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‘You seem melancholy today, Genevieve,’ he says to her, as he always does.
‘I am well enough,’ she replies, as she always does.
His smile falters, betraying displeasure; but he permits her to leave. He knows that if he pushes her, she will make her excuses and return to bed. A day in bed, for Genevieve, is another day failed. Another reminder of how little she has progressed since she arrived.
Genevieve walks slowly back down the path, pauses to step over a slug squelching mournfully over the cobblestones. In spring the garden roars to life, both gorgeous and ugly, dens of rats and murmurations of swallows. The bright and the brown, the rain and the sunlight. This is supposed to be her favourite season.
The season when France feels the farthest away.
Genevieve returns to her bench. She puts the striker down and flips the paper over. Holding her pencil in her hands, she chews her lip. My heart’s desire. My heart’s desire.
She writes, in all capitals: TO FORGET CLAIRE MARCHAND.
The paper lights quickly. It produces smoke in a strange, pale colour, closer to fog than ashes. Genevieve holds the invitation over the grass until the flame grows near enough to burn, then drops it. She stamps at the final embers to ensure the lawn does not catch.
The first day of Floréal. She does some brief calculations in her head—that is two weeks from now, is it not? It would be a great undertaking to reach southern France by then, one her grandfather would never permit. This was only a fancy, then, as she had suspected; and one that she has gladly indulged. She is glad for a moment of distraction. She is grateful to whoever sent the letter to her, liar or no.
Genevieve thinks: It must be a lie. Mustn’t it?
But Genevieve also thinks:
What if it is not?
Leander Sterne,
Reverie and Sons
Humbly request your attendance at
THE AUCTION OF SECRETS
Upon the first day of Floréal, year III of the Republic
At Château Reverie, the Commune of Saint-Yvanne, Basses-Alpes
Reward beyond your wildest imaginings; your deepest desires fulfilled; for the price of honesty, all but death may be undone.
Should you wish to attend, please inscribe your heart’s desire upon the obverse of this paper and burn it so the ashes fall upon the soil.
He finds the letter in his pocket, as if he has been carrying it all along. Perhaps he has. The paper is heavy cream, faintly textured, and scented with lilies; the wax seal is a violent red, imprinted with a pattern of intertwined vines. When Leander presses the letter closer to his nose, the lily scent becomes metallic, iron dark. The wax seal begins to soften and drip. He doesn’t know whose blood was used to make it. He doesn’t care to ask.
Leander Sterne reads the letter and laughs, because he cannot remember how to weep. He laughs as he takes up the pen he has stolen from his brother’s desk and inscribes his wish upon the paper. He laughs as he writes the word LIBERTY with the scrawling, uncertain lettering of one who isn’t certain if he is left- or right-handed.
Leander Sterne doesn’t know who he is. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is his success. All that matters is his freedom.
Liberty, he thinks, as he traces the Château’s corridors, the floors warm and breathing beneath his boots, the windows misted over as if the building is in tears.
Liberty, he thinks, as he stands out in the sunlight. He holds the letter up to a false sun, his mother’s brightest eye, and the paper glows with light.
‘Liberty,’ he says, as it catches flame.
Primidi
1 FLORéAL, 1795
Two
Saint-Yvanne is perched perilously high atop the Alps, at such an acute angle from the ground it seems it might detach itself at any moment and skip like a pebble down the mountain. Its grey-stone buildings gaze down upon a vast valley, through which the river Ubaye carves a cascade of foam. Even from this distance, the air is so thin and clear that Genevieve can see the green trees that line the river’s banks, trembling in the wind as if they fear the fierce tumble of the water.
