Death Is the Cure

by Slade, Nicola

  She took the blue velvet bundle out of the bag, untied the cord and placed the beautiful little locket, still in its wrapping, carefully upon his knee.

  ‘I suspect … that is I have come to believe that this should be in your keeping, M. de Kersac,’ she told him quietly and watched as, almost fearfully, the old man folded back the cloth covering, his hands – slightly gnarled with rheumatism – shaking a little as he did so.

  She observed him closely as he opened the locket and looked down at the tiny portraits and she was aware of a long shuddering sigh that shook his frail body. He reached out a finger and touched the face of the young woman whose white powdered hair was piled high and adorned with ostrich plumes and strands of pearls. Through a mist of tears Charlotte was aware that the old man’s pale-blue eyes, also glistening, were just the same as the eyes of the woman whose portrait he held so reverently.

  Not a word was spoken and she reached over and pointed to the other miniature, that of the small boy staring out from the painted ivory. Did he have a haunted look about him? A sense that his life would not, in any way, resemble the life his parents had mapped out for him? Hindsight, she told herself, knowing as she did the suffering the little boy had endured. The tears fell then, hotly splashing on her hand and she hurriedly fished a handkerchief out of her bag.

  Still the old man said nothing but continued to sit there holding the exquisite little portraits of Queen Marie Antoinette and her son in a tender clasp, but when Charlotte, much moved, tucked her hand tentatively but gently into his arm, she was aware of a slight relaxation of tension in the body held so rigidly upright.

  Time was passing and Charlotte was aware that Elaine and Jackson would soon be expecting her to join them for the short ride to the railway station. If I am to say these things, she faltered, then I must say them now, or hold my peace for the rest of my life.

  She released his arm and rose quietly, and stationed herself in front of him, first making sure that there were no passers-by, or guests from Waterloo House in the vicinity. There must be no prying, watching eyes for this moment. She took a deep breath and as he looked up at her with startled eyes, dragged from his reverie, she sank in a deep, reverent curtsy.

  ‘Monseigneur,’ was all she said.

  He leaped to his feet with the speed and agility of a much younger man, the two miniatures still clutched in his left hand.

  ‘No, my child,’ he exclaimed, his voice roughened by emotion. ‘No, not that, never that, I beg of you,’ and he took her hand and raised her up.

  Charlotte let out a long, quavering sigh. So it was true. She resumed her seat beside him, still retaining the clasp of her hand in his. Their eyes met and their cheeks were wet with tears. He tried to speak, not once but twice, but the words would not come and she reached out and took both his hands, still holding tightly to his treasure, and clasped them in her own, the tiny pictures cradled gently between them.

  ‘You have my word,’ she told him, on a half sob. ‘You know that I will never, ever, tell anyone about this. Not a single soul.’

  At that he abandoned the attempt to restrain his emotion and let the difficult tears of old age trickle down his cheeks. But only for a moment, and as he began to search in his pocket, Charlotte mutely held out her own handkerchief.

  ‘So,’ he said presently. ‘So here we are.’ He put his arm round her and for a moment she leaned her head against his shoulder. She was reluctant to break the companionable silence that lay between them but there was something else she must mention so she screwed up her courage and turned to him.

  ‘Mon … I beg your pardon, M. de Kersac,’ she began, correcting herself even as he raised an elegant eyebrow at her. ‘There is something I must tell you. Something of the utmost seriousness.’

  She hesitated for so long that he prompted her.

  ‘Then you had better tell me, ma chère.’ He encouraged her with a faint smile and, as she met his eyes, she understood that he knew very well what she had discovered and what it was she had to tell him.

  ‘Mr Jonas Tibbins,’ she said haltingly. ‘I don’t know if he said anything to you, but I must tell you, sir, that I believe he had been commissioned to discover you. He was a detective and he told me that his quarry, as he put it, was known to be visiting Waterloo House at this time. I believe he knew who you were.’

  She took his hand in hers once more and turned a face brimming with questions to him.

  ‘You know … you have my word though I do not believe you ever required it … that I will never speak of this.’ She indicated the locket, now folded into a neat velvet parcel on his knee, with a hand laid gently over it as though he could not bear to relinquish his touch. Her eyes glowed with love for him, along with a dancing mischief. ‘But my dear, dear sir, you know that if you could bear to tell me about it, I should be so much interested.’

  He was smiling at her too. ‘What is it that the English say? There is a proverb, is there not? Something about curiosity killing the cat?’ Their eyes met again and he nodded, the amusement dying away. ‘Tell me, dear Charlotte, what is your own reasoning? You who have so cleverly deduced so much that was previously impenetrable? Why do you believe that Mr Tibbins was searching for a ghost? An old man who matters only to a few people in a tiny far away corner of the world?’

  She looked away, towards the hills just visible between the houses opposite. ‘That last morning,’ she said slowly, choosing her words with care, ‘at breakfast when Mr Tibbins had, if you recall, secreted one of his unsettling little notes to you and to some of the other residents at the house. I saw the word, Monseigneur and thought, for a while, that it meant you were a renegade cardinal.…’

  His head jerked up sharply and he gave her an incredulous look and she shrugged. ‘I know how foolish that sounds now and I soon abandoned that idea, but then I recalled that Mr Tibbins had said something about exile. I remember now. It was the night before, when Lady Buckwell was so scathing about exiled royalty and you made some remark to her about not trespassing on her goodwill.’

  He nodded but waited in silence while she gathered her thoughts. ‘Yes,’ she said, remembering the detective’s voice, half mocking, half serious. ‘He said something about us all being exiles here at Waterloo House and he quoted the words of Psalm 137: ‘By the rivers of Babylon … we wept as we remembered Zion.’ And then he looked round at us all and – I believe he said – “What is it that we think of when we remember Zion?” And he looked straight at you, monsieur.’

  His continuing silence was a little unnerving, but she was too much in earnest to back away now. ‘I think that Mr Tibbins’s clients must be members of some secret society dedicated to the removal of any remnants of the Ancien Régime. Fanatical Jacobins, perhaps? Or their descendants, they would surely be too young to have been sans-culottes themselves but perhaps there was a family tradition?’

  He interrupted her then with an abrupt shake of his head. ‘No, you deserve an explanation, my dear, but it is not easy for me to explain.’ He faltered a little then gathered confidence. ‘You are partly correct in your assumption; there is indeed a secret society, but they are not rabid revolutionaries. Far from it, though had Mr Tibbins’s employers succeeded in their ambition, the result would have resounded upon the world stage and could have precipitated yet more decades of revolution and war.’

  He cleared his throat then took her hand, looking away towards the trees. ‘What they desire more than anything else, is the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. The true monarchy. They wish, either by peaceful methods or, if necessary, by force of arms, to remove from the throne of France its current incumbent, the Emperor Napoleon the Third and his empress, the beautiful Eugénie. And in their place it is proposed to reinstate the rightful king of France, son of King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette, the Lost Dauphin, in fact. King Louis the Seventeenth.’

  His head was bent and silence fell between them for a few moments, then he continued, ‘I do not know the name of Mr Tibbins’s
client, but he and his fellow conspirators had learned, from what exact source I cannot even begin to guess, that the young Dauphin did not die in the Temple Prison as was reported at the time, but that his gaolers, Simon and his wife, were bribed most heavily, to smuggle out the child and to put in his place a child from the slums; a child of a similar age and appearance who was already far gone with consumption. That child was given shelter and food and rough kindness until his death, far more so than he would have received in the gutter where he was discovered.’

  The sad, quiet voice tailed away and he sighed. ‘At least … that is what I was told later, much later, when I was in a condition to ask. Was it the truth?’ He shrugged and his eyes were bleak. ‘Who can tell at this distance? One can only pray that it was so. As for the other child, known to his gaolers as Louis Capet, he fell into so severe a fever that his life was despaired of and he was conveyed, by a roundabout route, to a small fortified manor house in a remote corner of Finistère, far away in the west of Brittany. There he was brought up as the acknowledged child of the elderly Count de Kersac who was said to have married unsuitably, thus explaining the previous silence regarding the child’s existence.’

  ‘They wanted you to take the throne?’ Charlotte whispered. ‘But what did Armel think of that? Did he know?’ She was aghast at the thought of Armel de Kersac, forced to leave forever the manoir and the farm and his beloved fairy stones. ‘And Marianne too? Oh no, not the child, she would be destroyed …’ She read the answer in his eyes. ‘He doesn’t know, does he? Armel – you haven’t told him? And Marianne? Her full name … it is Marie Antoinette, is it not?’

  ‘Of course,’ he spoke simply. ‘She is the image of my mother as I believe you deduced when you came upon the miniature. And as, indeed, I suspect the detective recognized also. No, my dear, I have not told Armel. In fact, I never even told my wife, but I have written down my story for him to read after my death.’ A wry smile twisted his mouth. ‘My dear wife was always curious as to why I laughed at the suggestion that the old Breton name was a variant of Arthur, the ‘once and future king’. It afforded me some satisfaction that Armel should have such a name for at that time I had no intention of ever revealing my life story to anyone.’

  ‘Mr Tibbins spoke to you, I believe. Did he not explain how he had tracked you down?’ Charlotte ventured to ask. ‘He had the locket, I know, but the likeness is surely not enough.’

  ‘He hinted merely, but there have always been rumours in monarchist circles.’ He shrugged. ‘Some of them were founded upon nothing but wishful thinking, but there is no such thing as a complete secret. The details were not generally known but money talks always and hints were dropped. It was necessary that not one whisper of my whereabouts should reach anyone, royalist or revolutionary alike, and to that end my prolonged illness was a blessing in disguise. A sick, possibly dying child, dressed as a girl as an added disguise, could be moved from house to house, village to village and I bore no resemblance to that little boy in this picture.’ He touched the bundle with a gentle finger. ‘I was gaunt, almost skeletal I believe, though I have no recollection of that time. By the time I was rational again I was Louis, the acknowledged but, probably, natural son of the Count de Kersac in a spot so remote that nobody ever raised a weapon in anger.

  ‘It was not only the sans-culottes who were a threat to me, you know.’ He spoke at first in a conversational tone, rising to anger. ‘My foster father was informed, many months later, that there was a known plot to kill me; a plot that emanated from followers in the train of my uncle, he who was known as Philippe l’Égalité, champion of the masses, and traitor to his family, God rot his filthy soul.’

  His passion startled her; he had seemed so quiet, so resigned as he told her his story. He shook his head and gave her an apologetic smile.

  ‘Forgive me, dear Charlotte, what am I thinking of? So heated and yet so long ago.’ They fell into a gentle conversation in which she told him something of her own history until a shout from across the road alerted them. ‘Ah, it is time. And so we must take our leave, but first I must confess to you. I am not a violent man, I have seen too much of death, but I am wholeheartedly grateful to whoever murdered that detective. I think I might have been able to kill him myself, to save Armel and Marianne, but I shall be eternally grateful that I did not have to take that step.’

  She was too startled to respond by more than an upward glance. Should she mention her suspicions as to the perpetrator of that murder? But no, she had made a vow to herself to keep silent on that subject, and she would not break her word, even to him. I could set his mind at rest a little, she thought, and related Lady Buckwell’s conversation with Mr Tibbins’s henchman. He nodded sagely, but said nothing, so they rose to their feet and walked slowly towards the group at the door of Waterloo House, her hand once more tucked into his arm and his own hand, the one not holding his household gods, stroking her fingers with a light caress.

  ‘I am very sorry for Armel,’ he told her again, ‘but I knew all along you were not for him. But I will say this, my dearest girl, if I were forty or even thirty years younger I tell you I myself would have proposed marriage to you with all my heart.’

  The mischief in his pale eyes struck an answering light in her own hazel ones. ‘If that had been the case, dearest M. de Kersac,’ she said lightly, ‘I should most certainly have accepted.’

  He was surprised into a look of pleasure and he smiled even more warmly. ‘I am only seventy-three,’ he informed her with a shrug and another smile at his own involuntary vanity. ‘Even now I—’

  ‘Excuse me, sir.’ It was Jackson, bobbing a curtsy to the gentleman and turning to Charlotte. ‘Mrs Knightley is ready in the carriage, Miss Char – Mrs Richmond I should say, and you have precious little time in hand when it comes to catching that train.’

  Charlotte had reached the carriage by now and she nodded a greeting to Elaine while holding out her hand to this collection of people who, while perhaps she could not call them all friends, were certainly now more than mere acquaintances. To Mr Chettle and Dora Benson she spoke a brief farewell with a promise of a meeting in Hampshire very soon, while some commonplace politeness was all that was required for Captain Penbury and his droopy bride-to-be, who would return to Finchbourne in a day or so, along with Mr Chettle and Dora.

  Lady Buckwell (Aunt Becky indeed!) took her hand, bestowed a kiss on Charlotte’s cheek, to the manifest astonishment of the assembled company, and smiled, merely saying, ‘I will write to you, my dear, and you must do the same to me. I will not lose you too.’ Then the lady turned on her heel, perhaps overcome by an unaccustomed and uncharacteristic rush of sentiment, and trod briskly up the steps and into the house.

  And so she came to the de Kersac family and her heart swelled with love and sorrow as she held out her arms to the small Marianne and mopped up her tears. She held out her hand to Armel de Kersac but her voice shook too much for coherent speech. Finally she was clasped in a warm embrace by the old man and for a moment they were alone, the rest of the group having moved away a little.

  ‘My child.’ His eyes were filled with compassion as he looked at her. ‘There is something I need to say to you, I forgot it earlier when we were … otherwise occupied.’ She gazed at him in surprise, her eyes wet with tears. ‘I believe I know something that troubles you, even now.’ He hushed her exclamation. ‘No, say nothing. If I am correct I suspect that you torment yourself daily with guilt, the guilt of having survived when your loved ones have died. Is that not so?’

  Her astonished gasp was answer enough. ‘I thought so. Indeed I spoke more truly than I knew at our first meeting, when I told you we were akin.’ He took her hand once more. ‘We live by the same rules: trust no one, watch your words, be always on your guard, but more than that, what we both crave is forgiveness, absolution perhaps, redemption if you prefer, for the unwitting sin that we committed in our youth. That of living when all that we held dear was gone before and left us with our grief a
nd guilt. But you must let them go, my child, and live for yourself now.’

  ‘Oh.’ She could say no more and he gave her another fatherly kiss on the cheek followed by a low and courtly bow as he kissed her hand with great elegance. Then he pushed her gently towards the carriage. ‘You may tell la princesse lointaine everything we have discussed,’ he told her, surprising her greatly. ‘She will never mention it and indeed, I think she will have little time to do so. But she is a great lady and you will need to talk to someone. She is the most fitting person.’

  He nodded at her incredulous glance and bowed regally to Elaine who was watching them with considerable interest, but she made no remark, either in the bustle that ensued, nor once they had boarded the train. Only when they were a bare half hour from Salisbury did she allow her curiosity to overcome her tactful silence.

  ‘You have made a most interesting friend, have you not, dearest Char? In the person of that charming elderly Breton gentleman?’

  Charlotte took a sharp breath as she recalled M. de Kersac’s words, spoken with gentle melancholy, about Elaine, the princesse lointaine, as he had christened her, who would never tell his secrets or indeed have time to do so. A shiver ran down her spine but Elaine was looking at her with lively curiosity written all over her delicately beautiful face, so Charlotte moved across to sit beside her friend. She gave a very brief, almost curt explanation of the passions and secrets stirred up by the American detective among the residents of Waterloo House and then startled Elaine even further by disclosing the sad and strange history of the Lost Dauphin of France.

  ‘My dear Charlotte,’ Elaine exclaimed when Charlotte’s voice tailed away. ‘If I did not know you to be an exceedingly sensible young woman, not in the least given to flights of fancy, I should think you to be planning to write a Gothic romance! But I see that you are in earnest and that all these events happened right under my nose while I sizzled gently in young Mr Radnor’s electrical baths. And although you have not asked it of me, I do assure you that this will remain between us. Your kingly admirer was right to perceive no threat from me.’