Sepulchre (63 page)
Julian put his hand out to steady himself against the wall. His mouth felt dry, like dried fish, unpleasant and sour. He needed a drink to take away the taste. He looked round, no longer thinking straight. There was a stick lying on the ground, half sticking out of the hedge. He picked it up. She was still talking, on and on, telling lies. Why wouldn't she stop talking?
Julian lifted the stick and brought it down, hard, upon her head. Shelagh O'Donnell cried out in shock, so he hit her again to stop her making any noise. She fell to her side on the stones. Then there was silence.
Anatole was buried in the grounds of the Domaine de la Cade. The spot chosen was the little promontory overlooking the valley at the far side of the lake, in the green shade, close by the crescent stone bench where Isolde often sat.
Abbé Saunière officiated at the meagre ceremony. Léonie - on the arm of Audric Baillard Maître Fromilhague and Madame Bousquet were the only mourners.
Isolde remained under constant watch in her chamber, unaware even that the funeral was taking place. Locked within her silent and suspended world, she did not know how fast or how slowly time was passing, if indeed time had ceased or if all experience was contained in the chime of a single minute. Her existence had shrunk to the four walls of her head. She knew light and dark, that sometimes the fever burned in her and sometimes the cold tore at her, but also that she was trapped somewhere between two worlds, shrouded in a veil she could not draw aside.
The same group paid their respects a day later to Dr Gabignaud in the graveyard of the parish church in Rennes-les-Bains, this time the congregation swelled by the people of the town who had known and admired the young man. Dr Courrent gave the address, praising Gabignaud's hard work, his passion, his sense of duty.
After the burials, Léonie, numb with grief and the responsibilities thrust suddenly on her young shoulders, withdrew to the Domaine de la Cade and ventured little out. The household fell into a joyless routine, day after endless day the same.
'Madame Vernier's pulse is fast tonight,' he said gravely, packing away his equipment into his black leather bag and unhooking his stethoscope from his neck. 'The severity of grief, the strain upon her due to her condition, well, I fear for the full restoration of her faculties the longer this state persists.'
The Aude valley was frozen in misery. Those without shelter, if fortunate, were taken in by their neighbours. Oxen starved in the fields, their hooves caught in the mud and ice, rotting. The rivers froze. The tracks were impassable. There was no food, for man nor beast. The tinkling bell of the sacristan rang out over the fields as Christ was carried through the countryside to grace the lips of another dying sinner, over paths concealed and made treacherous beneath snow. It seemed that all living things would, one by one, simply cease to exist. No light, no warmth, like candles blown out.
In the parish church of Rennes-les-Bains, Curé Boudet preached masses for the dead and the bell tolled out its mournful passing note. In Coustaussa, Curé Gélis opened his doors and offered the cold flagstones of the presbytery floor to the homeless as shelter. In Rennes-le-Château, Abbé Saunière preached of the evil stalking the countryside and urged his congregation to seek salvation in the arms of the one true church.
At the Domaine de la Cade, the staff, although shaken by what had taken place and their part in the matter, remained steadfast. In Isolde's continuing indisposition, they accepted Léonie as mistress of the house. But Marieta grew alarmed as sorrow stole from Léonie her appetite and rest, and she grew thin and pale. Her green eyes lost their shine. But her courage held. She remembered her promise to Anatole that she would protect Isolde and their child and was determined not to let down his memory.
Victor Constant stood accused of the murder of Marguerite Vernier in Paris, the murder of Anatole Vernier in Rennes-les-Bains and the attempted murder of Isolde Vernier, formerly Lascombe. There was also a prosecution pending arising out of the attack on the prostitute in Carcassonne. It was suggested - and accepted without further investigation - that Dr Gabignaud, Charles Denarnaud and a third comrade in the sorry business - had been killed on the orders of Victor Constant, even if it had not been his finger on the trigger.
The town disapproved of the news that Anatole and Isolde had married in secret, more at the haste of it rather than the fact that he was the nephew of her first husband. But it seemed that, given time, the arrangements at the Domaine de la Cade would come to be accepted.
The log pile against the scullery wall diminished. Isolde showed little sign of recovering her mental faculties, although the baby grew and flourished inside her. Day and night, in her chamber on the first floor of the Domaine de la Cade, a good fire crackled and spat in the hearth. The hours of sunlight were short, barely warming the sky before dark fell over the land once again.
Enslaved by grief, Isolde stood yet at a crossroads between the world from which she had taken temporary leave and the undiscovered country beyond. The voices that were with her always whispered to her that if she fared forwards she would find those she loved waiting for her in sunlit glades. Anatole would be there, bathed in gentle, welcoming light. There was nothing to fear. In moments of what she believed was grace, she longed to die. To be with him. But the spirit of his child wishing to be born was too strong.
On a dull and soundless afternoon, with nothing to mark it from those days that had come before or those that were to follow, Isolde felt sensation return to her delicate limbs. At first, it was her fingers. So subtle as to be almost mistaken for something else. An automatic response, not one of purpose. A tingling at the tips and beneath her almond-shaped nails. Then, a twitching of her pale feet beneath the covers. Then, a pricking on the skin at the base of her neck.
Isolde heard a noise. Not, this time, the ceaseless whispering that was always with her, but the normal, domestic sound of a chair leg against the floor. For the first time in months, it was not distorted or amplified or subdued by time or light, but knocking on her consciousness without refraction. She sensed someone leaning over her, the warmth of breath on her face. 'Madama?'
She allowed her eyes to flutter open. She heard the intake of breath, then feet running and a door flung open, shouting in the passageway, coils of sound winding up from the hall below, growing in intensity, growing in certainty.
Isolde blinked at the brightness. More noise, then the touch of cold fingers taking her hand. Slowly she turned her head to one side and saw her niece's thoughtful young face looking down at her. 'Léonie?' She felt her fingers being squeezed. 'I am here.'
Isolde's convalescence was slow. She walked, raised a fork to her mouth, slept, but her physical progress was unsteady and the light had gone from her grey eyes. Grief had detached her from herself. Everything she thought and saw, felt and smelt touched chords of painful remembrance.
Most evenings, she sat with Léonie in the drawing room talking of Anatole, her slim white fingers resting on her growing stomach. Léonie would listen while Isolde recited the whole story of their love affair, from the instant of their first meeting, to the decision to grasp at happiness and the hoax at the Cimetière de Montmartre, the short-lived joy of their intimate wedding in Carcassonne on the eve of the great storm.
At the Domaine de la Cade, Léonie and Isolde remained locked together in their sorrow, bereaved, watching the shadows on the lawns. They had few visitors, save for Audric Baillard and Madame Bousquet, who, despite having lost the estate on Jules Lascombe's marriage, proved to be both a generous friend and a kind neighbour.
Monsieur Baillard, from time to time, brought news of the police hunt for Victor Constant, who had disappeared from the Hôtel de la Reine in Rennes-les-Bains under cover of dark on the night of the 31st October and had not been seen since in France.
The police had enquired for him in the various health spas and asylums specialising in treating men of his condition, but met with no luck. Attempts were made by the state to seize his considerable assets. There was a price on his head. Even so, there were no sightings, no rumours.
On the 25th March, by unhappy coincidence the anniversary of Isolde's false burial in the Cimitière de Montmartre, Léonie received an official letter from Inspector Thouron. He informed her that since they believed Constant had fled the country, perhaps over the border into Andorra or Spain, they were scaling down the manhunt. He reassured her that the fugitive would be arrested and guillotined should he ever return to France and hoped, therefore, that Madame and Mademoiselle Vernier would feel no alarm that Constant would concern them further.
At the tail-end of March, when inclement conditions had kept them inside for some days, Léonie found herself taking up her pen to write to Anatole's former friend and neighbour, Achille Debussy. She knew he was now going under the name of Claude Debussy, although she could not bring herself to address him so.
The correspondence both filled an absence in her confined life and, more important for her fractured heart, helped keep a link with Anatole. Achille told her what was happening in the streets and boulevards she and Anatole had once called home, gossip about who was in conflict with whom, all the petty rivalries at the Académie, the authors in favour or disgraced, the artists fighting, the composers snubbed, the scandals and the affairs.
Léonie did not care for a world that was now so distant, so closed to her, but it reminded her of conversations with Anatole. Sometimes, in the old days, when he returned home after a night out with Achille at Le Chat Noir, he would come into her room, throw himself into the old armchair at the foot of her bed, and she, with her covers drawn up to her chin, would listen to his stories. Debussy wrote mostly of himself, covering page after page with his spidery writing. Léonie did not mind. It took her thoughts away from her own predicament. She smiled when he wrote of his Sunday morning visits to the church of Saint-Gervais to listen to the Gregorian chant with his atheistic friends, sitting with their defiant backs to the altar, thereby offending both the congregation and the officiating priest.
Léonie could not leave Isolde and, even had she been free to travel, the thought of returning to Paris was too painful. It was too soon. At her request, Achille and Gaby Dupont made regular visits to the cimitière de Passy in the 16th arrondissement to lay flowers on the grave of Marguerite Vernier. The tomb, paid for by Du Pont as a last act of generosity, was close to that of the painter Edouard Manet, Achille wrote. A peaceful, shaded spot. Léonie thought her mother would be content to lie among such company.
The weather changed as April came in, arriving like a general upon the battlefield. Aggressive, loud, bellicose. Squalls of scudding clouds skated across the peaks of the mountains. The days grew a little longer, the mornings a little lighter. Marieta got out her needles and threads. She put generous pleats into Isolde's chemises and let out the panels on her skirts to accommodate her changing shape.
Purple, white and pink valley flowers pushed tentative shoots through the crusted rim of the earth, raising their faces to the light. The smatterings of colour, like dabs of paint dripped from a brush, grew stronger, more frequent, vibrating in the green of the borders and the paths.
May tiptoed shyly in, hinting at the promise of longer summer days to come, of dappled sunlight on still water. In the streets of Rennes-les-Bains, Léonie often ventured to visit Monsieur Baillard or met with Madame Bousquet to take afternoon tea in the salon of the Hôtel de la Reine. Outside the modest townhouses, canaries sang in cages now hung out of doors. The lemon and orange trees were in blossom, their sharp scents filling the streets. On every corner, early fresh fruits brought over the mountains from Spain were sold from wooden carts.
From Paris, Achille wrote that Maître Maeterlinck had granted permission to set his new drama, Pelléas et Mélisande, to music. He also sent a copy of Zola's La Débâcle, which was set during the summer of 1870 and the Franco-Prussian War. He enclosed a personal note saying he knew it would have been of interest to Anatole, as it was to him, as sons of convicted Communards. Léonie struggled with the novel, but appreciated the sentiment that had caused Achille to make her so thoughtful a gift.
She did not allow her thoughts to return to the Tarot cards. They were tied up with the grim events of Hallowe'en, and although she could not persuade the Abbé Saunière to talk to her of those things he had seen or done in the service of her uncle, she remembered Monsieur Baillard's warnings that the demon, Asmodeus, walked the valleys when times were troubled. Although she did not believe such superstitions, or so she told herself, she did not wish to risk provoking a recurrence of such terror.
She packed away her incomplete set of drawings. They were too painful a reminder of her brother and her mother. Le Diable and La Tour were left unfinished. Nor did Léonie return to the glade ringed with the wild juniper. Its proximity to the clearing where the duel had taken place, where Anatole had fallen, made her heart crack. Too much so to contemplate ever walking that way.