Maxime told me Lila had gone home, that he would drive me. I sit next to him in a sleek Bugatti I didn’t know he possessed and put my life into his hands. The car is low to the ground; my seat leans far back; it’s like being driven in a coffin. I feel wretched without knowing why, remembering Lowen’s face as I hugged him goodbye. When he shook Maxime’s hand, he didn’t look at him—he was looking at me, and I felt the bubble I’ve been building over the past week burst with his scrutiny.
Maxime didn’t go back to any of what happened earlier. As soon he started the car, he set to outlining his plans for the charity ball, which has been months in the making and which I have suddenly become instrumental to. A couple of weeks ago I was packing for a few days, and now it is assumed that I’m a cog in D’Arvor’s machine. I both dislike and adore it, the thrill of Maxime writing me into his life, while I fight with the unease of not being in control.
But there is also the doubt about the sculptures, like the scratch of a forgotten pin in my jacket. The artworks at D’Arvor and the ones I saw today feel completely different. I know in my heart that the ones in Rennes, as well as Viviane, are by Constance. I know now that Anne Foucault was her muse, friend, and confidante throughout her time at D’Arvor. I think back to my experience in Guinevere and Lancelot, how everything felt staged, how the artist was hiding behind its subject. There was no trace of Anne, but there was a hooded figure scampering away from me… Lila asked if this was possible—clearly the artist of the sculptures in the attic was deliberately hiding something. I have to come to the conclusion that it’s either Constance trying to conceal something that happened to her at D’Arvor, or that I’m dealing with an outstanding forger.
I can’t throw myself completely into this, offering Maxime my assistance, striking deals with him (my help for a piece of D’Arvor—my devotion for a piece of him), pouring my brain and heart and soul into his life legacy, until I know for sure what I’m dealing with.
“Maxime,” I start, noticing the inky darkness we are speeding through, realizing I’m completely at his mercy. I have no idea where we are. The night stretches into unknown wooden alleys, the fields threatening to smother us. I fancy I can hear the screech of a night bird, or perhaps one of the washerwomen catching an unwilling soul.
“Hmm?”
As we got to the car, he threw his jacket into the boot, rolled up his sleeves. The bright white of his shirt outlines his torso in the dark. His arms are covered in fine golden hairs, catching stray light as he handles the steering wheel, gently pulling and pushing to follow the curves of the road.
“Is there a—there isn’t, I mean, any chance that your sculptures might…?” I’m hoping he might say something, help me out, but in his silence I have no choice but to stumble forward. “That someone might have tried to emulate her style…?”
His voice is cold with shock. “You think they might be fakes?”
It’s fine. It’s a natural question to ask, I tell myself, yet I know the violence of bringing this up when we’re talking of family heirlooms. “No, not at all… I—it’s just—they are so different from those in Rennes. It’s—a bit difficult to make it all fit together. I was just wondering if there’s something we haven’t thought about, another explanation, maybe.”
In the silence, I imagine what would happen if, at his push of a button, my seat fell through and I landed on the tarmac, bruised and hurt. I think he’s going to speak, but, out of nowhere, he slams on the brakes.
“Merde,” he hisses, in that painfully long moment when time stops and the car threatens to spin, frozen in the imbalance, gravity pushing it to the edge of an accident. I’m bashed forward against my seat belt, which, thankfully, locks, and the screech of the tires echo the ghosts and the night creatures and the ghouls and the malevolent fairies as the car struggles to stay on the road and Maxime and I both hang on.
We’ve stopped. We’re still on asphalt. In the middle of the track, but motionless, facing forward. In the headlights, a fox stands for a moment, a copper shape of long limbs, his beady black eyes absorbing the light—then it scampers out of sight.
Maxime and I breathe out in unison. I am brought all at once so close to my parents’ fate that I can feel them near, as if a portal has been opened, as if it is their ghosts awaiting me in the forest. This dangerous, magnificent desire to stay here, to make some kind of mark upon the world, to scream my name, comes upon me. I have the urge to pull Maxime to me then—tell him he saved my life, kiss the hell out of him, feel the warmth of his skin against mine.
Like the fox, it lasts the time of a blink, then it’s just me, composed again, my hands snatching at the seat belt that is still cutting into my throat. Maxime switches the light on in the car as if to find his bearings. Its sharpness exposes me completely.
“Can fakes be that—good?” His voice is hoarse. He moves forward and I think that he’s going to turn on the radio, but instead he brushes my hair from the side of my neck. “Are you hurt?” His fingers tenderly stroke the flesh the seat belt ate into.
“The answer is: not likely,” I whisper. I close my eyes at his touch, not daring to move.
“You’re not hurt?”
“I’m not hurt. And you’re right. Fakes can be great, but there’s always a tell. Something that doesn’t add up.”
“But you would know, Camille, wouldn’t you?”
He’s still stroking, then with his other hand he cups my face, gently but firmly making me look him in the eye.
“You’re right,” I tell him.
“Why aren’t you sure then?”
Is he going to kiss me? I’m losing my mind here.
“Because the sculptures you’ve shown me, Maxime, they’re different… They’re extraordinary.”
“Like you,” he says.
I take his fingers, to examine his hands in mine. I want to attach them to my heart, so he can feel how fast it’s beating. Wait. What is that, under his nails? He snatches them away, clicks off the light, then bends forward, this time to punch some buttons on the radio.
“At the bar earlier,” I start again. It feels like days ago. “You talked about my gift.”
He is silent while a song fills the car. Respire encore. Breathe, still.
My eyes linger on his hands holding the wheel, and I wonder if the flecks of plaster I just saw on his fingers were real or a figment of my imagination. Am I making things up? Projecting my thoughts onto him?
We both have secrets.
“You’re right,” I continue. It feels a bit easier to say in the dark, when I don’t have to look at him. When we just escaped a car crash. “I can tap into art. Physically transport into it. Into scenes of the artist’s past, their inspiration to make the piece. I know it sounds mad, but—”
He interrupts me. “I know. But that’s not all, is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You can bring people in with you.”
“How do you know?” Did Lila tell him? But they haven’t been by themselves this afternoon. Unless she told him earlier, that night after the attic… I can’t help feeling betrayed, but of course her loyalty would be to him. What did I expect? That Lila and I were really becoming friends, just because of what we shared this afternoon?
“I’ve always suspected, Camille. You put Viviane in my head. I knew something was happening then. Then at the V&A, surely you realized I caught glimpses of what you were seeing? The pond, the water, some sunlight. Incredible confidence.” A pause, while the car’s ventilation purrs, the radio blasts, and I’m staring at the night beyond the headlights, trying to reconsider my whole history with Maxime. “I saw the way the woman reacted at the Courtenay showcase. And today, I think Lila was lucky enough to get a proper grand tour in the museum and neither of you are telling me. The truth is, I think you’re a coward.”
“What?” I’m stunned. That’s a lot to process. But—a coward…?
“You—tap into things (your words); you observe, you watch, when you could be using your power to a much greater extent. Have you ever thought of where Constance’s fame would be if you had been more active?”
I feel like he’s punched me right in the heart. This space is too small; I’m too vulnerable, lying back in my seat, at the mercy of Maxime’s words while they cut me open. My fingers grasp the door handle.
I thought I was safe here with him, that he was the only one who seemed not to judge me for my failures, and now this? I can’t bear to stay here while he too is telling me how I failed Constance, and myself.
I rattle the door, but it’s locked. “Let me out.”
He sits very still, watching me struggle.
“Camille, I’m proposing that we work together. That I help you refine that power. Do you think it’s a coincidence that Viviane unlocked it for you? That after a mere two weeks here you are stronger than you have ever been, able to take someone in with you willingly?”
“What do you mean?” I gasp.
“I think it’s all linked to the estate, to D’Arvor. And I think that there, you and me, somehow…we can magnify each other.”
I let go of the door. That part of my brain desperately trying to get to grips with our history kicks off again and I see it all: how Maxime held my hand in D’Arvor’s attic the first time I went to Avalon. How I kept returning to the lake, the glimpses of the boy with golden locks. Maxime was there at Courtenay too, when I pulled the woman in. He was there to receive Lila in his arms, my head full of my infatuation for him, when she snuck in. Every time my gift has progressed, it’s been thanks to him and D’Arvor.
“What exactly are you hoping to gain from this?” I ask.
“I told you. I want the world to know the extent of Constance’s talent. I want them all to see her the way you showed her to me, all these years ago.”
“You want people to buy a sculpture at the ball,” I say slowly, putting the pieces together. Crazy Connie’s little fancies. “Is it all about the money?”
“Ah, Camille, is this really what you think of me? After all those years?” He rubs his eyes with his fingers.
I think of Duke Charles’s amused contempt, of Maxime’s reaction. If it’s not about money, it must be about prestige. What’s in it for me? Then I see, again, Rob marching me out, the crowd in Courtenay staring in silence. Rob chose not to believe me and fired me without a backward glance. All these years I’ve had to hide my gift, make it a containable hidden quirk, for fear that people would think me mad and discredit me. I’ve worked so hard to mold myself into somebody who stayed in her lane and strived to give them what they wanted in a way that suited them.
Maxime was right. I was always watching the story pan out, never an actor in it. I think I may have been a coward.
I think of Constance’s unmarked grave, how she could have gone from the elated, confident artist I saw in Washerwoman to disappearing from the records. Have I done the same to my own life by erasing my potential? What role did Anne Foucault play in Constance’s fate? Then I think of Maxime’s nails. Of his reaction when I questioned the sculptures. I have a lot of figuring out to do, and I do think only Maxime and D’Arvor hold the answers. Maxime didn’t deny that he had Night Swimming earlier in the bar. Even if there’s a tiny chance…
“I suppose I do want to see how far I can go,” I say.
I hear his smile in the darkness.
“But there’s one condition.”
“Anything.”
“You give me Night Swimming after the ball. You let me be the one who shows it to the world.”
“Of course,” he says. “Dear Camille, that was the plan all along.”