Bastien (4 page)

An unbearable heaviness permeates me from head to toe. With her soft whispers in my ear telling me to rest now, I let my eyes close and embrace the waiting darkness.

Chapter Six

I dream the world as a painted tarot card. The moon bulges full in the night sky, and all the stars are traced into constellations. A wolf sits on the cliff before me, howling soundlessly. Roses and dark cloaks swirl around me, a black cup spills shimmering liquid into the grass, and then a woman appears before me. She is slight, naked, and so close to me we are nearly toe to toe. Her hair is a lush reddish brown, a shade so warm and inviting I want to sift my fingers through it.

She is a painting that is somehow not a part of this world. I recognize her for the innocent she is by her wide blue eyes, at once challenging and pleading with me. Something inside my chest clenches tight. I want to touch her, draw her into my arms. I am certain the smallest contact will melt away the paint and make her as real as I am. She is made to fit me and I can almost feel her skin against mine as I reach out.

But I pull back. What if I’m wrong? That single touch could destroy her. She stands before me, an angel, warm and good in a way I have never been. She might as well be the world away.

It maddens me. Her mouth moves and I strain to hear her words, but there is nothing. “What?” I demand. “What do you want!”

My bellow frightens her and she is gone.

“No, wait! Come back!”

Blood red rose petals rain down where she stood. I stoop to pick one up and it withers in the palm of my hand. “Come back,” I plead.

I wake on a bed of white pillows, fully dressed. I am in Lilith’s bower, but she is gone.

There are no more mirrors, the fires have gone out, and the creatures around them lie motionless, asleep. My head is splitting. I try to retrace my steps back to my friends, but as soon as I leave the circle of trees I find myself in front of the shack.

The hag stands by the door which is once again covered with the curtain. “Where are my friends?” My voice is raw, hardly recognizable.

The hag says nothing.

“Are they still inside?”

She proffers her hand. In the palm of it is the damned tarot deck.

“Why will you not speak, damn you?”

The hag flips the top card. The Hierophant. Whatever the hell that means. I shake my head and grasp the curtain to go back inside. Louis and the others can probably take care of themselves much better than I can at the moment, but I still need to find them.

An old, gnarled hand curls painfully in my forearm, stopping me in my tracks. When I turn back to her, the hag brushes the top card off the deck and flips the next one. “The Devil?” I stare at her for an explanation.

She simply drops that card and flips the next one. Strength. “Yes, you said that last night,” I say dryly. “Show me something new.”

The cards shoot off her hand, straight at me. I fall back with a shout, flailing and slapping them away without success. They batter my face like so many bird wings and, for a moment, I am deaf and blind to the world at large. When the assault stops, I shove to my feet, ready to strangle the bitch.

She is gone.

I circle the shack to look for her and find nothing. I tear the curtain off the door, but there is nothing inside other than stomped dirt and four rickety walls. No more Faery court, and no friends. In my hasty backward retreat I bump into the barrel. I reach for it to steady myself and feel a prick in my palm.

A blood red rose lies on the makeshift table, placed next to a neat stack of tarot cards.

There is no one around to see me pocket the cards. I hesitate before I pick up the rose and inhale its fragrance. It’s just like the one on the Strength card.
Strength
. I scoff at that and toss the bloom aside. Shoving my hands into my pockets, I head back into town to my waiting carriage.

Only my carriage is not waiting, and when I inquire as to its whereabouts, the merchants prove less than obliging. My pockets empty of coin, I am forced to walk home. It was an hour’s ride in a carriage, it takes me half the day to get back to my castle, and by then I am ready to throttle my driver and skin him while his legs still twitch.

When I open my own front door, I find my companions from last night have my butler cornered by the hearth. They seem very angry, but I can’t tell what they’re all shouting about at the same time.

What the hell do they want now? My ear splitting whistle breaks up the lynch mob and the entry hall falls silent. Everyone is staring at me.

“Bastien!” Adeline cries and launches herself at me. Honorine and Brigitte are weeping.

Liliane is not even there.

“Holy Christ, man,” Adrien says, raking his hair back. “We thought you were dead.”

I stare at him and then look down at Adeline making a mess of my shirt. “What? Adeline, let go of me. If this is a joke it’s not funny. You bastards not only left me there, you took my goddamned carriage! Would it have killed you to wait until morning?”

Adrien and Louis exchange a look as Adeline rejoins them, her face flushed with tears and a healthy dose of embarrassment. Good. “Bastien,” Adrien says, “you’ve been gone for two weeks.”

Jacques bows impassively and removes himself from my vicinity. Clever man. Louis looks torn between confusion and anger. Edgard and Firmin are staring as if they are seeing a ghost, Adrien and Gaspard both have their arms full of distraught female. They believe what Adrien said.

“Have you all gone insane?”

“Look,” Edgard says, pointing at the door. Or rather the window above it.

I look. “What, the moon?”

“It was new when we went to the Faery court.”

It’s full now. My throat closes shut and I have to swallow repeatedly to find my voice again.

“Where is Liliane?” I don’t dare look at them for the answer.

“She’s gone, Bastien,” Firmin says. “She took up with a... creature. She was dead when we found her.”

I shudder. Two weeks. Liliane is dead. My chest feels hollow. I rub at it and find the stolen tarot deck. If I take it out right now and look at the top card, will it be Death again? Was the hag trying to warn me?

“Leave,” I say.

Firmin escorts Honorine and Brigitte to the carriage. Edgard and Gaspard follow, with Adrien and Adeline taking up the rear. Adeline touches my arm and looks at me sadly as she passes by. I wince and pull away.

Only Louis remains. After the others are gone down the long drive, he says, “It must have been an accident. They don’t... they don’t murder out of spite. The male probably didn’t realize how fragile she was. You know Liliane, she’d go toe to toe with the Devil to prove that she could.”

He says it too easily, as if he is inured to this sort of thing happening. How often has he been there? How well does he truly know those creatures? How many has he seen die at their hands?

“What did she say to you?” he asks. “Lilith.”

“There really wasn’t much talking, Louis,” I reply.

Louis takes an angry step, as though to challenge me. It takes me by surprise. Of all of us, I would never expect Louis to be the one who takes exception to what I do, or with whom. “She was mine,” he grates. “You selfish, narcissistic prig, she was mine!”

“Apparently, you failed to make her aware of that.”

Louis’ fist connects with my jaw, spinning me sideways. Half my face goes numb and in an instant explodes in pain. I am so startled I laugh, and once I’ve started I cannot stop. Seeing Louis’ livid face only makes me laugh harder.

He slams the door behind him.

My laughter refuses to subside. My sides hurt from it as I lean against the wall and slide down to the floor, lost in my mirth. Maids poke their heads around corners, servants stare as they pass me by. It is Jacques who finally scrapes up enough courage to come to my aid. He drags me to my feet and guides me up the stairs to my chambers.

It’s not until I am shrugging out of my coat that I notice my reflection in the mirror.

There are tears streaked down my face.

Chapter Seven

I spend the following days in morose drunkenness. I invite no company, nor do I accept any.

Summer is turning to autumn and the gardeners are out in droves, tending to the flowers. I watch them from my window, absently shuffling the stolen tarot cards.

Every once in a while a card falls out of the deck. More often than not, it’s the Strength card, with its red, red rose and sharp thorns. I find myself searching for the woman I glimpsed beneath the rose. She disappeared like a mirage, not just from the card but from my dreams as well. Now I can’t even recall her face. I turn the card this way and that, into the light, into shadow, I bend it just short of creasing. Nothing I do changes the image on its face.

Jacques comes in with a food tray. “The cook must be worried about you, he made your favorite.”

“The cook made my favorite, the maids change the bedding every day, the hostler comes in every morning to ask if he should prepare a horse for me. What do you think they’re all worried about? That I am dying, or that I am not?”

“You are a spirited man who hasn’t left his room for six days, my Lord. It is very uncharacteristic of you.”

I look away from the garden just so he can see me raise an eyebrow. “One of my friends died… in a horrible accident three weeks ago. Is a man not allowed time to grieve?”

Jacques picks an invisible speck off his sleeve. “As I said, my Lord, it is very uncharacteristic of you.”

My teeth grind together at the implications of that answer. “I am beginning to realize my staff is not very fond of their Lord and master,” I muse aloud. I never even considered this to be a possibility before. “Do you by chance harbor some wisdom as to why?”

Jacques says nothing.

“I own them. They live in a castle and they’re paid well for their service. They’re not beaten or abused in any way. What could they possibly have to complain about?”

My butler offers no explanation.

I shrug philosophically. I really do not care enough to press. “I want roses in the garden,” I say instead.

“Yes, my Lord. Do you have a particular spot in mind?”

“Yes. Everywhere.”

Jacques nods. “I shall inform the head gardener.”

Long after he leaves and my tray has gone cold, I am still sitting at that window, counting stars. I don’t want to go to sleep. It’s become a chore to dream. Either I’m swamped with memories of Lilith and wake up trying to fuck my pillow, or I am lost in the painted tarot world, chasing after a faceless woman dressed in rose petals. Neither is a welcome sight tonight. Lilith never stays long enough to bring me to come, and the strange woman always slips through my fingers and I can never find her.

And then there is the hag. I saw her a few times as well. Half young maiden, half old crone, like a Faery spell gone awry. Her young eye is black as coal. Her old is white, obviously blind.

She stares at me, waiting for something. What does she want? My soul? A woman as well versed in the dark arts as she should already know I don’t have one.

By midnight I am sure God created woman in order to punish man. I take a candle and go down to the library. There are hundreds of books in here, surely one of them will be able to entertain me until morning. Maybe if I just sleep by the light of day my dreams will be more pleasant. Or at the very least, less exhausting.

I peruse the subjects. History. I will be asleep after two pages. Politics. Only if I want the women in my dreams to band together against me. I pause at Poetry. There are only a couple of volumes in this category, as sentiment is not something I subscribe to. However, desperate times call for insipidity and, given that my only other option is Myth and Folk Tales, I take a book of poetry from the shelves and take a seat on the settee.

The first verse has me rolling my eyes and snapping the book shut.

Drivel. Another man brought to the brink of madness by woman, whining and pining after his tormentor. It’s not the sun kissed wheat of the woman’s hair, or the cherry red of her lips, or the peach pink of her cheek that bothers me—obviously the man was hungry when he wrote this.

It’s not even that he describes this after he sneaked into the woman’s chamber in the twilight hours to watch her sleep—I can understand that not every man has the ballocks to wake the woman up for what he really wants from her. No, it’s the overblown desperation with which he states that without these features he shall cast himself into the sea and shatter his bleeding heart upon the jagged rocks of the shallows.

I don’t relish the idea of destroying a book but in this case I make an exception and burn the damned thing in the hearth. Happy to be rid of it, I retrieve the second book of poetry. This one I open with more caution. I am pleasantly surprised to find the poet whining about war instead of a woman, and for the rest of the night I enjoy vivid imagery of severed limbs and spilling guts.

When morning comes, I dress and order my horse prepared. It’s time to look in on my companions and find out what happened that night.

Edgard and Gaspard are closest. I find them in their clothier’s shop, strangely subdued and reluctant to talk to me. All they say is that they were separated from the group early on and don’t remember much of what happened. They are horrible liars and they know it, but no matter what I say, they will not tell me more.

Honorine has left for her uncle’s estate a good two weeks’ ride south, by the sea. That is what her head of household tells me when I come calling.

Brigitte is nervous during my visit. Her hands shake as she drinks her tea. She doesn’t try to seduce me even once. That, more than anything, tells me that something is wrong.

I find Adeline at Adrien’s house. As the only child of a senile father, she has more freedom than other young women to do as she pleases. I am not one to judge, nor do I care whose bed the woman chooses to warm. What I find curious is that Adrien tells me straight away he has asked for Adeline’s hand and she consented. They are to be married in the spring. After that announcement I don’t have the stomach to ask them about the Faery court.