Siri Mitchell - Chateau of Echoes

It was such a violent movement that it practically threw me on top of him, but it did have the result of avoiding a collision with an oncoming truck. The road had made a tight turn to the right while Cranwell had been distracted.

“I’m sorry, Freddie,” he said, once he’d yanked the steering wheel back to the left to avoid sending us sailing into the ditch. “You have to stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Propositioning me.”

“Prop-?” My face immediately flamed, but then I remembered what men of his type are like. They flirt with everyone. “Cranwell, if I ever proposition you, you’ll know it.”

He turned to grin at me. “My mistake.”

“Drive.”

Cranwell accompanied me to the grocery store, and after that, he insisted I accompany him into the historic center of Dinan. I didn’t protest too much. Dinan is a charming town with the oldest network of ramparts in Brittany. We drove, as closely as possible, around the walls so that Cranwell could get a good look at the dimensions of the medieval city.

We stopped at St. Sauveur, leaving the car to take a look inside the basilica. Then we drove up and down the more touristy streets, filled with old half-timbered and stone houses. I pointed out the missile-shaped Tour de l’Horloge, the clock tower that postdated Alix by half a century. It was Thursday, so we ate lunch at Place Duguesclin market, picking up rillettes sandwiches and Cokes. Then we decided to tour the rest of the city on foot. After passing several old convents, another church, city hall, and the municipal library, we walked through the old commerce streets where fishmongers, iron workers, tailors, and other merchants had hawked their wares in Alix’s time.

Cranwell was forever asking me to translate the historic signs fixed to buildings or perched on poles in the middle of the sidewalks. He wanted to make sure he didn’t write about things not present in Alix’s era.

Finally, we paid an entrance fee to the Maison du Gouverneur to see exactly what the inside of a fifteenth-century half-timbered house had been like. They also had a good collection of regional furniture on display that Cranwell took some time to sketch.

By five that afternoon, he’d seen what he’d come for and had nearly scribbled through his notebook noting his impressions, so we decided to walk to a nearby restaurant and then head home.

“I’m low on gas,” he commented as he started the car. “Should I get some before we leave?”

“It’s only about 75 kilometers.”

Cranwell gunned the engine and we peeled out of the parking garage. “We should be fine.”

With night falling, I decided to direct Cranwell to take a slightly larger road. While less picturesque, it wound through fewer towns and should have been an easier drive. At least it was a beautiful drive. Twilight had always been my favorite time of day, and that evening, the trees seemed to lengthen, then loom. In the stretching shadows, their silhouettes formed a tunnel over the road.

At one point, it looked as if there were a board lying in our lane up ahead. Cranwell must have seen it also, because he slowed the approach of the car. But he didn’t steer around it, he drove right over it. He must have been thinking about our near-miss that morning. And that was his mistake. The moment he hit it, the car seemed to deflate.

Cranwell pulled the car off onto the narrow shoulder and got out to inspect the damage, slowly walking around the vehicle. I saw his mouth moving, although I couldn’t hear any words. Then he hiked back down the road. Turning in the seat, I could see him pick up the board and examine it. Then he flung it into the trees.

When he got back into the car, he slammed the door shut. And as he turned to me, I could tell from the flint in his eyes that the news was not good. “Do you have a cell phone?”

“No.”

“All four tires are flat. That board must have had about fifteen nails sticking out of it.”

I wasn’t prepared for that. If winter days were mild in Brittany, the nights could kill. It’s not that they were frigid, but they were damp, and if you didn’t keep moving, if you didn’t keep your blood circulating, you could get hypothermia.

“Where exactly are we?”

“We passed Montauban about fifteen minutes ago.” At least I remembered that much. And I remembered more. “The next town, Iffendic, isn’t for another six kilometers.” We really were in the middle of nowhere. “I’ve seen police on this road before. They may patrol it. I think waiting here, inside, is safer than leaving. Besides, we’ll stay warm for a while.”

“Agreed.” In turning on the ignition briefly, he glanced at the gas gauge. His eyes grew wide.

“Isn’t it two kilometers to the mile?”

“Roughly. It’s actually 1.6.”

“I miscalculated. I’m sorry, Freddie.”

“Are we low?”

“Past empty… I probably drove too fast.”

No “probably” about it. He’d definitely driven too fast.

“I can’t leave the engine on, but we can have some heat for a few minutes at least.”

He turned the heat on full and moved his seat back and down, then he stretched out his legs, cracked his knuckles, and folded his arms under his head. “So what do you want to talk about?”

The warmth from the car’s heater didn’t last long. An hour later, I had drawn my legs up onto my seat and had my arms slung around them. I remembered from some water safety course I’d taken in junior high that this modified fetal position helped to trap body heat.

He turned the car back on for about fifteen minutes to restore the heat. It felt good, but with all the layers that encased my body, I began to sweat.

“Do you want my jacket?” Cranwell leaned toward me and reached an arm behind my seat for it.

In spite of seeing me shake my head, he kept looking, and when he fished it out, he made me wear it.

“Don’t you want it?” I figured he should have dibs if he needed it.

It was as if he were dressing a child. He guided one of my arms into a sleeve and then the other. “I’m fine, Freddie. I dressed for the weather.”

He was right, but I frowned at him anyway.

“Don’t scowl at me.” He reached through my leather jacket and began to unwind the scarf from my neck.

Closing my hands over his, I tried to stop him.

He gently disengaged them. “If you tie this over your head, it will keep you warmer.”

He was right, so I let him wrap the scarf, Grace Kelly-style, over my head and around my neck.

“Just call me babushka.”

“Or we could braid your hair and call you Gretel.”

When he said that, I knew that I must have looked about twelve years old. It was the curse of my round face and my big round blue eyes. The freckles scattered lightly over my nose didn’t help any.

“What were we talking about, Cranwell?”

He went back to his side of the car and stretched out like before, but folded his arms across his stomach. “What was it like? With Peter?”

“In the beginning, it was wonderful. It was what I’d dreamed. Toward the end, his job had begun to devour him. He wasn’t there, physically or emotionally. His mind was always on his job, but we couldn’t talk about it. It was the only way he could protect me.”

“And by protecting you, he pushed you away.”

“Basically.” My temperature was beginning to moderate, and I was no longer sweating. “But I wasn’t going to let him push me far. He was an honorable man, a decent man. I was in love with him. And I respected him. We just had one more month, and then we would have moved on, started over again. Whatever had burdened him would have been left behind. I was not unhappy being married to him.” It was important to me that Cranwell understand.