When it was time for dinner, I called for the maid and asked her to have a tray brought up to the room. I needed more time. I knew a trip downstairs, having to make conversation with Madame and my brother, would just interrupt my concentration. Nervously, I went over my plan. Madame would pay us handsomely whether or not I was able to locate the book. That and the money made from pawning my opals would surely get my brother out of trouble. Then I would force him to confess to my mother. Even Madame’s party stopped preying on my mind. All that mattered was saving Sebastian. And all I felt was the danger coming closer.
I stopped drawing to eat the meal the kitchen sent up—roasted chicken with an artichoke soufflé and a lovely slice of apple tart served with crème fra?che. I didn’t drink the burgundy that arrived with the food, because I needed to keep working.
After I ate, I picked up the blindfold once more. It was cold when I lowered it over my eyes. I welcomed the satin touch. I heard faint noises outside my window and wondered if Madame and Sebastian were taking a stroll. Concentrating, I shut out the sounds and focused my attention on the pencil I held, running a finger down its smooth wood. My other hand rested on the paper, its rough grain centering me. In my mind, I searched the black abyss. Sightless, I peered into that empty stage and waited for the riddles to resolve, the shadows to settle.
I saw the stone room once again. The gray, wet, cold rock walls. The ancient carvings. I saw a shadow cast on the wall. If there was a shadow, didn’t there have to be a light source? Of course. Why hadn’t I looked for it before? In my mind, I turned around to find it. There was a man holding a lantern. It was Gaspard! On his face was a look of both surprise and resignation. He couldn’t understand how I’d found the place. And yet he’d known I’d find it eventually.
“Where are we?” I asked.
He began to tell me, his mouth moving, forming words, but there was no sound. I couldn’t hear his answer.
“One clue,” I asked him. “Just one hint, so I can give it to Madame and leave.”
The way he was looking at me, I sensed he was torn. That he wanted me to go and also to stay.
He held out a sheet of paper. I assumed it was a map and was grateful that he was sharing it. But when I looked at it, I saw it was his son’s butterfly drawing. Not a map at all.
I took off the blindfold, opened my eyes, and looked down at what I had sketched. Not the room, not the stones, not Gaspard. I’d drawn the butterfly.
I snapped my pencil in frustration. It split in half and cut my finger in the process. In the bathroom, I rinsed my hand off, my blood turning the running water pink. The sight of it made me gag. I was never good with blood. Neither was my sister Opaline. Her squeamishness had kept her from volunteering as a nurse during the war. I felt weak and grabbed hold of the sink. I closed my eyes and concentrated on relaxing, on breathing.
Finally stable, I let go, grabbed a linen, and wrapped it around the fleshy part of my thumb to stop the bleeding. Back in my room, I rang for the maid, this time asking for a bandage.
While I was waiting, Madame knocked on my door. “Are you all right, dear? I heard the maid was asking for a bandage.”
“My pencil broke. It’s just a scratch,” I said as I let her inside.
In a very maternal voice, she said, “Let me see,” and took my hand. “Not just a scratch at all. That’s a nasty gash, and it has a splinter in it. We’ll have to remove the wood and put some salve on the wound. Come with me.”
I followed her down the hall and into her suite. If the common rooms downstairs were forests, her suite was the inside of a flower. Everything was pale pink and delicate. The walls were covered in blush-colored moire silk, the Aubusson was leaf-green and the pink of a ballet slipper. There was a white piano in the sitting room, smaller than the grand black one downstairs, and the seat beneath it was a luscious shade of salmon. Her bathroom was done in the same pinks but in tile and marble with gold accents. And in the triple-winged mirror, I watched the world-class opera singer pour alcohol over my wound.
The gash was the shape of a perfect crescent moon. The symbol of the daughters of La Lune. I flinched.
“Am I hurting you, dear?”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Is it the shape?” she asked.
“You know about that?”
“You forget that we were close, your mother and I, when she was young and confused about her ancestry. Pierre and I knew all about the symbol of La Lune.”
Madame spread an ointment on the wound and wrapped it with gauze that she tied expertly in a neat little knot.
“Thank you,” I said, examining the bandage.
“When I was a young girl, I made a promise to my patron saint that if I ever became a singer, I would repay her by helping God’s poor. I fund an orphanage nearby where I take young girls from the slums in Paris. And I try to visit them often. Not just to stand and stare at them but to give them singing lessons. Eat with them. Nurse them when they’re sick. I’ve learned how to tend to a wound or two. Now, just one more thing?”
“Yes?”
“Will you show me the drawings that caused this mishap?”
“I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. I was going to try again in the morning.”
She couldn’t be deterred.
Back in the studio, Madame examined one after the other of my most recent sketches. She scrutinized each for so long I got bored watching her and poured myself a glass of the wine that had come with my dinner.
I’d finished one glass and poured a second when she finally put down the last sheet.
She shook her head. “There really is nothing here to tell us where the subterranean cavern is. Damn you, Nicolas!” She balled her hand into a fist and banged it down on the side table where I’d put a jar of pencils. She hit the wood so hard that the jar bounced and then fell, spilling its contents all over the floor. I immediately got down to pick them up.
“I’m sorry,” Madame said, as she stood, preparing to help.
“No, I’ve got them.” I finished gathering them. “And I’m sorry about the drawings. I keep trying to leave the room in my mind and get beyond it so I can see where it is. I can usually move around like that while I’m wearing the blindfold. Go past a first scene into another. But not when I’m in the stone room. I feel trapped there. As if there is no way out.”
“I wonder if that’s a clue to where it is? That you can’t find an exit or an entrance.”
She picked up the drawings again and went through them carefully. “Where could there be a space like this? How can you hide an entrance?” She paused. “In Egypt, we toured the pyramids. Once the kings were entombed, the entrances to their resting places were hidden. Do you think this might be a tomb?”
“I suppose it could be.”
“And you will try again in the morning?”
“Yes, I promise. I’ll see if I can get on the other side of the walls and try to get in. So far, I’ve put myself inside and tried to find a way out.”