Chapter Three #2
Mister Allard is a frightening man, I’ve decided, and certainly not one to be crossed or disappointed.
Tall and pale, with wrinkles that sag his face like melting candle wax and eyes so dark they appear almost fathomless.
He shows no sign of his age in his posture, stiff and straight like a statue, but there is an eternity of experience in those empty eyes, and I find myself torn between wanting to know each and every story, and wanting to cower beneath his sharp gaze.
“Yes, sir,” I say with a nod, fingers gripping tight around the strap of my satchel. “I do the books for my father at our shop, and I am particularly passionate about reading and writing.”
The man hums, eyeing me up and down as if in search of the lie. “And your penmanship?”
“Well enough.”
If he believes me, I cannot tell, but he turns on his heel and gestures for me to follow without another question about it.
“You will be tasked firstly with taking inventory of all the things the old owners have left behind in the manor,” the steward says as he leads me into a large, sparsely decorated parlor.
“You will document everything, from the furniture to the number of candles, understood?”
Regardless of the sparsity of the room—compared to what I might expect of a lavish home like this, at the very least—I cannot help but think it a daunting task.
The Chateau de Klein is not a small manor, and though I don’t know the exact number, I know it to hold a multitude of rooms that no doubt have entirely too many things in them for one person to have need of.
Still, it is easy enough work, and I cannot deny that my curiosity drives me to explore the old home, even now.
“How am I to know which belongs to the old owners and which belongs to the new?”
“Mistress Azizi wishes to take stock of the current items before she unpacks her own things,” Mister Allard answers.
“We have only so far unpacked her personal quarters, her study, and the kitchens and washrooms. We have begun decorating the foyer and hallways with her personal collection of art, but any other décor you might find throughout the house will need to be documented. Should you find yourself unsure, however, you will write it down anyway, and I will go over your notes at a later date.”
After assuring him that I understand, he hands over a thick, empty ledger and an ink pen.
“You will begin here in the main parlor. If you find a door to be locked, you may assume it is locked for a reason. Lunch will be provided at precisely noon, and you will be expected to finish your work for the day and be off the grounds before sundown.”
“Oh um…” I dig into my bag and pull out the lunch parcel my father packed me. “I’ve brought lunch. There’s no need to go through any extra trouble.”
His wrinkles deepen when he frowns, eyeing my meal as if it’s personally offended him. After a long moment, he raises his chin and stares down his long nose at me. “Lunch will be at noon. Miss Azizi is not to be disturbed. If you need assistance, you will find me.”
And then he is gone, leaving me alone in the large parlor.
“Right,” I mumble to myself, tucking my lunch away before placing my satchel on a long settee in the center of the room. “Best get to work then, I suppose.”
There isn’t much left in the large parlor, but the extravagance of the furniture and décor make it easy to imagine what it might have looked like when previously occupied, easy to close my eyes and see the entire chateau lit up from the candlelit chandeliers, the light reflecting off gilded portrait frames and illuminating the many trinkets that littered the tables and shelves.
Now, only memories remain—brighter spots on the wallpaper where paintings once hung, dust coating empty shelves and surfaces, rust building up on metal smoking boxes.
Le Chateau de Klein has always been a strange taboo in my village. For as long as Sainte-Falaise has existed, nestled in the thick trees of le bois égaré, so too has the Widow’s Chateau, sitting atop its little cliff overlooking the sea and carrying its haunting songs along the ocean wind.
I’d only been to the manor once before its current proprietor moved in, back when I was nothing more than a child desperate to make the other village boys like me.
Back then it looked scarier than it does now, with its gothic spires reaching into the sky like fingers of the dead and its grand, stained-glass windows peering into the darkness like massive eyes, grander even than those of the church in the village.
“Go on then, Theodore,” one of the other boys, Fitzwilliam, had said when we made it to the gate of the manor. “If you’re really a boy, then you shouldn’t be frightened! Just go in the maze and grab a stone from the fountain to prove you made it.”
I didn’t know at the time that Fitzwilliam and his friends had never even passed the gate of the Widow’s Chateau before, much less gone into the large hedge maze that curled around it like a cloak of writhing darkness.
Didn’t know that they were too cowardly to do it themselves and that they’d been hoping the ghost of the white lady would gobble me up and toss my bones over the cliffside.
What a surprise it’d been when I returned the next morning, shivering in my thin coat, hair dripping from the morning rain, and my fist clenched around a dark stone from the fountain.
The boys didn’t believe me, of course, but even back then, I hadn’t been afraid of this place.
It had a certain otherness that rattled to the same tune as my own bones.
Not quite a comfort, but a connection, a feeling that somewhere hidden inside the walls there was a monster trying to claw its way out. Just like the one beneath my own skin.
"Hidden in the walls, a monster," I mumble to myself, the words buzzing in my head, the start of something new.
A story perhaps? No, a poem. "I wander through the halls in search of a monster…
Peer through shadow and peek through stone, and there you'll find where monsters roam.
Or no, that's no good. And there you'll find where I have roamed? "
The poem slips through my fingers, the ink pen Mister Allard gave me hovering an inch above the ledger where I’d been documenting the different titles of books that lay scattered throughout the smaller office just off the side of the parlor.
My hand twitches to reach for my satchel and the small journal tucked within it, yearning to jot down the few lines of poetry so I could pick them apart later, perhaps mold them into something deeper.
I can feel the words hovering just out of reach, floating in the ether that is the Widow’s Chateau.
Madness haunts this place, they say, fermented in the cracking stone and rotting wood.
But all I feel is an unfathomable loneliness caked into the walls, suffocating me until it feels as if I might drown in it.
The frantic crashing of waves in a storm, the desperate thirst for fresh water while the salt stings at your open wounds.
I close my eyes to breathe it in, to let the utter silence push harshly at my eardrums. No sound of people chattering away or horses clomping down the streets. No scheduled church bells hammering in my head or my father’s sewing machine grinding along with his out-of-tune humming.
It’s comforting, in its own way. The loneliness. It feels… safe.
“It is nice, is it not? Being so far removed from the constant noise of humanity?”
The voice is a low and clear rumble from beside me, and I jump at the suddenness of it, just barely managing to catch Mr. Allard’s ledger before it tumbles from my hands. My cheeks warm when I spin to face her, only growing hotter at the amusement I find dancing in her eyes.
When I first met Lady Azizi Alilovi? earlier in the week, I thought her to be a specter of some long dead de Klein that still haunted the old home.
She did not look the part of a spirit, nor a de Klein, but she walked without a sound, and her dark eyes glinted in the lamp light like rubies.
For all her terrifying beauty, she did not look real.
Now, however, I am convinced that Lady Azizi is instead a devil sent to lure the sinners in the world to damnation.
She stands before me a temptress in her silk chiffon negligee, the material so light that it flutters even without wind, red as the Serpent’s Apple against her dark skin and spilling behind her like an open wound.
Her straight hair is left loose, cascading down her back and past her waist. A pearl necklace wraps around her throat, rubies dripping from it like blood.
She wraps a gold and crème shawl around herself, though it does nothing to hide the curve of her breasts or the shape of her long throat.
It is impossible not to stare. While there are pretty girls in Sainte-Falaise, of course, they all hold a certain plainness to them. Content and comfortable to live their days wasting away the same as every other girl—simple gowns and simple lives, simple husbands and simple children.
But Lady Alilovi? is so much more. She watches me as I imagine a jaguar would watch a deer, her claws digging into the branch of her tree, her muscles shifting as she readies herself to pounce.
She surely does not belong here in my little village.
My face flushes as I avert my gaze, locking it on a sconce across the room, watching the oil-lit flame flicker and waver above the wick. I do not know what she sees when she looks at me, but it still feels improper to look upon her in her sleep things.
“My apologies, my lady,” I sputter, pausing only long enough to clear my throat.
“I didn't mean to bother you. Mister Allard asked me to start cataloging the previous owner’s belongings, and I’d finished the front parlor, you see, so I came to work on this one next.
” Her appearance leaves me wrong-footed, my words pitched higher than I typically prefer as they stumble out of my mouth.
I struggle not to fidget with the cuffs of my sleeves, a bit ashamed of how disheveled I must look in comparison to her fine nightgown.
“You may look upon me, young Mr. Villin,” Lady Alilovi? says, a small note of amusement colouring her tone. “I am not worried about wayward glances, though I can make myself more presentable if you are in discomfort.”
I swallow, slowly lowering my gaze, though I dare not let it dip below her chin. Is my face as red as her silk, I wonder? Can she hear how my heart kicks up its tempo when she offers me that pleased smile?
So long I have lived as the monster, the one who watches with hungry eyes. Never before have I felt so much like prey as I do now beneath her unblinking stare.
It takes a moment for her words to click, and when they do, I give a frantic shake of my head, gesturing to the house with an unsure hand. “This is your home, my lady. It doesn’t matter to me how you choose to dress. I am only sorry to have woken you.”
She hums and holds up her hands. They are freckled with spots of paint, bright ruby reds and sapphire blues. Her movement shifts the air, and I can smell the linseed and pine that cling to her. “I'm afraid I got quite lost in my paints and have yet to go to sleep.”
I recall the paintings that lined her hallways the first day I was led around the chateau—luscious landscapes and beautiful portraits.
She’d been patient with my constant distraction, but I still had little time to truly admire them.
Perhaps now, with the freedom to roam as I work, I might have time to take a closer look.
“I did not realize you were a painter, my lady. The works in the halls, are they yours?”
“They are.”
"You're very skilled."
A smile graces her lips, but it does not reach her eyes. "Thank you."
She says nothing else, only watches me with that animal stare, and I try not to shrink beneath it. “I will get back to work then, if you have nothing else for me, my lady?”
Lady Alilovi? shakes her head and turns back to the door, pausing just before crossing the threshold.
“Mr. Villin—”
“Theodore,” I interrupt her before I have the chance to think first. I curse myself as her eyebrows raise in surprise. “Sorry, I simply mean—well, Mister Villin is my father. I much prefer Theodore, or-or Theo, if you like.”
Something twinkles in her lamp-lit eyes, making them look nearly as red as her gown. “Theodore, then. I’m sure my steward informed you that I don’t like to be disturbed when in my study, but if you ever have need of me, do not hesitate to knock. Yes?”
“Oh. Thank you, Lady Alilovi?.”
She looks as if she wants to say something, but she only turns on her heel and disappears through the library door in a swirl of crimson and crème.
I stand solitary in the empty foyer, but I do not feel alone.