The curtained door of the carriage opened and the occupant stepped down. Luc shrank back even further into the shadows. The man was without doubt a cleric, and from the expensive cloth of his cloak, and the deference with which he was treated by the soldiers, Luc deduced that he was of high rank. He watched the priest disappear through the archway towards the main part of the monastery while the soldiers dismounted and clustered together on the stone benches over on the other side of the courtyard, enjoying the last of the late afternoon sunshine. They made no move to unsaddle their horses, so it looked clear that their visit was to be a short one. The carriage door hung open invitingly and Luc suddenly realised that he was being presented with a valuable opportunity to get up into the mountains more quickly than he had anticipated and time, he knew, was of the essence. The sooner he got up there, the sooner he could carry out his mission. Casting a cautious glance across at the soldiers, he emerged from the pile of wood and slipped across to the carriage.
He glanced in and was immediately heartened to see that it was empty. With another swift glance over his shoulder, he climbed in, trying to tread as lightly as possible. These carriages, set on massive springs, had a tendency to sway wildly at the slightest touch. Inside there were two bench seats facing each other, and above them, running across the back of the coach, a luggage shelf. It was this that attracted Luc’s attention.
Although it was only the width of the carriage, the deep shelf went back quite a long way above the heads of the passengers and, importantly, looked solid enough to take his not inconsiderable weight. Hastily, in case the priest were to return, he pulled himself up and found to his satisfaction that he could lie fairly comfortably with his knees bent. And he was sufficiently far back to be invisible to any but the most inquisitive of fellow travellers.
He settled down to wait, his heart beating faster, but his nerves well under control. In spite of the very real danger of discovery, it felt good to be active once more. But in fact it was only a matter of minutes before he heard footsteps and felt the carriage shake as a passenger climbed aboard. A voice, which sounded perilously close to him, shouted a command and they lurched into motion. Luc braced himself by wedging his feet and shoulders against the sides and hoped the priest would not decide to investigate the luggage rack. He closed his eyes and was beginning to drift into a sort of waking dream when he was shaken back to full consciousness by a voice.
‘How long do you think it’ll take to get there?’
The voice was so close that, for a moment, he was sure that he had been discovered, and that this was some form of mockery. He tensed, readying himself for action, although he was under no illusions: his cramped conditions made him near helpless. Before he could make any move, however, he was stopped in his tracks by the sound of another voice.
‘If we keep up this pace we should arrive at Santa Cristina before dawn. Let’s hope we can get some sleep, Your Grace. It’s not the best road in France, and I’m sorry to say that this is certainly not the best carriage in the land.’
Luc’s spirits lifted as he heard the name of their destination. As long as he remained undiscovered, this was a perfect solution to his problem. However, Your Grace could only mean one thing. He was travelling with a very senior cleric, maybe even an archbishop.
‘Do you think he’s still in the country, or has he made it across the frontier?’
Luc shrank back as far into the shadows as he could.
‘He’s still here, Your Grace. I’ve had the whole valley under surveillance since his sighting at Oloron. There’s no way he could have got past. My guess is that he’s gone to ground, in the hope that we drop our guard. Don’t forget who we’re dealing with here. This isn’t just anyone, this is Luc de Charny. He’s a veteran, an experienced warrior, with years of active service behind him. He’s successfully avoided capture now for the best part of seven years, so he knows what he’s doing. Believe me, he’s still around.’
Luc listened in awe. The speaker seemed to know a lot about him. How was it that down here they could be so well informed? Closer to the court and around Paris it was logical that there would be people who knew the full picture. But who would know about him down here?
‘I’ve been following him since he left Paris, and he’s no fool. All the way he’s been one step ahead of us mainly because he chose to take a highly unusual route. If he hadn’t been spotted in Bordeaux we might indeed have lost him.’
If the priest had travelled from Paris, it was logical that he was closely linked either to the king or the inquisitors. Either way, Luc knew he was in very hot water indeed. Unwittingly, he had stumbled into just about the most dangerous company he could ever have imagined. He had no doubt he could kill these two men without difficulty, but the remaining guards would be a different matter. A sharp dagger was no match for half a dozen broadswords. He settled down and forced himself to stay awake, even when he heard the snoring of at least one of his travelling companions. He couldn’t risk even the slightest noise.
For seemingly endless hours they continued along the winding road up the valley. In spite of the springs, the carriage lurched drunkenly on the potholes. More than once, he found himself in imminent danger of being thrown out of the luggage rack onto the laps of the men below. In the background, like a constant reminder of the precarious situation in which he now found himself, he could hear the hooves of the armed escort. From time to time, he heard them shouting to each other as they picked their way through the darkness.
Then the carriage began to lean heavily backwards. The driver’s whip cracked more regularly and the leather of the horses’ harness creaked as the pressure increased along with the gradient. The serious climb to the top had begun.
Chapter 3
French Pyrenees, April 2016
The next morning Luke had to scrape ice off the windscreen of the car. It was a dry day with a hazy sun, but dark clouds on the horizon threatened snow later on. As they set off towards the mountains, he thanked the instinct that had made him choose a vehicle with four-wheel drive. If the weather forecast was to be believed, the snow was going to be heavy.
They stopped a few times as they made their way up the valley towards the pass and Spain. The relatively gentle hills had now been replaced by rocky outcrops and scree slopes. Ahead of them, brightly lit by the spring sunshine, was the seemingly impenetrable barrier of snow-covered peaks that stood out clearly against the pale blue of the sky.
‘It’s going to be a hard climb from here to the pass.’ He cast another searching look upwards at the sky. ‘And if the snow sets in, we might not see anything. But it would be so good to get the view from the top down into Spain, just like millions of pilgrims over the centuries!’
‘Like our mystery man.’ Amy sounded very definite about this and Luke smiled. The previous evening they had made a start on their story and had decided that, seeing as they were going that way, their hero would also be making for the former pilgrims’ hospice of Santa Cristina, high in the mountains, near the Somport Pass. They had had quite a discussion about just who the main protagonist of their tale might be, as well as exactly when it might have been set, but without coming to any conclusions. Without admitting it to each other, or maybe not even to themselves, both of them now had a mental picture of a medieval character who looked suspiciously like Luke himself. So far there wasn’t an Amy character, but he, at least, felt pretty sure she would put in an appearance before too long. Meanwhile, modern-day Amy was trying to remember exactly where the abbey had been positioned. ‘And Santa Cristina’s right at the top?’
‘Just the other side, but it’s no more than a ruin these days. Quite possibly hidden under a few feet of snow at the moment, too, but we can always hope.’
Amy nodded. ‘Such a pity, considering how important it used to be.’
‘Third only to the Great St Bernard and Jerusalem itself.’ Amy nodded. She hadn’t heard of Santa Cristina before, but half an hour on the internet after dinner the previou
s night had made her realise its significance in the medieval world.
As they began to climb, the road got progressively more tortuous, and the valley sides tightened towards them more and more. The road was now squeezed alongside the banks of the fast flowing river. Luke glanced across to the passenger seat. Although Amy looked happy enough, it was difficult to know what she was getting out of this part of the journey, spectacular as it was to a sighted person. He gave her a quick description of their surroundings, finishing with the words, ‘I wouldn’t want to fall into that river.’
She half turned towards him. ‘Dirty or cold?’
‘We’ll take a closer look.’ He braked, pulled off the road, bumped down a steep track and drew up with a crunch of gravel beside the river.
‘Come on, let’s see what you think of a real mountain stream.’
As they opened the doors, both felt the noticeably colder air.
‘That’s straight off the snowy mountains.’ Amy had correctly worked out the direction of the wind and was reaching for a jacket. He leant over to the back seat and handed her a down-filled body warmer. As she stepped out of the car and pulled it on, he took her arm and led her to the edge of the water, helping her across the bank of pebbles. Hearing the water, she crouched down and dipped her hand in.
‘I see what you mean. It’s freezing.’
The word see had caused him all sorts of embarrassment when he first met her. It kept leaping uninvited into his mouth in expressions like Let’s see or Come and see. This caused him acute discomfort each time as he felt he had made some dreadful gaffe in the face of her blindness. If he had, she never gave any sign of it. Gradually, he started to notice that she herself used the verb as often and as naturally as he did. Relieved, he had reverted to his normal figures of speech.
She hastily withdrew her hand from the water and replaced it lightly on his arm. ‘Brr! Of course, at this time of year, and with sun on the mountains, I suppose the winter snows are melting fast. I imagine it’s really clear, clean water. The pilgrims would have been able to drink it with impunity, wouldn’t they?’
‘No question. I’m sure it’s as pure as pure.’ He was acutely aware of her hand on his arm, the warmth reaching through the sleeve of his jacket, and the sensation, while pleasant, was disturbing. He made sure he kept the conversation on historical matters. ‘Who knows? Hundreds, if not thousands of medieval pilgrims may have come to this selfsame spot to fill their water bottles.’
‘Mind you, of course they wouldn’t have been glass bottles.’ She missed nothing. ‘Glass was horrifically expensive in those times. What would they have used? Animal skins?’ She gave his arm a squeeze, which he had come to recognise as the sign that she wanted something.
‘If we’re talking about the Middle Ages, you’re absolutely right. Glass was a real luxury until centuries later. As far as water bottles were concerned, the usual container in those days was unquestionably a gourd or a sheep’s stomach, sometimes soaked in pitch. Personally I’d favour the gourd to the dead sheep, but each to his own.’
She giggled and he smiled with her. She really was a very good travelling companion, not at all the cold, aloof woman he had encountered in London. He thought back to when they had first met. It seemed so very long ago now. In reality it was barely a month and that meeting, he now knew, hadn’t been easy for either of them. Her home was a wonderful, elegant house in Highgate. He wondered idly to himself as he walked up the steps to the front door just how much a three storey Georgian mansion might be worth in this part of London, where an apartment could sell for millions. Father Timothy, who had persuaded him to go for the interview, had told him virtually nothing about Amy, apart from the accident that had robbed her of her parents, and her blindness of course. In particular, Tim had totally omitted to mention that Amy Hardy was, without question, one of the most startlingly beautiful women Luke had ever seen. However, beautiful or not, her attitude that first day had been far from welcoming; decidedly cool in fact. Why had she been so prickly? No time like the present, so he asked her.
‘Can I ask you something, Amy? Why were you so grumpy when we first met?’
A look of surprise crossed her face, closely followed by one of remorse. He had to wait a while for her reply.
‘I know, Luke, and I’m so sorry. I think, more than anything, it was fear. Fear that you might take one look at me and decide you didn’t want the responsibility of taking a blind girl halfway across Europe. You see, it took me five years to make up my mind to get up and start doing something with my life and, while I was waiting for you to come to the house that day, I was suddenly terrified it might not work out, and I’d be stuck there all on my own once again. It came across as grumpiness, but it was fear of rejection. Rebuilding a life isn’t easy.’ It was said with stiff finality. She was still holding onto his arm, but her face was towards the rushing water.
He followed the direction of her eyes and found himself watching a bird’s nest swept downstream over the rapids. A back eddy caught it, held it uncertainly for a few moments, before a fresh wave collected it once more and whirled it away downstream. He was conscious of the inner turmoil in her voice as she continued.
‘The accident’s still ever-present in my head. At least, it has been up to these last couple of weeks. In the space of a few seconds my life changed completely and forever. One moment I was a privileged, or rather over-privileged, member of the one per cent of the one per cent. Then the next moment, my whole world, my family and my future were smashed to smithereens. In the morning I was skiing back over from Zermatt. In the evening I was in a hospital trying to come to terms with losing my family and my eyesight.’ There were tears in the corners of her eyes, but she refused to let them run. Angrily she rubbed her forearm across her face.
‘They said my father had a heart attack as we were going down just about the steepest part of the road. I didn’t even realise. Suddenly we were off the road and falling. I don’t remember what happened after that until I woke up in the hospital…’ Her grip on his arm, which had been getting tighter and tighter, suddenly relaxed. ‘It hasn’t been easy. I’m afraid the net result has been to make me grumpy. At least, I was then.’ She released her hold and sat down on the cold pebbles. She took a deep breath and did her best to smile. ‘But I’m much less grumpy now, honest.’ She picked up a handful of pebbles and started to throw them into the river, one by one.
After a moment’s hesitation he sat down as well, choosing a place close beside her, but not touching her. His whole body cried out to him to offer the comfort that she so patently lacked, and he so badly wanted to put his arm round her and hug her, but for his sense of propriety. Apart from anything else, he was, after all, employed as her guide.
The enormity of what she had lost was only too obvious. He wondered, not for the first time, how he would have coped in similar circumstances. Certainly the torment he had endured in his own life, and which had seemed so overwhelming over the last few years, was put into stark perspective. She settled back, one pebble remaining in her hand. He saw her fingers gently feel it and he started to speak, compassionately and cautiously but, as he saw her response, increasingly freely.
‘Thanks for telling me that, Amy. I’m sorry to have put you on the spot like that.’ He cleared his throat. ‘For what it’s worth, I was just thinking that I couldn’t wish for a better travelling companion. No grumpiness at all and I certainly don’t know many others as knowledgeable on medieval matters as you.’
Her expression softened.
‘You’ve lost a lot; a lot that’s irreplaceable, but in return you’ve got some things I haven’t. You can probably see that pebble you’ve got in your hand more fully than I can. I just rely on the one main sense, while you’re seeing it in more ways than I can. I imagine you feel things and hear things so much more intensely than I can. For all I know you can probably hear the car even though the engine’s switched off.’
She raised her head and replied in a brighter ton
e.
‘That’s easy. I can smell it from here and, for that matter, I actually can hear it. But I don’t think it’s necessarily because my other senses are any better than yours. After all, my nose and my ears are still the same size they were before the accident. It’s just, like you said, you sighted people tend to rely on that one sense and it sort of overpowers the others. Anyway, I bet you can hear it too. Listen, can’t you?’ Her arm pointed straight at the car. He pricked up his ears obediently. She was quite right. The big engine ticked and crackled as it gradually cooled down in the mountain air.
‘Q.E.D.’ He smiled at her and she picked it up from his voice and smiled back. Then, in more serious vein, he added quietly. ‘And never convince yourself that your problems are insurmountable. I can tell you from very painful personal experience that everybody has problems, some physical and visible, others, the worst kind, invisible inside the mind.’ In response to something he read in her face, he made a promise. ‘I’ll tell you all about it one of these days.’
Her eyes crinkled into a little smile as she heard that he had correctly interpreted her unspoken question. She had always known he was secretive about his past, but this was the first time he had hinted that he, too, might be suffering some hidden trauma. She turned back towards the river, glad she had said what she had said, feeling ever more comfortable with him and wondering what had happened to him that he wasn’t saying. Raising her arm, she lobbed the last stone into the freezing water. Then she took a deep breath and turned her head back towards him.
Chasing Shadows Page 3