The Splendour Falls (15 page)

I believe I looked quite normal when Martine and Christian finally appeared above the tangled grasses of the cliff edge.

Martine recovered first from the surprise. ‘Hello!’ Her widow’s veil had been emphatically cast aside this morning, in favour of a yellow windcheater so bright it almost hurt one’s eyes to look at it, worn over smartly-pressed black denim jeans and a yellow roll-neck jersey. Even in casual clothes, I decided, she outshone me fairly, but the only thing of which I was truly jealous was her smile. She had perfect teeth. I hadn’t ever met a person with really perfect teeth before.

I returned the greeting, straightening away from my supporting wall. ‘Out for a walk, are you?’

‘Yes. Christian is bored with moving,’ Martine told me, ‘and so he makes today the sketches for his painting.’ Which would explain, I thought, the decidedly battered leather
satchel he was lugging about with him this morning, its broad strap digging into his hunched shoulder. He looked half-asleep still. Martine, on the other hand, was wide awake and talking brightly. ‘You are admiring the chapelle, Mademoiselle?’

‘Please,’ I said, ‘call me Emily.’ And then I frowned. ‘What chapelle?’

‘The Chapelle of Sainte Radegonde, behind you.’

I looked round at the silent wall, the bolted door. ‘Is that what this place is? I didn’t know.’

‘But yes, this is most famous, here in Chinon. Christian often sketches here. You must come in with us, and see it. The chapelle,’ she informed me, ‘is not to be missed. Is it, Christian?’

‘What?’ His head came round a quarter turn, the blue eyes vague as he pulled them away from a contemplation of a floating tuft of clouds. ‘Oh, yes, of course. You must come.’ He didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic, but I didn’t take it personally. He seemed to move in a solitary world of his own creation, did Christian Rand.

‘The chapelle is kept locked, now,’ Martine said. ‘Most people, they must ask at the Tourist Office if they wish to see inside. But Christian has a key.’

He was fiddling with it now, in the lock – a long,
old-fashioned
key like something from a Gothic film. At last it turned, but before he opened the door he did a most peculiar thing. He looked at me with a serious expression, and said: ‘You will close your eyes, please.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I am sorry,’ he looked half embarrassed, ‘but it is … you
will only have one chance to be seeing this for the first time, and it is better to be surprised. Please.’

I shrugged and stepped up to the door, screwing my eyes tightly shut like a child waiting to receive a present. I heard the creaking of old iron hinges as Christian pushed the great door open, and I caught a gentle breeze upon my upturned face, a breeze that faintly smelled of flowers and warm stone.

‘There,’ said Christian. ‘You may look.’

At first I couldn’t seem to move at all, I could only stand there with my face uplifted to the naked sky and stare and stare until my eyes grew moist. Before me, framed by the open doorway, rose two colossal pillars, smooth and richly white. They seemed to soar towards the heavens, supporting on their curving capitals the arched remains of a ruined wall, capped softly by a golden fringe of grass. Tall iron gates set in between the pillars shielded the inner sanctum, within whose cool and sloping shadows slender columns stretched along a sacred aisle, and the eyes of sculpted saints gazed blindly back at me.

Between the saints and me a garden grew, a wild garden, mindless of man’s will or rules of order. Here and there the sunken forms of graves spoke of the time when this wild place had been a proper church, with nave and transept, altar and aisles. But the graves were empty now, the bodies moved and buried elsewhere. Above where they had lain the roof had long since fallen and been cleared away, and the once-high walls had crumbled to uneven contours, their jagged stones yet softened by a trailing growth of ivy.

‘My God,’ I whispered.

Christian seemed to understand. ‘It is most beautiful, this place.’

I scarcely heard him. I finally managed to free my frozen limbs and take a cautious step inside the door.

Here a bay tree arched above a broken baptismal font, and delicate wild flowers quivered at my feet. Everything was green and living, even the soil sprouted moss, and the silent air around me seemed to hum with vital energy.

I nearly didn’t see him, to begin with.

He might have been a statue himself, propped against the sunlit wall. The pale hair, the white shirt, both seemed to blend into the ivory stone behind him, and his outstretched legs were buried in a waving sea of green. Only his eyes, when he opened them, commanded attention. They stared, blinked slowly, tried to focus. And then one hand came up to pull the wired headphones from his ears, and I heard the jarring click of a portable tape player being switched off.

‘Good morning, everyone,’ Neil Grantham said.

The three of us reacted rather differently, although in my own case it wasn’t so much a reaction as a lack of one. I don’t think my expression even changed. Martine, beside me, simply laughed, a short delighted laugh, and said, ‘Neil, you idiot! How ever did you get in?’

Christian’s response was by far the most dramatic. ‘You will
not
move!’ he ordered, in a forceful tone that sounded not a bit like him.

Neil, who had been leaning forward as if to rise, sank back against the wall and watched benignly while Christian dropped to his knees in the damp earth and swung the bulging satchel from his shoulder, searching through its contents. I’d never seen an artist in action. It was fascinating to watch him clasp an ink pot to the edge of his sketchbook and boldly dash a straight-nibbed pen across the virgin page.

Fascinating to me, at least. No one else took any notice. Martine Muret had doubtless seen it all before, and Neil was looking, not at Christian, but at me. ‘You gave me quite a turn just now,’ he said, mildly accusing. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘I’m surprised you didn’t hear us opening the door. That lock goes off like a shotgun.’

‘I was listening to my music.’ The small movement of his head provoked a stern look of reproach from Christian.

‘Neil …’

‘Sorry.’ Neil’s head stayed very still against the glowing stone, but his eyes swung back to me. ‘Thierry loaned me this little machine to replace the one I broke yesterday. It’s working rather nicely.’

‘At this moment.’ Martine came forward, smiling, to stand between the two of us. ‘And how did you get in?’ she asked again. ‘The door, it is kept always locked.’

‘I have my methods.’ His dark eyes crinkled at the corners.

Christian sighed. ‘Martine, please, you block the light. Thank you,’ he said shortly, when she’d backed away a step. The pen went scratching across the drawing paper and Christian huddled over it, frowning with the force of his concentration. Neil seemed quite unaffected by all the attention. He didn’t stir against the wall, and when his gaze came back to mine it held a quiet resignation.

‘It isn’t me that interests him,’ he said. ‘It’s something that I’m doing, without knowing it. Isn’t that right, Christian?’

The painter looked up, briefly. ‘You make this good shadow on the column, just there. This shadow I can use.’

‘You see?’ Neil smiled at me, vindicated.

Christian lowered his head. ‘And also,’ he went on, ‘you have a quality quite unique that I try to capture. This most amazing stillness.’

‘Well, naturally,’ said Neil. ‘You won’t let me move.’

But I knew what Christian meant, and it was something deeper than the seated man’s motionless hands or his calm deliberate voice. It was a thing intangible, yet clearly felt – the sense that time was moving round him, past him, leaving him untouched. Even when the drawing was completed and Neil was finally able to stand, rising stiffly from the hard ground and stretching, the aura of stillness clung to him.

Martine smiled. ‘You are too old, I think, for climbing walls,’ she told him.

‘Have a heart, love,’ was Neil’s reply. ‘I’ve only just turned forty-three – I’m not quite ready for the eventide home.’

Not by a long shot, I agreed, turning my gaze from his boyish face and snugly fitting denim jeans to the crumbling wall above his head, which at its lowest point must still have been some ten or twelve feet tall.

‘You climbed that wall?’ I asked, incredulous, is that how you got in?’

‘Could be.’ He smiled again, refusing to appease our curiosity. Turning to Christian, he asked: ‘Have you got the keys for this gate with you? Emily might like to see the murals.’ He said my name so easily, as though we were old friends, or something more. I thought I saw a flash of curiosity in Martine’s sideways glance, but Christian found his keys again and came forward to unlock the towering
black grille that sealed the sculpted saints within their inner chamber. They had an odd effect on me, those saints. Though they were trapped in shadows, while I had open sky above me, I felt somehow that it was me, not them, shut in behind the iron bars; that their eyes saw a wider world than mine.

The blind stone faces stared at me as Christian swung the great gate open and we passed into the chapel proper, where our voices echoed as we walked between stone columns soaring high to meet the ceiling many feet above our heads.

‘This has been carved from the cliff,’ Martine told me. ‘You can see here the marks of the chisel. It is very old, this chapelle. Christian,’ she said, turning, ‘you must tell the story of Sainte Radegonde. I never can remember it properly.’

Christian shrugged uncomfortably and hurried through an abbreviated version. ‘She was a German, like myself – a princess. In the sixth of centuries her people were destroyed by the Frankish king, Clotaire, who took Radegonde for his bride. She was then eleven years old. But she was not happy with Clotaire, and so she left him and became a nun. She founded, here at Chinon, a small convent.’

I looked around. ‘What, in this spot?’

‘No, not here. The hermit Jean was living here, a holy man. I will explain.’ He frowned a little, trying to collect his thoughts. He was clearly unaccustomed to the role of tour guide. ‘When Radegonde was living at Chinon, there came an order from Clotaire, her former husband, that she should be going south to Poitiers to make a convent, for which he would provide the money. But Radegonde, she
was not certain this was good, so she came here to visit Jean the hermit, to ask him what to do.’

‘And what did he tell her?’

A second shrug. ‘He said that this was a good idea, to go to Poitiers. And so Sainte Radegonde went there, as Clotaire wanted, and built in Poitiers a great church. It is there that she is buried.’

There was an altar of sorts at the end wall, a heavy stone table laid with a white lace covering, set in a hollowed niche that glowed with ancient paintings.

‘This mural,’ Martine said, pointing to the flaking pigments, rich blue above a deep wine colour, ‘this is not the oldest here. This one is only seventeenth-century.’

There were fresh flowers on the altar, and a wooden standing crucifix flanked by bronze candlesticks. Beneath the drape of lace, a broken sculpture bore the likeness of a medieval woman lost in meditative rapture, a royal crown upon her head.

‘Is this her?’ I asked, bending for a better look, is this Sainte Radegonde?’

Christian nodded. ‘Yes. And also this,’ he said, showing me a daintier statue that graced a second table in the adjoining painted niche. At the feet of this Radegonde were more cut flowers, and a shallow plate with several coins laid in it. Offerings to the saint, I thought, until Christian set me straight.

‘Those are donations to the Friends of Old Chinon,’ he said. ‘To help with the upkeep of the chapelle.’

Always the practical intruded into the romantic, I reminded myself with a wry smile.

Martine was at my shoulder, pointing. ‘The chapelle, it goes even further into the rock, through there.’ She showed me a smaller iron gate that spread to fill an opening in the rear wall. There were no saints behind this gate, no kind benevolent eyes, only a few feet of visible stone floor and then an inky darkness. ‘There are more caves, and many fine museum items, and an ancient well, from Sainte Radegonde’s time. She must see the well, Christian. Do you have the key?’

But the young German shook his head, expressionless. ‘No, I have not brought it with me. We can show the well to her another time.’

‘But Christian, surely …’

‘I have not brought the key, Martine.’ His tone was firm. ‘I am sorry.’

I wasn’t overly disappointed, myself. The dank smell of stone that rose from behind the iron gate was acrid and unwelcoming. Besides, my roving gaze had just that moment fallen on a painted frieze at the opposite end of the covered aisle.

‘I don’t believe it,’ I said abruptly. ‘There’s John.’

Martine, interrupted in her train of thought, looked at the end wall and frowned. ‘Yes, that is Jean the hermit,’ she said. ‘It is a reproduction of his tomb, you understand. The sleeping statue, it is not as old as—’

‘No, I didn’t mean that,’ I broke in. ‘I meant the fresco higher up, at the back. That’s John Lackland, King of England.’

‘Oh, I see. Yes, you are quite right, that is a painting of the Plantagenets.’ Her face cleared, and she led us across
the neatly swept floor to the corner where the painting was. It was only a fragment of a fresco, really, with a fair chunk missing along the bottom edge, but the colours were brilliant and stunningly true.

‘I’ve seen this before,’ I said slowly, admiring the artist’s skill. I remembered it from one of Harry’s books.

Martine, the art expert, assured me it had been much photographed. ‘Many people came to see it thirty years ago, when it was found. It is believed to have been painted when this John came here to marry his queen. That is her there,’ she pointed out, ‘on the horse behind her husband’s. Not the older woman at the back, but the young girl riding in the front.’

Neil came up behind me, closer to the wall, his breath stirring the hair on the top of my head. ‘She looks young to be a queen,’ he commented. ‘And she isn’t wearing a crown, is she? The crown is on the older woman.’

‘That’s Eleanor,’ I told him, absently, my eyes fixed on the vibrant painted figures. ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine. She was John’s mother.’ But I wasn’t looking at the famous queen. I was looking at the lovely tragic girl in front of her, the great dark eyes that gazed towards the future with such hope …

‘It was by luck alone that this survived,’ Martine was saying. ‘Just after it was painted Chinon came to the French king. This John of England, he killed someone, I think, and it was not so nice to have his picture in the church. And so this fresco, it was covered up with plaster. It was not seen again until 1966, when some of the plaster fell down.’

I heard her only dimly. I went on studying the painting, and as my eyes passed over Isabelle it seemed she was now
staring straight at
me
, as though she yearned to tell me something. The quiet shadows wrapped cold hands around me, and I quickly looked away. It was, at any rate, the end of the impromptu tour. We wandered back into the sunlight of the walled and roofless yard.

Christian took up a position by the baptismal font, beneath the waving branches of the bay tree, and began to sketch again in ink, his upward glances swift and keen as he traced the broken architecture onto paper. Not wanting to disturb his concentration, I settled myself between Neil and Martine, against the great pillars opposite. I don’t believe I did it purposely, sitting between the two of them … I don’t
believe
I did … but then, my actions and reactions where Neil Grantham was concerned were becoming increasingly unpredictable.

He levered his head away from the curved white stone to toss the thick fall of fair hair back out of his eyes, and the noonday sunlight struck him full across the face. ‘This is as close to Eden as it gets,’ he said. ‘I daren’t come up here too often, or I’d never get anything accomplished. In fact I’d probably never leave Chinon, come to that.’ He started to smile, but my expression stopped him. ‘What? What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’ I looked away rather quickly. It would sound foolish to tell the truth, to tell him that I’d only just now noticed that his eyes weren’t black at all. They were blue, a pure dark blue, deep as the still sea at midnight. Not that it much mattered what colour his eyes were. What mattered was that I’d noticed it at all.

Harry had always laughed at me for noticing men’s
eyes. ‘I can always tell when you’re smitten, my love,’ he’d teased me, more than once. ‘I only have to ask you what colour his eyes are.’ And he was right, as always. If I wasn’t interested I answered ‘brown’, not knowing, but if a man had struck my fancy I could describe his eyes in embarrassing detail.

I felt my face growing warm, but Neil didn’t notice. He’d looked away again, towards the far wall, where he’d been sitting earlier. ‘There’s that bloody bird again,’ he said, his voice mildly amused.

Martine, at my other shoulder, turned her head to look. ‘What bird?’

‘Just over there. The swallow. He was hopping round like mad this morning – made me tired just watching him. He must have his nest around here somewhere.’

I stared at the little fork-tailed bird, and for a moment – just a moment, mind – I almost wanted to believe …

Don’t be an idiot
, I told myself firmly. It wasn’t the same swallow I’d seen, it couldn’t possibly be, and it certainly hadn’t brought me a message from any prince. There were no such things, I reminded myself, as princes. Neil rolled his head sideways again, as if to tell me something, but I pushed myself upright and rose to my feet. ‘I think I’ll leave my own donation at the altar,’ I said, my voice sounding unnaturally bright. ‘This is a lovely place, I’d hate to see it go to ruin for lack of funds.’

I wasn’t the only one who felt that way, obviously. Beside the statue of Sainte Radegonde, the small chipped saucer held a generous scattering of coins. Among the thin French francs I saw a few larger pieces that proved to be
American, and half hidden below those was a smallish coin of beaten silver …

I stared at it a moment, disbelieving. It couldn’t be, I thought, it simply couldn’t be … but there it was, all the same – a small, round coin of tarnished silver, with the image of a dead king raised on one side. The image of King John of England, third of the Plantagenet line.

The breeze blew suddenly chill within the sheltering walls, and I heard again my cousin’s laughing voice, and saw him close his fist protectively around that coin, drawing it back and up, out of my reach. ‘You might have stopped believing in good luck pieces, Emily Braden,’ he’d told me then with an indulgent smile, ‘but I haven’t. I’d rather lose my right arm than this little chap.’

Numbly, without thinking, I fished the coin from the saucer and closed my fingers round it, pressing it into the soft flesh of my palm until I could feel each contour of its worn surface. It was no longer in its round protective casing, but it was obviously Harry’s coin. I wouldn’t think too many tourists carried King John coins about. He had been here, then, just recently. I frowned. Harry had been here …