The Splendour Falls

by Susanna Kearsley

  “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, inquiring. 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 good-bye.”

  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 center of the square. I stopped and paused, and took a step toward 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 fa
ce. And as I crossed to the hotel I felt those silent eyes upon me, watching steadily, as a hunter sights its prey.

  Chapter 7

  Nor knew what eye was on me…

  Monsieur Chamond rose from behind the reception desk to greet me with a smile smooth as silk. In middle age he was a handsome man, neat and compact with an efficiency of movement that I much admired. In his youth, he would have rivaled his nephew Thierry as a breaker of women’s hearts. Most certainly he would have broken mine.

  We exchanged our formal greetings, and because I answered him in French he kept on in that language, a little cautiously, poised to switch to English at my first sign of difficulty. “I’m sorry that I was not here to meet you yesterday, myself. You are enjoying your stay in our hotel, I hope?”

  “Very much.”

  “And your room, it is satisfactory?”

  “It’s lovely, Monsieur,” I said, and was rewarded with a warm smile of pleasure.

  “I’m glad. Room 215, is it not?” He handed me the key. “And you have another message, Mademoiselle. Just this morning.”

  I took the narrow envelope he handed me and turned it over, frowning slightly. It was addressed, quite simply, “Braden,” in a bold black hand I didn’t recognize. “Another message…?”

  Monsieur Chamond proved most perceptive. At the tone of my voice his eyes moved with sudden apprehension to one corner of the desk, below the counter, and whatever he saw there made him shake his head. “I am so very sorry, Mademoiselle, I had assumed…” With the shrug of one resigned to suffering, he retrieved a small square notepad with a message scrawled upon it. “Our regular receptionist Yvette, she is on holiday for two weeks, and so her sister Gabrielle is filling in. She tries, poor Gabrielle, but she is not Yvette. She is… easily confused, and sometimes when I tell her things, she forgets.” His smile held an apology. “Your cousin telephoned last night, while you were out at dinner.”

  Wait for it, I thought drily. “Oh, yes?”

  “He speaks good French, your cousin—like yourself. He said he would be late, perhaps a few days. If you did not mind…”

  “I see.” My host, I knew, had made that last bit up. Harry would hardly have cared whether I minded. “And did he say where he was ringing from?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.” He looked at me more closely, perhaps surprised that I’d received the news so well. “This will not spoil your plans, I hope? Your holiday?”

  “Good heavens, no.” I’d rather expected it. In fact, when Harry hadn’t met me yesterday, as promised, I’d braced myself for the inevitable. My cousin rarely kept to schedules. Hours turned into days with him, and days to weeks, and by the time he did show up in Chinon I might well be safely back in England, sorting through my holiday snaps. I smiled at Monsieur Chamond. “I’m sure I’ll manage, on my own.”

  “But I am sorry that you were not told last night. We might have saved you worrying.”

  Worry? About Harry? Hardly likely, I thought. “No harm done,” I said, looking down at the envelope he’d given me. “And is this from my cousin, too?”

  “No, Mademoiselle—that came this morning, as I said. By hand.”

  “How curious. I wonder who…?” I tore the flap, and drew a printed card from the envelope. It was an invitation, of all things. I was invited to a guided tour and wine-tasting, the card informed me, at a time of my own choosing, although a written note along the bottom edge asked would I please be kind enough to telephone for an appointment. How very curious.

  Monsieur Chamond was watching me. “It is from the Clos des Cloches, I think?”

  “Yes.” I showed it to him. “That’s the vineyard on the hill, isn’t it? The one behind the château? I saw it just this morning.”

  “Yes. The white house.”

  “Odd. I wonder where they got my name.”

  “Ah, no,” he said, “that is my writing, Mademoiselle, on the envelope. The boy who brought it told me it was for the English lady staying here. And you,” he explained, with a small shrug, “you are the only English lady that we have.”

  “But surely…” I let the protest hang, unfinished. I could hardly accuse my host of making a mistake—that would be rude. And anyway, it hardly mattered. It was just an invitation; probably some sort of marketing ploy delivered round the hotels. Come and taste our wines, and bring your wallet with you—that sort of thing. Strange, though, that they should still be holding tours at harvest-time. I dropped the square card into my handbag and forgot about it.

  Well, nearly forgot about it. One couldn’t quite forget about the Clos des Cloches in Chinon, I discovered. The name leaped out at me again half an hour later, from the menu of the restaurant where I’d chosen to eat lunch. “May we suggest,” the menu read, “a red wine from the Clos des Cloches?” Why not, indeed? A half bottle of the youngest vintage could be squeezed within my budget, I decided. The waiter took my order down approvingly, then vanished, leaving me to watch the ebb and flow of passersby along the narrow cobbled street outside the window.

  The restaurant was tiny, just six tables and a narrow bar, but Monsieur Chamond had recommended it so strongly I had gamely searched the streets until I’d tracked it down. The French, I reasoned, knew their restaurants. And lunches were a serious affair. Most businesses closed down in France from noon till two, so everyone but cooks and waiters could observe the ritual. I had forgotten how enjoyable it was to sit and eat at leisure, not to hurry, with the warm smells swirling lazily around me and the hum of conversation drifting past from nearby tables. I’d forgotten how wonderful the food in France could be—how even a salad could be stunning, filled with unexpected textures and a subtle trace of spice. And I’d completely forgotten about the wine.

  At home I rarely drank wine with my meals, but here in France it seemed so natural, and the half bottle seemed so harmlessly small, that I’d already drunk three glasses by the time I thought to count. And by then I couldn’t do much, anyway—I was feeling quite pleasantly foggy.

  So foggy, in fact, that when I’d finally paid the bill and stepped outside, I found I couldn’t quite remember just which way I ought to go. Looking round, I tried to get my bearings. There was the château, off to my right, which meant I should head that way, surely… except it seemed to me I’d come along a wider road than that one… and I had changed direction twice… or was it three times? Blast, I thought, you’re lost.

  The tourist map I’d tucked into my handbag proved no help at all. It only showed the central part of town, and the unnamed streets and alleys formed a mysterious web on the glossy paper. It was no use, I decided—I’d have to ask someone.

  It was no small thing, here in France, to ask someone directions. The rules of etiquette were very clear—the person you asked was obligated to help, even if they didn’t have a clue, themselves, exactly where to send you. Wrong directions, to the French, were better than no directions at all. When all else failed, they’d pull another stranger into the discussion to assist. I’d caused a pile-up on a Paris pavement, once, by asking someone where to find the nearest bookshop.

  So it was with a certain caution that I scanned the passing faces now, waiting for the proper sort of person. The morning’s sun had disappeared behind a swell of slate-gray cloud, and people walked by briskly with their collars pulled tight against the damp. I chose a woman slightly older than myself, smartly dressed and carrying a briefcase. She glanced with mild horror at my map, and I remembered how the French disliked maps—they preferred to ask a person. Calmly, I refolded it and stuffed it in my handbag, listening in patience while she told me how to get back to the Hotel de France.

  It sounded rather more complicated than I remembered, but I thanked her, careful not to slur my words, and toddled off in the appropriate direction. The problem with medieval towns, I thought some twenty minutes later, was that the streets all ran whichever way they wanted. Which meant, I thought as th
e asphalt gave way once more to cobblestone, that following directions proved nearly impossible.

  The pavement shrank until there was barely room for one person to walk, and I crowded close against the leaning buildings. These houses had not been scrubbed clean like the houses on the rue Voltaire, and the passing centuries had weathered their walls to a sort of uniform dun color. Here and there, where the houses didn’t quite meet one another, a darkened crevice lay concealed by broken boards, or a snatch of garden glimmered through the narrow opening.

  An old woman with suspicious eyes, her thick, shapeless body lurching from side to side, passed by me in indifferent silence, and I felt bolder stares from a cluster of young men who moved more swiftly and with purpose.

  Around the corner, the street was quieter. The human noise of shouts and speech and motors grew steadily more faint behind me, until my own footsteps sounded intrusively loud. On every house the shutters were pulled back and fastened; lace curtains fluttered at the open windows. Painted doors sagged on their ancient hinges, over steps that had been swept spotlessly clean. The evidence of human life was everywhere, but I saw no one. The twisting street was empty, lonely, silent.

  I might have been the only soul alive.

  And so the cat, racing past me in a sudden blur of black and white, nearly scared me to death. I jumped aside as a great lolloping mongrel of a dog came tearing up the street in hot pursuit, but the cat was even quicker. In the blink of an eye it hurled itself over a high stone wall, leaving the dog standing in frustration on the other side. After barking its displeasure, the dog slunk sourly off in search of a more co-operative quarry.

  The wall over which the cat had vanished formed part of a narrow alleyway whose name, Ruelle des Rèves, was plainly marked for all to see. The Lane of Dreams. It seemed too grandiose a name for such a tiny thoroughfare.

  Curious, I crossed the street. Standing in the lane, one could easily see how the cat had managed its escape. The wall was thickly hung with ivy—not the dark English ivy to which I was accustomed, but the other kind so common here in Chinon, a tangled mass of paler green that brightened at its outer edge to crimson, where the smaller leaves spilled down in curling tendrils.