Chateau of Echoes

35

one day before Toussaint

I insisted this morning that Anne be brought to my room, and Awen, still in my bed, and he must tell her of the marriage arrangement which has been made for her.

He says me that he could not.

I told him I would be present, but he must do it. If he could do anything for Anne, it must be to give her leave and the liberty to go. Had I not loved him so much, I would not have insisted. But I do.

I called Agnes to have Anne brought, and it was done.

Awen spoke through clenched teeth and did not dare to look at her as I did.

He had to do it. He cannot live divided. And he is my right.

Agnes smiled to hear it.

Anne spoke not one word.

one day after Toussaint

I have sent a messenger to my father to tell him of the coming of Anne. She will leave in two weeks time.

two days after Toussaint

I paid a visit to my lord this night.

I hit softly on the door, but he would not open it.

I remembered of Anne and how she came to him, so I spoke my name.

He opened it quickly to me.

I demanded of him to show me the way to pay the debt I owe.

He bid me come to his bed.

And this time, when he began to untie my laces, I let him.

day of Saint Malo

Awen has made me his wife. He comes to me by day as well as by night. I feel on fire with the heat of it. I am wanton. I have found happiness enough to last eternity.

We made no note of the going of Anne until this day, the day after she has gone. I remember myself of that morning of yesterday and recall that Awen had been in my bed. And I smiled at the memory of it and lifted my head from this journal and found that he had been watching me all this time. And I am putting down this work and going to him.

four days before Sainte Cecile

I find I have been selfish. All these years I have spent reading and studying when it would have done better to attend to my affairs.

I am a woman. I am a wife.

I had given up my duties for my pleasures, and all had turned upon itself. What if I had been a wife to Awen for several years past?

Anne would not have been in my place.

And what am I to do without Anne? I know not how to arrange a chateau. I know not how to command a servant. She has done all this, but I had allowed her to do it. I have been punished for not performing my duties.

I have kept the Book of Days of my mother; I fail to see how keeping it would do me harm, but I have given up what rests of my books; even the scroll possessed by my mother. For I confess I slit the top of the baton for it seemed to me hollow. And from there I took a scroll inscribed in a language I have never seen. I have demanded of myself what people could write in such a language of heavy lines, but as I have no teacher. I have no hope of being able to read it.

I have placed my journals in my chest and when I am done writing this day. I will demand of Agnes to take them all: the books and the journals. I care not where.

I must attend to life.

36

As the days passed, the tragedy of Severine’s breakdown and the shock of her betrayal shifted from the foreground of my thoughts to the background. I thought about looking for someone else to replace her and then thought about taking a break. I considered for the first time what I would do if I didn’t have my chateau. I didn’t arrive at an answer, but at least the question itself no longer scared me.

Without Severine’s arms to push Cranwell into, my thoughts about him had no lightning rod. They crashed and blazed and thundered in my mind without anything to ground them. If he didn’t belong to Severine, then he was no longer off limits. But that didn’t mean that he was mine or anyone else’s.

I was like a person who plans to drink flat water and swallows a mouthful of sparkling water instead. It takes a while for the mind to process the difference, even while the taste buds are transmitting the new information.

So Cranwell was unattached. He was the person he’d proclaimed himself to be and not the lout I had assumed he was. But what difference did that make in our relationship? And what sort of difference did I want there to be? If I had met Cranwell under different circumstances, if there had been no actresses or models, no Alix or Severine… then he wouldn’t be the man he was. And he wouldn’t be staying in my chateau.

In spite of how hard I’d tried to keep my distance from him, I enjoyed everything about him. What’s not to like about a man who volunteers to do his own vacuuming? And mine too?

Lucy came down one afternoon to find me. I assumed it was because Cranwell was talking to her about the same amount he was talking to me: very little. He was absorbed in editing his manuscript. I considered asking her if Cranwell ever spoke to her of me; if he were looking forward to going home; if he played with the collar of his shirt when he thought of what to write next, or if he’d already decided. But those questions seemed too intimate. Too indiscreet. Like asking the Queen’s butler if she used a teaspoon or soup spoon to eat her cereal for breakfast. They were the sort of questions I wanted the answers to only if I could ask them of Cranwell myself. So I spared Lucy the indignity of having to answer them.

Cranwell offered no clues. No changes in the way he had always related to me.

As much as I longed to erase Severine from the equation, she had become a ghostly place marker between the knowns and the formulation of the unknown. And I had been unknown for too long. With Cranwell’s departure, there would be no one left who knew me.

But isn’t that how many people lived their lives? Why should I be any different? What right did I have to demand anything more than what I already had? I wasn’t true to Peter in life. Not really. But was there anything to be gained in trying to be true to him in death? Did the dead require such sacrifices of the living? Could they? Did it do anything at all to guard my heart for the ghost of unresolved guilt? Maybe that’s why I couldn’t ask for what I wanted. Maybe I didn’t think I deserved to be loved.

Did anyone?

What was I supposed to do? Was there anything to do? What would happen if I did nothing at all?

Then when Cranwell was finished, he’d go. He’d find another place and write another book. And another and another.

What would happen if I did something?

Then when Cranwell was finished, he’d… go write another book.

So if I did nothing, Cranwell would leave and if I did something, Cranwell would go, so what was the best use of my pride?

Do nothing.

Do something.

I passed those days in suspension between doing something and nothing. I had forgotten how to reach for the things I wanted, if I ever had known how in the first place.