The room was like a prison cell. I knew instinctively that it was a prison cell.
I felt an impulse to shut the door and hurry away; but curiosity was too strong. I entered the room. What was this house? I asked myself.
Was it conducted like a monastery, a convent? I knew that Genevieve’s grandfather regretted he had not become a monk. The ‘treasure’ in the chest explained that-a monk’s robe was his dearest possession. I had learned that from the first of Francoise’s notebooks. And the whip? Had he scourged himself. or his wife and daughter?
And who had lived here? In this room someone had awakened every morning to that barred window; those bleak walls, to this austerity.
Had he or she desired it? Or. I noticed the scratching on the distempered walls. I looked closer.
“Honorine,” I read, ‘the prisoner. “
So I was right. It was a prison. Here she had been detained against her will. She was like those people who had lived in the dungeons at the chateau.
I heard the sound of slow padding steps on the stairs. I stood very still waiting. Those were not Genevieve’s steps.
Someone was on the other side of the door. I heard distinctly the sound of breathing, and went swiftly to the door and pulled it open.
The woman looked at me with wide incredulous eyes.
“Mademoiselle!” she cried.
“I was looking for Genevieve, Madame Labisse,” I told her.
“I heard someone up here. I wondered … You are wanted downstairs.
The end is very near. “
“And Genevieve?”
“I believe she is hiding in the garden.”
“It is understandable,” I said.
“The young do not wish to look on death. I thought I might find her in the nurseries, which I guessed would be up here.”
“The nurseries are on the lower floor.”
“And this …?” I began.
“This was Mademoiselle Genevieve’s grandmother’s room.”
I looked up at the barred window.
“I looked after her until she died,” said Madame Labisse.
“She was very ill?”
Madame Labisse nodded coldly. I was too inquisitive, she seemed to be telling me. In the past she had not given secrets away for she was paid well to keep them; and she was not going to jeopardize her future by betraying them now.
She was right; Genevieve was hiding in the garden. It was only after her grandfather was dead that she returned to the house.
The family went over to Carrefour for the funeral, which was, I heard, carried out with the pomp usual on such occasions. I stayed behind.
Nounou did not go either; she had one of her headaches, she said, and when she had one of them she was fit for nothing but her own bed. I guessed the occasion would have aroused too many painful memories for her.
Genevieve went over in the carriage with her father, Philippe and Claude; and when they had left I went along to see Nounou.
I found her, as I expected, not in bed; and I asked if I could stay and talk with her awhile.
She replied that she would be glad of my company, so I made coffee and we sat together.
The subject of Carrefour and the past was one which both fascinated and frightened her, and she was half-evasive, half eager.
“I don’t think Genevieve wanted to go to the funeral,” I said.
She shook her head.
“I wish she need not have gone.”
“But it was expected of her. She is growing up-scarcely a child any more. How do you think she is? Less inclined to tantrums? More calm?”
“She was always calm enough …” lied Nounou.
I looked at her sadly and she looked sadly back. I wanted to tell her that we should get nowhere by pretence.
“When I was last at the house I saw her grandmother’s room. It was very strange. It was like a prison. And she felt it too.”
“How can you know?” she demanded.
“Because she said so.”
Her eyes were round with horror.
“She … told you … How …”
I shook my head.
“She did not return from the dead, if that’s what you’re thinking. She wrote on the wall that she was a prisoner. I saw it, ” Honorine, the prisoner. ” Was she a prisoner? You would know. You were there.”
“She was ill. She had to stay in her room.”
“What a strange room for an invalid … right at the top of the house. It must have made a lot of work for the servants . carrying to her up there. “
“You are very practical, miss. You think of such things.”
“I should think the servants thought of it, too. But why should she think of herself as a prisoner? Wasn’t she allowed to go out?”
“She was ill.”
“Invalids are not prisoners. Nounou, tell me about it. I feel it’s important… to Genevieve, perhaps.”
“How could it be? What are you driving at, miss?”
“To understand would enable me to help. I want to help Genevieve. I want to make her happy. She’s had an unusual upbringing. That place where her mother lived and then this castle … and everything that happened. You must see that all that could affect a child… an impressionable, highly-strung child. I want you to help me to help her.”
“I would do anything in the world to help her.”
“Please tell me all you know, Nounou.”
“But I know nothing … nothing …”
“But Francoise wrote in her notebooks, didn’t she? You haven’t shown them all to me.”
“She didn’t intend anyone to see them.”
“Nounou … there are others, aren’t there … more revealing .. ?”
She sighed, and taking the key from the chain at her waist she unlocked her cupboard.
She selected a notebook and gave it to me. I noticed from where she took it. There was another there the last in the line and I hoped that she would give me that too. But she didn’t.
“Take it away and read it,” she said.
“And bring it straight back to me. Promise you’ll show no one else and bring it straight back.”
I promised.
This was different. This was the woman in great fear. She
was afraid of her husband. As I read I could not rid myself of the feeling that I was spying into the mind and heart of a dead woman. But he was concerned in this. What would he think of me if he knew what I was doing?
Yet I must read on. With every day I spent in the chateau it was becoming more and more important for me to know the truth.
“I lay in bed last night praying that he would not come to me. Once I thought I heard his steps, but it was only Nounou. She knows how I feel. She hovers … praying with me, I know. I am afraid of him. He knows it. He cannot understand why. Other women as so fond of him.
Only I am afraid. “
“I saw Papa today. He looked at me as he often does, as though he would look deep into my mind, as though he is trying to discover every moment of my life … but mostly that.
“How is your husband?” he says to me. And I stammer and blush for I know what he is thinking. He said: “There are other women, I have heard.” And I did not answer. He seemed pleased that there were.
“The devil will take care of him for God will not,” he said. Yet he seems pleased that there are other women and I know why. Anything is preferable to my being sullied. “
“Nounou prowls about. She is very frightened. I am so frightened of the nights. I find it so hard to get to sleep. Then I awake startled and fancy someone has come into the room. It’s an unnatural marriage.
I wish I were a little girl again playing in the nursery. The best time was before Papa showed me the treasure in the trunk . before Maman died. I wish I didn’t have to grow up. But then of course I should never have had Genevieve. “