CHAPTER 56
CARCASSONNE
THURSDAY 22ND OCTOBER
At half past four, the gig pulled away down the long drive of the Domaine de la Cade with Anatole, Léonie and Isolde inside. Marieta sat up front with Pascal driving, a single blanket draped over their knees.
The carriage was closed, but the cracked leather hood was inadequate protection against the cold early morning. Léonie was swaddled in her long black cloak, drawn up over her head, squashed warmly between her brother and her aunt. She could smell the must and mothballs of the fur throws, used for the first time this autumn, which covered them from chin to toe.
For Léonie, the blue light of the early hour and the cold only added to the adventure. The romance of setting out before dawn, the prospect of two days in Carcassonne to explore and go to a concert and eat in restaurants, she could not wait.
The lamps clinked and knocked against the cab as they made their way down to the Sougraigne road, two points of light in the darkness. Isolde admitted she had slept badly and consequently felt a little nauseous. She said little. Anatole, too, was silent.
Léonie was wide awake. She had the early morning scent of the heavy, damp earth in her nose and the fragrant mingling scents of cyclamen and box, the mulberry bushes and sweet chestnut trees. It was too early, yet, for sound of lark or pigeon, but she heard the hoot of owls returning from a night’s hunting.
Despite their early start, the blustery weather conditions resulted in the train arriving more than an hour late into Carcassonne.
Léonie and Isolde waited while Anatole hailed a cab. Within moments they were flying across the Pont Marengo to a hotel in the northern quartier of the Bastide Saint-Louis , recommended by Dr Gabignaud.
Situated in the rue du Port, on the corner of a quiet side street close to the église Saint-Vincent, it was modest, yet comfortable. A semicircle of three stone steps led up from the pavement to the entrance, a black-painted door framed in chiselled stone. The pavements were raised above the cobbled street. Ornamental trees stood along the outer wall in terracotta pots, like a line of sentries on duty. Window boxes upon the sills cast their green and white shadows against freshly painted shutters. On the side wall, the words HÔTEL ET RESTAURANT were painted in high block capital letters.
Anatole took care of the formalities and oversaw the bags being carried to the rooms. They took a first floor suite for Isolde, Léonie and the maid, with a single room for himself across the corridor.
After a light lunch in the brasserie of the hotel they agreed to rendezvous at the hotel at half past five in time for an early supper before the concert. Isolde’s appointment with her late husband’s lawyers was fixed for two o’clock in the road called Carriere Mage. Anatole had offered to accompany her. As they departed, he exacted a promise from Léonie that she would go nowhere without Marieta and that she would not venture unchaperoned across the river beyond the boundaries of the Bastide.
It was raining again. Léonie occupied herself talking to another guest, an elderly widow, Madame Sanchez, who had been visiting Carcassonne for many years. She explained how the lower town, the Basse Ville she termed it, was constructed on a grid system, much like the modern American cities. Availing herself of Léonie’s all-weather pencil, Madame Sanchez ringed the hotel and central square on the plan de la ville provided by the proprietor. She also warned how many of the street names were out of date.
‘Saints have yielded to generals,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘So now we listen to the band in the Square Gambetta rather than the Square Sainte-Cécile. All I can tell you is that the music sounds exactly the same!’
Noticing the rain was easing off and impatient to begin her explorations, Léonie excused herself, reassuring Madame Sanchez that she would manage perfectly well, and made hasty preparations to go.
With Marieta struggling to keep up, she headed for the main square, La Place aux Herbes, led by the shouts of the hawkers and market traders, the rattling of cartwheels and harness filtering up the narrow street. As Léonie drew closer, she could see that many of the stalls were already in the process of being dismantled. But there was a delicious smell of roasting chestnuts and freshly baked bread. Punch flavoured with sugar and cinnamon was being ladled from steaming metal containers hanging from the back of a wooden handcart.
The Place aux Herbes was an unassuming but well-proportioned square, lined on all four sides by six-storey buildings and with small roads and passageways leading in from each corner. The centre was dominated by an ornate eighteenth-century fountain dedicated to Neptune. From beneath the rim of her hat, Léonie read the label out of duty, but thought the work vulgar and did not linger.
The branches of the spreading platanes were losing their leaves, and what remained was painted in tones of copper, pale green and gold. Everywhere were umbrellas and brightly coloured parasols, sheltering from the wind and the rain that came and went, willow paniers containing fresh vegetables, fruit, garden herbs and the autumn flowers. From wicker corbeilles, black-draped women with weatherbeaten faces sold bread and chèvres.
To Léonie’s surprise, and delight, almost the entire façade of one side of the square was occupied by a department store. Its name in bold letters was attached by twisted threads of wire to the wrought-iron balcony railings – PARIS CARCASSONNE. Although it was only just past two thirty, the trays of bargain goods – solde d’articles, réclame absolûment sacrifiés – were being laid out on tables at the front of the store. Hanging from the awnings on metal display hooks were hunting guns, prêt-à-porter dresses, baskets, all manner of household objects, frying skillets, even stoves and ovens.
I could purchase some item of hunting equipment for Anatole.
The thought flashed in, and then out of her mind. She had only a little money and no possibility of acquiring credit. Besides, she would not know where to start. Instead she strolled with fascination around the marché. Here, or so it seemed to her, the women and few men selling their produce had smiling and open faces. She picked up vegetables, rubbed herbs between her fingers, breathed in the scent of tall-stemmed flowers, in a manner she would never have done in Paris.
When she had seen all the Place aux Herbes had to offer, she decided to venture into the side streets surrounding the square. She walked west and found herself in Carriere Mage, the street where Isolde’s lawyers were situated. At the top end were mostly offices and ateliers de couturières. She paused a while outside the workshops of Tissus Cathala. Through the glass door she could see displays of cloth of every colour, as well as all manner of sewing materials. On the wooden shutters either side of the entrance, paper drawings of les modes masculines et féminines were tacked up with pins, from gentlemen’s morning suits to ladies’ tea dresses and capes.
Léonie occupied herself by examining the sewing patterns, regularly glancing up the street towards the lawyers’ offices, thinking perhaps to see Isolde and Anatole emerge. But as the minutes passed and there was no sign of them, the lure of the shops further down the street drew her instead.
With Marieta trailing behind, she walked in the direction of the river. She stopped to look through the plate-glass windows of the several establishments trading in antiquaries. There was a librairie, its windows filled with dark wooden bookcases and bound red and green and blue leather spines. At number 75, an épicerie fine, there was the enticing smell of strong and bitter ground and roasted coffee. For a moment, she stood on the pavement looking in through the three tall windows. Inside, shelves of glass and wood displayed examples of beans, paraphernalia, pots for the stove and for the fire. The letters above the door read Élie Huc. Inside, strings of dried sausage hung on hooks to one side of the store. On the other, bundles of wild thyme, sage, rosemary, and a table covered with dishes and jars filled with pickled cherries and sweet glacé plums.
Léonie decided she would make a purchase for Isolde, a gift to thank her for arranging this trip to Carcassonne. She stepped inside the Aladdin’s cave, leaving Marieta to twist her anxious hands on the pavement, returning some ten minutes later holding a white paper packet containing the finest Arabian coffee beans and a tall glass jar of crystallised fruit.
She was becoming bored with Marieta’s anxious face and doglike presence.
Dare I?
Léonie felt a spark of excitement at the mischievous idea that had slipped, unbidden, into her mind. Anatole would scold her badly. But there was no need for him to find out if she was quick and if Marieta held her tongue. Léonie glanced up and then down the street. There were some unaccompanied women of her class out taking the air. Admittedly, it was not the norm, but there were a few. And no one seemed to pay the slightest attention. Anatole fussed too much.
In such an environment, I do not need a guard dog.
‘I do not wish to carry these,’ she said, thrusting the packages at Marieta, then making a show of staring up at the sky. ‘I fear it might rain again,’ she said. ‘The best thing would be for you to take the packages back to the hotel and acquire an umbrella at the same time. I will wait for you here.’
Worry sparked in Marieta’s eyes. ‘But Sénher Vernier said to stay with you.’
‘It is a task that will take no more than ten minutes,’ Léonie said firmly. ‘You will be there and back without him ever knowing.’ She patted the white package. ‘The coffee is a gift for my aunt and I do not wish it to spoil. Bring the umbrella back with you. We will have the reassurance of protection from the rain, should we need it.’ She drove home her final point. ‘My brother would not thank you were I to catch a cold.’
Marieta hesitated, looking down at the packages.
‘Hurry,’ said Léonie impatiently. ‘I will wait for you here.’
With a doubtful glance behind her, the girl scurried away back up Carriere Mage, repeatedly looking over her shoulder to reassure herself that her young mistress had not vanished.
Léonie smiled, delighted by her harmless subterfuge. She did not intend to go against Anatole’s instructions and leave the Bastide. Conversely, she did feel she could, with clear conscience, walk as far as the river and catch her first glimpse of the medieval citadel from the right bank of the Aude. She was inquisitive to see the Cité about which Isolde had spoken and for which Monsieur Baillard had such affection.
She removed the map from her pocket and studied it.
It cannot be so far.
If Marieta did, by bad luck, arrive back before she did, Léonie could simply explain that she had taken it upon herself to seek out the lawyers’ offices in order to be able to walk back with Isolde and Anatole and had thus become separated from the maid.
Pleased with her plan, she crossed the rue Pelisserie, her head held high. She felt quite independent, adventurous, and liked the sensation. She passed the marble columns of the Hôtel de Ville, flying a pristine tricolore, and walked towards what she identified from the plan to be the ruins of the ancient Monastère des Clarisses. At the top of the single remaining tower, a decorative cupola covered a solitary bell.
Léonie exited the tight grid of bustling streets and entered the tree-lined calm of the Square Gambetta. A plaque commemorated the work of the Carcassonnais architect, Léopold Petit, who had designed and supervised the gardens. There was a lake in the centre of the park, with single jets of water shooting to the heavens from beneath the surface, creating a white haze all round. A bandstand in the Japanese style was surrounded by white chairs. The ramshackle arrangement of the seating, the debris of ice-cream biscuits and waxed paper and the wet ends of cigars suggested that the concert had finished some time ago. The ground was littered with discarded flyers for a concert, muddy footprints upon the white paper. Léonie bent down and picked one up.
From the green and pleasant spaces of Gambetta, she turned right along a rather dull cobblestoned street that ran down the side of the hospital and promised to lead to a panoramic viewpoint at the foot of the Pont Vieux.
A brass figure was mounted on top of the fountain set at the crossroads where three roads met. Léonie rubbed the plaque to read the inscription. She was variously La Samaritaine or Flore or even Pomone.
Keeping watch over the classical heroine was a Christian saint, Saint Vincent de Paul, who surveyed the scene from the Hôpital des Malades at the approach to the bridge. His benign stone gaze and open arms seemed to gather in the chapel alongside, with its high arched stone doorway and rose window above.
The whole spoke of beneficence, money, affluence.
Léonie turned full square and had her first uninterrupted sight of La Cité, the citadel set high on a hill on the opposite bank of the river. She caught her breath. It was both more magnificent and more human in scale then she had pictured. She had seen the popular postcards of the Cité that carried the famous words of Gustave Nadaud: ‘Il ne faut pas mourir sans avoir vu Carcassonne’ – one must not die without having seen Carcassonne – but had thought it no more than an advertising slogan. Now she was here, it seemed a true reflection of fact.
Léonie could see the water was very high. Indeed, in places it was lapping over the bank and up on the grass, washing against the stone foundations of the chapelle de Saint-Vincent-de-Paul and the hospital buildings. She had no intention of disobeying Anatole further, and yet she found herself stepping up on to the gentle slope of the bridge, which spanned the river in a series of stone arches.
A few steps further and I will turn back.
The far bank was mostly wooded. Through the treetops and branches Léonie could see watermills, the flat roofs of the distilleries and the textile workshops with their filatures mécaniques. It was surprisingly rural, she thought, remnants of another, older world.
Léonie looked up to see a battered stone Jesus hanging upon a cross in the central bec of the bridge, a niche in the low wall where travellers could sit awhile or remove themselves from the path of carriages or draymen’s carts.
She took another step, and so, without ever actually deciding to do so, crossed from the safety of the Bastide to the romance of the Cité.
