Sacred Ends

by Lisa Appignanesi

  She looked away. Looked out towards the door as if Napoléon might come through it. Her smile had vanished. Her lips trembled. ‘Not so good as Uncle Xavier promised. He said it was his sacred mission to bring us together. And since Papa wouldn’t come to my beautiful Martinique, I was to come to him. But my father, he drinks too much. All the men they drink. I think it kills them. P’tit Ours, he tells me my father is dead. Now Amandine Septembre only wants the little that is hers to help her go home to her island. I do not want to stay here. No. Never. You will help me, Madame, yes?’

  Marguerite nodded. ‘I will do my best.’

  Amandine reached for a sheaf of papers. ‘You see here, and here again, there is my name. I think it is a will.’

  Her broad index finger slowly underlined the word ‘testament’ as she pronounced it slowly.

  Marguerite studied the papers. This was indeed Napoléon Marchand’s will. She couldn’t take in its complexities now, but it seemed he had overwritten the name Amandine in two places and scratched out the name beneath. She held the paper up to the light and under the scratching-out she could see the name of Estelle Tellier. There were other scratching-outs, too. Marguerite read quickly. From a brief glance it seemed that old Napoléon had switched round his bequests to the two daughters, so that what had originally gone in the favour of one now went to the other. The advantage was all Amandine’s.

  She was pursued by the thought that, for all her ostensible innocence, the woman might just have executed this overwriting herself. There was a simple way of finding out.

  Briefly Marguerite explained what she had read, then asked if Amandine had a pen and paper on which she could write a note authorising Marguerite to take the documents to the notary and magistrate.

  Amandine stared at her from eyes round with concern.

  ‘Ah, Madame. We must search the house for ink and paper. Perhaps in my papa’s old room. There is a desk. Let us go and see. But Madame, Amandine can only sign. She cannot write well. Her maman didn’t teach her. Or Uncle Xavier. Poor Uncle Xavier. He so wanted to come home. And now he is home for good. He died here, I think. In this house. I heard something, you know. In my sleep. Screaming. A body falling down stairs.’ Tears flooded her eyes. She shrugged them away and motioned Marguerite down the hall.

  ‘Do you have any idea where your old servant, Hercule, might be, Mlle Septembre?’ Marguerite asked as the woman strode ahead in front of her.

  ‘Hercule? No, I don’t. And I don’t want to know, Madame. He was less than kind to Amandine. Less than kind. To tell you the truth, Madame, since I have arrived in your country, my country too, few have been kind to Amandine. Uncle sometimes, P’tit Ours and yourself. That is all. Is it to ask so much for a little kindness? Kindness from one’s kin? Even in the village where we met, the children, they had no manners … Amandine will be very happy to go back to Fort de France. Very happy to have warm sunshine and flowers and the blue of the sea.’

  She gave Marguerite her own warming smile, then ushered her into a room that housed a vast four-poster bed, complete with dusty muslin, and a shapely desk. In the drawer of the desk they found a pen, but no inkwell and no paper.

  Disappointment turned down Amandine’s lips. Perspiration gathered at her brow. ‘There are many rooms. We can try the others.’

  ‘Or we can take all this back to my home. To La Rochambert. We will find everything we need there.’

  ‘Amandine is not dressed to visit a lady, Madame. Another day, perhaps. And I must wait for P’tit Ours. I will give you the papers and you will take them with you. You will write what you need to write and then bring it to me to sign. Uncle Xavier did the same.’

  ‘I would rather you came with me, Amandine. It would be better. And we can find you some good clothes, I’m sure. We might even meet up with P’tit Ours on the way.’

  Marguerite had a renewed urge to hurry. There was no guile in this woman. At least not the kind that would find its way into forging documents.

  ‘You think so? You will really have a gown for me?’ She looked sceptically at Marguerite’s slenderness, the close-fitting dress, the rows of buttons up to the ruffled neck.

  They had reached the drawing room again and Marguerite started to assemble the papers. ‘I’m sure we’ll be able to adjust something for you.’ She bent for the strongbox to put all the papers in, but Amandine stopped her.

  ‘No, if we take this, P’tit Ours may think I have gone. We will leave it for him. There is money here. Money for our journey. We will only take the papers. That’s all we need, don’t you think?’

  Marguerite nodded. She folded the documents as best she could into her pocket, when a noise made her turn.

  At the door of the room, filling its frame with her girth, stood Madame Tellier. Her eyes darted like nervous beetles, then seized with hatred on Amandine, on Marguerite, on the papers she had been folding into her jacket, on the strongbox in full evidence on the table behind.

  ‘You. You with her! Both of you.’

  The woman’s face took on a cold, watchful stillness. Time seemed to stop.

  Marguerite remembered a wounded heron her father had found by the river. Its wing was broken. He had put a splint in it, a slow, painstaking process, while she had held the bird still. During the entire operation, the heron had stared at them from its yellow predator’s eyes, cold and deep and still, waiting, watching for the kill.

  ‘I knew you had them. I knew it.’

  ‘Madame Tellier,’ Marguerite tried to break the mesmeric hold of the woman’s eyes. ‘I don’t know if you’ve met Amandine Septembre. I believe she’s your half-sister. ‘Your father names her as his daughter in his will.’

  ‘I have no sister.’ The woman’s voice was low, icy. It shook with undisguised venom. ‘That woman is no more my sister than an ass is the sister of a thoroughbred. You will give me my father’s papers. Now. Bring them to me. Right here.’

  ‘Ah no.’ Amandine Septembre spoke for the first time. ‘No, no. These papers bear Amandine’s name. Papa Napoléon put Amandine’s name there. They stay with me. I have worked for them. I have come a long way with Uncle Xavier.’

  ‘You will bring the papers to me,’ Madame Tellier repeated. ‘Or you will meet the same fate as that traitor, Xavier.’

  She lashed out with her booted foot, making her skirts and petticoats swing. The handkerchief she drew from the folds of her dress emerged as a gun – a pistol with a long, shining barrel. Marguerite had no doubt at all that it was loaded.

  She reached for the box and was about to ferry it to Madame Tellier when Amandine placed herself directly in front of her, whether to stop her or protect her wasn’t clear.

  ‘No, Sister. I said no. The papers stay with me. We are sisters. We will share what there is.’

  Gunfire exploded into the stillness of the room. With a moan, Amandine staggered to the floor. Marguerite knelt down beside her, touched the blood that was oozing from her shoulder.

  What happened next was almost too quick for her senses. She heard a roar, like that of a wounded animal trampling through the undergrowth. Then a shot from Madame Tellier’s gun. The bullet ricocheted off the wall. Madame Tellier fell heavily to the ground. On top of her sprawled a giant figure, kicking, punching, wrestling with her.

  P’tit Ours.

  He was bellowing, howling. His face was contorted with pain. ‘Amandine, Amandine. Darling Amandine. You killed her. Killed Amandine.’

  With each strangled syllable, he kicked the supine figure beneath him, until, with a superhuman lunge, Madame Tellier turned over and fired once more. Fired directly at the youth’s head.

  With a gasp of surprise, he grasped her shoulders and butted her head against the floor.

  ‘No!’ Marguerite was shouting, had been shouting. Had been shouting for ever. ‘No, no, no, no!’ She rushed forwards, pulled the gun from the woman’s hands. It came easily. Madame Tellier had the full weight of a prostrate P’tit Ours on her, his poor head punctured, bleeding
. Bleeding across the now unconscious woman who had taken his life.

  An unearthly wail rose from behind Marguerite, first soft then growing louder and louder. She turned to see Amandine on her knees, clutching her arm. The blood seeped from it, carmine. She struggled towards P’tit Ours. She stared at his poor broken form with an expression that denied the terrible irreversibility of death. Calling his name. Calling him: ‘My protector.’

  Sobs shook her. Her dress trailed the floor and made it into a soft bed. Somehow, she lifted P’tit Ours and cradled him gently in her lap. She rocked him like a child, a large overgrown child who had died for her.

  Marguerite, watching their blood mingle, found she was crying too. The pity of it. The pity.

  THIRTY

  The days passed. La Rochambert, on its little hill overlooking river and valleys, had taken on the aura of a sanatorium. Madame Germaine had moved in, sent by Dr Labrousse to help in the care of Amandine Septembre, whom Marguerite had insisted would convalesce better under her watchful eye. Faced with this more immediate charge, the elderly woman had not yet gone to seek out Louise Limbour, the girl who was much in Marguerite’s thoughts.

  Amandine’s wound – after Dr Labrousse had pried the bullet from her shoulder to the sound of her heart-rending screams – was healing well. Her soul, it was clear, would take longer. All her best hopes had been shattered, the last one disappearing with P’tit Ours, to whom she had grown attached with the kind of strong bond that links strays and outcasts. She wept for him. She mourned. She repeated over and over that he had died for her.

  Papa Napoléon had warned her that her sister could kill. She hadn’t believed him. She was stupid. Unworthy. She too deserved to be behind bars like Estelle with all her bandages. She rocked herself and an invisible P’tit Ours in the comfortable bath chair Marguerite had had moved into the music room for her. She stared out of the window as if the strength of her gaze might provoke the forlorn winter landscape to transform itself into the bluest of seas on which P’tit Ours would come sailing.

  Only Marguerite’s piano-playing or Martine’s tears seemed to stir her from her sadness. At the first, she would break into a deep hum and provide a strange harmony to the music. Marguerite encouraged her to sing. She had a wonderful throaty voice that could rise and fall in waves of throbbing sound. Martine, too, came to life with Amandine’s singing. Marguerite watched the two women, initially suspicious of each other, grow closer and closer with the passage of the days. She had a wish that the closeness might outlast convalescence. Martine needed a strong friend and Amandine, it was clear, thrived when she had someone to look after.

  That became increasingly clear when baby Gabriel was wheeled into the room, initially to listen to the music the women made. Amandine’s song grew firmer in his presence, took on a note of rapture. She was never so happy as when the babe nestled against her, rocked by her crooning voice. He, in turn, would give up any grumbling or plaint as soon as Amandine’s arms folded round him and the voice thrust its way into his tremulous body.

  As her physical strength returned, Amandine also began to exchange herbal remedies with Madame Germaine, the two of them pitting their native lore against each other and sometimes bursting into paroxysms of laughter.

  Marguerite had already assured the woman that, unless Napoléon Marchand was in great debt, she stood to find herself in possession of a tidy sum once probate was over. In the meantime, should she wish to travel home, Marguerite would be more than willing to advance her passage.

  She had handed the will and all the other papers in Amandine and P’tit Ours’s possession over to the police, though she had had a good look at them first herself. Only one thing disturbed her. The warring half-sisters apart, there was a third beneficiary to old Napoléon’s estate. And this one only bore a collective and altogether holy name.

  The convent rose from the mist on the plane like an ancient fortress that had turned its back on the world and its ways. Its wooden door, faced by grillwork, opened to reveal a wizened, apple-cheeked woman in a severe grey habit and wimple. She was small and round and she gazed up at Marguerite from bright blue eyes, her forehead crinkling in friendly interrogation.

  ‘I am Marguerite de Landois.’

  The interrogation didn’t leave the woman’s face.

  ‘The Reverend Mother has given permission for me to make a brief retreat behind your walls.’

  ‘Oh. I see. Come in, my dear. But I’m afraid no one’s told me anything about it. Nothing at all. And the Reverend Mother and the holy sisters are at prayer now. You’ve come in the back door, you know.’ She took Marguerite’s bag and scrutinised her with sudden canniness. ‘Never you mind. You can stay out here with me. I’ve been tending the grounds. That’s why I heard you ring. But no one told me. No one told me to expect you. They don’t ever tell me much.’

  They were in a tidy, formal garden, backing on to the grey stone of the convent. Even from here, the structure looked uninhabited, the restricted windows blinded by shutters. The garden was more appealing, its pebbled lanes edged with evergreen shrubs. Everything was preternaturally quiet.

  In front of them, at the end of one of the garden’s lanes, stood a grotto, its sides overgrown with vine. A niche at its centre held a painted statue of the Virgin Mary, all blue and gold and with a pretty, girlish face. Beneath her, on the ground, a fountain bubbled water. For a moment she was reminded of the alcove of a shrine in Napoléon Marchand’s house. It seemed more likely that she had stepped into a recreation of the scene at Lourdes. Had a local shepherdess or milkmaid experienced visions here, too?

  A magpie startled her, thrashing brilliant wings as it flew from the grotto. The sister laughed, and began chatting in a manner that completely belied the inhospitable air of the buildings.

  ‘I’m responsible for the gardens. A lowly occupation. But it suits me. Not all that busy this time of year, except through here. Always things to do in here. Next month, I’ll be in the kitchen garden.’

  They had passed through a gate, beside which she had deposited Marguerite’s bag. Marguerite was startled to find herself in a cemetery, overcrowded with tombstones, inscribed wall plaques and an assortment of crosses, many of them plain and wooden. The sister knelt down beside a tiny, freshly dug-over grave. A bucket stood to her side. She lifted bulbs and prodded them into the soft, turned ground, patting the earth above them flat with the heel of her broad hand.

  ‘Poor little mite. Didn’t have much of a chance. Almost dead by the time he came to us. So many of them are. We baptise them as soon as they arrive, of course.’ She looked around her at the jumble of graves with their unadorned markers, then turned to dart a quick look at Marguerite’s waist. ‘I’m so sorry, so sorry.’ She crossed herself quickly. ‘Still … He’s with Jesus now. And the ones who are born here fare better. Really.’

  She tried a reassuring smile that didn’t quite work, and it was only then that Marguerite took in exactly what she was saying.

  She flushed a little. Didn’t quite know how to disabuse the sister, who must be a lay sister, she now thought. But it didn’t really matter that the woman might think she had come here to hide a pregnancy. She lowered her voice. ‘I believe you had a young woman here called Louise Limbour.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, Madame. I can’t know. Everyone’s given new names when they come here. Our special saints’ names. For the day we arrive. As if we were baptised again. At that very moment. The Reverend Mother insists. That way there’s never any problem about gossip or … but weren’t you told?’

  The old woman was suddenly in some confusion. She raised herself a little unsteadily from knees that had started to ache.

  ‘Let me help you.’ Marguerite took her arm. ‘No, I wasn’t told. But I won’t be staying all that long, so perhaps there’s no need.’

  ‘I see, my dear. I see. I wasn’t sure. But I thought you might be one of the … one of the poor mothers. They often come through the back door. Well, then…’ She smiled and
bent again to pick up her bucket and small spade. ‘Let’s walk back. They’ll be out of chapel soon.’

  ‘It’s wise of the Reverend Mother,’ Marguerite offered.

  ‘Yes. Yes. She’s a wise woman. She herself took the name of Saint Helena. Her feast day is on 18 August. Saint Helena was Constantine’s mother. She built churches, you know. And she’s the patron saint of divorces and difficult marriages. Are you married, my dear?’

  She searched Marguerite’s gloved hand for evidence of a ring.

  Marguerite nodded hastily. There was a simplicity to the woman, yet she cut to the quick.

  ‘Perhaps you’ve come to the right place.’

  ‘Perhaps. And you. When did you first come to the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin?’

  The woman chuckled. ‘Longer ago than you were born, I imagine. I came with the Reverend Mother. She wasn’t a Reverend Mother then, of course. Oh no. But she was always clever. And she’s made a difference to this place. It’s grown. Flourished. Yes, she’s made real changes.’

  The old features grew blurred. There was a tremor in the apple cheek. It made the papery wrinkles prominent. ‘I didn’t have the real vocation. I talk far too much. But there’s a lot I can do for them. There they are. Look. I’ll take you to the Reverend Mother.’ She darted ahead of Marguerite, as if the sight of her superior were a signal to quell words.

  Bells had started to ring. Coming out of the chapel with its two courtyard buttresses was a double file of women. They were all in grey. They walked to a common rhythm, slow, contemplative, the large crosses over their bosoms swinging. Their eyes were lowered to the ground. Their hands were clasped in front of them. There was no chatting or stray movement. Whatever personal nightmares or doubts might plague them, for now they were as one, almost emanations of the church from which they streamed. Only their headdresses differed. It was hard to say precisely how from this distance, but the youngest seemed to be wearing pure white.

  The dim, austere corridors with their rounded arches had swallowed them by the time Marguerite and her guide came in. The gloom stretched into an unpeopled infinity. They walked briskly, their shoes echoing on stone, disturbing the hush. A loggia overlooking an inner courtyard brought light and then there was a turn, another corridor, and the sister stopped. With a little sigh, she knocked at a door.