And so the circle was completed. Odile de Caray completed it at this moment when she, the priest, and the young man, smiling a little, walked out of the room, and out of his life.
He heard the key turn in the lock.
Now there was absolute silence over the whole castle. Lindsay thought that it was as if he had been struck deaf; he made himself walk across the room to hear the sound of his own footsteps. The movement took him to the window, so that, almost in spite of himself, he saw them ride out. There was a clatter of hooves, a jingle of stirrups, and then, beyond the gate house and the drawbridge, the cavalcade moved into view; he could see Philippe in front, and behind him the Twelve. Christian was immediately recognizable, not only for the unconscious grace with which he sat his horse, but for the fact that whereas all the others carried guns, he alone carried the sturdy longbow which had been in his hand when Lindsay had first seen him.
The horsemen moved away along the side of the lake; timeless they looked from this distance, as they trotted towards the dark forest under the leaden sky.
And then, once more, he became aware of the people of Bellac: first of all, in the courtyard below him, castle servants presumably—a group of five, staring after the riders; and there, at the edge of the formal garden, two figures straightened up from their work, heads turned towards the lake. A groom appeared in the archway leading to the stables; he spoke over his shoulder to someone behind him, and a moment later another groom joined him, wiping his hands on a piece of rag; a small boy ran out after them, looking up at them, questioning; the men glanced at each other, and then laughed at the child, shaking their heads. And perhaps it was that look and that laugh which told Lindsay, more than words could ever tell about the conspiracy of silence which ruled the valley—a conspiracy from which both he and the child were excluded; for them, for those who did not know or did not believe, what was about to happen would be ‘an accident while out hunting’; for the others . . .
He saw movement in the village now: more people of Bellac were coming out of their houses, out of their barns, looking up from the neat rows of their diseased vines or from the sickly yellow patches of their corn, to watch the thirteen horsemen—the twelve and the one—who rode towards the forest.
Much later—he could not have told how long he sat there in the utterly silent room—Lindsay heard the sound of the door being unlocked. For a moment his dazed mind did not quite grasp what it meant. Then he was on his feet and running.
It was as he reached the landing at the top of the staircase that the dog began to howl. The sound, shattering that silence, brought him to a standstill, the hair crawling on the nape of his neck. The Great Dane was standing in the shadows of the hall below, head raised in lament. Lindsay knew then that somewhere in the forest the arrow had been loosed.
He turned and flung himself at the door across the landing. He had half-expected it to be locked, but it was not. The first thing he noticed was that Françoise had closed the shutters and drawn the curtains; she stood in the middle of the lamp-lit room, staring at him.
He ran to her and took her in his arms, holding her closely; he was saying, ‘I couldn’t stop him. Forgive me—there was nothing I could do . . .’
Almost savagely Françoise said, ‘Don’t tell me, James; I don’t want to hear. Please, please don’t tell me.’ But her arms around him tightened their grip.
So they stood there, in the room with the closed shutters—a flimsy wooden barrier against a savage day which they could neither of them understand.
Below, in the hall, the howling dog was suddenly quiet.
13
The Waiting Valley
Prince Cottanero had said to Lindsay, ‘You can no more prevent what is happening than you can prevent tomorrow being the second of August. As for the future, you may say whatever you like—nobody will believe you.’
During the days that followed the death of Philippe de Montfaucon Lindsay had ample opportunity to realize that the prince had been quite right. There were times when he even doubted his own sanity.
The official inquiry into the death was conducted with respect and tact. To Lindsay it was like a bad dream—one of those nightmares in which everything one knows to be true is subtly changed to a falsehood. The gentleman in charge of the proceedings was small, elegant, white-haired. He had clearly been warned in advance that the English witness, James Lindsay, was slightly eccentric and might, given the chance, rob the inquiry of all its dignity. He never gave the English witness, James Lindsay, any such chance.
It might be thought, he said, that someone had been distinctly lax to allow a young man like Christian, of a noticeably happy-go-lucky disposition, to go out shooting with, of all things, a bow and arrow which it was clear he was unable to control with any degree of proficiency. The terrible contrition which the young man was now suffering, and the fact that he was clearly unsure exactly how the fatal arrow had come to be loosed were two points beyond question. It seemed, he said, that the whole tragedy might more properly be called the fault of the adults who were present, rather than of the unfortunate young man himself. (A good deal of publicity was given to the fact that his father was a saintly, near-legendary figure who was giving his life to the lepers in Africa.) On the whole people felt rather sorry for Christian. Nobody felt in the least sorry for Lindsay.
This odd character, it was pointed out, was not only an Englishman but also an artist. (Everybody thought this a highly amusing conjunction.) He appeared to have spent much of his time at the chateau reading the history of the Montfaucon family. Now it was undeniable that many of the deceased’s ancestors had died in odd circumstances: three of them, by a strange quirk of coincidence, on August the first, the same day as the late marquis. This may have given rise to the well-attested fact that the Englishman, Lindsay, actually spoke of the accident before it happened. Since the last Montfaucon death, prior to the one under inquiry, to fall on this date had been in the year 1624, it was generally thought that the Englishman’s prognostication had been a very long shot indeed.
If Lindsay seemed to behave in a rather excitable way under inquiry, most charitable people put it down to the ‘artistic temperament’ and to the fact that two days before the accident he had fallen off his horse and severely injured his head. It was noticed that the widowed marquise watched him with a good deal of trepidation and was seen, on more than one occasion, urging him to calm down.
The inquiry was inclined to pooh-pooh most of the statements made by the ordinary people of Bellac. There were, it admitted, certain rather odd details which were not easily explained. For instance, it seemed quite unnecessary to carry the body of the deceased halfway round the estate before taking it back to the castle, but Bellac was something of a backwater, and it had to be remembered that peasants had their own ancient traditions in these matters. (Lindsay at this juncture thought that he had indeed gone quite mad. But then all such obvious pointers to the death having been a ritual killing were completely ignored.)
The evidence of the old woman, Jeanne Defranc, who had stated that the blood of the deceased dripped over every inch of the way, was discounted entirely. Medical men had stated that this was an impossibility. (Lindsay groaned aloud, and was stared at pityingly.)
The inquiry concluded its findings by saying that no one should be led astray by the marked difference in attitude shown by the people of Bellac towards the death. It might seem that some of them held the late marquis in a degree of esteem which almost bordered on adulation; but then it had to be remembered that he had been an excellent landlord.
At the end of all this, the small, white-haired gentleman in charge of proceedings fixed Lindsay with a beady brown eye, and added a rider. It was possibly just as well, he said—in view of his foreknowledge of his friend’s death—that the Englishman, James Lindsay, had, at the time of the death, locked himself by accident into a remote and little-used part of the chateau. Particularly in view of the fact that James Lindsay had, most unexpectedly, bee
n named as principal legatee in the will.
And now . . . Now Françoise and James live in a very beautiful old farmhouse not far from Lorient on the coast of Brittany. As most people will know, he is now an internationally recognized painter; there is not a gallery interested in contemporary work which does not possess at least one of his paintings. He and Françoise are very happy, and the four children are delightful.
Tante Estelle often visits them. (Her brother, Philippe’s father, died two years ago.) She divides her time between the farmhouse in Brittany and her own small apartment in Paris.
James is still not sure in his own mind whether or not he should have taken the whole matter further; whether or not he should have exposed the inquiry for the short-sighted farce which it assuredly was. Françoise and Tante Estelle are both quite sure; it was they who persuaded him to keep quiet—for the memory of a man whom they had all loved, and for the sake of Gilles and Antoinette.
Gilles is now sixteen. He knows that he is the possessor of an ancient title and the vast estates that go with it. He remembers Bellac well, but shows no inclination to go back there. He has a brilliant head for figures, and there is a plan afoot for him to enter the Swiss banking house to which, via his maternal grandmother, he is related.
Françoise and James, though surprised by this ambition, are not altogether displeased. They can think of nothing further removed from the baleful influence of Bellac than the money factories of Basel. And yet . . . And yet . . .
The chateau stands empty, lapped in its own immutable silence. The brown people of the valleys go about their business, thinking their secret thoughts. There have been many years of abundance now, and hardly a week goes by without a fresh posy of flowers, a bunch of grapes, a twist of corn being placed upon the gravestone of Philippe de Montfaucon.
Sometimes you may see one of the men pause in his weeding, one of the women glance up from her scrubbing, to look at the empty road which leads down into the valley from that other world outside.
It will not, they know, always be empty. Soon or late, next year or in ten years’ time, another will come. Until that day they will wait in patience.
The Twelve dance on high, Amen.
The whole on high hath part in our dancing. Amen.
Whoso danceth not, knoweth not what cometh to pass. Amen.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Philip Loraine was the pseudonym of Robin Estridge, a prolific novelist and screenwriter. Born in 1920, Estridge wrote many novels of crime and suspense under the Loraine name and also wrote literary fiction under his own name. He is perhaps best remembered today for Day of the Arrow (1964), published under the Loraine pseudonym and adapted by Estridge for the screenplay of the film Eye of the Devil (1966), starring David Niven, Deborah Kerr, and Sharon Tate. Robin Estridge died in 2002.
Day of the Arrow Page 18