CHAPTER 39
The journey back to the Domaine de la Cade was an uncomfortable one.
Léonie sulked. Anatole paid her no attention at all. As soon as they arrived, he leapt down from the carriage and vanished into the house without a backward glance, leaving her alone to contemplate a dull and solitary afternoon stretching out before her.
She stormed upstairs to her chamber, not wishing to see anyone, and flung herself face down upon the bed. She kicked off her shoes, letting them drop with a satisfying thump to the floor, leaving her feet to dangle over the edge as if she was floating on a raft on a river.
‘J’en ai marre.’ Bored.
The clock on the mantelshelf chimed two.
Léonie picked at the stray threads on the embroidered cover, teasing out the emaciated shimmering strands of gold until she had made a pile worthy of Rumpelstiltskin on the bed beside her. She threw a frustrated glance at the clock.
Two minutes past two o’clock. Time was barely moving.
She slid off the bed and walked over to the window, lifting the corner of the curtain with her hand. The lawns were flooded with light, rich and golden.
Everywhere Léonie could still see evidence of the damage wrought by the mischievous wind. Yet at the same time, the gardens looked serene. Perhaps she would take a walk. Explore the grounds a little.
Her eyes alighted upon her workbox, and she burrowed through the materials and sequins to where the black book lay.
Of course.
It was the ideal opportunity to search for the sepulchre. Return to her earlier plan for passing the day. Perhaps she would even find the Tarot cards. She took out the book. This time, Léonie read every word.
An hour later, dressed in her new worsted jacket, sturdy walking boots and with her hat perched on her head, Léonie sneaked out onto the terrace.
There was nobody in the gardens, but she walked fast nonetheless, not wishing to have to explain herself. She passed the cluster of rhododendron and juniper bushes almost at a run, keeping up the pace until she was out of plain view of the house. Only once she was through the opening in the high box hedge did she slow and catch her breath. She was perspiring already. She stopped and removed her scratchy hat, enjoying the feel of the wholesome air on her bare head, and pushed her gloves deep into her pockets. She felt exhilarated to be so completely alone and unobserved, the mistress of herself.
At the edge of the woods, she stopped, feeling the first prickings of caution. There was a palpable sense of quiet, the scent of bracken and fallen leaves. She glanced back over her shoulder, in the direction that she had come, then into the sombre light of the wood. The house was all but out of sight.
What if I cannot find my way back?
Léonie looked up at the sky. Provided she was not too long, provided the weather held, she could simply head home to the west, in the direction of the setting sun. Besides, these were private woods, managed and tended, set within an estate. It was hardly like venturing into the unknown.
There is nothing to cause alarm.
Having talked herself into continuing, feeling much like a heroine in an adventure serial, Léonie set out along an overgrown path. Soon she found herself standing at the crossroads of two paths. To the left there was an air of neglect and stillness. The box trees and laurel seemed to drip with condensation. The downy oak and sharp needles of the pins maritimes seemed to bow under the unwelcome weight of time with a blighted and exhausted aspect. The right-hand path was positively mundane in comparison.
If there was a long-forgotten sepulchre within the grounds, then surely it would be deep within the woods? Far out of sight of the house itself?
Léonie took the path to the left, into the shadows. The track had an unfrequented air. There were no fresh wheel ruts made by the gardener’s barrow, no indication that the leaves had been raked, no sense that anyone had recently passed this way.
Léonie realised she was walking uphill. The path was growing rougher and less clear. Stones, uneven earth and fallen branches tumbled from the overgrown thicket on either side. She felt enclosed, as if the landscape was pushing in upon her, shrinking. On one side, above the path, was a steep embankment, covered with dense green undergrowth and boughs of hawthorn and an intense tangle of yew, knitted together like iron-black lace in the half-light. Léonie felt a fluttering of nerves in her chest. Every branch, every root spoke of abandonment. Even the animals seemed to have forsaken the benighted woods. No birds sang, no rabbits or foxes or mice moved in the undergrowth to their burrows.
Soon the ground beside the path fell away sharply to the right. Several times Léonie dislodged a stone with her foot and heard it tumble into the chasm below. Her misgivings grew. It required no great leap of imagination to summon the spirits or ghosts or apparitions that both the gardener and Monsieur Baillard, in his book, claimed haunted these glades.
Then she emerged on to a platform in the hillside, open on one side to reveal the panorama of the distant mountains. There was a small stone bridge over a culvert, where a strip of brown earth intersected the path beneath it at right angles, a low channel worn away by the fierce rushing of meltwaters in spring. It was dry now.
Far away, through the opening, glimpsed over the heads of the smaller trees, the entire world seemed suddenly spread out before her like a picture. The clouds scudding across the seemingly endless sky, a late summer afternoon heat haze or mist floating in the troughs and curves of the hills.
Léonie took a deep breath. She felt magnificently distant from all of civilisation, from the river and the grey and red roofs of the houses below in Rennes-les-Bains, from the thin outline of the cloche-mur and the silhouette of the Hôtel de la Reine. Cocooned in her wooded silence, Léonie could imagine the noise in the cafés and bars, the clatter in the kitchens, the rattle of harness and gig in the Gran’Rue, the yell of the cabman as the courrier took up position in the Place du Pérou. And then the thin tolling of the church bell carried on the wind to where she stood listening.
Three o’clock already.
Léonie listened until the faint echo had died away. Her spirit of adventure faded with the sound. The words of the gardener came back to her.
Keep your soul close.
She wished she had asked him – asked somebody – for directions. Always wishing to do things for herself, she hated to ask for help. More than anything, she regretted not bringing the book itself.
But I have come too far to turn back now.
Léonie raised her chin and walked on with determination, fighting the creeping suspicion that she was going in the wrong direction entirely. Instinct had led her this way in the first place. She had no map, no words of instruction. Again regretted the lack of forethought and pride that had caused her not to at least enquire after a map of the Domaine. Not that she had observed such a thing in the library earlier.
It crossed her mind that no one knew where she had gone. If she should fall or lose her way, nobody would know where to find her. It occurred to her, too, that she should have left some sort of trail. Fragments of paper or, like Hansel and Gretel in their woods, white pebbles to mark the way home.
There is no reason you should become lost.
Léonie walked deeper, further into the grounds. Now she found herself in a wooded glade, ringed by a circle of wild juniper bushes covered with late-ripening berries, as if birds never penetrated this deep into the forest.
Shadows, distorted shades, slipped in and out of her vision. Within the green mantle of the wood, the light was thickening, stripping away the reassuring and familiar world and replacing it with something unknowable, something more ancient. Winding through the trees, the briars, the copse, an afternoon mist had set in, stealing up without a word of warning or announcement. There was an absolute and impenetrable stillness as the sodden air muffled all sound. Léonie felt its chill fingers wrapping themselves around her neck like a muffler, curling around her legs beneath her skirts like a cat.
Then, suddenly ahead of her she glimpsed, through the trees, the outline of something not made of wood or earth or bark. A small stone chapel, no bigger than would accommodate six or eight worshippers, its roof steeply pitched and a small stone cross upon the arched entrance.
Léonie caught her breath.
I have found it.
The sepulchre was surrounded by a host of gnarled yew trees, their roots twisted and misshapen like an old man’s hands, overshadowing the path. There were no impressions in the mud. The brambles and briars were all overgrown.
Feeling pride and anticipation in equal measure, Léonie stepped forward. Leaves rustled and twigs snapped beneath her boots. Another step. Closer, now, until she stood before the door. She tilted her head and looked up. Above the wooden arch, symmetrical and perfectly pointed, were two lines of verse painted in antique black lettering.
Aïci lo tems s’en
Va res l’Eternitat.
Léonie read the words twice aloud, rolling the strange sounds over in her mouth. She pulled her all-weather pencil from her pocket and scribbled them down on a scrap of paper.
There was a noise behind her. A rustling? A wild animal? A mountain cat? Then a different sound, as if a rope was being drawn across the deck of a ship. A snake? Her confidence evaporated. The dark eyes of the forest seemed to be pressing in upon her. The words in the book now came back to her with a dreadful clarity. Premonitions, hauntings, a place where the veil between worlds was drawn back.
Léonie felt suddenly reluctant to enter the sepulchre. But the alternative, remaining alone, unprotected in the clearing, seemed far worse. With the blood pounding inside her head, she reached forward and grasped the heavy metal ring upon the door, and pushed.
At first, nothing happened. She pushed again. This time there was the sound of metal grinding out of place and then a sharp click as the catch gave. She put her narrow shoulder against the timber and, with the weight of her whole body, gave a sharp shove.
The door juddered slowly open.
