This Monstrous Thing(50)
By the time we crested the final ridge, all three of us were soaked through. The chateau seemed to materialize from the gray darkness, soot-stained bricks wrapped in fog risen from the rain.
I had to push my sopping hair out of my eyes to see it properly. “All right,” I called over a shout of thunder. “We’ve seen it. Can we go back now?”
“You’re very dull,” Mary said. “We’ve come all this way, we might as well try to get inside.”
I wasn’t keen on that, but Oliver lit up like a firework, and before I could protest, he was already trotting off, Mary fast on his heels. I considered just sitting down where I was and refusing to go along with any more of their schemes, but Mary looked back over her shoulder at me, just one glance and a half smile and I was pulled helplessly after her, caught yet again in her magnetic field.
We circled the castle until we found a door with a heavy padlock. Mary rattled the latch like that might get us through. “Locked up tight.”
“Alasdair can take care of it,” Oliver offered. I glared at him, and he grinned.
“Do you know how to pick locks?” Mary asked me, but Oliver answered.
“He’s brilliant at it. He could be a fantastic thief if he wanted to.”
“It wasn’t my idea to break into a castle,” I muttered as I crouched down for a better view of the keyhole.
Suddenly Mary was right beside me, hand on my elbow to steady herself. I nearly toppled over. “Show me how. I’ve always wanted to learn.”
“Fancy a bit of thievery yourself, Mistress Mary?” Oliver asked.
“I think it might come in handy someday, that’s all.”
I showed Mary how to get through the lock, first with needle files I had in my pocket and then with one of her hairpins. It gave easily when I tried, but it took her longer. Oliver kept grumbling from behind us about being wet and cold and what exactly were we doing down there with our hands out of sight. We both ignored him, but Mary’s mouth kept twitching. When the lock finally sprang open, she gave a little laugh of delight. “My, but I do feel like a scoundrel. You boys make me daring,” she said, and led the way into the musty entrance hall.
The castle was like a museum inside, all the furniture from a hundred years past still in place but empty and unused, with piles of dust gathered in the corners and mold creeping through the faded wallpaper. The rain drummed its fingers against the vaulted ceilings and cast rippling shadows over the flagstones as drops slid down the windowpanes.
Mary and Oliver stopped a few paces in and looked around like we’d stepped into some grand cathedral. I stood behind them, ringing rainwater out of my waistcoat. They both seemed so impressed that I decided not to mention how bleeding creepy I thought the whole place was.
There was a hiss like a piston behind us, and we all turned in time to see the door steam shut. Oliver tried the handle, but it wouldn’t give. “Dammit, it locked.”
“Of course it locked, it’s a prison,” Mary said, and we both looked at her.
“A what?” Oliver said.
“A prison,” she repeated. “Or it was, once.”
Oliver scowled. “You might have mentioned that before we got locked inside.”
“Don’t you know the story?” Mary asked, and I shook my head. “A hundred years ago, the man who lived here killed his whole family, so the city made him serve his sentence under house arrest. They wanted him to live with the ghosts of what he’d done. I think he hanged himself before they could execute him. The family name was Sain. It’s called Chateau de Sain but I’ve heard everyone calls it Chateau de Sang now.”
“Blood Castle,” I said, and I could have sworn the room got colder.
“Hell’s teeth,” Oliver murmured. “You and your grim stories. Think there’s dungeons as well with skeletons hanging from the walls?” He looked like he was about to say something more, but his gaze snagged on me. I realized I was standing very close to Mary—very close, close enough to feel the damp material of her skirts brush the tips of my fingers as she shifted her weight. A sly smile started to spread across his face, and I panicked, certain he was about to say something teasing that would make me blush and her step away.
But instead he turned on his heel and started across the room. “You two stay here,” he called, and shot me a knowing look over his shoulder. “I’m going to find another way out. Or the ghosts, whichever comes first.”
Neither Mary nor I moved as he disappeared through a door across the room. We stood shoulder to shoulder, wet clothes dripping onto the floor and the silence between us filled up by the muted echo of the storm. I could feel her next to me, a static charge pulsing all up my side. She was still staring up at the cobwebs and the dust and the peeling wallpaper with such a look of reverence on her face that I wondered if we were seeing the same thing. “What are you thinking of?” I asked her.
She took a long, deep breath, like the prelude to a sigh. “The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things / Lived on; and so did I.”
I didn’t know what she meant by that, but when I looked over at her, I thought for a moment she was crying. It might have been just the raindrops left on her face.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“It’s so beautiful,” she whispered. “All empty and broken down. Sort of makes you want to . . .” She caught me looking at her and trailed off. I felt my cheeks get hot, but I didn’t look away. Her gaze was fervent, so intense that it felt like a physical touch.