The Splendour Falls

by Susanna Kearsley

  Two men in separate centuries, both loving Isabelles, bound by a single destiny that sent its unrelenting echo down the years.

  A tiny chill swept fleeting through the room, and Simon fidgeted, unable to stand the suspense. “So what happened?” he asked Madame Chamond. “What happened to Hans and Isabelle?”

  “Ah, well, it was most difficult. A few days later came the liberation and everything was changed. Hans I think was killed, or captured, in the fighting, and Isabelle…”

  Simon reacted sharply. “She killed herself? In our room?”

  “No, not in your room,” said Monsieur Chamond, unable to mask his quick smile. “No, Isabelle drowned herself, did she not, in the river?” He looked to his wife for confirmation. “At least, that is what I have heard. No one has ever died in this hotel, not like that.”

  Neil turned in his chair. “And what became of the diamonds?”

  “No one knows,” said Christian quietly. It startled me a little, to hear the cadence of the German voice, so soon after surfacing from my imaginings. It was as if Hans himself had spoken to us.

  “Diamonds…” Garland Whitaker breathed the word like a prayer. “Wherever did the Germans get diamonds from?”

  “From… displaced persons.” Christian’s eyes touched Simon and Paul for the briefest of moments before he lowered his gaze and went on. “The Nazis hid many such things during the war. But you know this, you were talking of it at the restaurant on Friday, of the place you lived in Germany.”

  Garland nodded. “And no one’s ever tried to find these diamonds? Well for heaven’s sake, where was this tunnel that Hans and Isabelle used to meet in?”

  “I do not know,” Madame Chamond replied, her smile indulgent. “Chinon is not so large, Madame, but the tunnels, they are everywhere. And it is just a story, after all. It happened many years ago. The diamonds might just be invention, added later to the story. Who can say?”

  Jim Whitaker gave his Scotch a swirl. “So Isabelle left her ghost behind, did she?”

  Monsieur Chamond looked over at him from behind the bar. “If she did, she is a quiet ghost. She does not bother us.”

  “She’s murder on my electronic equipment,” Neil said drily, and Monsieur Chamond laughed.

  “Apart from that.”

  Simon sent our host a suspicious look. “And you’re sure she didn’t die in our room?”

  “Quite sure.”

  Paul smiled finally, in his quiet way. “I thought you said,” he reminded Simon, “that there were no such things as ghosts.”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “Then it really doesn’t matter where she died, does it?”

  Neil Grantham’s dark eyes moved thoughtfully from Paul to me. “I think our Miss Braden believes in ghosts, though. Don’t you?”

  It was quite unsettling, the feel of those eyes on my face, and I answered without looking up. “On occasion,” I admitted, “yes, I do. I’d think Isabelle would have every right to haunt this place, after what happened. I mean, war is so futile, isn’t it? So inexcusable, the things it does to people’s lives.”

  Garland widened her eyes. “Oh, but it’s necessary sometimes, Emily. The Germans—excuse me, Christian—but the Germans just had to be put in their place, don’t you agree?”

  Simon spoke up in my defense. “But I think I know what Emily is saying. My grandfather never talks about the war. It hurts too much for him to think about it. And that was over fifty years ago.” He looked across at Jim Whitaker, with a vaguely curious expression. “You said your father fought in Normandy. Does he ever talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “My father talks,” said Christian, unexpectedly. “He was a child in the war. He talks in his sleep. He has dreams.”

  We were all silent a moment, reflecting on the wreckage of a war that none of us had lived through. For me, the war meant only Granddad’s faded ration book and the neighbor’s horrid bomb shelter and musty gas masks gathering dust in the cupboard under the stairs. It all seemed so distant from me, really—an hour or so of film in black and white, and stories told by old men at the local, when the winds of November came cold off the Channel.

  So distant, and yet… for a moment, there in the bar of the Hotel de France, the echoes of the past came calling, calling, and trailed a haunting trace of laughter through the air.

  It was Christian who spoke up first, shifting his position at the bar, his soft eyes thoughtful. “But this war,” he said, “it is over now, and now we all sit here and talk, French and German and American…”

  “And Canadian,” said Simon.

  “…and Canadian. It is strange, is it not?”

  Paul smiled at him. “It’s reassuring. Nice to know we can all move forward, once the scars heal over.”

  Half swallowed by the shadow in the corner, Neil calmly pointed out that all old scars felt twinges now and then. “You can’t erase the memory altogether, unfortunately.”

  After another full minute of thoughtful silence Simon leaned forward, reaching for his beer glass. “It’s kind of sad, really, when you think about it,” he said, “but I guess for some people the war is never really over, is it?”

  It was Jim Whitaker who answered him, but he wasn’t looking at Simon. He wasn’t looking at any of us. Eyes fixed unseeing on the darkened windows, his voice came absently, almost as if it didn’t quite belong to him. “No,” he said, slowly. “I don’t believe it is.”

  ***

  I didn’t sleep well, tossed by dreams. I heard the tramp of soldiers’ feet across the fountain square, the sound of German voices in the rooms below, the lighter running rhythm of a woman’s feet along the corridor. I sighed and shifted restlessly upon the bed, the covers tangling round my legs. Isabelle may not have died in the Hotel de France, but she had left her shadow here. I felt it passing over me, as though she stood beside my bed, and then the curtains at my open window fluttered while the fountain’s song grew louder, lulling me to dark oblivion.

  I woke early, feeling vaguely melancholic and decidedly unsociable. And so I rose and dressed, and went alone to walk beside the river.

  Monday mornings in France had a peaceful silence all their own. Most shops stayed closed out of tradition, and people clung a little longer to their pillows. In all my hour’s walk, I only met two people in the shuttered winding streets. From the river’s edge, I turned along the road and sauntered up around the château walls to where the white house of the Clos des Cloches slumbered in its field of green; then round and up again, past the château’s entrance tower with its silent bell, to the narrow breach in the cliff wall, where the steps from the fountain square wound their breathless way upwards.

  Here I rested, tucking my hands into the pockets of my jeans and lifting my face to the warmth of the morning sun. Below me, in the patchwork jumble of turrets and church steeples, tightly walled gardens and blind shuttered windows, I heard a swallow singing. O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow… What was the rest of that poem? I couldn’t remember. Tennyson, again, at any rate—I’d read it at school. Something about a prince wanting the swallow to carry a message to his true love, to tell her he was coming.

  A bird, perhaps the same one, broke, rustling, from a fruit tree in the garden just beneath me, and went winging out across the town, its dancing flight and joyful song dissolving my clinging mist of melancholy. “So my prince is coming, is he?” I asked the swallow, just a speck now in the brilliant sky. Well, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

  But when, a moment later, I heard footsteps coming up the steps below me, that’s exactly what I did—I held my breath for no good reason and leaned forward to peer over the wall. My chest relaxed. I exhaled, and it sounded like a sigh.

  Not a prince, certainly. Only Garland Whitaker, laboring upwards, her fingernails flashing blood-red on the iron handrail. The auburn hair, I thought, looked artif
icial in the sunlight—too bright, too tightly curled. She puffed a little, and her face was flushed.

  More footsteps echoed to my right, punctuated by a trill of childish laughter. I straightened away from the wall and turned in time to see a tall man coming round the corner further up by the château, with a lively child swinging on his hand. The man’s dark head was bent low, to catch the chatter of the little girl. He hadn’t seen me yet.

  Thinking fast, I ducked my head and scurried off, away from the château, away from the steps, away from all of them. I was not, I thought firmly, going to hang about while Garland and Armand bumped into each other, with me in the middle. She was a hopeless gossip, he was a hopeless flirt, and I’d never hear the end of it.

  My getaway would have done credit to a bank robber, I moved that quickly, though no doubt a bank robber would have had a better sense of direction. It should have been easy to find my way down into town, but the first sloping crossroad I came to was blocked, completely blocked, by an idling lorry, and instead of waiting for the driver to move on, I decided to walk along the cliff a little further. Surely there’d be other roads, or even stairs…

  The narrow road curved upwards and became a lane. Still hopeful, I moved briskly between the silent houses and garden walls, past thick falls of fading ivy and red clay-tiled roofs, painted gates and painted shutters. The houses crowded closely on both sides, parting now and then to give a glimpse of the dizzying drop to the terraced gardens on the cliffside, and the quiet river snaking past the rooftops far below.

  I appeared to be the only person about, which was just as well, since there wasn’t room for two on the narrow strip of pavement. For a short while I enjoyed the solitude, the scent of roses drifting from the gardens, the spectacular view. But when I reached the first cluster of troglodyte caves, I began to feel uneasy.

  I blamed it, to begin with, on the caves themselves. They were not the neatly chiseled cliff dwellings pictured in my Loire Valley guide books, cozily supplied with curtains and carved fireplaces. These caves, cut from a thrusting rise of rock, were eerie and abandoned, black windows crumbling over hollow doors, broad chimneys giving way to the grasping growth of weeds and vines that spilled down from the burning cloudless sky. It was an easy thing, in this apocalyptic settlement, to fancy eyes that watched from every yawning door.

  All right, I admitted, so maybe it wasn’t too clever of me to be walking up here, on my own. When I crossed the next path cutting down from the cliff, I’d descend to the safety of town.

  The path that I was on grew more wild and lonely the further I walked. There were few houses now. On my right, a low rubblestone wall, spattered with lichen and moss, was the only barrier between me and a sheer vertical drop through cedar-scented scrub and tangled weeds. Even the roofs of Chinon, far below, seemed somehow less hospitable.

  The paved path turned to yellow soil beneath my feet, and a second crumbling cliff of troglodyte dwellings rose from the weed-tangled hill beside me. A warning prickle chased between my shoulder blades. Oh, bloody hell, I thought. I turned. The breeze caught a withered leaf and sent it tumbling end over end across the dirt path, until it was trapped by the long waving grass. Nothing else moved. “Hello?” I called, just to be sure. “Is anyone there?”

  Silence. Slowly I turned around again, pushing on more cautiously. The solitary house that rose blackly from the path ahead did nothing to reassure me. It was an ugly house, unwelcoming, its sagging door wrapped round with barbed wire coils. As I passed by, the wind swept past, rattling the tightly-shuttered windows like a viper’s warning to the unwary. Again the shiver struck me and again I turned my head to look behind. The path was empty.

  But this time, when I started to walk on, I heard a sound. The faintest shuffling footfall, and a breathing that was nothing like the wind. Behind me in the house some creature flung itself against the door with a savage growl, and I broke into a half run. I stumbled twice on the uneven ground, and my shoulder brushed a trailing vine and loosed a shower of small white petals that clung to my skin, but I didn’t slow my pace until I reached a less neglected place.

  There were troglodyte houses here, as well—a neat, low line of them, fronted by a level sweep of gravel. But these houses looked inhabited, not ragged and abandoned. At their farthest end one lovely tree spread green against the white stone walls, and beside the tree a carved and ancient archway sheltered a wooden door with heavy iron hinges.

  Here, in this oasis of ordered beauty, I stopped running. There was no logic to it, really, but my racing mind said: Sanctuary. Here, I knew beyond all reason, I was safe. With trembling legs I leaned against the wall and drew a ragged breath. I didn’t move, even when the sound of footsteps rose above the pounding of my heart. This was not the sound that had pursued me down the path. These steps were different, sharper, climbing from the bottom of the cliff, and there was nothing furtive in their measured tread. Stairs, I thought. There must be stairs nearby. My eyes searched out and found the spot. The steps grew louder, mingling with a voice I recognized, and I felt myself relaxing.

  I believe I looked quite normal when Martine and Christian finally appeared above the tangled grasses of the cliff edge.

  Martine recovered first from the surprise. “Hello!” Her widow’s veil had been emphatically cast aside this morning, in favor of a yellow windcheater so bright it almost hurt one’s eyes to look at it, worn over smartly-pressed black denim jeans and a yellow roll-neck jersey. Even in casual clothes, I decided, she outshone me fairly, but the only thing of which I was truly jealous was her smile. She had perfect teeth. I hadn’t ever met a person with really perfect teeth before.

  I returned the greeting, straightening away from my supporting wall. “Out for a walk, are you?”

  “Yes. Christian is bored with moving,” Martine told me, “and so he makes today the sketches for his painting.” Which would explain, I thought, the decidedly battered leather satchel he was lugging about with him this morning, its broad strap digging into his hunched shoulder. He looked half-asleep still. Martine, on the other hand, was wide awake and talking brightly. “You are admiring the chapelle, Mademoiselle?”

  “Please,” I said, “call me Emily.” And then I frowned. “What chapelle?”

  “The Chapelle of Sainte Radegonde, behind you.”

  I looked round at the silent wall, the bolted door. “Is that what this place is? I didn’t know.”

  “But yes, this is most famous, here in Chinon. Christian often sketches here. You must come in with us, and see it. The chapelle,” she informed me, “is not to be missed. Is it, Christian?”

  “What?” His head came round a quarter turn, the blue eyes vague as he pulled them away from a contemplation of a floating tuft of clouds. “Oh, yes, of course. You must come.” He didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic, but I didn’t take it personally. He seemed to move in a solitary world of his own creation, did Christian Rand.

  “The chapelle is kept locked, now,” Martine said. “Most people, they must ask at the Tourist Office if they wish to see inside. But Christian has a key.”

  He was fiddling with it now, in the lock—a long, old-fashioned key like something from a Gothic film. At last it turned, but before he opened the door he did a most peculiar thing. He looked at me with a serious expression, and said: “You will close your eyes, please.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I am sorry,” he looked half embarrassed, “but it is… you will only have one chance to be seeing this for the first time, and it is better to be surprised. Please.”

  I shrugged and stepped up to the door, screwing my eyes tightly shut like a child waiting to receive a present. I heard the creaking of old iron hinges as Christian pushed the great door open, and I caught a gentle breeze upon my upturned face, a breeze that faintly smelled of flowers and warm stone.

  “There,” said Christian. “You may look.”

&nb
sp; At first I couldn’t seem to move at all, I could only stand there with my face uplifted to the naked sky and stare and stare until my eyes grew moist. Before me, framed by the open doorway, rose two colossal pillars, smooth and richly white. They seemed to soar toward the heavens, supporting on their curving capitals the arched remains of a ruined wall, capped softly by a golden fringe of grass. Tall iron gates set in between the pillars shielded the inner sanctum, within whose cool and sloping shadows slender columns stretched along a sacred aisle, and the eyes of sculpted saints gazed blindly back at me.

  Between the saints and me a garden grew, a wild garden, mindless of man’s will or rules of order. Here and there the sunken forms of graves spoke of the time when this wild place had been a proper church, with nave and transept, altar and aisles. But the graves were empty now, the bodies moved and buried elsewhere. Above where they had lain the roof had long since fallen and been cleared away, and the once-high walls had crumbled to uneven contours, their jagged stones yet softened by a trailing growth of ivy.

  “My God,” I whispered.

  Christian seemed to understand. “It is most beautiful, this place.”

  I scarcely heard him. I finally managed to free my frozen limbs and take a cautious step inside the door.

  Here a bay tree arched above a broken baptismal font, and delicate wild flowers quivered at my feet. Everything was green and living, even the soil sprouted moss, and the silent air around me seemed to hum with vital energy.

  I nearly didn’t see him, to begin with.

  He might have been a statue himself, propped against the sunlit wall. The pale hair, the white shirt, both seemed to blend into the ivory stone behind him, and his outstretched legs were buried in a waving sea of green. Only his eyes, when he opened them, commanded attention. They stared, blinked slowly, tried to focus. And then one hand came up to pull the wired headphones from his ears, and I heard the jarring click of a portable tape player being switched off.