The Ghosts of Kerfol by Deborah Noyes Page B

sheet off the daybed —“‘of the silver key that unlocks the gates of the sea.’”
    Suze let her dress fall round her ankles, and with her eyes closed, she could almost conjure it, the smell and feel of Stan’s skin, the veins in his wrists as he smoothed the hanging hair from her face. The cushions were a silky chill beneath her back, and his weight a warmth. There was no moon tonight, and she could make out nothing in the painting, though she knew it was there.
    Tres settled alongside her, lean and whispering. “‘No!’ said Dahut. ‘Impossible!’ Her father kept the key day and night on a chain round his neck, but the prince swore that if she got him the key, he would spirit her away to his kingdom of riches, where she would reign as queen. That night, she crept into her father’s chamber. As the old king slept, she sneaked the key from his neck and returned with it to her lover.
    “‘Here is the key,’ Dahut said. ‘Let us leave.’ But the prince was silent. He snatched it from her and went from the palace laughing, for he was the Devil in disguise —”
    “Are
you
the Devil?”
    Tres kissed her neck, and it was Stan’s kiss. Stan’s whisper. “Don’t interrupt,” he breathed. “Dahut watched her prince throw open the gates. There was a great creaking and tearing sound as seawater began to surge and curl through the sleeping city —”
    “You really like this story, don’t you?” Suze slurred, and he nibbled her fingers gently as he whispered, and she could hardly keep her eyes open.
    “To this day, fishermen docked in Douarnenez on misty mornings hear the sound of church bells in the sea below, calling the faithful. If ever a sailor answers, it’s said, the lost city of Ker-Ys will bob above the waves and become capital of all France. There’s a Breton proverb:
Pa veuzo Paris, e tiveuzo Ker-Ys
—‘When Paris shall sink, Ker-Ys shall emerge.’”
    She shuddered for effect, but ended up giggling.
    O let us be married! Too long have we tarried:
    But what shall we do for a ring?
    She giggled and giggled and curled up like a little sea-swept shrimp, exhausted, with her head reeling and the rain a lullaby.
    Suze woke near dawn with a stain on her memory, hung over, and it took some time to orient herself. Sunday. Kerfol. The east wing. She sat up abruptly. In daylight, green eyes looked down at her.
    My eyes.
    The face in the painting was her face.
    Suze wrestled her way out of the sheet and stood, queasy and reeling, strangely modest all of a sudden. She groped her stole from the back of a chair, flung it over her shoulders, and went forth with hand extended as if she might meet her image partway, as if the painting were a mirror and she might take her own hand and be led away to the little boat under the moon in the land where the Bong-tree grows, where Stan would be waiting, and they’d dance by the light of the moon, themoon, themoon.
    The same moon out there now, setting over Kerfol. But her own frame in unfamiliar clothes, a stranger staring down with her face but as cold and distant as the moon, themoon, themoon was just too terrible. She turned to tell him, “I have to tell you . . . Stan, I have to tell you.”
    Something te
rrible.
    Something wonderful.
    The figure under the sheet lay very still, and for a moment Suze hesitated. As she lifted the fabric like a magician unveiling astonishment, it was not Stan beneath, welcoming and beloved; it was not even Tres, whose youthful close-shaved face she now recalled with desperate clarity; it was the hideous old impostor from the garden, leering, the man with the pointy beard and eyes like ice. She screamed and fell back on the floor, scrabbling sideways like a crab in a confusion of shadows, a black lunging, a pulse — within or without, at once — deafening, and the last thing she saw was her own face. Beautiful in that necklace.

T HEIR TOUR GUIDE, JULIET , was breathy in all the right places, a master of the dramatic pause. The