A Drop of Night (4 page)

Mama returned to her chambers well past midnight. I heard her on the stairs, the noisy clatter of her shoes as she hurried up, her door creaking shut. An airy, velvet hush descended. But still the château seemed to groan and shift, as if some small object at its heart were pacing, unable to come to peace.

The next morning Mama joined us for breakfast. Her face was drawn and pale, her eyes oddly watery. I should have realized something was not right. Were I not such a fool, I would have silenced my sisters with a severe look and we would have eaten quickly, communicating solely through glances and the tapping of silver, and then fled to dusty, unused guest rooms where we could discuss the matter in private. But I wanted dreadfully to hear tales of the new palace. When my sisters crowded around her I joined them, asked Mama if the palace was very large, and how many candles it must take to light the hallways, and was it warm
in the depths, or bitter cold, and was there a
salle d'Apollon
like the one in Versailles?

She would not speak a word. She sat gingerly at the table, peeling an orange with a paring knife, cutting it into neat, jewel-bright wedges, and when the servants brought her a bit of fried liver in a painted china dish, she blanched and pushed it away. We continued to chatter mercilessly. We would not cease. And after a while Mama began to weep, putting her hands to her ears, and the orange lay on the table, a knobbly spiral of peel, and the rich flesh within hacked to bits.

Exhibit A—I had a boyfriend once. I was fifteen. He was fifteen.
He
had green eyes and floppy hair and liked Vampire Weekend, and if that doesn't guarantee a life of shared bliss, I don't know what does. We were going to get married. Move to the West Village and have zero children and drink tea and live a life of bohemian ennui. It didn't happen. Green-eyed Boyfriend was expelled for pouring lighter fluid all over the bike stands and setting them on fire. Not even to protest anything. Just because. It was okay, though, because he didn't know we were getting married. I never actually talked to him. The height of our romance consisted of me ignoring him all the way through chemistry, and the instant I heard about the bike stand incident I was over him anyway. People who are dumb enough to light bike stands on fire are not people I want to share a lifetime of bohemian ennui with.

Exhibit B—Two years earlier, when I was thirteen, I went to the library and checked out all the books I could find on sociopaths and bizarre human psychology. The librarian probably thought I was deranged, but I wanted to be sure. I figured if I had a medical reason to be mean and angry, things would be simpler. It turns out having medical reasons to be mean and angry doesn't actually help you become less mean and angry. It doesn't fix you.

I lean my head against the window of the black Mercedes and watch the landscape rush past. It's an endless conveyor belt—frosty green fields, gray sky. We're whooshing along a six-lane highway. Behind us are two more Mercedes—long, low cars with tinted windows. Ahead is another. We're like a shiny, furiously speeding funeral procession.

Jules is lying on the seat across from me, staring up at the ceiling. Professor Dorf and a driver are up front behind darkened glass. Will, Lilly, and Hayden are one car behind us. I'm starting to regret this arrangement. Jules is much too effusive for me. He has this way of laughing loudly and then looking at me cautiously, like the only reason he laughed is because he wants me to
laugh, too. I don't like that kind of pressure. Still, it's better than being in the other car. Lilly's trying to drag Will out of his shell, and I don't know
what
Hayden's doing. He didn't stick with Orangina for long on the plane ride, and his reaction to all the alcohol was to become very slow and buzzy, and speak in short, dramatic sentences about the sky and the tarmac. But maybe he's knocked out cold by now. I wish Jules were knocked out cold.

He's just being friendly, Anouk.
He's just a nice person
.
It's possible.
But this is where Exhibit B comes into play. I don't believe in the whole “deep down people are basically good” notion. I think deep down is where people are the worst.

“And so for our social sculpting class this one guy got a bunch of horse manure and mixed it with Plasticine until it was this really glossy brown, almost like chocolate, and he put it in a bear-shaped mold and called it ‘Poo Bear,' get it? It was, like, a commentary on how culture is packaged to look appealing but is basically crap. It was brilliant.” He raises his eyebrows in admiration and looks out the window.

“Except Winnie-the-Pooh isn't crap,” I say. “Winnie-the-Pooh is amazing.”

“What? It's not about Winnie-the-Pooh, it's— You're missing the point.”

“No, I'm not. ‘People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day'?
That's
brilliant. If Mr. Social Sculptor wanted to be all clever and subversive, he should have made a shampoo bottle out of crap, called it ‘Sham-Poo,' and it could have been a commentary on all the toxic chemicals in commercial shampoo, and then he could pretend he's a crusader against multinational cosmetic corporations instead of just skewering children's books he's probably never read.” I click my tongue. “Missed opportunity there.”

“Don't you study art history?”

“Is that a legitimate question, or are you trying to shut me up?”

Jules laughs. I know he's doing that inquisitive little sideways look right now.

I keep my gaze fixed on the landscape outside. We landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport about 10
A.M.
Paris time and were whisked straight from the tarmac to our waiting motorcade. We didn't even have to go through Immigration.

I get a quick blur of kebab restaurants, bright signs, and concrete-block houses as we pass through a town. Jules
starts talking about bands I've never heard of. I wonder if he's just trying out subjects until I latch on to something. Sorry, my life consists of reading Tolstoy in original Cyrillic and watching foreign-dubbed Hollywood movies on repeat until I understand the dialogue through context. Also dreaming up Machiavellian revenge. Also being irritating and pretentious. At least we have that in common.

I slip the blue folder out of my bag and page through it. Jules starts talking about a book, still staring at the ceiling. (“It's called
The Beauty of Chartreuse on the River Styx
, and it's about quirky teens who fall in love and die.”)

I see Lilly's one-sheet:

Lilly Watts—skill set: audio and visual sensitivities.

What does
that
mean? That she can see and hear?

I flip further. I really want to be sleeping right now. I didn't even doze on the flight over. I changed out of my pointy witch shoes at the Paris airport in favor of some sensible-looking crepe-soled brogues, but my toes still hurt, and all I want to do is lie down on the black leather seat and conk out. I force myself to read:

Very few records of the Marquis du Bessancourt and his family have survived
.
Many of their papers were likely
destroyed to avoid capture and the widespread repercussions against aristocrats during the Reign of Terror. Surviving documents show that Frédéric du Bessancourt was born in 1734 as the only legitimate child of a local nobleman, later rising to prominence as a banker and businessman under Louis XV of France. At this time, he also gained a reputation as a scientist, natural philosopher, and a frequent lender to the king and his successor, Louis XVI, financing much of the monarchs' lavish lifestyle. In 1774, the marquis married Célestine Gauthier. They had several children.

All records of the Bessancourt family cease after 1789. They are never mentioned again, either in revolutionary propaganda or in prison registries in and around the city of Paris. It is at this time that we assume he and his family fled underground, escaping France shortly afterward and reestablishing themselves under other names in England or Germany. Construction on a subterranean palace may have begun as early as 1760 in the vast caverns under the ancestral château. The palace, known at the time for unknown reasons as the Palais du Papillon (Palace of the Butterfly), has sat untouched for two hundred years. It lies below the water table, in bedrock, inviting
the possibility that some areas are partially or entirely submerged. We have no definite idea how large the palace is, how structurally sound, how safe. Regardless of its current state, it will be a treasure trove of revolutionary era detail and perhaps the most significant discovery from eighteenth-century Europe in history.

We are pleased to have you with us on this momentous expedition and hope that this project will be a rewarding and enlightening experience for every one of you.

It's signed with an illegible scribble. Underneath is written, helpfully:

The Sapani Family

“Hey?” Jules is looking at me. I wonder how long I've been ignoring him. “You okay?”

I drop my head against the window again and make some indeterminable noise against the glass. For some reason he takes that as a no.

“You know,” he says, as if pondering some major philosophical revelation. “You're a weird one. Normal people would be like, ‘Yayyy, going to France with an awesome person named Jules and also exploring a two-hundred-year-old site, yayyy!'” He waves his
hands with each
yay
. “I can't figure you out.”

“I can't figure me out, either.” I watch a twisted old tree by the side of the road grow closer, larger, gone. “Also, normal people didn't go on this trip. Just so you know.”

He's probably making a face, being weirded out. I don't care. I do care, but at some point you have to stop caring, or you become Chernobyl-dead-zone levels of crazy. I
am
excited to be here. I can't wait to get into the palace, start discovering things, forget about New York, forget about college and the next sixty-plus years of my life that I have yet to muddle through. I just don't know how to communicate that to people.

“So, what are you here for?” Jules asks. “What are your stakes?”

I jam my feet up onto my seat and stare at the tips of my sensible brogues. I can't actually tell him. What am I going to say, that I'm being all Huck Finn and running away? Rebelling against the status quo, searching for redemption, trying to find an identity outside of being a punching bag for my dysfunctional family's psychoses? Because that's what I'm here for, and I don't need him to tell me that what I really need
is therapy/some people have actual problems/those shoes are Prada, how could you possibly be unhappy?

“I'm here for the experience,” I say. Lie. “And to practice my signature forging.” I sling a wrist across my forehead. “Those selection rounds,
whew
! Got any dotted lines requiring signatures from parents and guardians? I'll sign them for you.”

“You forged your parents' signatures? Do they even know you're here?”

“They think I'm in Azerbaijan. I left a note.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“No.”

“What's wrong with your parents?”

“Look, Jules? You're nice and everything, but you need to mind your own business.”

The Mercedes rumbles through some road construction. Bright cones flicker past like little lighthouses, gone in an instant. My chest feels tight. I don't look, but Jules's expression is probably bordering on disgust by now.

“Well, you certainly look like you've had a rough life,” he says. “Malnourishment. Constant threat of war. No clothes but what you could scrounge out of
the charity bin. How did you ever make it this far . . .”

“What?”

“Nothing. D'you think it's strange they're letting teenagers into a find like this? I mean, they could have gotten some veterans. Famous art historians or something. Doesn't it strike you as odd?”

I squint at him. “There
are
going to be famous art historians and veterans. Dorf's here. And anyway, we worked for this. We have qualifications. I'm sorry you have such a low opinion of your skills, but I feel like I've earned this.”

I don't. I don't feel like I've earned anything.

“You're saying you're right up there with the greats and they couldn't have gotten anyone better if they tried?”

“I'm
saying
, no one's been down there yet,” I snap. “I'm saying there haven't been many tests or age verifications, and no one knows anything until we get down there and start combing the place. So until then, yeah, teenagers are a great option. Good night.”

I curl myself into the corner, and I feel empty, straight-up miserable.
Four chances of friendship down,
zero to go. Good job, Ooky. Diligent as ever.

There's this special talent humans have that they can be unhappy no matter where they are. No matter who they're with and what they have. Or maybe that's just my talent.

I pretend to fall asleep. Jules isn't talking to me anymore anyway.

The market women marched on Versailles yesterday. They killed two guards, relieved them of their heads, and mounted their grisly trophies on pikes. “Like apples on a spit,” Guillaume told the servants gathered around him in the front hall, and a gasp went up, a frantic chorus of rustling aprons and whispered oaths.

We were not supposed to hear, my sisters and I, but we stood at the crack in the music room's doors and listened.

Guillaume had been at Versailles, waiting to deliver a message from Father, when news came of the market women's approach. He claimed to have seen the queen herself running for the hall of mirrors with the young dauphin. He said that the royal family had fled to Paris, that Louis XVI was as good as headless already.

My sleeves stick uncomfortably to my wrists. My mouth is dry. I hurry my sisters out the other side of the music room,
and I try to distract them with fumbled card tricks, but I cannot focus and I drop the deck. Father has already left the château, gone down to the Palais du Papillon. Again a casket was sent to Mama, an invitation asking her to join him in the depths. Again I intercepted it:

My
darling,
it said, the writing splattered and uneven, ink beads on an ink thread, as if Father paused many times during the forming of each letter to consider the next.

It is no longer safe to remain in the château. I have heard whispers, received letters. A storm brews in Paris that will rain blood and ruin on France as it has not seen in a hundred years. Soon there will be looting and death and chaos. The king will be beheaded and his wife as well. A wave of human filth will flow across the land. But you have nothing to fear, ma chérie. For such a catastrophe as this I built the Palais du Papillon: so that no matter what terrors befall the world, our way of life shall go on, the beauty and tranquillity of our grand culture preserved forever. I promise you, you shall have every comfort in the palace. You will be safe, my treasure. You will be cared for.

Your husband,

Frédéric du Bessancourt

But Mama would not go. I had heard her pleading with
the guards he had sent for her, heard her anguished sobs, so desperate and grating, I could hardly imagine them coming from one so small.

“Why?” I asked her again this morning when I caught her alone in the upstairs gallery. “Mama, why will we not go to the palace? We will only be there a short while, surely. What has frightened you?”

She answered me this time, taking my hands and squeezing them until I thought my fingers might snap. “The servants,” she said. “They have such dreadful faces.”

She might as well have held her tongue for all that helped me.