CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Winds rushed down from the mountains, filling the canyons, moaning, keening. They whipped the trees and whistled through the eaves. Icy pellets of snow smashed against the windows and the roof. Tree branches scraped against the windows, like fingernails, as if the trees were trying to claw their way inside.
Inside the castle, the silence was heavy. It weighed like stone on the shoulders of everyone there: servants, Lucie, Genevieve, Adrienne. Everyone moved about in hushed seriousness. The comte lay dying. What had started as a small sniffle had worked its way into his lungs. His fever soared. His cough was wrenching. His skin was pale and clammy.
The doctor, who had been to the chateau every day for a week now, straightened and stood. He took the stethoscope from his ears and turned to Genevieve, a few feet behind him in the dim light. He shook his head.
Genevieve clamped her knuckle between her teeth and fought back tears. The doctor laid his tools in his leather bag and touched the comte gently on his upper arm. The comte grimaced but did not open his eyes.
The doctor swallowed and let his hand rest on the comte’s arm for a moment. Then he turned, took Genevieve’s elbow, and guided her toward the door. “The fluid from the pneumonia is getting worse.” His eyes traveled back to the comte, propped against several pillows. “I don’t imagine it will be long now. You might want to send for the priest.”
Genevieve swallowed. Her eyes filled; her face glistened in the pale gray light from the windows. She brushed at the moisture on her face, and nodded.
“I would stay, if I could,” he whispered. “But Mademoiselle Fro—a young lady in the village is in labor, and I do not think she will have an easy time of it.”
“Yes. Yes, I understand. Merci, docteur.”
“I am sorry, madame. He is a wonderful man, your father.” He looked back at the frail old man on the bed. “It is hard to imagine Beaulieu without him in it.” He touched Genevieve’s shoulder and walked away. The door closed behind him with a soft click.
Genevieve stood, trying to breathe, watching her father as he lay there, his chest heaving with the effort of breathing. She turned and opened the door. Lucie and Adrienne sat on stiff chairs in the hallway, facing the doorway. Adrienne had situated her chair so that she might catch a glimpse of her grand-père whenever the door opened.
Genevieve glanced at her and then turned her eyes to Lucie. “Lucie, could you ask Renault to prepare to go to Nice? We will need to send a telegram to Marie and Julien.” She stepped into the hallway, turning her shoulders to block Adrienne, and whispered to the governess, who was now standing. “And send someone else for the priest.” Genevieve bit her lip and turned back to the sickroom.
“Oui, madame.” Lucie curtsied, her eyes growing dark and clouded. “I’ll be right back, Adrienne. I need to do a few things for your maman.”
Genevieve closed the bedroom door behind her and went to her father’s bedside. The day was so dark and gray; she had kept the bedside lamp burning long past the night. She dipped the washcloth into a pan of water on the table and brushed her father’s brow and his cheeks with the cool cloth.
She sat down in the chair beside his bed and pulled her rosary from her skirt. “Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.” She whispered the words, which threatened to choke her, to make her gag.
The light of the gas lamp flickered, casting amber spirits into the gray gloom. The comte began to cough, his whole body wrenching from the effort, jerking up from the pillows as he tried to expel the fluid in his lungs. Genevieve stood and held a cup beneath his mouth. He spat several times and leaned back.
His eyes were open. She looked into their blue depths, the same blue that shone in her own eyes, and in Adrienne’s. She couldn’t imagine a world without those twin lakes of wisdom and calm, watching over all of them.
“Adrienne . . .” he muttered. “Bring her to me.”
Genevieve helped him lie back against the pillows and nodded. She opened the door and looked at her daughter, sitting stiff and fearful on the chair across the hall. Adrienne tipped her head, caught a glimpse of Grand-père on the bed behind Genevieve. Adrienne’s eyes swept up to her mother’s face.
“He wants to see you, Adrienne,” Genevieve whispered. She was so exhausted she could barely stand.
Adrienne slid off the chair. She turned and placed her rosary on the cushion she’d just vacated. She pressed her lips together and tiptoed through the door to Grand-père’s room.
“Not too close, dear.” Genevieve’s voice was soft. She laid a gentle hand on Adrienne’s back as the girl crept forward.
Adrienne forgot to breathe. She inched forward, petrified at what she might find. She stopped near the foot of the bed. Her hands hung at her sides. She stared at her grand-père. His eyes were closed. He was thin, frail, delicate, and fragile like the finest bone china. She could almost see through his skin, to the bones underneath his face, the bones in his hand, resting lightly on the cover. He reminded her of a delicate white bird, like the dove she had found one morning, after a storm, its slender body broken and smashed against the ground. She shook her head, trying to rid it of the image.
The room was gray, filled with the dimness of the storm outside. The bedclothes looked gray and dingy in the dim light. Grand-père, too, was gray.
She shuffled another step forward, let her hand creep over the covers to find his own. She pressed it softly. The comte opened his eyes and let out a long sigh, as if the sight of her was a tonic, the one thing he’d been waiting for.
“Adrienne,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “Ma cherie.” He began to cough, and pulled his hand away from hers to cover his mouth. It took several moments before he lay back against the pillows, and the coughing quieted. Genevieve stood at the opposite side of the bed, holding his shoulders as he spasmed.
He turned his eyes back to Adrienne, drew in a long, careful breath. “Be careful, my girl. Be careful what you say. Even when you know you are right . . . no matter what it may be . . . be careful.” His hands lay on the cover. “There are some things better left unsaid. Your aunt Marie . . .”
Adrienne swallowed. Her throat burned, as if she had swallowed broken glass. She stood perfectly still.
He reached for her hand, and squeezed it gently. “Promise me? That you will keep what you see to yourself?”
Adrienne nodded. Her voice was soft. “I promise, Grand-père.” Tears slid down her face. She did not want to cry in front of him. But she did not want to move her hand to brush away the moisture, to draw his attention to it. She stood still, her small hand inside his, and nodded again. She met his eyes through the curtain of her tears.
He smiled, and squeezed her hand once more. “That’s my girl,” he whispered.
His eyes closed and he began coughing again. He pulled his hand away, his body strained with the force of the cough. Genevieve held him, held the cup in front of his mouth as he spat and choked, the phlegm spotted with blood.
“You’d better go now, Adrienne.” She motioned toward the door with her head.
Adrienne backed away, her tears warping everything she saw. She stopped at the foot of his bed. Waited. When his cough had subsided, and he lay back again, exhausted, she put her hands on the wooden foot rail at the end of his bed. “Grand-père,” she whispered, leaning over the rail. “I love you.”
He did not open his eyes.
“Adrienne, go. Please.” Genevieve’s voice was sharp.
The door to the bedroom opened, and Père Henri moved inside, Lucie right behind him. Adrienne stared as the priest lit a candle, took out his oil, and made the sign of the cross on the comte’s forehead. The oil caught the light and made a shiny reflection on his skin.
“Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in his love and mercy help you, with the grace of the Holy Spirit.” The words hung in the air, heavy and full. Genevieve stood to one side, her hand pressed to her mouth, her handkerchief wadded inside her palm.
“May all the saints and elect of God, who, on earth, suffered for the sake of Christ, intercede for him.” Père Henri moved slowly around the bed. “So that, when freed from the prison of his body, he may be admitted into the kingdom of heaven.”
Adrienne felt the pressure of Lucie’s hand on her shoulder and looked up. Lucie guided the girl to the hallway.
The words of the priest could still be heard. “Through the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, world without end. Amen.”
Servants lined the hallway, up and down outside the comte’s door. They were coming up the stairs, moving into the hall, quiet and somber. They knelt. They took out their beads. Mimi, the cook who had been with the comte for sixty years, knelt by a chair, her head down, her beads in hand. Her face was shining and wet in the gray light. “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death,” she whispered.
All of the servants were dropping to their knees, whispering the words of the prayers they had been saying their entire lives. Many of them were crying.
Adrienne felt the sting of her own tears. “No,” she cried, trying to see her way between all the kneeling bodies and feet. The words of their prayers pressed against her on all sides. “No!” she said louder. She held her hands to her ears. “No. Stop it!” She shook her head back and forth, pressed hard against her own ears, as if, by stopping their voices, she could make this whole ordeal end, make the comte be well again.
Lucie stopped and knelt in front of the little girl. “Adrienne . . .” Her own eyes filled. “You must . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence. She knelt in front of the little girl, her hands on each of the girl’s arms. Her eyes sought Adrienne’s, pleaded with her.
Adrienne threw her arms around Lucie’s neck. Henriette, kneeling nearby, reached over and put her hand on the child’s back. She rubbed small circles into Adrienne’s dress.
Lucie pulled Adrienne back. She stood and led the girl down the hall to her own bedroom. Adrienne climbed onto her bed, on top of the covers, her face turned toward the gray window. Snow and sleet hit the glass and slid down, just like tears. As if the house itself were crying.
She would do as Grand-père had asked. No matter what she saw in her visions, no matter what voices she heard in her mind—she would never say another thing. She would bite her lip. She would refuse to listen to what the voices told her. She would erase the pictures. She would never again give voice to her knowledge.
She pressed her lips together, and a tear escaped from the corner of her eye and traveled a long, slow path to the pillow, forming a pool of darkness on the linen. “Oh, Grand-père,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me.”
The storm wailed and thrashed against the walls of the castle. The wind sighed, picked up force again, keening and moaning as if it were the mother of a child, lost in the cold and darkness. As Adrienne lay weeping, the comte exhaled for the last time. Adrienne spoke only to his spirit.