“And no mere trifle, m’dear. Finding them’s not too hard. Doing it without the Doyennes knowing, that’s quite another matter. They spy on me almost as much as on you. Watch out, in fact,” the great-uncle muttered, shaking his moustache. “I saw the Rapporteur, with her confounded sparrow, lurking around the place.”
Aunt Rosaline gritted her long teeth on hearing their exchange. She was perfectly aware of their little schemes, and although she didn’t approve of them, fearing that Ophelia would get herself into more trouble, she was often their accomplice. “I’m starting to run low on waffle batter,” she said, drily. “Go and fetch me some, please.”
Ophelia needed no persuading to slip into the provisions store. It was freezing cold in there, but she was away from prying eyes. She soothed the scarf, which was getting restless on its peg, checked that no one was around, and then opened the envelope from her great-uncle.
It contained a picture postcard. The caption read, “XXIInd Interfamilial Exhibition,” and the postmark dated back more than 60 years. As a worthy family archivist, her great-uncle must have used his contacts to get hold of this card. It was the photograph that interested Ophelia. The black-and-white image, tinted here and there with artificial colors, depicted the exhibitors’ displays and the exotic curiosities along the aisles of a massive building. It was like Anima’s covered market, but a hundred times more imposing. Pushing her glasses up on her nose, the young girl held the postcard closer to the light. She finally found what she was looking for: through the building’s large windows, almost invisible in the fog outside, stood a headless statue.
For the first time in a long while, Ophelia’s glasses colored with emotion. Her great-uncle had just brought her the confirmation of all her hypotheses.
“Ophelia!” called Aunt Rosaline. “Your mother’s asking for you!”
At these words, she quickly hid the postcard. The surge of excitement that had overcome her instantly dissipated, to be replaced by frustration. It was even beyond that. The waiting, the endless waiting was digging a hole within her body. Each new day, each new week, each new month made that hole bigger. Ophelia sometimes wondered whether she wouldn’t end up falling in on herself.
She took out the fob watch and lifted the cover with utmost care. The poor mechanism was suffering enough as it was, Ophelia couldn’t risk any clumsiness. Since she had retrieved it from Thorn’s belongings, just before being forcibly repatriated to Anima, the watch had never told the time. Or rather, it told a few too many times at once. All its hands pointed now one way, now another, with no apparent logic—four twenty-two, seven thirty-eight, five past one—and no longer the slightest tick-tock.
Two years and seven months of silence.
Ophelia had received no news from Thorn after his escape. Not a single telegram, not a single letter. She could keep telling herself that he couldn’t run the risk of making contact, that he was a man wanted by the law, perhaps by God himself, but it was eating her up inside.
“Ophelia!”
“I’m coming.”
She grabbed a pot of waffle batter and left the provisions store. On the other side of the stand stood her mother, in her enormous, flouncy dress.
“My daughter, who finally deigns to leave her bed! About time—any longer and you’d have turned into a bedside table! Merry Tickers, darling. Serve the little ones, would you?”
Her mother indicated the long line of children accompanying her. Ophelia saw among them her brother, sisters, nephews, second cousins, and the sitting-room clock. They weren’t that “little” in her eyes. Hector had shot up so much in recent months, he’d more than caught up with Ophelia. Seeing them all like this, with their height, their flaming hair, and their freckles, she sometimes wondered whether she really belonged to the same family.
“I discussed your case with Agatha,” Ophelia’s mother said, leaning her entire bust over the stand. “Your sister agrees with me, you must think about finding yourself a job. She’s spoken about it with Charles, and they both agree to you coming to work at the factory. Just take a look at yourself, my girl! You can’t carry on like this. You’re so young! Nothing still binds you to . . . you know . . . him.”
Ophelia’s mother had mouthed that last word without actually saying it. No one in the family ever mentioned Thorn, as if it were a shameful subject. In general, no one ever mentioned the Pole. There were days when Ophelia wondered whether all she’d lived through over there was actually real, as though she’d never been a valet, or a vice-storyteller, or a great family reader.
“Do thank Agatha and Charles, Mom, but it’s a no. I can’t see myself working in lace.”
“I can have her with me at the archives,” her great-uncle growled into his moustache.
Ophelia’s mother pursed her lips so tight, her face looked like bellows. “You have a deplorable influence on her, uncle. The past, the past, always the past! My daughter must think about her future.”
“Ah, that!” he said, with irony. “You’d like her to be as conformist as those nice little books in the library, hey? Might as well send her out into the sticks, your kid.”
“I would particularly like her to give a favorable impression to the Doyennes and Artemis, just for a change.”
Ophelia was so exasperated that she mistakenly handed a waffle to the family clock. It was no use—she could keep repeating to everyone that a Doyenne was not to be trusted, no one listened to her. She would have liked to warn them about so many more things! About God, in particular. And yet she’d spoken of him to no one; neither to her parents, who endlessly questioned her, nor to Aunt Rosaline, who fretted over her silence, nor to her great-uncle, who was helping her with her research. The whole family knew something had occurred in Thorn’s cell—the less informed thinking it was Ophelia who had been imprisoned—but no one had ever obtained the final word from her on this story. She couldn’t utter it, not after what she’d discovered about God.
Mother Hildegarde had killed herself because of him.
Baron Melchior had killed for him.
Thorn had almost been killed by him.
The very existence of God was a dangerous truth. For as long as was required, Ophelia would keep the secret.
“I know you’re all worrying about me,” she finally declared, “but it’s my life that this is about. I don’t have to explain myself to anyone, not even to Artemis, and I don’t give a damn what the Doyennes think.”
“Much good that will do you, dear girl!”
Ophelia stiffened on seeing a middle-aged woman stealthily approaching the stand. She wore no watch, walked no clock, but sported an extraordinary hat, on top of which a weather vane in the form of a stork was spinning at full speed. Her gold-rimmed spectacles further enlarged two protruding eyes, which watched every move of the Animists in general, and Ophelia in particular. If the Doyennes were the accomplices of God, the Rapporteur was that of the Doyennes.