Signe had said that there was such a thing as too much of a good thing. Well, when she got back to Paris, she was going to shove those words back down his throat. She was getting too much a vacation. Everything seemed too relaxed. So relaxed that she felt like a tightly wound coil about to go off at any moment. Aside from her jaunt to the village the previous day, she had done absolutely nothing. The astronomers were too busy with their work. The servants were working. She couldn’t even do any adequate snooping—as the bedroom that used to be Legard’s had been locked back up.
“Are you sure you can’t take off today?” Haidée whined as she paced near the back door of the observatory’s kitchen in short, restless strides. In her hand was a bottle of tonic.
Colette shook her head as she finished packing the luncheon basket that she had requested. “I’m sorry, Mademoiselle. I must work.” Then the mousey maid furtively glanced back at the cook who was on the other side of the room stirring a pot on the oven. The cook was a large, heavy-set woman who wore voluminous muslin skirts and a white cap over wiry hair. “Madame Boulanger would be livid if I took off without prior notice.”
The maid wasn’t much of a talker, but Haidée was desperate for some companionship. “Madame Boulanger works you too hard.”
“No, not that much. She is simply very strict.”
“And I am too liberal, is that it?” The maid seemed surprised at her edgy tone. At her expression, Haidée stopped. “I apologize, Colette. Eight o’clock is too early for me. Even my medication wasn’t sufficient to completely awaken me.”
“No one asked you to wake at an hour that you are not accustomed to, Mademoiselle.”
Haidée was silent at that remark. She felt that it would be too strange for her to admit aloud to her reasons for getting up early. Colette might think her mad or obsessed. Instead, she stuffed her tonic bottle into the basket when the maid had finished putting everything into it and then tucked the basket handle onto the crook of her arm.
“Will you be back for dinner?” Colette finally asked.
She paused before putting her hand on the knob of the kitchen’s back door. She turned her head slightly to look at the maid and then the cook. Madame Boulanger had paused in her stirring and had ambled over to ponder a spice rack. Haidée wasn’t fooled. “I will be back before dinner,” she said loudly. “And judging from the weather when I looked out the window earlier, I would very much appreciate it if there were some cold hors d’oeuvres for the evening meal.”
“Mademoiselle!” Colette whispered horrified. “You know Madame Boulanger despises unwanted visitors. She’s going to make the exact opposite as you say.”
Haidée winked at her before opening the door and taking a step through the threshold. “That’s exactly what I’m counting on, my dear Colette.”
Outside, the wind was brisk and cool, but the sky was far lighter than the previous days. It was a deep turquoise blue and the clouds overhead were fluffy bits of meringue, swiftly dusting across the horizon with the breeze. Haidée was glad that she had chosen a much stiffer coat to put on over her walking dress—this one was done in a severe military style, long and black with shiny brass buttons. She chose to wear a pair of black boots as well as a matching bonnet over her head. The loose and curling red-brown locks flowing out from beneath the bonnet meant that she had decided not to wear the wig. Which was just as well, she had reasoned when she had gotten dressed. She was taking a walk outside, alone, and no one at the observatory seemed to particularly care about what she had on her head.
Opposite to the main path that connected the observatory to the village was another smaller dirt path that wound around the observatory’s back garden and out over to the edge of the island. Haidée set out on a sedate pace, walking a bit first and then stopping beside a shrub of roses or a patch of herbs to simply take things in, to idle, and to empty her mind of anxieties.
Past the garden gate, the path meandered around a long strand of trees crowned in bright red and gold leaves. The wind occasionally managed to tug a few into the air, making them land onto the still green grass like copper coins in a wishing well. Haidée was reminded of a gypsy woman who had briefly taken her in shortly after the death of her mother. Madam Zéphyrine was an unusually sedate example of her kind—she dressed and acted like a seasoned matron. But there had been a hint of other to her. Perhaps it was the tilt of her eyes or her very faint, unplaced accent. And then there had been her bracelet, worn golden discs hooked together by a fine gold chain. She had been about twelve—still a child—and somehow, the combination of a matron’s appearance yet the faint odd air made Madam Zéphyrine all the more appealing.
She had asked her once about her bracelet, and the gypsy woman had merely given her a mysterious smile. “You could say it is an heirloom,” Zéphyrine had replied. Other than that, she had not explained.
But that didn’t mean that she was always stingy with her knowledge. There had been a day similar to the autumn day she was currently enjoying, nearing the end of October. The gypsy woman had taken the day off from her customary stitching work and was puttering around her house with a jar of blue paint and a brush. She had been touching up on some odd geometric designs that were painted in the doorways, around the windows, and even on the lintel on top of the hearth fireplace.
“Is this a traditional design of the gypsies?” she had asked.
“No, child.” Zéphyrine had been sitting on the chair, concentrating on a swirling pattern underneath one of the windows in the sitting room. “The origins of these marks are much older. Perhaps even older than the oldest histories. Every year, before All Souls’ Day, I renew them. They have a kind of power to keep certain things away.”
“Are they like the bells on the dressmaker’s that keep the ghosts out?” she had asked, not understanding.
The gypsy woman had laughed. “No, not like that.”
There were small schools, even in Paris, that catered toward wealthy and talented young men who were curious about learning “the nature of the world.” The intellectuals mostly ignored them, thinking that they were nothing more than places where one learned parlor tricks and games. But when there had been kings, it was an undisputed fact that these small schools held an appreciable amount of power over the nobles. Soothsayers and oracles had enjoyed high esteem before the Revolution. Outside of those schools, there were the solitary practitioners—who were also always known to be men.
When Zéphyrine had begun to teach her, Haidée quickly realized that she was not learning the typical old wives’ folklore. But one couldn’t tell just anyone that a spark could be generated out of thin air or that one could make a bird fly backwards if one had the proper tools and the proper words at one’s disposal. And then, when she had departed from the gypsy woman’s care, she had worked hard to hide what she had learned.
But then she had started getting the headaches and the visions. She wondered, briefly, if this skill of hers was not merely a skill but a part of her—like breathing. If she didn’t exercise herself, she might inadvertently stifle herself.
At that thought, she shook her head. How silly! She didn’t need to exercise that particular skill to survive. No one wanted a woman who could start a bonfire with just a line in the sand. She was finally nearing the end of the small bit of woods. Beyond, she could see the edge of the island that would drop off in sheer cliffs into the sea. The path itself wound along the edge and towards a low stone wall that separated the relatively flat grassy part of the island with the downward slope of the hill that led into a small bit of farmland. She stopped by one of the last trees and sat down on a nearby flat stone for a brief break. Haidée set her basket down and took off the cloth covering the contents—intent on getting her bottle of tonic for a fortifying sip.
But before she could reach in to get the bottle, a furry brown head with shiny black eyes poked out of the basket with a biscuit in its mouth.
Haidée shrieked and ignominiously tumbled off of her stone seat.