chapter FORTY
THE GOLDEN TRAP
Wake up, Fox! She thought she could feel the vixen’s pointy snout prodding her forehead.Fox! Wake up! But when she opened her eyes, she found herself alone in her human body.
Above her she saw a canopy, blue like the evening sky, and the dress she was wearing was as strange to her as the bed she was lying on. Her head ached and her limbs were heavy, as though she’d slept too long. Images flooded her head. A cab. A train. A carriage with golden cushions. A servant at a gate with iron flowers and –
Troisclerq.
She felt dizzy as she sat up. High walls covered with golden silk. Hanging from a wreath of white stucco flowers on the ceiling was a red crystal chandelier. As a child she’d fantasised about rooms like this. But the windows were barred. She pushed her hand beneath her pearl-embroidered décolletage. She wasn’t wearing her fur dress any more.
Calm, Fox.
But her heart wouldn’t listen.
Try to remember, Fox. A labyrinth. Troisclerq had led her through it. To a house with ivy-covered walls of grey stone. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember any more than that.
Had he put something in the water he’d offered her in the cab? Elven dust? A Witch’s love potion? But she felt no love. Just anger at herself.
Where had he taken her? And where was her fur dress?
Jacob . . .
What would he think? That she’d abandoned him for a flower on her dress and a smile from Troisclerq?
She gathered up the far-too-wide skirt. The dress was sumptuous enough to be worn to a royal ball. Who put it on you, Fox? She shuddered. She’d also never before seen the shoes she was wearing. She pulled them off and walked barefoot across the wooden flower patterns in the waxed parquet floor.
The door was unlocked.
Outside it, a corridor with a dozen doors. Which direction had she come from? Remember, Fox!
No. First she had to find the fur dress.
She could still feel Troisclerq’s hand on her arm. So gentle. So warm. What had he been thinking? That he could seduce her with a big house and a new dress? Had she returned his smile too readily, laughed at his jokes too often? Laughing had been so easy with him. His glance had let her know how beautiful she was. Did he try to kiss her? Yes. The images were coming back to her like the memories of a stranger. He had kissed her. On the train. In the carriage. What have you done, Fox?
So many doors.
She tried to open them, but they were all locked. The portraits hanging between the doors all showed women.
The corridor led to a staircase. Fox thought she could remember it. She was just about to go down, when a servant came up the white steps towards her. It was the same one who’d opened the iron gate. He was so tall that he kept his head bowed between his broad shoulders.
The room she’d woken up in . . . the dress . . . the portraits . . . the servant in his black velvet coat. It was as though she was lost in one of the games she’d played for hours as a child in the woods.
‘Where is your master?’
The servant just silently took her arm. His hands were covered in dull brown fur. Lotharaine was full of stories of noblemen who kept enchanted animals as servants, for they were more loyal than any human.
The house was huge, but they met no one. The door at which the servant finally stopped was made from dark wood; the same wood lined the walls of the dining room the servant waved Fox into. Red lace curtains caught the evening light coming through the windows.
‘Welcome to my home.’ Troisclerq was sitting at the end of a long table. It was the first time Fox had seen him unshaven. The skin around mouth and chin had a bluish hue.
Breathe, Fox. In and out. As the vixen does when death is staring at her.
Bluebeard.
There were ten plates on the table. They always laid their table for the number of their victims.
Troisclerq smiled at her. He was wearing an immaculate white shirt, as usual. Even during their endless coach journey, he’d always been dressed as though he travelled with a manservant.
‘Do sit down.’ He waved at a chair to his left. ‘The dress looks nice on you.’
The servant pulled out the chair for Fox. As she sat down in front of her empty plate, she thought she could sense the presence of all the dead girls who’d sat before her on these black velvet chairs. She tried to remember the faces that had looked at her from the portraits.
Breathe, Fox. In and out.
She had to find her fur dress. She couldn’t leave without the dress. Troisclerq took her hand. He kissed her fingers gently, as though his lips had never touched anything more beautiful.
‘I usually give my female guests the keys to all the doors in my house, and I ask them not to use one particular key. It’s an old tradition in my clan. You may have heard about it?’ He put the key ring on the table. All the keys were all silver-plated except one. That one was somewhat smaller than the others, and its head was golden and shaped like a flower.
‘Yes,’ said Fox. ‘Yes, I’ve heard about it.’
‘Good.’ Troisclerq pushed the bunch of keys next to her plate. ‘Not that you’d need the keys to find out what’s behind each door. The vixen would smell it anyway.’
Of course. He’d seen the fur dress. Fox tried not to wonder whether it was he who’d taken it off her. She closed her hand around the key ring as if that could prove she wasn’t afraid. The servant poured her a glass of wine. The wine was so red, it looked as though he was filling her glass with blood.
‘This time you caught the wrong girl.’
She sensed the strange dress on her skin. Done up for the portrait on his wall, Fox.
‘Really? And why is that?’
The servant filled her plate. Duck. Baked potatoes. She realised how hungry she was.
‘I’ve never been afraid of death.’ Fox looked Troisclerq straight in the eyes so he could see she was telling the truth. Those dark eyes with the shadows that should have warned her. But you liked how he looked at you, Fox. You liked how he kept reaching for your arm or touching your shoulder as if by accident. All the things Jacob was avoiding more carefully these days. She carried her longing for him like a secret beneath her skin, but maybe Troisclerq had sensed it, as he’d sensed the dress beneath her clothes, like a trail of blood in the woods, though his hunger was of a different kind. So what? Whatever it was that had attracted him to her, she would know how to die. The vixen had taught her. She lived with death, both as the hunter and the hunted.
‘The wrong girl? Oh no.’ Troisclerq was as soft as moss in the woods. ‘Don’t fret. I always select my prey carefully. It’s what has kept me alive for nearly three hundred years.’ He nodded at his servant. ‘You will give me what I want. Like all the others. And even more so.’
The servant placed a pitcher on the table. The evening light glistened through the crystal like splinters of a dying day.
Troisclerq got up and stroked Fox’s naked shoulder. ‘Fear has many colours, did you know that? White is the most nourishing kind, the fear of death. For most, it is their own death they fear more than anything. But I knew right away that you are different. And that made the hunt even more enticing.’ Troisclerq scattered a handful of withered flowers on the table. ‘I left a very clear trail. I’m sure he’s already on his way. Wouldn’t you think so?’
Jacob.
No. Fox would forget his name, so Troisclerq could never find it in her heart. She felt her fear choking her.
A few white drops materialised at the bottom of the pitcher.
Troisclerq gently stroked her cheek. ‘The labyrinth that surrounds my house,’ he whispered, ‘will let only me pass. Everybody else gets hopelessly lost. They forget who they are, forget why they came, and they just wander aimlessly between the hedges until they starve to death. They end up eating poisonous leaves and licking dew off the gravel.’
Fox splashed her wine into his face. She gripped the glass so tightly that it shattered in her hand. The wine turned Troisclerq’s shirt red, as red as the blood that now trickled down Fox’s fingers. Troisclerq offered her his napkin.
‘He loves you, too, you know. Even though he tries hard not to notice it.’ No voice could have sounded more tender. He pushed back his chair. ‘From here you have a good view of the labyrinth. If a swarm of pigeons rises from it, that means he’s caught in it. I’m not expecting any other guests apart from Jacob.’
The floor of the carafe was now covered with a milky white puddle.
Troisclerq walked down the long table. Past the empty plates. Before he closed the door, he said to her, ‘It may be a consolation to you that the fear will kill you as well. Love is a deadly affair.’
She wanted to bite his throat. Choke his velveteen voice with blood. But the vixen was as lost as Celeste.