The Art of Piracy

Chapter 1-1

1

Veronica Lillet Kindred shaded her eyes and looked up at the chateau. It appeared to be a typical opulent French manor, not one that deserved to have tales told about it of ghosts and strange occurrences. But the horses had gotten more nervous as they'd approached, and her crew quieter.

She didn’t know any of the men that well, but they'd started the morning boisterous enough to the point of boasting that they'd capture the first spirit they encountered and put it in a glass jar. Then they'd bring it back to Paris and start doing séances, mediumship being a better paying profession than requisitioning and moving art.

The boasting had turned to nervous fidgeting and whispered repetition of rumors.

While Veronica had no doubt that men committed the sort of horrors that could produce specters, she didn't believe in ghosts. Still, something about the house felt…wrong. Like someone had taken the harmony of the place apart and put it back together with a note out of tune. Or something like that. She could never exactly describe the things she felt, only a sensation akin to the internal thrum at a concert when the instruments played loudly. Ironic since she'd only ever been passable at playing the pianoforte and singing, her first love being art. She'd learned during her time as an art history apprentice in London to pay attention when something stuck out as different. That's why Léonard Basquet, famous art historian and dealer, had sent her on this errand.

Focus, Veronica…

Even now her fingers twitched to sketch the archways and soaring lines of the chateau's windows and walls, but she quashed the feeling. Even if she had the time, she doubted the drawing would come. She hadn't been able to put pencil to paper and produce anything useful since Peter's death, and she doubted her once-prodigious talent would return now. Besides, there was no time for such frivolity. They had a shipment to assemble and an airship to catch.

"Allons-y," she said with as much authority as a young woman could command over a group of rough men. They muttered under their breath but complied, no doubt motivated by the bonuses they'd been promised. She pulled out her list and studied it. Only about ten pieces, she read for the hundredth time. Enough to start a collection. I'll trust your good taste as to what to select. -Léonard

A big responsibility. But hadn't she been waiting for the past four years for something like this? And it came along with the chance for her to return to Terminus in triumph, not as the disgraced girl who'd secretly married her headmaster and been widowed six months later.

The foreman took out an ornate key that looked like it came straight out of a fairy tale and applied it to the padlock on the large wooden front door. Although the rest of the chateau might boast modern upgrades, the Marquis had apparently decided to keep the old door, which was pitted and studded with iron. The squeak of its hinges lingered into a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of the house. With a shiver, Veronica wondered what sort of monster might emerge, but several seconds passed with no signs of life within.

No one wanted to go in first, so with a huff, Veronica led the way. A switch on the wall made gas lamps flare to life. So the Marquis had updated his property. Good. She hadn't relished the idea of using a torch or candle to illuminate the dark middle of a house filled with priceless objects. She feared setting something irreplaceable alight, or—the worst horror—burning the place down.

As the lights in the grand entrance hall flared to life, Veronica wondered if burning down the chateau would, indeed, be the worst horror. The place had obviously been evacuated quickly. Dust covered chairs that had been overturned and iced moribund shapes on the floor that at first looked like animals but turned out to be scraps and articles of clothing. As Veronica and her crew followed the directions to the library, their movements kicked up the fine powder that swirled and eddied, making phantasmic shapes and casting faint shadows that tricked her peripheral vision. Underneath it all, the sigh that she'd heard when the door opened lingered and vibrated with its sense of wrongness.

Even so, she couldn't help a slight grin at the fact she led the way. The team of five burly men had fallen in behind her, and she congratulated herself on taking charge and showing courage.

See, Uncle Thaddeus, sometimes charging right in can be a good thing.

When they opened the double library doors and flipped the light switch, Veronica caught her breath. Two levels of books surrounded a large space anchored on the eastern wall by a fireplace, above which hung a large painting of Psyche and Eros in flight. The young god turned his face away, and Psyche gazed longingly at him. Veronica snorted. She knew that look. She'd had that look. Now she knew better.

"All right, down to business. Maurice and Gaston, you pack the crates. Lefoux and Armand, y'all, er, you follow me and bring the pieces I select to them. Carnais, stand guard." That last came out of her mouth almost involuntarily, and warmth crept into her face. Would they think her stupid or merely cautious? So far nothing had threatened them, at least not openly.

Carnais didn't argue, although someone muttered that muscle wouldn't protect them from whatever lurked in the chateau.

Veronica walked around the library on both levels and examined the paintings that hung between bookshelves, getting a sense of them. The Marquis' family had had eclectic tastes, although themes ran to the classical. She found a smaller Psyche and Eros, this of the young woman kneeling in front of piles of grain as the ants helped her sort them and Eros standing with his mother in the shadows in the background.

"This one." She indicated the painting. Although she found it annoying that Eros colluded with his mother in torturing his bride, she also felt a stab of satisfaction. Why not? That's what men did, wasn't it—hide things from their beloved that would tear things apart? Tear them apart?

She brought herself back to the moment with a shake of her head. There was no time for self-pity. That was all in the past. She had art to requisition.

Veronica chose several more, including a Flemish landscape, a pre-Raphaelite languishing nymph, and what looked like a military tableau. Also a couple of small statues. Sadly they didn't have room or weight allowance for one of the gorgeous large kouros. The Archaic Greek statues' graceful white forms would have fit beautifully in a gallery. Too bad one of them appeared to be damaged. They had hinged limbs and could move, but thankfully they remained still. She didn't think her crew would have appreciated it if they had gone into their stereotypical motions.

She had room for one more picture and returned to one she'd been drawn to but couldn't see the obvious value of. An eight-by-twelve inch painting of a small boy sat in a frame on one of the center tables. It looked to have been painted at least a hundred years prior, but no artist's mark helped her place it or its worth. The child wore a blue ruffled suit and held a dimpled golden ball. When she picked it up, the energy around her increased in pitch and tone before falling into a hush. A noise from one of the upper galleries startled her, and one of the paintings she hadn't selected crashed to the floor, leaving an empty spot on the wall. Worse, there were two holes at eye distance about where the portrait's eyes would have been.

She shivered. Were they being watched?

The disturbance had spurred the men into action. One of them snatched the painting from her hands and put it in the crate with its fellow pieces. The crew murmured back and forth in French too fast for Veronica to catch, but she understood the meaning—they wanted to get out of there, and soon. She agreed. Whereas a phantasm or ghost would have been interesting, the thought of a person watching them? That was downright creepy.