Adrienne looked at her, her blue eyes large and serious. “My grandmother was real.”
A hush descended. All movement stopped; every leaf and blade of grass completely still, as arrested by Adrienne’s words as Lucie was. “But your grandmother was not a witch.”
Adrienne got very quiet. Her eyes moved to the chateau, the village of Beaulieu barely visible beyond it in the distance. “Some people say she was.”
“Which people say that?”
“Madame LaMott. Her cousin. The housekeeper that takes care of Père Henri. A lot of people.”
Lucie knelt down on the grass in front of the little girl. She put her hands on Adrienne’s shoulders and turned her so that she faced Lucie directly. “Adrienne, your grandmother was not a witch. I don’t care what anyone says. That is just people talking. Sometimes, when people are jealous of someone, or envious of what they have, they say mean things. Do you understand? You cannot listen to what people say.” Even as the words left her mouth, Lucie thought of just how often lately she had been doing just that—listening for every veiled comment or conversation, searching for the knowledge that she lacked. She knew nothing about this grandmother, nothing other than the fact that she had died when Genevieve was born.
Adrienne stared at Lucie, but she said nothing. She shifted her gaze back to the village in the distance, to the steeple of the church rising into the clear blue sky. “I heard other things, too,” Adrienne whispered. “At church a few days ago.”
Lucie’s breath caught.
“Remember when I ran into the churchyard? To get a flower for my mother?”
Lucie nodded. She always hated it when Adrienne took off like that, even though she was within sight. She remembered watching Adrienne as she looked through the mums, planted beneath a hedge of elderberry bushes.
“There were some girls behind the bushes. Noemie and Claire and someone I don’t know. They were talking about my grandmother.” Adrienne shuddered. “And then”—she paused, trying to get the words to come out—“Claire said I was just like her. She said I was . . . touched.” Adrienne demonstrated by putting an index finger to her temple. “What does that mean? Touched?”
Lucie exhaled, wishing she could get her hands on Claire and those vicious little girls. “It means you are different from her. It means you can do something that she doesn’t understand.” Lucie stopped for a moment. “And Adrienne, those girls are much too young to know anything about your grandmother.”
Adrienne was quiet for a moment. “They said my grandmother was a witch. That she had to be locked up. And that I needed to be locked up, too.” Tears made a soft trail on Adrienne’s cheeks, and Lucie knelt down next to her. “Lucie? I heard them say that Julien was not poisoned in church. That I was wrong. That I made it all up.”
Lucie exhaled. “Adrienne, those girls don’t know anything about what really happened to Julien. You need to forget what you heard—they don’t know what they are talking about.”
Adrienne’s eyes wandered to the chateau in the distance. When she spoke, her words were low and quiet. “Do you think she will try to hurt me?”
“Who? That little girl? What could she possibly do—” Lucie began.
“Not her,” Adrienne whispered, her eyes still locked on the chateau, as if she could see into the rooms. “Aunt Marie.”
Lucie stopped breathing. That thought had crossed her mind. Her worries about Adrienne were many, but Marie had loomed over them all like a storm at sea. She forced herself to inhale. “Your grand-père would never let that happen,” Lucie said. “And neither would I.”
Adrienne turned and looked up at her governess. Lucie met those blue eyes, and for a moment, she could almost see the future. A thick sense of dread filled Lucie’s bloodstream. She stood and stared into the distance.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The great hall was lined with trunks and luggage, filled almost to overflowing with the things Marie and Julien were taking back to America with them. One carriage had already been packed, in preparation for their early-morning departure. Eight months had passed since they had returned to France. Julien was stronger, not nearly as pale. He was able to eat again, although in small quantities and mostly only very bland foods.
The family sat in the parlor. A fire blazed in the fireplace, straining to heat the tall room. The castle had been covered in snow for a fortnight, and the chill permeated every inch of the stone structure.
Grand-père was in his wing chair, smoking his pipe and holding Emelie, who snuggled in his lap, her head resting comfortably against his chest. Genevieve sat on the settee, her knitting draped over the mound of the new baby she carried. Marie occupied the wing chair opposite Grand-père, a white linen cloth in her lap, her needle poking in and out in a percussive rhythm. In the corner, slightly away from the family, Lucie knitted.
Julien sat at a chair by the window. “Game of chess, Adrienne? Might be our last chance for quite a while. I’m not sure when I’ll be getting back to France again.” He smiled at her. “You could be all grown up by then.”
Adrienne smiled and joined him in the chair opposite the table. “Tell me again, Julien. I want to hear about the trip—the ship and the trains and the wagons.”
The two kept their eyes on the chessboard. Adrienne made the first move.
“We’ll take the carriage to Brive. Then the train to Clermont. Another train to Paris, and then the coast. From there, we take a steamship to New York.”
At the mention of New York, Adrienne brightened. “Have you seen the Statue of Liberty?”
“Yes, we have. Several times, actually. They haven’t yet held the formal dedication ceremony, but it has been up for a while.” He moved his hand to the board.
“Then we take a train to St. Louis. That’s about halfway across the continent . . . and then another train to Santa Fe. And then a buggy home to Santa Cruz.” He smiled at Adrienne.
“I wish I could ride on a train.”
“I imagine you will, someday. Perhaps you will come to America when you are older.”
The comte gazed at the two of them, his grandchildren, so different, and so far apart in age. Julien would be leaving tomorrow, back to the New World, and it was highly unlikely that he would be back again any time soon. The comte knew that he would probably never see this grandson again, and somehow he sensed that Julien was feeling that same sense of finality. For this one evening, at least, the comte managed to shake off his fatigue. He wanted to enjoy every moment with Julien before he left.
“Your mother tells me that you have been doing some work with the railroads out there in the West.” Grand-père removed his pipe and blew a stream of smoke into the air. “Something about the Chili Line, I believe?”
Julien looked up at him and smiled. “Yes, I have. It’s a narrow-gauge train, smaller in size than a regular train. They are designed to handle the steep curves of mountainous areas, and they are constructing narrow-gauge lines in many of the places where gold or silver has been found. The Chili Line starts at a small town in Colorado and runs down next to the Rio Grande River. Even stops at Santa Cruz, where I live.”
“Have you ridden on it?”
“Only part of the route. It’s not completely finished yet. Maybe this summer they will have it completed. They want to take it all the way into Santa Fe.” Julien’s eyes dropped back to the board. “Money is always an issue, though. And land. The railroad has to buy up all the land before they can get started. And most of the landowners are Mexican or Indian. That’s where I come in,” Julien continued, his eyes on his next chess move. “I do the interpreting for the railroad when they are buying land.”
The comte smiled. “So your training in diplomacy has come in handy, then?” He sensed Marie’s back going stiff in the chair next to him.
Julien threw back his shoulders. “Many times, actually. I believe it has played an important role in my being able to move up so quickly in the church.”
Adrienne looked up at her cousin. “How do they know where to put the tracks?”
“They send out surveyors. Men take instruments, and make measurements. How steep the slope is—how sharp the turns are. They look for places where they might have to go over lots of rocks, or over steep canyons, that kind of thing. The Chili Line has all of those—steep slopes, sharp curves. They’ve been working on a bridge over the Rio Grande Gorge. It should be quite a sight when it’s finished.”
“If I were a younger man, I would do my best to get over there and see it,” the comte continued. For the past few years, he had been vicariously living out life in the Wild West through this grandson and his letters and stories. “Your mother tells me you have been working with some important people in the region. You know General Palmer?”
“General Palmer lives in Colorado. He fell in love with the West as soon as he first saw it. You would love it, too, Grand-père. The mountains and pine trees. General Palmer started the town of Colorado Springs. People are flocking to it—beautiful mountains, clean water, dry climate. They’re calling it Little London.” Julien glanced at his mother across the room. “I’d love to be transferred there, actually. It’s a beautiful area.
“General Palmer is the one who started the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad—that’s how he first saw southern Colorado and the New Mexico Territory. And that’s the company that is putting in the Chili Line. And since I speak Spanish and French and English, even a few of the Indian dialects, they contacted me to help with the interpreting when they need to buy land from the Mexicans or the Indians.”
“It’s hard to imagine, Julien, you having direct contact with the Indian people. Living amongst them, working with them. I’ve been fascinated with those stories since I was a boy.” The comte puffed his pipe.
Julien sighed heavily. He stared at the chessboard for a moment. “It is hard to imagine how different they really are. I guess when I first set out to join Archbishop Lamy in the New World, I was very na?ve about it all.
“I thought they would be happy to have us . . . happy to have someone bring them the way to salvation.” Julien looked up at the comte. “But that is not the case at all. They resent us—all of us, I think. Even the archbishop, and he has done nothing but good for them. They cling to their old ways, their old ceremonies. Their faces stay calm, they nod their heads at my suggestions, and then they go off and do what they want to do. As if nothing I say or do really matters to them.
“And those dark eyes . . . those dark faces . . .” Julien stopped for a moment, and his gaze seemed to drift into the distance. “It is so hard to know what they are thinking. All of their secrets are hidden behind the depth in their eyes, as if that darkness is a curtain that hides everything they feel.” He brought his gaze back to the chessboard. “With Europeans, I feel like I can look in a man’s eyes and get a good feeling for what kind of man I’m dealing with. But not there. I look in those dark eyes, and I cannot see anything.”
“Perhaps it is just a matter of time. Maybe they will come to trust you after you have worked with them longer.” Grand-père wanted to believe his own words, but even as they left his mouth, he doubted what he said.
Julien shook his head. “I thought so, too, at first. That we could find a way to connect. That when they saw the benefits of the school, of having their children educated, they would come around. But they don’t trust anyone from outside. I have begun to doubt that we will ever make a difference in their lives.”
Julien looked up at Grand-père. “They resent the Americans. I can understand that, at least partially. I mean, many of the people who live in New Mexico Territory have been in that area for generations. The Americans are newcomers, really. And some of them—the Americans, I mean—are quite uncivilized.” Julien paused for a moment. “Certainly nothing like the French priests that the archbishop has brought in. And yet the people there treat us as if we are just as bad as the Americans, as if we had designs on their land.”
Adrienne stared at her cousin. Her head tipped to one side. Her eyes were glazed, lost. “Julien? Do you . . . do you make money . . . when you help the railroad?”
Even with his frailty and age, the comte could feel the effect of those words on the rest of the room. The whole room had gone quiet; the comte noticed how Julien’s back stiffened, how his brows knit together when he looked at the little girl.
“Of course, Adrienne. Very few people can interpret the languages. The railroad pays for that service. I never keep the money, though. I put it right back into the church coffers. For the school. Everything I do is working for their benefit. In the end, selling that land to the railroad helps every one of us.”
The comte watched the two of them. He could see that Julien was defensive; it was written clearly in the set of his shoulders and the spark in his eyes. The comte sighed heavily. He’d spent too many years negotiating the minefields of tension between rich and poor. It made sense to him, suddenly, why Julien might have been poisoned. The comte let his gaze brush over the others in the room. Adrienne was looking at the chessboard. Julien was staring at the little girl.
Grand-père examined the two grandchildren for a moment longer. “As much as I hate for this fine evening to end, it’s getting late, and you and Marie have a long day ahead of you tomorrow.” He handed Emelie to her nurse and stood. “I think it’s time for prayers. Julien, if you would . . .” Grand-père held his arm out.
The family shifted and moved, placed knitting and stitching into baskets, and knelt on the thick rug, scattered about close to where they had been sitting. Julien knelt, near the center of the room, and began the words of the rosary. His voice rose and fell, lilting, almost as if the rosary were a work of musical genius. His eyes were closed. He swayed back and forth with the rhythm of the words. All the tension of a few moments before seemed to have passed.
The comte gazed at Adrienne. Her eyes were open, her brow knit together like she was trying to make sense of something. She kept raising her head to look at Julien, kneeling on the carpet in front of her. Without moving his head, the comte let his attention shift to Marie. She, too, had her eyes open. She, too, was focused on Adrienne, and the anger that radiated from her posture and eyes was lethal. The comte shivered. Oh, Marie, he thought. Let it go. Just let it go.
Julien’s voice led them. “Oh, my Jesus.”
All their voices rose in the words of the prayer. “Forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell and lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy. Amen.”