Siri Mitchell - Chateau of Echoes

The light went out in the woman’s eyes and she extended a slender jeweled hand toward me. “Please. Call me Sophie.”

Surprised at her informality, I took her hand and shook it.

We walked, at a slow pace, up the central staircase, and I gave myself credit for having placed them in a room on the first floor near the stairs. I made sure they knew where the bathroom was and asked if they required anything.

Sophie walked me to the door saying, “We require nothing.”

I’d never been brushed off so politely.

They came down to dinner late that evening. Both had changed into more formal clothing. M. Duroc was wearing an honest-to-goodness tuxedo, and she was wearing a backless floor-length gown.

They spent four hours on dinner: foie gras on toasted brioche with Sauternes, Coquilles St. Jacques , scallops, filet mignon de porc with mushrooms and steamed green beans, and a gâteau aux trois chocolats .

Sévérine sat with Cranwell and me in between serving courses. At one point she came back down in the middle of a conversation Cranwell and I were having.

“I haven’t seen it that often,” I told him.

“It’s not so rare.” Cranwell shoved up the sleeves of his butter cream cotton sweater.

“Maybe between an eighty-year-old man and a thirty-year old woman, but not with a pair of eighty-year-olds.”

Cranwell scoffed at me. “You just haven’t been to Florida lately. Happens all the time.”

I whipped his plate away from him, meaning to carry it to the sink.

“Do you mind?”

“Sorry. You weren’t done?” I placed it squarely back on the island in front of him.

“No.” He reached for the remaining baguette that rested between us, tore off a piece, and began sopping up the mustard sauce from the rabbit we had been eating.

“Honestly, Freddie, love can come at any age.”

“I know…” I just hadn’t seen a love so passionate. At any age. Not in a long time.

Sévérine perched herself on a stool beside Cranwell and tore off a piece of baguette for herself. She began to run her bread around the rim of Cranwell’s plate. Her hand bumped into his. She let a tiny giggle escape and smiled into his eyes when he looked over at her.

He dug an elbow into her side. And winked at her. Then addressed his next comment to me. “Freddie, you’re the one who insists King Arthur’s nationality was French.”

“Breton.”

The glance Cranwell sent me let me know he’d been teasing. “The love story between King Arthur and Guinevere is a classic. Passion that’s withstood the passing of centuries.”

“But they weren’t really in love, were they?” I was unclear about the finer details of Arthurian legend, but I knew someone who had believed in fairy tales. I looked at Sévérine, raised an eyebrow and tilted my head in Cranwell’s direction.

She finished chewing her bread. Sighed. “It is difficult, the legends of King Arthur and what is known about his relationship with the queen. The knowledge expands through the centuries of the Middle Ages, and this is the reverse of what we expect during this time period. So what is true, and what is a tale? It must depend on the writer and on the nationality Guinevere is given.”

“What nationalities has she had?”

“Roman, Welsh, Celtic, British. She is like Mariamne, the symbol of the French Revolution; her attributes change according to the decade.”

“So she’s a symbol, not a person?”

“In some ways. She is a symbol of the changing thoughts of women. In any case, we know Guinevere to have been the focus of the attentions of many different men. Whether this is because she is abducted against her decision or because she chooses to run away, it is difficult to say. But always, she is married to Arthur, a man she respects but does not love. And always she is in love with someone she can never have. And this passionate but chaste affair of the heart destroys the finest kingdom on Earth. That is the tale of King Arthur and his Queen.” Sévérine picked up her new tray and headed toward the stairs.

“Thanks. You seem to know as much about Arthur as you do about Alix.”

Sévérine paused, and then turned, her face hidden in the shadows. “I learned these stories on the knee of my father as a child.”

Pulling up the neck of my angel blue angora turtleneck, I rolled my eyes as I went to portion out dessert. Cranwell and Sévérine may have been having a fling, but it was not the same thing. I was right, and I knew it. A love as passionate as the Durocs’ was rare.

T he next morning after they had finished breakfast, the Durocs decided to go for a walk. They asked me where they might go, and I directed them down the drive and toward the path I’d made during my jogs through the forest.

They went upstairs to retrieve their coats and then came back arm in arm. Sophie paused as they walked down the front steps to tie an Hermès scarf around her head and pull on delicate leather gloves.

Though I meant to push the door closed behind them, I stopped halfway and leaned against the doorjamb. I hadn’t meant to, but I sighed as I watched them walk arm in arm down the drive. A shiver overcame me, and I wished I’d thrown my cardigan on over my tank top.

Cranwell and Lucy had come up behind me, ready to start their own morning walk, but Cranwell stopped to watch the Durocs with me. It looked as if he were prepared for some serious tramping, wearing wide-wale brown corduroys and an olive barn jacket.

“You know they’re not married, don’t you?”

“Cranwell!”

“They’re not.”

“Of course they are.”

“They are not.”

I watched as Sophie picked her way across the gravel, careful not to scuff her high-heeled shoes.

“Cranwell, that’s blasphemous. You just automatically assume the worst about everyone.”

“Bet?”

He stuck out his hand, and I gripped it with mine. “What’s your bet?”

“I win, you go with me to the Pointe du Raz.”

Pointe du Raz? The rock-strewn westernmost tip of France at the opposite end of Brittany. It was a bit too far away to be labeled a day trip, but then I wasn’t planning on losing.

“I win, you prep my garden for spring. Deal?”

“Deal.”

We shook on it and then turned back to the couple, watching as they swayed down the drive, blurred into the forest, and disappeared.

That evening when they appeared in the dining room for dinner, Cranwell was building a fire for me. As before, Sophie was wearing a stunning gown.

M. Duroc pulled her chair out. As she moved to sit in it, her hand fluttered to her throat. “ Le collier. J’ai ‘oublié .” She’d forgotten to put on her necklace.

“ Ça ne fait rien, ma biche .”

She moved away from the chair and toward the entrance to the dining hall. “ Un petit moment .”

“ Laisse-le .”

“ Un instant .”

We all watched her glide across the room.

“Your wife is an extraordinary woman.” Cranwell said what the three of us were thinking.

M. Duroc inclined his head. After a moment he spoke. “She is not my wife.”

Cranwell could have turned in that instant and smirked at me, but to his credit he didn’t.

The old man’s lips lifted in an ironic twist. “It is not that I have not asked. We encountered each other when we were eighteen. I knew within a week that I must marry her. We both did. But she was Jewish, and I was not, and so we needed time. To convince our families. That was 1939.”

M. Duroc sighed and played with his watch. “We should not have cared so much for what other people thought. We waited, but we waited too long. The next year, our government began collaborating with Germany. I begged Sophie to marry me so that I could protect her. My family was prominent in Paris; she would have been safe. But she refused. She was afraid she would ruin me. And then after the war, still she refused. She claimed there were too many who were anti-Semitic. She would not marry me, yet she picked my wife for me. I agree with you. Sophie is an extraordinary woman. And she is not my maîtresse ; she is the owner of my heart.”