CHAPTER 101
SUNDAY 11TH NOVEMBER
Eleven days later, Meredith stood on the promontory overlooking the lake, watching as a small wooden casket was lowered into the ground.
It was a small party. Herself and Hal, now the legal owner of the Domaine de la Cade, together with Shelagh O’Donnell, still bearing the evidence of Julian’s attack on her. There was also the local priest and a representative from the Mairie. After some persuasion, the town hall had given permission for the service to go ahead on the grounds that the site could be identified as the place where Anatole and Isolde Vernier were buried. Julian Lawrence had plundered the graves, but not disturbed the bones.
Now, after more than a hundred years, Léonie could finally be laid to rest beside the bodies of her beloved brother and his wife.
Emotion caught in Meredith’s throat.
In the hours after Julian’s death, Léonie’s remains had been unearthed in a shallow grave beneath the ruins of the sepulchre. It looked, almost, as if she had simply lain down on the ground to rest. No one could account for the fact she had not been found before, given the extensive excavations that had been carried out on the site. Nor why her bones had not been scattered in all that time by wild animals.
But Meredith had stood at the foot of the grave and seen how the colours of the earth beneath Léonie’s sleeping body, the copper hues of the leaves above her and the faded fragments of material that still clothed her body and kept her warm, matched the illustration on one of the Tarot cards. Not the replica deck, but the original. Card VIII: La Force. And, for an instant, Meredith imagined she saw the echo of tears upon her cold cheek.
Earth, air, fire, water.
Caught up in the formalities and endless French red tape, it had so far been impossible to find out precisely what had happened to Léonie on the night of 31st October 1897. There had been a fire at the Domaine de la Cade, that much was on record. It had broken out around dusk and, in the course of a few hours, destroyed part of the main house. The library and the study were the worst damaged. There was also evidence that the fire had been started deliberately.
The following morning, All Saints’ Day, several bodies were recovered from the smouldering ruins, servants who – it was presumed – had found themselves trapped by the flames. And there were other victims, men who didn’t work on the estate, from Rennes-les-Bains itself.
It was not clear why Léonie Vernier had chosen – or been forced – to remain behind when other inhabitants of the Domaine de la Cade, her nephew Louis-Anatole among them, fled. There was also no explanation of why the fire had spread so far, so fast, and destroyed the sepulchre too. The Courrier d’Aude and other local newspapers of the time made mention of the high winds that night, but even so, could they have bridged the gap between the house and the Visigoth tomb in the woods?
Meredith knew she would figure it out. In time, she’d fit all the pieces together.
The rising light glanced off the surface of the water, the trees, and the landscape that had held its secrets for so long. A breath of wind whispered across the grounds, through the valley. The priest’s voice, clear and timeless, called Meredith back to the present.
‘In nomine Patri, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’
She felt Hal take her hand.
Amen. So be it.
The Curé, tall in his heavy black felt cloak, smiled at her. The tip of his nose was red, she noticed, and his kind brown eyes glittered in the chill air.
‘Mademoiselle Martin, c’est à vous, alors.’
She took a deep breath. Now the moment had come, she was suddenly shy. Reluctant. She felt Hal squeeze her fingers, then gently let her go.
Struggling to keep her emotions in check, Meredith stepped forward to the edge of the grave. From her pocket, she took two items recovered from Julian Lawrence’s study, a silver locket and a gentleman’s fob watch. Both were simply inscribed with initials and a date: 22 octobre 1891, commemorating the marriage of Anatole Vernier to Isolde Lascombe. Meredith hesitated, then crouched down and dropped them gently into the ground where they belonged.
She glanced up at Hal, who smiled and gave the slightest nod. She took another deep breath, then pulled out an envelope: the piece of music, Meredith’s treasured heirloom, carried by Louis-Anatole across the water from France to America, and down the generations to her.
It was hard to let it go, but Meredith knew it belonged with Léonie.
She looked down at the small slate plaque set into the ground, grey against the grass:
LÉONIE VERNIER.
22 AOUT 1874 – 31 OCTOBRE 1897.
REQUIESCAT IN PACEM.
Meredith let the envelope go. It twisted, then spiralled down, down through the still air, a flash of white slowly falling from her black-gloved fingers.
Let the dead rest. Let the dead sleep.
She stepped back, hands clasped in front of her, her head bowed. For a moment, the small group stood in silence, paying their final respects. Then Meredith nodded to the priest.
‘Merci, Monsieur le Curé.’
‘Je vous en prie.’
With a timeless gesture, he seemed to draw in all those gathered on the promontory, then turned and led the small party back down the hill and round the lake. As they struck out across the lawns, glinting with early morning dew, the rising sun was reflected like flames in the windows of the house.
Meredith suddenly stopped.
‘Can you give me a minute?’
Hal nodded. ‘I’ll just see them settled inside, then come back for you.’
She watched as he walked away, up on to the terrace, then she turned back to look across the lake. She wanted to linger a while longer.
Meredith pulled her coat tight around her. Her toes and fingers were numb and her eyes were stinging. The formalities were over. She didn’t want to leave the Domaine de la Cade, but she knew it was time. This time tomorrow, she’d be on her way back to Paris. The day after, Tuesday 13th November, she’d be on a plane above the Atlantic on her way home. Then she’d have to figure out where the hell to go from there.
Work out if she and Hal had a future.
Meredith looked across the sleeping waters, flat as a mirror, to the promontory. Then, beside the old stone seat, Meredith thought she saw a figure, a shimmering, insubstantial outline in a white and green dress, tapered at the waist, full at the hem and arms. Her hair hung loose around her, shining copper in the sun’s cold rays. The trees behind her, silver with hoar frost, glinted like metal.
Meredith thought she heard the music once more, although she wasn’t sure if it was inside her mind or from deep within the earth. Like notes on manuscript paper, but written upon the air.
She stood in silence, waiting, watching, knowing it would be the last time. There was a sudden glint on the water, a refraction of the light perhaps, and Meredith saw Léonie raise her hand. A slim arm silhouetted against the white sky. Long fingers encased in black gloves.
She thought of the Tarot cards. Léonie’s cards, painted by her more than a hundred years ago to tell her story and that of the people she had loved. In the confusion and chaos of the hours immediately after Julian’s death on Hallowe’en – while Hal had been at the commissariat and calls were going backwards and forwards between the hospital, where Shelagh was being treated, and the morgue where Julian’s body had been taken – Meredith had quietly, and without any fuss, replaced the cards in Léonie’s sewing box and returned it to the ancient hiding place in the woods.
Like the piece of piano music, Sepulchre 1891, they belonged in the ground.
Her eyes stayed fixed on the middle distance, but the image was fading.
She’s leaving.
It was the desire for justice that had kept Léonie here until the full story was told. Now she could rest in peace in the quiet ground she had loved so well.
She felt Hal come up and stand beside her. ‘How’s it going?’ he said softly.
Let the dead rest. Let the dead sleep.
Meredith knew he was struggling to make sense of things. For the past eleven days they had talked and talked. She had told him everything that had happened, leading up to the moment when he burst into the clearing, minutes behind his uncle – about Léonie, about her Tarot reading in Paris, about the obsession stretching back more than a hundred years that had taken so many lives, about the stories of the demon and the music of the place, about how she felt she had somehow been drawn to the Domaine de la Cade. Myths, legends, facts, history, all jumbled up together.
‘I’m good. Just a little cold.’
Meredith kept her eyes fixed on the middle distance. The light was changing. Even the birds had stopped singing.
‘What I still don’t understand,’ Hal said, pushing his hands deep into his pockets, ‘is why you? I mean, obviously there’s the family connection with the Verniers, but even so …’
He trailed off, not sure where he was going.
‘Maybe,’ she said quietly, ‘because I don’t believe in ghosts.’
Now she was no longer aware of Hal, of the cold, pale purple light spreading through the valley of the Aude. Only of the face of the young girl on the other side of the water. Her spirit was fading into the backdrop of the trees, the frost, slipping away. Meredith kept her eyes centred on the one spot. Léonie was almost gone now. Her outline was shifting, sliding, slipping away, like the echo of a note.
Grey, to white, to nothing.
Meredith raised her hand, as if to wave, as the shimmering outline faded finally to absence. Slowly, she lowered her arm.
Requiescat in pacem.
Until, finally, all was silence. All was space.
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ Hal said again. He sounded worried.
She nodded slowly.
For a few minutes more, Meredith stood staring into the empty space, unwilling to break the connection with the place. Then, she took a deep breath, then reached for Hal. He felt warm, solid flesh and blood.
‘Let’s head back,’ she said.
Hand in hand, they turned and walked across the lawns towards the terrace at the back of the hotel. Their thoughts were running down very different paths. Hal was thinking of coffee. Meredith was thinking of Léonie. And how much she was going to miss her.
