I awoke to my father’s pacing in the study above me. He crossed the floor back and forth as I stared up at the ceiling. I groaned and turned over in my bed. Sometimes I could tell the kind of humor he was in based on the sound of them. That day I heard nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing had changed. My brother had been gone for a month and nothing had changed.

I received no word from him since he left. I soon realized that I had no way of contacting him. He mentioned Luneville and the name Elliot but neither of those facts gave me the confidence that a letter would reach him or if it would’ve been wise to send one if he wished to stay incognito.

It was all worrisome. My father was indifferent but the wait nerved my mother. She wanted to hear from him, to know he was safe, and how he was enjoying himself. A journey that long could be dangerous - bandits, accidents, or any of the other horrors that could befall the party. I tried to comfort her as best as I could as she cried on my shoulder. I would tell her that his letters must have gotten lost or delayed in some way - we would hear from him soon. In the end there were only so many excuses to make.

I dragged myself awake and I knew what I had to do that morning - I had to find the gun. While all my past plans were tainted and I generally forgot that the gun existed, I had a jolting realization the night before that my father might ask for it at some point. I didn’t have a good answer for him if he found out I had lost it.

I found my brother’s door unlocked. I made haste searching throughout the room. I didn’t wish to be caught - I didn’t have a good answer for that either. I rummaged through his secretaire, the shelves, behind the shelves, behind the books and inside of them, under and behind the bed, through the trunks and cabinets, and anywhere else I could imagine it could fit and cursing when I found nothing. I only thing I did find was in the drawer of his nightstand - a paper addressed to me.

I no longer have the paper. In summary he wrote down the instructions on how to contact him. It was quite complicated, to avoid the risk of his location being found out in case the letters were interpreted by my father. It would go to a friend of his wife’s, who lived far from where he was living. At the very end of the letter, at the bottom of the page, he wrote to not bother going through his room - the gun wasn’t there. I found that quite annoying.

I mumbled a series of curses. Since I was already there I searched through his room more, perhaps out of spite or perhaps in case he was trying to fool me. In my light search I found various bottles of liquors between his bed and the wall which made me very much delighted.

It reminded me of all the times we spent together. We had little money of our own to spend freely but at times we pooled what we had to convince one of the servants to go into town and buy whatever was cheap. There wasn’t a way for us to steal our father’s stash and live. The staff was discreet - but we weren’t. We both spent too many nights laughing on the littered floor and wake overcome with sudden illnesses to explain ourselves.

The first time, I recall, was when I was much younger. He gave me a bottle and told me that “it helps”. He was right of course - it helped immensely. When I drink I achieve that numb sensation I consistently crave as the whole world becomes something separate from myself. If I passed out, then nothing that happened before truly happened - it was all only another nightmare. The last time we drank by his fireplace and he told me that he would take care of me when he was the Comte - which I find funny now.

I took a few bottles and carried them to my room. I placed them in a trunk under my shirts before I went to make another trip. As I entered the hall I saw my father and some servants enter his room. I had forgotten - my mother told me that all the mattresses were to be re-stuffed with straw. My father preferred to loom over the servants as they worked to make sure they were working properly - as if he would know. It caused much annoyance in the staff and was, among other reasons, why most didn’t stay for too long. - especially the women after a month or so.

Seized with some terror, I fled to my room where I closed the trunk and pulled the bottle of laudanum from under my bed. I was unsure of where to place it, other than throwing it out the window, I placed it on my bedside table. I was afraid that my father would use the opportunity to search through my room. I thought hiding it, even somewhere as common as a desk drawer, would be suspicious. If I had it on my bedside table, then I had nothing to hide. The bottles would’ve been easier to explain.

“Why do you have this?” said my father as he picked up the laudanum from the table while the servants stripped the bed.

“Maman gave it to me,” I said as I stood close by. I hoped he wouldn’t ask her to about it though I doubted that he would’ve cared. “I’ve had trouble sleeping. Night-mares and such.”

“with what?”

“Wine.”

He set the bottle down as the servants continued the work. I stood there awkwardly as we both watched the servants worked.

“Do you not have anything better to do than stand there?”

Two months turned into three and the house became more worried. My father retreated into his expressionless irritation. My mother wept. My father send letters every which way and became more snide in his comments. My mother spoke of highwaymen, carriage accidents, etc. My father wished to keep it all under wraps, not wishing for Society to know he lost his son. He knew many people and I’m sure his search for information trickled down into the populace. Missing heirs were a dangerous thing. Nothing changed in my daily life enough to be of note. I only heard of his fruitless searches in small glimpses from my mother who, I am sure, kept as much from me as I did her.

While I’m not privy to the details of this, my father found out about the banns read in Luneville. He flew into a rage and terrorized the house for weeks. He believed I knew about it, or my mother did, or that we both knew. It took much strength on my part to keep my discretion. It was discovered that my mother was missing some of the silverware that was once part of her trousseau. That only made my father more convinced that she knew and gave it to my brother to pawn. Eventually, albeit slowly, he gave up raging at us and turned to everyone else. He attempted to get the police involved to drag him back to France and annul the marriage. He sent letters to the Duc de Lorraine and His Majesty though I suppose there was little to be done. Still foreign at the time my father could do little about it.

I heard all of this piece mail from my heartbroken mother, crying on my shoulder yet again, who didn’t understand how he could’ve betrayed us so. How he could’ve left her - her eldest gone. I don’t believe she truly recovered from the shock of it. I would watch as she took many drops with a cup of wine in her breathless panic over what she did wrong and how she wished for him to be back home. It’s hard enough to see women cry, but to see one’s own mother cry - over something so uncontrollable - hurt my heart. While I didn’t hate my brother I can’ say I particularly liked him in those moments either.

My parents acted as if he was dead. Which, in a way, he was. My father practically disowned him. Sometimes my mother would barely speak of him and neither did I. When he was brought up I had a sensation that was not unlike grief, but since I have felt real grief I can’t say it was that intense. It was more akin to disappointment. I can’t say I was happy for him, in some unknown land doing whatever he wanted in a vastly different life from the one we were brought into. I can’t say I was upset either. It was only a fact of life that washed over me like the rest.

Unfortunately, it meant my father payed more attention to me. He tried to teach me how to run his estate and wealth in case my brother didn’t return. He would summon he to his study, reclining in his armchair and taking snuff, while he spoke to me. He would tell me about our family, the peasantry, the rentes, land, and the accounts he kept. Most days it was fine. Other days he would be annoyed at me for slowness and misunderstandings. Once, I fell asleep at my desk, exhausted and hungover, only for my father to wake me up with his fist slammed near my head. He grabbed me by the back of my coat and forced me to look at myself in the mirror as he stormed down on me about my laziness and uselessness. At least he was right - I can’t say I’ve ever took my life too seriously.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in bed. My mother came in and cooled the cuts on my face with a wet rag as she ran her fingers through my hair. We didn’t say anything about it. We understood each other and that was enough.

A month or so passed. The weather warmed and cleared steadily. I went riding more often in the early mornings before my lessons for the fresh air and exercise. I weaved between the trees and through the underbrush. I didn’t hunt for anything as I had neither want or need. I only wished to enjoy to woods and the flowers around me. As I rode back home, I saw a small and furry grey mass in the clearing that opened to the chateau. As I rode up closer I came upon the recognizable figure of a cat, Mademoiselle - my mother’s. I stared down at her, unbelieving, before I got down from the horse. I moved the car with the end of my shoe, praying on the possibility she was asleep, but she didn’t move. The sight of the corpse made me sick. She had been my mother’s as long as I could remember. As I child I used to play with her with my mother’s ribbons. She would purr while napping in a basket of cabbage at her feet as she sewed. She was a good cat, who grew old with me, who I felt was also mine.

I got back on my horse to take a shovel from the stables. I didn’t know where to bury her, but I wanted to get it done as soon as possible - I didn’t like the image of her rotting in the sun. Only when I picked her up with the shovel to place her in her newly dug grave did I see the slash across her throat.

By the time I was done I was late for my lessons but I was more worried about telling my mother - unsure how to. I found her in her apartment polishing her collection of porcelain cat figurines when I broke the news to her. Her reaction was as expected. She wished to see the grave so I took her to the small grave with a few stacked stones as marker. She dropped to her knees while she screamed and dug into the dirt with her fingers.

“I found Mademoiselle in the woods,” I told my father at dinner, “she’s dead.”

My mother dotted her eyes with her kerchief. He continued to eat.

“One of the dogs must have got to it,” he said after a pause before he looked over at my mother, “what are you crying over? It’s just a damn cat.”

Nothing else was said about that.

I might have been jealous of my brother. I imagined that while he was alone he dreamed of leaving. Leaving him, leaving us, leaving me. He had his own life while I was still in the exact same position as I was in before despite my attempts at change. Everything would be the same forever. Unfortunately I did not have a wealthy heiress waiting on me. I resigned myself to this fact. I suppose it’s like what Newton said - that an object at rest will stay at rest just as before and into eternity. Inertia loomed above me, below me, behind and before me. Unknown to me there was a greater force coming in haste for me. One that would push me into the unknown - a force named Catherine.

Chapter V: Redundant

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