The Ghosts of Kerfol Read Online Free Page A

Coppery bangs dropped in his eyes, and he pushed them back again. “Old Yves tried to catch my father in the act, and his father before him, for decades. Don’t imagine I’d ruin my good family name by getting caught.”
    “But why —?”
    He looked up quickly. “Why what? Why does the lord of the land hire the spawn of a known poacher?” He looked hard into my eyes, and I did not look away.
    The Red Boy threw down the half-eaten apple without bothering to bury it, as I’d hoped and expected he would. “Why do birds fly?”
    I watched him go, red to my ears, and then rooted out the soiled core from the thicket. I buried it in a hole like a charm.
    That night I found Milady in the great hall, weeping. It was the grandest space in the manor, its ceiling painted with nymphs and animals; green and white marble walls; stately pillars framing lead and gilt statues. I stood wringing my hands as she roved the parquet floor in her rustling gown, running her hands over velvet benches and silk curtains embroidered with
fleurs de lys.
She flicked the fresh-cut flowers and painted with one finger in a sheen of dust on a sideboard, erasing her script swiftly.
    I stood watching from the shadows, guilty as a thief.
    “I have nothing,” she said, looking up as if she’d known I was there all along. I was rapt — bewitched, it would seem. Why didn’t I flee then before it was too late? Take my hemp sack and go.
    She lifted and slapped down her riches, one opulent object after another, and my head reeled with confusion.
    Nothing.
    Like most everyone at Kerfol, I assumed it was Milady’s childless state that grieved her. It must have grieved Yves de Cornault that she gave him no son, but did he fault her? Lonely though her marriage was, could she fault
him
?
    But she snatched up my hand before I could ponder further. “Come, Perrette.” Once more, she brought us to the orchard, now silvery in moonlight. In Milady’s grip I felt the same pulsing energy that I remembered in the body of my little pet bird. Birds have hollow bones, Grand-mère had said, closing my hands round Percy’s downy form. Delicate creatures. But my pet was a wild bird, and in that small, quavering shape, Grand-mère said, lived every wind that blew in every corner of the world. “Do not forget and set him down, even for an instant, or off he’ll fly.”
    Would it be that way to hold Milady, too?
    For once, and not for long, I pitied her husband.
    But it took little to see that Sire was the furthest thing from Milady’s thoughts. “It is a different orchard now,” Anne de Cornault whispered as she skipped past and round me — mad, ecstatic, I know not which — turning and whirling under the upraised arms of the trees. “Now that
he
has walked in it.”
    I remembered very well, of course, the young nobleman’s words at table that night, my first night in service at Kerfol.
    Quiet. Quiet. You’ve had too much wine,
I wanted to plead into the roar of crickets. On the other hand, I wanted her to speak and tell me everything. I wanted to know what would become of me, of everyone in this doomed house. I wanted fair warning if she meant to turn the master’s wrath upon us all, but it was not my right. So I followed as she walked, holding her skirts like a peasant, as she wore herself out, danced her passion in the tall grass.
    It wasn’t until we started back toward the courtyard that I noticed she wore no shoes, that she was tramping through the damp weeds with feet as white as porcelain. I think those bare feet frightened me most of all.
    That night I lay alone on my narrow pallet remembering the big featherbed. It was Mama’s pride and joy when we were small —“the reason I married your father,” she would joke before Papa lost his commission and the hunger came. After the hunger, there were no jokes; the featherbed was sold like everything else to stop us starving. I remembered the safety of sun-and-lavender-scented sheets and how the center of