Late one afternoon, I forced myself at least to look at the object of my depression. Removing my scarlet blindfold from its velvet-lined box, I held it for the first time since February.
It wasn’t alive but had always stimulated a life force in me, a low-level humming that I felt deep inside my chest and womb. Oh, I had missed the thrill of that sensation. I hadn’t even realized how much until that dusky hour.
Lifting it to my face, I rubbed its satin smoothness against my cheek. Gliding like a lover’s finger, it caressed my skin, the sensation a whisper, begging me to put it on. To join with me again. To show me what I couldn’t see without it.
I shut my eyes and stroked the fabric over my eyelids, feeling its familiar, cool touch. I longed to slip the elastic over my head, to position the shade just so, then succumb to the deep visions that would overwhelm me, until there was no other feeling but mysterious awareness, clarity of sight, and then release. Like a drug delivering a euphoric vision and a heightened sense of being.
I let the blindfold fall from my fingers onto the stone floor. Staring down at it, I could almost hear it whispering to me, begging me, tempting me. The blindfold was as lost without me as I was without it. But I couldn’t. Not ever again. I wouldn’t.
I bent to pick it up, smoothed it, and was putting it back in its velvet tomb when I heard a knock on the door. I left the blindfold out and went to see who it was.
Sebastian handed me a package. “I was at the market, and they just got in some of our favorite cheese. Do you have any bread?”
I put the wedge of Saint-André on a plate, sliced off a few pieces of the baguette I’d bought that morning, and put a bottle of rosé and two glasses on the table between us.
He ate every crumb.
“I have something to tell you,” he said. “And I just want you to hear me out before you say no.”
“Sebastian, you’ve turned into a nag.”
“So I have. Because you’ve become as obstinate as a mule. Now, listen. La Diva has made us an offer that is simply too large to turn down.”
“Is this about painting her house again?”
“Yes.”
“Sebastian, we’ve been through this.”
“No, no, just hear me out. It’s a house, Delphine. And it’s hiding a treasure that is hundreds of years old. No one can get hurt. You can’t see a secret that will harm anyone. You’ll be looking for a book, not searching inside someone’s soul.”
He had stood up and was pacing. He noticed my blindfold in its open box. Lifting it out, he dangled it from his forefinger.
“I’m done telling you that you need to do this for yourself. Now I need you to do it for me. When you lost your sight, I couldn’t give it back to you. I was helpless. Maman had magick to use, but I had none. It’s been the same since you came home. It’s as if you are blind all over again. And I’m helpless all over again. Please, Delphine.”
He was right. I owed it to him. Ever since I was a little girl, he had been the one to do everything for me, including being my eyes for that terrible year. He’d championed my work and was tireless in promoting me. Every important commission I’d ever had was because of him.
“I want to say yes, to make you happy, to do it for you.” I shook my head. “But I won’t. I can’t.”
“I want to show you something.” Sebastian reached into the leather satchel he’d put on the floor, pulled out a magazine, and flipped it open to an illustrated article about Madame Calvé.
I ran my eyes over the page of photos, from top to bottom, right to left: La Diva in costume, in her most famous role as Carmen on the stage in Milan at La Scala. Next, in another costume on the stage at the opera house in Paris. And finally in street clothes, standing in front of a stone castle.
Suddenly, I felt as if a window had been thrown open and cold air was rushing in. Compared with the others, the last photograph shimmered. I stared at La Diva standing in front of a large wooden door, which was open to show a glimpse of the castle’s stone interior.
Her intense gaze seemed to bore right through me. I knew that a photograph couldn’t literally pull me into it. Even so, I gripped the arms of my chair for ballast.
“There are more pictures of the place.” Sebastian turned the pages. “Do you see? It’s not just some house, Delphine. It’s seeped in all the history you have loved reading about since you were little. Now it’s a chance to walk inside one of those castles. The Chateau de Cabrières was built in the eleventh century. They say that in the thirteenth century, the Knights Templar kept a treasury there, and when they wouldn’t reveal its whereabouts, they were put to death. It’s smack in the middle of the Languedoc that you and Papa used to explore together. You’ve been telling me for years that the area is the seat of mystical and supernatural occurrences no one can explain. Madame is looking for a book, but while you are there, you can investigate those caves and grottoes you love so much.
“Emma has access to so much history. Listen to the story she told me about an old letter that a local priest she’s friends with showed her. In 1300, the last seneschal of Cabrières, a Templar, passed through the region on his way to a monastery in Montserrat. With him were a squire and six pack mules laden with bags of gold. Realizing that he was being pursued by King Philip’s men, the Templar buried the treasure somewhere in the area.
“Days later, when he was apprehended, he refused to divulge where he’d hidden the gold and so was executed on the spot. Since then, twice, once in 1820 and once in 1860, Arab gold pieces have been found in the area. Even if you don’t divine La Diva’s book, you might be able to find some of that buried treasure and who knows what else.”
When my father and I explored the area, searching for artifacts from the Templars and the Cathars, we’d never discovered anything as exotic as gold. Over the years, I found broken pottery, a button, and a metal clasp that must have held a cape together. On one trip, my father stumbled on a rough-hewn granite altar that invited hours of rumination, as we imagined who had prayed there and what their lives had been like. As an architect, he was fascinated with the ruins and the stories behind them. I was the only one in our family as interested as he was. Every summer, we’d take a weeklong hike through the area and explore a different ancient village, looking for buried treasure. The Cathars were a heretical Christian sect that had created all kinds of enigmatic work. The paintings and cave art in the region mesmerized me and, I’m sure, influenced my work. We’d do tracings and stone rubbings and take them home with us in an effort to make some sense of their symbolism. No one had ever figured it out. The Cathars’ codex had never been found.