Eleven
The castle opened its eyes at night. It came to life in the darkness.
Arabella heard it. She heard the howls, the laughter, the whispers and wails. Percival always told her that it was just wind whirling through the eaves, or old timbers creaking. As she walked down the dark corridors, she trailed a hand over the ancient stone walls. Her fingers came away wet.
“It’s just a leak, mistress,” Percival would say, but Arabella knew better. The walls had seen what had happened in this place. They’d held so much pain, so much grief, that they themselves were weeping.
Ghosts roamed here, creatures made of memories and regrets. They drifted down corridors and through rooms, trailing sadness in their wake like a courtesan trailing perfume.
And all the while, the golden clock kept time, counting off minutes and hours, days and years. Arabella could never escape the sound. No matter where she went, she heard it ticking, like the castle’s monstrous heart.
A gallery window caught her reflection as she hurried past it—the collar of her blue-velvet dressing gown framing her face, her golden hair trailing down her back, her slippered feet passing like whispers over the floor. In the far reaches of the castle, places where no one went anymore, chairs covered with sheets loomed like malevolent specters, their arms outstretched. Suits of armor stood like shadowy sentinels in cobwebbed corners. Portraits of stern ancestors gazed unforgivingly from their frames.
Moving swiftly down one dismal hallway after the next, Arabella tried every handle to every door, making certain that they were locked tight. Now and again, she pressed a palm to a door or leaned her forehead against it, her ears cocked, her body tensed.
Lady Espidra had locked them away. For your own protection, mistress, she’d said. She’d never told her where, in case—in a moment of weakness—Arabella was tempted to let them out. They’d been silent in their imprisonment, but now they were restive; Arabella could feel it. They wanted to get out, to roam again, to do her harm. She could not rest until she knew that no door had been left unlocked.
It was as she was hurrying from the east wing of the castle to the west that she heard it—singing. The sound was so unexpected, so completely out of place, so beautiful, that she stopped dead. No one sang. Not here. Not anymore.
Ah, song of the rising sun!
And song of dew!
Ah, song of the waters …
It was a man’s voice, as meltingly rich as a ribbon of warm caramel. More Spanish than French. Arabella recognized the lyrics; they were from “The Mountains of Canigou,” an old song, pretty and sad, that the people of the Pyrenees sang.
The singing grew louder. Arabella realized it was carrying up from outside and hurried to a window. Looking down, she saw a broad-shouldered man walking across a courtyard toward the kitchen, a lantern in his hand.
“Valmont?” she whispered, shocked at the idea of her stern butler singing. But no, it was another man, younger, rangy, following Valmont at an unhurried pace, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold.
“The thief,” Arabella whispered. Valmont was escorting him back from the stables.
The moon poured its rays over him, painting streaks of silver into his black hair, highlighting the angles of his face, pooling in his dark, unknowable eyes.
“He is an uncommonly beautiful man,” said a voice from behind her.
Arabella jumped. She stepped back from the window, flustered. A woman stood in the shadows, just a few feet away.
“You startled me, Lady Espidra.”
“The most beautiful of them all, I would say,” Espidra added, moving close. Her thin lips curved into a smile of regret. “But unlike the others, he’s trapped here, my dear. Because of you.”
Arabella flinched. Espidra’s words scraped her heart raw. “But it wasn’t me,” she protested. “You know that. I forbade anyone to raise the portcullis.”
“Does it really matter who did it?” Espidra asked. “All that matters is why. And just imagine if he were to find out.”
Arabella read the threat under her words and bristled at it. “You are not to tell him. I forbid it.”
Espidra pressed a hand to her chest. “Me? Never, Your Grace.”
Arabella returned to the window, her eyes searching for another glimpse of the thief, but he was gone.
Espidra extended her hand—fingers bent like bare winter branches—and stroked Arabella’s hair. “Supper is in an hour. Come, we must dress you.”
“Not yet. I am not finished here.”
“I shall be waiting,” Espidra said, and then she left.
Arabella lingered by the window for a moment longer, then she continued down the dark hall, moving from door to door, making sure each one was locked. The unfamiliar rush of brightness that coursed through her heart just moments ago had drained away. She felt heavy now. Weighted. Like a corpse at the bottom of a lake, staring up through sightless eyes at a dark and faraway sky.