CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Marie opened the door to the chapel the next morning, tray in hand. For a moment, her mind could not register the sight before her. She dropped the tray; it clattered on the floor. China shattered, tea poured along the floorboards. Marie’s hands rose to her mouth. The smell was sickening, metallic and rusty. She moved forward slowly, her skirts dragging through the blood. She reached for the knife that had fallen to the floor and held it, blood marking her hands.
She bent over, blood rushing to her head, forcing her to reach for a wall and slide her body slowly to the floor. The smell, the blood, was overpowering. She held her hand over her mouth and nose, tried to fight back the bile that threatened to erupt from her throat.
Julien appeared behind her, drawn by the crash. “Oh my God!”
He rushed past Marie, knelt on the floor next to Adrienne, his pants growing damp from the pool of thickening blood. He held his hand to her neck and reached for a pulse. Marie knew there was no need. Her body was cold and rigid.
He knelt next to her, his hand resting on her shoulder. Her eyes were closed. She looked almost peaceful. As if she’d gone to sleep.
Marie sat slumped against the wall, staring at the pool of blood. The knife dropped from her now-bloody hand and clattered on the floor.
The seconds ticked by, both of them utterly quiet.
For a moment, Marie was paralyzed with memory, no longer sitting in a room in Manitou Springs, but back again at Beaulieu. She was thirteen years old. She could hear the baby, Genevieve, wailing and crying. She moved toward the door of her mother’s bedroom, an overwhelming dread filling her being. She heard the creak of the bedroom door as it swung open. Baby Genevieve lay in her bassinet, her screams punctuating the stillness in the room. The smell was the same; the pool of blood was the same. She moved closer to the body of her mother, lying on the bed. Her arm lay close by her side; blood had pooled under the wrist and leaked onto the bedding, onto Marguerite’s nightgown. It pooled on the floor. Marie moved closer, her head shaking back and forth. Her foot hit against something. She bent down and picked up the knife that Marguerite had used to take her own life.
Marie could not scream. It caught in her throat and stayed there, frozen into stillness, as the baby’s nurse rushed in behind her, her own screams loud and almost ludicrous in their ferocity. Marie had held the knife close against her own skirt, unwilling to let the nurse see it. Her father charged in a moment later, banishing the nurse from the room and quickly taking charge.
She remembered the months, the years, of walking into a room and seeing the dark eyes of the servants on her, their voices suddenly hushed. She remembered the stares of the people in the village. Her father had done his best to change the story, to make it sound as if Marguerite had died from complications of childbirth. He made a very large contribution to the church. Marguerite was buried in the family cemetery, with a full Christian burial. But the gossip never really died, and neither had the shame and humiliation and anger. Marie had spent her whole life trying to make sure that no one would ever gossip about them again. She had spent her whole life trying to protect herself, and those she loved, from any further pain and disgrace. She had spent her whole life, and especially these past few years of controlling Adrienne, trying to avoid the pain and fear of that awful moment.
“We should . . . we need . . .” Marie began. She fought nausea, pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, and held it to her mouth and nose. She pushed herself up to her feet. “We . . . we have to get her out of here. The sisters will be coming with our trays . . . We cannot let anyone see this.”
Julien nodded at her words. He could not meet her eyes, and she stared at the back of his head. How could he have done this? Here she was, nearing the end of her life, and worried, once again, that word of a suicide would travel through town. Worried that Dr. Creighton might reveal the reason that the young girl had taken her own life. All the nightmares that she had spent a lifetime trying to avoid were back again, slamming against her. And he was the cause. The son for whom she would do anything. The son she had bent heaven and earth to protect. Marie thought quickly, as she always had. It was February; the ground outside was frozen. Trying to dispose of the body outside was out of the question. Besides, what if someone, what if one of the nuns, should see him? She looked around the room, let her mind travel through the castle. Where could they put her? She thought of staircases, closets, the coal room in the basement. She thought of the many fireplaces. None of those would work. The smell would permeate the building. When the sisters came down from Montcalme with their trays of food, they would notice it immediately.
Julien stood, walked to the other side of the couch, out of the pool of blood, and knelt, sliding his arms under Adrienne’s legs and shoulders. Heaving from the weight, he stood on shaky legs and turned toward the door. Adrienne’s head tipped back; her hair fell in a sheet of reddish gold.
“I’ll bury her,” he whispered. “In my private chapel, at the other end of the parlor. There’s a tunnel, an old mining tunnel, behind the north wall. We found it during construction. I think I can get her in there.”
Marie nodded.
Julien shifted the weight in his arms. Adrienne’s arm fell to the side. He maneuvered her through the door. “Could you . . .”
Marie stared at the puddles of blood on the floor. She held the handkerchief to her mouth. “I’ll clean up,” she whispered.
Julien turned and walked down the hallway, to the other end of the castle. He laid Adrienne on the floor, next to the chapel door, while he fumbled with his keys. This was his personal chapel. He never allowed anyone in here. He found the key, jammed it into the lock. The door swung open.
He bent, and picked up the body once again. He panted, as if her slender weight had turned to lead with the alchemy of death. He carried her to the other end of the room. The room was stone on all four sides. Only one window shone in the space. It was small, high up on the wall. He laid her, again, on the floor.
He moved back to the door, went through to the parlor, and looked for some tool to work with. He returned with the letter opener, removed his jacket, and closed the door to the chapel behind him. He began to chip at the mortar between the stones, the stones that lined the back wall of the room, next to the mountainside.
It took several hours. The light in the window had paled to gray when he had finally removed enough of the stones to fit himself through. He wiped the dust from his hands, lit a candle, and stepped into the dark, damp space. He shivered. The belly of the mountain swallowed him in its eerie silence.
Julien went back, slipped his hands under Adrienne’s arms, and pulled, sliding her, one tug at a time, into the tunnel. He crouched, pulled her several feet into the tunnel, and laid her body on the cold, damp earth. He arranged her limbs, which had grown stiff in the hours of digging. He thought of getting a blanket, her cloak, something to wrap her in, but it was more trouble than he could manage. He wanted nothing more than to get this over with, to get out of this dark space, away from the eerie feeling of death. He wanted to pretend it had never happened. He wanted to erase the words of the doctor; he wanted to eradicate the look on his mother’s face.
He knelt, shivering, tired in every limb, every muscle. It crossed his mind, briefly, that he should pray—that he should whisper a “Hail Mary” or an “Our Father.” He shivered again and started to cough.
He knelt and made the sign of the cross on her forehead. But the words caught, stuck in his craw. He could not speak. He could not pray. He looked at her body, at the wisp of a frame that held a baby. Not his baby, he insisted to the dark. With a girl like Adrienne, how could you ever be sure? She had been trouble from the moment she was born. There was no telling what other secrets she held.
He turned and hurried away from her, rushed to evade his own guilt. Inside the little chapel, he knelt and began to put the stones back in place. He felt exhausted, unable to continue. The only light in the room was the flicker of the candle, the window having gone dark and black while he was inside the tunnel. He sat back on his heels, staring into the dark crevice.
The thought of going to bed, upstairs, just above this room, sent a shiver down his spine. He could not leave the space open, her body stiff and cold, uncovered. No matter how tired he felt, he knew he had to continue, to get those stones back into place. He could mortar them later. But tonight, he had to close that dark opening, shut off that ghastly sight. Erase her from memory. Block her in, as if she had never existed.
He worked into the early-morning hours. When he had finished, he moved to the door of the little chapel, shut it hard, and locked it behind him. He could barely hold his head up, barely move his feet through the parlor.
He stopped, staring down the hall toward the other chapel, the one by the kitchen. He moved slowly, holding his candle before him. The door swung backward slowly when he pushed it, a soft swoosh against the floor.
The room was clean. The broken dishes were gone, the spilled tea wiped from the walls. The knife no longer lay on the wooden planks. There was no sign of blood on the floor. The couch looked pale silver in the night. He could feel the dampness where Marie had cleaned it. But he could see no sign of blood.
He turned and dragged himself to bed.