Chapter Six

The tapestries flapped against the walls as they passed by, making it look as if the warriors brandished their swords and spears at the people moving through the corridor. Ned wasn’t sure if this movement was because Tony was causing a breeze by the pace he set or because the chateau was drafty, but he had no time to investigate. He was too busy keeping up with Tony.

The women—with Horace keeping a silent guard over them—were waiting beside one of the doors that appeared between the tapestries in the corridor. Each of the doors along this corridor was flanked by stone pilasters and surmounted by a pediment carved with leaves and rosettes surrounding a shield with a coat of arms. An impressive—even oppressive—sight. This section of the castle must have been the residence of the lord and his family. Not diffident about proclaiming their importance, thought Ned, but then, what aristocratic family ever was?

Delphine greeted them with a bashful smile—she really had a delightfully sunny disposition, especially in contrast to the grim faces of the other two women. Ned felt a spurt of irritation. Yes, they were about to visit a dying man, but did they have to look as if they were already in mourning? Then he remembered that they actually were in mourning. Now he felt irritated at having to feel guilty. He would have liked to swear to relieve his feelings, but that seemed childish.

How was it that even on such short acquaintance Marguerite always managed to make him feel as if he had put his foot wrong? Even when he hadn’t opened his mouth. It wasn’t anything she said—she barely spoke to him. Now, she wasn’t even looking at him. She was standing there as still and impassive as a carved pillar, her eyes motionless as if her thoughts were far away. She certainly wasn’t thinking about him. Delphine might be a bit silly, but at least she didn’t make him feel like an idiot.

“We’re not late then.” Tony looked relieved. He was massaging his stomach again. Another attack of dyspepsia was the reason he had been delayed.

“No,” said Mme. d’Hivers. “The doctor has not yet deigned to open the door for us.”

“Tante Héloise…” Marguerite softened the reproof with another of her rare little smiles.

The older woman shrugged her indifference. “For all your life, the old man never acknowledged your existence, if he even knew of it. Why should we distress ourselves over him?”

“But think how sad it is,” said Delphine. “He has lived here all alone all these years, without a family to love him, and now when we finally meet him…” Her voice drifted off into a sigh and tears glinted in her eyes.

Marguerite sighed as well, but it sounded more like exasperation than sympathy.

Tony pulled out his watch and glared at it. “It’s one thing if the old man is truly not feeling well, but if Fernac is just playing with us…”

“The vicomte must be very old,” Ned said gently. “A little patience must be necessary.”

Tony glared at him. “Let’s see how patient you feel when you ask him a perfectly simple question and instead of giving you a straight answer, he starts telling you fairy tales.”

“Alas, the poor old man. To have his mind wandering so.” Delphine tilted her head and clasped her hands at her breast. It was a very attractive pose, but Ned had the oddest feeling that he had seen it before. In a magazine illustration, perhaps.

The door had opened without their noticing, and the doctor stood there, frowning impatiently. “His mind is not wandering. He just lacks the strength to explain himself.” He waved them brusquely in.

If the other rooms had been furnished in the latest fashion, this one was in the splendor of a long-vanished age. It was a room fit for a king, but not the sort of king who reigned from Versailles. This was the room of a warrior king.

Over the fireplace hung a sword and shield—the equipment of a medieval knight. Ned was not sure, but he thought they might very well be authentic. On the wall facing the bed was a large iron crucifix—also, Ned thought, genuinely medieval.

The hangings on the stone walls here were of crimson velvet, and the bed had a canopy and curtains of the same fabric, held up by richly carved posts of some dark wood.

It was an enormous bed. Half a dozen men could have slept in it. The sole occupant, however, was a wizened old man, whose hand, resting on the bed covers, had shriveled into a claw. His dark eyes were sharp, darting over his visitors with something that was not kindness, coming to rest on Ned.

“So you are the young man who fancies himself an historian.” The voice was thin and high, but not weak, and not kind. “Live long enough and you will find yourself turned into history, like me.”

“As will we all,” said Ned, “but not all of us will have lived through such tumultuous times.”

“Tumultuous,” the vicomte repeated, savoring the word. “They were that.” He fell silent, his eyes drifting away, as if looking into the past, until he returned to look at Ned once more. “They were brave, you know. All of them. At least that’s what they tell me. My brave brothers, my brave father. Even the priest was brave. And they all died.” He chuckled. It was not a pleasant sound. “They all died, and I survived.”

Ned cleared his throat. “If you remember…”

“Of course I remember. I cannot forget,” he snapped. The clawlike hand picked at the cover, the eyes unfocused again. “I cannot forget. I hear them crying out. The obligation must be fulfilled.”

The old man fell silent, and the others waited with various degrees of patience. Delphine seemed eager for the vicomte to speak again, while Marguerite watched her cousin with a mixture of worry and anger. That, Ned thought, seemed to be Marguerite’s most common expression, though he could not see any reason for it. Mme. d’Hivers stood back watching them all contemptuously—her most common expression as well.

Ned felt uncomfortably like an intruder.

Tony, never a patient sort, spoke up with an attempt at joviality. “Well, great-grandfather, might you be willing to share those memories with us?”

The dark eyes snapped. “Are you a fool, like all the rest of them? The treasure—the treasure must be found.”

“It might help if you told us a bit more about it.” Tony was not in the least intimidated, only annoyed.

The old man did not seem to hear him. His face went slack, and his eyes lost their focus. “The priest hid it. Just before they came. He hid it, and then they dragged him off and killed him.” He closed his eyes and his voice slowly faded. “I saw them. I saw them and I could not stop them. I did not even try. I ran away.”

Silence filled the room as they all stood around, uncertain. An odd little rumble began. The old man had fallen asleep again and was snoring.

The doctor shooed them into the corridor and shut the door on them.

“Is it jewels, do you think? Perhaps the family jewels, diamonds last worn by a vicomtesse at Versailles.” Delphine’s eyes shone as she waved her hands to drape herself in imaginary necklaces and tiaras. “Or is it gold, saved from the hands of the revolutionary pigs, the canaille?”

“If there ever was such a treasure, it is doubtless long gone,” said Marguerite. “Think, Delphine. This chateau stood empty for forty years. Anything the revolutionary troops missed would have been found by the enterprising thieves who followed them.”

Delphine’s face fell into a mutinous pout. “But he says there is a treasure.”

“He says, he says! What does it matter what he says? He has lived here now for years. If there ever was a treasure worth retrieving, would he not have found it himself? He just uses this talk of a treasure to tease us, to make us wait here in attendance on him—and we are all foolish enough to do so!” Marguerite marched off in a swirl of anger.

“She is probably right, Delphine.” Tony gave the girl a consoling pat on the shoulder.

Delphine shook him off. “No, she is not right. There is a treasure, and it is rightfully mine. She just doesn’t want me to have it.” She flounced off in the opposite direction from Marguerite.

Horace started to follow her, but halted to look questioningly at Mme. d’Hivers. She sighed and nodded permission before turning the other way to follow Marguerite.

Lifting a hand to rub the back of his neck, Tony sighed. “I have absolutely no idea what those women are on about. Everything with them is always a drama. I wish they would just come out and say what it is that is bothering them instead of expecting me to guess.”

Ned nodded sympathetically, but his main emotion was frustration as his thoughts turned to the old vicomte. It was maddening. The old man had been here at the time of the Revolution. If only he could converse lucidly, and not just whisper gnomic hints, he could reveal so much about not just the events but the thoughts of people at the time. All that history, forever out of reach.

Or was it forever?

It might never be possible to unlock the vicomte’s memories, but the chateau might contain other revelations. “Tony, you said there were papers.”

“Lord, yes. Piles and piles of them. Not the legal stuff—deeds and what have you. The lawyers have all that. Just old letters, diaries, that sort of thing. Interested?”

“You know I am!”

Tony laughed. “Your kind of treasure. Buried not underground but up in the old north tower. And maybe you can find something in there that will tell us what this damned ‘treasure’ is.”