A Gown of Thorns: A Gripping Novel of Romance, Intrigue and the Secrets of a Vintage Parisian Dress (16 page)

‘You do want to help with the feast?’ he asked. ‘It’s our way of thanking the workers and ensuring they come back next year. So if you think you’d rather not—’

‘My cooking’s not that bad! I’ve been talking it over with Audrey. She’s got everything planned as far as traditional fare goes and I suggested doing a barbecue as well, and she quite liked the idea. My devilled drumsticks are to die for. Stop!’ Laurent had begun to argue that nobody ever had a barbecue at a
fête de vendange
. ‘Life moves on. Greet change or you’ll end up like Albert.’
Let your worries show, and we’ll have Rachel
barging in
, she added silently.
Though not if I have anything to do with it.
Petty, but then jealousy always was.

‘
Petty? More than that.
’
Clear as flute music, Yvonne’s opinion piped through her head. ‘
Sometimes, jealousy kills.
’

L
aurent had described
grape picking as ‘the hardest physical work of your life’ and he hadn’t been joking. He’d given Shauna scissors and a bucket and, along with the other
vendangeurs
who were new to the work, a swift lesson in technique. He spoke clearly and slowly.

‘Only pick the healthy grapes. Rotten ones can change the character of a whole vat of wine. You work in pairs, one each side of the vine. Don’t swap rows and don’t leave the vine until it is picked clean. On no account do you ever put your scissors in a bucket. If they fall in among the grapes, they can wreck the press. Cut the grapes so that they fall into your bucket, not to the ground. If you need water, shout for these two’ He indicated Olive and Nico. ‘Any questions? No?
On y va!
We stop for a break in two hours.’ He touched Shauna’s arm, his good humour mended. ‘I’ll be your tutor. Come on.’

Workers fanned out among the rows. Some bent to their toil, others kneeled to work. The
hutte
carriers walked up and down, calling ‘
Panier, panier!
’ meaning, ‘baskets to fill!’ Nico and Olive ran about tirelessly, emptying for the pickers, replacing their buckets and offering water like stewards at a road marathon. They appeared unaffected by the shimmering heat. Shauna took a moment to wipe her scissors, already sticky from grape sugar, and watched one of the
hutte
men emptying his load into the trailer. He was shirtless, his mahogany torso testimony to a season of vineyard labour.

‘That was my job from age thirteen to twenty-one,’ Laurent told her.

Why he too had such broad, well-developed shoulders, she supposed. She and Laurent worked side by side until the first water break, by which time she’d got the hang of shearing clusters in one decisive clip, shifting her bucket along as she reached for the next bunch.

Watching her for a minute or two, Laurent nodded approval. ‘You seem competent already, so this is
au revoir.
’ He patted Shauna’s cheek, leaving it sticky. Which, he told her when she complained, augured well for the quality of the wine. ‘I have to go and feed the press now, check that everything is going right in the
chai
. Feeling OK?’

‘Fine,’ she muttered, though actually her knees and calves ached savagely. The vineyard was on quite a steep slope and the slow crab-walk she’d adopted was working muscles she’d never been aware of having. She’d been bitten too, by midges and heaven knew what else. She’d chosen a long cotton dress and leggings today, thinking the outfit would keep off the sun and the biters. But though she’d doused herself in repellent, something had found its way in. As for her dress, it was too long and she kept stepping on it. Twice she’d sprawled on top of her grape bucket. A blister was forming on the inside of her finger where her scissors chafed.
Two more two-hour stints to go
, she reminded herself. And tomorrow, picking would begin at eight a.m. Thinking of Laurent in the
chai
with Raymond, piling grapes into the press, she muttered, ‘Lucky so-and-so.’ Then, ‘I’m a scientist. Get me out of here.’

But despite all, she was enjoying herself. The atmosphere was convivial. Australians and New Zealanders traded banter as they picked, as did the Spaniards and Portuguese. The older women sang songs that had probably been heard among the vines for generations. The air became a minestrone of languages, the local women talking in their own dialect, and suddenly Shauna realised she could understand them. Most of it, anyway.
I’ve got the language
,
she thought.
Soon I’ll be dreaming in French. Camembert Dreams?

She had a new partner now. Before abandoning her, Laurent had introduced her to Madame Guilhem, who lived in a cottage in Chemignac. ‘She’ll keep an eye on you. She knows these vines backwards.’

Shaking the frail hand and looking into a face as wrinkled as a walnut shell, Shauna had thought,
At least I’ll be faster than her
. Two minutes proved the danger of snap judgements – she’d been left standing with ten vines already between them.

Resting to let her catch up, Madame Guilhem grinned. ‘Except for when I had my children, I’ve done every Chemignac harvest since I was eight years old.’

Eight?
‘So your first time was…?’

‘1925, working for the old Comte de Chemignac.’

‘Henri, Laurent’s grandfather?’

‘No, no.’ The old woman shook her head at Shauna’s ignorance, ‘
His
father, Gaston. Henri, we called “the young comte”, because he was, for a while.’ She laughed, displaying stubby teeth. ‘Like the thorn tree that guards the
chai
, I have been here throughout the ages. I have seen everybody and everything, and outlived most of it. I turn eighty-six at Christmas.’

It made Shauna ashamed of her shuddering muscles and blisters. At eighty-six, she rather fancied being a retired Dame, ennobled for her contribution to biosciences, giving the occasional university lecture but mostly listening to music from a recliner chair. They picked in silence until Madame Guilhem whistled through her teeth. ‘Look at her. At the end of harvest, we should put her on the cart like the
gerbeboade
.’

That was a new word. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Madame.’

‘The wine-maiden. The dolly. I should think that young lady will ensure fertility for the rest of the year.’

That ‘young lady’ was Rachel, who had joined the pickers at some point. Clearly, her allergy had been overcome. She was gliding past with a bucket of opalescent grapes held away from her body. In an off-the-shoulder tunic and long white shorts, she looked like a temple maiden taking a sacrifice to the altar. The ‘altar’ being the wiry Portuguese man, Adão, whose
hutte
clearly had room for one more offering.

‘If he falls over backwards,’ Madame Guilhem huffed, ‘poor lad will never get up again.’

Shauna giggled and Rachel threw her a pitying stare. ‘You’ve just put a mouldy grape in your bucket. We’ll know who to blame if the Sauvignon Blanc gets declassified to table wine.’

She was right, blast her. Shauna fished out the bad cluster and threw it under a vine. Rachel turned back to Adão, squeezing his shoulder, jokingly testing his muscles.

‘Harvest is the most amorous time,’ Madame Guilhem chuckled. Shauna grunted and concentrated on keeping up with her. As an amateur
vendangeuse
, she couldn’t chat and pick. Not safely, anyway.

‘It was a time of love for your mother, anyway.’

Shauna looked up, amazed. ‘You knew my mother?’

‘I know that colour.’ Madame Guilhem nodded towards Shauna’s hair, a few spikes of which poked from beneath her hat. ‘
Blond Vénitien
. Her name… Let me remember… Elisabeth. She fell in love with an
Irlandais
.’

‘An Irishman. Yes, she did.’

‘With green eyes.’

Shauna knew she ought to keep picking, not least because stopping would make her seize up, but she was paralysed by the idea that this old woman had stooped among the same vines as her parents. Had seen their love blossom. A wasp, attracted by the sugary glaze on her skin, got between her and the grapes. By the time she’d waved it away, Madame Guilhem was way ahead. Shauna picked as fast as she could to catch up. ‘They got engaged here, so Madame Duval said.’

‘So they did. They made a cut in each other’s arms. Mixed their lifeblood together under the thorn tree. I told them off, not only because the thorn is bad luck, but because the
épine noire
makes the blood septic. But I suppose they were happy even so?’

‘For eighteen years. Then Dad died.’

‘I am sorry. How?’

‘His heart. His doctors blamed cigarettes.’

‘
Bien sûr
, though my husband smoked from the age of twelve, and he died only last winter.’ Madame Guilhem peered at Shauna through a chink in the foliage. ‘I wish you better luck. You are in love, of course, and he is a fine specimen, ha?’

‘No. I mean, yes…’ She was blushing again and said, because she had to offer something, ‘“Now you see why I can’t be perfectly happy. No one could who has red hair.”’

‘Eh? Has the sun got to you?’

‘I’m quoting
Anne of Green Gables
.’

‘I don’t know her.’

‘It was a book I loved as a child. What I mean is, we redheads blush. Our blushes are gathered up by God to colour the sunset. That’s the sort of thing Anne of Green Gables would have said.’

Madame Guilhem looked unimpressed, then shrugged. ‘Huh. And your tears are the rain, I suppose.’

‘I suppose. Which means they’re scheduled for the end of next week, according to Laurent.’ Shauna angled her scissors and another fat bunch of white grapes fell into her basket. She snipped again and this time cut a sliver of her own flesh. She squealed in pain and rammed her finger in her mouth. Madame Guilhem tutted and passed her a clean tissue, which turned swiftly scarlet against the wound. At that moment Shauna’s tongue seemed to lose its inhibition. ‘You’ve been here all your life, Madame. So you must have known Yvonne. An English girl, here during the war.’

‘
La rouquine
. A relation, that is why you ask?’

‘No relation.’ The blood was still welling and Shauna accepted another tissue. ‘Yvonne. That’s all I know, and that was probably a code name.’

‘Your mother is Elisabeth Thorne?’

‘Before she married. She became…’ Shauna uttered an ‘Oh’ of dawning comprehension. Here, at Chemignac, Elisabeth and Tim had mixed their blood. Afterwards, Tim Vincent had imprinted Elisabeth’s name, Thorne, on his flesh in the form of a tattoo. The couple had pledged themselves to each other and, at the same time, declared an indelible link to Chemignac. Henri had chosen
Écharde
as his secret name. In Shauna’s dream, Yvonne had been amused by the coincidence of him as a ‘splinter’ and she as ‘thorn’. Had Yvonne been, literally, a ‘Thorne’?

‘Do you think we could be related, Madame?’ But the old woman’s recollection had moved on.

‘I was working here when Yvonne arrived,’ Madame Guilhem said. ‘At the time, we all thought the war would go on forever. I came here every day to clean a part of the château that had been seized by a German businessman. I’d sweep and mop, then cook breakfast for the two layabouts who were paid to tend the garden and look after the German’s dogs. I’d keep my head down, then go home on my bicycle. So I didn’t see much, but I knew she was there and that she was part of the Resistance. Very brave. She fell in love with our Comte Henri.’

‘Was that a bad thing?’

‘Not bad, no. Henri de Chemignac was a widower with two little children. It was right that he should look to marry again. But love and marriage are not the same thing. And at a time when our country was not our own and anybody – neighbour or friend – might be an informer, it was not wise to love too deeply. Yvonne stayed because she had no choice, and Henri risked everything because he so admired her.’ Madame Guilhem pushed tendrils of vine aside, the better to see Shauna. ‘It was not only Henri who wanted Yvonne.’ ‘No? Who?’ But Madame Guilhem let the vine leaves fall back, ending the chat.

Even so, Shauna had absorbed enough to move her understanding of Yvonne on a stage. Recruited by SOE, Yvonne had come here to do a dangerous job. Falling in love must have been well and truly off the script. Yet deeply human. Perhaps that was the fatal flaw – everybody at Chemignac was too human. Shauna massaged her calves, wincing. She’d picked a full row without stopping other than when she’d snipped her finger. She’d snatch five minutes’ rest here. It had to happen that the moment she flopped down on the grass, Albert chose to turn in her direction. He’d been overseeing a group of Spaniards working on the row next to hers. One of them had missed a cluster and he’d been pointing it out. Aggressively. Waving his stick. He turned his head, and his eye landed on Shauna.

‘Why be pleasant when you can shout instead?’ she muttered, getting back to work. She remembered Albert leaning against the kitchen sink the night Isabelle fell, staring down at the unconscious woman. What kind of man was Albert de Chemignac, at heart? What lived beneath that querulous, fault-finding exterior? She had the urge to stride over to him and ask. But her picking partner tugged at her dress, telling her, ‘Only one more row, then we stop for a break.’

Albert de Chemignac stumped towards a different part of the vineyard, doubtless to carp at another group of pickers.

A
long stone’s
throw from where Shauna knelt among the vines, the Gown of Thorns hung in an unfamiliar wardrobe. It was back where it belonged, at Chemignac. It had survived two wars; it had evaded a car wreck. Soon, it would enjoy its first public appearance in over sixty years. It would absorb the warmth of its rescuer’s body and be transformed. It would regain its power.

I
n his office
at Lancashire John Kay University, Professor Mike Ladriss pressed ‘save’, then closed the computer document he’d been working on for three days. Coursework for next year’s fresh intake. Not usually his job, but he’d been let down by a tutor who had given in her notice. Without, in fact, any notice.

Reading the woman’s written resignation, Mike had instantly thought of Shauna Vincent as the perfect solution to this crisis. She’d have relished the challenge he’d have given her: ‘I need two first-year modules sketched out fast. Be fresh, be exciting and challenging. I can always curb your enthusiasm later.’ But, no Shauna. One conciliatory text from France, implying that she was still keen for any work he might send her way, then nothing. He’d faxed her on the number she’d provided – a number belonging to a Dordogne wine estate – letting her know that the Cademus job had come vacant. He’d expected a call back within minutes.

Nothing. Silence, other than a distasteful reply from a third party informing him that Shauna had gone to Paris. Leaving behind, if he’d read the subtext correctly, a somewhat checkered reputation.

If Shauna was struggling to adjust to life outside university, then he had to take some of the blame. She’d been passed over for the Cademus job in favour of a far less capable candidate and Mike knew now that a donation offered to the company by the successful candidate’s father had swung the decision. ‘You say donation, I say bribe.’ What next? London bankers and foreign oligarchs buying first-class honours for their children? He’d wished ever since that he’d taken more of a stand over it. This university owed Shauna an apology and if the university wouldn’t give it, then he would like to. The problem was finding her. Data protection prevented him from digging out her files and finding a family address. His only clue was the sender of that message, Comte Laurent de Chemignac.