I creep over and brush the glittering remains into my dustpan, the marble floor cold under my knees, even through my skirts. Rising again, I notice the empty space in the row of decorations on the sideboard. With trembling fingers, I nudge the other objects closer together.
I take up my dustpan again, brush held firmly over the elegant debris, and hurry out. At the back of the great kitchen stands a barrel for sweepings and leavings, but I must weave my way past cooks and potboys and scullery maids to get to it, expecting at every moment to be stopped, my guilty burden discovered. Yet I arrive without incident, dump the contents of my dustpan into the barrel, then poke my brush around inside to conceal the wreckage with ashes and other bits of trash already there.
I pause briefly to steady my breathing, then go back through the great kitchen. I spy the little chambermaid in a distant corner, rinsing her hand in her mop pail; she glances up at me for an instant, gratitude in her face, but we are too prudent to take any more notice of each other. A spiderweb of shadowy back passages connects the grand rooms of the chateau, and I am eager to return to the one that leads back to my chambers. But I hear the stern voice of Madame Montant in a nearby room, scolding some other servant for some far lesser infraction, and I hurry into an unfamiliar outer passage to avoid her.
I choose the darkest path, hoping the shadows will render me invisible until I can get back where I’m supposed to be. But a bend in the passage, beyond the last of the fine chambers, ends abruptly at a small door. It’s rare enough to find any doors to interrupt the flow of splendor between these grand rooms, and this one seems so humble, with plain iron hinges and no ornamentation, I hope its purpose is to lead servants to a more direct route between wings. But when I try the handle, a graceful curve of iron, I find the door is locked.
“What do you think you’re doing there, girl?” cries Madame Montant, emerging out of one of the larger rooms behind me. “This will not be tolerated!”
“Sorry, Madame.” I can scarcely speak. What can I possibly say in my defense?
“That room is forbidden to servants!” Madame glowers at me.
Room? This locked door? I do not even know where I am. She says nothing about broken porcelain, but her manner could not be more threatening.
“Disobedience is not tolerated. Get your things —”
But before she can order me off, as I’m sure she means to do, another chambermaid comes breathlessly down the passage to tell us that Monsieur Ferron, the steward who manages the household, is calling for the entire staff to assemble out on the front steps immediately. As the girl runs off, Madame spares me one last glare, then mutters, “Well, then. Don’t dawdle, girl.”
I am still part of this household! I hardly see where we go, I’m so relieved, but I follow Madame’s black figure down another twisty passage. It opens onto the forbidden entry hall, and with a firm grip on my wrist to prevent me wandering off, Madame drags me across a corner of the black-and-white marble tiles and out onto the porch above the courtyard.
What a lot of us there are! The household servants crowd the porch and cascade down the front steps, and the outdoor staff gathers in the flat upper courtyard and the broad driveway between the terraced gardens.
Monsieur Ferron has called us together to tell us that the master is on his way back to Chateau Beaumont. We are told to be swift about our duties, obedient, invisible, and above all, silent. On no account is the master to be vexed with idle chatter from any of us upon his arrival.
“Pray God his lawsuit has prospered,” mumbles one of the gardeners to another. But not so softly that Monsieur Ferron does not hear him.
“The master’s business is no affair of yours,” the steward says icily. He stares us all down over the long nose in his thin face. “However,” he goes on after a lengthy pause, “as it is a matter of some concern to the operation of this household, I can tell you this much: the suit is not yet resolved.”
There is a great deal of mumbling among the servants at this news. Cooks, maids, grooms and gardeners, stableboys and huntsmen, all cast one another fearful glances and mutter darkly. The rugged gatekeeper with the scarred face looks even more grim than usual and shakes his head. I have no idea what it all means, so I’m grateful when Charlotte appears at my elbow.
“The master is pursuing a claim to an estate in Clamecy held by the Villeneuve family,” she whispers breathlessly. “He’s taken it all the way to the Paris parlement. He says his claim through his grandmother is more valid than that of the Villeneuve cousins who hold it now.”
“He’s bringing a suit against his own cousins?”
She nods back eagerly. “He fostered out there as a page when he was a boy. That’s how he comes to know how rich a place it is, in rents and dues and fees.”
“Silence!” Monsieur Ferron commands us. “Do not,” he warns, “give the master any cause to complain of you. Not if you value your positions.”
The grumbling lowers in volume but not intensity. The mood of the folk is black as we are all dismissed back to our duties — myself included, for none of us can be spared now that the master is coming home.
Most of us are forbidden to return through the entry hall, so I trot down the steps to join a swarm of household servants crossing the courtyard for the kitchen wing. On the way, I pass the gardener who spoke up before.
“Small wonder his suit comes to nothing,” he mutters to his companion. “It’s the Beaumont Curse!”
“Oh, be off with you both,” scoffs the head gardener, coming up quickly behind them to shoo them back to their duties.
The Beaumont Curse? I turn about, hoping for an explanation, but for once, Charlotte is nowhere to be seen.
Each nightfall casts longer, colder shadows inside the chateau as the days grow shorter. This is the time for slaughtering and feasting in my village, but there are no such celebrations here. Tempers shorten along with the days as our work increases. Stableboys row with gardeners out in the yard; kitchen girls fling accusations at laundresses. In the evening when we servants take our meal around the worktable in the great kitchen, I recognize the little chambermaid who broke the fancy ornament. But we dare not look at each other, much less speak, for fear our shared guilt will crackle between us like lightning. Madame Montant watches me like a falcon, ready to swoop down on my every misstep, so I take extra care not to make any.
Tonight a frazzled Aunt Justine sent me off to deliver clean linens to a distant storeroom where I have never been. I found the place, but with only a single candle to light my way through the gloom, I’m not sure how to get back to the kitchen. These passages all look alike in the dark. I listen for the distant talk of the servants to guide me, but their chatter has faded.
Instead, I hear a soft, sweet sound, a kind of humming, from somewhere nearby in the dark. I follow it around a corner and find myself facing the humble little door to the locked room I encountered the other day. Forbidden to servants, I was told. But even as I begin to back away, a feeling of warmth and comfort steals over to me, as if the door itself were beckoning me. The singing seems to be coming from the other side, soothing, like a lullaby, and I move closer; perhaps whoever is inside can direct me back to the kitchen. I scarcely touch the curved handle, and the door opens, drawing me in.
No one is inside. The hearth I glimpse across the little room is cold, yet it seems warmer in here than in any other place I’ve yet been inside the chateau. By candlelight, I see that it’s not nearly so grand as the other chambers, nor so ferocious in its finery. Its few furnishings are simple. I bend down slightly to inspect a rocking chair standing before me, woven from twigs and saplings, its worn cushion plain linen, not velvet. It seems homey and comfortable, as few other objects do in this place, and so well-used, someone might have been sitting in it only a moment ago.