Then to the roof, where the wind whistled thin and strange in her ears, and the world below seemed more removed than it ought to have been. There was a pool upon the roof, which caught rainwater, and long golden fish swarmed in its dark depths, which no one could catch: she and Jerome tried with nets, but the fish always dived away into the dark, and though they put their arms and their long nets as far down as they could go, there was no sign of them, although as soon as they drew out, the fish came back to the surface.
But mostly they stayed on the third floor, where no one came. During the hours of daylight, there were four pages stationed on the roof to keep a lookout in all weathers, who at every hour had to answer the distant call rising up through the circle: what comes to Coeurlieu? and much woe did they get if they did not report a wagon-train or a carriage or a visitor riding to the castle, who came in by the gates later. Meanwhile the knights on the day’s watch saved themselves the stairs, and sat round their table on the ground floor comfortably drinking and playing cards, or very occasionally training; in winter, they made the great circle a riding school. And the second floor was filled with stores, though nothing of essential worth, but the third floor was all but empty: not as useful for a lookout, and too many stairs to climb up and down every day. No one came to look for them there, or objected.
She soon grew used to the endless stairs and the endless country outside the windows. Jerome taught her to read there, the two of them lying on their stomachs on the sun-warmed stone looking over his hated books: Isabeau had been taught her letters, but never much more. He even taught her a few magister’s charms, enough to make small chips of rock hop like frogs and catch the sun in a mirror that would shine for a few minutes. She had never had a friend before. She had lived always with girls either too much older or younger; she did not like to look after little ones, and the elder had not paid much attention to her. She had been trained more or less by a succession of noble ladies, sent from one castle to another as her father gained a higher place for her, and she had a little talent for cards and embroidery, which won her a little share of society and praise. But now the frame and the fabric lay forgotten more often than not.
By the time the letter came, near midsummer, she could read it for herself: the Comte had helped the king break the siege of Grosviens, and he was coming home. “God save my good lord and bring him swiftly,” she said, sadly, handing the letter back to Father Jean-Claude, who had brought it to her. She knew she had not done her duty. Her husband would come home and she would have nothing to show him for her time, but that she had learned to read, which she ought have done sooner, and the distraction of his heir.
She hurriedly began to embroider a cloak with the yellow flowers of the Comte’s coat of arms on long green vines, at least to have a gift which might please him, though so little work would not show her very industrious. When Jerome tempted her again to put it aside and come wander with him, she looked out the window and imagined to herself that she saw the Comte emerge from the woods upon the road, and refused. Jerome sighed but kept company with her, and even turned the pages of his books occasionally when she reproached him.
The vines grew and the flowers bloomed, all along the border, and then she decided to risk beginning the great donjon on the center of the back. She rose with the first light good enough to see her needle, and in the evenings in her own bedchamber bent late over the sewing with smoky candlelight. The tower climbed, its windows stitched in black and the stones in silver thread, until all that was left to sew was the Comte’s flag streaming from the battlements on the roof, which she could not do until the next merchant brought her the blue thread for which she had waited two weeks already. She set the frame down frowning, and then Jerome sat up from his books and looked at the heap of the cloak in her lap and said slowly, “My father has not come yet.”
They climbed the stairs to the roof of the donjon to look out at the countryside: no sign of a company anywhere, only a single rider far distant, raising a small cloud of dust at his heels. The wind tugged at her hair beneath her coif, and she put her arms round herself, strangely cold, though the summer sun beat strong and hot upon her skin.
The rider came to Couerlieu before the sun went down. The plague had erupted in Blens, between here and Grosviens, and many roads were closed: the townsfolk had heaped barricades of burning brush across them, to try and fend off death. The king had desired the Comte to stay with him in Mont-Sauvage, and therefore the Comte commended the castle and his lady to Sir Gaubard, the stolid old knight of forty-three who was the chatelain. Sir Gaubard gave orders at once to have the road to the castle closed, and to send men down to Coeurlieu town to receive messengers and supply, which would be brought halfway up the mountain, there to wait three days, before they ascended the rest of the way. The plague would come anyway, of course; the plague came everywhere.
Jerome took the news in silence, and afterwards hid himself in such wise that Isabeau could not find him. She did not see him until the next day, when standing on the walls in the evening, she heard the plague bells tolled in town, faint but clear, with three notes struck to mark three deaths. She turned away and saw him crossing the courtyard with a sack over his shoulder and a walking stick, going into the tower, and no one halted him.
Isabeau stood a moment, afraid, and then she went down the stairs to the courtyard and ran after him, in time to see him climbing to the second floor of the tower. She pursued, calling his name, but he did not turn; he climbed on swiftly, and by the time she had reached the second story, he had disappeared onto the third, and the round circle of sky was grown deep violet blue, although there were yet no stars.
She looked down. The doors stood open, but if she climbed a few steps further, she would no longer be able to see them. A heavy silence lay upon the air within. Everyone had gone out of the donjon, as they did every night when the bells rang for vespers. It was her duty to go out, too. Jerome might stay, just as he might neglect his tasks and lessons, because there was no use to him. But she knew that when she came to look for him in the morning, he would forever be gone: diving deep into dark like the golden fish, no matter how she tried to grasp him.
There were day-candles in small niches along the stairs, and by chance one had been blown out sometime early in the day. She pried it from the puddled wax at its base and lit it from one of the dying stubs, and with it in her hands climbed timidly higher, calling Jerome’s name softly. Her voice seemed to press against resistance, and he did not answer. She reached the third floor, familiar and yet gone strange: outside the too-high windows she could see only dark, and long shadows hid the curving wall, dancing over the floor to the tune of the sputtering lights. She climbed onward.
Icy air struck her in the face as she pushed open the door to the roof, full of the smell of snow and winter. “Jerome, are you here?” she called. No answer came. Above her head the stars shone high and infinite and unfamiliar, and the horizon was a circle of solid dark all around, with no rolling shadows of hills or trees breaking into the smooth bowl of the sky. She walked quickly around the full circle of the battlements and came back to the door, panting clouds. A thick layer of ice had grown atop the pool, the fish pale ghosts moving beneath it. There was no sign of Jerome.