Lacroix

By Xavier Vidal

When a proposition sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Elsa's life is falling apart, abandoned by her partner, jobless, a young single mother of a 1-year-old baby. When she receives a mysterious and unexpected proposition to leave Barcelona and move to France, to live and work in a magnificent castle, all expenses paid, surrounded by horses, forests, and beautiful lakes, she jumps at the opportunity, eager to start a new life.

But Lacroix Castle has been hiding a dark secret since World War II, when it had become the summer residence of Marshall Pétain, head of the French collaborationist government with Nazi Germany.

Elsa has awoken a terrifying enemy, but will she find the inner strength to face it and save her family?

• Language: English
• Publisher: XAVIER VIDAL, New Zealand
• Release date: Nov 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9780473589950

Xavier Vidal

Nacido en Barcelona, tras graduarse como médico en la Facultad de Medicina, Xavier ganó una beca Fulbright, y estudio y vivió varios años en Boston (USA), obteniendo dos Masters  en la Universidad de Harvard. Durante 20 años trabajó como Director General en varias multinacionales de biotecnología y agencias internacionales de publicidad. Xavier ha escrito guiones cinematográficos, obras de teatro, obras de teatro musical (libreto, música y letras), artículos periodísticos, y novelas. Ha escrito artículos sobre temas relativos a Nueva Zelanda como lector corresponsal para la edición digital de La Vanguardia, uno de los principales periódicos de España. UXMALA fue seleccionada como Finalista en el VII Premio HISPANIA de Novela Histórica (2019). Xavier escribe todas sus novelas en español e inglés, y reside en Auckland (Nueva Zelanda) con su familia.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1 

Barcelona. Today.

Elsa dropped the spoon and pulled out a lock of her brown hair, dyeing it a premature silvery shade, leaving a trace of flour on her forehead.

I won't tell you again. When I come back tonight, if you are still here, it won’t pain me to take all your things out myself. You know I never exaggerate, so don't waste any time, her stepmother said, adjusting the tight skirt in her uniform, and slamming the door on her way out to work at the perfume shop.

Elsa did not attempt to suppress the sigh that escaped through her teeth, as her clenched fist drew a shaky path through the layer of flour spread out on the marble top, an expression of rage she had hitherto always managed to control.

How she longed to have known her real mother, dead in childbirth when she was born.

If it weren't for the photographs her beloved father constantly showed her during her childhood, her mother's face would now be but a distant memory, replaced by the more idealized one that often appeared in her dreams. 

Her stepmother's angry face intruded and shattered her daydream. Since her father's sudden death five years ago, her life became a hard journey. The months she lived in her stepmother's care had been the most bitter of her life.

She experienced her eighteenth birthday and her emancipation, as if the Allied troops had arrived to liberate her from the concentration camp where she was living.

Elsa had fond memories of those first years of independence, despite how difficult that nomadic life had been for her, from house to house, at the mercy of the goodwill of her dwindling group of friends from the public school she soon had to abandon.

Years of sleeping on old couches, sharing cramped quarters in unsanitary cubicles that would have pleased a hobbit, enjoying every frugal meal to the fullest, because of how infrequent they were.

Job offers seemed to avoid her and faded away faster than if Houdini himself were the interviewer.

Few jobs, abhorrent surroundings, miserable wages, a panorama of exploitation that would have made the foreman of the Pharaoh in Ancient Egypt feel at ease, as his slaves dragged giant stones up the ramp to the rhythm of the whip cracking. 

Every day life put her youthful endurance to the test. 

Elsa wondered if it was worth being born to live like that, and every day her own answer was that fortune was waiting just around the corner, ready to change her future.

She tried not to think she was fooling herself, but circumstances seemed to conspire to show her she was.

A baby's cry burst the soap bubble she was trying to elevate her thoughts in, and in a split second her maternal instinct activated all the warning systems.

She moved away from the kitchen table and approached the baby chair in which a few seconds ago a beautiful one-year-old little girl with curly brown hair was sleeping.

Elsa looked around for the bottle but remembered she had prepared none.

The thought of unbuttoning her blouse to breastfeed her daughter passed fleetingly through her mind, but she discarded it, not so much because she had been trying for weeks to break that annoying habit, but because she suspected the productive splendor of her breasts was already a thing of the past. 

Abandoned by her partner almost before the pregnancy test strip changed color, her life brought her back to the edge of the same dizzying abyss she had been at so many times, only now it was pushing her until her bare feet clinged to the edge, blood and color fleeing from her nails.

Three years of living together with her partner, a foreigner as allergic to commitment as he was to the slightest hint of romanticism toward her, did nothing to raise her hopes of living a happy life.

Happiness for Elsa died with her parents, in the plural.

No matter how hard she tried to walk toward happiness in every conceivable way, it always drifted away, smiling sardonically at her and prolonging her agony.

Her new life as a single mother began as the true climbing of the Everest of her misfortunes, making her suffer the lack of oxygen during the ascent, causing all sorts of suffocation and exhaustion symptoms.

Now she faced the descent, whose difficulty people often underestimated and much more dangerous and arduous than the ascent.

Fearful of the unknown, unsure of her suitability as a mother, and terrified of the responsibility of maintaining the life her unconscious passion had engendered, she let herself be carried away, trusting her instincts.

Not thinking about what she was doing helped her to move forward. The first months, the unconsciousness of her ignorance and the excitement brought by novelty slowed down her reasoning, helping her to descend the first meters.

But when the night came on the mountain, the cold and the terrifying abysses were still there, only invisible, preventing her from making progress in her descent and accentuating her fear, causing a paralysis that gripped and annulled her spirit.

Homeless, without a partner, with no job or income, without support or family warmth, she succumbed to altitude sickness, surrendering to adversity, letting the sweet narcolepsy of death overrun her senses and seduce her.

Only the crying of her daughter kept her tied to life, she was the rope her body hung from in the darkness of the abyss, to which she clung with the despair of those who know they are close to the end. 

In desperation, she glanced at the caption of a message that just came in on her mobile phone, flying to her in the icy wind of social networks, and sent by Carla, one of her two remaining friends.

Her brain could only process the headline.

Start a new life in France.

CHAPTER 2

Those words intrigued her enough to rinse off some floured tears and pick the phone.

Her daughter's crying reminded her she had to take care of her nutritional needs first, and she opened the refrigerator hoping to find some fresh juice that would save her from the tedious preparation of formula.

Opening the refrigerator in her stepmother's apartment was like opening Ali Baba's cave, only without the thieves and relocated to the North Pole.

The product labels looking at her all lined up under the bluish light of the fridge drew a scene in whose reality she did not recognize herself.

Top brand products, whims that would have been difficult to justify in a Sultan's pantry, much less for someone with a modest salary like the one her stepmother made in the perfume shop.

A mystery she would never be able to unravel, although she was not eager to solve it either.

While her little daughter was busy wetting her lips in a glass of orange juice, fresh in terms of temperature but not in nature, her gaze returned to the mobile phone on the table.

Her fingers drew a wet flour arabesque that woke up the phone touch screen and showed her the intriguing text again.

Carla’s message spoke about a unique opportunity that had come up in France through a friend of her parents. If she accepted the offer, she could start whenever she wanted. Carla was not interested, but she thought it could be good for Elsa during those difficult times in her life.

Difficult times. Elsa couldn't suppress a grimace when she read it.

Her whole life now was just one big difficult time, one that looked like it could go on for at least eighteen more years, judging by that little person who kept making orange spit bubbles.

A short text in French accompanied the message, describing the offer in detail.

The three years of French she took in secondary school should enable her to read it, and she put the effectiveness of public education in her country to the test.

After a quick diagonal reading, her eyes soon stopped on several words that struck her as if they had been embossed.

Live in a dream castle in the heart of France. That was a good start, but she wondered if they weren't overdoing it.

Without paying for lodging, services or taxes. That was still better, nothing to object to.

With the right to use a large annexed house, with kitchen, bathroom, study, and several bedrooms. That seemed tailored to her needs.

On an estate with several lakes and extensive forests with abundant hunting and fishing. It sounded idyllic, though she had always felt no animal deserved to die, except perhaps for certain insects.

Candidate will take care of the castle annexes and look after the fields and the orchard. No problem so far, not in vain had she survived the last few years with nobody’s help.

Responsible person, who appreciates nature and tranquility. Must be a horse lover. When she got to that part, she stopped in her tracks.

The closest she had ever been to a horse was in the parade of the mounted police unit in Barcelona. She always had nothing but enormous respect for horses, a word that in Elsa's language translated as panic.

That last part and the mention of the horses worried her, but it also intrigued her powerfully.

It was a fantastic offer. In her world, when something sounded too good to be true, it always turned out to be so.

In the text, there was hardly any mention of obligations. Surely there had to be more. Where was the deception? 

After living through the misfortune of losing both of her parents and her life from then on becoming one of survival, the present was all she had left.

Thinking about the future seemed like a gigantic unknown to her, a cruel joke of fate, and not even the fact she had a daughter to care for helped to erase such thoughts from her mind. 

On the other hand, the idea of breaking away from everything and starting a new life abroad both seduced and frightened her, but weighing pros and cons, the tingle weighed more than the chills, and the idea sounded more and more attractive to her, even somewhat sensually.

Freeing herself from her stepmother's inexplicable resentment, from the prejudices of much of society toward a single, unemployed mother, from the disturbing and unpredictable threat of her ex-partner lurking in the shadows.

Perhaps she could leave all that behind and start a new life.

Living in a castle, and in France, of all countries. She was beginning to feel like the princess in one of the bedtime stories her father read to her every night during her childhood.

In her imagination, she was running through green meadows dotted with daisies, her long veil in the wind, before the slender, elegant and majestic silhouette of the castle, her own château, its white walls glittering in the evening sun. 

She knew that dreaming costed nothing, and deep inside, her common sense told her such an opportunity was either a great exaggeration or a huge misunderstanding that would clear up in the most painful way possible as soon as she set foot in that place.

Her heart encouraged her to take risks, for it had proved to be stronger than she thought and to be bulletproof against disillusionment.

It was worth trying, whether it was the adventure of a lifetime or just another disappointment to add to an already long list. No one could call her a coward for not trying to change her life, hers and her little girl's.

After a short phone conversation with her friend, in less than an hour she had her few belongings packed, ready to fit them into every free space she could find in her tiny car.

With the car keys in her hand, she couldn't help a smile and a sigh of happiness and hope melting on her lips, as she closed the door to the apartment of the woman who seemed to hate her so much, and who would be glad not to find her there when she returned.

Elsa hugged her daughter, and giving her a soft kiss on her little pink ball of a nose, she abandoned the house, the city, and her current life, with the hope of having a new opportunity to restart her life for good.

The palace awaited its princess.

CHAPTER 3

The long journey to the north kept her under permanent tension and anguish, but not out of fear of what she might find at her destination, nor the frequent stops she had to make for her little girl, not even because of the demanding concentration after so many hours of driving.

Her main concern was if the rickety vehicle would hold out without leaving her in the gutter. She had never driven it out of town, at least not since she bought it, for she could not speak for its five or six previous owners.

Unaccustomed to visiting a workshop for maintenance, every crackle coming from the vehicle caused in Elsa an electric shock of vital distress and cold sweat.

She drove along national roads, avoiding the highways and their expensive and numerous tolls sprouting at every bend in the route.

Leaving Catalonia, her region of birth, and crossing the Pyrenees gave her a bittersweet taste.

Not that she left much behind, as the happy memories with her parents she would always carry with her, but moving away from the devil she knew was proving to be harder than she imagined.

She wondered if this was how the sailors who centuries ago sailed in search of unknown continents felt, or the explorers who ventured into uncharted territories anywhere around the world.

Her daughter's babbling always brought her back to reality. It reminded her that from that moment on, it did not matter where she lived.

Her life would always be where her little one was, in a shared room in a smelly boarding house, between the seats of that car, in a small city apartment, or even in a dream castle in the French countryside.

It was a comforting thought, and it helped her to keep her eyes on the road and a smile on her lips.

Despite all past troubles in her life, Elsa was positive and optimistic by nature, and would let nothing spoil the new life about to begin for both of them in France.

Without a credit card, which the bank had taken away because of late payments, she administered the little cash she had left by prioritizing filling up the gas tank and buying food at the grocery stores in the villages she passed through.

When night came, she stopped on the outskirts of Béziers, in the parking area of a small shopping center, a lonely place, but close enough to the city not to be too frightened.

It was not the first time she had slept in her car, but she hoped it would be one of the last, thankful that it was late summer and the temperature inside the car was as pleasant as outside.

At dawn, the early rush of trucks coming to unload goods woke her up, and she hurried to move the car so as not to attract attention. 

She felt immensely lucky her daughter already slept through most of the night, a blessing people did not value enough, unless someone mentioned it to her with admiration.

As soon as the mall opened its doors, she went into the bathroom to wash and change her daughter's diapers.

Being the first, guaranteed that she would find the toilets clean, an obsession that even her financial hardships would not eradicate.

The journey north continued, her eyes always on the road and the needle, not that in the compass but the one in the fuel gauge, more critical for the success of her journey.

Elsa wanted to get there before it got dark, she didn't want to spend another night in the car, and she sensed they were already very close to their destination.

She stopped the car in the ditch and unfurled the huge accordion road map on the passenger seat.

Good news. If her sleepy sense of direction was not deceiving her, she must have been about four or five villages away from Branchenat, the town right before the castle.

She didn't even try to fold the map back into its original form, which she knew from experience was an impossible task, and returned to the road with renewed energy, already smelling the finish line.

Branchenat's road sign passed to her right and Elsa slowed down to take in the scenery.

Extensive mown fields, bordered by small groups of trees that brought some greenery to the dry, yellowish carpet stretching out in all directions.

Enormous cylinders of hay of perfect proportions and symmetry, scattered in a neat mess over the fields, drew her attention.

It looked as if someone had interrupted a bowling game between giants and they had fled leaving the pieces scattered over the field, hoping to return later to complete the game.

The houses followed one another, spaced out along the road, modern and well maintained, looking like second summer residences, and Elsa missed the traditional French village air she had expected to find.

Behind a low gray wall, she could see the top of the tombstones, crosses and small mausoleums of the modest local cemetery, the first place that reminded her she was in a real French rural village.

Several bends later she reached a crossroads, presided over by a small church whose walls had once been white, topped by a miniature rose window through which light barely passed.

A tiny tower crowned the church, sporting a small bell proportionate to the rest, which reminded her more of a cat's rattle, given its minute dimensions.

She moved on and soon left the last residences behind, crossing the vast crop fields stretching as far as the eye could see.

The immensity of that sky, which the sunset already painted in ochre tones, was the ideal setting to dive into the vast green cornfield sea.

The very long straight road section disappeared in the distance and sank into the swell of those green waters swayed by the gentle afternoon breeze.

It was a magnificent sight, and for a moment Elsa forgot her worries and let such beauty fill her mind. 

The next bend revealed a straight line into what looked like a small forest but turned out to be rows of lush trees growing along the road, like a silent escort of soldiers in formation welcoming her.

A thin white wooden fence appeared as if from nowhere to flank the road on her right, announcing the importance and status of the land it bordered.

Through a clearing among the trees, she saw an elegant square tower in the distance, crowned with a dark pointed roof, and beyond that, a slender round tower, which looked more like a spire.

She wondered whether that was her castle or another of the many stately residences that abounded in the area, but the vision disappeared among the trees as fast as it had appeared.

As she continued along the road, behind the fence the tall grass meadows turned into a carpet of well-kept lawns, dying at the foot of leafy centenary trees.

After a wide curve to the right, she noticed how the road widened, the trees disappeared and the fence metamorphosed into large white columns supporting a huge rhomboid-shaped gate, behind which sprang a wide dirt road.

With a gentle flick of the wheel, Elsa left the road and stopped in front of the huge fence, letting her gaze fly past the wooden bars.

And then she saw it, behind that majestic entrance, at the end of the avenue, framed by a reddish sky in the evening sun, the sharp needles of its towers trying to puncture the clouds of fire swirling around it.

Château Lacroix.

CHAPTER 4

Château Lacroix. Branchenat. France.

The vision surpassed in beauty everything she had imagined during the trip.

Her mind had prepared a cocktail of images borrowing elements from medieval Spanish and Scottish castles, with their crenelated stone walls, mixed with the stylized silhouettes and pointed towers of Austrian castles, and sprinkled with decorative details from German dream castles, those she had always associated with princesses and knights-errant since her childhood.

The resulting image was a hybrid of clichés, which burst into pieces as soon as her eyes ran across Lacroix‘s stark and balanced lines.

Taking advantage of her daughter's sleep, Elsa got out of the car and ambled to the gate, resting her hands on a crossbar until her chin touched the wood.

She couldn't believe what she was seeing.

The imposing castle was the epitome of elegance and style, with its light beige walls, its immaculate white windows and the dark roof with its steep slopes crowned by spires and chimneys everywhere.

The three-story building, centered at the end of a wide avenue, looked as if taken from a fairy tale.

If at that moment a golden carriage pulled by three rows of white horses had appeared in front of the main door, Elsa would not have been the least bit surprised.

She had never seen anything so beautiful, at least with respect to buildings. It took her several minutes to assimilate the whole environment and to make the leap from the dream world back to the real one.

And now, what? She didn't know where to go or what to do.

The gate was closed, and even if she opened it, she found it very presumptuous and out of place to make a triumphant entrance down that tree-lined avenue toward the castle, riding on a piece of junk like the car she was driving.

Beside the white column supporting the gate she saw a small access door. She tried it but it was locked and found no bell.

The avenue leading to the castle turned to the left and disappeared through a thick group of trees, among which she made out the shadow of some outbuildings, probably horse stables or service buildings.

There had to be a less formal entrance than that, so she decided to explore the surroundings.

Not wanting to leave her little girl in the car, she caressed her to wake her up and introduced her little feet in a backpack she hung from her shoulders, letting the baby rest against her chest.

She locked the car and walked along the side of the road, following the wooden fence until she reached a very long wall marking the point where the outbuildings stood.

A metal fence gave access to a path among the trees, too narrow for a car to pass but suitable for people.

She kept walking along the wall, so high it hid the inside of the compound from view, until she reached a large wooden gate, so dark and dirty she thought it must have been there since the time of the Last Crusade.

Elsa pounded on the door with her fists, seeing neither a peephole nor a bell, and after several unsuccessful attempts, she turned away. The wall disappeared into the distance and she could not see any more doors, so she went back and tried the path she had spotted earlier.

The grass invading the path went up to her knees, and when she walked into the group of trees, she found it less dense than expected.

Soon she came out into a clearing overlooking an enormous courtyard, flanked by three elongated buildings.

She assumed they must be barns, stables or rural dwellings, probably for the farmers who looked after those lands.

Ivy invaded most of the visible walls, drowning out the small windows on their façades and those in the attics, which opened through the reddish roof tiles as if trying to reach the surface to breathe.

Elsa would have sworn she had gone back in time and found herself in a village in the Middle Ages, if it hadn't been for the nose of a vehicle that looked even older and more run-down than hers, peering out of a half-open shed door.

In a corner between two buildings the fiberglass body of an old dust-covered boat yellowed in the sun, longing for the times it had sailed on the waters of a nearby lake, because from that place, almost in France’s geometric center, dreaming of the sea was beyond reach.

The sun was setting and the shadows moved fast, giving an increasingly gloomy appearance to the whole, accentuated by the threatening bark of a dog approaching from behind.

Elsa turned and stood on guard, terrified to see a Doberman so black it blended into the dark trees in the background, although she had no trouble identifying it.

As if there were a strange psychic connection between animals and babies, the little girl woke up and stretched out her arms to the dog, in a gesture that didn't look like terror, but rather like funny complicity.

Elsa turned her head to either side, looking for a place to hide, and ran to the sleeping boat at the end of the yard, circling it until she found a small metal staircase at the back.

Not without effort, she climbed aboard, while the little girl let out gurgles of joy, enjoying the adventure.

Once inside, she took refuge under the dusty green canvas protecting the boat, supported by wooden wedges imbedded on the ground, while the dog jumped around her, getting up and resting its front legs against the boat's keel.

Her maternal instinct made her hug her daughter to protect her while covering her head under the canvas, as if the thin piece of cloth would have magical properties against the fangs of an angry Doberman.

She could hear its barking and the scratching of claws against the boat, sounding a few inches away from her face, which is probably where the dog was, although Elsa remained hidden and closed her eyes, a universal tried and tested resource in the face of most dangers or threats.

The little girl's laughter had turned to tears, scared by the blows to the boat and the dirty darkness under the canvas, but Elsa remained firm in her immobility.

When the dog seemed most furious, the barking stopped, leaving only the sound of dry blows accompanied by a raspy, deep voice screaming in a tongue Elsa did not understand.

For some strange reason, the screams were scarier than the attack of a huge wild Doberman, and Elsa remained motionless under the canvas, as if that would make whoever was there pass by.

The animal’s howls turned into high-frequency snorts and gasps, and Elsa felt someone tear the tarpaulin she had been holding since the attack began.

Elsa looked up and found herself face to face with a vision that for an instant took her back to her childhood’s school books, fascinated by the artistic recreation of the Cro-Magnon man's face, with its well-populated eyebrows, wide nose and a stern look on his face.

But that was not a diorama from the natural history museum but real life, and Elsa clasped her daughter in her arms, turning her body sideways to protect her.

CHAPTER 5

W hat do you want? Who are you? cried Elsa, trying not to let the fierce face looking at her in silence intimidate her.

The man held the tarpaulin up high, in a clear invitation for Elsa to leave her hiding place.

Calmer when she saw how the dog seemed to obey the man, she stood up, stroking her daughter's cheeks to calm her down, as she scanned the horizon like a captain on a vessel’s bridge.

When she was sure the dog remained still, she disembarked from the boat, with an elegance worthy of better ports.

She stood in front of the man, not wishing to go near the Doberman, which was snorting a few steps from her legs.

Who are you? Do you live here? Elsa insisted, getting only a slight shoulder shrug in reply.

I'm looking for Mr. Boucher, Jérémie Boucher. Is he here?

On hearing that name, the man softened his somewhat sullen expression, furrowing his eyebrows and letting out a grunt intended to be a statement.

He turned and pointed to the trees, toward the castle. 

Elsa took advantage of that moment of loquacity to try to get more information.

I have come from Barcelona to see him. I sent him a message two days ago, I don't know if he received it, or maybe my friend Carla contacted him too, I don't know. Do you know if he can see me now?

The man did not answer, snapped his fingers, and the dog followed him a few steps behind as he walked into the woods.

Elsa interpreted she should follow him, and though she was not sure it was a good idea, she preferred to reach the large open space in front of the castle rather than remaining there alone.

She walked through the group of trees and out onto the vast esplanade where the castle stood.

As she approached it, she admired its imposing presence and the austere elegance of its lines.

Looking up,