She swallows. She can’t imagine a grandfather who flies his grandchild on a private plane for a high-school assignment. A grandfather who is so attentive but who nevertheless fed the Nazi war machine. “Do you know Château de Valençay?” Sharon asks, disbelieving the fortuitous break.
“Sure. We can drive there for lunch and taste their excellent wine.”
* * *
If this is the same plane that flew her to Paris a year before, this morning it is subject to more vagaries of air pressure. Or is she more nervous? The opportunity to make inquiries at Valençay is incredible luck. Sharon fights the nausea that rises in her. The roar of the engines, so close, thrums in her temples. Nibbling on crackers, she appreciates that Christine has stopped chattering about her paper about Jeanne d’Arc.
With another churn of her stomach, Sharon gathers her hair into a loose braid and thinks of the reservists, young men who have never been at sea but who have been plunged into the brutal winter conditions. That’s why each ship has a reservist doctor on board, himself a sea virgin.
Amiot, who commandeered the pilot seat for takeoff, relinquishes it to his copilot and sits across the aisle from Sharon. “It’s a perfectly clear day. Would you like the pilot to take the scenic route or the shortest one?”
“The scenic route, please,” Christine says.
“Are you okay with it?” Amiot asks Sharon.
She munches on a cracker. “Yes.”
“Great,” he says. “He’ll start southwest at the mouth of the Loire River at Saint-Nazaire and will fly low along it so the two of you can see it in all its glory.”
The view that opens to Sharon from the air is a series of fairy-tale postcards. She forgets her unease when fortresses and châteaux pop up below as if they were mere Monopoly pieces. Massive and ancient, they perch along silver-blue rivers, sit atop soaring cliffs, nestle in thick forests, and lord over grayish-green fields.
“Fortresses were built for defense from the thirteenth century well into the sixteenth,” Amiot explains. “From the seventeenth century on, kings and noblemen built houses for themselves or their mistresses. Moats still kept outsiders out, but we see fewer buttressed walls against enemy attacks.”
Sharon takes in the mix of conical, triangular, and peaked roofs, of turrets and towers topping stone behemoths. Amiot points out the styles: Here’s a medieval, and this is a French Renaissance. Royals with more flamboyant tastes chose baroque. There is so much of everything that Sharon’s head spins.
Then, below her, a geometric carpet of boxed hedges form squares, each with a different interior design. Moments later, another formal garden dazzles her with its curlicued hedges enclosing bright vegetation. The pale winter sun glints off lakes, reflecting pools, and tributaries of the Loire.
Valençay, she thinks, filled with anticipation. I’m coming.
A black limousine awaits them on the runway, and the uniformed chauffeur drives them to the city of Orléans. The glittering holiday lights zigzagging over the streets are dazzling. Before exiting the car for his meeting, Amiot says to Sharon, “It’s an hour-and-a-half drive from here to Valençay. How important is it for you?”
“That’s the purpose of my trip today!” she cries, then softens her tone. “Sorry. Maybe I can head there now while the two of you are busy?”
“Aren’t you coming to the cathedral with me?” Christine’s lips pull down in a pout.
“Very well,” Amiot tells them, “both your wishes will be met. First the one, then the other.”
Minutes later, the limousine deposits Sharon and Christine in front of a majestic cathedral. Christine’s feet barely touch the ground as she skips up the stairs, her braids flying.
“The story of Jeanne d’Arc appears in medieval stained-glass windows depicting her life story. Orléans was her hometown,” Christine says as the two of them enter the cavernous church filled with ribbed pillars and arched ceiling vaults. “I’m also interested in the craft of jewel-colored glass—cutting it and fixing it with lead that will last centuries.” She clicks a series of photographs with what looks like an expensive camera, then pulls two sketch pads out of a canvas bag. “My grandpa says you can draw.”
The two of them fold their coats and sit down on the freezing stone floor, cross-legged, each copying a different piece of glass art that had started as merely sand and fire.
But Sharon hates wasting her time. Every few minutes, she raises her eyes to the church entrance, on the lookout for the chauffeur
who will drive them to Valençay.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Château de Valençay, France
Mid-December 1969
Amazingly, to save the long drive, Félix Amiot arranged for a helicopter to fly them to Valençay. The ride feels bumpier than the plane, and they’re buffeted by winds from hills and valleys, but soon the helicopter lands on a mowed field on the grounds of the château.
“It is rumored that during World War Two, Duchess de Castellane allowed the Allies to drop ammunition and land missions here,” Amiot says.
Sharon scans the winter-dormant manicured gardens, the huge castle. “Where’s the village?”
“Didn’t you say you wanted to visit this château? We have a lunch set up for us in the famous wine cellar.”
She cringes, hating to seem ungrateful. What business could she possibly have inside the château? “I must speak to the priest at the village church.”
“Very well. After lunch?” Amiot smiles. “Will you share with us what this is about? Certainly not naval business.”
Heat floods her face. “It’s too complicated and personal.”
A young man with bouffant hair and what must be eighteenth-century attire welcomes them and launches into a thirty-minute guided tour. Sharon struggles to seem interested in the tapestries, furniture, sculptures, Chinese cloisonné jars, ancient swords, uniforms, and paintings of ancestors. All she wants is to find out about this Pelletier woman who gave birth to Danny.
Lunch is an elaborate affair. There is no restaurant on the premises; Amiot has arranged for a chef along with fine china and crystal. All because she asked to visit Valençay? With all of Amiot’s good intentions, she’s here, but at the wrong spot, wasting two hours on dining and wine tasting.
She hates to be rude. “It will get dark at four o’clock,” she says.
“It’s one thing that the French take seriously. We don’t rush through meals.” Christine scoffs. “But we must eat little so as not to get fat.”
Sharon is relieved when the young man reappears—until he suggests a visit to the greenhouses. She can take it no more. “Do you know anyone who lived or worked here in 1946?”
“The family of the former business manager has been in service here since the Duke of Talleyrand was Napoléon’s ambassador. I can take you to his cottage.”
“Go ahead,” Amiot tells her. “We’ll have our coffee.”
