Hayden and Jules come down.
At precisely 5:30, a door opens and Professor Dorf and Miss Sei come snapping toward us over the marble.
Chateau de Bessancourt—October 18, 1789
We remain in the chateau like ghosts. It is so quiet here, the gardens and the park slowly succumbing to neglect and silence. All five of us—Mama, me, Bernadette, Charlotte, and Delphine—are draped across the sofas or curled on the rugs in a tense sort of stupor. The servants have all been sent down. I watched them crowding the staircase, a procession of cooks and maids in dirty aprons and snowy caps, butlers in gleaming livery, musicians, wigmakers, and tailors, their faces stiff as funeral masks.
Mama is pretending that all is well. She dresses for dinners that are not served, thanks maids and footmen who are no longer here, pantomiming desperately to us that we are not alone in the path of thousands of starving, angry peasants.
Yesterday I went into the lower passage and stared at the little panel, the secret way into the Palais du Papillon. I saw Father’s motto, picked out in tiny brass letters along the cornice, almost invisible: To Good Luck and Safety and Everlasting Peace.
“We should not stay, Mama, ” I say, sitting up, and every head but hers turns to stare at me. The windows are open onto the park. A breeze is whispering in, warm at first touch and then chilly. “We should take the carriage to Croisilles or go down to Father, but we must not stay here alone. What if someone were to come?”
No one answers. Bernadette and Charlotte do not seem to understand the danger. They have never gone a hot day without parasols or a cold day without fox fur, and I fear they think themselves invincible because of it. Delphine knows something is wrong, but she is six. I could not bear to tell her my worries. It is Mama who should worry with me, who does know but will not tell me. She should be helping me organize our escape, hurrying to bolt up the chateau, and yet she continues on her frivolous course like a horse in blinders. I feel I could scream.
“We will die if we stay here.”
The words leave me like a battering ram. At my feet, Delphine gasps. Charlotte and Bernadette look up from their poetry, startled. Mama glances at me, her eyes wide and limpid. Her voice trembles when she speaks, but her words ring pure and clear: “Everyone dies,” she says. She turns to the window, her beautiful face in profile, the sunlight playing across her long, pale neck. “They are cutting off heads, you say? It is a quick way to go. A mercy.”
The double doors open and Dorf leads us into the dining room. Miss Sei turned down a hallway seconds before we reached it. Guess she’s not mingling with the riffraff this evening.
The dining room is huge. The size of a tennis court. A massive table runs down it, polished walnut with an explosion of peonies and greenhouse hyacinth at its center. Candelabras stand on either side of the flower arrangement. They’re not lit. The lights are in the walls, in the ceiling, thin strips of LED tucked behind panels, illuminating everything with a soft amber glow. It’s like we just stepped into one of Tolstoy’s endless dinner scenes, except it’s high-tech and attended solely by underdressed teenagers.
We pull out our chairs. Lilly decides she wants to sit next to Will three seconds after she’s situated herself next to Hayden. Shuffling and scraping chair legs ensue, followed some by some annoyed looks from Hayden. Now we’re all in place, and silence settles like dust.
Dorf clears his throat. “Your parents have all been informed of your safe arrival. We will be keeping them updated and will have a complete folder prepared and sent to them before your return. Once the media embargo is over, they’ll know as much as everyone else. I think they’ll be quite pleased with what you have accomplished and what you are capable of.”
I hate how he talks. Like we’re kind of not even real people. Like we’re a row of dumbbells with painted faces, supposed to nod and smile at his performance.
“The palace,” Will says. His shoulders are slightly hunched, like he’s uncomfortable in his chair. He’s fiddling with the silverware, straightening it on thestarched linen napkin. “It must have taken decades to build. Versailles took fifty years to build. How could they have kept something so huge a secret?”
Dorf smiles. “They couldn’t. At least, not entirely. There were reports of a great undertaking in Péronne, and certainly local rumors, but many historians thought it was simply another tall tale fabricated by Paris revolutionaries. Slander was rampant against the aristocracy. An underground palace as large as the Sun King’s court but buried 100 feet down was probably too ridiculous and excessive a luxury to even consider.”