CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Beaulieu, France—1896
Autumn flamed on the hillsides. The chestnuts, beech, English ivy were all decked out in fiery jewels of carnelian, amber, coral, and amethyst. They decorated the hillsides, like ladies at a ball. The air was filled with their perfume, the sweet scent of decaying leaves. The yellow plums had dropped from the trees, and birds sang as they picked at the remains.
Sixteen-year-old Adrienne knelt at Grand-père’s grave in the cemetery on the hill. Sunlight flickered through the leaves of the oak tree, casting lacy shadows on the graves of Grand-père, his wife, and their infant son. A breeze played with the curls at Adrienne’s face and neck as she knelt to her work.
She had brought a trowel, and toiled at removing the grass that had grown up around his stone. She laid the trowel aside, brushed the hair from her face with the back of her hand, and swept the dried leaves away. She turned and reached for the bouquet she had brought him: crimson mums, yellow birch leaves, bright orange berries from the bittersweet vine. The best of autumn’s color.
Adrienne slumped to one side, moving her knees out from under her. She loosened the tie of the brown velvet cloak around her neck. She stared at his stone. “She’s coming back again, Grand-père,” Adrienne whispered.
Marie had been back a few times in the years since the comte had passed. Julien had come only once. Each time, Adrienne felt her stomach clench and flip. Her throat tightened. Her head pounded. She forced herself to be vigilant, on guard, so wary of visions and voices that she could smell her own sweat.
“I’ve done it, Grand-père. Exactly what you asked. I’ve kept quiet.” Adrienne let her head drop. She toyed with her skirt.
The silence had other consequences, and she herself did not understand the connection. But here she was, sixteen years old, and there were huge pieces of the past nine years that had disappeared from her consciousness completely. It was as if, in her effort to still the voices and visions that tried to come through, she had erased everything—even the memories of those events she had actually lived.
One day melted into the next, a somber pool of brown water. She rarely went anywhere, not even to the village. Her weekly trips to church were horrid, and she dreaded Sundays. She could almost hear the whispers of the townspeople, feel their eyes boring into the back of her head and neck. She couldn’t meet their gazes. She kept her eyes down and her mouth closed. She rarely spoke. She often feigned illness just to avoid the whole ordeal.
Lucie spent most of her time with Emelie and Antoine, the son Genevieve had given birth to after the death of the comte. Adrienne was left to herself: to her books, her paints, her music. She took long walks on the hillside. The loneliness weighed heavily on her. It kept the corners of her mouth down, her gait measured and somber, as if she were an old woman, and not a girl of sixteen. She could not remember the little girl who had run and skipped down the hill with her grand-père, the girl who chased butterflies and dragonflies, and tried to imitate the wrens. This Adrienne did not run, did not skip. She rarely smiled. She rarely spoke.
Adrienne stood and dusted off her skirt. She gathered her tools into a basket and closed the wrought-iron gate behind her. It creaked, and she heard the click as the bolt slid into place. She turned and started back toward the castle. The whole countryside was bathed in gold. The dried yellow grasses were gilded with the softened light of shorter days. Leaves flickered like jewels, bright colors catching the sun. Adrienne topped a hill and started down the incline to the house.
Twelve-year-old Emelie ran through the tall meadow grass at the back of the castle, her hair flashing like metal in the sunlight. Antoine, now a boisterous nine, ran behind her, screaming and laughing as he waved a snake at his sister.
The scene brought back a snippet of memory, a picnic, one or two summers ago. Time seemed so hazy and nebulous to Adrienne. But she could remember sitting on a hillside, under the shade of a chestnut tree. She and Lucie were sitting on a blanket, the remains of their picnic lunch spread at their feet: grapes, apples, bread, a block of cheese. The picnic basket was open, cloth napkins tossed carelessly over the sides.
Antoine and Emelie were standing in the grass, just as they were now. In the memory, though, Antoine was smaller, no more than seven years old. He had found a frog, and he and Emelie were bent over it, studying the creature. Suddenly Emelie screamed, and Antoine started chasing her, frog held out in front of him. Every time Emelie stopped running for a moment, he raised the frog high in the air and made screeching noises.
Adrienne remembered how her spirits had lifted, watching the two of them. Antoine had been terrorizing his sister since the age of two. Most of the time, it was exasperating, but on this particular day Adrienne could tell from the way Emelie screamed and ran and laughed that she was enjoying this caper just as much as he was.
“I wish that could be you, Adrienne,” Lucie had said, sitting quietly on the blanket beside her.
“The one with the frog, or the one being chased?” Adrienne asked.
Lucie smiled. “Laughing, having fun. I haven’t seen you doing that since . . . since you were very young.”
Adrienne’s smile, her momentary joy at the two children playing, evaporated. She felt as if she’d been stabbed in the lung; for a moment, she lost the ability to breathe. She had a vague memory of running after a butterfly, in a field much like this one, Grand-père not far behind her.
Adrienne looked away, to the hills on her left.
“Do you still have them, Adrienne? The visions?” Lucie’s voice was soft and low; she kept her eyes on the children in the grass.
In all the years since the comte had died, Adrienne had not spoken of any visions. Adrienne swallowed hard and picked at the fuzz on the blanket. It was a coarse gray wool; leaf shadows from the chestnut tree danced over its surface, over the skirts of the two females, legs stretched out in front of them.
Adrienne pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “Sometimes,” she murmured.
Lucie sat up straight and turned to look at the girl, trying to read what might lie hidden in her silence. “I wondered if maybe they had stopped. You never talk about them anymore.” Much of the tension that had vibrated through the air back then had disappeared. With Marie gone most of the time, and Adrienne no longer sharing startling stories, even the servants had relaxed. And truthfully, Lucie, too, was relieved that the stories had stopped. Since that moment, years ago, when she had overheard the servants talking about the death of the comtesse, Lucie had felt a thread of apprehension running through her. The thought of what might become of the little girl had always stayed in the back of her mind.
But she wasn’t convinced that this silence was any better. She had watched Adrienne change before her eyes—from a little girl who was natural and light and full of joy to one who rarely smiled, never laughed, and seemed to hold herself rigid and straight and carefully in check at all times.
When she spoke, Adrienne looked away, as if she had caught a glimpse of Lucie’s thoughts. “What is there to talk about? Visions are nothing but trouble. No one really wants to know.”
“I do. I want to know what you see.” Lucie meant what she said. She had always been fascinated by Adrienne’s uncanny abilities. Yes, it was frightening sometimes, and yes, she worried about what would become of the girl. But it was intriguing to hear the things that she could see.
“Why? It only makes people angry. Or afraid. Or they think I’m some kind of—” Adrienne stopped, and drew in a sharp, quick breath. “Some kind of lunatic.”
“Joan of Arc had visions. She became a heroine because of them.”
Adrienne’s eyes met Lucie’s. “A dead heroine. Burned at the stake for all her trouble.” Adrienne’s words stabbed the air. “It’s dangerous to be different. To know secrets.”
Lucie sighed. “She saw things that were important. Things that helped her country. Not everyone can do it, Adrienne, and it seems to me that you might have visions for a reason. I guess I just wondered if you still had them, or if they had gone away.”
Adrienne turned her head away. Yes, she still had visions. And she hated them. Hated them in a way that she could never explain. Just a few days before, she had been gazing out the window, staring out over the vineyards, and had spied Renault in the drive, returning from a trip to buy supplies in Lyons. Renault was the driver of the coach; he took care of the horses. His wife, Madeline, was an upstairs maid. They had married two years before, and she was about to give birth to their first child. Both of them had been glowing with anticipation and happiness.
Adrienne felt her shoulders and neck go stiff with the thought. Lucie and Madeline had become friends. Lucie was as excited about this child as the parents-to-be. She had seen Renault smiling as he worked in the stables, whistling as he went about his chores.
Adrienne turned and met Lucie’s eyes. “Yes, I still have visions. But believe me, no one wants to know what I see. You do not want to know what I see. What good does it do to see the future if one can do nothing to change it?”
Lucie exhaled slowly. She shuddered.
“My visions have nothing to do with saving France,” Adrienne said, turning her face away from her governess, away from the questions that filled the young woman’s eyes. “My visions have nothing to do with saving anyone.” Adrienne swallowed, the taste of her own knowledge bitter and sharp in her throat.