Precious Things (5 page)

She looked down at the collar. Its intricate adornment – the thousands of beads, diamantes and tear-shaped seed pearls in silvery hues, arranged in a delicate repeating pattern of fleur-de-lis. There were sequins as well, tiny circles of sheeny hue. It had taken so much longer to complete than she'd first thought. Aimée wasn't sure why she'd embarked on such an ambitious project. Perhaps because she'd known that when she completed it, her marriage would be imminent. If only she had the power to delay the inevitable.

But there was no escaping it. This time tomorrow she would be a bride, leaving the only home she'd ever known. Aimée didn't know what terrified her more: to be leaving the château – a place she both loved and hated, where she knew every room, every creaking stair and
dusty passageway – or to be going into the unknown with a man she barely knew.

Aimée remembered the day she'd begun work on the collar. It was the same day Father had told her of Bernard's proposal. Entering Maman's dusty, undisturbed dressing room, Aimée had found her mother's wedding dress, a silk damask gown, still hanging in the old cedar wardrobe. Wreathed in lavender sachets, its lace bodice felt oddly warm to the touch. There was no point having the tailor come – she was the same size Maman had been at nineteen, and there was no money for new dresses anyway. Apart from a small smudge on its collar, her mother's dress was perfect. Aimée held it to her nose, detecting something beneath the lavender. A faintly acrid tang, strangely familiar. She hugged it close and breathed it in deeply, filling her lungs with her mother's scent.

Back in her parlour, Aimée had snapped the small, firm stitches apart with her metal pick, removing the stiffened, stained chiffon neck band from the silk gown. She wondered if Maman had once, like her, sat down to sew this dress, and reasoned that she most likely had.
What was she thinking?
Aimée wondered.
Was she excited, or just as nervous as I am? Would she have wanted me to marry Bernard for his money?
She laid the collar down over some finely woven linen and took hold of the heavy brass scissors, cutting a swathe to match the fabric beneath. The new collar would not be the same as the original; this one would dazzle all the guests at the wedding Father was planning, a wedding he hoped would signal a revival in their family's fortunes. Her collar would give her pride and strength. It would not betray her fear.

When the collar was formed – a curved band shaped wider than her own slender neck – Aimée picked up a sheet of translucent paper and traced a pattern upon the surface of the weave with her pen. Doubling back occasionally to correct her mistakes, she gouged new lines in the linen until the imprint was deep. Then she removed the paper to fill in the pattern with her fine-tipped pen. Aimée watched as the indigo ink seeped into the fabric, and felt a small quiver of excitement. Picking out the tiniest of beads in her polished wooden
work box, she fancied each of the motif's tips digging into a maiden's throat, before being pulled back to expose a ruby red necklace of punctured flesh.
There.
Was it unsettling, or only to her eyes? Her mind flitted over the text of
Histoires ou contes du temps passé
and its tale of that other dreaded husband:
La Barbe Bleue,
the ugly Breton king. She felt another small thrill.

After her mother had died, Aimée had inherited a cache of leather-bound books – French fairytales, Maman's favourite. Father had dismissed them with a sniff as ‘rubbish', but Nounou had taken them up to the nursery anyway. After her governess had taught her to read, Aimée had sought solace in the elaborate tales of kingdoms, princesses and enchantments, which made her feel somehow closer to Maman. Little was ever as it seemed in the stories, and that's what she liked best. It was a far cry from the boredom and dreary predictability of life on the estate. Still – the grotesque and oddly titillating details in the stories seemed to have escaped Father's notice, and for that Aimée was glad. Otherwise, he was very strict about what she was permitted to read. His library – always kept locked – was strictly forbidden. Aimée supposed that he did not think it worth educating a girl, and a plain, awkward one at that.

Standing now with the collar in her hands, Aimée could hardly believe how much work it represented – the many hours it had taken her. She did feel some relief to be finished, it was true. Opening the hidden drawer beneath her sewing box, she placed the collar inside on its burgundy velvet plinth and slid the drawer closed. She only needed to attach it to Maman's gown, then her wedding dress would be complete. She must call for Faustine to fetch it for her. Aimée opened the drawer again. In that split second she felt she'd caught the collar unawares. The dark mercury beads looked somehow different in the dying light. Malevolent, almost. But then it appeared to recover itself before her eyes, the collar sparkling up at her benignly, a thing of beauty once again.

Aimée felt clutched by a strange sensation and slammed the drawer shut. Why, it was like something out of one of Maman's books!
Her imagination ran wild for a moment, and she felt a tiny thrill of fear. Sinking back into her chair, Aimée told herself to stop it – this was nonsense! She felt under the cushion for her book. Now, here was the real terror: a book of poems by Christina Rossetti, stolen from Father's library. She'd neglected to return it last week. She hadn't wanted to let the book go, favouring it above all others. The book was ecstasy, really – Aimée adored it, but knew she was foolish to have kept it so long.

Maman had loved all things English, Nounou had said. The languages, the fashions, the poetry. Surely the slim volume had been hers then? It didn't make any sense for Father to have owned it otherwise. But of all the books in his library, it was Aimée's most secret pleasure. She understood why he hadn't given it to her along with the other books of fairytales. The passion contained within its pages was obvious – and so unseemly for a young woman of her place in society. Father always told her, ‘Love is a wasted emotion, Aimée. Duty and honour, that's what's more important.' It made Aimée wonder why he'd even wed Maman in the first place; their marriage had so clearly been one of passion rather than convenience. Aimée had always been amazed by their wedding pictures – the look of adoration in his eyes as he gazed at Amandine, and the open look of love in her mother's own. They had been happy once, that much was obvious.

Looking out through the parlour window towards the fading sky, Aimée was struck afresh by the thought that at this time tomorrow, the château would no longer be her home. She would be leaving it, and likely forever.
My home, my prison
, she thought. What was Bernard's house like, she wondered, looking down at the book in her hands. She hadn't even asked where he lived. Would he have a library, and would he let her go out into the world? Would he let her read?

Aimée thought back to all the times she'd ventured into the library – Father's vast, high-ceilinged chamber – with her stolen key. Passing silently in stockinged feet, sliding the volumes back on the shelves from which she'd taken them, Aimée always made sure to rearrange the spines to appear as though nothing was amiss. Of all the servants, only Gaston had been given permission to enter the library, but neither he
nor Father seemed to notice her illicit visits. She was very, very careful. Once, when she was thirteen, Father had seen her loitering in the hall outside and had become almost apoplectic with rage, ordering her back to her quarters.

‘Knowledge is a perilous thing, Aimée!' Father had cried, hands shaking as he'd slammed the door violently. Muffled words rang out behind the closed door: ‘I cannot have it poisoning you the way it did your mother.'

And yet Aimée did seek out knowledge. Many times a week, and long after she outgrew the exquisite thrill of deceiving her father. Devouring the library became necessary to her survival, the key to escaping the numbing boredom that threatened to asphyxiate her as the years passed and Father became stricter and stricter. When, as a child, she had first discovered where the library key was kept, Aimée realised that it wasn't so difficult to borrow it on occasion. It was stored on a hook inside a glass case, attached to a wall near Father's rifle collection. It was the work of only a moment to unhook it and place it inside her skirt's pocket and continue walking. Aimée took it almost once a week, returning the small iron key to its place before anyone noticed it was missing. But as emboldened as she'd become, Aimée was still terrified of being caught.

As the years continued, she wondered whether Father had even noticed that she'd educated herself without his knowledge or consent. Her governess had taught her to read and write and do basic sums, but the lessons had concluded when Aimée turned twelve. ‘What more does a girl need?' her father had asked rhetorically – Aimée listening, her ear pressed to the door – as he gave the governess, a Miss Doré, her notice.

That was why she'd found herself standing outside the library that day when she was thirteen, not long after Nounou left, almost starved by her curiosity. That curiosity had only expanded over the years, reaching out in creeping tendrils. At first she felt tentative, dipping into huge volumes on history and science and skipping over the contents she found confusing. But she kept reading, and soon
graduated to learning about medicine, art and philosophy – indeed anything she could lay her hands upon. Her appetite was insatiable. If she found a phrase or a concept difficult, she wouldn't rest until she found out what it meant. But early, careful questions made Father stare at her so strangely that she stopped asking and learned to hold her tongue.

Aimée eventually discovered there were books in Father's library that she could not quite believe had been placed there at all. She returned to them again and again. The Rossetti was one of them – she'd found it only a few months before. Long ladders resting upon well-oiled rails skirted the room. While balancing on a top rung, she retrieved the red leather-bound book tucked behind some others on a high, dusty shelf. Noticing the embossed words, almost entirely worn away, she could just make out the English title:
Goblin Market and Other Poems.
Looking upon the cover illustration of two women at rest in each other's arms, Aimée almost lost her footing and her breath quickened with a heady mixture of excitement and anticipation.

For many weeks the illustrated plates in the Rossetti book occupied her waking thoughts. As she slowly translated the words to French, Aimée grew unsettled by the tale of forbidden fruit. The fates of Laura and Lizzie – the two sisters in the poem – and their encounter with evil goblins played constantly upon her mind. The temptation. She found some solace in her sewing. But as her wedding day drew nearer and nearer, Aimée often found herself working on the collar, murmuring Rossetti's couplets under her breath, her stitching taking up the insistent rhythm of the poem. As the days passed and the collar started taking its final, intricate form, Aimée's sewing became ever more feverish and she often worked late into each night, weaving through the collar all her frustrated desire and fear. ‘
Come buy, come buy
,' she'd whisper to herself, biting off a thread, imagining she was biting the forbidden fruits offered by the nasty creatures. Gaston's dark, inscrutable face hovered constantly in her mind as she sewed, and her breath came short and fast.

As she'd stitched the shining beads to the collar in sharp, prickling layers, the exquisite conjoined curlicues of the pattern reminded her of the entwined maidens, and Aimée came to think of the collar as not only her talisman against harm, but also, increasingly, her guilty secret. When she picked up the collar now to stroke the glimmering sharp beads, it seemed cool and heavy in her palms, drenched in longing and fantasy and guilt. Aimée reassured herself that after she was married, when she was Bernard's wife, there would be a large house to keep and staff to oversee. There would be more ways to fill her day. She would be busy, she hoped. When the collar was done, and she was married, she told herself again and again, she would no longer yearn for Father's valet to notice her, or be tempted to act upon the twitching in her fingers, which longed to reach out and touch him. At least, that's what she told herself.

But the collar was done now, and her longing had only increased.

Sitting in the parlour now, Aimée's cheeks flushed. Holding the book in one hand, her other hand lying lightly on her chest, she felt the insistent beating of her heart, the pulse of blood around her body. ‘
She had never tasted such before
,' Aimée whispered, rolling the sinuous words over her tongue.

Suddenly the door pushed open and a cool eddy of air entered the room, followed by Faustine on quick, clicking heels. ‘Monsieur won't be home this evening, mademoiselle,' she said. ‘He just sent word. You're to go ahead and have supper without him.'

‘Please knock and wait for my response before entering!' Aimée snapped, shoving the book under a cushion, wondering if Faustine had seen the illicit object in her hands.

The girl ducked her head, her eyes cool. ‘Yes, of course. I'm so sorry, mademoiselle. Dinner will be ready on the hour,' Faustine said, curtseying and then closing the door behind her.

Aimée sunk back into her chair and pressed her hands over her eyes. Look what she'd been reduced to! Pathetic fantasies and love sought between the pages of a book . . . Perhaps it was good she was leaving the château. Although whether she was headed towards a
better life or not was debatable. Could she ever find it in herself to love Bernard? And what about her new home?

The château was rundown and shabby, many of the rooms dusty and full of furniture covered in sheets, but to Aimée it was her entire world. She might chafe against her father's heavy controlling hand, but the château and the estate was the only home she'd ever known. The hilly landscape held numerous horse meadows, many of which she'd roamed when she was a child, and lakes – and outbuildings too, which had provided shelter for the small market, held once a month on the grounds many years before. There were stables, kitchens, and a disused brewery and bakery her father no longer kept running. The orangery and greenhouse were still in use, but the servants' quarters had only been half-occupied since her mother died. They never used the grand hall or the various sitting and drawing rooms any more. The music room was closed, the pianoforte sold a long time ago. Vaulted cool rooms lined with Father's diminished wine collection lay in the cellar below, and the chapel was small but still large enough to seat a hundred guests – though it rarely did. In fact there were never visitors, besides the occasional delivery or the more increasingly common debt collectors.