A fiery heroine seeks vengeance against a royal court of deadly vampires in this epic alternate history set in lavish Versailles.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the first two chapters of Victor Dixen’s The Court of Shadows, which is out September 19th!
Louis XIV transformed from the Sun King into the King of Shadows when he embraced immortality and became the world’s first vampire. For the last three centuries, he has been ruling the kingdom from the decadent Court of Shadows in Versailles, demanding the blood of his subjects to sate his nobles’ thirst and maintain their loyalty.
In the heart of rural France, commoner Jeanne Froidelac witnesses the king’s soldiers murder her family and learns of her parents’ role in a brewing rebellion involving the forbidden secrets of alchemy. To seek her revenge, Jeanne disguises herself as an aristocrat and enrolls in a prestigious school for aspiring courtiers. She soon finds herself at the doors of the palace of Versailles.
But Jeanne, of course, is no aristocrat.
She dreams not of court but of blood.
The blood of a king.
Chapter One
“In the name of the king, open immediately!” a thunderous voice orders. My parents exchange a panicked glance. We’ve just sat down to eat at the dining table, all five of us. My oldest brother, Valère, freezes. The second one, Bastien, drops his spoon to the floor. I grab the spoon, since I’m always picking up after Bastien—even if I’m the youngest.
“Who can that possibly be at this hour, and on a Sunday, no less?” Maman asks.
She looks at the old clock that shows it’s barely past seven in the evening. The clock stands next to an almanac affixed to the wall, open to today’s date: August 31 in the year 299 of the Age of Shadows.
By way of response, a fist hammers the front door, making the steaming pheasant soup shake in our bowls. My heart trembles even harder. “In the name of the king!” the nighttime visitor announced. He could just as easily have said, “In the name of the devil himself!”
I eye the framed engraving of Louis the Immutable that hangs above our fireplace, same as it does in all the hearths of France. The sovereign’s long curls lost their brown coloring long ago—or, more likely, the paper itself faded over the years, since the engraving was printed ages before I was born. The king’s face, however, hasn’t acquired a single wrinkle. And for good reason: it’s hidden behind a smooth gold mask that doesn’t betray age or display any expression. Only two dark eyes emerge, eyes that callously scrutinize every person in the kingdom. The metal lips, closed and enigmatic, are far more chilling than if they revealed the sharp canines hidden beneath.
Shrugging off a shiver, I run to the window to try to see what’s happening outside. Through the thick pane of glass, the main road of Butte-aux-Rats is bathed in a golden and blinding light: it’s the end of summer, when the sun lingers until after eight on the plateaus of the Auvergne, the mountainous heart of the country . . . and when the vampyres rise late. It’s the happiest season of the year, the few weeks when it’s warm enough to go coatless. It’s the time when the villagers nearly forget about the Mortal Code that for generations has crushed the Magna Vampyria, the broad coalition comprising the kingdom of France and its vice-kingdoms.
“Get away from the window, Jeanne,” Maman orders me. “Don’t take unnecessary risks.”
She anxiously tucks a strand of her long brown hair behind her ear. My own hair, which is cut above my shoulders, has always been gray. Only my mother finds this anomaly charming.
“The rays won’t burn my skin,” I tell her with a shrug. “I’m not a bloodsucker.”
“Don’t say such things!” Papa snaps as he pounds the table.
As a good citizen who’s been under the thumb of the regime, he’s always the first to get upset when we don’t show proper respect to the vampyres. Reverently, he’s installed some dried chrysanthemums—the flowers of the undead—under the royal portrait. Next year the kingdom will celebrate the despot’s jubilee. Nearly three centuries have passed since his transmutation; it happened in the year 1715 of the old calendar, the night he should have died of old age at the end of an interminable reign marked by war and famine. Instead of drifting off to eternal sleep, the Sun King took part in a heinous secret medical rite. The procedure granted him immortality but also mutilated his face. Louis XIV became Louis the Immutable, King of Shadows: the first vampyre in history. Immortal and disfigured. Soon thereafter, every monarch on the continent pledged their allegiance to him so that they, too, could transmute into immortals, ensnaring Europe in an iron yoke. The cli- mate itself froze, and an ice age spread over the land.
“Open now or we’ll smash down the door!” the person outside shouts more menacingly than before.
The fist starts banging again on the door of the apothecary that’s attached to our living quarters, the entrance of which faces the village square.
My brothers get up now. Valère rushes over to the sideboard and takes out a long knife, the one our father used to carve the pheasant that I poached from the forest this very morning. Bastien just looks around, seemingly alarmed. And our old tomcat, Tibert, abandons his plate of giblets and takes refuge in a corner. As for me, I instinctively stand firmly on my legs, my thighs taut under my lambskin breeches. I may be small for my seventeen years, but my body is nimble and primed to run.
“Sounds like the militia,” Valère whispers as he blinks behind eye- glasses that make him look years older. He’s always been the nervous one in the family.
“Calm down,” Maman says in a gentle, commanding voice. “Let go of the knife. Nothing’s going to happen to us.”
Valère does as he’s told: in front of our mother, my big brothers toe the line. In the shop, she’s the one who holds the purse strings, and at home, she has the final word.
“Maman’s right: nothing will happen to us,” I say. “Since when has anything interesting occurred here? And that’s not about to change today. Right, Bastien?”
Despite the joking tone I take to get a smile out of him, I do feel somewhat anxious. Who could possibly find blame with my parents, the Froidelacs, the honorable apothecaries of a forsaken village way out in the depths of one of the most hemmed-in provinces of France? We’re twenty miles from Clermont, the nearest city. My parents have always paid the tax, in both gold and blood. Twelve times a year, my father even helps Dr. Boniface bleed each and every villager. He starts with himself, his wife, and his children. Under the Mortal Code, an apothecary is charged not only with providing village folk with remedies but also with draining them of the precious red liquid. Such is the tithe collected by the Hematic Faculty—from the Greek haimatos, meaning “blood”—a religious order founded by the priest-doctors who transmuted the king.
“We have nothing to reproach ourselves for, right, aside from being deadly boring?” I say, giving Bastien a wink. He’s my favorite brother, the only one in the family who appreciates my sense of humor.
Papa nods, the way he always does to reassure his patients, but his forehead is creased with fear. I’ve never seen him like this—or rather I have: he looked exactly the same on that frigid December night some five years ago when a group of militiamen dragged a stranger in a snow-laden coat to the apothecary. The poor fellow had defied the curfew that forbids commoners from traveling on the roads after sunset and fallen victim to a vampyre who happened by, a vampyre whose name we’ll never know. The lords of the night have the right to feed as they wish on those who dare go out after the warning bell tolls. The only signs the predator had left on his victim’s neck were two purplish perforations from which he’d nearly drained the prey of all his blood. I was twelve years old, and it was my first time seeing a vampyre bite. It imprinted its mark deep in my soul, as it did on that poor man’s flesh, though I haven’t seen another bite since. Here, in the depths of the Auvergne, where there are twice as many sheep as humans and ten times as many rats, the lords of the night hardly venture near.
I take a deep breath, trying to gather my thoughts.
On that long-ago winter night, when my father held the freezing man in his arms, he had a look of despair. But today, in summer and daylight, why does he appear in such a state?
“Apothecary, mark my words, it’s my final warning!” shouts the angry voice from out on the village square.
My parents exchange a harrowed look.
Papa heads toward the door that separates the dining area from the shop.
The room reveals shelves covered with neatly aligned terra-cotta jars on which Bastien carefully hand-painted the names of various ointments and potions. The sun shines on the wooden countertop. So many times, when I had to tend to the cashbox, I felt suffocated by the cramped space, filled with dread that my life was slipping through my fingers. I only feel like myself when I’m in my lambskin breeches, my hair hidden under a shepherd’s hat, running through the woods to gather medicinal plants . . . and flushing out wild game when the occasion presents itself.
Suddenly, I’m gripped with worry: What if the militia has come to arrest me for the pheasant we were about to eat? Commoners are forbidden to hunt, but until now Captain Martin has always turned a blind eye to my indiscretions. He’s thankful that my parents generously provide him with sage herbal tea to treat his bouts of gout.
I twist my neck to get a better look, filtering the blinding light between my lashes. At last, I can make out the visitor standing in front of the glass-paned door that opens onto the town square. It isn’t Captain Martin, the small, good-natured fellow who oversees the three-man militia of Butte-aux-Rats. The visitor threatening to smash the glass of the door with his gloved fist stands tall and lean like a gibbet. His body is shrouded in a long black robe that falls to the ground. A large white pleated ruff is fitted around his neck, the frilly adornment worn by members of the Faculty.
“An inquisitor . . . ,” I whisper as I recognize the bat-shaped iron- ring claw attached to his conical hat.
I’ve never seen an inquisitor except in the engravings of novels. But I know they’re the only members of the Faculty who wear the bat claw, ready to crush the state’s religious enemies anywhere they hide. The presence of such a high-ranking dignitary in Butte-aux-Rats is unheard of. The Faculty’s only representative is Dr. Boniface, whose own ruff is a modest and simple flattened version.
This time I’m sure of it: There’s been a mistake. A terrible error that my father will clear up in a few words.
“Children, go upstairs,” Maman orders us.
“Why?” Valère wants to know.
“Don’t argue.”
Begrudgingly, we obey. But at the top of the stairs that lead to the bedrooms, I speak to my brothers in a hushed tone.
“Stay here, in the dark. I’m going to eavesdrop on what’s happening below.”
It’s the advantage of being the smallest in the family—I can hide anywhere. Tightly, I hug the railing, just like when I’m in the forest, lying in wait for prey.
The lock on the door turns with a clang.
Boots pound against the tiles of the shop. The inquisitor clearly didn’t come alone.
From my perch, I see him enter the dining room, followed by one . . . two . . . three soldiers dressed in dark leather, shod in thigh-high boots, all heavily armed. Atop their heads are gray cloth hats lined with fur, the long tips of which fall down to their shoulders. In horror, I recognize the headgear of the king’s cavalry. These fierce dragoons are charged with eliminating anyone who threatens the ruthless mandate of the Vampyria.
Why have they come here tonight? Papa tries to appear confident.
“Welcome to my humble dwelling, Your Reverence. My wife and I are honored by your visit. We were just about to have supper, a chicken soup.”
Chicken soup, a small lie to pass off the poached pheasant for poultry purchased at the market. A stranger like the inquisitor is no doubt clueless that at Butte-aux-Rats, where it freezes two-thirds of the year, humans and animals must snatch their meager sustenance from the sterile land. Here, even a respected apothecary cannot afford a weekly chicken.
“We’d be delighted to share our modest meal with you . . . ,” Papa continues as if nothing were amiss.
He points to the chipped soup tureen, the pitcher filled with watered-down wine, and the breadbasket that we always cover with a dishcloth so the rats don’t take nibbles. It’s a very simple setting, but the bouquet of flowers that Maman gathered adds a touch of color and grace—no, not dried chrysanthemums like those that decorate the altar to the king but fresh-cut flowers from the fields.
“In his time, didn’t good King Henri wish that the royal subjects in his kingdom could put a chicken in every pot on Sundays?” Papa persists, smiling.
“Leave old King Henri in his tomb, where his bones have been moldering for centuries!” The inquisitor’s guttural voice is as sharp as the razor-thin face that emerges above the ruff.
Behind me, I hear Valère swear under his breath. Henri IV was the next-to-last mortal who reigned over the land. A faraway past when monarchs were just and the sun shone brighter, a past that has always seemed to me like a fairy tale. Every Sunday, Dr. Boniface recites the Faculty’s sermons—that the transmutation of the high aristocracy installed a lasting peace in France and Europe: the pax vampyrica, putting an end to past wars. The dogma also explains that the vampyres protect mortals from nighttime abominations when these creatures leave their lairs after sunset. I don’t know if these horrors really exist, since I’ve never seen any. Finally, the hematic credo claims that there has been a continuous dynasty since Henri IV, founder of the Bourbons and a king who genuinely loved his people, right up to Louis the Immutable, his grandson who rules over us today. But sovereigns of the past went about with uncovered faces, like each of their subjects, whereas for three hundred years, the Immutable has been hiding behind an impenetrable mask. The kings of old lived and died like humans, while the King of Shadows bathes his immortal body in the blood of the French.
Gripped by a fear that the inquisitor detects my presence and can read my thoughts, I flatten myself even closer to the second-floor railing. Who knows what powers the eminent members of the clergy who sold out to the Vampyria are endowed with?
But the visitor’s attention stays focused on my poor papa.
“Sedition has taken root in these walls, I sense it . . . ,” he growls, sniffing the air as if he can discern an aroma of guilt. He points an accusing finger at the tureen. “And I detect the whiff of garlic in that broth.”
“We’d never allow that,” Papa objects. “We know full well that garlic is an irritant for our lords. We know it’s forbidden in the kingdom! It’s only chives that you smell, Your Reverence.”
Losing interest in the tureen, the inquisitor moves along the length of a wall where heaps of logs are stacked. My brothers chopped the wood to get us through the upcoming six months of bitter winter. His footsteps make for the library at the rear of the room. Accusingly, he points at the shelves.
“So many books in a commoner’s household. This reeks of heresy.”
“These are only classic essays on herbal medicine, along with a few innocent novels,” Maman snaps back, standing firm.
She’s right. There’s nothing unusual in our library except for an adventure series in English that I’ve read a dozen times out of boredom. My mother inherited the books from an obscure great-uncle whom she never knew. She learned English before she taught me, but she’s never stepped foot across the Channel due to the sequester that forbids commoners from traveling more than a league farther than their village bell tower.
The inquisitor hasn’t come to discuss literature. Brusquely, he turns away from the library and swoops down on my father, his long black robe whipping the air like a cape.
“Take me to your laboratory,” he orders.
“My laboratory? That dark cellar is rank with toxic fumes. It’s the rat poison I’ve been forced to produce in large quantities. Such a place isn’t worthy of a visit by a man of your stature.”
“Now, or I’ll have your throat slit.”
The dragoons draw their swords menacingly.
Papa hesitates a second, an instant of doubt.
I, too, doubt. For the first time, I doubt him.
Why is he reluctant to show his lab to these intruders?
A room filled with old chipped beakers and dented stills that’s of absolutely no interest. Unless . . .
“What’s going on, weasel?” Bastien whispers behind me, his voice anxious.
Weasel, his affectionate nickname for me. Bastien’s an artist who spends his days drawing, his eye quick to pinpoint the animal features that hide behind those of people.
“Papa’s heading toward the cellar hatch,” I whisper.
My father’s only forty-five years old, but suddenly he looks as hunched as an old man. Quickly, he glances toward the top of the stairs and catches my eyes.
I have the wrenching suspicion that he wants to tell me so many things that he’s been silent about, but now it’s too late. An awful feeling tells me that the unspoken words will never leave his lips.
“Let’s go!” the inquisitor thunders, giving my father a rough shove. “I’m the only one who uses the lab,” Papa says, though it’s untrue.
After the chicken soup, it’s his second lie: Maman, an herbal specialist, helps him to prepare medicinal potions and ointments in the lab every day; Valère studied alongside them for many years; even Bastien spends a lot of time there grinding rock pigments for his paintings. I’m the only one in the family who never ventures into the cellar. What if I’m completely unaware of the experiments that take place down there, like forbidden practices that could attract the attention of an inquisitor?
Papa rushes through the trapdoor, the inquisitor and one of the dragoons close on his heels. Meanwhile, the other two position themselves on each side of my mother.
Soon, a racket can be heard coming from the cellar—the sound of shattering glass and metal bashing against metal.
I can feel Valère simmering with anger behind me. He’s glued to my back.
“We have to do something,” he whispers.
“Do what?” Bastien snaps, sounding panicked. “Except hope they don’t discover the secret passage?”
I look at my brothers.
In the dimness of the hallway, their faces seem to belong to strangers. It’s not only their brown hair, so unlike my pale strands, nor their brown eyes, where mine are a muted blue-gray.
All three of us were born a year apart, but we’re each so different. Valère inherited our father’s hard work ethic; he’s supposed to take over the shop one day. Bastien has our mother’s refinement; when he’s not busy drawing or daydreaming, his beautiful penmanship makes him the unofficial scribe of the village. As for me, I don’t take after anyone. No trade awaits me. And tonight, I don’t feel part of my own family.
“What are you talking about?” I whisper. “What secret passage?”
“Better that you don’t know,” Valère says. He looks stern behind his eyeglasses. “Papa and Maman say you’re too unpredictable.”
“What secret passage?” I say again, grabbing hold of his wrist.
Valère clenches his jaw and tries to pull his arm away, but I’m not inclined to let go before I get an answer.
Bastien intervenes, fearing that the tussle will attract the attention of the dragoons in the room below.
“I didn’t know about it either before my eighteenth birthday last year,” he tells me softly. “And you, weasel, you’d have been told too. I’m sure Maman was just waiting for you to come of age.”
“Tell me what?” I ask, my stomach in knots.
I’m hurt that my favorite brother—the person I’m closest to in the world, my only friend—kept something from me. As for my mother, I can’t help but glance down the stairs and into the dining room, where the destruction in the cellar echoes loud and clear.
Maman stands stoically between the two dragoons, her face unread- able. She’s always had a strong personality, and so do I, which often sparked fireworks between us. All during my childhood, she was my role model: she taught me so much, giving me a love of books and awakening my curiosity about the world. Then, in adolescence, I started to resent her. Why stir up my desire for the unknown if it was only to cruelly remind me about the laws of the curfew and sequester? As I got older, Butte-aux-Rats seemed to get more and more confining, the idea of being trapped here for life only fueling my frustration.
“There’s a hidden door in the cellar,” Bastien whispers so softly that his voice is barely audible. “It leads to a secret room behind the lab. A workshop where Papa and Maman practice alchemic experiments for some Fronde rebels in the region.”
I’d like to respond that it’s impossible. My shopkeeper parents are stuck in the humdrum of the day-to-day. They’re not conspirators who’ll risk their lives for a lost cause. Everyone knows the science of alchemy is officially banned by the Faculty. Everyone also knows that the Fronde rebels are nuts, mere mortals who dare to revolt against the king. Rumor has it that those fools use the same energy as the one that runs in the blood of vampyres—the mysterious Shadows—to fashion the wicked arms meant to overthrow the Vampyria. It’s just gossip, of course; after all, the Vampyria is indestructible.
“Papa and Maman would never have gotten swept up in such mad- ness,” I whisper, outraged. I struggle to keep my voice down. “They’d never . . .”
A terrible blast swallows the rest of my sentence and makes the house shake all the way down to its foundations.
Chapter Two
Deafened by the explosion, I let go of Valère’s wrist.
Immediately, he rushes headlong down the stairs.
“Papa! Maman!” he shouts.
Thick smoke from the blast rises from the open cellar trapdoor. My ears are ringing.
My eyes sting.
But most of all, I’m jolted by a dire feeling: My brothers were right. The cellar was full of banned explosive substances, and my father just blew himself up alongside the inquisitor so that we stood a chance of getting out alive.
Cursing and coughing, the two surviving dragoons draw their swords as they look for my mother, who’s vanished in the smoke.
Quick as lightning, Valère dashes toward the kitchen knife he left on the corner of the sideboard and turns around with surprising agility. He plunges the knife into the ribs of the first dragoon, right up to the handle. But this master stroke is a fluke. He stumbles under his own weight, exposing his neck to the second dragoon.
My heart skips a beat. I take my sling out of my lambskin breeches. It’s the same weapon I used to bring down the pheasant earlier. I push in a pointy stone I picked up in the forest and, in a frenzy, turn the sling round and round above my head . . . but not fast enough.
The soldier’s sharp sword comes down like a cleaver on Valère’s neck.
Blood spurts from the sectioned artery all the way to the fireplace, splattering the portrait of the golden-masked king.
My hand flinches, and my projectile misses the killer by a few feet, instead hitting the vase on the dining table. The sound of shattering glass fills the house.
Valère’s severed head falls off his body and rolls onto the bloodied floor tiles.
I howl in horror.
The soldier looks up at me with burning hate.
I thrust my hand into my pocket, searching for a new stone, but my fingers come up empty.
Already the dragoon is heading toward the stairs, brandishing his sword.
At that instant, my mother pops out from behind the log pile in the corner of the library. Her face is marred with pain. She kneels down to pick up a fragment of the broken vase that’s beside Valère and plants it into the dragoon’s shoulder.
“For my son!” she yells.
The soldier freezes on the spot.
Maman snatches the fragment back and holds it so tight it could sever her fingers. Then she brings it down with all her might.
“For my husband!”
The soldier turns around at the same time and slashes my mother’s neck with the edge of his sword.
“Maman!” I scream.
My mother has just enough strength for a third stab. She plunges the fragment right into her adversary’s heart. Then she collapses against his chest.
The dragoon’s pointy hat falls to the floor.
Leaning one against the other, the dragoon and Maman remain stock still, like two lovers fused in a monstrous embrace.
I escape from the grip of Bastien’s trembling hands and hurtle down the stairs.
“Maman!” I yell again as I grab her by the shoulders. The dragoon’s lifeless body crumples behind me.
My mother’s own body is as limp as a rag doll between my tensed fingers. Just like the doll my parents insisted on giving me when I was young, before they understood that the only thing of interest to me was using my sling to help Tibert hunt rats.
“Talk to me . . . say something . . . anything . . . ,” I manage to say between sobs.
Tell me everything you and Papa never mentioned.
Tell me who you really were.
Tell me stories like when I was young—Aesop’s fables or Perrault’s tales
or one of your own made-up legends.
But no sound comes from her pale lips.
Her face is a blur in my tear-filled eyes.
Above her shoulders, the Immutable glares down at me from behind his frozen mask, his cheeks dabbed with red from Valère’s splattered blood.
I can’t stand the sight of the king anymore, so I bend over to rest my mother’s body on the ground. The wildflowers she gathered are scattered around us. As I lay her head down on the tiles, my fingers come in contact with the chain of the small bronze medallion she always wore around her neck. It’s broken; the killer’s sword severed the links.
“They’re all . . . ,” Bastien says softly behind me. I can feel his ragged breathing on my neck. “They’re all dead.”
All dead?
In the time it takes for this unfathomable information to register in my brain, I hear the sound of a piercing whistle. It’s coming from the dragoon that Valère stabbed before he died. The brute is lying in a puddle where his blood mingles with that of my loved ones. With his last breath, he blows his whistle to sound the alarm. And then he expires.
Did the inquisitor come with other henchmen? Are they waiting outside, ready to finish what he started?
“We . . . we have to go,” Bastien stammers.
“Go . . . ,” I echo as I look at my mother’s hair—hair she was so proud of—as it floats like algae in the reddening puddle of water from the flowers.
“Don’t let me down, weasel.”
Bastien shakes my shoulders, forcing me to regain my wits.
In a pitiful attempt to gather a memory of my mother, I grab the medallion and slide it into my pocket.
“The forest,” I say in a whisper as I get up.
The woods are where I exiled myself all through my childhood so I could flee the boredom of Butte-aux-Rats and everything about it that poisoned my soul. It’s where my instincts tell me to seek refuge now.
The moment Bastien and I step across the shop with its neatly aligned jars—a space that smells of disinfectant and fresh wax, where I spent so many dull hours dreaming of escaping to the other end of the world—I’m hit with the certainty that I’ll never set foot here again.
I grab my old felt hat hanging on the wall and plop it over my hair. We tumble out into the village square, engulfed in silence.
The sun that was so blinding only a short while ago has nearly disappeared behind the roofs of the thatched cottages, their shutters now all closed.
As I feared, there are more dragoons around. Across the clay-dirt square, three men armed with long spears stand guard in front of a dark wooden stagecoach hitched to glossy-coated horses. Thick black velvet curtains obscure the carriage windows.
I tilt my head to better hide my face under the large brim of my hat. Why aren’t these men racing after us, after hearing the whistle?
It seems like it’s more important for them to safeguard the carriage . . . and its occupant.
“A . . . a vampyre carriage,” Bastien stammers.
I swallow painfully as I recall my nighttime reading, novels where I discovered the garb worn by inquisitors. Certain engravings showed carriages made of precious ebony wood, aboard which the lords of the night travel around, sealed off from the light of day.
In all my life, I’ve never encountered a vampyre. Even if the portrait of their creator has spied on me from the fireplace since childhood. Even if, every month, I’ve given them a tenth of my blood in a hematic flask labeled with my birth year. Now, for the very first time, I’m only yards away from one of those creatures. Creatures that at the same time terrify and disgust . . . and fascinate me.
“Night will fall soon, and then we won’t stand a chance of getting away from whoever’s inside that carriage,” Bastien laments, tearing me from my thoughts.
He drags me into the semidarkness of an alley, out of the dragoons’ sight.
“A vampyre has a keen sense of smell. Better even than the finest bloodhound,” he tells me. “He’ll easily detect our scent in the forest. We have to . . . have to hide somewhere else.”
“Somewhere else? But where? There are only about twenty muddy streets, the forest all around, and the castle at the top of the hill.”
“Exactly,” Bastien snaps back as he grips my arm.
He eyes the crumbling castle at the top of the steep and craggy hill, the one that gave Butte-aux-Rats its name. In truth, it’s more like a manor than a castle, an old fortified structure that’s been gnawed at by the centuries. It’s where old Baron Gontran de Gastefriche lives, the overlord of Butte-aux-Rats and the few neighboring hamlets. Since his wife’s death from the fevers years ago, he and his daughter are the only nobility in the region. They’re exempt from the blood tithe, same as the parish doctor. But they see to it that two hundred flasks filled with their subjects’ blood are sent every month to the archiater of Clermont, the vampyric prelate who replaced the bishop of former times.
“Follow me,” Bastien says, suddenly full of confidence, something I’ve never known him to possess.
There’s a glimmer in his big sensitive eyes, the same determined, wild spark that I often saw in the eyes of our mother. In this instant, my brother is her spitting image.
He pulls me toward the path that winds its way to the hilltop, the last place I would ever have thought of as a safe haven.
The thatched roofs vanish behind the treetops. Soon we can’t even see the bat-shaped weather vane that for three centuries has replaced the cross atop the village bell tower. The path continues to rise as we go around the hill.
My thoughts, too, are swirling. Obsessively.
I keep hearing the same words, a horrible refrain that crushes me. They’re all dead.
The pain is so great that even if I wanted to scream, I’d no longer have the strength. And though tears come to my eyes, our rapid ascent dries them before they spill onto my cheeks.
We can’t see the village anymore. Which means that no one there can see us. Not the villagers behind their shuttered windows, and not the soldiers assigned to the carriage. The latter have no means of knowing what direction we took. Only their master’s olfactory power stands a chance when he awakens at nightfall . . .
“Why the castle?” I manage to say between two intakes of breath. “Because . . . I know someone,” Bastien answers, out of breath. He may be a head taller than I am, but all the days spent painting on his canvases haven’t prepared him for the climb, not the way running in the forest has prepared me. I have to slow down so I don’t leave him behind.
“You know someone?” I say. “What does that mean? Is it a secret you’ve all been keeping from me, that and the one about the cellar?”
Yet again I realize that I didn’t know my family, even though I considered myself perceptive. I was so focused on getting away from home that I was blind to what was happening under my own roof.
“No,” Bastien pants, struggling to utter his words. “This secret is entirely mine . . . Maman and Papa and Valère . . . didn’t know about it . . .”
Seeing how my questions make him short of breath and slow him down, I decide not to ask anything else. At least for now.
Once we finally arrive at the castle’s tall portcullis, the sun casts its last rays over the forest.
“There’s a padlock!” I cry out as I place my hands on the chain that hangs from the bars like a dozing garden snake.
“Not quite,” Bastien says, sweaty.
He leads me through some thickets to the left of the sharply pointed portcullis.
My lambskin breeches protect my legs from the thorns and brambles, but the sleeves of my blouse catch and tear.
Suddenly, I see a hole in the iron fortification. It wasn’t visible before. Time and rust have worn down three bars, creating an opening large enough for a person to squeeze through.
Bastien easily glides in. It’s obviously not the first time he’s done this. I follow in his footsteps and enter grounds filled with twisted shrubs and misshapen bushes. The manor has fallen into a state of neglect, if it ever even knew a golden age in this arid landscape where nothing grows. The name of the fiefdom itself—Gastefriche, meaning “wasteland”—seems cursed. There’s no one left in Butte-aux-Rats or the neighboring villages who knows how to trim hedges in the style of Versailles. We make our way under this disheveled cover where nature has gone wild. We dart from bush to bush, escaping the attention of the guard who’s daydreaming in front of the castle courtyard.
As we go around a statue of a nymph half-consumed by moss, we reach the rear of the building. The tall stone wall is perforated with dark arrow slits; the highest, largest one comes outfitted with a small balcony that’s been invaded by ivy. A flicker of candlelight dances behind sheer curtains.
“The service door is never locked,” Bastien assures me. He’s gotten his breath back.
“What about the servants?” I ask, worried.
“The baron dines early and sends his staff off to the outbuildings before nightfall.”
How does Bastien know so much about the castle? I have no idea, but I’m in a hurry to find shelter. My brother pushes the worm-eaten wooden door and lets me enter the ancestral dwelling of the barons of Gastefriche.
The door shuts silently behind us, and we’re instantly plunged into total darkness.
“Do you have a light?” Bastien whispers.
I take out my shepherd’s tinderbox lighter. Along with my pocket knife, it never leaves my side. I activate the wheel of the flint. Soon the sparks create an incandescent glow at the tip of the wick. Bastien retrieves an oil lamp that seems to have been waiting just for him.
“Follow me, weasel,” he says.
“Where to?”
Bastien raises the lamp to shed light on his face.
He’s eighteen, a year older than me, but I’ve generally thought of him as my little brother. Of delicate constitution, he always took days to recover from the monthly tithe bleedings. Papa had to give him a tonic of bitterroot, while I was back on my feet within the hour. According to the humoral theories preached by the Hematic Faculty, each person has a different dominant humor. The choleric, like Valère, produce an excess of yellow bile that predisposes them to anger. The phlegmatic, like Bastien, have an excess of phlegm that disconnects them from the world and plunges them into endless daydreams. As for me, I’m an exception since, according to my father’s diagnosis, I have a mixed humoral makeup—melancholic and sanguine. When I’m inactive, my excess of black bile plunges me more quickly toward boredom and depressive thoughts; but when I’m fully active, my excess blood takes over and I’m impulsive, even volcanic. Bastien’s soothing company often allowed me to channel my contradictory emotions, particularly useful when I needed to hunt.
The two of us spent so many hours lying in the fields, gazing up at the clouds. My imagination often made out menacing monsters and gruesome scenes of slaughter, but Bastien helped me to see bright winged horses and magical celebrations. The other village children called him “the nut,” because his mind wandered. And they called me “the witch,” because of my gray hair. When we were young, I defended Bastien against anyone who made fun of him because everyone knew better than to mess with the witch. As we got older, I was still the one who went searching for him when he got lost in the woods, unable to find his way home after traipsing through the landscape for a scene to paint. But tonight, he’s the one who guides me through dusk.
“Let’s go up to Diane’s room,” he says softly.
“The baron’s daughter?”
She must be my age or just a few years older, but I’ve never spoken to her. I see her only once a year, at the church, on December 21, the Night of Shadows. It’s the longest night of the year and has replaced Christmas of old. I can’t fathom how my brother and the baronette are connected. He’s a mere commoner, treated like livestock, while she’s a mortal noble allied to the vampyres.
Unless . . . suddenly I remember that Bastien was called to the castle last summer. The baron wanted him to paint his daughter’s portrait. She’s now of marrying age, and like in bygone days, a successful portrait is the best way to secure a good match in another province. It doesn’t make sense to travel and meet before there’s a strong prospect. As with horticulturists, there aren’t many artists running around in Butte-aux- Rats. My brother was the only one capable of the task. So he spent two weeks at the baron’s castle, painting the aristocrat’s heir.
“Diane and I . . . we’re in love,” Bastien says, confirming my suspicions. “I swore I’d save her from an arranged marriage—the one her father expects will come about because of the portrait.” A slight smile lights up his perspiring face. “One of these days we’re going to escape together.”
Escape? Escape where? Suddenly I want to grab hold of Bastien and shake him hard. All my life I’ve dreamed of fleeing. To defy the sequester law that forbids travel, that roots commoners to their villages until death. But I’m not a dreamer like he is. I know that’s impossible.
“For now, Diane will save our necks,” Bastien says, his voice full of hope. He starts up a creaky staircase. “There’s a deep closet in her bedroom. I’ve hidden there many times when a servant came knocking on her door.”
“You mean you saw her again, after she sat for her portrait?” I ask, horrified.
“I’ve been visiting her every week, for a year,” he admits. “We have no secrets from each other.”
Climbing the last step of the staircase, I abruptly think back to all the afternoons when Bastien disappeared for hours at a stretch and returned to the house without having drawn even the smallest sketch. Now I know where he spent his time—in the arms of a girl whose slightest kiss could have condemned him to death if word had gotten out.
We reach a polished door, in a hallway where oil lamps glisten and their wicks flicker.
Bastien gently scratches at the door, no doubt in a pattern that’s a secret code. An open sesame that will lead us to our salvation.
