‘Missed a bit!’ Shauna yelled, then said, ‘Oh, hang on, that’s me.’ Kneeling, she used her shears on a straggle of grass, then ran to catch up with Laurent. Some twenty rows later, they stopped for water and melon. Shauna lay back with her head on her rucksack.
‘You can retire if you like.’ Laurent flung his melon peel over his shoulder. He’d taken off his top and his nut-brown torso gleamed wet – using bottled water, he’d sluiced off the copper sulphate residue that the machine had stirred up. When he leaned forward to smack a horsefly on his ankle, Shauna saw that his shoulder blades were flecked with grass cuttings.
‘What about you?’ Her voice made an involuntary key-change. ‘Will you take a break?’
‘No chance. Look up.’
She did, at a sky dappled with greyish clouds. ‘Altocumulus,’ she said. ‘Isabelle said there was thunder in the air. She’s gone to bed with a pressure headache.’
‘I doubt that’s the only reason.’ Laurent squinted upward. ‘She’s right though. Storm later, though probably not till after dark. Nico will get his ride.’
‘I’ll help you finish off here.’
‘I appreciate it, Shauna. Nico, are you fit to go on?’
‘When may I go on the tractor?’
‘For the last ten rows. Shauna, do you want to try driving?’
Her leg muscles felt like sponge, but having talked up her rough terrain skills, she answered, ‘Definitely.’
Three times she stalled the tractor. ‘Hard down on the clutch,’ Laurent instructed. ‘Go off in first gear, never mind the noise it makes, then into second gear, but don’t come too fast off the clutch.’
On the fourth attempt she got it. ‘Slowly, keep a consistent speed and whatever else you do, drive straight!’ Laurent bawled at her. He kept alongside for a while, then dropped back and she was on her own. Her hat disappeared over the back of the tractor. She made it to the top of the row of vines with all the concentration of a child riding her first bicycle. She swung around the headland at the top of the avenue and headed down the one beside it, laughing with the joy of mastering a new art. Laurent let her complete four rows before waving her to a stop. ‘Bravo!’ he congratulated as she put the tractor in neutral and turned off the engine. Her whole body was shaking with the effort of controlling pedals and steering, and her ears were booming. He held out his hand to help her as she stepped unsteadily onto the grass. For a second or two, he held her and lightly kissed the top of her head.
‘Go find your hat. I’ll finish off because I go faster and I want to take my labourers to lunch. With luck, we can eat and go for a ride before the storm breaks.’
Half an hour later, they crammed in to the red 2CV. Laurent drove them to a pizzeria in Garzenac whose wood-fired oven produced the biggest, most loaded pizzas Shauna had ever seen. They shared two, and a generous salad. Laurent ordered Coke for Nico and two glasses of red wine for them, saying, ‘This is a neighbour’s Cabernet Franc. It only just missed being given its appellation d’origine contrôlée. They can’t export it, so we get to drink it here.’
‘Do you export yours?’
‘Last year, I sent thirty thousand litres of red and nearly as much white overseas, mostly to Britain, Germany, Japan and Hong Kong. For many years, before I took over, our whole vendange would go to a local cooperative to make blended Pays de Bergerac wine.’
‘Now you press it at the château?’
‘Yes. Vinify it, bottle it and market it too. It’s hard work and so much can go wrong. But I wanted to take Chemignac back to its time of greatest pride, back to the nineteen-twenties when we had a run of superb vintages. Before the war changed our family’s fortunes. Not everyone approved of my ambitions.’
‘But you’re stubborn.’
‘I prefer “focussed”. The best way around obstacles is to look beyond them.’
Albert is an obstacle, she conjectured. Bitter over the mistakes that lost him his birthright.
Laurent’s expression turned serious, suggesting he was about to confide something close to his heart. ‘I want to move towards producing wine sustainably. It is the future, I think.’
‘You’re going organic?’
‘Écolo!’ Nico crowed derisively, helping himself to more pizza. ‘Granola.’
‘He’s calling me a granola cruncher,’ Laurent said in English. Shauna had not really noticed before, but he spoke English with an American inflection. ‘A muesli eater. In England, is that what you call people like me?’
She laughed. ‘Not these days. Muesli’s gone mainstream. “Tree-hugger” is a good translation, though I’ve never understood why it should be an insult. I’ve wanted to hug more trees than people.’
He held her gaze. ‘Then it would be frustrating to meet you in the forest.’ Raising his glass, he gave her a silent toast, then turned to Nico, asking in French, ‘Did you understand any of that?’
‘Most of it,’ Nico answered. ‘You fancy her. I’ve already told her.’
Back at Chemignac, after parking in the stable yard, Laurent invited Shauna to ride out with them.
When she told him she hadn’t been on horseback in ten years, he said, ‘I’ve a good-natured mare trained to take all levels of rider. We’ll take it steady.’
She was tempted, but Nico’s face told her that he, at least, hoped for a fast ride and that her presence was not in his plan. ‘I’d love to another time, Laurent. I’m going to rest, then maybe take a walk in your woods. Not to hug trees,’ she said, spoiling the effect by blushing. ‘To explore. Turn over a few stones.’
‘Wear proper shoes,’ he told her. ‘And socks, because we have snakes, though you’re unlikely to see one. Follow the paths and keep the château in sight at all times. As you discovered before, it’s easy to wander off at a tangent.’ He looked up, frowning. ‘Better get on with it. The weather’s thickening up.’
After a shower, Shauna changed into a short, sleeveless dress of printed cotton, tied a shirt round her waist, then dug out the trainers she’d brought with her as a last-minute addition. As she was rooting out a pair of Olive’s tennis socks from the laundry room, she heard the muttering of radio commentary and followed the sound to the kitchen. Isabelle must have risen and she might be wondering where her grandson was. The kitchen was empty, but the table was piled with linen napkins, all of the same deep violet shade. There was a bundle on the ironing board. She smoothed one out and saw the embroidered initials, ‘H & M-L de C’.
Henri and Marie-Louise de Chemignac, Isabelle’s parents. The same initials were carved over the gatehouse, with the date of 1931, marking their marriage. ‘My mother came from church in a carriage drawn by white horses,’ Isabelle had told her. ‘My grandmother paid a mason to entwine their names in stone, because she had arranged the marriage. Liked to remind them of it, I suppose!’
These napkins were probably part of a trousseau, the table linen and sheets a bride brought to her new home. Painstakingly fashioned, stored lovingly, to be fished out every now and again and doused in insect-repellent… The air smelled of lavender and that familiar patchouli. Embroidered beneath the napkin’s cypher was a thorn twig, identical to Laurent’s tattoo, which really was no surprise. He was Laurent de Chemignac, after all. But what about this coincidence? She tugged at her dress, contorting to examine her own tattoo. A sprig of blackthorn, Prunus Spinosa, three spines each side. Or, if you wished to be mystical, it was the straif of Irish legend, symbol of war, strife and – so her mother had assured her – eventual victory. She’d had it inked below her shoulder on her twenty-first birthday, in memory of her dad. He’d worn the same symbol on the back of his hand. His had been blue-black like the sloe berry, the fruit of the blackthorn.
‘Isabelle?’ Shauna called. The ironing board was fixed at a low height, suggesting Isabelle had done her ironing seated. On the floor, the kitchen calendar lay discarded. Today’s date, July 13th, was ringed in black, an aggressive ‘X’ striking it out. Disturbed, Shauna went up to Isabelle’s
room and put her ear to the door. She wasn’t sure if she could hear breathing or not, but felt she didn’t know her hostess well enough to poke her head inside and check.
Instead, Shauna dashed off a note.
Nico with Laurent, I’m out for a short walk, will be back in an hour or so. Hope you’re feeling better. Happy to prepare supper – let me know.
For a change, she went out by the front door, threading through rose bushes to the moat. There, a narrow footbridge led to the meadows. Shauna crossed them, making for the woods. A saffron sky was streaked with violet-grey. Beautiful but ominous – as was a distant rumble of thunder.
She’d gone a little distance when something made her look back at the château. The doves were on the wing again and she wondered if they sensed the oncoming storm. Interesting… The window on this side of the tower glowed yellow but she couldn’t tell whether there was electric light behind it or the glass was reflecting the sinking sun.
She became aware of a figure in the window, a slight, dark shape, seeming to stare down at her. Whoever it was must have taken down the oil painting that hung over that window, otherwise they wouldn’t be visible. It certainly wasn’t Albert. Nor Isabelle, who had several times insisted that she never went up into the tower these days. The figure was too insubstantial to be Rachel, and Olive wasn’t due back from her friend’s house until nightfall. Nico was riding with Laurent. So who was it? Forgetting everything she’d ever said about superstition and apparitions being the failure of logic, Shauna turned her back on the tower and ran towards the woods.
Chapter Nine
On the 13th July 1943, on this spot, these men of Chemignac fell, murdered by German Gestapo agents. Michel Paulin, Luc Roland, Henri de Chemignac. Murdered alongside them were men of the British SOE, Maurice Barnsley and George Sturridge. Their resistance furthered the cause of liberty and freedom.
A mason had inscribed these words on a boulder the colour of the nearby crags. It was a primitive-looking memorial, one face cut smooth. At its base lay a bunch of roses and vine leaves.
Ignoring Laurent’s advice, Shauna had left the main track, enticed by a splash of colour shining through the greens of walnut trees and holm oaks. She’d emerged into a broad clearing and discovered maize growing tall among patches of blue-flowered chicory. It was the silken tassels of the maize bathed in quirky, evening light that had caught her eye. That was when she’d seen the boulder at the clearing’s heart. She re-read the inscription, her heart picking up speed. Isabelle’s father, Henri, had died during the last war, but Isabelle hadn’t explained how. Shauna had simply assumed that he’d been killed at sea or fighting in a regiment.
Executed for fighting with the Resistance. Here, on this spot, five men. Five clean shots or a bloody massacre? Oh my God… The date sunk in. Today was July 13th, exactly sixty years since the atrocity. Now she understood the mark on Isabelle’s calendar. And maybe Isabelle’s migraine? Shauna crouched, reading the card attached to the rose bouquet. It read simply, ‘Jamais oublier, jamais pardoner’:
Never forget, never forgive
A head broke off a rose. She put it back with the others but it rolled free, so rather than leave it she buried it in the neck of her dress.
Then she cried. Not gentle tears, but tearing sobs. She then sat down on the ground, against the stone, losing sense of time until, roused by a blue flash overhead, she realised that the storm had struck.
In her hospital bed in Dakenfield, a patient plucked at the cannula taped to her left hand. A nurse tried to calm her.
‘You must keep your drip in, Miss Thorne.’
‘No – I have to go and find him or it’ll be too late to tell him I’m sorry.’
They upped her morphine.
The first crash of thunder split open the sky, releasing a violent downpour. Within seconds, Shauna was drenched. It was dark; nature was in turmoil. The wind in the branches sounded like an express train blasting through a tunnel full of dried peas. She struggled to find the path home. Perhaps wouldn’t have seen it at all had it not been for periodic flashes of lightning.
Thankfully, the storm was brief. By the time Shauna was walking towards a chink of twilight that promised a way out of the trees, a lull had descended. She felt clammy and miserable. Her dress was sticking to her. At some point, she’d lost the shirt she’d tied round her middle. Her trainers and Olive’s socks were mustard-brown because the paths had turned into alleys of mud. She trod on one of her laces, tripping and falling as a pale shape filled the void between the trees. It was an outline stolen from myth. A woodcut of a knight, broad-shouldered and with a tapering waist, astride a horse that seemed to be made of moon-mist. It was coming closer, the picking of heavy hooves and the rhythmic percussion of breath proving it to be no vision.
‘Shauna, is that you?’ The voice was gravelly with exasperation, and she quailed, ashamed of being so easily overwrought, of getting lost again.
‘Laurent! I found something…’ She scrambled to her feet as he rode up alongside her. His face, glistening with rain, doused her desire to share her discovery. To avoid his eye and hold off whatever rebuke was coming her way, she leaned against the horse’s shoulder. The muscular flanks were heated and heaving. Laurent must have pushed quite hard to get here. As for Laurent, though he held the reins slackly, there was tension in his hands. His fingers opened and closed on the leather. She wondered if the storm had rattled him – or was it the sight of her in a bedraggled dress? ‘I would have found my way back eventually.’
‘You went off the path, yes? You ignored my warning?’
‘Not really.’ Yes, really. ‘It got dark on me, and then the rain came down and I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.’ It struck her then that he was alone. ‘Where’s Nico?’
‘Home, ages ago. I called on Isabelle to check you were all right, and found her in a bad state. Linen napkins all over the floor, as though the storm had blown through the house—’
‘Why were they on the floor?’
He didn’t answer that. ‘She was convinced you’d been struck by lightning. In your note, you told her you were going for a short walk, that you’d be back to help with supper. When you didn’t arrive, she was terrified some harm had come to you. It wasn’t fair to put her through that.’
He was right. ‘I’m sorry. Time got away from me, but it was thoughtless. Laurent, I saw something—’
‘Today is a difficult enough day for her.’
‘I know. I found a stone—’
But he wasn’t going to let her say it. ‘I went back to the stables and got Héron and told Isabelle I’d find you even if it took all night.’ His voice cracked, betraying something more human than plain anger. ‘You climbed the tower without permission, you stray into the woods – I can’t look after you all of the time. If you won’t take care of yourself, you should leave Chemignac before it’s too late.’
‘Too late for what?’
He put a hand on her shoulder. Not a gentle touch. A constraining grip, as if he feared she might walk off. ‘Can you get up behind me?’
‘Not really.’ The horse towered over her, easily sixteen hands.
He made the horse sidestep, and swung off its back. ‘Hitch your dress up.’ When she made no move, he put his hands on her waist. ‘Let me lift you. Don’t be afraid. Héron won’t go anywhere.’
In the end, she bunched her dress around her waist, wishing she’d at least worn shorts and not cotton briefs, and let him lift her onto the broad back. There was no saddle, for which she was glad.
Laurent led Héron to a tree stump suitable as a mounting block and clambered up behind her. They rode out of the woods together at a trot, water splashing up as far as Shauna’s waist. She gripped Héron’s thick mane, glad of the honed body behind her. At the same time, trying not to merge with it. Once in open meadow, when the horse broke into a canter, she was glad of Laurent’s arms around her. Years hunched over books and computer screens had weakened her core muscles.
‘Doing my best.’ For such a sturdy creature, Héron was surprisingly smooth-gaited and she soon got the rhythm, letting go of the shocks of the day. Later, she’d make Laurent tell her about the memorial stone and the circumstances of his grandfather’s death. But she wouldn’t mention the wraith at the tower window. It would be humiliating to be told she was nuts and even more terrifying to be taken seriously.
Security lights came on as they trotted into the stable yard. The tabby cat padded out from one of the barns while horses neighed and called to them from some distance away.
‘Are they out in the paddocks? The other horses, I mean?’ Shauna was gabbling to divert Laurent’s attention from her legs, which looked luminous under their spattering of mud.
‘Yes, now the storm’s passed. Anyway, they don’t mind weather, they’re hardy Camargues and Boulonnais.’ He dismounted and Shauna slithered into his arms, apologising for her filthy state, for leaving streaks on Héron’s flanks.
‘Did you roll down a slope?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘The paths were like soggy cake.’ She wriggled her dress down.
‘Our summer storms are violent. Tomorrow, I’ll worry about mildew.’ A gruff note in his voice suggested he was conscious of speaking roughly to her before. He kept Héron’s reins in one hand, his free arm around Shauna. She went completely still, wondering what was coming next. Another telling-off, more warnings? Or the same polite withdrawal that she’d experienced from him before? She wasn’t sure she could take another confrontation. When he was angry, he was irresistible.
‘What is this?’ He took the broken rose from the front of her dress. She’d forgotten about it – it must have worked its way out of her cleavage as she rode home. ‘Stealing from my garden?’
‘I… No… I mean…’ She hated anyone thinking she was underhand.
A Gown of Thorns: A Gripping Novel of Romance, Intrigue and the Secrets of a Vintage Parisian Dress Page 7