"Well, here we are, Anne-girl," said Gilbert, helping Anne out of the hired ride. "Château Frontenac."
Anne stared at the tall building; a horseshoe-shaped luxury hotel made up of four wings of grey stone of unequal length. The wings were connected to each other at obtuse angles. An architecturally gothic hotel. The builders completed this hotel in 1893 on the site of an older hotel and, hundreds of years before that, the mansion used by the governors-general of New France.
Anne ogled the steep pitched roofs, towers, turrets, tall chimneys, and the gables and dormers.
"I knew that you'd like it," Gilbert said with a smile.
"Oh, Gilbert, thank you very much for bringing me here. I'm sure that we could have found much less expensive lodgings."
"Ma belle, I wouldn't take you on a long train ride to a conference in Quebec City if I hadn't planned to book a room here. What do you take me for? A beast?"
The pair entered the lobby for their check-in.
"You're ogling again," Gilbert said as Anne admired the lobby's mahogany paneling, marble staircase, carved stone, and wrought iron.
"Dr. and Mrs. Blythe," Gilbert said to the concierge. To Anne, he murmured, "Hope they don't put us into any of the haunted rooms."
"Haunted rooms, Gilbert?" Anne whispered back.
"Oh, never mind, it was just a joke. This place has some silly ghost stories," Gilbert said.
One of the bellboys muttered, "La Dame en Blanc."
The concierge glared at the bellboy.
The bellboy bowed and said, "Pardon, Monsieur," then left.
"The lady in white?" said Anne.
The concierge said, "Aw, yes. La Dame en Blanc. Many of our long times employees have seen both her and Comte de Frontenac. Here are your keys, Monsieur."
"La Dame en Blanc? Comte de Frontenac?" Anne said to Gilbert after they - and their luggage - entered their room.
"Well, here we are, Anne-girl," said Gilbert, helping Anne out of the hired ride. "Château Frontenac."
Anne stared at the tall building; a horseshoe-shaped luxury hotel made up of four wings of grey stone of unequal length. The wings were connected to each other at obtuse angles. An architecturally gothic hotel. The builders completed this hotel in 1893 on the site of an older hotel and, hundreds of years before that, the mansion used by the governors-general of New France.
Anne ogled the steep pitched roofs, towers, turrets, tall chimneys, and the gables and dormers.
"I knew that you'd like it," Gilbert said with a smile.
"Oh, Gilbert, thank you very much for bringing me here. I'm sure that we could have found much less expensive lodgings."
"Ma belle, I wouldn't take you on a long train ride to a conference in Quebec City if I hadn't planned to book a room here. What do you take me for? A beast?"
The pair entered the lobby for their check-in.
"You're ogling again," Gilbert said as Anne admired the lobby's mahogany paneling, marble staircase, carved stone, and wrought iron.
"Dr. and Mrs. Blythe," Gilbert said to the concierge. To Anne, he murmured, "Hope they don't put us into any of the haunted rooms."
"Haunted rooms, Gilbert?" Anne whispered back.
"Oh, never mind, it was just a joke. This place has some silly ghost stories," Gilbert said.
One of the bellboys muttered, "La Dame en Blanc."
The concierge glared at the bellboy.
The bellboy bowed and said, "Pardon, Monsieur," then left.
"The lady in white?" said Anne.
The concierge said, "Aw, yes. La Dame en Blanc. Many of our long times employees have seen both her and Comte de Frontenac. Here are your keys, Monsieur."
"La Dame en Blanc? Comte de Frontenac?" Anne said to Gilbert after they - and their luggage - entered their room.
Gilbert chuckled. "Just some superstitions, old wives' tales. Dr. Parker told me about these. He has family in Quebec, you know. The Lady in White is just what it sounds like. A ghostly lady in white shows up in people's hotel rooms. Even craws into bed with them, too, as some of the stories go. Probably wishful thinking on the parts of lonely drunk fellows. The other ghost is Louis de Baude de Frontenac. A Governor-General of New France in the 1600's. The guy after which they named this hotel. In fact, they built this hotel on the site of the mansion in which he died. So, yeah, the locals here say that Frontenac haunts this place."
Anne said, "Well, this place feels like home, then. Although, Gilbert, if we had wanted to see a ghost, we could have just gone back to our Haunted Walk."
Gilbert took Anne into his arms and kissed her.
He said, "You'll hear plenty of ghost stories if you talk to the right people. We can see the Plains of Abraham from this hotel. Got to be plenty of ghost stories about the battle there. Both commanders dead. The British pushed the French out of New France after their victory here."
Gilbert ran his hand over Anne's right breast. He cupped his hand over the spot where her layers of clothing encased her nipple. He rubbed it.
"But enough of this ghost talk, Anne. I brought you here to get you away from the patients and the children . . . and the ghosts."
"Oh, Gilbert. You always know the best places to touch me and make me feel good."
"That's because I'm a doctor, ma cherie."
Anne squeezed Gilbert's derriere. Back when Gilbert was a medical school student and they had to sneak hurried touches when Marilla wasn't looking, Anne had proclaimed that Gilbert's rear end had been designed specially to fit her hands.
Now Anne said, "Gil, we should dead bolt the door."
"I already did that," said Gilbert.
Anne woke in Gilbert's arms. The Pima cotton sheet had slipped, revealing most of Gilbert's bare, sleeping form. Gilbert still had the toned muscles and flat stomach of the farm boy that he had been when he and Anne had fallen in love. Anne knew that their housekeeper, Susan Baker, and their neighbor, Cornelia Bryant, gossiped about Gilbert's physique when they thought that Anne couldn't hear them. More than once, Anne caught Susan trying to see what Gilbert looked like in his nightshirt when he slept through a day after being on his feet all night. Hell, Anne once caught Susan trying to score a free show by looking through the washroom keyhole while Gilbert soaked in the bathtub with a tumbler of whiskey after a rough call.
Anne glanced at the empty glasses on the nightstand. The folks back in Glen St. Mary would be scandalized if they learned that their doctor and his wife had both gotten drunk on currant wine before they made noisy love in the fanciest hotel in Quebec City. Anne knew that other guests at the hotel could hear them because someone had pounded on their door during the night of passion. Anne surprised even herself because she knew that she could make love very quietly. She and Gilbert make love silently all the time back home. How else did Gilbert knock her up five times while that busybody Susan slept in the next room? Oh, shit! Did Susan listen to her and Gilbert having sex back at the House of Dreams and Ingleside?
Well, hopefully she and Gilbert wouldn't get expelled from the Chateau Frontenac for being too loud. Now, wouldn't that set the tongues in the Glen wagging.
Anne felt someone watching her. She looked up to see a woman dressed all in white standing next to the bed where Anne lay naked with her husband. Remembering the ghost story, she laughed and thought, "Oh, it's the White Lady. Or the Lady in White. Or whatever you call her. Well, whatever you are, don't get into this bed. He's all mine!" Anne laughed harder. Wait, she said that all out loud, didn't she? Oh, wait, she was still drunk, wasn't she?
Anne laughed harder still. Yep, she was still drunk!
Anne's laughter woke Gilbert.
"You game for another round?" he asked her.
"You bet," said Anne.
She forgot about the White Lady. Or the Lady in White. Or La Dame en Blanc. Or whatever.
Wojciech tugged at his porter uniform.
"This hotel is completely booked. Every single room. They had me take luggage to the haunted rooms tonight."
Marie leered at him. "Vous êtes un brave petit garçon, vey courageux."
"You mock me, woman," said Wojciech. "I don't know why I put up with you. I should take the next boat back to Poland. Don't know why I ever came to this city."
Marie pulled at the strings of her hotel maid uniform. "Why don't you, then? Just go. Aller, partez, sortez d'ici."
Wojciech said, "Don't worry, woman. I will do just that. As soon as I have the money to pay my passage. Gah! I wish that I could find a railroad baron to kidnap for ransom."
Marie said, "Oh, there's several of them staying here. I overheard Monsieur Moulin talking about the bookings. Beau Blythe is here tonight. Heir to the CP Rail. Also, William Van Horne, Hudson Allison, Quigg Baxter, Thornton Davidson, Mark Fortune. Oh, Woj, I could go on. There's plenty of millionaires here for you to swindle. If you want something badly enough, Woj, there's a way."
Wojciech sucked in his breath.
"What's wrong, Woj? You a coward? Le froussard."
Marie tucked her hand into her armpits and flapped them like a chicken.
"Never mind, woman," said Wojciech. He stormed away.
Gilbert took Anne to breakfast in the Chateau's dining room. They were seated at a table with a couple from Vancouver, the McNairys.
"We have visited many of the railway hotels," said the wife. "Most of them are haunted, you know. But this – Chateau Frontenac – is the most haunted."
"Oh, indeed?" said Anne.
"Why, yes," said Mrs. McNairy. "Why, indeed, we ourselves heard several of the ghosts moan last night. They moaned quite loudly, for quite a bit of time. Came from a room down the hallway from ours. We even heard someone bang on the door of that room to stop all the moaning."
"Oh, erm, how dreadful," said Gilbert, turning beat red.
After breakfast, Gilbert kissed Anne farewell for the next few hours as he attended his medical conference.
She realized that she had at some point removed her hat and misplaced it. Perhaps it happened when Gilbert kissed her as he left the hotel? Anne left her information with the concierge so that they could return her hat if it was located.
"The last name is Blythe," said Anne. She recited her room number.
"Very well, miss," said the concierge. He wrote down the information. He handed the information to a porter standing next to him. "Please post, Woj," the concierge said to the porter.
A very short while later, Anne's missing hat was located and sent to the concierge's desk. Monsieur Moulin tasked Wojciech with returning the hat to Madame Anne Blythe at the room number listed for her. Woj brought the hat to the Blythe hotel room. The hat was quite a simple hat. The room was not one of the hotel's fancy suites. It was not even one of the hotel's fanciest rooms. Even weirder still, it was one of the rooms that was rumored to be haunted by La Dame en Blanc. This puzzled Woj, since Marie had previously overheard Monsieur Moulin say that Beau Blythe was a railroad heir. Why would a railroad heir and his wife stay in a haunted, non-fancy room in lieu of staying in one of the suites? Madame Blythe thanked Woj profusely and tipped him for his efforts, but she didn't tip him the way that he expected that a railroad heir's wife would tip a porter.
Reunited with her hat, Anne set off for her own walking tour of Quebec City.
She started with the Plains of Abraham.
In 1759, during the Seven Years' War – and its offshoot, the French and Indian War - the British Major General James Wolfe laid siege to the French-controlled Quebec City. After three months, the two armies battled on a field below the bluff where Chateau Frontenac now looked over the St. Lawrence River. Locals called this field the Plains of Abraham. Both Wolfe and the French commander, Major General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, suffered fatal gunshot wounds. Wolfe clung to life until he learned that the French had surrendered. Montcalm died the day after the battle. The French left Quebec City. Shortly afterward, France gave up New France.
Anne had studied the battle years earlier in a Redmond history class. As of only a few years earlier – back in 1908, in fact – the Prince of Wales had travelled to Quebec City to dedicate this as Canada's first National Historic Site. The residents and tourists of Quebec City now walked for exercise here in the Quebec Battlefields Park, Canada's first urban park.
Anne strolled down the tree-lined walkway. She heard another tourist sigh, then exclaim, "Vous croyez que j'ai peur des revenants?"
Yeah, Anne thought. There probably are ghosts still fighting here. A long siege that ended with a short, conclusive battle. Both commanders dead. There were probably soldiers, buried on that battlefield, who didn't realize that it was already past the hour When the hurly burly's done / When the battle's lost and won."
Anne thanked the almighty that the time for fighting in wars was over for Canada, and that none of her sons would ever be soldiers.
She saw Mrs. McNairy sitting on a patio, at a café, drinking something in a mug.
Or, rather, Mrs. McNairy saw her first, and flagged her to stop.
"Mrs. Blythe, right? And your husband is Dr. Blythe, did I remember that correctly?"
"Why, yes," said Anne.
Mrs. McNairy said, "Forgive the intrusion, but may I ask you something personal, my dear?"
"Um?" said Anne, bracing herself for the oncoming question.
Mrs. McNairy said, "Did your husband drink his own urine?"
"I beg your pardon?" said Anne.
Mrs. McNairy said, "I heard that medical school students are required to drink their own urine. So, they know what healthy urine smells and tastes like. Is that true? Did your husband drink his own urine as part of his medical training?"
"Oh, erm," said Anne.
Mrs. McNairy said, "I think that I have the sugar in my urine. The maple sugar urine disease. Something's not right with my body. It's betraying me. I'm dying, Mrs. Blythe. And the doctors don't know what to do. They can't do anything for me. Oh, I've been such a little fool. I thought that if I went to the right school and found the right husband, I'd have made it. I went to McGill. I earned a B.A. at McGill. And I found Professor McNairy. I thought that he was the best husband for me. But then he lost his teaching job. And then he lost another teaching job. He cannot hold any job, Mrs. Blythe. Our lives have been just jumping from one job to the next job for him. And I no longer love him, Mrs. Blythe."
"Oh, erm," said Anne again.
Mrs. McNairy said, "I can tell that your man, on the other hand, is a good man. And that you both really love each other. Take care of each other. Now go. You don't need to be seen with an old lady getting drunk on a patio."
Anne said, "Do they sell spirits here?"
"Nah," said Mrs. McNairy. "I carry a flask in my coat."
"Did you see any ghosts?" Gilbert asked her when she told him at dinner that she had toured the old battlefield.
Anne said, "No, but one of the other visitors actively looked for them. Sometimes I hear these old stories, Gilbert, and I wonder what the whole point of being a ghost and haunting things even is."
"You're assuming that ghosts even exist, Anne-girl," said Gilbert.
"Of course, ghosts exist," said Anne. She ignored the look that Gilbert shot her. "But, Gilbert, why bother? Take the Battle of Quebec. The one that happened in 1759. Both commanders worked their entire lives to be Major Generals. And then, poof. That's it. They're both dead. No lavish retirements spent cruising the Atlantic or vacations in luxury railway hotels. So, what was the point of spending an entire life at war?"
"Wow, Anne-girl, how much wine did you have? You're debating the morality of war now?"
"Just wait, Gilbert. So, they died at war. If you think about it, the battle's outcome didn't really affect either of them. They're both dead. So why would they stick around to haunt the battlefield? The French lost Quebec City, and then later the British lost it too, in a way, with Confederation."
"Anne-girl, maybe this should be your last glass, okay? I'm cutting you off," said Gilbert.
"Well, never mind those guys from the battle, Gilbert. Why does Louis de Baude de Frontenac haunt this place? I mean, sure, he died somewhere on the site of this hotel. But he lived a long and successful life. He died in his bed in his 70's, didn't he? Quebec City seems to think that he did a pretty good job of being governor-general. There are statues of him all over the place here."
Gilbert said, "Well, assuming that ghosts exist – and I DON'T believe that ghosts exist, Anne-girl, maybe he's just watching out for the city."
"But why would he do that, Gil? It doesn't even belong to France anymore. Hasn't for the past 150 years. Also, why does the Lady in White stick around?"
"Okay, Anne-girl, you are now talking way too loudly. Finish your dinner."
Gilbert settled their tab. The couple returned to their hotel room.
"Dead bolt the door, Gil," said Anne.
"I already did," said Gilbert.
Anne untied Gilbert's cravat. She removed his jacket. Slid his suspenders down. Unbuttoned his shirt. After Gilbert was bare from the waist up, she caressed the spot on his muscled bicep where Captain Bill Taylor from Harbour Mouth had tattooed "Anne."
Anne reached for the buttons on Gilbert's trousers when he stopped her.
"My turn now," said Gilbert.
Anne and Gilbert were drifting off to sleep when they heard screams coming from the hallway.
"Doctor! We need a doctor!"
Gilbert dressed hurriedly and headed for the commotion.
Anne made herself decent, and then peered outside of the door.
It was Mrs. McNairy, lying unconscious on the floor.
Gilbert kneeled towards her. After he worked on her for a while, he stood up, shook his head.
"There's nothing that I can do for her," he said. "She's gone."