A Drop of Night (11 page)

For a second I think I'm imagining him. Bone thin. Red-rimmed
eyes. Standing like a twisted angel against the baroque gilt and oil paintings behind him.

There are rogue assets loose in the palace
—

And now Lilly sees him, too, and it's like her brain is telling her one thing and her eyes are telling her another thing, because she's walking straight toward him, saying, “That's not—that's not a person—”

And now she shrieks so loud it hurts my ears, “
Who-are-you-who-are-you?”

And everything snaps. The others see him. We're all running, trampling over each other trying to get to the nearest door, desperate not to turn our backs on him. He's plaster pale. He's wearing knee breeches and a ruffled, loose-hanging shirt, and the blood is drenching it, slicking it to his skin.

He doesn't move. He watches us, and his mouth drops open. Words start tumbling out of him, frenzied and desperate:
“Reine,”
he says, shivering.
“Mere de misericorde, notre vie, notre joie, notre esperance, salut. Enfants d'Eve—”

We're crashing into a long, high gallery.

I hear:
“Nous crions vers vous de fond de notre exil—”

It's a French prayer, but it sounds mangled, dark, and in my head Dorf is laughing, screaming,
You didn't lock us out; you locked yourselves in!

I whip my head around, almost fall into Jules's back. The pale man is still standing, grinning. And now he follows. His eyes fix on mine. He's charging toward us, feet pounding the floor. I face forward, running with all my strength.

“What's he saying?” Lilly screeches.

I look back again, my vision bucking drunkenly.
Four to one, four to one, if he catches up we can—

He's hurt, but those milk-white arms are corded with muscle, and his gangling legs are carrying him toward us like some bony, fast-moving spider. He's still muttering, staring straight at me.

We reach the end of the gallery. There's no exit. What we thought was a door is a three-dimensional illusion
painting depicting the gateway to the Elysian Fields. This room is a dead end.

You have
got
to be kidding me.

I look back. The pale man is fifteen feet away. Lilly drags her sword out and starts swinging it in front of her in wide, frantic arcs. “Stop!” she shouts. “Don't come any closer. Anouk,
speak French to him, what are you waiting for
?”

I spin.
“Arrêtez!”
I shout.
“Arrêtez, n'approchez pas! Ne vous—”
Don't come any closer, don't
—

He skids to a stop about five feet away. And everything goes silent. The others turn slowly. The man stares at us. A drop of blood, dark as wine, rolls from his fingertips and splashes to the floor.

“Who are you?” I ask in French, and it comes out in an awkward yell. “Are you with the Sapanis?”

He tilts his head. His eyes are bruised and bloodshot, and something about them—the way they're pinned freakishly on my face—makes me want to crawl under the floor.

“What do you
want
?” I ask again.

The man blinks at me. And now he seems to cringe in slow motion, bowing elaborately, one leg forward, one arm swept back and up, his gory hand extended toward
me like a pantomime. He takes a step closer, another one, his head still lowered.

“Don't touch him,” Lilly whispers. Her sword is extended toward him, the blade shivering.

“Trust me, I don't plan to . . .
Écoutez
,” I snap at the pale man. “What happened to you?”

His eyes roll up to meet mine. For a second they're sharp. Now they're brimming, dripping tears and he's inching toward me, fingers trembling, blood splattering the floor.

“Aurélie,”
he croaks.
“Aurélie
.”

“Who's Aurélie?”

He doesn't answer. Drops onto one knee and wraps his long arms around himself, head hanging. He's so thin. His spine stands out like a little mountain range down his neck, strangely reptilian.
“Aidez moi,”
he whispers.
“S'il vous plaît, ayez pitié.
J
'
ai tellement peur.
”

“Help me,” Will translates softly. “Please, have pity. I am so afraid.”

“
He
's afraid?” Jules practically shrieks. “What about
us? Dorf said there was something down here. That thing could very well be it. What if he's infected or something?”

The pale man tips sideways and clatters to the floor. His breathing is getting shallower, quick, weak gasps. His skin is turning a disgusting gray-purple color.

“He's going to bleed to death,” I say. It comes out cold, flat. I don't know what the proper reaction is to meeting a terrifying person on the verge of death in the palace of your kidnappers. My brain is telling me to run back to the Sistine Room, pick a different door, and forget we ever saw him, but—

“What if he can help us?” I step toward him cautiously. His breaths are so quiet now. A line of blood is creeping away from him across the floor, like a finger, reaching for us. “What if he can tell us what we need to know to get out of here?”

“Are you crazy?” Jules whimpers. “No, no, no, we are on the
run
, okay? We are going to be killed.”

“Jules, look at him. He's hurt. He's in the same boat as we are, and he's probably been down here longer—”

“It might be a trick,” Will says. “If he's faking it—”

“Then I die gruesomely and you guys know better for next time. Win-win.” I'm not waiting for a decision by committee. I pull my letter opener out of my pocket and walk up to the pale man. He raises his head, looking at
me from under his lids. His skin is almost translucent now from loss of blood. Patches of red are blooming around his eyes and on his neck. His fingernails are thick and yellow.

“Aidez-moi,”
he wheezes again, barely audible.
“Aurélie, aidez-moi. . . .”

I crouch and hold his gaze. “Can you get us out of here?” I say in French.

He begins nodding, but his eyes are glazing over. “
Oui, mademoiselle, oui!
”

“Okay.
Un accord
. You help us and we'll help you, got that?”

He's sobbing, grasping for my hand, tears dripping, mixing with the blood on the floor.

I jerk away and force down the bile rising in my throat. “If he tries anything . . .” I turn to the others, “we knock his brains out and run. Until then we're going to help him.”

He smells disgusting. A mixture of sweaty and grimy, New
York City streets in summertime and something bloody and metallic that I can't quite place. I'm trying not to breathe—trying not to touch his skin accidentally and throw up everywhere—as I wrap swath after swath of pine-green velvet from some drapes around his arm. It's like I'm in
Gone with the Wind,
being all nurselike and mid-nineteenth century. Give me some hoopskirts and I'll kick Melanie right out of town.

“More,” I say, and throw my head back, staring up at the ceiling. “I need more cloth.”

We're one door over from the Sistine Room now. A little hexagonal sitting room with a concert harp standing in the center. The drapes were hanging in front of some fake mirror windows that I assume are supposed to trick you into feeling less enclosed, except they do the exact
opposite. You see drapes and a window-shaped object, and you expect to be able to look through it and gaze out into the sky or wide-open fields, but you don't. You see yourself. It's disturbing.

Will tears another strip off the drapes and passes it to me. I gulp air and dive back down, tying bandages as fast as I can.

The blood is coming from a deep gash running from the base of his elbow to his wrist. It's on the top of his arm, just a flesh wound, but it's bizarre. It's not a cut. Not a bite. It's wide and smooth at the edges, a trough, almost like something burned him. Slowly.

“He said he can get us out of here?” Jules mutters over to me. He's hunched next to Will, trying to find the seams in the curtains. “And yet we can't believe anything he says. So explain to me, why are we helping him again? We can't trust him!”

“We're not going to trust him.” I tie another strip of velvet around his arm. Hear a wet squelch as I tighten, and feel my stomach roil. “We're going to make sure he doesn't die in the next five minutes and then we're going to have him save our lives whether he wants to or not.”

I glance at the pale man's face. His skin hangs in folds,
but I don't think it's from age. He's like one of those Vietnam POWs in archive footage, or an extreme mountaineer after a hard climb. Exhausted and depleted and sick. I see why his eyes seemed bloodshot before. The dark irises are weirdly broken, as if they've begun to spread into the white. I think of the zombies in arthouse-y British apocalypse movies, how the characters look right before the infection grabs hold. I want to put this guy in a glass containment cell and talk to him through an intercom. He has other wounds on his body, too. Older ones. Tiny, hairline cuts on his neck and forehead and on the palms of his hands that have healed into delicate satiny scars. White as fish bones.

“We need to go!” Lilly whines. She's standing next to us, shifting from foot to foot and brandishing her sword like an angry garden gnome.

I knot the last strip of velvet around the makeshift bandage and stand quickly.

“We're going. Can you walk?” I say to the pale man.
“Pouvez-vous marcher
?
”

He nods, but he doesn't stand. Will helps him up. Lets him go. His leg cricks grotesquely, and he almost drops again. Will catches him.

“By
yourself
?” Jules asks testily.

Will holds him up, and we start to walk across the room. Slowly. Okay, maybe this was stupid.

“Take us to the exit,” I say in French. “The way out.
La police pour nous, l'h
ô
pital pour vous
.”

He shakes his head wildly.

“What d'you mean ‘no'? Yes! Like, right now!”

“Not yet,” he says, lowering his head, squeezing his eyes closed, doing that bobbing bow again. “Not safe. We must hide! They are coming!”

“He says we need to hide?”

“Where? Where do we hide?”

“Follow,” he says, and now he rips out of Will's grasp and begins to hobble unsteadily into the Sistine Room, through the doors, back toward the white antechamber. We hurry after him, Will going right up to his side in case he wants to make a run for it. We're slamming through doors, through an endless string of sumptuous rooms. Drapes, gilt, paintings, and furniture pass in a blur. We're in a narrow corridor, the walls paneled in dark wood, the ceiling ribbed with gilt, patterned as if it's made up of massive dragonfly wings. The pale guy stops in front of a double door. He starts nodding, gesturing toward it.

“Safe?” I ask, tapping a hand on the wood. “We'll be safe in here?”

He stares at me, eyes twitching. Jules turns, staring down the corridor.

“Safe!” I repeat, urgently.
“Est-il sécuritaire?”

Something's coming. I hear it now that we've stopped—far, far away, but getting closer, the unmistakable sound of pounding feet. Doors opening. And that humming's back, sudden and sharp. The same humming I heard in the bone-white antechamber, but louder now—a thin, fuzzy line of sound, rising painfully. Whoever's approaching, they can't be more than five rooms away. In a few seconds they'll be bursting into the corridor.

The pale man is freaking out, and so is Jules. The hum is a bone saw now, cutting into my brain.

Unless there's a contingent of Sapanis on the other side of these doors, draped over chaises longues and sipping the blood of infants from martini glasses, this is where we're hiding.

I rip open the doors. Will grabs the pale guy, Lilly grabs Jules, and we're all piling into someplace big, someplace dark—

They have separated me from my sisters. I cannot remember the moment it happened. Perhaps I went mad for a short while after meeting with Father, or perhaps I was simply too tired and battered with grief to notice, but they are gone now. I remember the dry click of our shoes on wooden floors, Delphine's soft crying, and the swish of Charlotte's and Bernadette's skirts as they held hands and comforted each other. A door, creaking open and shut. Crawling into the cold sheets of a bed. When I woke, I was alone. I have been alone ever since.

Nine days since I have seen the sun.

Nine days since Mama died.

Nine nights in these close and muffled chambers.

Nine scratches on the wood behind the bed canopy.

I feel as though I have been buried alive.

My tomb is lovely. It consists of two rooms. The hyacinth
rooms, so says a scroll above the door, the
chambres jacinthe
. There is a bedroom, lavish in colors of pale green and rose. There is a boudoir draped in blue silks, with a great curling fireplace of snowy marble. I tried to climb up the chimney on the second day, but there was a grate only four feet from the ground and no way to loosen it. I still wonder sometimes where it comes out, whether there are chimneys poking out of the earth in the middle of Péronne's woods far above.

Or perhaps it is a fakery, like the mirror windows and the drapes. Perhaps it goes nowhere. I have never seen the fire lit.

My rooms are connected to each other by a tall gilt doorway. There is a small toilet through a panel by the bed, and the door from the boudoir leads to a hallway. That is all I know. The door to the hallway is always locked, and no one has entered or left by it since I arrived.

The servants do not use the doors. They have their own clever system and I never see them, even during the day when they bring me luncheon or tidy one of the rooms. Every night, I go to sleep determined to doze lightly and to wake at the smallest sound, but in the end I sleep like a rock, and in the morning my clothes are cleaned and the lamps have all been trimmed and there is breakfast waiting for me. I have discovered how they do it: when I move from the bedroom
to the boudoir or vice-versa, the door will click shut behind me, locking. I can rattle and hammer as much as I please, but it will not open until it wants to; and when it wants to, the room beyond is always empty of anybody. I will find dishes of pastries and bowls of fruit, cups of thick cream, freshly starched petticoats, little pots of tea, and sometimes a new volume of poetry or tales. But the one who brings me these gifts is always gone.

Of course I looked for the secret panel that lets them in, and of course I found it. Two rooms can hold only so many secrets, and for only so long. But alas, the panel is locked from the other side. I pried at it until my fingers bled, and the next day there were bandages and a greasy brown salve on my nightstand.

I had half a mind to throw them across the room, another half to break my toes against the wall and scream until I was hoarse. I would have, had I thought it might help. But there is no use being childish. I have searched every nook and every cranny for a way to escape. I have left desperate notes, and shouted to be released, and I have cried all my tears away. No one is listening. I have nothing to do now but go mad. I feel I am accomplishing that, at least. I am becoming like the batty old dowagers at court, wandering from room to room
or sitting half lost in the heaps of their finery with nothing to do but mutter and glance disapprovingly at the young, happy people they had once been, and wished they could be again.

Sometimes I write on the paper provided. Often I stare at my own reflection. It is poor company. During the first several days I would peer at the false windows and pretend I was speaking to Mama, would imagine the dry click of my sobs was her soft tutting and the swing of the clock hands were her fingers, running through my hair.

“Do you think we will get out?” I would say to the glass, and then I would answer in a lovely, foolish voice: “You will get out, Aurélie. You are clever and you are brave.”

I have stopped doing this. Not even the dowagers were quite so mad.

Last night I thought I heard Delphine crying.
“
Aurélie?” she wailed, somewhere faraway, and I sat straight up, listening until my ears rang, but I heard nothing more. I got out of bed and pressed my ear to the door. I woke on the floor nine hours later, and now I think that perhaps I dreamed it.

Today, I rise at my usual hour and dress behind the silk screen. It is nearly impossible to dress without a servant; I miss half
the buttons, but it doesn't matter. I don't know why I bother anymore. Perhaps I will never see anyone again, and I might walk about in a sheet like a Roman princess. Perhaps I will die down here, an old spinster far underground, by then utterly delusional.

I am already having the strangest dreams. Flashes of teeth and butterfly wings, folding open and closed. Delphine with her hair grown wild and vast, tangled with silver forks and toy rocking horses. Mama, pulling a bullet from her breast.

Breakfast is waiting for me in the boudoir when I am finished dressing. Hot rolls and butter, honey in a crystal dish, and a bundle of glossy black grapes. The grapes taste of ashes. All the fruit here does. I wonder if Father grows them in little jars in a laboratory. Havriel said they sealed the palace, closed it up against the blood and ruin of the revolution, so I doubt they are coming from Lyon, as they used to. I pluck a few grapes and eat them. I sit down and butter a roll. The silverware makes soft clinking noises in the silence.

It is different down here, the sound of silence. On the surface, silence is a vast, full thing. It is alive, pulsing with the movement of the sky and the world and the stars. Here the silence is closed and tight. Everything is louder, every breath and every step. It makes it difficult to breathe and difficult
to step, and perhaps that is the point. I throw down the roll after two bites and go to the writing table.

I am trying to escape, still. I have come to the conclusion that I have two options. One is to discover how the servants come in and out, which I have done, catch them in the act, beat them senseless, and escape through the secret panel. The second is to wait for someone—Havriel or Father—to come in the regular way, beat him senseless, and leave through the door.

I know the servants are only in one of the two rooms at a time, and that the doors lock whenever they are there, preventing me from ever stumbling upon them face-to-face. I know there is a panel in the boudoir and another in the bedroom through which they enter. They will not speak to me through the door. They will not answer my notes, no matter how kindly I write them and how many francs I promise them.

But I have a new idea. A servant will come again today to clear away the breakfast dishes, and this time I will be lying in wait.

I sit at my desk, dip my pen, and write a few words on a square of paper:

Roses

Viper

Whipped cream

I pause. Pretend I have forgotten something in the bedroom. Slip out of my chair and move toward the door. I take special care not to look at the mirror as I pass it. I doubt they are watching me through it, but I will not have them suspect. I go about the bedroom, singing to myself. I move away from the door, casually. Almost at once it begins to creak shut behind me, as if guided by invisible hands.

I wonder if it has something to do with the floor. Perhaps weight on the boards, or simply a watchful eye and a lever. It makes no difference. As soon as the door begins to close, I spin. A heavy wad of stationery is crumpled in my hand. I drop to the floor and jam it between the door and the frame.

The lock snaps out. It does not catch.
Perfect
.

I feel a thrill of fear as I press my back against the wall. There may be several servants; perhaps someone is standing guard, and I will be hopelessly outnumbered. But if I do not try, I will never know.

I hear the panel in the boudoir opening and footsteps padding across the floor. Slowly, I move forward to look through the crack between the door and the frame.

I see the boudoir, tranquil and empty, like a doll's room. . . .

I wait, hardly daring to breathe. I do not see anyone, but I hear movement, the slide and tinkle of plates, the whisper of table linens. I reach for the heavy bronze vase in the corner next to the door. It is with this I plan to do the beating. It is too far away. I slide over the floor toward it.

When I return to the door, I see the servant. A leg. A hand. He is standing, facing the bedroom door.

I want to curse.
Was I too quiet? Does he suspect, does he see that the door is unlatched?

The floor in the boudoir creaks. I glimpse a heel again, a leg. The servant is turning away, moving to another part of the chamber. I ease the door open, barely a fraction of an inch.

I see his back now. It is a man in fine livery, a waistcoat and white stockings. He is clearing away the breakfast dishes, replacing them with marbled wafers and candied fruits that have been cut into bright squares, like soft jewels. He is young. The slope of his shoulders is vaguely familiar to me, as are the brown curls on his head.
Have I seen him before?

An unpleasant needling sensation besets my shin. I try to shift my position as delicately as possible. The floor gives
the tiniest of creaks. When I look again, the servant is gone.

My eyes dart throughout the room. I did not hear the panel close.
Has he gone?
He must not escape. Not before I catch him. I wait, frozen in place, gathering the courage to burst into the room. I take a slow breath—

His face appears between the door and the frame, exactly level with my own. Our eyes lock. I rip the door wide and hit him hard across the side of his head with the vase.

He goes spinning to the side, loses his balance, and crashes to the floor. I lunge at him again. He raises an arm in defense. “Stop!” he shouts, and now he seems to remember himself, and says more quietly, urgently: “Stop, mademoiselle, please.”

I stare at him, wide-eyed. He is the guard. The young guard who tried to save Mama. He is not a day older than I am. I whirl and head for his secret panel. It is closed, but surely not locked.

I tug on it. It does not move.

I go back to the boy who is just starting to stand, wobbly on his legs. I raise the vase again.

“I don't care who you are,” I say. “I don't care what they told you. I am held prisoner here. My sisters are lost. You will help me find them.”