Recap :
Having convinced herself that her brother was insane, Berthe had forged documents to support her theory, and having succeeded in dispossessing her brother of his rightful possessions, she instructed the two mysterious men who had attended his funeral to blindfold him and leave him in the forest to die a slow death, to be devoured by wolves. The two masked strangers took pity on the young man and left him to his fate in the forest. The next day, Jamil met a shepherd to whom he asked for help. The shepherd, who had lost his two sons in the same war in which Jamil had fallen victim, took pity on the young man and accepted his request. As the days wore on, the young man worked in the wine house of a friend of old Isaie, and one evening as the conversations continued, the big surprise came. Îsaie was the man who saved Jamil during the war. Time went by and Isaie died, his daughter Rosée became Jamil's fiancée, but one day when they went to town
to town, jamil's sister asked the two men to get rid of her brother and saw him out of the corner of her eye, taking his fiancée with him. The couple returned and the man's sister went back to the family manor wondering whether this was true or whether her conscience, which woke up from time to time, had been playing tricks on her ... the couple had a daughter whom they named Angelique and the following year a son named Jacob.
Chapter 4: ( Resurrection of the past )
The couple already had everything they needed to be happy, and Jamil had decided to move to the city to facilitate his daily activities, since the owner of the Jeremiah wine house where he had been employed had finally opened the drinking business he had always dreamed of. However, mysteries hovered around this beautiful family, each member of which tried to conceal their secrets. Rosée was well aware that things were slipping out of her control, and she knew with a great deal of certainty that her husband was behaving very suspiciously, which prompted her to react. Jamil felt like Atlas carrying the weight of the heavens on his shoulders. He saw his sister trying to stone him, and even though in his mind he really wanted to believe it was only a resemblance, he knew deep down that it was Berthe, even two years after their meeting. Not to mention the dream and prophecy that had haunted his nights for months in his youth, and which now resurfaced in his memory as a father. But he didn't know which of his children would be the subject of the prophecy, and even if he did, he couldn't kill one of them...
When Angélique, the couple's eldest daughter, was born, Jamil, though happy, felt a great sense of frustration, remembering the guardian's words, and the same was true of his second child. The couple decided by mutual agreement not to have any more children, in order to be able to provide for their family, but Rosée found herself pregnant a second time, but the baby died. When Jamil heard the news, he went mad, but his wife told him that the child had died, which greatly appealed to him. Her husband's behavior was becoming worrying, after all, he lacked nothing, but Rosée thought he was angry for financial reasons, even if in Jamil's mind it was for something else. Rosée became aware of her husband's concern when he saw each of his children at birth, but kept it a secret, knowing that if she asked him, he'd shy away from answering. A swarm of secrets now hung over her husband, so, overcome by curiosity, she decided to meddle in what was none of her business, and rummaged in the wooden chest that her husband had forbidden her to open, having stolen the cellar key during the night. Even Jamil rarely visited the cellar, having buried most of his memories there.. As it opened, the creaking door increased the rhythm of the curious woman's tachicardies, and she finally found the chest under hundreds of crumpled papers on which Jamil had written the prophecy revealed to her years before. But Rosée was well aware that such a great secret had to be well guarded, so she pushed aside the papers containing the answer to one of her questions and opened the chest where spiders had woven their web and where she found an old wallet, half devoured by insects, in which there was an old picture that was crumbling in the damp and whose clarity had faded with time. The picture's content was badly altered, but it was possible to make out three men and a woman, belonging to the nobility. Another question arose: why was her husband in possession of such a photo and who were the people in it? She took the picture, tidying up the room to cover up her act, and spent the night of the same day when Jamil fell asleep looking at the object of her intrigue, and finally recognized her husband: young at the time and in his perfect pre-war beauty. Stunned, she screamed, waking him up. She replied that his screams were the result of a bad dream. And he fell asleep again .Rosée kept thinking and thinking to unravel the mystery her husband didn't want her to know. The next day, as he was on his way to work, she sat down by a window in the living room to take a closer look at the image in the dim light of that rainy day. Suddenly, a wind opened the window and blew the sheet away, landing on its other side where an address was written. It was a detail she missed, being too intrigued to look carefully. Reading the address on the paper, Jmail suddenly returned, having forgotten his bag, and Rosée, unsure of what to do, threw the photo into the fireplace, watching the flames erase this old memory. Once her husband was back at work, she prepared to pay a visit to the address on the photo to find out if there was any relationship or link between her husband and the other people in the photo.
The address on the picture was that of an elderly photographer's home. But what could she say to him and what question could she ask him, who would have been content to show him the picture and ask him the identity of the characters if her memory was still accurate, but who had ruined the photo .
she knocked on the door of the old residence where gargoyles sat at the entrance. Once the door was open, she was stunned by the sight, even though she had always wanted to lie. An exact copy of the image she possessed was on the wall inside the residence. She passed herself off as a former client of the photographer, who despite his advanced age had still not lost his memory and sensed the deception. But he began to tell his visitor the reason for his retirement, enjoying her company as few people ever visited him. Rosée listened wholeheartedly, even though staring at the painting gave the impression of hearing nothing at all. She then asked him about the portrait, and he told her the story that changed this woman's life forever. The four figures in the photo were all of the same blood, brothers and sisters, and having recognized her husband in the photo, Rosée knew that her husband had lied to her about being an only child. The photographer was in fact Jamil's uncle, who never had the chance to meet his parents, who were killed after he was born. Rosée, devastated from the inside, asked the old man for the address of the family he was talking about; she absolutely wanted to know for sure, after all, the old man could have had halucinations at his ageor he might have lied to her for who knows what reason. The requested address was given to her and she went there. She found in front of her an immense manor house, with a roof of greyish clay, surrounded by gardens on all sides. Not a single window was open, and a sinister atmosphere pervaded the air. She didn't dare knock on the door and returned home without a reply, not even knowing if the old man had been telling the truth. At one of the manor's windows, a blonde-haired woman watched Rosée leave. Sensing her suspicions, she motioned with her hand for one of the manor's servants to follow her, and so he did. The servant followed her and found out where she lived. The next day, alone at home and as pensive as ever, there was a knock on her door, and it was the blonde-haired woman who had seen her the day before in front of her residence. Rosée was surprised, not knowing the woman, and asked why she had come. The silent woman with her fan in hand pushed Rosée and entered the modest house where she saw pictures hanging on the walls bearing images of Jamil and Rosée, some of them with their children.
The blonde-haired woman waved her hand, and the men who accompanied her took Angelique and Jacob and left the house. Rosée shouted at them for their identities and tried to summon help, but to no avail.
On his return that evening, Jamil was devastated to hear the news, and from his wife's description of the mysterious visitor he became sure of the woman's identity. It was undoubtedly his sister Berthe. He forbade his wife to inform anyone of what had happened and left the house in the middle of the night, heading for the manor house. His memory had weakened, but it was as if forces had sprung up from nothing and guided him to his destination. Two hours passed before he finally arrived. He knocked on the door of the mansion, and the two men who were supposed to kill him immediately recognized him and asked him to leave, but he told them he would only return home in the company of his children. The mansion door opened and Berthe stepped out. With a hateful look at the two men who had once disobeyed her, she asked her brother to come inside and listen to the subject of her visit. Berthe knew that her brother posed a threat to her: alive, he could lose a large part of the inheritance he had been deprived of, and on top of that, he could judge her for having falsified documents proving his madness, and for having made an attempt on his life in the presence of two witnesses.Jamil didn't care about all this lust, he just wanted to go home with his children, and that's when a deal was struck. Jamil's silence about the past against his children's lives. And if one day he decided not to respect what had been agreed, his children's lives would be taken away from him. The relieved father took his children and returned home to his wife, who gave no details of her visit to the manor. The mysteries within the couple continued to grow, and the silence that reigned between the two became increasingly heavy. Rosée was now certain that her husband was hiding his true identity from her, even though she didn't have the courage to knock on the manor door that day, and Jamil in turn had to be more suspicious than ever, since his sister knew he hadn't been killed. This silence lasted for years to come. What will happen, and when and how will it be broken?
...to be continued....