own talent, driven by her passion for sculptures, she demanded Boisseau’s time and attention. Whenever I looked around, he wrote much later, Mademoiselle Sorel was there, that gaze of hers so intense it made my hands burn. She was no amateur. She was an apprentice. After a while, he tasked her with some work on the hands and feet of his sculptures and allowed her to use his models when he was done with them. She stayed late, after everybody else had left, and brought in her own candles so she could practice her craft.
Boisseau kept returning to classical mythology, and during her time in Paris, Sorel explored Ovid’s Metamorphoses in her own works; she always chose to represent couples. I know why; with Boisseau, she was changing, too. Under his guidance, she was sharpening her skills and mind, becoming a powerful artist. Under his hands, she was turning into a woman who knew desire, whose body plied to yearning and whose mind to obsession. He breathed air into her life. Around him, she was dizzy with new possibilities. It was exhilarating.
In her works, I have felt her skin cracking and splitting when she broke the ice that had formed, overnight, on top of the water buckets. The hindrance of her skirts, that she would fasten up at her waist when she was alone. The burning muscles of her arms, her back, the sweat pooling between her collarbones. I have felt how she used men’s condescension as fuel for her ambitions. It spoke to the way my own skin cracked in the cold of unheated old houses, the nights spent at the computer until every muscle of my back and neck ached. The way I had to earn every single bit of respect I ever received, ten times over. We both worked tirelessly to break our ceilings. Constance’s faith in herself, her hunger for living every experience to the full, her total commitment to her vision, gave me a rush every time I tapped into it. With her, I felt I could bust my own limitations, that she offered layers and experiences and emotions I soon could not do without. I needed more and more.
I have also experienced the warmth that spread through her when Boisseau beckoned her to the fire, one night when he stayed late, and wrapped her shoulders in a shawl, their first kiss, as she was trembling with cold, then suddenly hot all over. She was deeply infatuated, and so was he. Their story was complex, doomed, and formative. His teaching and resources unlocked the love of her life: sculpture. Neither could exist without the other.
Until her association with him became her downfall. Parisian society eventually got wind of their affair and, with relief, found a familiar box to put her in: the muse, the mistress of a Great Man. He wanted her to stay and continue working with him, but she left. After their breakup, she tried to make it work in the Parisian art world, but without his name and protection, everything dwindled. She was not only a woman, but a tainted one. She was a wild thing with strong arms wearing men’s clothes for ease of working. They didn’t know what to do with her.
I am done with Paris, she wrote back to Anne Foucault, therefore I am very tempted to accept your invitation. I need D’Arvor to wrap me up in its wings. I need to believe in fairies and magic again—the vengeful ones who trap untrue lovers in stone, I mean. The kind of magic that repairs a broken heart.
PS I am also quite handy with a saw and a hammer, if that is of any use to your castle.
In Brittany, she immersed herself in local Arthurian legend. Anne would tell stories at night by the fire in the dining room. Constance revisited the places of her childhood that tourism had just started to exploit: the Val Sans Retour, Brocéliande, where she searched for Merlin’s tomb. She worked hard to develop her own style, which soon moved away from the Arthurian cycle to scenes of ordinary life. Until now, I only knew Viviane as an example of the earlier. Other works of her time at D’Arvor I saw a few years back in an exhibition in Rennes’s Beaux-Arts Museum: a set of scenes and portraits of ordinary rural life. All exquisite, but very different, in her attempt to sublimize the humble happiness of everyday tasks. I remember tapping into these and finding them too quiet for her. I only went to see them once.
These sculptures in front of me right now, these four Arthurian couples in the attic, are a missing piece of the puzzle of her life, the link between Paris and Brittany. Heartbroken on more than one count, Constance would have initially brought the remnants of her tumultuous love story to D’Arvor. She would have continued to seek inspiration in dramatic legends of magic and broken hearts.
I’ve been telling myself all of this, going over her life, as a way to stay here. The sculptures are calling, the pond rising, and I’m scared. I don’t trust myself and my gift anymore. I know I’m going to have to relent, but I’m trying hard to stick to my process and, first, observe. I’ve been staring at Guinevere and Lancelot a while now, the lovers who could never be together, trying hard to analyze it from the outside. Sorel portrayed the push and pull so clearly in their movements, their arms intertwining without ever touching. Guinevere’s dress looks so heavy it almost tips her backward into Lancelot’s arms, yet she pulls away.
Her composition draws you in, and you keep looking for the place of connection, going round and round them without ever quite finding it.
They want me in… Not yet.
Not yet, not yet. I take a step back, trying to hang on to this reality. You can do this. You are in charge.
This is the find of a lifetime, something that very few experts get to experience: access to a whole new chapter of the life of the artist they have devoted their life to. D’Arvor has lovingly preserved and provided me with this opportunity.
Yet, I try to stifle a tiny touch of disappointment that Night Swimming isn’t here. I take a look around the attic, in a daze, wondering if it could be hidden here somewhere, still undiscovered. I’m not bold enough to start ripping dust sheets off the Foucaults’ family heirlooms.
Yet.
The pull intensifies, water rising to my knees. It vibrates with echoes, monsters down below. Will I ever get used to this new fear that permeates my process now? The loss of control, the new prospect of spiraling, the danger?
I should take measurements, write detailed descriptions of them. I squeeze my tape measure in my hand, allowing the sharp edge to cut my skin. A flash again. Maxime’s eyes, as they landed on me earlier today in this very space.
But then we met again later. What are the chances?
All around me there are threads linking us all—the castle, Constance, Maxime, and me—alive and organic and here I am, a spider at the center of the web. Or am I a fly, struggling to break free?
I’ve always known—suspected—felt—
I swear Lancelot’s eyes flash green at me—I gasp as my grip on reality snaps and the flash flood takes me.
I prepare for the struggle, the fight for my life, but once inside the pond, things still, except for my heart beating in my ears, the headache of my clenched jaw. It is cold, dark, and I start trying to focus on what is beyond the fear. Where the light should be all the way down, in Avalon, I hear blackbirds, glimpse a pond in the sunset, golden branches of gorse.
That below is Constance’s world. My heart soars—that is the way it’s always been. Perhaps just a little more muted, tainted by my own fears, but I think it is safe.
I swim through into an Avalon that glows gold and green, and straightaway I look for her. I want her to tell me I’m going to be OK, impart some of her wisdom, reassurance. My legs shake as I survey it all. It is pretty, with such giddiness in the air—but Constance isn’t here. Instead, Lancelot and Guinevere stand by the pond, their hands intertwined, their words reaching me.
My love, what would I do without you?
That’s unusual. Where is she? I stare at them as they loop and loop in their loving charades, a distortion in the air. There it is again—the crippling feeling that something isn’t right.
I put my faith in you.
You are my better half; you are the key to unlocking it all.
They embrace, the warmth of infatuation and devotion pouring into the landscape, liquid gold in the pond. I watch them, feeling like a voyeur, unsettled at Constance’s absence. Is this more proof that my gift is broken? Or was our connection severed somehow?
I walk and walk, trying to find her. The cracks of dry branches make me jump. A hooded figure scampers away from me. A branch falls—the whole tree. It is two-dimensional like the decor of a theater.
It’s all going wrong; it’s uncanny, as if my doubts are attacking the substance of this world.
Oh, God—the pond. I need the pond to be real. What if I can’t go back? I run, but the water keeps receding ahead of my feet—
There’s someone else in here, someone who shouldn’t be. I catch her eyes, terrified, at the edge of the water.
Lila.
She immediately dives in and I race after her, heart beating in my temples. I swim through as fast as I can but can’t quite catch up with her. The shock of the fast return, of reality hitting me in the face makes me stumble as I get my bearings.
“Lila?” I run out of the attic to the sound of her scampering down the stairs. “Wait!” I whisper-shout as we tumble down after each other through the dark house, a shock after the golden sun in Lancelot. To my surprise, instead of ducking off into her bedroom, she continues down the main staircase, stepping into a land of marble and echoes like you do in a different dimension.
She’s clumsy, like she’s drunk, and I catch her halfway down, stopping her with my hand on her shoulder.
“Lila, wait.” She struggles free and I realize I shouldn’t be holding her. “Sorry, I’m so sorry, but please hear me out—”
“How did you do this?” We’re in the darkness, suspended between two floors. Her eyes are two pools of shadows.
I take a breath, rub my hand on my forehead. “What? Lila, please, we’re going to wake—” I stretch out my hand, not touching her this time, but in what I hope is an appeasing gesture.
“You were there, standing like a ghost, and then…and then, you…”
“I what?” I need to hear it. I realize I never got to speak to the lady in the Hepburn dress and find out what she experienced. How she got in there. I hide my hands deep in the pockets of my robe to hide their shaking.
“You put things in my head,” Lila says.
“What things?”
I need to know exactly what it was like for her. How much I can affect others. She shakes her head. “I saw… I felt it, that…the Val Sans Retour, I was there.”
Creaking floorboards upstairs make both of us jump. We wait, but no one comes. I wonder how many ghosts are eavesdropping on us.
“How did you know?” Lila asks again. “The Miroir aux Fées. The pond, in Brocéliande. What did you do?” She regains some defiance as she crosses her arms on her chest.
This hardens me to her. “What did you do, Lila?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You were following me, though?”
“What?”
Now I’m crossing my arms too, mirroring her on the stairs. “Since I arrived you’ve been playing tricks, then watching me like you can’t wait for me to trip on one of your silent wires. I know you don’t want me here, but please, leave me alone to get on with it. It’s clearly going to be best for both of us.”
“You think I don’t want you here?”
“You said I didn’t belong here. That you thought I would do a bad job of it. I overheard you on the first night, talking to Maxime.”
A long silence. In a stray pool of moonlight, her face falls. “What exactly did you hear?”
We’re interrupted by the front door below us opening and closing.
“Max!” Lila is gone in a flash, rushing down. I follow. Is she going to tell him that I was snooping? Or worse, that I’ve hurt her? She doesn’t seem hurt, just spooked.
At the bottom of the stairs, Maxime turns on a lamp on a Louis XV sideboard. He is shaking a fine pellicle of rain off his coat. The light makes his hair glow like gold thread. Lila throws herself into his arms and he receives her, surprised. I freeze on the last step.
“What’s going on? It’s so late,” he says, his hands on her waist. “Or early.” Then he sees me. “Camille? Is there a problem?”
I look at my hand, gripping the banister, on fire. The cracked knuckles. The warmth of a woolen blanket in an icy room. The sun pouring onto the water’s silvery surface, as the lovers embrace, Constance and Boisseau, and Maxime and Lila. Despite everything that happened, I find a trace of the love of Lancelot and Guinevere in me still, as they embraced in an Avalon of gilded ferns.
“I just had a nightmare. I woke Ms. Leray up in the process. Sorry.” Against his chest, Lila’s voice is small. He closes his arms around her protectively. One of her legs has hooked itself around his knee as if she is hoping to merge with him.
That’s what I want. For the first time in years, it hits me. That kind of love. Someone to save you, scoop you up, be the guiding light you need. Not in the past, not by surrogacy, but for real. In this world. Feeding on rays from Constance’s mind, unspoiled by my own doubts and demons, I allow myself to want it.
I should turn around and go back to my room, but I can’t take my eyes off Lila and Maxime. When he brings his hand up to stroke her hair away from her face, smoothing long dark locks between his fingers, I notice her hair is wet. Did I really take her into the pond with me? Or did she choose to swim in to follow me? Is she going to tell him?
Maxime’s eyes meet mine over her shoulder. In a blink we’re back in the attic, and I know he feels our connection too. If I could tap into this—hang on to this for a bit longer—would my fear and brokenness melt away?
I just want to know what we have.
My heart beats as the water falls from Lila, and from Maxime’s coat, hitting the marble.
You are my better half; you are the key to unlocking it all.