Sepulchre (41 page)

'May we? It will be a souvenir of our time here.' Léonie pulled at Anatole's sleeve. 'Please? A gift for M'man.'

 

To her surprise, tears sprang into her eyes. For the first time since Anatole had sent the letter to the post, Léonie found herself sentimental at the thought of her mothers company.

Perhaps observing her high emotions, Anatole capitulated. He sat in the middle upon an old metal chair, its legs uneven and wobbling upon the cobbles, holding his cane across his knees and with his hat in his lap.

Isolde, elegant in her dark jacket and skirt, stood behind him to his left with her slim black fingers in silk on his shoulder. Leonie, pretty in her russet walking jacket with brass buttons and velvet trim, stood at his right, smiling directly into the camera.

'There,' Léonie said, when it was over. 'Now we shall always remember this day.'

Before they departed Rennes-les-Bains, Anatole made his regular pilgrimage to the poste restante, while Leonie, wishing to be convinced that Audric Baillard truly was not in residence, made her way to his modest lodgings. She had slipped the sheet of music taken from the sepulchre into her pocket and she was determined to show it to him. She wished, too, to confide how she had begun to make a record on paper of the paintings on the wall of the apse. And to ask him more of the rumours surrounding the Domaine de la Cade. Isolde waited patiently as Léonie knocked upon the blue wooden door, as if she could draw Monsieur Baillard out by force of will. The window boards were all closed and the flowers in the boxes on the outer sills were covered in felt, in anticipation of the autumn frosts that might soon come. An air of hibernation hung about the building, as if it was not expecting anyone to return for some time. She knocked again.
As she gazed at the shuttered house, the strength of Monsieur Baillard's warning not to return to the sepulchre nor seek the cards came back to her more strongly than ever. Although she had only spent one evening in his company, she had complete confidence in him. Some weeks had passed since the dinner party. Now, as she stood silently waiting at a door that did not open, she realised how much she wished him to know that she had remained obedient to his wishes. Almost completely so.

She had not retraced her steps through the woods. She had not taken steps to learn more. It was true she had not yet returned her uncle's book to the library, but she had not studied it. Indeed, she had barely even opened it since that first visit.

Now, although it frustrated her that Monsieur Baillard truly was absent, it did nonetheless strengthen her resolve to abide by his advice. The thought flashed through her mind that it would not be safe to do otherwise.

Léonie turned away and took Isolde's arm.

When they arrived back at the Domaine de la Cade some half an hour later, Léonie ran to the corner beneath the stairs and placed the sheet of music in the piano stool, beneath a moth-eaten copy of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. Now, it seemed significant to her that in all that time she had possessed it, she had not ever actually tried to play it.

That night, when Léonie blew out the light in her bedchamber, for the first time she regretted that she had not previously returned Les Tarots to the library. She was sensitive to the presence of her uncle's book in her chamber, albeit hidden beneath her spools of cotton, thread and ribbon. Thoughts of devils slipped into her mind, of children stolen from their beds, of markings upon the ground and stones that seemed to tell of some evil unchained. In the middle of the long night, she jolted awake with the image of the eight Tarot tableaux pressing down upon her. She lit a candle and set the ghosts to flight. She would not allow them to draw her back.

For Léonie now understood absolutely the nature of Audric Baillard's warning. The spirits of the place had come close to claiming her. She should not give them such an opportunity again.

CHAPTER 54

The clement weather held until Tuesday 20th October. A gunmetal-grey sky sat low on the horizon. A damp and obscuring mist wrapped the Domaine in chill fingers. The trees were but silhouettes. The surface of the lake was choppy. The juniper and rhododendron bushes cowered in a gusting south-westerly wind.
Léonie was glad that Anatole had had his day's hunting with Charles Denarnaud before the rain set in. He had set off with a brown leather etui à fusil slung across his shoulder holding his borrowed guns, the buckles gleaming in the sun. Late in the afternoon, he returned home with a brace of wood pigeon, a weatherbeaten face and eyes flushed with the thrill of the shoot.

As she glanced out of the window, she thought how much less pleasurable an experience it would have been today.

After breakfast, Léonie took herself into the morning room and was curled up upon the chaise longue with the collected stories of Madame Oliphant when the post was delivered from the village. She listened to the front door being opened, a murmuring of greetings, then the clipped footsteps of the maid on the tiled floor crossing the hall to the study.

For Isolde, it was approaching a particularly busy time of year on the estate. St Martin's Day, 11th November, was approaching. It was the day of annual accounting and, on certain estates, evictions. Isolde explained to Léonie that it was the day the tenants' rents were settled for the coming year, and as chatelaine, she was determined to fulfil her role. It was more a question of listening to the estate manager and acting on his advice rather than making decisions per se, but the matter had kept her cloistered away in her study the past two mornings.

Léonie dropped her eyes back to her book and continued reading. A few minutes later, she heard raised voices, then the unaccustomed sound of the study bell jangling. Puzzled, Léonie put down her book and, in stockinged feet, ran across the room and opened the door a fraction. She was in time to see Anatole bounding down the stairs and disappearing into the study.

'Anatole?' she cried after him. 'Is there news from Paris?'

 

But evidently he did not hear her as he slammed the door firmly shut behind him.

 

How quite extraordinary.

Léonie waited a moment longer, peering inquisitively around the door frame, hoping to glimpse her brother, but nothing further happened, and soon she grew weary of watching and returned to her settee. Five minutes passed, then ten. Léonie continued to read, even though her attention was elsewhere.

At eleven o'clock, Marieta brought a tray of coffee into the morning room and set it out on the table. There were, as usual, three cups.

 

'My aunt and brother will be joining me?'

 

'I have not been given orders to the contrary, Madomaisèla.'

 

At that moment, Anatole and Isolde appeared together in the doorway.

 

'Good morning, petite,' he said. His brown eyes were shining,

 

'I heard the commotion,' Léonie said, leaping to her feet. 'I wondered if you had received news from Paris.'

 

His expression faltered a moment. I'm sorry, no. Nothing from M'man.'

 

'Then . . . whatever has happened?' she asked, realising that Isolde, too, was in a state of some excitement. Her complexion was high and her eyes too, were bright.

 

She crossed the room and squeezed Leonie's hand. 'This morning I received the letter I have been waiting for from Carcassonne.'

 

Anatole had taken a position in front of the fire, his hands behind his back. 'I believe Isolde may have promised a concert.. .'

 

'So we are going!' Léonie leapt up and kissed her aunt. 'That is perfectly wonderful!'

 

Anatole laughed. 'We had hoped you would be pleased. It is not the best time of year for such a journey, of course, but we are at the mercy of circumstances.'

 

'When shall we go?' Léonie asked, looking from one to the other.

 

'We will depart this Thursday morning. Isolde has wired to inform the lawyers she will be there at two o'clock.' He paused, exchanged another glance with Isolde. Léonie caught it.

 

There is something more he wishes to tell me.

 

Her nerves again fluttered within her chest.

'In point of fact, there was one other matter we wished to raise with you. Isolde has most generously suggested that we might extend our stay here. Perhaps even until the New Year. What would you say to that?'

Léonie stared at Anatole in amazement. In the first instance, she did not know quite what she thought of such a suggestion. Would the pleasures of the country pall if they remained longer?

'But. . . but your work? Can the magazine spare you for so long? Do you not need to oversee your interests from closer at hand?'

 

'Oh, I dare say the magazine can manage a little longer without me,' he said lightly. He accepted a cup of coffee from Isolde.

 

'What of M'man?' Léonie said, assailed suddenly by an image of her beautiful mother sitting alone in the drawing room of the rue de Berlin.

 

'If Du Pont can spare her, we had thought, perhaps, to invite her to join us here.'

 

Léonie stared hard at Anatole.

He cannot believe she will ever leave Paris. Or return here. 'I do not think that General Du Pont would wish it,' she said as an excuse for the refusal that would surely be the response to such an invitation.

'Or perhaps you are too bored with my company to wish to remain here longer?' Anatole said, coming across the room and draping his arm around her shoulders. 'Does the thought of further weeks spent confined here with your brother distress you so?'

The moment stretched, taut and expectant, then Léonie giggled. 'You are a fool, Anatole! Of course I would be delighted to stay longer. I cannot think of anything I would like more, although-' Although?' Anatole said quickly.

The smile slipped from her lips. 'I should be glad to hear from M'man.' Anatole put down his cup and lit a cigarette. As would I,' he said quietly. 'I am certain it is only that she is having so agreeable a time that she has not yet found the opportunity to write. And, of course, allowing time for my letter to be forwarded to the Marne.'

Her eyes narrowed. 'I thought you believed they must have returned to Paris?'

 

'I suggested only that they might have done so,' he said mildly. Then his expression lightened again. 'But the thought of a trip to Carcassonne pleases you?' 'Indeed, yes.'

He nodded. 'Good. On Thursday, we will take the morning train from Couiza. The courrier publique leaves from the Place du Pérou at five o'clock.' 'How long will we be staying?' 'Two days, maybe three.'
Leonie's face fell in disappointment. 'But that is hardly any time at all.' 'Quite long enough,' he smiled.

This time, Léonie could not fail to notice the intimate glance that passed between him and Isolde.

 

CHAPTER 55

 

The lovers lay beneath the sheets, their faces lit only by the flickering light of a single candle.

 

'You should return to your rooms,' she said. 'It is late.'

 

Anatole folded his arms behind his head in a gesture that clearly spoke of his determination to stay longer.

 

'Quite. Everyone is in bed.'

Isolde smiled. 'I did not believe that I could experience such happiness,' she said quietly. 'That we would ever be together here.' Then the smile fell from her pale face. Her hand went, automatically, to the hollow of her throat. 'I fear it will not last.'

Anatole bent over and kissed the damaged skin. Even now he felt her desire to pull away from the touch of his lips. The scar was a constant reminder of her brief and violent affair with Victor Constant.

It was only some months into their romance, after the death of her husband, that Isolde had permitted Anatole to see her uncovered and without her customary high collar or scarf or choker concealing the ugly red scar on her neck. It was some weeks later still before he succeeded in persuading her to tell him the story of how she had come by the injury.

He had thought - mistakenly - that speaking of the past might help her gain mastery over her memories. It had not done so. Moreover, it had disturbed his peace of mind. Even now, some nine months after their first meeting and when the litany of the physical punishments Isolde had suffered at Constant's hands was familiar to him, Anatole still found himself flinching as he remembered her calm and expressionless recitation of how, in an attack of jealousy, Constant had used fire tongs to hold his signet ring to the coals, then pressed the hot metal to her throat until she passed out from the pain. He had branded her. So vivid was her description that Anatole all but felt he could smell the sickly-sweet scent of her burning flesh.

Isolde's liaison with Constant had lasted only a matter of weeks. Broken fingers had healed, the bruises had faded; only that one scar remained as a physical souvenir of the damage Constant had inflicted upon her during the course of the thirty days. But the psychological damage lasted far longer. It pained Anatole that despite her beauty, her graceful character, her elegance, Isolde was now so fearful, so lacking in all self-worth, so afraid. It will last,' Anatole said firmly.

He let his hand move lower, smoothing over the beloved familiar bone and form, until it came to rest upon the soft white skin at the top of her thighs.

'Everything is in place. We have the licence. Tomorrow we will meet with Lascombe's lawyers in Carcassonne. Once we know where you stand with regard to this place, we can make our final arrangements.' He snapped his fingers. 'Facile.'

He reached over to the nightstand, the muscles stretched visibly beneath his bare skin. He retrieved his case and matches, lit two cigarettes, then handed one to Isolde.

 

'There will be those who refuse to receive us,' she said. 'Madame Bousquet, Maître Fromilhague.'

 

'I dare say,' he shrugged. 'But do you care so greatly for their good opinion?'

Isolde did not answer the question. 'Madame Bousquet has reason to be aggrieved. If Jules had not taken it upon himself to marry, she would have inherited the estate. She might even challenge the will.'

Anatole shook his head. 'Instinct tells me that if she had intended to do so, she would have done it when Lascombe died and the will was published. Let's see what the codicil says before we concern ourselves with imagined objections.' He inhaled another mouthful of smoke. 'I do concede that Maître Fromilhague might deplore the haste of our marriage. He might object, even though there is no blood tie between us, but what business is it of his?' He shrugged. 'He will come round, given time. When all is said and done, Fromilhague is a pragmatist. He will not wish to sever links with the estate.'