The French Prize

by Cathryn Hein

  She put her weight down and stood, one arm shielding her breasts. In the silence, the creaking bedsprings sounded like a screeching bird. Olivia winced at the intrusion of noise then scanned the room for her clothes. They hung neatly folded over the back of a chair in a corner near what looked like the cottage’s main door.

  Mustering the little dignity she still possessed, she crossed the room and snatched them up. They felt crusted and filthy, and she was glad the stink of camphor and antiseptic covered the smell of her stale sweat. Not that she cared about her body odour. It suited her sour mood perfectly.

  He spoke without looking at her, breaking the tension with quiet words. ‘I’ll arrange for you to fly back to England tomorrow. This is not worth you dying for.’

  ‘I’ve no intention of dying, Raimund,’ she told him as she inspected her torn and soiled bra, before tossing it aside. Her chest hurt too much to put it on, and modesty was pointless. The Frenchman had already had a good look at her breasts. ‘Not here, that’s for sure.’

  He surveyed her, his eyes trailing over her poorly concealed breasts and stomach. For a half-second, she thought she saw his pupils dilate but then he blinked and returned to his contemplation of the cup.

  As quickly as she could manage, she shrugged into her shirt, fastened the buttons, tugged on her trousers and then sat on the chair to pull on her boots. The clothes boosted her confidence. She rose and stood by his shoulder, wondering if she could snatch La Tasse out of his hands, but then thought better of it. The grazes had made her fingers stiff and clumsy. She couldn’t risk dropping the cup.

  He reached forward and turned up the lamp. The golden light cast shadows across his face and Olivia was reminded of the features of one of the sculptor Rodin’s Burghers of Calais. Rodin had captured the moment when the Burghers had, knowing they were about to die, surrendered themselves to the English in order to save their besieged town. She couldn’t recall the burgher’s name, but Rodin had given the man’s face such a realistic look of suppressed pain and clench-jawed determination, it was as though he were alive.

  Not knowing why but feeling the need to offer some sort of comfort, Olivia placed her hand on Raimund’s shoulder. ‘What’s going on, Raimund?’

  ‘History.’

  She sighed and withdrew her hand, but just as she was beginning to think that ‘history’ was all she was going to get out of him, he tilted the cup towards the light and pointed at the tiny etchings underneath the rim.

  ‘Can you read this?’

  She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table and then reached to take the cup from his fingers. To her surprise, he didn’t resist.

  The words of the Chanson were very faint. Part of the rim was still encrusted with clay and would need careful cleaning before the inscription could be revealed. It would be a slow process. While the cup appeared solid, thirteenth-century pottery could be fragile, especially pieces that had been interred in such a harsh environment.

  Olivia shook her head. ‘It needs restoration.’ She eyeballed him. ‘Using proper implements.’

  Raimund placed his elbows on the table and rested his forehead on the heels of his palms. He rubbed hard at his head, as though trying to wipe out a terrible memory. Olivia’s gaze widened at the sight, the cup momentarily forgotten. Raimund Blancard, the man of no emotion, of eyes that gave away nothing, the man of cold, hard stone, was crumbling before her.

  ‘This burden is not meant to be mine.’ He dropped his hands and stared at her. ‘Three months ago I was in —’ He stopped and swallowed, as though he had been about to give away a secret and had only just caught himself in time. He took a deep breath before continuing. ‘I was on deployment with my men. I was doing what I liked, what I was good at. And then the photographs —’ He closed his eyes and bowed his head, his chest heaving.

  Olivia didn’t want to ask. The look on his face told her the answer wouldn’t be pleasant, but she had to know. ‘What photographs?’

  He raised his head as if to gaze at her, but his eyes were riveted on something only he could see.

  ‘I have seen many things during my time with the Legion, Olivia, but nothing like this. Nothing.’

  Olivia held her breath. Raimund was no businessman. He was a soldier with the Foreign Legion, which as a Frenchman meant he could only be an officer in the French Army. The horrors of conflict would not be unfamiliar, yet whatever was in the photographs had shocked him deeply.

  ‘The first ones … I thought there was still hope. I could tell from his eyes that Patrice was still alive. In terrible pain but living. Then the others came.’ He buried his head again, his fingers tearing at his skull as if he wanted to dig inside his mind and drag out the harrowing images stored there.

  Without thinking, Olivia put down the cup and folded her arms around his shoulders, stroking his back, soothing him as he had done with her. She didn’t know who Patrice was, but he was someone Raimund had loved very much.

  For several heartbeats, he seemed to draw comfort from her embrace, but then he pulled away, the granite mask back in position. The stoic soldier had returned.

  ‘You must be hungry,’ he said. ‘I’ll heat some soup for you, but after you have eaten we must go.’

  Olivia wrapped her fingers around his forearm. ‘Trust me, Raimund. Tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘No. It’s too dangerous.’

  Her hand stayed in place. ‘Whatever’s going on, dangerous or not, if it’s something to do with La Tasse, then you need me.’

  His eyes ran over her face as though assessing her sincerity, but he remained silent.

  Olivia tightened her grip.

  Without warning he smiled, then leaned forward and kissed her gently on the temple. ‘You are a very strong, very clever and very beautiful woman, Doctor Olivia Walker. I feel privileged to have known you. But it’s time you returned to England.’

  Her stomach somersaulted at his words, at the tender touch of his lips, and for a brief moment she lost herself in a fantasy, but then reality crawled back to the surface.

  She released his arm as though it were on fire and snatched up the cup from the table, holding it to her chest, her mouth set in a defiant line. Keeping her front facing him, she backed towards the door. If he wanted the cup, he’d have to come and get it, but he had better be prepared. She’d fight like an alley cat if she had to.

  ‘You can flatter me all you like, but it won’t work. I’m not leaving the cup.’

  He held out his hand. ‘Olivia —’

  She set her jaw, determined not to be fooled again by his slippery words. ‘It doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the world.’

  ‘You are wrong. It belongs to no one but my family. It always has. It always will.’

  Olivia frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Raimund said nothing.

  Silence stretched and the air felt as tight as the wounds on her stomach. He wouldn’t stop staring at her, and she had the feeling she was being assessed in some way. Although only small, the cup felt heavier than it actually was, as though mystery had suddenly made it leaden.

  Then Raimund sighed and pointed to the chair where her clothes had hung. ‘Sit down. We will talk.’

  Suspecting some sort of trick, Olivia stayed where she was. ‘About what?’

  ‘What this is really all about. A sword called Durendal.’

  Olivia brought the spoon to her mouth and sipped the soup Raimund had heated for her. For a Tetra Pak product, it tasted surprisingly good. The French predilection for eating only quality produce appeared to apply to convenience foods as much as haute cuisine.

  The cup lay in its box close to her right hand, although Raimund had made no further move towards it. After ordering her to sit, he’d retreated to the cottage’s tiny kitchenette and busied himself with a pot and the small gas stove, not saying another word until he had placed a steaming bowl of soup on the table in front of her. Even then, it was simply another order to eat.

 
; He sat down with his own bowl and toyed with his spoon. After a while, he pushed it away, the cooling soup untouched, and then began to speak.

  ‘When Roland was defeated at Roncevaux Pass in 778, rather than let the Basques take his sword, he threw Durendal into a stream.’

  ‘A poisoned stream, don’t forget,’ said Olivia, smiling. The story of Roland was full of embellishment, the poisoned stream being one of many.

  Roland was a paladin, one of the twelve peers of Charlemagne’s court. A soldier who fought legendary battles for his king, a Knight of the Round Table well before knights or the Round Table existed.

  Mighty warriors have great swords, and for Roland, his was not Excalibur but Durendal. However, just like Excalibur, Durendal was blanketed in myth and mystery. The stories were endless. While the tale of the poisoned stream was the most popular—given that it was immortalised in the Song of Roland, the first and greatest of the Chansons de Geste, the epic poems of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries—there were many others.

  Olivia’s favourite had Roland, with his dying breath, heaving the sword back into France where it miraculously lodged itself into a cliff face above the Notre Dame Chapel at Rocamadour in the Dordogne. Neither this nor myriad other stories were true, although she had no doubt Durendal had survived the ages.

  Where it was hidden, though, was another matter.

  Raimund didn’t smile back at her. He simply continued his narrative. ‘Charlemagne returned to the battle site and retrieved the sword. We know from Einhard’s biography that Charlemagne took it back to his capital at Aix-la-Chapelle, but from there it was lost.’

  Olivia knew all this, but that didn’t stop the fluttering in her chest. Raimund was about to divulge something she didn’t know. She was sure of it.

  ‘You’ve heard of Guy of Narbonne?’

  She nodded. Guy of Narbonne was one of Charlemagne’s most trusted and loyal aides. His family had assisted the great Charles Martel, Charlemagne’s grandfather, in his conquest of Gaul and then allied themselves with the Carolingian kings. First Pepin and then on his death, Pepin’s son, Charlemagne.

  Raimund took a deep breath. ‘Charlemagne gave Durendal to Guy for safekeeping.’

  Olivia dropped her spoon into her half-finished soup and pushed it away as Raimund had done. She looked intently at him, searching his face for guile.

  ‘There are no records to prove that.’

  There was a long pause before Raimund answered, as though he was about to admit something of great import and wanted to think twice about it.

  ‘There are.’ He held her gaze, his dark-brown eyes sincere. ‘I have records that follow the fate of Guy, Durendal and La Tasse right up until the fourteenth century when La Tasse was lost.’

  Olivia stared at him with a mixture of disbelief and awe. If this were true, Raimund was sitting on a historical gold mine.

  ‘Guy was my ancestor, Olivia. He and all of his descendants were entrusted with guardianship of the sword. As far as we know, Le Chevalier Gris was the last to hold it in his hands. He is the one who hid the sword, before he left with Saint Louis on the Eighth Crusade to the Holy Land. But he left his descendants La Tasse as reference to its location. However we failed. The cup was lost, and with it Durendal.’

  Olivia slumped back and rubbed at her mouth. This was too fantastic.

  ‘I am the last of Guy’s descendants.’

  She stood up, wondering if now was when she was meant to start laughing, wondering if at any moment Raimund’s eyes would crease and his lips would twitch with suppressed humour. Neither happened.

  ‘Please tell me you’re joking.’

  He kept his eyes on hers. ‘It’s true, Olivia. With Patrice’s death, the burden of finding Durendal falls to me. There’s no one else left to fulfil Guy’s promise.’

  ‘Patrice. He was your brother?’

  Raimund nodded.

  ‘He was searching for the cup, for the sword, and now he’s dead?’

  He didn’t answer but then he didn’t have to. The look on his face answered for him.

  Olivia could barely speak. ‘What happened to him?’

  Raimund’s expression turned black, fierce in the shadows cast by the poor light. His hands clenched into fists. ‘He was tortured and then killed by the man who is chasing us now.’

  Shaking her head, Olivia sagged back onto the stool. ‘This is … this is just …’ She closed her eyes and tried to think. ‘Who is it that’s after us?’

  ‘His name is Gaston Poulin. He is,’ Raimund twirled his finger near his temple, ‘fou.’

  ‘Mad?’

  For a moment, grief tugged at Raimund’s mouth and Olivia felt an overwhelming urge to comfort him, to press him once again to her chest and let him express some of that closely held pain.

  ‘Only a madman would take photographs of his handiwork and send them on as if they were mere postcards.’

  ‘But why did he kill Patrice? Even madmen have reasoning.’

  Raimund rubbed his face and then let his hand fall. The dark circles under his eyes weren’t mere shadows, but the sign of a man who could see no end to his suffering.

  ‘When Charlemagne presented Guy with the sword for safekeeping, they thought they were alone. But the handover was witnessed by a young boy. A boy who believed Durendal belonged to him.’

  Though Olivia guessed the answer, she asked anyway. ‘And who was this boy?’

  ‘Arnaud, Roland’s illegitimate son. Gaston is Arnaud’s direct descendant.’

  ‘And Gaston believes Durendal is rightfully his?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No different to you then,’ she said wryly.

  Raimund’s eyes turned to flint. ‘I am a captain in the French Army. I order my men to kill and will kill myself if required, but I am not, and never will be, a torturer.’

  Olivia massaged her temples as the headache she’d thought she’d shed resurrected itself. This was ridiculous.

  ‘He will stop at nothing, Olivia. Which is why I must find Durendal first and settle this for all time.’

  She dropped her hands, alarmed by what she heard in his voice. ‘And then what?’

  His fierce gaze did not waver. ‘And then I will destroy it.’

  CHAPTER

  3

  Olivia leaned her head against the cool glass of the car’s passenger-side window. Outside, dawn soaked the landscape in peach, orange and cobalt blue, but today Provence didn’t look beautiful or romantic. Today, it only reminded her of what a harsh and unforgiving place it could be.

  After dropping his bombshell, Raimund had reached across the table and slid the aluminium case from under her hand, placing it next to him, just out of her reach. She’d wanted to fight but there was little point. He was a soldier, able to disable her without a moment’s thought. All she could do was stare at the box and farewell her dreams with a silent goodbye.

  He’d gathered their bowls and tidied the kitchenette while she’d sat numbly in her seat, and when he’d finished, led her out of the cottage like a small child towards a tarpaulin-covered car. As Raimund had squeezed inelegantly into the driver’s side of the diminutive Renault Clio, Olivia had smiled to herself. It was the first time she’d seen him look less than graceful and it gave her a certain petty satisfaction.

  As he drove, he’d spoken as though nothing had changed between them, as if their working relationship was still solid. As if he’d never given voice to his ludicrous intention. Olivia only listened through lack of choice.

  The cottage, he’d told her, had been in the family for years, although rarely used. Since his return, he’d made an effort to inspect all the family holdings and stock them with food and first-aid supplies, and importantly, a form of transport. The photographs of Patrice had taught him to be prepared for anything, and given the events of the last day, his instinct had proven correct.

  At the end of this commentary, he’d glanced at her, almost as though he was seeking praise, but she’d turned her face t
o the window and made no returning remark. From that point on he’d said nothing further.

  Now the silence felt laboured and awkward, and Olivia had to resist the urge to switch on the radio. The quiet, however, was her ally. She wanted him to stew, but more importantly, she needed to think.

  After several kilometres of serpentine road, a village appeared. Raimund pulled the Clio to a halt in front of a shuttered bar-tabac and reached across in front of her to extract a phone card from the glove box. He gave her a look, then stepped out. Next to the ubiquitous yellow La Poste box stood a telephone cabine. He halted in front of it, inserted the card and then punched out a series of numbers.

  He talked with his back to her, as though he didn’t want her to watch and lip-read, but he needn’t have bothered. Olivia’s mind was occupied elsewhere, trying to work out how Raimund thought he could find Durendal without her. Wondering if he knew something she didn’t. But of course he did. If what he said was true, somewhere out there records existed, and records held clues. He had a trail to follow. And that meant so did she.

  On his return, he cast her yet another look she couldn’t interpret. Probably surprise that she was still there. Perhaps he’d expected her to run, but there was nowhere for her to go except back to England, and she was damned if she was doing that. If Raimund tried to put her on a plane, she’d scream the airport down. He might have possession of La Tasse, but he and it weren’t going anywhere without her.

  ‘I lost my portable at the chateau,’ he said, referring to his mobile phone. ‘There is much to be arranged but the most important are now done.’

  ‘These arrangements pertain to me I take it?’

  ‘Not all. Most were for your guard.’

  Shame at her selfishness darkened Olivia’s cheeks. A man had been shot and she’d barely given him thought.

  Raimund seemed to interpret her colour as distress. ‘His family will be well looked after, I promise.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me we were being guarded?’

  ‘I had hoped you would not need to know.’ He twisted to the side to reach for his seatbelt. ‘Since the day you arrived in France you’ve been protected secretly. Either by myself or a trusted colleague, or like today, by two of us. Your safety was paramount.’ He paused. ‘It still is.’ Then he ducked his head as he locked the belt in place, but not before she caught sight of a mouth turned down in sorrow. ‘Laurent was a good man. He deserved better than to die like this.’