The Champagne Queen (The Century Trilogy Book 2)

by Petra Durst-Benning

  But Leon took her firmly by the arm. “Don’t you dare think about work now. This is our first night in our new home!” He pulled her to him and kissed her passionately.

  Isabelle felt the old, familiar tingling deep in her body. Maybe the champagne business could wait until tomorrow after all.

  The next morning, the sun was already beaming from the sky at eight o’clock, enticing Isabelle to open a kitchen window. She was wearing one of her best dresses: deep-red velvet with a black border. She wanted to look as pretty as possible to take on her new home. In the sunlight, the color of the dress reminded Isabelle of the Dutch tulips that bloomed in the same deep red in the garden at her parents’ house.

  The twittering of birds came in from the bare vines outside, increasing the feeling of springtime, but the kitchen grew noticeably chilly in just a few minutes. Isabelle shivered and closed the window again. She pulled her wool shawl a little closer around her shoulders, then turned around and looked at the remains of her breakfast. To make things easier, she had eaten in the kitchen instead of carrying everything to the living room. The coffee had been a little bitter and the bread hard, and she had to chew it for ages to choke it down. The evening before, she had forgotten to put it in the large clay pot intended for just that—a mistake, as it turned out. But these were just trifles, weren’t they? In their night of lovemaking, her hunger had been satisfied in other ways.

  She was in the process of heating some water to wash the dishes when Leon appeared with two thick files under his arm.

  “You have to see this.” He pushed the plates and cutlery aside to make room for the files.

  Isabelle was about to protest, but when she saw the furrows on his forehead, she stopped herself.

  Leon tapped on a page he had opened to, and said, “It looks as if Jacques only had customers in America. Look here, a Carlisle Restaurant in Springfield, Missouri, the Hotel Bristol in Knoxville, a Grand Hotel in a place called Dayton—”

  “Those cities are certainly not on the East Coast, or we’d have heard the names before,” said Isabelle, as she tried to comprehend what it all meant.

  “The Park Hotel and the Sweet Joey in Springfield. Lots of overseas customers, but in places we’ve never heard of, and no sign of Boston or New York.” He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple jumped. “Now what? Does this mean I have to go to America, like Adrian Neumann?”

  For a moment, they stood in silence.

  Adrian Neumann was the husband of Isabelle’s friend Josephine, in Berlin. He imported bicycles from America, and he and Josephine sold them in Germany. Josephine had always had a good head for business, and Isabelle had silently envied her for that.

  Forget Jo! Your time has come, her inner voice whispered. Now you can prove yourself!

  “You uncle must have customers around here, too. Or . . . somewhere else in Europe. In Germany, for example. That would at least be close. Have you looked through everything?” she asked doubtfully. She knew how slapdash Leon could be, after all.

  “If you don’t believe me, go through it all yourself,” he said, and stomped out of the kitchen.

  Shaking her head, Isabelle sat down at the kitchen table and began to leaf through the files. Orders, bills, a little general correspondence, all neatly organized by year. When Leon returned to the kitchen, she said, “Everything points to your uncle traveling to America once a year to sell champagne. Here’s his invoice for the passage last year.”

  “It’s like I said,” Leon replied. He pulled on his jacket. “Let’s talk about this topic another time. I have to go.”

  “Go where?” asked Isabelle, irritated. “You can’t seriously go off cycling now!”

  Leon grinned. “Can’t I? I have to check the lay of the land when it comes to selling champagne around here, don’t I? Before we talk about sailing off to America, I want to see if I can pull in a few local customers.”

  Isabelle watched as Leon rode off. Her mind was swirling with thoughts. Did he really want to see the situation for himself? Or was he really just going for a training ride? And if that was the case, wouldn’t she be better off handling matters herself?

  A short time later, Isabelle marched off with a notepad and pencil. She had to get an overview of the estate and what it took to run the place before she could even begin to make any plans.

  The house was built on an embankment in such a way that beneath the ground floor there were several lower floors, cellars, and exits. The garden, too, was laid out over several levels connected by stone steps. For a long moment, Isabelle stood and gazed out over it all. The view of the gently curving hill was so beautiful that it almost brought her to tears. How magnificent the vineyards would look when the first new leaves sprouted! But when did that actually happen? She decided to read some of Jacques’s books that very evening to learn about the rhythm of the vines over the course of a year.

  She walked on and came first to a narrow vegetable garden, then to an extended fruit orchard, where two peacocks strutted as if they owned not only the field but the entire world. The sight of them brought a smile back to Isabelle’s face. But then one of the large birds began to stalk toward her, and she hurriedly moved away.

  Farther down, at the same level as the lowest cellar, there was a small field where some bushes were growing. Currants, perhaps? Or raspberries? Isabelle thought of the many jars of preserved fruit in the pantry. She hoped they would be able to employ a cook before harvest time.

  She crouched down and placed her hand on the cold earth. The vegetable garden and berry bushes were still hibernating, but the fertile earth would soon wake to new life. The grass would come up and the bushes would bloom. It already smelled so good! She breathed in the earthy air as deeply as she could, filling her lungs.

  All of this was theirs, now and into the future, and it was not a dream? The extensive garden, the animals, and the vineyards? She headed toward the chicken pen, walking over narrow planks laid on the ground beside the field. At least she could walk here without getting her shoes wet. In Grimmzeit, the mud had often been ankle deep! Isabelle counted twenty chickens and two roosters, all scratching for food. She opened the door of the coop and a sour smell escaped from inside, but she ignored it. Carefully, she felt around in the straw nests. An egg! And another! And there, a third. She gathered twelve eggs in all and placed them carefully in a bowl that she discovered beside the door. At least she knew what they would be eating for lunch.

  Motivated by her success, Isabelle moved on. The next shack she inspected was a stall that, she assumed, was meant for the sheep. But it was empty, and the floor was covered with trampled, filthy straw. Several planks were missing from the wall and others were dangling loosely. Overseer to repair, Isabelle noted on her list. But then she thought again, crossed out the first two words, and wrote hammer and nails instead. She could do this sort of thing herself! She would get Claude Bertrand to show her how to use such tools as soon as possible. If her friend Josephine could fix bicycles in Berlin, then Isabelle could certainly hammer a few nails into wood, couldn’t she? She didn’t want to bother Leon with it; he had to put all his energy into selling the champagne. If this place is ever going to amount to anything, and as long as we have no staff, I’ll have to do as much of the day-to-day work as I can, she thought as she moved on toward the next shack. That, it turned out, was the stable for the horses. The top half of the Dutch door was open, and two pretty horses, both brown, were looking out curiously. When Isabelle reached out toward one of them, it kicked the door hard with its forefoot. Isabelle jumped. The horse kicked the wooden door again.

  “What is it? Do you want to come out? Or are you hungry?” She looked around, but the grass around the stable was still too short for her to be able to tear out a handful. In the barn beside the stall, she discovered a few bales of hay. She plucked an armful of hay from one of them and took it back to the horses. They whinnied gratefully, but then Isabelle watched them bicker over the feed, their ears lying flat. Hadn’t the oversee
r fed them yet? It was already after nine.

  Claude Bertrand lived in a house at the end of the property, Leon had reminded her the evening before. Isabelle could see the house from where she stood. It was small and looked solid, though a little run-down—just like the rest of the estate. There wasn’t much she could really put her finger on, but when she looked closely, she spotted a small hole in the fence around the chicken run here, a loose plank there, and over there was a broken step . . . It seemed clear to her that, since Jacques’s death, no one had really maintained the place as they should have. But that would change.

  Isabelle was pulled out of her thoughts abruptly when a shadow appeared beside her.

  “Our stock feed is running low, I’m afraid, like so many other things.” Claude Bertrand opened the door to the stable and threw a few carrots into their food trough. “I drove the sheep out to the meadows last week, though it’s really much too early in the year. But if I move them every couple of days, they’ll get enough to survive. I need the hay for the horses. But I’m afraid we’re going to have to buy more, even if hay is expensive at this time of year.” He leaned down and stroked his dog’s head; like the day before, the faithful mutt was at his side.

  “A herd of sheep, horses, peacocks—why haven’t the animals been sold yet?” She watched sympathetically as the horses crunched hungrily at the carrots.

  Claude Bertrand shrugged. “I’d been advising Monsieur Jacques for years to do that! In the past, most of the producers in the region kept sheep; they’d sell the wool to balance out a bad grape year. These days, almost every vigneron has given up on sheep. All of them are concentrating on their main business. But Monsieur Jacques wanted to stick to the old tradition. And Monsieur Leon also told me yesterday that he wanted to hold on to the sheep, like his uncle.”

  Well, we haven’t had our last discussion on that topic, she thought. She kept the thought to herself and said instead, “Monsieur Bertrand, could you show me the wine cellar? I’d like to get a first impression of our stock.”

  He looked at her in bewilderment. “But, madame, that is not my area. I don’t even have a key to the wine cellar. Gustave Grosse would knock my head off if I set foot in his shrine!”

  Gustave Grosse. Isabelle pressed her lips together. Where was the cellar master? Shouldn’t he have been there the day before to greet them?

  “But you can at least tell me which vineyards belong to us, can’t you?” There was a lot more she would have liked to say, but she didn’t want to get into an argument with the overseer, who struck her as a very friendly man.

  “What you can see. The one ahead, that joins the orchard—see it? And the two blocks beside that?” The overseer pointed forward with one hand, and his dog instantly leaped in that direction as if its master had thrown a stick for it to fetch. “All three parcels belong to the Feininger cellars. A very good situation, though one of them is lying fallow right now. There are many other vineyards all around the village, too. Gustave Grosse can show you all of them. Why don’t you stroll around for a bit? It’s good to see the sun again after the long winter.”

  Isabelle walked off feeling like a schoolgirl who had asked her teacher too many tiresome questions and had been sent away as a result. She would put up with it for that day, she decided. But in the future, Claude Bertrand would have to get used to her questions.

  Chapter Seven

  As he did every Wednesday morning, Daniel Lambert set off to inspect the Trubert vineyards. After the long winter months, the plants in the Champagne region were slowly starting to return to life. For him—a cellar master with more than thirty vineyards to look after and the one to decide when and where the work had to start—it was an important time. Daniel had an unerring eye for the changes nature brought with it as the year turned. And what he couldn’t see, he could feel. In most areas, the winter dormancy of the vines was over. But, as usual, the northern slopes of the Trubert estate were a few weeks behind. The vines had not been cut back, so they were growing wild and unkempt beyond the trellises.

  Merde! Daniel felt a cold fury rising inside him. Why had he failed the previous fall, yet again, to convince Henriette Trubert of the importance of pruning her vines even more rigorously? Fewer grapes per vine meant higher quality—that was the argument he had tried to convince her with.

  But she was unmoved and had simply replied, “Trubert champagne is good. After all, we have the best cellar master for miles around, and that is always one of the best buying arguments for our customers.”

  “But, madame, please understand. With better grapes, I would be able to achieve an even better result!” he had pleaded with her.

  “If it makes you happy, then for God’s sake cut the vines. But I don’t want to hear a word about cutting them back to just one cordon! I insist on a good harvest,” she had said. And that had been the end of the discussion.

  Daniel had decided not to raise the subject with Alphonse. Henriette’s husband had a thousand things to think of—but his business, unfortunately, was not one of them. He left that entirely in the hands of madame.

  While he sat on one of the boundary stones, Daniel thought again about looking for a new position. He was always getting offers, but so far none of them had really attracted him.

  Although he had more than enough work waiting for him back in the wine cellar, Daniel sat for a while on the stone, eating a little bread and cheese and enjoying a moment in the sun, which was strong enough to give a little warmth. Early bees were already exploring, and their soft buzzing was the only sound in that landscape of vines.

  Would a new boss really mean more freedom? he wondered. Delivering pretty speeches—all the vignerons could do that! But in the end, how much of a free hand they gave their cellar master . . . well, that was a different matter. He’d assumed that his previous employer trusted him and his judgment. But when it came down to it, Jacques Feininger stuck his nose in everywhere, making Daniel’s disappointment all the more bitter. At the start, Daniel had smiled and swallowed his pride and tried to change things by making good points. In vain. By the second year, they had fought so fiercely with one another that he’d finally packed up and gone to the Truberts. From bad to worse, he thought.

  He swung his gaze to the right, and a bare slope of the Feininger vineyards caught his eye. The pang that he felt in his heart was short-lived, but it hurt. It had once been Lambert land. One of the best locations in Champagne. He sniffed contemptuously. Pearls before swine: Jacques Feininger was simply no good as a vigneron. He had not even come close to getting the best out of that fertile land.

  As if he needed any more proof to back up his conviction, Daniel looked farther out, to a more distant vineyard. At the edge of the property lay a pile of old uprooted vines that had been replaced by newer, younger plants. Practically babies, the new plants, and they had barely survived their first winter. Lunacy, no less! It was one of the best-situated blocks, far and wide. And the vines they’d pulled out were not even twenty-five years old and still had a good ten or twenty years ahead of them. Mature plants that produced mature grapes with a lot of color, not just immature, young fruit!

  “Everyone is always going on about the importance of the terroir for the wine. But the terroir is God-given, and a vintner has no power over that. But what a vintner can do, my dear son, is to know every vine like he knows his best friend.” Daniel suddenly heard his father words in his ear, as he so often did when he was working out in the vineyards by himself. “Vintners are good at overlooking the fact that every plant has its own characteristics and preferences and weaknesses, and all of it is tied up with where it’s growing in the vineyard and many other factors. Every single plant has to be pampered like a child, because all of them together give a wine its own peculiar identity.”

  What would his father say if he knew that many of today’s producers didn’t care at all about the “identity” of a champagne and were far more interested in making as much as they possibly could? Champagne was the drink o
f the rich, and all over the world, people paid a lot of money for the pleasure it brought. The Champenois rushed to meet the increasing demand, and quantity often mattered more than quality. Frederick Lambert would turn in his grave if he knew that his own son, Daniel, had become part of that game. Though his father was the last one who had any right to go casting aspersions.

  “Damn it,” he murmured, and tried in vain to replace his gloomy thoughts with something more pleasant. Perhaps he should forget about work for the day and spend the time drinking Ghislaine’s house wine instead. Nothing special about it, nothing to tantalize one’s palate, but simply a wine with which he could drink himself into oblivion. But then, in his sister’s tavern, he’d be sure to run into Alphonse Trubert, and he had no desire to do that. He would never understand what Ghislaine saw in the man.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sight of a person climbing to the top of the hill—at this time of year, that was not something he would have expected. It was an unfamiliar woman, one dressed so elegantly that she looked more prepared for a ballroom than for a vineyard. Her hair glowed amber red in the sun. What must it feel like to wrap a strand of red hair around your finger? he thought. The thought came unheralded. She paused every few steps, and while it seemed as if she was enjoying the view, at the same time her chest rose and fell like that of someone who has been running for her life. Daniel grinned mockingly. Typical city woman. Madame was out of breath, and on a slope as gentle as that one.