by Kate Forsyth
‘Eat a horse? Why would you want to eat a horse?’ Her voice rippled with laughter. ‘What odd terms you English have! Come in. I have saved you some supper.’
‘Glory be, but you’re a marvel. Thank you.’ David followed her into the stillroom, but saw no sign of any meal on the table.
Viviane took up the candle and led the way towards the corner, Luna at her heels.
‘My great-aunt has gone to visit a neighbour tonight, so I am all alone, and Pierrick told me you missed your dinner. I know it is not de rigueur, but I thought … that is, if you do not mind … that we could sup together.’ She looked back over her shoulder at him. ‘You do not mind, do you? I know I can trust you not to take advantage.’
‘No, not at all … I mean, yes, yes, of course you can trust me,’ he answered, blushing and stammering like a schoolboy.
‘I am about to show you one of the secrets of the château. You must swear on your parents’ grave to never reveal it to anyone.’ Viviane gazed at him expectantly.
David said at once, ‘I swear, honour bright, never to tell.’
She was pleased with his response. ‘Honour bright. I like that. Now, see the panelling on the wall? If you press the third rosette like so …’ She demonstrated. To David’s surprise, a low hidden door in the panelling sprang open, revealing a narrow turn of steps within.
‘It leads up to the library,’ Viviane said. ‘We can be comfortable there. Come on, follow me.’
The stairs were nearly as steep as a ladder, and very tightly wound. David had to duck his head and hunch his shoulders, and almost lost his footing as Luna dashed through his legs. At last he crept out another small door into the library.
‘I found the secret door quite by accident when I was a child,’ Viviane explained to him. ‘No-one else knows about it. Except Pierrick, of course. He used to come and rescue me when Madame Malfort left me tied to a chair for hours. She always rested in the afternoon, you see. We had to be sure to be back by the time the abbey bells rang the Angelus, else she would discover me gone. Once we barely got back in time, and she could not understand how my hair could be so tousled and full of seeds, and my dress so grubby.’ She laughed.
David felt a familiar pang of mingled pity, dislike and jealousy. Pity for Viviane, so lonely and constricted. Dislike for her governess, who sounded like a harpy. And jealousy towards Pierrick, who featured in so many of her tales.
Viviane danced forward, waving her hand to show him a small table set with white linen and old silver. ‘I did it all myself,’ she said. ‘To keep our supper secret, tu vois. Madame would be most displeased if she knew.’
She lit the candles with a long taper kindled at the fire, and then poured them each a glass of ruby-red wine. ‘Sit,’ she said. Then she ladled small bowls of brown soup, and shaved what looked like horse manure over the top. She picked up her spoon and tackled it with enthusiasm, but David hesitated.
‘Try it,’ she coaxed. ‘I promise, it is très bien.’
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Chestnut soup with truffles,’ she answered. ‘Eat!’
He did as she ordered, and was pleasantly surprised.
‘You English do not know how to eat,’ Viviane said. ‘Boiling your beef till it is grey, and then those horrible pudding things cooked in dripping.’
‘I’m Welsh, remember. You should try our bara brith before you scoff.’
She held her spoon suspended over her bowl. ‘Bara brith?’
‘Fruit soaked in hot tea and sugar, then baked with flour and spices and glazed with honey.’
‘You and your tea. Pierrick told me how disappointed you were to discover we do not drink it here.’
‘Only coffee and cider. Most uncivilised. Though I must admit this wine is very drinkable.’ He smiled and lifted his glass to her.
‘I raided the cellar,’ she admitted. ‘I’m glad you like it.’
‘What’s next?’ he asked as she removed the bowls and put down a plate before him.
She lifted the silver lid. ‘It’s lamb from the salt meadow, served with white beans.’
‘What does that mean, from the salt meadow?’
‘The lambs are raised on the salt marshes near the sea, where the grasses are bitter.’
The flavour was exquisite. David ate eagerly.
‘I wanted you to taste some of our Breton delicacies. Usually our meals are ordered by Madame, but she does not like our local food and so I must always eat as if I am at court. So much food, and all so rich and laden with cream. This is much better.’
‘So where is Madame tonight? She does not often leave the château, does she?’
‘Oh, no, never! She is far too lazy. She is all worried and upset about the news from Versailles, however, and so has gone to gather gossip.’
‘What news?’ David asked, sipping his wine.
‘Well, the king is bankrupt now, they say.’ Viviane topped up his glass. ‘And so he’s recalled Monsieur Necker, who was the former director-general of finance. The king had banished him from Paris with a lettre de cachet but has now changed his mind and wants him to return …’
‘What’s a lettre de cachet?’
Viviane regarded David with sombre black eyes. ‘They are letters signed by the king and counter-signed by one of his ministers, which have no right of appeal. If a lettre de cachet is issued against you, why, you can be sent to prison without a trial, or locked away in a convent or a mad house, or transported to the colonies, or condemned as a galley-slave, or exiled. And there’s nothing you can do about it.’
‘Quelle barbare!’ he exclaimed, using one of her favourite expressions.
‘Exactement. And the worst of it is the king will sometimes sign lettres de cachet sight unseen for his favourites, so they may imprison or banish who they please, with no legal consequences.’
David looked up. ‘That really is barbarous.’
‘Yes. It is one of the things most disliked about the king. Anyway, Monsieur Necker was banished with such a letter but now he has been reinstated. All Paris is celebrating, for they hope he will save the country from bankruptcy. Madame is most angry, however. Monsieur Necker is a commoner, you see, and a Protestant, and he believes in reform, all of which Madame hates.’
‘So Madame would hate me too.’
‘Oui, naturellement.’ Viviane smiled at him. She cleared away the dirty dishes, piling them neatly on a tray, then made coffee in an ornate silver pot over a hissing flame. She brought him a small cup, black and strong, and sat by the fire, picking up her sewing. She was embroidering red roses on pale pink silk.
‘What is that you are making?’ David asked, coming to sit nearby.
‘A new waistcoat for Pierrick. It is our birthdays in a few weeks. We turn twenty.’
Jealousy pricked him once more. David tried to repress it. He knew it was wrong of him. Viviane had known Pierrick all her life. She thought of him as a brother. And, Lord knew, David had no right over her affections. Yet he could not help wishing that he did. The few moments he spent with her each day were like bright notes in a minor key.
‘What do you wish for your birthday?’ he asked, after a long moment of silence.
‘If I could have anything?’
He nodded and Viviane considered, her head tilted to one side. ‘I’d like a flying carpet that could take me wherever I wanted in the twinkling of an eye, but still bring me home in time for supper.’
‘Where would you go?’
‘I would go to all the wild and hidden places,’ she decided. ‘Places where hardly anyone has been before. I’d go to Madagascar, and the Caribbean, and the South Sea Islands, and the Americas, and New Holland. Imagine the rare beasts I would see, the new flowers and fruits, the strange customs of the natives …’
‘You’d be following in the footsteps of the botanist-gardeners from the Jardin du Roi,’ David said.
She clasped both hands together in a characteristic gesture of eagerness. ‘Would I?’
‘I would like to see the Jardin du Roi one day. I have heard it is most beautiful.’
‘It may be your best chance of seeing the rarest and most exotic plants,’ David said, ‘since you do not have a flying carpet.’
‘One day perhaps I will go,’ Viviane said.
David hated the way melancholy shadowed her face. He said impulsively, ‘I will take you there! You would love it so much. It was originally a medicinal garden, and so many of the herbs and plants there have healing purposes. But there is a Cabinet of Curiosities, too, and all sorts of romantic follies. A labyrinth, and a dovecote, and secluded rose bowers.’
‘It sounds most romantical.’
David went red. He took a gulp of his coffee to hide his embarrassment, then made a face at its bitterness.
‘So where would you go, if you had the magical flying carpet?’ she asked.
‘To China, so I could get a decent cup of tea,’ he said ruefully.
‘China,’ she whispered. ‘Yes, it’s the great last unknown, isn’t it?’
‘You know they call it the Flowery Kingdom? Merchants come back with the most extraordinary plants. Gigantic peonies, azaleas, camellias, lilies, chrysanthemums, repeat-flowering roses, mulberry plants … no tea plants as yet. Smuggling out tea is apparently punishable by death.’
‘I have read that there is a massive wall there, four hundred leagues in length and twenty-five feet high, that scales mountain heights and valley depths,’ Viviane said. ‘I would like to see that.’
‘It must be extraordinary,’ David said.
‘One day, perhaps, it will be possible,’ she whispered, and set another stitch in her sewing.
On the evening of her birthday he waited in the garden for a long time, a bunch of wild flowers in his hands, but Viviane did not set a candle in the window of the tower, as a signal she was alone.
Miserably David went back inside. As he began to prepare for bed, he saw a faint glow from the courtyard through his tiny mullioned window. Curious, he glanced out and saw Viviane walking towards the chapel. She was dressed in black, and had her hair bound back severely. In her hands she carried a small lantern. It cast a golden radiance about her head like a halo. Luna limped at her hem.
David caught up his coat, and shrugged it back on. He slipped through the silent corridors and across the courtyard, looking in the chapel’s door.
Viviane was praying by the marble sepulchre of a woman with her hands folded upon a book. Her lantern flickered in the cold draught, filling the vaulted roof of the chapel with light, if not with warmth. David watched till he was numb and stiff with cold. At last he saw Viviane rise, and bend to kiss the cold marble lips, then put a little posy of rosemary on the cold white breast.
It was her mother’s grave, David realised. Only then did he remember that Viviane’s birthday was also the anniversary of her mother’s death.
He went inside the chapel. She looked up in surprise.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I did not realise … it is a sad day for you as well as a glad day.’
‘Thank you,’ she answered simply. ‘Everyone else tells me not to be ridiculous, that it is stupid to be sad for someone I never knew.’
‘It is possible to miss something you’ve never had,’ he said.
She nodded.
‘I was only six years old when my parents died, and yet I miss them every day.’
‘How did they die?’
‘In a carriage accident. We had no warning, no chance to say goodbye.’
‘That is very sad.’
‘At least I knew them. I have some memories of them.’
‘I have only this.’ Viviane drew a round miniature painting out of her pocket, small enough to be hidden within a hand. Set within a gilded frame, edged with red velvet, was a portrait of a young woman dressed in blue. Her powdered hair was piled high on her head, under a hat dressed with pink and blue plumes. A tree behind her, a glimpse of blue sky, and just one pink rose, growing beside her.
‘Your mother? She’s beautiful.’ David handed back the tiny portrait.
Viviane turned it over and unfastened the back. Hidden within were two black locks of hair, entwined together. ‘My mother’s hair and mine, cut from our heads the day I was born and the day she died.’ She touched them with a reverent finger.
David drew the gold signet ring from his left hand. ‘This is all I have left of my parents. My mother had it made for my father. They were forbidden to marry, you see. She was a squire’s daughter, and he was a poor parson. She had it engraved with a fleur-de-lis, can you see? For his French blood and the village he grew up in. And then she had it engraved on the inside with a secret message that only he could see.’
Viviane took the ring and held it to the light. ‘This, and my heart, until I die,’ she read. ‘Oh, that makes me want to cry. So how did they marry? Did they run away together?’
‘Eventually her father relented and gave his permission,’ David said. ‘They were poor but very happy, or so my grandmother says.’
She gave him back the ring. ‘It sounds like an old fairy-tale.’
‘A fairy-tale that came true,’ he said stoutly.
A sudden brief smile illuminated her face. She shook her head and moved past him into the darkness, the white dog pressing close by her side.
‘It is good that you live in a world where fairy-tales can come true,’ she whispered, so low he barely heard her. ‘I, unfortunately, do not.’
6
The Day of the Dead
2–9 November 1788
The Day of the Dead dawned bright and cold.
David rode out into the shadowy forest, flame-coloured leaves flying up from beneath the gelding’s hooves.
At home, in Fleur-de-Lis, his grandfather would be preparing a sermon designed to bring comfort to those who grieved their dead. His grandmother would be cooking soul cakes and his sisters would be tying up little treats of gingerbread and treacle toffee, to give the children who would come mumming that night. If David was home, he would have been building a huge bonfire in the garden, ready for the evening festivities. In Welsh, the day was known as Calan Gaeaf, the end of summer, the beginning of winter, the shadowy time when spirits walked the earth.
Here they called it La Touissant, or All Souls Day.
David had been at Belisima-sur-le-lac for three months now, and it had all been filled with the kind of purposeful work he had longed for. Yet it had been a lonely time too. The men who worked under his command were distrustful, not liking Englishmen. Monsieur Corentin was polite but distant, while David felt an electric current of rivalry between him and Pierrick. He did not believe that Pierrick thought of Viviane only as a milk-sister. How could he, living so close to her, seeing that glowing vivid beauty every day?
Whenever David thought to himself that Viviane could never love a mere footman, he had to remember that he himself was just a poor jobbing gardener, far too lowly for a marquis’s daughter. It did not matter that David believed fervently that all men were born equal in the eyes of God, and that he had as much right to forge his own way as anyone born of noble blood. It only mattered that, in the eyes of the world, she was born of blue blood and he was not.
David gave a sigh that was almost a groan.
He set his horse to galloping, not heeding the lash of twigs across his face. In recent weeks, David had been longing for a steep climb up a cold windy mountain, or a plunge into the icy waters of a black Welsh lake. He was not sleeping well, even after long days of hard labour. He was homesick, he told himself. Hiraeth was the word for it in Welsh. A yearning or a longing for that which was gone or which could never be. David bent lower over the gelding’s withers, urging him on.
When at last he drew his horse up, both panting and sweating, he found himself in part of the forest he had never explored before. A
narrow path ran down between mossy boulders to the lake. And there, framed between the bronze-red leaves of an ancient beech tree, was the finest view of the château he had yet seen. Both bridges were revealed, their arches reflected in the water, and the turret with its battlements, and the tall pointed spires. The white foam of the mill-race through the smaller bridge added a dash of movement and drama to the scene.
At once David imagined building a summerhouse here. A place to have picnics in the warmer months, a retreat for silent contemplation in winter. He pulled out his notebook and began to draw sketches. I must bring Viviane here, he told himself.
He rode back to the château more slowly, feeling the wind chill on his skin as the sweat dried. Then he sent a formal note up to the drawing-room, requesting Mademoiselle de Ravoisier to ride out with him that day.
An hour later, Viviane came skipping out to the courtyard, dressed in a trim green riding habit with a tall black hat decorated with a curled ostrich plume. The dress showed her slim boyish figure to advantage, and David found himself once again bereft of words.
They rode together along the winding path through the forest, Luna loping at the horses’ heels. The path gave lovely views of the château reflected in the glimmering lake behind them.
‘Do you gallop, monsieur?’ Viviane asked, when they were some distance away from the château.
‘Frequently,’ David answered, a little surprised.
‘Race me then!’ And she leant forward, and gave the mare a little tap with her whip. The mare surged forward into a smooth, ground-eating gallop. Viviane cast back a mischievous look and David spurred his own horse on. Through the autumn forest they sped, fallen leaves swirling up from the horses’ hooves. Luna raced behind.
David almost caught up to Viviane, but she leant low over the pommel of her side-saddle, urging her mare on. She reached the clearing first and pulled her mare up with a victorious whoop. ‘I won, I won!’ she called and waved her whip triumphantly.
‘Ladies are not meant to gallop,’ she confided, as David drew up beside her. ‘But I always want to.’