Chris Karlsen - Knights in Time (22 page)

“Here it comes.” Marchand faked a loud sneeze, his nose dipping into his palms. “Oh my,

what is this?” He opened one palm to expose a two-cent euro. “Behold.”

Mirielle squealed and clapped in delight. “Your nose made a coin. Do it again.”

He faked another sneeze that produced another two-cent coin. “Let’s see if your nose

makes coins,” he said. “Take a big breath.” She did. “Bigger.” Her little chest expanded, filling out her Whinnie the Pooh tee shirt. “Now, sneeze as hard as you can.” She did and then immediately

pried his fingers open.

“Look, momma. I sneezed a coin too.” Mirielle hopped in a circle, stopping when she

faced Marchand again. She eyed his coins and then raised those bright eyes to his.

“I have no use for such small coin. I think I shall throw them out. I must look for a trash

can,” he said as he stood.

“No,” Mirielle cried and clasped her small hand around as much of his as she could. “May

I have them, please?”

“Such a face, how can I resist?” Marchand dropped the two coins in her hand, “Of

course.” To Veronique he said, “I’d like to go to Honfleur now.”

#

“Where exactly do you want to go? I’ll try to park close,” Veronique said as they entered

the city limits.

“I wish to visit a chateau that used to be here. You can put me off anywhere. I can walk,”

Marchand said.

“Going to see a chateau sounds fun. Direct me there. If you don’t mind, Mirielle and I

would love to see it too.”

The narrow cobbled streets that existed in his time hadn’t changed terribly much. Half-

timbered dwellings shared living space with houses and shops of aged stone. Many new streets

were added to the old, making a hodge-podge of the village he knew, not to mention the traffic. All of which might’ve thrown him but once they turned onto the road that paralleled the harbor, he

saw his home high on the hill.

“There it is.” He pointed the castle out to her. Veronique ducked her head and peered up

through the windshield.

“Now that I see it, I know how to get up there.” She wove her way through the winding

streets to the intersection with the chateau’s road.

“No. No. This cannot be,” he said when they pulled up to where his gate and outer wall

once stood. In their place was a massive courtyard with a circular gravel drive and shrubbery cut to resemble animals.

Veronique parked off to the side next to several other cars.

Marchand got out as soon as she’d stopped and headed towards the front door. A brass

plaque next to the walkway that led to the entrance read, Hotel Oberon.

“Wait for us, Roger,” Veronique called to him.

Fixed on the sign, he asked, “What is this? Hotel Oberon, what does this mean?”

“I don’t understand the question. That’s the name of this place. It looks beautiful. Let’s go

inside.”

Veronique took Mirielle by the hand and the three entered what was Marchand’s great

hall. Now they’d filled it with gilded furniture of silk brocade and velvet. Vases of flowers sat on small tables that were useless for any real purpose in his opinion and scattered around the room.

“May I help you?” asked a bespectacled man with thinning hair and stood behind a marble

topped desk.

“Oberon, where does this name come from?” Marchand asked.

“It’s the name of the last family who owned the chateau. The Soliel Chain owns it now but

chose to keep the family name.”

“What about the original family, the one that built the chateau?”

“This is a brochure with the history of the building and area.” He pulled a folded paper

from the desk drawer and offered it to Marchand. “Are you interested in a room, sir?”

“Not at the moment,” he said and skimmed the paper.

The brochure said nothing of his family, no mention of their name. It spoke of a hunting

lodge being the first building on the land, which was true. His great-great grandfather on his

mother’s side, Gerard Perrault, had it constructed. But his grandfather, a Marchand, made it into a grand chateau. Apparently, an aristocratic family named Oberon owned it during the Renaissance

and up until the Revolution, when they were condemned and executed. Afterward, it had various

occupants but no real owners.

Angered by the lack of information pertaining to his family, the reference to a renaissance

followed by a revolution also puzzled him. Renaissance? What rebirth had France gone through?

What revolution? When did the revolution occur? From what he’d seen, France wasn’t suffering

the chaos an uprising creates. He’d try to find out more about both on his own, without directly questioning anyone if possible. Many of his questions led to people calling him crackers

“Let me know if I can assist you in anyway,” the man behind the desk said and returned to

his paperwork.

“I’d like to walk around the grounds if possible,” Marchand said.

“Feel free. You’ll find our gardens magnificent and the sea vista in the rear is

remarkable.”

“We’ll catch up. I have to take Mirielle to the bathroom first,” Veronique said.

As he walked to where the stables, the kennels, and the barracks stood, he saw nothing

remained except the main structure they called a hotel. They’d turned his home into a house for strangers.

A path led to the garden that overlooked the water and the rocky cliff the chateau was

built upon. Marchand followed it and when he found the exact spot he wanted, he sat on a stone

bench behind a glass safety wall waist high. An invisible fist clamped around his heart. He closed his eyes as his chest tightened and memories flooded back. Events sharp as the day they occurred rolled through his mind. Torment filled minutes passed. When he heard Mirielle’s laughter, he

opened his eyes, turned his head and dragged the back of his hand across his eyes.

“We’ve been looking for you,” Veronique said and joined him on the bench. “Lovely view

isn’t it?”

The water view didn’t hold his attention only the rocks below.

“Roger?” Veronique ducked her head to get a better look at his face. “Is something

wrong?”

Marchand glanced to see where Mirielle was and saw she played on the grass with a doll

Veronique brought.

Turning back to the rocks, he said, “I was remembering a small boy who fell to his death

here a long time ago.”

“Did you see it happen?”

“No, but I saw his body. He was my son.”

One hand went to her chest, the other to his leg. “I am so sorry. How awful for you. Do

you want to talk about it?”

Did he? He’d never spoken of it, not even with his wife who wailed alone in her chamber.

The few times they saw each other after, she kept her distance and her silence with him. His

friends at the time waited in vain for him to broach the subject of his child’s death. But empty of the courage to do so, he could not. The servants feared to speak.

The nightmare was as fresh in his memory as the day it happened. In the early morning

hours on that tragic day, his son’s nurse beat on his chamber door. She’d awoken to find the

child’s crib empty. A massive search ensued. Marchand searched the woods on horseback to no

avail and returned to search a different area. As he rode into his bailey, he saw one of his knights approaching, his son’s lifeless body in the man’s arms.

“No. No.” To his ears, the painful cry sounded like someone else’s. He jumped from his

mount, took his son from his friend, and brought the tiny boy to his chamber. Rocking back and

forth, he cradled him to his chest. Hours passed before he granted the priest entry to prepare the body for burial.

Perhaps it was time he found the strength to speak.

“He was but two summers, fair-haired, like me, with his mother’s blue eyes. A sturdy little

fellow, had he lived, he’d have had my build. It was in the midst of summer. Window shutters

were left open to allow for the cool sea breeze. My boy awakened in the night and climbed from

his crib without his nurse hearing. A curious child and filled with energy, he crawled into the window embrasure.” Marchand twisted to indicate a tall window on the hotel’s third floor. “That one.” He blinked away the image of his son in the window that flashed across his mind. “The cliff abutted the rear of the chateau then, only a footpath separated the two. He fell to his death upon the rocks.”

“Dear Lord.” Veronique’s hand tightened on his thigh. “What was his name?”

“Yves.” He turned to face the sea again.

Strong waves crashed onto the lower rock face, sending an arc of spray high. Somewhere

in the Channel a storm brewed.

“In the hot months, when the water warmed, I’d take him to the beach and we’d play in

the sand. The day before he fell, I’d waded in the surf with him on my shoulders. He demanded to get down. I held onto him while he paddled along.”

“You mentioned your wife. You arrived with Fabian alone. Where is she?”

“Dead. She died shortly after my son. A suicide.”

“How your heart must’ve broke. Her taking her life because she lost her child.”

“Perhaps that contributed. But my wife was sad for months prior to the accident. Were I

to choose, I’d say she mourned the loss of the man I had sent away, the man she loved, over that of her son.”

“Oh.”

He expected talking about it to trigger the hurt of that day again. Instead, a sense of relief

came. The fist that crushed his heart loosened its hold. Questions he’d asked himself over and

over seemed irrelevant. Guilt for things he hadn’t done that might’ve saved his son, eased.

As for his wife, nothing other than divorcing him would ease her torment and that the

church would not allow. In the end, he gave her the respite from him she sought. He could count on one hand the number of times their paths crossed after his son’s death until hers.

“Why do you return to this place of sorrow?” Veronique asked.

“I had business here or thought I did.”

With one last look at the third floor window, he looked at Veronique and wrapped his hand

around hers, still on his thigh. “I’m ravenous. Are you and Mirielle hungry? I’d like to go to a café with a table outside under one of those colorful canopies. My business here is done.”

Chapter Twenty

Gloucestershire, England

Stephen spent the evening learning more Phantom songs. One,
All I Ask of You,
wasn’t

sung by the Phantom but he liked it, and felt Esme would too. He practiced that song along with the others. He’d stayed awake until a nearby owl screeched success in its hunt.

He woke to songbirds. Again, he had to guess at the hour and how much time until Esme

came. “Let the hour be early.”

Dew on the grass idea helped the first day. A mad dash outside in his underwear to feel

dew revealed little today. He’d likely rose later than usual, assuming he had, he jumped in the shower and soaped up fast.

Mid-rinse, he paused. Hot water beat on his shoulders as a pleasant scenario of her joining

him in the shower danced across his mind. He turned. The scar tissue around his eyes stung as

the water sprayed his face. A harsh reminder she showed little tender interest in him. He snapped out of daydream mode and hurried to finish.

Someone knocked as Stephen prepared himself a bowl of crisp wheat flakes. The cereal

tasted sweet and nutty, which he liked. The milk tasted odd, not bad, but not what he was used to drinking.

“Come in,” he called out.

“Morning,” Alex said.

“Alex, I expected Esme.”

“It’s only been a day, but I thought to check-in to see how things worked out for the two

of you. I figured pretty well, as Owen tells me you went riding together.”

“I enjoy her company very much. She’s a fine teacher.”

“Good, but that’s not the only reason I’m here.” Alex lay something on the dining table

with a dull thud and then took Stephen’s hand, placing his palm on top of an object wrapped in

thick cloth. “Feel.”

Stephen peeled away the layer of fleeced-lined material. He pulled in an excited breath as

relief rushed through him. He squeezed the familiar hilt in a tight grasp. “My sword. Thank you for getting it back.” He removed the sword from the table. “Did the Frenchman who took it give you

trouble?”

“A bit. What he really wanted was to talk to you about how you acquired the sword and

armor. I told him that wasn’t going to happen.”

Stephen moved to the part of the room where he knew no furniture was located to slice

the air with a couple controlled maneuvers. “He can take his questions and bark at the moon with them. He had no right to steal my possessions.”

“It wasn’t stealing exactly. He left you a receipt and a way to contact him.”

“Bah! A receipt given to a man who can’t see what he wrote. ‘Tis one step away from

trickery, if you ask me. What about my armor?”

“Sorry, he’s kept the rest. But I made a bargain with him regarding it. I think you’ll be

pleased.”

Not having his armor returned rankled Stephen. If he wore it for Esme, maybe she’d see

he wasn’t a madman but indeed told her the truth. Nor did he care for the fact Alex bargained

without his consent. The armor and sword weren’t Alex’s to barter with.

He stopped slicing the air and rested the blade point on the floor and his hands on the

pommel. “What agreement have you made without my say?”

“For the sake of expediency, I made a deal with him. You can’t use the armor anymore.

When we left the hospital, you even said you didn’t care about it, only your sword. So, I told the museum man he could buy the pieces from you.”

“Buy? You mean for money, right, as I desire no trade items?”