A Drop of Night(18)

I hear the old guard pounding back up the steps, shoving past my sisters, the rushing sound of his lantern as it flares. I do not move my gaze from the young soldier.

“Please help me,” I say to him, and my voice is a pitiful-thin thread. “We cannot leave her. If Father were to hear that we had abandoned her to the révolutionnaires he would—”

The old guard grips my wrist, dragging me savagely about. “Your father will do nothing,” he spits. “The Marchioness Célestine was driven to hysteria by the sight of her burning home. She could not be reasoned with, ran back to fetch her jewels, and was killed. That is all your father will hear, do you understand?”

His teeth are like china, gleaming in his leather face. I recoil from him, try to twist away, but his fingers only tighten further, digging into my skin.

“I asked you, mademoiselle, if that was clear. I trust that even in my brutish, peasant French you understood the question.”

“I do not believe you are in a position to command me, monsieur. Do not come if you do not choose to, but—”

The old guard turns my wrist so that my elbow points into the air and I shriek with the pain. My eyes fly to my sisters, panicked, as if I can do something to stop them from seeing, from hearing. They stare back, Charlotte’s mouth hanging open.

Somewhere high above, an echoing crash. The old guard lets me go and I stumble, gripping Delphine. “Move,” he says. “Rapidement.”

And we are hurrying down the stairs once more. Tears spring against my eyelids, hot and shameful. Confusion and fear twist into a knot in the pit of my stomach. I focus on the jacket stretched across the old guard’s back, the lantern fumes flowing in stinking swaths up the stairs, the soot dotting on my sisters’ necks like fleas. Mama, please, please be safe.

We pass under an archway. It is becoming difficult to breathe. The air is not warm, but my skin feels sticky beneath the layers of satin and lace. The stairs are becoming wider, the treads not so steep and narrow. Everything around us is rough, ugly stone.

We arrive at the bottom and move down a tunnel, round and ribbed like the belly of a whale. Ahead I see a room: a small cube, mirrored on all four sides. Someone is standing in it. A man. My hand tightens around Delphine.

The guards hurry us forward.

The man’s shoulders are so wide they seem to push at the seams of his black frock coat. His arms are like tree trunks. His back is toward us, but I know who he is now: Lord Havriel. The quiet giant at my father’s side, the steward of his great wealth and the keeper of his secrets.

Lord Havriel turns toward us. He is strangely elegant despite his size, like a dancer. His face is square and serious, framed by a dark beard neatly trimmed. He is almost Father’s age, but not half so decomposed.

“Mesdemoiselles,” he says, and he moves forward, his hand going to his waist in preparation to bowing.

He stops. His eyes skip over our bedraggled party: the old guard, Charlotte, Bernadette, Delphine. His eyes stop on me.

“Where is the Lady Célestine?” His voice is soft.

“She ran back to her rooms, monsieur,” the old guard says quickly. “There was nothing we could do, she—”

Havriel stiffens. “She is still in the chateau?”

The old guard shifts from boot to boot, but he does not answer. The younger one nods, once.

Havriel’s eyes twitch, only the slightest bit, a blink and a focusing. And now he is growling, and I feel Delphine flinch against me. “Non, espèce d’imbéciles. Qu’est-ce que vous avez fait?”

He begins to pace. There is hardly any space in the little mirror room, but he does, tight circles, his black-trousered legs cutting like scissors. “You must get her. You must get her down here at once.”

“My lord, she would not come!” the old guard says desperately. “She was hysterical, she refused!”

Havriel stops and spins on the young guard. His eyes are dark and flashing as storm clouds. I have never seen him anything but calm—at dinner parties or during ceremonies of state, with King Louis and his Austrian wife, with everyone preened and brushed out, proud as peacocks, Havriel was the silent one, the austere figure in black, a vast quiet presence, sipping wine, whispering into Father’s powdered ear. . . .

“You will return at once to the surface,” he says, and suddenly his voice is dangerous and low. “I have orders to seal the Palais du Papillon. If you come back alone you will be locked out, and believe me, your role in the rescuing of our dear noblesse will not be appreciated by your kinsmen in Paris.”

The young guard clutches his musket. He swallows, staring at Havriel. The older guard stares, too, but there is something dreadful squirming in his eyes, a mixture of fear and utter hatred.

“You are sending us to our death for a madwoman—” he begins, and Havriel whirls on him and bellows: “Go! And pray she is yet alive!”

They leave us, ducking back through the doorway, and now they are sprinting away, silhouetted in the tunnel.

As soon as the sound of their feet has faded, Havriel’s shoulders slump. He turns to us, and the many deep grooves in his face soften. But there is worry in his eyes, and a question, too, as if he does not know exactly what to do with three weeping girls and one staring, sullen one. I do not know what to do with him, either. I take Delphine by the shoulders and turn her away. “All will be well,” I murmur, leaning down next to her ear. “They are going back for Mama. They will bring her safely down.”