I was suffused by a sense of warmth as a breeze blew golden rays of the sun over me.
I watched Gaspard continue to walk away into the forest, the gray-green shadows enveloping him. The air around him misted. And suddenly, on his right, I saw Nicky, holding his father’s hand. And on his left a winsome woman with blond hair. She linked her arm in his as she leaned into him just enough so the lengths of their bodies touched.
When I saw the past, the air around me always chilled. This air was warm. Like the day I’d seen what I thought was my trespass against Mathieu. I knew I wasn’t seeing Gaspard’s past. His wife had been dark-haired. I’d seen her photo in Nicky’s butterfly book. This was his future. The secret he was walking toward. The woman who was waiting for him right around the bend. I was about to call out. I wanted to tell him, but I heard my own name.
“Delphine!”
I turned in the other direction. Mathieu was half walking, half running toward me. Reaching me, he stopped. There was a leaf caught in his hair. A smudge of dirt on his cheek.
“What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be recuperating,” I said.
“Sebastian . . .” Mathieu was out of breath.
“Easy,” I said. “Come, sit here.”
I led him to a flat rock, where we sat. The sun, peeking through the trees, had started to warm the stone. The heat was welcoming.
Mathieu took my hand. His touch was nothing like Gaspard’s. Not soothing, not safe. Where Mathieu’s flesh touched mine, sparks flew and burst.
“Sebastian came back to the castle, soaking wet, a bad gash on his forehead. He said he didn’t know what happened to you. That you’d saved him but he couldn’t find you. He was in a panic. Madame immediately organized a search party. We’ve been at it for at least an hour. Combing these woods. Didn’t you hear any of us calling?”
I wasn’t sure what to tell him. The library was a secret that was not mine to share. I thought of my time inside that stone fortress. Gaspard had asked me a question that I had never asked myself. One I’d need to answer if I was ever going to paint again . . . or ever going to love again.
A long time ago, I’d become afraid, and that fear had blinded me with a darkness more debilitating than what I’d endured as a child. But now I understood.
The real secret that Gaspard’s ancestors learned, the secret of Flamel’s Great Work, of alchemy, was that love itself is the light. It offers us immortality . . . It is the true portal to enlightenment.
“Delphine, where were you all this time?” Mathieu asked.
“I was lost.”
“Well, you aren’t anymore,” he said, as he buried his face in my hand. I felt a drop of water wet my palm. Then he looked up at me, and I saw more tears. “You’re not lost now,” he whispered. “Not anymore. I’ve found you.”
Author’s Note
As with the most of my work there is a lot of fact mixed in with this fictional tale.
The postwar atmosphere in New York City, Paris, and Cannes are as close to the truth as possible. As is the art world I depicted in these pages. All of the artists whose names you recognize and who interact with my fictional heroine did exist and were in fact interested in the occult or mystical world. When possible—and it was often possible—I used some of their own words and thoughts as well as true anecdotes about their lives.
You can still visit many of the sights I wrote about in both New York, Mougins, and Cannes, including having a drink on the Carlton terrace. In Millau you can drive by the chateau, which was indeed owned by the very real, very famous opera singer, Emma Calvé. Madame did buy and restore the small castle because of the reports that Nicolas Flamel’s treasure, The Book of Abraham the Jew, rumored to hold the secrets to immortality and transmutation, was hidden there. The interior of the castle and the library are fiction since the building is now privately owned and, alas, I didn’t get to see it or walk its grounds.
All the stories about Flamel included in this novel are part of his legend. La Diva never did find the book but she kept the chateau until she died.