Strands of Bronze and Gold (17 page)

“Are you ready for such a ‘heavy’ responsibility?” he asked with laughter, but also with a certain consideration.

“I hope so.”

“You may use all except three. This one”—he showed a plain black key with scratches on the shaft—“goes to the churchyard gate. And this one”—he held up an enormous key with a cross shape piercing the head—“opens the chapel. This last unlocks the folly. Those places are unsafe and I must forbid them. All the rest I make you free with, including this brass one, which goes to the tantalizing bookshelves. See how I trust you?”

“Thank you, Monsieur.”

He kissed the top of my head and left.

I had M. Bernard’s keys. At last.

I inspected the east wing, which was still allegedly under renovation. It was indeed still under renovation.

Next I tried the muniment room. Dust motes danced in the light streaming through windows and the walls were lined with cabinets. Halfheartedly I opened drawers and doors, revealing stacks of brittle yellowed papers. There were lists of all the purchases of this great household for several hundred years. At another time it might have been interesting, but it wasn’t what I was looking for today.

What
was
I looking for? Something intriguing—something to do with my godfather’s brides. They had walked these same floors I walked. Three of them had slept in my bed. I wanted to know their thoughts. I wanted to know if M. Bernard was as demanding of them as he was of me, and if they had loved him.

The fluid, serpentine wriggle of a centipede as it squirmed along the edge of the sheaf of papers I held made me drop it with a strangled squeal.

The door flew open and I jumped. Charles jumped as well. We both grinned sheepishly.

“Sorry, Miss,” he said. “Thought I heard a mouse.”

“That was me. Squeaking mousily because of a centipede.”

He stooped to help me gather up the scattered papers.

“I have permission to be in here,” I said. “Monsieur Bernard gave me his keys.”

“Congratulations, Miss,” he said.

I laughed. He didn’t go so far as to laugh, but his eyes danced as he bowed himself out.

Thank goodness it had been Charles and not someone else. It
had looked as if I were poking my inquisitive nose into everything. How shameful that that actually was what I was doing.

If there were any traces of the wives in here, it would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. I stuck my head out the door to make sure no one lurked nearby before slipping out and tiptoeing down the corridor.

I scurried up two flights of stairs to the attics. My heart lurched when one of the doors along the third-floor corridor slowly opened. I froze. No one but me ever came up here. Out glided Odette. I was gratified that she started at the sight of me. We stood looking at each other for a moment. I couldn’t imagine what call there could be for my lady’s maid to be in this rabbit warren of cramped bedrooms. Naturally no babbled excuses came from Odette. She flicked her bright black glance my way, then twitched away her stiff skirt so it wouldn’t touch my flounces as she swished off down the hall.

I watched her back, wondering if she were a thief, scouring the house for objects to steal. In the chamber she had exited was a delicate, mother-of-pearl inlaid writing desk with one narrow drawer jutting open. Other than that, nothing seemed out of place. I checked inside the drawer—empty. Except … scratched into the wooden side was “Adele” again. My godfather’s fourth wife must have had a habit of labeling things. And yes, the desk might well have come from my bedchamber. There was nothing else of note in the room. If Odette had taken something, it had been small.

I shrugged. Maybe later I would care if my maid were a thief. Maybe later I would tell Monsieur what I suspected and be rid of her. But at this moment I couldn’t do it. I was feeling a grudging
complicity with Odette because she had not betrayed my woodland rambles.

As I climbed the narrow attic stairs, the stench of mice met me, along with some other smell I didn’t recognize.

The attics were dim and dingy, with pale light filtered through grimy dormer windows. What looked like shredded black rags hung from the lowest beams, where the roof nearly met the floor. Bats. That was the other smell. They hung quietly, minding their own bat business.

I wove my way between tarnished birdcages, sofas with stuffing billowing out, antiquated tallboys and washstands. What fun Anne and I would have had up here when we were younger, setting up houses and playing dress-up.

I moved around a dust sheet–covered mound and nearly stepped on a portrait lying face-up on the floor. A red-haired woman laughed up at me. Evidently it had been leaning against the wall but had fallen. The frame was cracked. After a second to slow the rapid beating of my heart, I set the painting up against a crate and studied it.

Which one was she? Which bride? She wore the style of the past decade. She had to be one of them. She stood beside a horse, and her expression was one of mischief, as though all the world were a joke. I could guess. I would guess it was Tara, of the fiery temper and the vase-smashing fights with her husband. Yes, somehow I was certain of it. The suicide.

So … were the other wives’ portraits up here as well? I began peeking behind paintings propped against walls. Most were
landscapes and still lifes consigned to the attic for one reason or another—discoloration, a tear in the canvas, a broken frame. Ducky, who couldn’t abide “waste,” had everything brought upstairs. But three more of these paintings had been banished here because M. Bernard couldn’t bear the sight of them, had ordered all traces of his departed wives destroyed. The heartsick people I had known had done just the opposite—they had carefully preserved their memories.

I found what I was looking for.

Ravishingly beautiful Victoire held a slender, dark-haired child, who must be Anton, on her lap. Here stood Tatiana in the orchard. A Russian family who attended our church in Boston had had the same high cheekbones and slightly slanting eyes. And here must be Adele, pale and hollow-cheeked, with eyes that were pools of melancholy.

Each of them had hair that could be described as “red.” All were different shades, however, from the pastel blushing gold of apricots to rich, deep auburn to pale strawberry to the intense glow that edged smoldering coals.

Seeing their faces only whet my desire to know more of these women who, at this moment, I thought of as my “Sisters.” Victoire, Tatiana, Tara, and Adele.

I riffled through trunks, slamming down lids if the contents were too antique. Twenty-five or so years ago—that would be Victoire’s time period. I found three trunks I guessed were hers. The gowns inside had the wide shoulders and collars of the 1830s. As I held them up, they released a musky, exotic scent. Here was a small
portrait in a silver frame of a woman from the early years of the century—Victoire’s mother? I cherished my own mother’s miniature. Never would I have left without it. Victoire had stolen away the first chance she got and couldn’t take many things with her. Perhaps this was what she had returned for when Ducky saw her, but all her possessions had been up here by then.

One chest contained a boy’s clothing and playthings—a small boy barely out of leading strings. Anton. There was something particularly tragic about the plush dog tucked carefully among the garments, with its fur nearly rubbed away from loving. How lonely for it to remain when Anton did not.

It was wrong of Victoire to leave her husband for another man—there was no doubt of that—but who knew what hole had opened in her soul at the ghastly death of her son? And who knew what had gaped in M. Bernard’s at the same time?

Tara’s trunks had her name engraved on brass plates. I fingered her possessions gingerly. She had stabbed herself. Some agony had possessed her so powerfully that she ended her own life. Maybe something of the emotions clung to her things.

Tatiana’s chests contained a baby’s layette among the larger items, the seams and trimmings beautifully stitched, probably by the expectant mother.

Adele’s baggage, naturally, had her name scratched into the wooden bands.

I handled gowns in rich fabrics and underclothing edged with exquisite lace from the past three decades, books and memorabilia, scrapbooks and toilette sets in silver and marble, ivory and
tortoiseshell. There were dancing slippers that had danced their last, beaded reticules and plumy fans, ribbons and bonnets, dried flowers that fell to pieces when I touched them. I found no jewelry. My godfather didn’t order
that
destroyed. Was it possible I had been the recipient of some of these ladies’ jewels? There were no journals or correspondence either. He might have carried out the burning of those himself. He might have discovered Victoire’s illicit love letter that way.

All the brides were fairly young, all spoiled with stylish (for their time) clothing, all red-haired, but all showed signs of individuality in their possessions. Tatiana fancied cats. She had some little flowered china figurines of tabbies and a picture of kittens playing with yarn. I hoped she’d rebelled against her husband and adopted some predecessor of Buttercup’s. Adele, who was only eighteen months gone, was fond of poetry; there were several books of French verse among her things. From one of the volumes drifted the dried frond of a fern. A good many foreign souvenirs nestled in Victoire’s belongings—she had traveled with M. Bernard. Tara, meanwhile, had been quite the equestrian; no less than four riding habits lay among her effects.

As I smelled their perfumes, touched the objects they had touched, I felt no morbidity because they were deceased, or at least all deceased but Victoire; what I felt was a growing fondness. I would have liked these women. Maybe I was so lonely I needed dead people to be my friends.

Four women’s lives were shut up in these trunks.

“You can come out now,” I said aloud, and the dusty air stirred with my voice.

Look
, they would say, if they woke and watched me,
she’s found my picture. She knows what I look like. She’s reading my book. Now she’s touching my green dress. She cares
.

I scrambled to my feet when a shadow flickered and a sharp tap sounded at a window. Only a cardinal flying into the glass. I peered out to see if I might look down into the churchyard, but the garden walls and the roof rose too far off to overlook. I should like to place flowers on their graves. I had the key.… But no, it was forbidden to enter that place.

It was in Adele’s trunk that I found the hair receiver—a rosy porcelain box with a round hole in the lid, filled with her deep auburn hair. An idea began to take shape.
I
would remember them, with substance and flame. Hair from their brushes and combs, strands clinging to their clothing and bonnets and hats could be shaped into a bracelet or a brooch. Or—no. It could be woven into the tapestry I was stitching for M. Bernard. The combined hair of myself and his departed wives would form the fire blazing in the forest setting.

A while later, with a small packet stuffed with the tresses I had painstakingly collected, and with the trunks neatly repacked, I descended to my bedroom to begin plaiting. I added the strand from the envelope to the others so it wouldn’t feel left out.

I used a makeshift loom formed of straight pins poked into the lid of a hatbox to braid several strands into one fiber thick enough for embroidery silk. Shimmering, glowing shades emerged from the mingled colors. There should be enough strands to weave into a bracelet as well as the tapestry.

As I plaited, the names of M. Bernard’s wives repeated
themselves in a litany in my head:
Victoire and Tatiana, Tara and Adele. Victoire and Tatiana, Tara and Adele
.

It continued as I sat down at my embroidery frame beside the library hearth and began to work on the tapestry, delicately knotting. I wondered: What would M. Bernard see when he gazed into this particular fire?

“Did you enjoy the freedom of the house?” my godfather asked upon his return. He had sought me out and watched quizzically as I handed him his keys. “Did you sample wine in the cellar and wield swords from the armory to fence with footmen?”

I snapped my fingers. “Oh, if only I had thought of those things. Next time …” I shrugged then. “In reality, I didn’t do much with the keys. Only chose a book from the locked cases and peeked into your office. Of course you work hard there, but to me it was simply a lot of fusty old papers.”

“ ‘Fusty old papers.’ Should I be insulted that thus you dismiss the place where I deal with fortunes?”

I glanced up at him sharply. Had I made a mistake?

He rumpled my hair. He was being playful.

“No,
mon bébé
,” he said. “I do not want you to trouble your pretty head with my business dealings. I want you simply to enjoy yourself all the day long and then dress yourself beautifully at night to please me. What book did you take from my collection?”

“Arabian Nights.”

“Entertaining literature, although not for the fainthearted.”

“There are some awfully bloody bits in many of the stories. Scheherazade had a ghoulish imagination.”