Chapter LVII
LVII
I was told by a manservant that they took me back to Chateau d’Ocerne at Antoine’s insistence. I received no confirmation of this from Antoine himself; he refused my requests to speak to him, though the care I received must have been provided under his instructions.
I lay for days in a twilight of muttering voices and muted sensations. My physical wounds healed rapidly, though it cost me pounds of my own tissue. My transformation had been fueled by the very bedrock of my being and the damage showed; though I returned to wholeness, I looked a walking corpse.
Sarmodel barely spoke to me for the entire time. His resources were as depleted as mine. He was distant, injured and brooding; I had no desire to disturb his solitude.
I believe I saw Antoine only once, though it may well have been a hallucination. He was standing at the end of my bed, watching me as I groaned and spasmed in the sheets. His face was stricken and his fists were clenched by his sides.
“It was you. You were eating them,” he said.
I fought to rouse myself properly, to speak in my own defense—you are still alive because of me!—but when I finally managed to sit up, I found the room was empty.
There were no more visits from Antoine, real or imagined.
Servants came and went with food and water and linens, locking the door behind them each time.
They spoke little to me, but I came to understand I was something in between a guest and a prisoner, partly, I think, because they didn’t know what to do with me.
I waited for either the bailiff to come and charge me, or perhaps the bishop to barrel in with Michael screeching overhead, but it seemed I was simply to be kept out of sight for now.
It mattered little; I was utterly defeated.
I hadn’t the energy to do anything but wait. Slowly, slowly, I came back to life.
I rose from my bed for the first time to investigate some faint fanfare from the courtyard. The herald’s voice rang out in an announcement I could not discern. I crossed the floor with difficulty—my joints screamed with every flexion—and pulled back the curtains.
The Ocernes had hidden me away high on the third floor to convalesce, so I had a commanding view of the courtyard from my window.
Lord and Lady Ocerne were once more arrayed in their finery on the landing before the great doors, surrounded by their retinue.
Antoine was with them, as were the bailiff and a handful of other nobles.
In the wintry courtyard, it was a dire, threadbare reenactment of our assignment ceremony.
The herald spoke again as the Bishop of Mende emerged from the chateau, moving slowly to stand beside Antoine.
The clergyman had not escaped the massacre unharmed—he looked absolutely dreadful.
Aside from his pronounced limp, one arm was cradled in a sling and half of his face was completely covered in bandages.
I opened the icy window a fraction to better hear the proceedings.
“. . . the selfsame Beast, which has been the scourge of Gévaudan these many months, now slain by Lord Francois Antoine de Bauterne, Gun-Bearer to the King and Lieutenant of the Hunt.”
Bauterne limped into the courtyard through the main gates. His battered face was almost as black as his clothing, his nose swollen like a mushroom and his eyes bloodshot. Behind him came a flat wagon bearing a great mound of rotting flesh.
Soeur. The hound’s carcass had been reconstructed imperfectly for display, but there was no mistaking her blighted form.
It was disintegrating slowly thanks to the extreme cold, but tendrils of plasma were already beginning to drip from the wagon.
1 Though she had done her violent best to kill me, I felt only profound pity for her.
The proud mastiff was to be paraded before the king as the very Beast she had come to hunt.
Bauterne bowed his head to receive the thanks of the lord and lady, and then it was Bishop Fontaine’s turn.
“And so ends the terror of Gévaudan, by the grace of the Lord and His Majesty Louis XV, King of France and of Navarre!” he announced with characteristic bombast. “Return now to Versailles with your trophy and the blessing of our Holy Father, and claim your bounty.”
The speech went on but I had heard enough.
My legs were beginning to tremble from the effort of standing and I was painfully cold.
I closed the window with a final glance at Bauterne.
The lieutenant did not seem to be enjoying his triumph.
His head was bowed and his swollen eyes were closed.
Around his wrist I spied the glimmer of gold; the gilded chain collar once worn by his favorite hound.
I returned to my bed and called for food. It was time to hasten my recovery.
The second time I arose was for another commotion in the courtyard. Several weeks must have passed since my first look outside; the ice was gone and the first spikes of green growth were showing on the boughs around the estate.
I was stronger this time. I stood at the window with a cup of lemon tea in hand, watching the bustle in the courtyard.
The chateau staff were all gathering as though to receive a visiting dignitary.
Antoine stood in the center of the thoroughfare, flanked by his mother and father, with the Bishop of Mende and his retinue to one side.
Fontaine’s convalescence was obviously nearing its end.
He had donned his choir dress of purple and white, presumably to lead a service for the people of the chateau.
His wounds had mostly healed, though bandages still covered the burned half of his face.
Antoine looked thin and tired. He was dressed in the sable-trimmed, honeycolored velvet waistcoat that had first caught my eye, back when I had first signed my name in the ledger in the courtyard, right where he was standing.
Antoine, you are impossible! Have you no fear?
Of you? Yes. From the first.
The courtyard continued to fill as people filed in from every corner of the chateau. They hurriedly adjusted wigs and waistcoats, assembling behind the noble family to face the front gate.
A few minutes passed in tense silence. I stared at Antoine, willing him to look up at me. Lady Ocerne was leaning toward her son, her mouth moving in a constant stream of speech near his ear. Antoine was unmoved; he might as well have been made of wax.
And as the herald announced their important guest, he looked for reassurance not to his parents, but rather to the Bishop of Mende.
“Baron Jean-Michel Voltours d’Apcher!”
A fine horse-drawn carriage appeared at the gates, decorated with the red castle of Apcher. The driver stopped it in front of Antoine and his family, and a valet stepped forward to open the door.
The Baron d’Apcher alighted and went down the line of very important people, greeting and genuflecting as appropriate. Antoine did his part with impeccable etiquette and not a trace of humanity.
“Lady Ninette Voltours d’Apcher!” announced the herald, and I felt an unwelcome stirring in the hollow cage of my chest.
So this was Antoine’s betrothed.
Ninette stepped delicately down from the carriage, with the aid of the valet.
She was dressed in a beautiful gown of cornflower blue, with a rose-pink stomacher and a sable-lined cloak.
She was smiling nervously and her round face was beautifully painted with cosmetics.
She could not have been more than fifteen years old.
She’s a child, I said to Sarmodel. It was the first time we’d spoken in weeks.
He roused himself disinterestedly and gave a cursory inspection of the scene. So? They’re all children, Sebastian.
Antoine greeted his intended bride nervously. He gave the flicker of a smile as he took her hand, and showed some genuine warmth as they conversed.
Yes, I suppose they are.
I raised my hand to close the window and noticed I wasn’t the only one watching from the fringes.
Cecile, the young herbalist from Saint-Julien, stood in the crowd just inside the gatehouse, her pale blond hair sticking out like dry sedge.
The hagstone, Dayane’s boon, winked across the courtyard like a coin catching the sun.
Antoine’s debts were already beginning to return.
I drew the curtains; I couldn’t watch any more.
That evening, the butler brought me a set of fine traveling clothes and a message from the Baron d’Ocerne: in recognition of my service to the barony, a small sum had been set aside for me along with a horse, available at my earliest convenience.
It seemed my time at Chateau d’Ocerne had come to a close.
Banishment is better than execution, I suppose, I said, reaching out to Sarmodel.
Is it? Leave me be.
I left as soon as I was dressed, taking the long eastern road through the mountains. Sarmodel said nothing and I was glad. I cared not for company or conversation. I felt hollowed out—corroded from within by an aching of my very spirit.
It was the last I saw of Gévaudan for twenty years.
1. The specimen was completely unrecognizable by the time it made it back to Versailles for presentation to the king. Bauterne still received his prize, but there remained a (very convenient) level of mystery around what the Beast actually was.