Sepulchre (29 page)
It was the ideal opportunity to search for the sepulchre. Return to her earlier plan for passing the day. Perhaps she would even find the Tarot
cards. She took out the book. This time, Léonie read every word.
*
An hour later, dressed in her new worsted jacket, sturdy walking boots and with her hat perched on her head, Léonie sneaked out onto the terrace.
There was nobody in the gardens, but she walked fast nonetheless, not wishing to have to explain herself. She passed the cluster of rhododendron and juniper bushes almost at a run, keeping up the pace until she was out of plain view of the house. Only once she was through the opening in the high box hedge did she slow and catch her breath. She was perspiring already. She stopped and removed her scratchy hat, enjoying the feel of the wholesome air on her bare head, and pushed her gloves deep into her pockets. She felt exhilarated to be so completely alone and unobserved, the mistress of herself.
At the edge of the woods, she stopped, feeling the first prickings of caution. There was a palpable sense of quiet, the scent of bracken and fallen leaves. She glanced back over her shoulder, in the direction that she had come, then into the sombre light of the wood. The house was all but out of sight.
Léonie looked up at the sky. Provided she was not too long, provided the weather held, she could simply head home to the west, in the direction of the setting sun. Besides, these were private woods, managed and tended, set within an estate. It was hardly like venturing into the unknown. There is nothing to cause alarm.
Having talked herself into continuing, feeling much like a heroine in an adventure serial, Léonie set out along an overgrown path. Soon she found herself standing at the crossroads of two paths. To the left there was an air of neglect and stillness. The box trees and laurel seemed to drip with condensation. The downy oak and sharp needles of the pins maritimes seemed to bow under the unwelcome weight of time with a blighted and exhausted aspect. The right-hand path was positively mundane in comparison.
Léonie took the path to the left, into the shadows. The track had an unfrequented air. There were no fresh wheel ruts made by the gardener's barrow, no indication that the leaves had been raked, no sense that anyone had recently passed this way.
Léonie realised she was walking uphill. The path was growing rougher and less clear. Stones, uneven earth and fallen branches tumbled from the overgrown thicket on either side. She felt enclosed, as if the landscape was pushing in upon her, shrinking. On one side, above the path, was a steep embankment, covered with dense green undergrowth and boughs of hawthorn and an intense tangle of yew, knitted together like iron-black lace in the half-light. Léonie felt a fluttering of nerves in her chest. Every branch, every root spoke of abandonment. Even the animals seemed to have forsaken the benighted woods. No birds sang, no rabbits or foxes or mice moved in the undergrowth to their burrows.
Soon the ground beside the path fell away sharply to the right. Several times Léonie dislodged a stone with her foot and heard it tumble into the chasm below. Her misgivings grew. It required no great leap of imagination to summon the spirits or ghosts or apparitions that both the gardener and Monsieur Baillard, in his book, claimed haunted these glades.
Then she emerged on to a platform in the hillside, open on one side to reveal the panorama of the distant mountains. There was a small stone bridge over a culvert, where a strip of brown earth intersected the path beneath it at right angles, a low channel worn away by the fierce rushing of meltwaters in spring. It was dry now.
Far away, through the opening, glimpsed over the heads of the smaller trees, the entire world seemed suddenly spread out before her like a picture. The clouds scudding across the seemingly endless sky, a late summer afternoon heat haze or mist floating in the troughs and curves of the hills. Léonie took a deep breath. She felt magnificently distant from all of civilisation, from the river and the grey and red roofs of the houses below in Rennes-les-Bains, from the thin outline of the cloche-mur and the silhouette of the Hôtel de la Reine. Cocooned in her wooded silence, Léonie could imagine the noise in the cafés and bars, the clatter in the kitchens, the rattle of harness and gig in the Gran'Rue, the yell of the cabman as the courrier took up position in the Place du Pérou. And then the thin tolling of the church bell carried on the wind to where she stood listening.
She wished she had asked him - asked somebody - for directions. Always wishing to do things for herself, she hated to ask for help. More than anything, she regretted not bringing the book itself. But I have come too far to turn back now.
Léonie raised her chin and walked on with determination, fighting the creeping suspicion that she was going in the wrong direction entirely. Instinct had led her this way in the first place. She had no map, no words of instruction. Again she regretted the lack of forethought and pride that had caused her not to at least enquire after a map of the Domaine. Not that she had observed such a thing in the library earlier.
It crossed her mind that no one knew where she had gone. If she should fall or lose her way, nobody would know where to find her. It occurred to her, too, that she should have left some sort of trail. Fragments of paper or, like Hansel and Gretel in their woods, white pebbles to mark the way home.
Léonie walked deeper, further into the grounds. Now she found herself in a wooded glade, ringed by a circle of wild juniper bushes covered with late-ripening berries, as if birds never penetrated this deep into the forest. Shadows, distorted shades, slipped in and out of her vision. Within the green mantle of the wood, the light was thickening, stripping away the reassuring and familiar world and replacing it with something unknowable, something more ancient. Winding through the trees, the briars, the copse, an afternoon mist had set in, stealing up without a word of warning or announcement. There was an absolute and impenetrable stillness as the sodden air muffled all sound. Léonie felt its chill fingers wrapping themselves around her neck like a muffler, curling around her legs beneath her skirts like a cat.
Then, suddenly ahead of her she glimpsed, through the trees, the outline of something not made of wood or earth or bark. A small stone chapel, no bigger than would accommodate six or eight worshippers, its roof steeply pitched and a small stone cross upon the arched entrance. Léonie caught her breath. I have found it.
The sepulchre was surrounded by a host of gnarled yew trees, their roots twisted and misshapen like an old man's hands, overshadowing the path. There were no impressions in the mud. The brambles and briars were all overgrown.
Feeling pride and anticipation in equal measure, Léonie stepped forward. Leaves rustled and twigs snapped beneath her boots. Another step. Closer, now, until she stood before the door. She tilted her head and looked up. Above the wooden arch, symmetrical and perfectly pointed, were two lines of verse painted in antique black lettering.
There was a noise behind her. A rustling? A wild animal? A mountain cat? Then a different sound, as if a rope was being drawn across the deck of a ship. A snake? Her confidence evaporated. The dark eyes of the forest seemed to be pressing in upon her. The words in the book now came back to her with a dreadful clarity. Premonitions, hauntings, a place where the veil between worlds was drawn back.
Léonie felt suddenly reluctant to enter the sepulchre. But the alternative, remaining alone, unprotected in the clearing, seemed far worse. With the blood pounding inside her head, she reached forward and grasped the heavy metal ring upon the door, and pushed.
At first, nothing happened. She pushed again. This time there was the sound of metal grinding out of place and then a sharp click as the catch gave. She put her narrow shoulder against the timber and, with the weight of her whole body, gave a sharp shove.
Léonie stepped inside the sepulchre. Chill air rushed to meet her, together with the unmistakable scent of dust and antiquity and the memory of centuries-old incense. There was something else too. She wrinkled up her nose. A lingering smell of fish, the sea, the salted hull of a wrecked fishing boat.
Immediately to the right of the main door on the west wall was the confessional, about six feet tall by eight wide and no more than two feet deep. It was made of dark wood and was very plain, nothing like the elaborate or ornate carved versions in the cathedrals and churches of Paris. The grille was shut. A single drab curtain of purple hung in front of one of the seats. On the other side of the compartment, the curtain was missing.
To the immediate left of the main door was the bénitier, the stoup for holy water. Léonie recoiled. The basin was of red and white marble, but it was supported upon the back of a grinning, diabolic figure. Blistered red skin, clawed hands and feet, malevolent eyes of piercing blue.
Despite the burden upon his back, the defiance remained. Carefully, as if afraid he might come to life, Léonie edged closer. Beneath, printed upon a small white card, yellowed by age, was the confirmation: ASMODÉE, MAÇON AU TEMPLE DE SALOMON, DÉMON DU COUROUX.
Asmodeus, builder of the Temple of Solomon, the demon of wrath,' she read aloud. Standing on her cold tiptoes, Léonie peered inside. The bénitier was dry. But there were letters carved into the marble. She traced them with her fingers.
She frowned. To whom did 'him' refer? The devil Asmodeus himself? Straight away another thought. Which had come first, the illustration in the book or the bénitier? Which was the copy, which the original? All she knew was that the date in the book was 1870. Bending down, her worsted skirts making swirling patterns in the dust on the flagstoned floor, Léonie examined the base of the statue to see if there was any date or mark upon it. There was nothing to indicate either its age or its provenance. Not Visigoth, though.
Making a mental note to research the matter further - perhaps Isolde might know - Léonie stood up and turned to face the nave. There were three rows of simple wooden pews on the south side of the sepulchre, facing front, like a classroom in elementary school but no wider than could accommodate two worshippers apiece. No decoration, no carvings at the end of the row, and no cushions on which to kneel, just a single thin wooden footrest running the length of each.
The walls of the sepulchre were whitewashed and peeling. Plain arched windows, no coloured glass, let in the light, but stripped the space of warmth. The Stations of the Cross were small illustrations set into the frame of wooden crosses, hardly paintings at all, more medallions, and all unremarkable, at least to Leonie's untrained eye.
She began to walk slowly up the nave, like a reluctant bride, becoming more anxious the further she travelled from the door. Once, thinking there was someone behind her, she spun round. Again, no one.
To her left, the narrow nave was flanked by statues of plaster saints, all half-sized, like malevolent children. Their eyes seemed to follow her as she passed by. She halted from time to time to read the names painted in black on wooden signs beneath each: Saint-Antoine, the Egyptian Hermit; Sainte-Germaine, her apron full of Pyrenean mountain flowers; the lame Saint-Roch with his staff. Saints of local significance, she presumed.
The last statue, closest to the altar, was of a slender and petite woman, wearing a knee-length red dress, with straight black hair hanging to her shoulders. With both hands she held a sword, not threatening nor as if she was under attack, but rather as if she herself was the protector. Beneath it was a printed card with the words: La Fille d'Épées. Léonie wrinkled her brow. The Daughter of Swords. Perhaps it was intended to be a representation of Sainte-Jeanne d'Arc?
There was another noise. She glanced up at the high windows. Just the branches of the sweet chestnut trees tapping like nails upon the glass. Just the sound of the sombre call of the birds.
At the end of the nave, Léonie stopped, then crouched down and examined the floor, seeking evidence of the black square the author had described, and for the four letters - C, A, D, E she believed her uncle had marked upon the ground. She could not see anything, not even the faintest memory, but she did uncover an inscription scratched into the stone flagstones.
'Fujhi, poudes; Escapa, non, ' she read. She copied this down too. Léonie straightened up and stepped forward to the altar. It matched precisely, to her memory, the description in Les Tarots: a bare table, none of the artefacts of religion - no candles, no silver cross, no missal, no antiphoner. It was set in an octagonal apse, the ceiling above a bright cerulean blue, like the opulent roof of the Palais Garnier. Each of the eight panels was lined with a patterned wallpaper decorated with thick faded horizontal pink stripes, divided by a frieze of red and white juniper flowers and a repeat detail of blue discs or coins. At the intersection of every papered section were plaster mouldings, batons or wands, painted gold. Within each was a single painted image.
Léonie gasped, discerning suddenly what she was looking at. Eight individual tableaux taken from the Tarot, as if each figure had stepped out of its card and up on to the wall. Printed beneath each one was a title: Le Mat; Le Pagad; La Prêtresse; Les Amoureux; La Force; La Justice; Le Diable; Le Tour. Black antique ink on yellowed card. It is the same hand as the book.