My study is unlocked for me every morning. I don’t even question it anymore; I wordlessly follow Maxime upstairs, my laptop under my arm, brogues echoing where servants used to hurry down, or drag their aching bones up the steps. Every morning I hope for some kind of tenderness from him, a gesture that would feed into the promises he made me of a life together. But every time I approach him, he reminds me of our great task at hand. Soon we will reveal the sculptures. Soon we’ll be in the eye of the art world. He doesn’t really promise anything for us after the soon.
In the small room, with nothing but the sky visible from the tiny bull’s-eye window, Maxime looking over my shoulder, I write the story of the great genius Constance Sorel, mixing truth and make-believe to the point that I might fool myself. I find a home for D’Arvor’s sculptures in her life’s story, tie them tightly into her tragic fate. I don’t know if I’m doing this for Maxime, the public, or for me. Trying to convince myself that it is acceptable. That it all fits. That it could have been true, if only she had had more time. That’s why I accepted to play a role in this in the first place, isn’t it? So that justice could be done to her. I’ve stopped hearing the baby—the silence is eerie. It doesn’t bring peace, merely more space for my doubts.
Still, in the way I know best, I construct the armature of Constance’s life, try to rebuild a polished version that will suit everyone. And what a life it is, what a dossier—it is quite magnificent. I should really be proud of myself.
Texts from Lowen appear on my phone at greater and greater intervals. I leave them unread. He exists in a different universe now. I know he can’t reach me, and I certainly don’t want him to save me. Shouldn’t it all be my own choice, through to the bitter end? I hear Maxime’s voice: At the end of the day, it’s only stuff. Matter. Plaster with fingerprints on it. If we give people what their hearts desire, we’re not responsible for what they will read into it. If it makes them feel inspired, who are we to decide what is right or wrong?
“I think we’re nearly ready. I’ve called the press conference,” Maxime tells me one morning as the key rattles in the lock. “They’re coming to hear about the huge discovery of the real Night Swimming and more sculptures by Sorel. So we need to make sure they get what they’ll be looking for.”
“I can’t do that until I’ve seen Night Swimming,” I tell him. “You need to show it to me. You told me you’d need my input. We have to make sure that it’s good enough.”
“It will be, Camille, if you make it hers.”
“But I’ll need to practice.”
“You’ll see it closer to the time. You have already proven you can do it. I’d rather you spent the next two weeks recovering and preparing. We need everything to be perfect on the day, and, frankly, you’ve not been yourself.”
I ignore that last remark because it’s true. I feel like I did just after the fallout at Courtenay, even worse, because here I share my space with the rest of the Foucaults. When I skip breakfast and pass them on the landing, and I know my hair is a mess, and my face a ghost of what it ought to be, they look right through me. Sometimes I close my eyes in this claustrophobic study, and Viviane’s palace is the only place I can summon to make me feel better. I can’t imagine a world outside this castle, and the pond is the only escape from its stifling walls.
You can’t leave.
“What’s your plan for the press conference?” I ask as I sit down mechanically, flipping open my laptop like I do every morning.
He sighs. “We will show them the sculptures; I’ll do the ‘rediscovered in the attic’ spiel; you’ll authenticate them, sell their importance for female art, Constance’s genius, her aptitude to tap into the supernatural, her feminine mystique, et cetera”—I wince—“then you’ll take them in. Give them a magical mystery tour that will knock their socks off. Show them that all along Night Swimming was the key to unlocking another dimension of the human experience.”
I flinch at the sudden contact of his arms around my shoulders. Like a straitjacket. “What happens after that?” I ask as I force myself to relax against him, inhaling the heady pine-tree scent of his skin.
“They’ll be amazed by it, by you, as amazed as I am. Then as they spread the word, we prepare for the sale.”
“What if they don’t like it?”
“You just need to make sure they do. Just do your—take them there, dazzle them, just like you did last time. They ate it up. And then, when they’re back, we hit them with Night Swimming.” He pauses. “I suppose it would be a shame if, say…we left some of them behind. Only if they cause us any trouble.”
Sometime soon, he’ll realize how far this is going and will snap out of it. But the casualness with which he suggests we could hurt others reminds me of his father’s look when I returned to them in Avalon. What if I told him I won’t go through with it?
I’m scared, I realize. Fear has been the undercurrent of everything I’ve been doing since the ball. Perhaps even before. I’m scared of how far Maxime will make me go. I’m scared of disappointing him if I refuse to play along. I’m also worried about what will happen to me if I go in and pour that amount of energy into masking things, tweaking the story, influencing all those people who have been trained to get at the truth. I remember Courtenay, the state I was in, the close calls we’ve had when Maxime trained me too hard. I’m still suffering from what I did at the ball, feeling like I’m losing my mind and can’t find a grip on reality or make-believe.
But I’m still angrier about Constance’s fate. Maxime is the only one who the world will listen to, who has firsthand authority on what happened to her. Constance deserves to be revered. She deserves to be known, no matter how. This will bring people to her sculptures, toss them back into the spotlight she’s always deserved. Everyone will believe it, and everything will be fine. Maxime doesn’t really mean what he said. And I’m still the one in control, aren’t I? I can make sure nobody gets hurt in there.
“Maxime, how much of this has to do with the fact that you’re Constance’s direct descendant?” I ask.
His eyebrow cocks. “Everything.”
“So this is all about prestige? Family reputation?”
“It’s to do with justice. We’re descended from a genius, the best sculptor of the late nineteenth century. If that was your history, would you not claim it?”
Of course I would. I would die for the world to know who I am, where I came from, if I came from her. And now I’m starting to wonder how much my obsession with Maxime was a way to bring myself closer to her.
I know he can feel my heart thump against his skin. I peel his arms off me and swivel so I can look at him. Is he a knight, of the modern kind? His eyes shine, ready for battle. He says he’s fighting for justice, taking down enemies blocking his way. He says we have those enemies in common, that we’re both fighting the same faceless trolls. His jaw is set strong under his stubble, his hand clenching his phone like the pommel of a sword.
Every morning at about ten, there’s a knock on the office door. When I open it, I find a plate of snacks left on an old chair in the corridor. I know it’s Lila’s sweet gestures of half éclairs and blackberries, but she is never seen and never comes in during the day. We only talk at night, as if we can’t be overheard or our friendship can’t be spied on under cloak of darkness. Nobody ever told us that we couldn’t be friends, but we know Maxime would disapprove.
In secret, we meet at the lake, every night at ten, and I tell her about the sculptures. It’s become a friendship language of sorts—she fuels me with sugar during the day; I fuel her with stories at night. We talk about Constance; I trace her life sculpture by sculpture, reminding myself of what is true, and where I connected with her real self. Then we both talk about our families, what we were like as children, our dreams to become a dancer (her) or a professor (me)—always the past, never the present, nor the future. We swim until we become numb, but we don’t see the underwater castle again.
When we share, our pasts merge into other people’s pasts. We talk about our parents, how her father emigrated to France after the Algerian independence with his best mates and met a young student in Paris. I tell her about my mother and all the things I inherited from her that I realize are still sticking to me like some kind of pollution. She tells me our parents have this in common (for her, her father—forever chasing the life he thought he would find in France, dissatisfied), about her closest brother who made her feel safe and loved, and I tell her about Constance. How her sculptures gave me shelter, taught me love and the hope for bigger, better things. The reassurance of being special when I was constantly told I wasn’t good enough.
“I thought the only way to show everyone I deserved to be here, in this world, was to find Night Swimming.”
“That’s why it’s been so important to you.”
“Yes. But honestly, Lila, I don’t know if it’s out there anymore. I think she might well have destroyed it in the end. I don’t even know if it still matters. Soon the world will be given a Night Swimming by Constance Sorel—and only very few people will know it’s a fake.”
“Do you really think everyone will buy it?” Her voice, tentative and quiet, travels across the ripples of the pond.
“The sculptures are incredible. They’re so—they’re so good. I don’t think anyone will know they’re not hers. Heck, they’re even better than some of hers I’ve seen.”
And as soon as Maxime’s Night Swimming makes an appearance in the world, and we sell it as such, that will be it. The provenance is too good—the quality, the style, the strong link to this place and to Constance—it will be undeniable. I think everyone will be fooled, and the story will be rewritten in a way that suits him.
And that suits me. I will be fully complicit in this. The lies spread will be wholly mine. I will be rewriting the history of art, the Foucaults’ lives, and mine.
“Do you think he would have a chance as an independent artist?” I hear pride in Lila’s voice, mixed with sorrow. She cares for him still. Cares despite all the complications. Another thing we have in common.
“I really think so. I understand he was turned away from that career by his father, but he really is hugely talented. And God, Lila, the way he got under Constance’s skin… understood her so intimately that his Avalon was so close to hers…I would love to see what he could do that would be completely his. If he stopped hiding behind her, I think the world would be all the richer for it.”
There’s a long silence.
“Could you help him find his way?”
“I guess I could try. Maybe, yes.” I hadn’t really thought about that. How I could help emerging artists reach wider audiences, be seen and understood. For as long as I remember, I’ve been set on one path and one path only, never thinking of branching out. I feel a flutter of something, like a tiny door that has opened, letting in some breeze. Courtenay might well want me back after this, but even if I could overlook my own lack of integrity as an expert, I’m not sure I want to be part of that world again. I remember the ball, the rich and powerful ambling in Avalon, Igraine undressed by their eyes, as their entertainment. Do I really want to keep feeding them? Maybe my meaningful is smaller and more authentic, more direct and under my control. Helping struggling artists to be discovered? It feels so liberating to be shown that there might be something else, a third way for my life to go.
“I don’t think Maxime would be up for it,” I say, my doubts reflected back by the long cry of an owl somewhere in the forest.
“Maxime? Maybe not.”
“What if you are good enough, though, in yourself?” Lila asks after a while, as we come out of the water, the cold night air immediately spurring goose bumps all over. Our teeth clatter as we wrap ourselves in towels and psych ourselves up for the return to the castle. “What if your worth isn’t in Constance, or in proving anything to anyone?”
“If the world were upside-down, maybe,” I say, and we both laugh.