SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Fifteen
Though breakfast only made me want to return to my bed, they made no such accommodation for me.
“There is too much ahead of you,” Maximillian said as I trudged beside him down the road where the carriage left us.
We walked through a massive vineyard whose trees had reached their full emerald bloom of early summer. Soon their tiny grapes would fill and hang heavy along with the heat.
“There is work to be done all season long, but the main event will come in September. That’s when the farmers will push through the fields in a two-week frenzy of harvesting to capture and decide the fate of every single grape. And from there, we begin the ultimate tasks of transformation.”
I didn’t respond, unsure of what to say. I was unfamiliar with the life of a farmer, having only ever rooted to the moving wheels of my parents’ wagon.
“It’s what we do here, Esprit,” he said, “and I want you to know everything about it. Gabrielle will teach you about literature and mathematics—the scholarly world—but I will teach you this craft.”
He stopped and caught my attention, taking my head in his large hand to focus on me.
“I’ll teach you to be a man of our breed. And when the time comes, I’ll be the one who’ll set your wolf free if you choose to join us in eternity.”
His piercing green eyes startled me, the way they seemed to look inside me with their intimate sincerity, and the effect was sobering. Maximillian had disarmed me with his magnetic presence each time we’d spoken. And standing alone with him in this field, this quiet place of beauty that was his sanctuary, he took me once again. He was awake in a way other men weren’t. It wasn’t his height or size or even his handsome face, though all those things left a heavy impression. Rather, something was awake in his very being that I found infectious, and I wanted for nothing but more of his light.
And then, as if realizing the predicament of my infatuation, a brotherly smile broke on his face and gave way to boyish laughter, as if he found his effect on me all too humorous.
“Mon Dieu, Esprit,” he said, turning back down the path towards the complex of wine-making buildings ahead. “We need to find you a friend soon if you’re ever to hear anything I have to say.”
Gabrielle sent for me later that afternoon. She’d given me the reprieve of a nap after lunch, for which I was most grateful. And now the day seemed less of a chore with my headache gone.
Gion led me to the very top room of the fortress. It was no minor accomplishment for me to climb the hundreds of steps. I was unaccustomed to stairs, never living my life over five steps above the ground. But I would not embarrass myself by asking Gion for a break along the way. No wonder his backside appears to be carved from marble.
“It’s excellent exercise,” Gabrielle said upon my entering as if she has heard my thought.
She stood at one of several windows, much wider than the tight slits the rest of the tower relied upon for daylight. Even from the staircase landing, I could see the view past her she observed was breathtaking at this height. The mid-afternoon light that poured into the large space revealed a tall, four-poster bed. Unlike the suites of multiple rooms beneath us, the level was one large open space filled with tables of various sizes, a plush reading chair beside two sofas, and an enormous desk covered in rolls of paper. The walls bore coats of arms, and the floors carried large rugs woven in deep shades of blue. Above my head was a chandelier, uncharacteristic to the tower with its black iron simplicity, that must’ve filled the room with ample light when lit at night. By the largest window sat a bronze retractor to magnify the miles she might see into the fields. A tall fireplace stood against the farthest wall, the house crest carved into the stone: two lions holding up a cub between them.
“Is this your room?” I asked, having not expected she and Maximillian would want to trek up so many steps to sleep.
“This is the prior baron’s room. Or I should say, the man from whom Maximillian inherited the fortress. Max is in his second barony, posing as his own son to account for his youthful appearance. The Baron we found here, Aoustin Henri de Roussade, passed away many years ago, but I’ve kept his room just as it was that first day.”
“What do you mean, you found him?”
Gabrielle turned from the window to appraise me and gave me a warm smile. She stood dressed in a well-tailored emerald silk gown, though she didn’t don one of the wigs I’d become accustomed to her wearing. Instead, she swept her raven hair up in a simple chignon. And for the first time, she appeared to be very young to my eyes. She appeared only slightly older than I was.
She moved across the wide floor to one sofa that stood before the large, unlit fireplace and took a seat before beckoning to join me.
“Just what I said,” Gabrielle answered. “Max and I had been traveling on foot for weeks, fleeing from our home in Milan, when we came across the fortress in the night. Max wanted to continue, insisting that we would only find safety across the sea in the new world, but I was weary from the leagues we’d covered, and I wanted to stop running. So, we scaled the fortress’s exterior until we both landed above the tower roof.”
Gabrielle looked to the staircase that wound up the perimeter wall.
“The baron was asleep in his bed,” she said, looking at the large four-poster bed that lay empty, “but the heavy thud of our landing woke him. He rose from his bed, lit a lantern, and ascended the steps to find the source of the disturbance.”
“You were in your wolf form? Was he not horrified to find you there?”
“Not at all, for he could not see us.”
I tightened my brow to show I did not follow her.
“I placed a soothing image in his mind, and it captured his attention such that he stopped where he stood to watch it. The image, a rippling brook in a quiet forest with chirping birds and falling autumn leaves, absorbed his focus, and his mind became malleable to my commands. I told him to return to this room and sit precisely where you sit now.”
“You and Maximillian can control people like that?” I asked, astonished at the very idea.
“Not Max, but I can,” she answered. “With the baron calmed, I took to his desk and read every paper, every correspondence and proclamation he kept to better understand the man. I wanted to know who he was, and how I might slip us into his world without causing him harm. Aoustin, in his early sixties, was the baron of a noble house seven generations old, and we stood in his family home. He had outlived his wife, who died in childbirth five years earlier. In his journal, I found long passages of grief over her loss. She had been with child too late in life, and he blamed himself, having dreamed of one last son to fill their empty home.
“Of their three sons who’d survived infancy, two had died from consumption. The last, Phillippe, had been called to war very young. Indeed, both Aoustin and his youngest son left this region, Burgundy, a decade earlier for different wars. Much of their correspondence had traveled between their assigned fronts of Namur and Alsace. In these letters between father and son, I learned of the young man’s life in the Royal Regiment and of Louis XIV’s push against England. There were short periods of peace when the boy fell in love and asked for his father’s leave to marry a German nobleman’s daughter.
“And then I came to a letter from the Duke of Luxembourg announcing Phillippe’s death in battle. Bundled with it was an emotional eulogy to Aoustin from Wenzel von Borchardt, who described his love for the boy. He spoke eloquently of how he’d promised Phillippe his daughter’s hand and had already considered him a son long before the boy fell.
“I stopped reading and rose with the two letters to find a place beside Aoustin. I found the well of suffering within the man quickly. He’d fallen into such a depression that even his duty to his house no longer motivated him. He was laden with thoughts of writing to friends and offering to take any suitable daughter into this hold to mend his broken line. But he’d never written a single word. He’d lived for months in paralyzed sorrow, dismissing those unneeded servants he could stomach being without. He pondered if he shouldn’t just allow his estate to succeed to relatives if no one could ever inherit his title.
“Rising again, I walked to the fireplace and stared at the letters from the Duke of Luxembourg and Wenzel von Borchardt in my hand. Glancing across the room to Max, I dropped the source of Aoustin’s suffering into the flames.”
I was so absorbed by her tale that I didn’t respond for several moments when she fell silent.
“But why would you do that?” I asked in time.
“I decided that Max and I would become Phillipe and Mademoiselle von Borchardt. That we would assume those identities and slip into this life.”