Bernanos immortalized this valley in The Diary of a Country Priest. Cavron, Fressin, Planques, Agincourt ... Of course, as an historian I spent a lot of time walking over the battlefield, some distance from the village and marked only by a solitary imposing stone. Joan was three years old when the decisive battle of Agincourt was being fought not so far away from her. It was important as background for Joan’s future, because it led to the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, which promised Henry V of England the throne of France by marrying him to Charles VI’s daughter, Catherine. The other child of Charles VI, though his mother was at pains to deny it, was the Dauphin, whom Joan caused to be crowned King at Rheims.
By nightfall I was in Hesdin, which long ago contained one of the great castles favoured as a home by the Valois dukes and long since destroyed. I found a nice hotel there and spent the night in this ancient town of Artois, burial place of many of the knights, the flower of French chivalry, who had fallen in 1415 at Agincourt.
The next day I got up late and tossed a coin as to whether I should continue on the N.39 I had rejoined at Hesdin and go as far as Arras and south through the battlefields to the Somme valley, or go straight back via Abbeville to Port Guillaume, which I had never properly explored, and at which I was forever gazing from Port St Pierre.
I decided on Port Guillaume and after a leisurely, tranquil drive – the car had taken a new lease on life in France, perhaps under the threat of the scrap heap and the way everyone laughed at it parked outside my door as they passed it in Rue du Chateau – I arrived there in the early afternoon.
In many ways Port Guillaume was more spectacularly situated than Port St Pierre. It was older; the chateau in which Joan had actually lived in Port St Pierre no longer existed, whereas the gate under which she had passed in Port Guillaume still stood. The cobbled streets rose gently to a high escarpment, a plateau on which stood the old church, forming a high wall or battlement overlooking the town.
I parked my car outside the walls of the old town and went through that gate. I climbed slowly, pausing to admire this old house or that, this perfectly kept garden or that spectacular view across the bay to Port St Pierre and the chateau, clearly visible but tiny-looking from this distance, with its grey-roofed twin turrets.
Gazing at it from afar, I felt at peace with myself. I really did love the chateau; who could help but love that ancient, noble house standing so serenely overlooking the bay? I’d been wise to take this break, to occupy myself with other thoughts. I’d allowed the concerns of the family and Laurent’s declaration to overwhelm me. Distance had given me perspective. I saw a light come on in the chateau and thought of the children in their schoolroom. The light reminded me that it was getting dark and I should go back to the car and head for home.
As I turned down the hill, I glanced into the window of an especially pretty house set in a partly walled garden. A man was lighting a pipe, and as he drew on it and waved out the match he looked up and our eyes met. Recognition was instant, but it wasn’t until he opened the window and leaned out that I realised who he was.
“Bonjour, Madame! You are exploring our lovely town.”
“Monsieur Schroeder! You live here?”
“Come in, come in. I’ll open the door.”
What a surprise! I looked at my watch. I didn’t want to be late, but I couldn’t be rude. I shook hands with him at the door and he led me into a small, elegant drawing room furnished with taste and care and dominated by a large desk at which he’d obviously been working.
“I don’t know why, Monsieur Schroeder, but I thought you were visiting the area that day we met.”
“I said we’d meet again soon. No, I’ve rented this place just for a year. I live in Heidelberg. I’m a scholar of sorts, an antique dealer, but right now I’m writing a book. This is indeed a lovely part of the world.”
I was looking out of his large bay window.
“What a magnificent view! You can see across to Port St Pierre, and as far as Le Hourdel.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” he said, joining me. “You don’t realise how fine a view until you are actually inside. We just manage to avoid being obscured by the trees.”
“And the chateau! You can see that quite clearly too. Look, the lights are beginning to come on.”
“Ah yes.” He screwed up his eyes as though he had just noticed the chateau. “So you can. I hope your foot wasn’t too badly hurt that day?”
“Well, it was, rather. I was laid up for almost a week.”
“That is bad news. How are the children?”
“Their mother just died.”
“Oh, dear, I’m very sorry to hear that. Are you living with them?”
“Oh, no. I was just there as a guest. Thank goodness I’ve moved back into my own rented house.”
“Thank goodness?”
“I’m writing a book, too. I couldn’t get on with any work there.”
“I can imagine. Three children must be a handful.”
“The nanny had died, too. The family has had quite a tragic time.”
“It seems so. Can I get you some tea? Please don’t say no. I have a store of Jackson’s teas which I drink every day myself.”
He disappeared into the kitchen, and I longed to go over to his desk and look at his papers – academic curiosity – but I wouldn’t have liked anyone to do that to me, so I remained where I was, gazing out of the window. Soon he was back carrying a tray which he placed on a table.
“I know the English habits. There’s milk for you and lemon for me.”
“Do you go to England at all?”
“Very seldom; occasionally for a sale if it’s important. I still buy antiques, but not so much as I used to. I enjoy writing. Tell me” – he poured the tea carefully into exquisite China cups – “what is the subject of your book?”
“Joan of Arc. I know it sounds mundane; but I’m a medieval historian and she happens to interest me.”
“I’m sure it is most interesting; she anticipated women’s lib by about five hundred years, didn’t she?”
“In a way, yes,” I laughed. “Come to think of it, she did. And tell me,” I continued, “have you been out shooting lately?”
“No, not this week, not at Port St Pierre. I shoot elsewhere as well, you know, but I have wanted to press on with my book.”
“What is its subject, may I ask?”
“Certainly. Jewellery. The history of the court jewels of France.”
“What a magnificent subject.”
“It will be a magnificent book. A large German publisher has commissioned it, and it will be printed simultaneously in many languages, with plates all in colour. They call it co-edition and that cuts down the cost. I have completed my research and now I have retired here to write it.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Only since the spring.”
“I must leave you to get on with your book, Mr Schroeder.” I said.
“Oh please, another cup of tea?”
“No, I really must go. I’ve been away for a couple of days. I felt like a little tour – Joan has been getting on top of me.” And the family, I nearly added, but much as I liked Mr Schroeder, a fellow historian and a sympathetic person, I didn’t know him well enough yet to confide in him.
“You must come again.”
“I will.” I got up rather awkwardly, pushing back my chair so that it brushed against his desk, causing some papers to fall on the floor.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” I bent down to gather them up.
“No, no, let me do it.” He pushed past me rather fussily. “They are all in order.”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry.”
Worriedly he sorted them out, then put them neatly in a pile and turned to smile at me. “That’s perfectly all right. No harm done.”
He showed me to the door and we made the customary polite farewells.
“Perhaps we could have lunch?” he suggested. “I have no phone, but I’ll certainly look you up in a week
or two.”
We waved and I went slowly down the road to my car. It was now dusk, but I was glad I’d stayed. In retrospect, there was something about Mr Schroeder that left me feeling uneasy; he was too charming, too anxious to please, too eager to make a friend of someone he hardly knew. Why? There was nothing at all sexual in his attitude. Yet he seemed to want to know me better. Why? For my super brain, doubtless. Yes, that was it; in some way he wanted to use me. But how could I possibly be useful to Gustav Schroeder?
All these things and more I pondered as I walked towards the car. Because the thing that really bewildered me about Mr Schroeder was this: If he were German, why did he write in French? That much I had managed to see from the papers strewn on the floor.
I was bilingual, but having been born and brought up in England I wrote in English and thought in English. I could write in French if I had to, but I would never write a hook in French. It would lack that colloquial quality essential for readability. Surely Mr Schroeder had been brought up in Germany and thought and wrote in German? Well, I’d ask him when I saw him again. It was an interesting point; in fact, I found it profoundly disturbing.
I drove round the bay, especially magical now in the dusk as the lights came on in Port St Pierre and Port Guillaume, and in the far distance the beam from the lighthouse at Le Hourdel began winking on and off. It had been a perfect day, breezy but clear and fine. The two clays away had certainly been a tonic for me. In town I stopped outside the butcher’s shop, remembering that I had nothing for dinner. I was just about to enter the shop when Martine flew out of Madame Gilbert’s opposite, waving her arms at me.
“Madame, Madame, Madame Gilbert wishes to talk to you.” She looked alarmed and her face was pale. Thinking at first that Madame Gilbert was ill, I rushed inside to find her sitting at her roll-top desk, ringing her hands, her face drawn in anguish. Now I was thoroughly alarmed.
“Madame, whatever is it?”
“Oh, Madame, pauvre Madame Clare. Sit down, sit down.”
“Tom ...” I had an awful feeling of panic and seized her arm. Of course, that’s why he hadn’t written. Something was wrong. “Madame Gilbert, what is it? My husband?”
Madame Gilbert’s face was buried in her hands, but at my words she looked up.
“Oh, Madame, how stupid of me. I have worried you about your husband. No, Madame, it is not your husband – pardon me for making you so anxious. It is the whole family of de Frigecourt, Madame. They are all dead!”
For a moment I had a feeling of dizziness and thought I was going to faint. What I’d heard was unbelievable. I stared at her, my eyes begging her to tell me that it was not so, that I had misheard.
“Madame Gilbert, what is it you are saying?” I realised I was whispering.
“Dead,” she whispered back. “Dead, except for little Fabrice. He stayed behind with the nurse. At the last minute, Laurent decided it was too windy for him. The only one left alive, the youngest, like the last time, in the war.”
I pulled her arm and we both sat down. “Tell me, for God’s sake, tell me all, Madame.”
Martine was quietly weeping in the corner. Oh, how I wanted to go back in time, to have this not happen, to know how to have prevented it. All Rose’s premonitions had come true. Madame Gilbert tried to compose herself and replaced the gold pince-nez on her nose.
“Well, the father, Monsieur Laurent, is a very keen sailor. He thought that as the weather was so warm and there was a good breeze he would take them all sailing in the bay.”
“But this is not the weather for sailing, Madame, it is nearly November.”
“Eh. Of course, it isn’t. There is a time for sailing as there is a time for hunting, but not for Monsieur Laurent; he decided and that was that. He is a very good sailor, too, and he had apparently not put the boat up for the winter yet. Maybe he was going to do that and decided to have a last sail. Ah, a last sail.” She lingered on the words.
Of course, it had been nice; the spring-like quality of the weather had moved me to take a break from my work.
“They were all to go, except for Jeanne, who said she didn’t like the water, but after she had got into the boat the new nanny – I don’t know her name – decided it was too cold for her and she got out. Then apparently Monsieur Laurent thought it was too cold for Fabrice, too, and ordered him out, not to his liking, as you can imagine. Oh, how he screamed, but it saved his life. Maybe the father had a premonition.”
“If he did, he wouldn’t have taken any of them,” I said shortly.
“Well, off they went, happily round the bay. They were due back for lunch ... they did not come.”
“Perhaps somewhere along the coast ...”
“Laurent would never have gone into the Channel at this time of year; he would have stayed in the bay.”
“But they just may have; oh, there is still hope, Madame Gilbert. I thought they’d found the bodies.”
“Calm yourself, ma chere Madame,” Madame Gilbert said sadly. “They did not find the bodies, but they found the boat; it had capsized off Le Hourdel. It was washed up on the shore there.”
“Oh, my God.” I experienced a feeling of doom. Le Hourdel was notorious for its currents; there were notices all over the place telling people not to swim, not to sail or fish at certain times.
“And Fabrice? He knows?”
“Madame, I know no more than I have told you.”
“I must go up to the house.”
“Yes, go. They will welcome you. I am too enervee to go just now.”
I rushed across the street to my car, drove up the main street and into the road that led to the chateau. The sight of the bay, my beautiful bay, made me shudder. It had become a graveyard – something treacherous.
The chateau was dark when I got there, what lights there were must have been on in the front. I parked my car by the pavement and rang the bell, and the gates swung open immediately. Madame Barbou was looking down the drive as I drove up and rushed over to open the car door. Her eyes were swollen with tears and we silently embraced.
“Madame, it is a terrible thing.”
“I’ve only just heard. Where is Fabrice? Does he know?”
“He knows that they are missing. We make out we are anxious, nothing more. He is watching television with Lisa. He has no comprehension.”
She started weeping anew, and I held her in my arms patting her back.
“Where is Jeanne, Madame?” I said quietly. Jeanne ... I thought of Rose, of Michelle’s remark about the evil eye. No, it was too horrible.
“Jeanne had the day off, Madame. Monsieur took the children out for the whole day. Doctor Bourdin is here, the young doctor. She came to see if everyone was all right. No one has any idea what to do or whom to contact. They are waiting for the mayor.”
Thank God for Michelle. I went into the house by the back entrance, into the salon, and found her standing by the window alone. From her face as she turned to me I could see how the tragedy had affected her.
“Michelle! Is there no hope at all?”
“There is no hope,” she said. “The boat capsized off Le Hourdel. There was no trace of them. They are dead.”
“It’s too horrible.”
“What I can’t understand,” Michelle said bitterly, “is how Laurent allowed himself to go to Le Hourdel at this time of year, especially with the strong autumn currents and the wind.”
“He must have drifted.”
“He is too good a sailor to do something like that. No, something else happened.”
“But what?”
“Maybe he became ill or the boat went out of control. Both the children are used to sailing, but they are not good enough to take charge of the boat in a stormy sea. No, he should never have gone. It was an error of judgment.”
“Let’s have a drink,” I said. It was after six o’clock.
“I won’t drink,” Michelle said, “or I won’t stop.”
Michelle had taken it very badly. I got my drink and mot
ioned for her to sit down.
“Do you think there is a curse on the family? Do you believe in such things?” I asked her.
“Now I don’t know. I almost do. I know it’s fanciful, but remember what we said about Jeanne?”
“What did we say?”
“About the evil eye.”
“Oh, that. Honestly, Michelle , you don’t really believe in that sort of thing, do you?”
“Well, I wonder.”
I took a deep drink.
“ So do I, if I’m honest.”
“Are you still thinking about Rose’s death?” she went on. “My brother said you even asked him. It’s obsessing you.”
“Yes, but Rose was right, wasn’t she? She said she thought Jeanne would harm the children. She also said in a letter to her boyfriend in England that she thought Jeanne was a witch.”
“How do you know that?”
“I read his reply. She’d left it in a book I found in my room.”
“Jeanne wasn’t even here today. Tell me, how could she have made a boat sink?”
I gestured helplessly. “Michelle, the evil eye means that you only have to look at a thing to cause harm. You put a spell on something. I can’t honestly believe that I’m saying this, my husband would have a fit, but I have an awful feeling I’m right, or that something very sinister is going on. All these accidents, these mishaps ...”
“The Burgundian curse,” Michelle said softly.
“Of course, the curse” I repeated,
“I told you how the place was deserted and we used to play here pretending to see ghosts and things. It was kind of spooky and all children play these kinds of games. Our parents told us to be careful or the Burgundian curse would get us. You know the family is descended from the dukes of Burgundy?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s all I know. Being of a scientific turn of mind even from childhood, I had no interest in such things, but a lot of the villagers still believe it.”
Rose, Rose Where Are You? Page 12