Виктория Холт - King of the Castle

“Miss! Miss!” and turning saw Genevieve running towards me.

“I saw you from my window,” she said. She laid her hand on my arm and pointed to the chateau.

“You see that window right at the top there that’s mine. It’s part of the nurseries.” She grimaced. She had spoken in English.

“I learned that off by heart,” she explained, ‘just to show you I could. Now let’s talk in French. “

She looked different now, calm, serene, a little mischievous perhaps,

but more as one would expect a well-brought up, fourteen-year-old girl to look, and I realized that I was seeing Genevieve without one of her moods.

“If you wish,” I replied in that language.

“Well, I should like to speak to you in English, but as you pointed out, mine is not very good, is it?”

“Your accent and intonation made it almost unintelligible. I suspect you have a fair vocabulary.”

“Are you a governess?”

“I am certainly not.”

“Then you ought to be. You’d make a good one.” She laughed aloud.

“Then you wouldn’t have to go round under false pretences, would you?”

I said coolly: “I am going for a walk. I will say good bye to you.”

“Oh, no, don’t. I came down to talk to you. First I have to say I’m sorry. I was rude, wasn’t I? And you were very cool… but then you have to be, don’t you? It’s what one expects of the English.”

“I am half-French,” I said.

“That accounts for the spirit in you. I saw you were really angry. It was only your voice that was cold. Inside you were angry, now weren’t you?”

“I was naturally surprised that a girl of your obvious education could be so impolite to a guest in your father’s house.”

“But you weren’t a guest, remember. You were there under…”

“There is no point in continuing this conversation. I accept your apology and now I will leave you.”

“But I came down specially to talk to you.”

“But I came down to walk.”

“Why shouldn’t we walk together?”

“I did not invite you to accompany me.”

“Well, my father didn’t invite you to Gaillard, did he, but you came.”

She added hastily: “And I’m glad you came … so perhaps you’ll be glad if I come with you.”

She was trying to make amends, and it was not for me to be churlish, so I smiled.

“You’re prettier when you smile,” she said.

“Well,” she put her head on one side, ‘not exactly pretty. But you look younger. “

“We all look more pleasant when we smile. It is something you might remember.”

Her laughter was high and quite spontaneous. I found myself joining in and laughing at myself. She was pleased and so was I to have her company; for I was almost as interested in people as I was in pictures. Father had tried to curb that interest. He called it idle curiosity but it was strong in me and perhaps I had been wrong to suppress it.

Now I was eager for Genevieve’s company. I had seen her once in a mood and now as a lively but extremely curious girl; but who was I to criticize curiosity, who had more than my fair share of it?

“So,” she said, ‘we’ll go for a walk together and I will show you what you want to see. “

“Thank you. That will be very pleasant.”

She laughed again.

“I hope you will enjoy being here, miss. Suppose I talk to you in English, will you speak slowly so that I can understand?”

“Certainly.”

“And not laugh if I say something silly?”

“Certainly I shall not laugh. I admire your desire to improve your English.”

She was smiling again and I knew that she was thinking how like a governess I was.

“I am not very good,” she said.

“They are all afraid of me.

“I don’t think they are afraid of you. They are perhaps distressed and disgusted by the unbecoming way in which you sometimes behave.”

This amused her but she was serious almost immediately.

“Were you afraid of your father?” she asked, lapsing into French. I sensed that because she was interested in the subject she must speak in the language easier to her.

“No,” I replied.

“I was in awe of him, perhaps.”

“What’s the difference?”

“One can respect people, admire them, look up to them, fear to offend them. It is not the same as being afraid of them.”

“Let’s go on talking in French. This conversation is too interesting for English.”

She is afraid of her father, I thought. What sort of a man is he to inspire fear in her? She was an odd child wayward, perhaps violent; and he was to blame, of course. But what of the mother what part had she played in this strange child’s upbringing?

“So you weren’t really afraid of your father?”

“No. Are you afraid of yours?”

She didn’t answer, but I noticed that a haunted expression had come into her eyes.

I said quickly: “And … your mother?”

She turned to me then.

“I will take you to my mother.”

“What?”

“I said I would take you to her.”

“She is in the chateau?”

“I know where she is. I’ll take you to her. Will you come?”

“Why, yes. Certainly. I shall be delighted to meet her.”

“Very well. Come on.”

She went ahead of me. Her dark hair was neatly tied back with a blue ribbon and perhaps it was the way of dressing it which so changed her appearance. Her head was set arrogantly on sloping shoulders; her neck was long and graceful. I thought: She will be a beautiful woman.

I wondered whether the Comtesse was like her; then I began rehearsing

what I would say to her. I must put my case clearly to her. Perhaps she as a woman would feel less prejudiced against my work.

Genevieve halted and came to walk beside me.

“I’m two different people, am I not?”

“What do you mean?”

“There are two sides to my character.”

“We all have many sides to our character.”

“But mine is different. Other people’s characters are all of a piece.

I am two distinct people. “

“Who told you this?”

“Nounou. She says I’m Gemini-that means I have two different faces.

My birthday is in June. “

“That is a fantasy. Everyone who is born in June is not like you.”

“It is not fantasy. You saw how horrid I was yesterday. That was the bad me. Today I’m different. I’m good. I said I was sorry, didn’t I?”

“I hope you were sorry.”

“I said I was, and I shouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t.”

“Then when you are being foolish remember that you’ll be sorry afterwards and don’t be foolish.”

“Yes,” she said, ‘you should be a governess. They always make everything sound so easy. I can’t help being horrid. I just am. “

“Everyone can help the way he or she behaves.”

“It’s in the stars. It’s fate. You can’t go against fate.”

Now I saw where the trouble lay. This temperamental girl was in the hands of a silly old woman and another who was half scared out of her wits; in addition there was the father who terrified her. But there was the mother, of course. It would be interesting to meet her.

Perhaps she too was in awe of the Comte. Most assuredly this was so since everyone else was. I pictured her a gentle creature, afraid to go against him. He was becoming more and more a monster with every fresh piece of information.

“You can be exactly as you wish to be,” I said.

“It is absurd to tell yourself you have two characters and then try to live up to the unpleasant one.”

“I don’t try. It just happens.”

Even as I spoke I despised myself. It was always so easy to solve other people’s troubles. She was young and at times seemed childish for her age. If we could become friends I might be able to help her.

“I am eager to meet your mother,” I said; she did not answer but ran on ahead of me.

I followed her through the trees but she was more fleet than I and not so encumbered by her skirts. I lifted mine and ran but I lost sight of her.

I stood still. The trees were thicker here and I was in a small copse.

I was not sure which way I had entered it and as I had no idea in which direction Genevieve had gone I felt suddenly lost. It was one of those moments such as I had experienced in the gallery when I had been unable to open the door. A strange feeling as though panic were knocking, gently as yet, on my mind.

How absurd to feel so in broad daylight! The girl was tricking me. She had not changed. She had deluded me into thinking that she was sorry; her conversation had almost amounted to a cry for help and it was all a game, a pretence.

Then I heard her calling: “Miss! Miss, where are you? This way.”

“I’m coming,” I said and went in the direction of her voice.

She appeared among the trees.

“I thought I’d lost you.” She took my hand as though she feared I would escape from her and we went on until after a short time the trees were less thick and then stopped abruptly. Before us was an open space in which the grasses grew long.

I saw at once that the monuments erected there were to the dead and guessed we were in the graveyard of the de la Talles.

I understood. Her mother was dead. She was going to show me where she was buried. And she called this introducing me to her mother.

I felt shocked and a little alarmed. She was indeed a strange girl.

“All the de la Talles come here when they die,” she said solemnly.

“But I often come here too.”

“Your mother is dead?”

“Come, I’ll show you where she is.”

She drew me through the long grass to an ornate monument. It was like a small house and on top of it was a beautifully sculptured group of angels holding a large marble book, on which was engraved the name of the person who was buried there.

“Look,” she said, ‘there’s her name. “

I looked. The name on the book was Francoise, Comtesse de la Talk, aged thirty years. I looked at the date. It was three years ago.

So the girl had been eleven years old when her mother died.

“I come down often,” she said, ‘to be with her. I talk to her. I like it. It’s so quiet. “

“You shouldn’t come,” I said gently.

“Not alone.”

“I like to come alone. But I wanted you to meet her.”

I don’t know what prompted me to say it but I blurted out: “Does your father come?”

“He never does. He wouldn’t want to be with her. He didn’t want to before. So why should he now?”

“How can you know what he would like?”

“Oh, I do know. Besides, it’s because he wanted her to be here that she’s here now. He always gets what he wants, you know. He didn’t want her.”

“I don’t think you understand.”

“Oh, yes, I do.” Her eyes flashed.

“It’s you who don’t understand. How could you? You’ve only just come. I know he didn’t want her. That was why he murdered her.”

I could find nothing to say. I could only look at the girl in horror.

But she seemed unaware of me as now she laid her hands lovingly on those marble slabs.

The stillness all around me; the warmth of the sun; the sight of those mausoleums which housed the bones of long dead de la Talles. It was macabre; it was fantastic. My instincts warned me to get away from the house; but even as I stood there I knew that I would stay if I could and that there was more to fascinate me in Chateau Gaillard than the paintings I loved.

It was my second day at the Chateau Gaillard. I had not been able to sleep during the night, mainly because the scene in the graveyard had so startled me that I could not get it out of my mind.

We had walked slowly back to the chateau and I had told her that she must not say such things of her father; she had listened to me quietly and made no comment; but I would never forget the quiet certainty in her voice when she had said: “He murdered her.”

It was gossip, of course. Where had she heard it? It must be from someone in the house. Could it be the nurse? Poor child! How terrible for her! All my animosity towards her had disappeared. I felt I wanted to know more of her life, what her mother had been like, how those terrible suspicions had been planted in her mind.

But the matter made me very uneasy.

I had eaten a lonely dinner in my room and had gone through the notes I had made; then I tried to read a novel. The evening seemed long; and I wondered whether this was the life I should be expected to lead if I was allowed to stay on. In other great houses we had had our meals with the managers of the estates and sometimes with the families themselves. I had never before felt so lonely when working. But of course I must remember that I was not yet accepted; this was necessarily a period of waiting.