by Kate Mosse
Léonie resolved that if he came on the Veille de Toussaint, he would find them gone.
On the crisp and cold afternoon of 31st October, Léonie put on her hat and coat, intending to return to the clearing where the juniper grew wild. She did not wish to leave the Tarot cards for Constant to find, however unlikely it was that he should stumble upon them in such an expanse of woodland. For the time being, until she and Louis-Anatole could safely return - and in Monsieur Baillard’s continuing absence - she had in mind that she would give them into the safe keeping of Madame Bousquet.
She was on the point of exiting through the doors on to the terrace when she heard Marieta calling her name. With a start, she turned back to the hall.
‘I am here. What is it?’
‘A letter, Madama,’ Marieta said, holding out an envelope.
Léonie frowned. After the events of the past months, anything out of the ordinary she treated with caution. She glanced down and did not recognise the hand.
‘From whom?’
‘The boy said from Coustaussa.’
Frowning, Léonie opened it. The letter was from the elderly priest of the parish, Antoine Gélis, inviting her to call upon him this afternoon on a matter of some urgency. Since he was known to be something of a recluse - and Léonie had met him only twice in six years, in the company of Henri Boudet in Rennes-les-Bains on the occasion of Louis-Anatole’s baptism, and at Isolde’s burial - she was puzzled to receive such a summons.
‘Is there any reply, Madama?’ Marieta enquired.
Léonie looked up. ‘Is the messenger still here?’
‘He is.’
‘Bring him in, will you.’
A small, thin child, dressed in nut-brown trousers, open-necked shirt and red neckerchief, holding his cap in clenched hands, was ushered into the hall. He looked dumbstruck with terror.
‘There is no need to be frightened,’ Léonie said, hoping to put him at his ease. ‘You have done nothing wrong. I only wish to ask if Curé Gélis himself gave you this letter?’
He shook his head.
Léonie smiled. ‘Well then, can you tell me who did give you the letter?’
Marieta pushed the boy forward. ‘The mistress asked you a question.’
Little by little, hindered rather than helped by Marieta’s sharp-tongued interventions, Léonie managed to tease out the bare bones of the matter. Alfred was staying with his grandmère in the village of Coustaussa. He had been playing in the ruins of the château-fort when a man came out of the front door of the presbytery and offered him a sou to deliver an urgent letter to the Domaine de la Cade.
‘Curé Gélis has a niece who does for him, Madama Léonie,’ Marieta said. ‘Prepares his meals. Sees to his laundry. ’
‘Was the man a servant?’
Alfred shrugged.
Satisfied that she would learn nothing more from the boy, Léonie dismissed him.
‘Will you go, Madama?’ asked Marieta.
Léonie considered. There was a great deal she had to accomplish before their departure. Conversely, she could not believe that Curé Gélis would have sent such a communication without good reason. It was a unique situation.
‘I shall,’ she said, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Ask Pascal to meet me at the front of the house with the gig immediately. ’
They left the Domaine de la Cade at nigh on half past three.
The air was heavy with the scent of autumn fires. Sprigs of boxwood and rosemary were tied on the door frames of the houses and farms they passed on the way. At the crossroads, impromptu roadside shrines had sprung up for Hallowe’en. Ancient prayers and invocations scribbled on scraps of paper and cloth were laid as offerings.
Léonie knew that already in the graveyards of Rennes-les-Bains and Rennes-le-Château, indeed in every mountain parish, widows draped in black crêpe and veils, would be kneeling on the damp earth before ancient tombs, praying for deliverance of those they had loved. More so this year, with the blight that had fallen over the region.
Pascal drove the horses hard, until sweat steamed up from their backs and their nostrils flared wide in the chill air. Even so, it was almost dark by the time they had covered the distance from Rennes-les-Bains to Coustaussa and negotiated the very steep track leading up from the main road to the village.
Léonie heard the four o’clock bells ringing down the valley. Leaving Pascal with the carriage and horses, she walked through the deserted village. Coustaussa was tiny, no more than a handful of houses. No boulangerie, no café.
Léonie found the presbytery, which adjoined the church, with little difficulty. There appeared to be no signs of life inside. No lights were burning in the house that she could see.
With a growing sense of unease, she knocked on the heavy door. No one came. No one answered. She rapped again, a little louder.
‘Curé Gélis?’
After a few moments, Léonie determined to try the church instead. She followed the darkening line of the stone building around to the back. All the doors, to front and side, were locked. A guttering, dim oil lamp hung miserably from a bent iron hook.
Increasingly impatient, Léonie made for the dwelling on the opposite side of the street and knocked. After a shuffling of feet from within, an elderly woman slid back the metal grille set within a hatch in the door.
‘Who is it?’
‘Good evening,’ Léonie said. ‘I have a rendezvous with Curé Gélis, but there is no answer.’
The owner of the house looked at Léonie with sullen and distrustful eyes, saying nothing. Léonie dug into her pocket and produced a sou, which the woman grabbed.
‘Ritou is not there,’ she said in the end.
‘Ritou?’
‘The priest. Gone to Couiza.’
Léonie stared. ‘That cannot be. I received a letter from him not two hours past inviting me to call upon him.’
‘Saw him leave,’ the woman said, with evident pleasure. ‘You’re the second to come calling.’
Léonie threw out her hand and stopped the woman from closing the grille, leaving no more than a fraction of light dripping from inside out on to the street.
‘What manner of person?’ she demanded. ‘A man?’
Silence. Léonie produced a second coin.
‘French,’ the old woman said, spitting out the word like the insult it was intended to be.
‘When was this?’
‘Before dusk. Still light.’
Puzzled, Léonie withdrew her fingers. The grille slammed immediately shut.
She turned away, pulling her cloak tight about herself against the onset of the night. She could only assume that in the time it had taken the boy to make the journey on foot from Coustaussa to the Domaine de la Cade, Curé Gélis had given up waiting and been unable to delay his departure longer. Perhaps he had been obliged to attend to some other urgent errand?
Increasingly anxious to return home after her wasted journey, Léonie took paper and pencil from her pocket of her cloak and scribbled a note saying how sorry she was to have missed him. She pushed it through the narrow letter-box on the presbytery wall and then hurried back to where Pascal was waiting.
Pascal drove the horses even faster on the return journey, but every minute seemed to stretch and Léonie almost cried out with relief when the lights of the Domaine de la Cade came into view. He slowed on the drive, slippery with ice, and Léonie felt like jumping down and running ahead.
When at last they stopped, she leapt out of the gig and ran up the front steps, possessed by a nameless, faceless dread that something, anything might have happened in her absence. She pushed open the door and rushed inside.
Louis-Anatole came running towards her. ‘He’s here,’ he cried.
Léonie’s blood turned to ice in her veins.
Please God, no. Not Victor Constant.
The door slammed shut behind her.
CHAPTER 93
‘Bonjorn, Madomaisèla,’ came a voice from the shadows. At first Léoni
e thought her ears were deceiving her.
He stepped out of the gloom to greet her. ‘I have been absent for too long.’
She leapt forward, her hands outstretched. ‘Monsieur Baillard,’ she cried. ‘You are most welcome, most welcome!’
He smiled down at Louis-Anatole, hopping from foot to foot beside him.
‘This young man has looked after me very well,’ he said. ‘He has been amusing me by playing the piano.’
Without waiting for further invitation, Louis-Anatole ran back across the black and red tiles, threw himself upon the piano stool and began to play.
‘Listen to me, Tante Léonie,’ he called out. ‘I found this in the piano stool. I have been learning it on my own.’
A haunting melody in the key of A minor, lilting and gentle, his small hands struggling not to split the chords. Music, at last, heard. Played, and played so beautifully, by Anatole’s son.
Sepulchre 1891.
Léonie felt tears brim in her eyes. She felt Audric Baillard’s hand take hers, his skin so dry. They stood listening, until the last chord faded away.
Louis-Anatole dropped his hands into his lap, took a deep breath, as if listening to the reverberations in the almost silence, then turned to face them with a look of pride on his face.
‘There,’ he said. ‘I have practised. For you, Tante Léonie.’
‘You have a great talent, Sénher,’ said Monsieur Baillard, applauding.
Louis-Anatole beamed with pleasure. ‘If I cannot be a soldier when I am a man, then I shall travel to America and be a famous pianist.’
‘Noble occupations, both,’ laughed Baillard. Then the smile slipped from his face. ‘But now, my accomplished young friend, there are matters your tante and I must discuss. If you will excuse us?’
‘But I—’
‘It will not be for long, petit,’ said Léonie firmly. ‘We will be sure to call for you when we are finished.’
Louis-Anatole sighed, then shrugged and, with a grin, ran off towards the kitchens calling for Marieta.
As soon as he had gone, Monsieur Baillard and Léonie went quickly into the drawing room. Under his precise and careful questioning, Léonie explained everything that had happened since he had quit Rennes-les-Bains in January, the tragic, the surreal, the mystifying, including her suspicions that Victor Constant might have returned.
‘I did write of our troubles,’ she said, unable to keep the reproach from her voice, ‘but I had no way of knowing if you had received any of my communications.’
‘Some I did, others I suspect went astray,’ he said in a sombre tone. ‘The tragic news of Madama Isolde’s death I learned only when I returned this afternoon. I was sorry to hear it.’
Léonie looked at him, seeing how tired and frail he looked. ‘It was a release. She had been unhappy for some time,’ she said quietly. She clasped her hands together. ‘Tell me, where have you been? I have missed your company greatly.’
He pressed the tips of his long, slim fingers together, as if in prayer.
‘If it had not been a matter of great personal importance to me,’ he said softly, ‘I would not have left you. But I had received word that a person . . . a person for whom I have been waiting for many, many years had returned. But ...’ He paused, and in the silence, Léonie heard the raw pain behind the simple words. ‘But it was not she.’
Léonie was momentarily diverted. She had heard him talk only once before with such affection, but had received the impression that the girl of whom he spoke with such tenderness was some years dead.
‘I am not certain I understand you, Monsieur Baillard,’ she said carefully.
‘No,’ he said softly. Then a look of determination came over his features. ‘Had I known, I would not have left Rennes-les-Bains.’ He sighed. ‘But I took advantage of my journey to prepare some refuge for you and Louis-Anatole.’
Léonie’s green eyes flared wide in surprise.
‘But I only came to that decision a week ago,’ she objected. ‘Less. You have been gone for ten months. How could you have ...’
He gave a slow smile. ‘I feared, long ago, that it would be necessary.’
‘But how—’
He raised his hand. ‘Your suspicions are correct, Madama Léonie. Victor Constant is indeed in the vicinity of the Domaine de la Cade.’
Léonie fell still. ‘If you have evidence, we must inform the authorities. They have refused to take my concerns seriously thus far.’
‘I have no evidence, only assured suspicions. But, I have no doubt, Constant is here for a purpose. You must leave tonight. My house in the mountains is prepared and waiting for you. I will give directions to Pascal.’ He paused. ‘He and Marieta - his wife, now, I believe - will travel with you?’
Léonie nodded. ‘I have confided my intentions to them.’
‘You may remain in Los Seres for as long as you wish. Certainly until it is safe to return.’
‘Thank you, thank you.’
With tears in her eyes, Léonie looked around the room. ‘I shall be sorry to leave this house,’ she said softly. ‘For my mother and for Isolde, it was an unhappy place. But for me, despite the sorrows that have been contained here, it has been a home.’
She stopped. ‘There is one thing I must confess to you, Monsieur Baillard.’
His gaze sharpened.
‘Six years ago, I gave you my word that I would not return to the sepulchre,’ she said quietly. ‘And I kept my promise. But as for the cards, I must tell you that, after I took my leave of you that day in Rennes-les-Bains . . . before the duel and Anatole ...’
‘I remember,’ he said softly.
‘I took it upon myself to take the path home through the woods to see if I might find the cachette for myself. I wanted only to see if I might find the Tarot cards.’
She looked at Monsieur Baillard, expecting to see disappointment, even reproof, on his face. To her astonishment, he was smiling.
‘And you came upon the place.’
It was a statement, not a question.
‘I did. But I give you my word,’ Léonie said, rushing on, ‘that although I looked upon the cards, I returned them to their hiding place.’ She paused. ‘But I would not now leave them here, within the grounds. He might discover them, and then ...’
As she was speaking, Audric Baillard reached into the large white pocket of his suit. He took out a square of black silk, a familiar parcel of material, and opened it up. The image of La Force was visible on the top.
‘You have them!’ Léonie exclaimed, taking a step towards him. Then she stopped. ‘You knew I had been there?’
‘Obligingly, you left your gloves as a memento. Do you not remember?’
Léonie flushed to the roots of her copper hair.
He folded the black silk. ‘I went because, like you, I do not believe these cards should be in the possession of such a man as Victor Constant. And . . .’ He paused. ‘I believe we might have need of them.’
‘You warned me against using the power of the cards,’ she objected.
‘Unless or until there was no other choice,’ he said quietly. ‘I fear that hour is at hand.’
Léonie felt her heart start to race. ‘Let us leave now, right away.’ She was suddenly horribly aware of her heavy winter petticoats and her stockings scratching against her skin. The mother-of-pearl combs in her hair, a gift from Isolde, seemed to dig into her scalp like sharp teeth. ‘Let us go. Now.’
Without warning, she found herself remembering their happy first weeks at the Domaine de la Cade - she and Anatole and Isolde - before tragedy struck. How in that long-ago autumn of 1891 it was the darkness she had feared most, impenetrable and absolute, after the bright lights of Paris.
Il était une fois. Once upon a time.
She was another girl then, innocent, untouched by darkness or grief. Tears blurred her vision and she shut her eyes.
The sound of running feet across the hall set her memories to flight. She leapt up and turned in th
e direction of the noise, at the precise moment the drawing room door burst open and Pascal stumbled into the room.
‘Madama Léonie, Sénher Baillard,’ he shouted. ‘There are . . . men. They have already forced their way through the gates!’
Léonie ran to the window. On the distant horizon, she could see a line of flaming torches, gold and ochre against the black night sky.