Bright Hair About the Bone (37 page)

“And I'm guessing her mean scheme misfired?”

“Spectacularly! I could never resist a challenge and was determined to pass her wretched test, so I set about the task. Really, if the magazines had been
Lepidoptery Weekly
or
Railway Modellers Quarterly
I'd have confounded her…but, by the end of the first volume, I was caught, entranced, addicted.”

“You passed?”

“With flying colours. I was even able to enjoy her expression when, on being discharged, I paused in the doorway and, as an afterthought, asked demurely if I might borrow further volumes of
Antiquities.
I specified volume numbers.” Letty shuddered. “Heavens! I squirm with embarrassment when I recall what an arrogant clown I was. I'm amazed they put up with me. Well, of course…some didn't.”

Paradee's expression was indulgent but quizzical. “Tell you what, Stella—have you ever thought your Miss—Scott, did you say?—may have…”

Letty laughed. “It's taken you seconds, Charles, but it took me years to work out that her choice of punishment was not random! I did write to her to thank her when I settled on a career.”

“You'll be able to write again to tell the old girl about your next venture, then,” he said. “Be my assistant! Help write up the notes on Fontigny. Your qualifications, your connections, your intuitive feeling for the work…you'd be the most enormous asset, Stella. But it would be good for you, too. I have powerful friends in the States and they would be your friends, too, if you'll come. Say you'll think about this and let me know tomorrow. I'm going home next week.”

“Next week? So soon?”

“Short notice, I know, but it will be a marvellous opportunity for you.”

The words were friendly, but there was something behind the friendship in his urgency. His eyes were shadowed by calculation, and Letty felt suddenly afraid that hidden issues were riding on her answer. She needed time to collect herself but she sensed that time was not to be accorded her. She felt that an abrupt refusal, or any refusal at all, would cause disproportionate offence.

“Charles! That's an amazingly generous offer. Look, I risk sounding like a Victorian heroine but I have to say it: This is so sudden! I'm devastated to hear your news but flattered by all you have to say, and I know we work well together. You guess rightly that I'm ambitious and I'm dazzled by the chance you're offering me, but even ambitious girls need time to…”

“A week, Stella. That's all the time you've got. There's a sailing from Cherbourg on the first of July.”

His voice was so tense as to be verging on threatening, she thought.

She stared calmly back at him. “A week. Well, that should be long enough to get my laundry done. Now…while you've been agonising, I'm afraid I've been lightly eyeing the menu board over your shoulder, Charles. The plat du jour is andouille à la lyonnaise and pommes frites! Shall we? And how about a pitcher of cool Beaujolais to drink to the future and wash down the sausages?”

His face relaxed, then creased into a grin of relief and humour—though triumph was an alternative interpretation. Whatever his emotion, the man sitting opposite was impressive—intelligent and ambitious—and their enthusiasms sparked and caught fire when they were together. There were many couples in the world of archaeology, not necessarily sharing a bed, according to gossip, but all famous, rich, influential, and hardworking. They could become another such; Laetitia knew it. He was offering her an opportunity which just one short month ago she would have seized on with squeals of delight.

He leaned towards her, face alight with affection, and said, “Would you like mustard with that?”

CHAPTER 35

A
re you saying he sees you as the next Sophia Schliemann or Katherine Woolley?” said Gunning. “How exciting for you. What an opportunity. And there you were thinking it would take ten years to make your reputation. You may have done it in as many weeks. That's if it is indeed the reputation you were hoping for.” He tucked Letty's arm through his and they strolled together along the high street towards the noisy centre of activities.

“Don't be silly. It's obvious what he's up to. He's after my money,” Letty said with too much emphasis. She was shamefacedly trailing her suspicions before Gunning, hoping that he would contradict her and laugh her out of them. As he did not at once challenge her, she pressed on: “Somehow he's discovered who I am and done a bit of research. Digging's his job, after all. And he wouldn't have to dig very deeply to find traces of me rising to the surface. You said it yourself, William—Phil and Patrick weren't taken in by the count's rendering of my family's coat of arms. They'd have reported back to Paradee, and one call to—oh, where do you suppose? The College of Heralds in London? Yes, that would do it—and he'd find out all he needed to know. His dollars have drained away and he thinks that by luring me to the other side of the pond, as he calls it, he can isolate me, perhaps even marry me—if he's not married already; I know nothing of the man—to get his hands on a little secure funding. Don't you agree, William?”

“I think that the speed with which all this has happened is disturbing and speaks of motives and compulsions of which we have no idea. But I'm inclined to share your suspicions.”

“To do him justice, he did hint right at the start that finance was a concern…and Howard Carter himself came within a whisker of being left in the lurch right on King Tut's doorstep. It's an uncertain world and I do think sometimes I oughtn't to be groping around in it.” She shot a sideways glance at him. “But whatever his motives, this offer of an academic position might well provide a firm base from which my career could take off. I have to consider it objectively. Who knows?—under Paradee's wing I could flourish!”

She watched as the first of the rockets took off from the town square and burst into the darkening sky.

“And you could equally well fall back to earth, singed, a spent force, a blackened stick up your rear end the only souvenir of your brief glory.”

“William! I have detected an increasing laxness in your speech of late. I am not one of your fellow soldiers or your fellow tramps. You may not swear in my presence, and you may not indulge in these louche innuendoes.”

“May as well go back if I'm to have no fun,” he grumbled. “I couldn't resist the timeliness of the image. I apologise.”

Letty was instantly struck with remorse. “William, I
am
sorry! I invite you to come out for a walk in the gloaming on Saint John's Night and what do I do? I
gloom
at you! You could have asked Marie-Louise or any of the other suitable parties hereabouts to join you for the festivities…enjoy a little dancing…”

“Do shut up, Letty!”

Taken aback by the abrupt discourtesy, she fell silent.

“Cripples don't dance, as you'd realise if you gave it half a second's thought. But, look here, you don't have to apologise for contriving a few minutes alone with me. Need I remind you that my attention is being generously paid for by your father? Though what Sir Richard's reaction would be if he knew you were engaging me in the capacity of matrimonial-cum-employment advisor, I can't imagine. I congratulate you on the interest you have aroused amongst the eligible male population of Fontigny, with their dazzling offers of everything from matrimony (or was it concubinage?…I don't think the terms were made quite clear) to research assistantships. And let's not forget your arrangement with Laval—copper's nark, was it?”

She scowled. “That's enough! You have my permission to go rattling on about the local topography, geology, mythology—whatever you like. Don't expect me to respond or even listen. I'm disappointed—though not surprised—you don't care to hear my deeper concerns. I'll keep them to myself. Ah, there goes the first bonfire—do you see?—on that hilltop. What is that village? Mortaine, do you think?”

“Did you notice they lit the fire the moment the sun dipped below the hills? Here in Burgundy—”

“I sense another of your-ologies coming out for a trot, William.”

“Just look on it as verbal wallpaper and return to your dark thoughts. I'm perfectly happy bonfire-spotting. There's another! How these customs live on in the country.”

“Yes, yes. Paradee told me all about it. The boy-sacrifices and all that.”

“An ancient figure. Adonis, Osiris, Tammuz, Christ…self-chosen often, a willing victim who goes, anointed and garlanded, dressed in mock-regal robes, only to be, when his appointed hour comes, stripped, mocked, tormented, and put to death. For the good of his people. His blood, his flesh, reinvigorate the earth and ensure re-birth. It's a very ancient theory.”

“That the dead should come back again, or at least some part of their essence, is a deeply disturbing if romantic thought.” Letty shivered.

“And what does Nature do but go on validating the truth of the myth?”

“Paradee said something similar.”

“Flanders fields are ablaze each year with a welter of bright poppies. And, of course, the superstitious claim that the spirits of the dead are rising up.”

         

“I sometimes think that never blows so red

The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;

That every Hyacinth the Garden wears

Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head,”
said Letty, pleased to retaliate with a quotation. “FitzGerald.”

         

“Balderdash! And these superstitions are continually shored up by religion. How many more centuries before people heed the evidence of their senses?” Gunning said bitterly. “How long before they listen to men of science? How long before they recognise that a crop of poppies is the predictable result when land is churned up by military manoeuvres, that the soil has been fertilised by the blood of young men, and that this is an entirely natural process?”

Letty rounded on him in disapproving astonishment. “You're saying that the blood of young men like my brother may be equated with…reduced to…no more than phosphate? Seaweed? A bag of Fish, Blood, and Bone Manure?”

“What else? The microscope would reveal no difference. Crop trials would show no emotional bias. There are no old gods to placate, Letty. And no new ones. They and their gruesome demands have only ever existed in our minds, can't you understand? They are our creation, a primitive human device for explaining the unseizable, the uncertain, and the terrifying aspects of life. We may be rid of their tyranny the moment we have become strong enough to admit that.” His voice took on a grating edge of anguish. “The thought of the aeons of suffering that humans have inflicted on themselves through ignorance and fear, in an effort to appease these imagined monsters, makes me despair.”

Her reply when it came was measured but cold. “Mr. Gunning, I have to say, if there is one thing I feel grateful for, it is that you took the decision to vacate the pulpit. Any church which has escaped your attentions by your quitting the cloth is a fortunate one. And the soundness of your decision becomes more evident, the more you reveal of yourself.”

Emotion finally burst through her imposed calm. She kicked savagely at a tub of geraniums projecting onto the pavement and swore. “Bloody men! Damned hateful creatures! Isn't there a single one I can trust or admire?”

Even Gunning was alarmed to hear such language from a woman. “I say! Too many hours spent in bad company, I think, Letty?”

Infuriated further by his reprimand, she poured out a torrent of words learned from an early age in the stables and stopped only when she noticed he was trying hard not to laugh.

“Well, you've made a good job of ruining a perfectly good pair of espadrilles. The flower tub, I'm pleased to say, shrugged off the attack. I wonder whose head you were kicking in? No—don't tell me.”

         

They drank glasses of the Green Lady at a café table, and enjoyed the crowds whirling excitedly to the lusty accompaniment of a country band. Young and old were there, grannies and children, singing, drinking wine, calling out greetings to people they hadn't seen since the last Saint-Jean. The fire blazed nobly, and, Letty was relieved to see, performed exactly to the requirements of the morning's careful construction. The fire crew came off watch and joined in the dancing. She waved to Marie-Louise, who waltzed by, flushed and excited, her eyes offering a flirtatious challenge to her partner, the Director of the Haras, Letty could have sworn, though it was hard to be sure when the chap was out of uniform and moving at speed. She briefly wondered what on earth the two were finding to talk about.

As the flames began to sink and the glow deepened, the crowds pressed closer. At last, with a hushing and a murmuring, they fell almost silent to welcome a file of young men who came forward, gauche and embarrassed to begin with, falling over their feet, pushing each other, encouraging each other, egged on by friends in the crowd. Letty was sure she'd spotted Robert, d'Aubec's young stable-lad, amongst them.

They performed beautifully, she thought, these leaping youths, born too late to be sacrifices. Lithe, handsome, daring, and moving her to tears…and no part of her could condemn or wonder at the girls who took them by the hand, murmuring shyly of rewards in their ear. The press of people grew less with the collapsing of the fire and Letty realised that the square was emptying fast. She raised her glass defiantly.

“Here's to corn in the grange, cows in the byre, and babies in the cradles,” she told Gunning. “By the next Beltane. Or Easter Day. Whichever is appropriate. Time we were getting back, William.”

         

The house appeared to be unable to shake off the heat it had drunk in from the June day. Letty had a cold bath, washed her hair, put on her dressing gown, and sat, too agitated to sleep, scribbling letters at her desk. The floorboards had creaked for hours with unseen people arriving, leaving, using the bathrooms. The hill villages had popped with fireworks until well into the night. She walked to the window and looked over the rooftops to the blue encircling horizon. It would be cool up there on the hilltops. She'd be able to think clearly, weigh her options. Making up her mind abruptly, she slipped on a short skirt and a fresh blouse and pulled on a pair of soft walking boots.

She made her way silently downstairs and hesitated by the front door, then opened the door, cringing at its treacherous creak, and slipped out. Walking had always cleared her head, and she set off rhythmically and determinedly towards the open country, promising herself that she would return with the answers to all her problems worked out. The streets were deserted; her soft soles made no sound on the cobbles. Speculating as to the lives behind the drawn curtains, hearing a baby cry or seeing a light suddenly break from an uncurtained attic in a dark house, she sped along, pausing occasionally to note a coat of arms over an arched doorway, glancing through an iron gate to a flagged courtyard and the dim radiance of an ancient lamp.

She walked into the deserted square, and stopped, startled, as peevish cries of protest rang out. Wretched jackdaws! She'd forgotten about them. She hurried on beneath the abbey spire and in front of the Haras. The houses were thinning out into farmland and fields and at last her mind was clearing.

He hadn't come back. In spite of her telephone call, her urgent need to see him. And with her usual self-honesty she admitted that the rebuff had hurt her more than she would have expected. He hadn't been fired by her enthusiasm. He hadn't sounded in the least excited by her revelation. Had she believed his excuses? “Vital meeting tomorrow morning…Try to get François to deputise but I can't promise…I'll do what I can…” And he hadn't been encouraging when she told him she was there at the château with Marie-Louise. “Didn't I say you were not to bring anyone else with you?” She'd frostily reminded Edmond that his list of outlaws consisted of two names only. “Well, at least I trust you're charging an admission fee if you're opening up to the public…The woman's probably even now planning visits by crocodiles of sticky-fingered school-children…” Preoccupied, detached, pompous.

Why was she surprised? The man had his empire to run. The sneaking thought occurred to her that the Emperor Napoleon whom he so despised had managed to do that and lead a romantic and involving love life through the ups and downs. Time perhaps to weed d'Aubec out of her life before the feelings she had for him put down serious roots in her heart. Very well, she decided—d'Aubec might well be returning on Monday but it would be to a château empty of
her
presence!