Lion of Languedoc (23 page)

Henri blinked uncomprehendingly as she emerged carrying nothing but her lace and some yards of silk. No food, no wine, no provisions of any kind. She mounted her mare and turned to give him a final goodbye.

‘Tell the King, if Léon refuses to return to Versailles, that he is of more service to him here, where there is so much unrest. A loyal man, able to summon a regiment at will, is of far more worth to him in Languedoc than in Versailles. The King is a man of sense. He will see the truth of the reasoning. And Henri …' Her voice was unsteady. ‘ Tell Léon I left him not because I did not love him, but because I loved him too well.' And then she turned her back on him, on the château, on everything that was life and breath to her and rode away, across the drawbridge and down the avenue of plane trees.

She crossed the Lancerre road, climbing up the hillside, reining in Clothilde beneath a gnarled fig tree. Then, steadfastly, she watched the shimmering road below her. She had not long to wait. In a cloud of dust Léon rode Saracen recklessly towards Chatonnay.

‘Goodbye, sweet love,' she whispered, and then she dug her spurs in and rode cross-country for Lancerre. A strange horse, richly saddled, stood solitarily in the courtyard, but there was no sign of the Abbé as she breathlessly dismounted.

Carrying her precious gift she ran up the stairs and entered Elise's room. She lay asleep, her hair framing her face in a golden halo. Very carefully Marietta laid her offering at the foot of the bed. She had given all that she could and Léon would understand. Every time he saw the gown worn by his daughters and granddaughters he would remember her and the few brief hours of happiness that they had shared. Softly she tiptoed from the room and walked to the head of the stairs.

Maurice's little interlude with Céleste had told him all he wanted to know. The wench that he sought was the guest of the Lion of Languedoc, and he knew enough of that gentleman's reputation to know he could in no way publicly lay hands on her and proclaim her a witch. To do so would be to cause his own death. He would have to take her far away from the south, far away from the reach of Louis' hot-blooded warrior.

But where? Léon was master for miles around. Word of a burning in Toulouse, Narbonne, even Nîmes would soon reach his ears. It would have to be somewhere further than that. He would have to take the Riccardi wench where the Lion would never dream of looking.

The answer was so simple that he laughed softly to himself as he rode to Lancerre. Evray. He would take her back to Evray. There would be no disputing she was a witch there; the whole population already believed so. He had asked if he could meet Mademoiselle Riccardi and Céleste had guilelessly told him that he could not today—she would be at Lancerre, tending his sick relative. It seemed that most of her days were spent there. Maurice was in no hurry to see his cousin by marriage, but he was in a hurry to see the girl who nursed her.

Only the luck of the gods had prevented him from riding headlong into Léon. He had seen the swirl of dust in the distance, and prompted by a sixth sense hastily urged his horse off the road and to the cover of some fig trees. It had been the Lion all right. They had never met, but no one else would ride a horse with such skill and speed, or look so frighteningly menacing.

Maurice waited until he had disappeared before venturing from his hiding-place. The man was a fighter. It showed in every line of his taut, muscled body. He was certainly an adversary he had no intention of meeting.

Madame Sainte-Beuve was asleep when he arrived and to his disappointment the housekeeper told him that Mademoiselle Riccardi had left half an hour previously. The housekeeper had been disapproving. Mademoiselle Riccardi was needed at Lancerre as nurse, and yet had scarce spent five minutes there today.

Maurice had flicked his whip infuriatedly against his boot, knowing that his chance had been lost. He needed to take Marietta with no suspicious eyes watching. To have come across her alone at Lancerre would have been ideal. They could have been halfway to Evray before her presence was missed. He strode the ornately-decked room that so irritated Léon, wondering when next his chance would come, and his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Marietta's hurried arrival.

With a satisfied smile he heard her run up the stairs towards his cousin's room. Slowly he walked to the foot of the stairs, preparing to mount, but he had no need to do so. She was already on her way out of the room, closing the door behind her, her cheeks flushed, her eyes unnaturally bright.

He waited for her, one foot on the bottom stair, one hand on the heavily carved banister. An elegant figure in fashionable dress.

‘Oh!' Marietta gave a startled cry and then quickly recovered herself. It must be Elise's wedding guest from Montpellier. Seeing his intention of mounting the stairs, she said. ‘I am afraid Madame Sainte-Beuve is asleep at the moment.'

He smiled. It was a strange smile and there was a curious light in his eyes. His face was abnormally pale, and as she drew nearer she saw that it was powdered. He made no effort to move out of her way.

‘It was not my cousin I wished to see, Mademoiselle Riccardi. It was yourself.'

‘She is recovered from the fever, but will need rest for many weeks,' Marietta said, unable to think of any other reason for his wishing to see her but concern for his relative's health.

‘And so is not receiving visitors?'

‘She is quite able to do so when awake,' Marietta said, pausing in front of him, wondering why he did not step aside and let her pass. His perfume was overpowering, sweet and cloying.

‘But there is no one visiting at the moment?' His voice had a silky edge to it that was not at all pleasant.

‘No.' She stepped forward resolutely, intent on making him give way for her. He moved his satin and silk-clad body further into the centre of the stairs.

‘You seem in a hurry, Mademoiselle Riccardi. Perhaps I may accompany you a little way?'

‘I'm quite used to riding unaccompanied.' She wanted to be away from him. She disliked his manner, his perfume, his smile, his eyes.

His gloved hand caressed the orb of the banister, the sunlight shining full on the giant-sized diamond, making it sparkle with a thousand fires. Marietta stared at it hypnotically. She had only ever seen one diamond of that size before, and that had been on the hand of the man who had visited her grandmother. The man who had then sought her out and had her burned. The man Léon had seen in the inn yard at Evray. The man who was now seeking her. The man sent by La Montespan to silence the Riccardis.

Slowly she raised her eyes from his ring to his face. Her fear was complete.

‘No!' she cried, trying to push past him. He seized her arm, pinioning her hand behind her back.

‘Your screams will only distress my kinswoman and serve you no good purpose,' he said viciously as he struggled to hold her.

‘No!' She kicked vainly, twisting, biting. The smooth leather of a thong slipped over her wrists, jerked tight so that she cried out in pain.

‘I think you
will
ride accompanied, Mademoiselle Riccardi,' he mocked as he forced her, still struggling, out into the courtyard. ‘It will be a long ride, and your last.'

Marietta's cry for help died in her throat. There was only Elise and the housekeeper and the servants. Elise was too weak to rise from her bed, even if she heard her screams and there was nothing the servants could do. The wheel had turned full circle. She would die as fate had intended, on the pyre on Valais Hill. But not submissively. Never that.

She kicked out savagely and the powdered face flinched, the lines of dissipation and cruelty deepening. It was the face of a man no older than twenty-seven or twenty-eight, yet it was a face ages old. The hideous face of death.

‘Cause me trouble and it will not only be yourself that dies, but the Lion of Languedoc also. He has harboured and protected you, knowing you for a witch: against that charge even he will be defenceless.'

As would Jeannette and Céleste, for once the de Villeneuve name had been tainted with witchcraft there would be no end to the persecution. She had wanted nothing but Léon's safety, and to gain it she would have to pay the highest price possible—that of going to her death in unprotesting docility.

She sat her mare, her back straight, her head held high.

‘To Evray?' she asked impassively as a goose-girl hurried her flock out of their path.

‘I think that would be—most suitable,' he said, as if talking of an ell of cloth and not the place of her death.

She wondered if he was fulfilling his mission for La Montespan for favours in her bed or for money. Most probably for money. She knew instinctively that her own body held no fascination for him, and was grateful for the fact. That sort of humiliation at least she would be spared. Maurice's lovers would be those of his own kind, if a man such as he was capable of love.

She wondered how he had endured charming Céleste. That must have been hardship indeed for him. And all to find out about herself! Poor Céleste, to be such a bad judge of character that she could not see beyond the slightest veneer. Lucky Céleste, for at least she was alive and would continue to be so for years and years, bearing children. Perhaps even children with the name of de Malbré.

She would not think of Léon, or of his feelings when he received Henri's message and found her gone. Of what his suffering would be. He would recover. He would marry Elise and she would be nothing but a memory to him. Marietta closed her eyes against the pain. She had determined not to think of him, but it was impossible. He filled her mind and her heart and she would go into eternity with his name on her lips. The knowledge of his love for her would give her the courage to endure the flames without crying out for mercy.

The road they were now riding she had not ridden since first approaching Chatonnay with Léon. Maurice had long since cut her bonds, sensing her capitulation. The sky was tinged with the first hint of dusk. It had been dusk when she had sat her horse so disconsolately, facing Trélier's inhospitable walls. Dusk when Léon had spurred Saracen back, saying ungraciously, ‘ You will be safer at Chatonnay than in Trélier'. They rested only long enough for a change of horses, and the next morning entered Toulouse, passing the inn where she had fled from Léon, cantering past the alleyway where he had caught her and kissed her.

The hours passed. Days merged into nights. There was another change of horse and yet another daybreak.

Surely that was the stream where they had sat and he had given her bread and cheese? She had not eaten for so long that she could no longer judge distances or for how long they had been travelling. Ahead of them the road was lined with plane trees, reminiscent of the drive leading to the château, and also of somewhere else. Marietta felt dizzy and sick. They had ridden down such a road, she and Léon, the morning after they had outwitted the inquisitor. It had been hot and the trees had given welcome shade, as they did now.

Her heart somersaulted and her breath caught in her throat. Ahead of them were more trees, a sea of trees. And above them, piercing the skyline, Valais Hill.

All too soon they were deep in the forest and their track became familiar, and then, before she scarce had time to gather her wits, the trees thinned and Evray was before them. And people, running barefoot and excited, were shouting.

‘The witch!' ‘The nobleman has captured the witch!' ‘The Riccardi wench is returned!'

They ran from every direction, clamouring around the pair on horseback as if in anticipation of a feast day.

‘The witch is back!' ‘There'll be a burning after all!' ‘ Go for the innkeeper!' ‘Go for the Inquisitor!' ‘Marietta Riccardi is returned to die!'

‘And you let her go?' Léon's fury made even the Duke flinch.

‘There was nothing I could do to stop her.'

‘The Devil take you,' Léon said savagely, wheeling Saracen around and heading furiously back to the road.

Henri spurred his horse after him, calling out: ‘Where are you going?'

‘After her, of course, you fool! To Venice!'

‘She may still be at Lancerre,' Henri shouted helpfully. ‘She had Elise's dress with her.'

Never had the road to Lancerre been travelled so fast. Henri's horse, given full rein for the first time in years, skidded to a halt in Elise's courtyard, his nostrils flaring.

‘I haven't seen anything,' the housekeeper was saying, clutching at the corners of her apron. ‘Madame's cousin came from Montpellier, and now even he has gone, and without so much as a goodbye.'

Léon pounded up the stairs, wrenching open the door of Elise's room so that Elise screamed, drawing the bedclothes up around her throat. ‘What is it? What has happened?'

The lace for the wedding gown lay across the bed.

‘When did Marietta bring the gown?' Léon demanded harshly.

‘I don't know, I was asleep. Oh, what has happened? Why are you looking like that?'

‘Because Marietta has gone!'

Behind him Henri's voice called: ‘Léon! Léon!' with such a note of urgency that Elise felt she would die of fright.

He ran into the room, the nonchalant, elegant Duke de Malbré; ran in like a village boy, clutching Léon's arm, saying, ‘Cécile is here to see the housekeeper. She's full of the talk in Montpellier.' He paused for breath and Léon nearly shook him.

‘What talk?'

‘That Madame Sainte-Beuve's wedding guest is the man hunting down the She-Devil.' Léon's face whitened. ‘Céleste met him earlier today. Cécile saw them together.'

‘Earlier? What time?'

‘Before Marietta left Chatonnay with the gown. Before he arrived here and made his presence known to the housekeeper.'

Their eyes held while Elise clutched at her pillows, crying hysterically, ‘What has happened? What's the matter? Why is Léon so angry? Henri! Henri! Please tell me.'