The Mountain Cage (33 page)

Jim shook his head. “Tried a lot of televisions here. None of them worked. Neither did the radios.”

“I was thinking the government might have ordered a stop to news broadcasts,” I said, “to keep people from getting more frightened.”

Erland shook his head. “How could they stop the news, even if they wanted to do so? They can’t shut down satellites and the Internet. There are too many ways to spread the news now.” He motioned at Knut. The other young man rummaged in his backpack and took out a small radio. We all huddled around it and heard nothing. No static, weak signals, white noise—nothing but absolute silence.

“This radio was working before,” Knut muttered in English much more heavily accented than his friend’s. “There is nothing wrong with it.” Astrid and Dorotea, the two young women, glanced at each other.

The Swedes were on their feet in a few seconds. They swept through the inn, searching for other radios and TVs, but discovered that none of them worked, either.

They were coming back into the dining room when I heard Ariane murmur something to Jean about the lights. Alberto leaned forward, then glanced at the Haworths. “She is saying that the lights in this room do not look the same,” he said. “When she was having dinner here last night, they weren’t as bright.”

Erland and his friends sat down at a nearby table. “There is something very odd here,” the young Swede said. “When we saw on our maps that we were near Chambord, we decided to stop here for the night. There was this fog—”

“I saw it,” Alberto interrupted, “from the roof of the chateau. It looked almost like a wall.”

“It is hanging outside the wall that surrounds these grounds,” Erland went on. “We had to ride through it. It felt like a warm soft mass, but dry and not damp. I could feel it pressing around me. A strange feeling went through me, like a small electric shock, and I thought of turning back, but by then we were through it.”

“We all felt it,” Knut added. “But then—” He leaned back in his chair. “I am glad we found this place. We all found ourselves glad to be here when we were closer to this inn. There is probably some food in the kitchen. We should make supper and then get some rest.” He smiled. “Perhaps we should stay for a few days. We will surely be comfortable enough. I feared that we might have to camp out in the forest.”

Everyone seemed eerily relaxed. Edna’s arm rested on that of her husband; Alberto had the sleepy-eyed contented look I usually saw after he had drunk a couple of glasses of wine.

“I think we should leave,” I said, having to force the words from my lips. Even as I said it, the rest of me was thinking of supper and then some sleep. “Something’s wrong here. I think—” But I couldn’t bring myself to say anything else, and no one was paying any attention to me.

Knut and Dorotea cooked lamb chops, potatoes, and carrots for our supper, and served the meal with wine from the inn’s cellar. We found room keys behind the desk in the lobby and drifted off to St-Michel’s guest rooms. I slept in my shirt and underpants, too tired even to go to the car and bring in my overnight bag.

A dream came to me. I was standing on the steps of Chambord’s double stairway, gazing down at the people in the hall below. The hall was ablaze with light, and four people stood near the staircase beckoning to me. I recognized Erland and his companions; they seemed to want me to join them. Looking up, I saw Alberto above me; I hurried up the stairs, lifting the skirt of my long blue silk gown. I left the stairway and came to a room where Edna and Jim Haworth sat in two small wooden chairs, warming themselves near the fire that blazed in the fireplace. Ariane entered the room, clothed in a long red gown. Faces appeared in the embroidery on the walls near the window and smiled at me. I was on the staircase again, with stone dragons writhing on the pilasters above me and stone salamanders flicking their tails as they crawled along the walls. I came to the terrace and found Alberto by the railing, looking out over the forest. He held out his arm and I rested my hand against it, but something about my gesture felt false, as if I hadn’t quite performed it correctly. On the other side of the canal, Jean was riding out of the woods on horseback with a deer slung across his mount. It was all ours, this magical place. No one could take it from us.

I woke and lay in bed without moving. I was used to waking in the middle of the night, when all my self-doubt and neuroses were working at full strength to convince me that my life was empty and useless. Even when I slept through until morning, I often had to lie there wrestling with lassitude and despair before facing the day. The hollow, stunned feeling of hopelessness with which I was so familiar was gone; I wasn’t quite sure of what I was feeling instead. Anticipation? Happiness? I hadn’t been truly happy for so long that happiness would be hard to recognize.

I sat up. Our overnight bag sat near the window. The door opened; Alberto entered with a tray holding a pot of coffee and two cups. In all our time together, he had never once brought me coffee in the morning. He had forgotten to bring milk, or else hadn’t found any; I drank the coffee black.

“I dreamed about you,” I said as he sat down on the edge of the bed. “We were in the chateau, all of us, Ariane and the Haworths and the Swedes. I found you on the terrace. Jean was riding out of the forest with a deer carcass on his horse. It was as if—”

“—it belonged to us,” Alberto finished. “I had the same dream, Lois, or one much like it. I stood on the terrace, and you came to me, and then I saw Jean come out of the forest. Before that, I was standing on the central staircase, and you were there, and the young Swedes were calling out to us. Then I was in another room, with the Haworths and Ariane.”

“Isn’t that kind of strange, both of us dreaming the same thing?” I poured myself more coffee. “There’s something else. My dream didn’t feel like one of my dreams. For one thing, mine usually aren’t that coherent. For another—” I tried to think of how to explain it. “I felt as if I was playing a part in a way, almost as if someone were trying to cast me but I wasn’t quite right for the role. And yet—”

Alberto said, “I felt I was where I belonged.”

“I felt that you were, too. You know, when I was a kid, I used to imagine that I’d meet a prince some day, or a nobleman anyway, and end up living in a palace. It’s a common enough fantasy, almost a cliché, but—”

“One of my mother’s ancestors was a count,” he said. “This was several generations back, but she was quite proud of her great-great-grandfather the count.”

I said, “That explains a few things about you,” and touched his arm lightly.

“Oh, I considered her pride in him an affectation, but she must have passed on some of that pride to me. There have been a few times, even recently, when I would tell myself while in a bad situation to behave as the count might have.”

My dream had seemed familiar, as if I’d dreamed it before, and yet parts of it seemed to come from outside my own memories and imagination. I recalled the feeling that I had been playing a part, that something had forced the role on me. I was about to say that we should go to our car and drive away now, but couldn’t bring myself to speak.

Somehow I got up and got dressed. Alberto was uncharacteristically subdued. We left the room together and found the others sitting on the terrace, gazing at the chateau across the way.

Chambord was unearthly in the early morning light. Despite its size, it had an ethereal air. As I moved across the terrace, my arm looped through Alberto’s, I could imagine the great castle ascending to the sky to rest among clouds.

Everyone was staring at us. I was about to greet the Haworths when Jean and Ariane rose to their feet. The blond cyclists stood up then, followed by the Haworths.

Edna came toward us, her husband just behind her. “You were in my dream,” she said in a soft voice unlike the heartier one I recalled from the day before, “you and Alberto both. We were over there, in the castle, all of us. We—”

Jim made a sound, almost like a moan. He seemed to be struggling to say something. His thin face contorted, then relaxed. I had the strange sensation that Ariane, Jean, and the Swedes were about to curtsy and bow to us.

No one else spoke. We left the terrace together, in silence. Jean and Ariane led the way, followed by the Haworths. They moved at a stately pace, their backs stiff, their footsteps slow and deliberate. The young Swedes were behind us, bringing up the rear. When I tried to speak, to turn around and go back to my room, my body refused to obey me.

We walked toward the chateau. It seemed to rise from the ground as we approached it. The horses were grazing nearby; they lifted their heads and whinnied. A deer was standing at the edge of the forest, unafraid.

We passed through the still-open entrance and went inside the keep. I found myself on the double staircase, feeling as though I was trapped inside last night’s dream. I looked down to see Erland and his friends gazing up at me.

I was on the terrace, with no memory of having climbed that far. Alberto was at my side, surveying the woods below. How familiar it all seemed. I had imagined such a scene as a child, when dreaming of a prince who would take me away from my ordinary life and carry me to his fairy-tale realm.

“Alberto,” I said, and his name sounded as if someone else had spoken it.

The wall of fog was still visible, but higher now, almost obscuring the distant road. A long line of cars waited beyond the gray mist. It looked as though people were returning to Chambord. I wondered why they had stopped there instead of continuing on their way.

The cars didn’t move. A few tiny human figures were walking among the vehicles, waving and motioning with their arms. I continued to watch the misty wall rise until I could no longer see the line of cars. The sun had risen, the sky was a sharp blue, and it came to me then that the air was much warmer than it had been the day before, almost too warm for this time of year.

“Alberto,” I said, and the word tore itself from me. “We have to get out of here.”

“You are wrong,” he said. “Chambord belongs to us now.”

I struggled to hold on to my thoughts. The fog was still rising; it would wall us in, cut us off from the outside. What did I care about the rest of the world? I could be happy here as the lady of the castle, my lord at my side. Hadn’t that always been a favorite fantasy of mine?

He took my arm. I felt entranced, unable to resist the dreamlike state stealing over me. I drifted across the terrace and down another staircase, clinging to Alberto’s arm. We came to a room where the heads of deer and other animals hung on the walls. Jean the gamekeeper was there, standing in front of a tapestry depicting a hunting party.

Jean said something in French. I didn’t catch his words. “What did he say?” I whispered. It was an effort to speak; my words sounded as though they were on a tape being played at too slow a speed.

“That he was a gamekeeper,” Alberto replied, “and that now he will be a hunter.”

I dug my fingers into Alberto’s arm and led him out of the room. To speak, even to think of what to say, was becoming increasingly difficult. I could be safe here. Alberto would be transformed into the romantic figure for whom I had always longed, and we would have our castle. Something was drawing those thoughts from me, playing them, making them resonate within me. That was when I knew we had to get out.

I would not try to talk. I would hang on to Alberto and try to guide him away from this place. I looked into his dark eyes and saw the fear that lay beneath the spell that had been cast on him. He understood what I was trying to do, even if part of him was resisting it. Maybe we could escape.

We made it to the double staircase and descended to the floor below. I heard voices echoing through the hall, and followed the sound to a red-walled room hung with portraits. Edna and Jim Haworth stood in the center of the room, speaking in English to Ariane, who was responding in French. Edna was muttering incoherently about a garden, while Jim was saying something about his army days. I couldn’t understand what Ariane was saying. One look at their slack-jawed, happy faces and empty eyes told me that they were completely under the chateau’s spell.

“Come with me.” I gasped for breath as I spoke, knowing it was futile, that they would not be able to leave. We went through another room, where Dorotea, one of the Swedes, was lying unconscious on a bed. I gazed at her composed face and thought of Sleeping Beauty, then tried to drag her from the bed. She slipped from my grip and fell back.

I had to save my strength. Alberto and I shuffled back to the staircase. The farther down the stairs we went, the harder it was to make our feet move.

We came to the ground floor and left the staircase. Erland was standing by one of the doors that led out of the keep. He seemed to be miles away, a small figure across the vast polished wood plain of the floor. I wondered how we could cross that floor, how we could ever get out of the château.

We struggled over the floor. With every step, I thought of how much easier it would be to stay. I remembered the contentment that had filled me inside these walls, of how much I wanted to remain here. I clutched at Alberto more tightly, knowing that if I gave up now, he wouldn’t have the strength to get out alone. His hand found mine and hung on tightly, and I knew that I wouldn’t get out without him.

Erland’s lips moved, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I think he was begging us to stay. We pushed past him and went outside. Knut and Astrid were in the courtyard, leaning against each other as they staggered toward the gate.