The Splendour Falls (6 page)

A stone bridge spanned the grassy moat that once had barred invaders from the tower’s high arched entrance gate. Today, the wooden doors stood open wide, inviting us to leave the road and cross the narrow footbridge to where Simon waited by the postcards, impatient.

‘They do have guided tours,’ Paul said, as we paused at the entrance to pay, ‘but Simon and I usually just wander around on our own. It’s up to you, though, if you’d rather take a tour …’

‘I hate guided tours,’ I assured them, ‘thanks all the same. Much more fun to wander.’

And wander we did. I’d always liked castles. I’d expected this one to be little more than a ruin, but many of the rooms and towers had been preserved intact within the shattered walls. One could almost hear the footsteps of brave knights and ladies, kings and courtiers, echoing round the empty rooms. The white stone, bathed in light from mullioned windows, lent a bright and airy feel to the sprawling royal apartments and made them look much larger than they were. From every corner twisting stairs led up to unexpected rooms with hearths and windows of their own, small private sanctuaries where a queen could comfortably retire to do her needlework or dally with her lover … at least, I thought, until the king found out, and had the lover killed.

In the next tower on, Simon pointed to a large framed painting of the château, just like the view Paul had shown me from the bridge. ‘That’s one of Christian’s paintings. Pretty good, eh?’

‘It’s marvellous.’ I leaned closer, amazed. ‘Christian did this, really?’ It was a bold and sweeping painting in the true romantic style, and he had caught exactly the unusual pale colour of the tufa-stone gleaming bright against a stormy violet sky.

‘He’s incredibly talented,’ Paul said, beside my shoulder.

‘So I see.’ With a vague prickling feeling of being watched, I slid my gaze from the painting to the figure looming in a shadowed recess of the tower wall. Not a real person, thank heavens – just a statue, and a massive one at that. ‘Good heavens,’ I said. ‘It’s Philippe.’

Paul looked up as well, at the young heroic face. ‘Who?’

‘Philippe Auguste. One of the early kings of France. He was the first real French king to own this château, actually,’ I went on, recalling Harry’s countless lectures.

Simon frowned. ‘Who owned it before?’

‘The counts of Blois and Anjou, I believe. And then the Plantagenets.’

‘What, like the Black Prince, you mean?’

I smiled. ‘A little earlier than that. Richard the Lionheart and that bunch. Richard’s brother John was the last to own Chinon.’

‘As in Robin Hood?’ Simon checked, his eyebrows lifting. ‘Bad Prince John? That guy?’

‘The very same.’

‘Neat.’

Paul looked at me with quiet interest. ‘You know a lot about the history of this place, then?’

My smile grew wider. ‘Rather. I’m lectured on it constantly. My cousin,’ I explained, to both of them, ‘is
something of an expert on Plantagenets. It’s his fault, really, that I’m here at all – he talked me into coming on holiday with him.’

The brothers exchanged glances. ‘But he isn’t here,’ said Simon, pointing out the obvious.

‘Not yet, no. But then, that’s not unusual for Harry. He does race off on tangents when he’s working on a theory. Which reminds me,’ I said, turning, ‘how does one get to the Moulin Tower?’

Someone was coming. Isabelle raised her head, all thought of sleep forgotten, as the heavy stamp of boots on stone drew nearer. Oh, please, she prayed, dear Mother of God, please let it be John.

Beside her, the old woman Alice roused herself, alarmed. ‘My lady—’

‘Hush.’ The whispered word held urgency. The boots were at the door now. She held her breath.

A rough knock, and a rougher voice … a voice she knew. ‘Your Majesty, are you awake?’

He hadn’t come. She swallowed back the bitter taste of tears and felt in darkness for her gown. He’d promised he would always come, whenever she sent word … with solemn eyes he’d sworn it, always. But the man who stood outside her chamber now was not her husband. She stood, shivering in the velvet gown, and crossed to unbolt the door, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the sudden glare of torchlight. The tall man in the passage looked more fierce than she remembered. He frightened her, he’d always frightened her, and yet she’d rather die than have him see
it. By force of will she kept her voice composed. ‘My lord de Préaux.’

‘Majesty.’ He knelt, and took her hand. The torchlight traced an old scar on his cheekbone as he raised his head. She saw no mercy in his eyes, no warmth – they were the hard eyes of a ruthless man who made his living by the sword. ‘You are to rise, and come with me,’ he told her. ‘I am to bring you safely to Le Mans.’

‘John sent you?’

‘Yes.’

She only had his word, she thought, and the word of such a man was hardly comfort in these troubled times. If he’d turned traitor, like the others …

Still, she was alone, with John not here – she had no choice but trust. Besides, she thought, de Préaux was a soldier – soldiers had no cause to lie. To take her hostage, he had but to seize her where she stood. And if he desired her dead he’d simply kill her and be done with it. The fact that he’d done neither proved de Préaux spoke the truth.

She raised her chin. ‘My lord,’ she said, ‘the rebels do surround us.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘May I ask, how did you … how …’

‘With difficulty.’ He stood, impatient. De Préaux never stayed long on his knees. ‘Do you come or no? I’ve twelve men freezing round the fire in your courtyard. They’ve ridden long and hoped for sleep, but I’d think it less than wise to wait till morning.’

She shivered in a draught of air that swept along the passage. ‘What would you have me do?’

‘Dress you warmly, and make haste.’

‘My women …’

‘Only you.’ He shook his head. ‘We have but one horse spare. Your maids must wait.’

She glanced at Alice. ‘But my lord—’

‘Queen Isabelle.’ He was not moved; his ugly face was resolute. ‘Upon your life my own life hangs. I am not sent to save the household – only you. It is yourself the rebels seek,’ he reminded her, ‘and once they learn their prize is flown, the castle will be safe. The siege will end.’

‘There is the Treasury, still.’

‘These men have no desire for treasure.’

No, she thought. They had one cause, and one cause only – to force John to release his nephew Arthur. And so he would, in time. Frowning, she drew back, gathering the folds of her robe about her. ‘What news of Arthur of Brittany?’ she asked, slowly. ‘Is he well?’

The eyes that touched hers held a fleeting trace of pity. And then he looked beyond her to where Alice stood in silence by the bed, and for a moment understanding passed between the dark knight and the old woman. ‘See that your mistress dresses warm,’ he said. He bowed and turned away.

Watching the last faint flickering of torchlight vanish down the twisting stairs, it seemed to Isabelle that every stone around her breathed a sigh of cold despair, as if by sorcery her own bedchamber had become a prison … or a tomb.

‘You’ve done it now,’ said Paul, as we watched Simon bounding off away from us.

‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘That story you just told us, about Queen Isabelle. You mentioned treasure.
Big
mistake.’ With Simon safely out of sight, he rummaged in his pocket for his cigarettes, shifting clear of the shadow cast by the tower at his shoulder. It was in ruins now, the Moulin Tower – an empty hull of stone with dark weeds sprouting in the roofless chambers. And no one walked those chambers, any more. A sign beside the bolted door said sternly:
Danger!
so we leaned instead against the low lichen-crusted wall that formed the western boundary of the château grounds. Behind our backs the slumbering Vienne flowed seaward, unconcerned.

Paul cupped the match against the breeze. ‘Telling a story like that to Simon,’ he advised me, ‘is kind of like
waving a red flag in front of a bull. He’s all fired up, now.’

‘He’s only gone to find the toilet, Paul.’

‘Don’t you believe it. Not my brother.’ He grinned. ‘He has the bladder of a camel. No, you wait and see – he’s sneaked off down to the entrance booth to see what he can learn about the tunnels.’

I looked along the empty path, intrigued. ‘But he doesn’t speak French.’

‘That wouldn’t stop him.’ Stretching his legs out in front of him, Paul dug his feet into the gravel and braced his hands beside him on the sun-warmed stone. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what happened?’

‘When?’

‘To John and Isabelle. You never finished the story.’

‘Oh, that.’ The breeze blew my hair in my eyes and I pushed it back absently. ‘It’s not the happiest of endings, I’m afraid. John did kill Arthur, or at least he had him killed, depending on which chronicler one reads. The King of France – Philippe – you remember the statue? Well, Philippe went rather wild. He’d raised the boy, you see. He’d been great friends with John’s big brother Geoffrey, Arthur’s father, and when Geoffrey died Philippe took Arthur back to Paris, brought him up. John might as well have killed Philippe’s own son.’

‘So he started a war.’

I nodded. ‘A terrible war. It cost John nearly everything. Chinon was one of the first castles to be captured, actually – it fell to Philippe not long after Arthur died.’

‘And Isabelle?’

I looked up at the Moulin Tower, lonely and abandoned,
the green weeds grasping at the crumbled window ledge. ‘He lost her too, in the end. John had foul moods and jealous rages, like his father. He even followed in his father’s footsteps in another way – kept Isabelle locked up and under guard, just as his mother had been kept.’

Paul frowned. ‘How sad.’

‘Yes, well,’ I shrugged, ‘it’s not a fairy tale, I’ll grant you. But then real life never is.’

He turned his head to look at me, squinting a little against the sun. ‘You don’t believe, then, in a love that lasts a lifetime?’

‘I don’t believe,’ I told him drily, ‘in a love that lasts till teatime.’

‘Cynic,’ he accused me, but he smiled.

We sat on several moments in companionable silence while Paul smoked his cigarette, his eyes half narrowed, deep in thought. I couldn’t help but think again how different he was from his brother Simon. One had room to breathe, with Paul.

‘Tragic,’ he said, quite out of the blue.

‘I’m sorry?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s just a kind of game I play, finding the right adjective to suit a place. I try to distil all the feeling, the atmosphere, down to a single word. Château Chinon’s been a tough one, but I’ve got it now – it’s tragic.’

He’d hit the nail precisely on the head, I had to admit. In spite of all the sunshine and the blue sky, and the brilliant golden walls, the place did seem to be pervaded by an aura of tragedy, of splintered hopes and unfulfilled desires.

The swift breeze stole the sunlight’s warmth and, shivering, I glanced up.

‘Simon’s coming.’

‘Damn.’ Paul stubbed his cigarette against the wall, setting off a shower of red sparks that died before they reached the ground. By the time Simon reached us, the telltale evidence lay crushed deep in the gravel underneath Paul’s shoe.

‘I got a map,’ said Simon cheerfully.

Paul’s eyes were knowing, but he held the innocent expression. ‘Map of what?’

‘The tunnels, stupid. Now, according to the woman at the gate, there should be something we can
see
, just over here …’ And off he went again, with purpose, heading for a spreading box tree several yards away. ‘Come on, you two,’ he called back.

With a sigh, Paul straightened from the wall arid stretched. ‘I told you so.’

I smiled. ‘Well, not to worry. When my cousin turns up he’ll be glad of the help.’

It took us some few minutes to find Simon, round the far side of the box tree. At first it seemed he’d vanished into thin air, until we stumbled on the narrow shaft sunk deep into the well kept lawn. A flight of stairs, worn smooth with age and damp with fallen leaves, descended here to end abruptly at a blank stone wall. And at the bottom of those steps stood Simon.

‘Hey, come down here,’ he invited. ‘This is really neat.’

I frowned. ‘But it doesn’t go anywhere.’

‘Of course it does.’ He pointed off to one side, into darkness. ‘Come and see.’

I wasn’t really going underground, I reassured myself. The sky was still above me, calmly blue. But when I reached the bottom step the air was dank, and the only thing that kept me from bolting right back up the steps was the fact that I’d have flattened Paul in the process. He leaned in now, behind me, looking where Simon had pointed. One had to focus past the iron bars to see the dimly stretching corridors beyond. ‘You’re right,’ he told his brother. ‘This
is
neat. Where does it lead?’

Simon consulted the hand-sketched map he held. ‘I’m not sure. The woman at the gate said there are tunnels all over the place, not just under the château but all around Chinon. I think she said Resistance fighters used them in the war.’

It was easy to imagine that. Easier still to imagine the echo of earlier times. I could almost see the torchlight casting shadows on the arched stone walls, and hear far off the furtive rustle of a velvet gown against the eerie silence. I wondered if this was the tunnel Isabelle had passed through, on her way to hide her treasure …

I was so deep in my imaginings that the sound, when it came, caught me unawares. A sound quite real and not imagined: the quiet closing of a door, somewhere in the dark and stretching shadows.

I cleared my throat. ‘Did you hear that?’

‘Hear what?’ Both brothers looked at me blankly.

‘It sounded like a door.’

Paul tipped his head and listened, but the dusty walls stayed silent. ‘Maybe the château workers use the tunnels,’ he suggested, ‘to get around the place. Or for storage.’

It seemed logical enough, I thought. But I felt a good deal better when we’d clambered up to ground level again, up in the sunshine where the breeze could blow the shivers from my skin.

‘Oh, hey,’ said Simon, looking at his map, ‘I think that might have been the tunnel that goes to the vineyard.’ Brow furrowed, he followed the tracing on the map and tried to match it with his own steps, so deep in concentration that he didn’t seem to notice when he left the grass and walked onto a broad paved circle that jutted out from the château walls. It might have been a tower once, or some such other fortification, but time had worn it level with the lawn. And Simon might have kept on walking, clear off its edge, had Paul not whistled sharply.

‘What?’ Simon raised his head, enquiring. He stopped two inches from the railing and leaned over, with a nod. ‘Yeah, that’s where it leads, all right. If Isabelle hid her treasure there,’ he told me, as we joined him at the railing, ‘your cousin can kiss it goodbye.’

Below us ran the road that had brought me into Chinon yesterday, now busy with a blur of passing traffic. And on the other side of the road was the most incredible estate I’d ever seen. It was a vineyard, a huge and wealthy vineyard – so huge, in fact, that the rows of dark green vines rose up the rolling slope to the horizon and beyond, protected by a tall unbroken boundary wall that ran along the road. Well, almost unbroken, I corrected myself. There was a gate, a great iron thing that would have suited Buckingham Palace, and from the gate a broad drive swept imperiously up the
hill to meet a Grecian mansion, gleaming white.

Above our heads a cloud raced underneath the sun and sent a shadow swiftly up the deeply furrowed hill, as the shadow of a hawk might chase its prey across a trembling field.

Paul understood my awe. ‘The
Clos des Cloches
. It’s really something, isn’t it? I’m told they make the best wine in Chinon.’

The
Clos des Cloches
– the vineyard of the bells, I translated in my own mind. ‘It’s beautiful.’

Simon shifted closer. ‘Martine says they give tours in the summer, and wine-tastings, but it’s out of season now. Everyone’s too busy with the harvest.’ Elbows on the railing, he hung forward, heedless of the dizzying drop. ‘Hey, look,’ he said, ‘there’s Neil.’

I looked. The bright gleam of Neil Grantham’s hair made him easy to spot on the narrow path beneath us, by the road. Two other men were with him, and a woman with short dark hair. I couldn’t see their faces from that angle, but Simon gave a low whistle.

‘Damn Neil,’ he said, good-naturedly. ‘He always beats my time.’

Paul smiled. ‘
That
,’ he told me, with a downwards nod at the dark-haired woman, ‘is Martine Muret.’

Martine Muret. I frowned. Oh, right … the woman Garland had been gossiping about in the hotel bar yesterday afternoon. The one whose former husband had just died … what, three days ago? I watched her now lean close to Neil, her hand possessive on his arm. She had a quick recovery time, I decided drily.

Simon shouted down and waved, and I pulled myself up quickly, taking a step back from the railing. ‘Listen, it must be nearly lunchtime. I’d better go back down, in case my cousin’s come.’

‘Are you sure?’ Simon turned around, distracted. ‘Because there’s a Joan of Arc museum in the Clock Tower, if you’d like to …’

I hastily assured him I’d seen plenty for one day, and it was always best to leave something for the next time …

‘Well, it is your first day,’ Simon conceded with a shrug. ‘We probably shouldn’t wear you out.’ He checked his watch. ‘And you’re right, it is lunchtime. Hey, Paul, let’s go ask Neil and Martine if they want to try that Chinese place across the river.’

Paul smiled. ‘She’s too old for you.’

‘Age,’ his brother said, indignantly, ‘is completely relative. You’re the physicist, you ought to know that.’

He bounced off, energy renewed, and Paul sighed. ‘You’re sure you don’t want to join us?’

‘Well …’

‘Joke,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t do that to you. Two hours with us is long enough for anybody. Just don’t forget to warn your cousin.’

‘Warn him?’

‘That Simon’s after Queen Isabelle’s treasure.’

‘Oh, that.’ I promised him I’d not forget. ‘I’ll see you later, then.’

I left him on the road outside the château. Instead of going back the way we’d come, along the path that wound down through the ancient part of town, I walked a few steps
further on and found, as Paul had promised, the entrance to the
escalier de la brèche
, a steep flight of stairs that led back into the fountain square.

It was far easier going down, I decided, although the steps were too broad to take at a normal pace. I had to take them like a child would, one foot down and then the other, following their steeply twisting course between stone walls hung thick with ivy. Here and there a wooden door gave a glimpse of someone’s terraced garden, or a fruit tree leaned across the wall to drop its leaves.

One final twist, a straight descent, and there I was, safely back at the fountain square with the hotel angling off beside me, its fanciful wrought-iron balconies webbed like pure black lace against the yellow-white stone of the facade.

The fountain sang and beckoned from the centre of the square. I stopped and paused, and took a step towards it. But the man sitting on the edge of the fountain’s basin changed my mind.

He had been sitting in that same spot yesterday, when I arrived – I’d seen him from my window. There couldn’t be two men in Chinon with a dog like that, a little spotted mongrel curled around its owner’s feet. And he wore the same clothes, leather jacket over tattered shirt, his blue jeans soiled and frayed. He looked, I thought, a shade less than respectable. Not threatening, exactly, but … something in his roughened face, some quality I couldn’t place, put me on my guard.

The man himself appeared to take no notice of me. He went on smoking, gazing placidly at nothing in particular.
At his feet the small dog shifted, raised its head, and pricked its ears up, suddenly alert. It stared, I thought, directly at my face. And as I crossed to the hotel I felt those silent eyes upon me, watching steadily, as a hunter sights its prey.