CHAPTER 96
It was hard going in the dark once they got to the woods. Louis-Anatole was a strong boy and Monsieur Baillard, despite his age, was surprisingly fast on his feet, but all the same they made slow progress. They had brought a lamp, but it was unlit for fear of drawing the mob’s attention.
Léonie found that her feet knew the path she had so long avoided to the sepulchre. As she walked, climbing uphill, her long black cape stirred up the fallen autumn leaves, damp underfoot. She thought of all the journeys she had made around the estate – the glade with the wild juniper, the clearing where Anatole had fallen; the tombs of her brother and Isolde, side by side on the promontory on the far side of the lake – and her heart wept at the thought that she might never see any of it again. Having so long felt confined by her narrow existence, now the time had come to leave, she did not wish to go. The rocks, the hills, the copses, the wooded pathways, she felt as if each was seamed into the structure of the person she had become.
‘Are we nearly there, Tante Léonie?’ said Louis-Anatole in a small voice, after they had been travelling some quarter of an hour. ‘My boots are pinching me.’
‘Almost,’ she said, squeezing his hand. ‘Be careful not to slip.’
‘Do you know,’ he said, in a voice that gave the lie to his words, ‘I am not in the least afraid of spiders.’
They arrived at the clearing and slowed their pace. The avenue of yews Léonie remembered from her first visit seemed more knotted by time and the canopy less penetrable than before.
Pascal was waiting. Two weak lamps on the sides of the gig spluttered in the cold air and the horses stamped their metal hooves on the hard ground.
‘What place is this, Tante Léonie?’ said Louis-Anatole, curiosity for the moment driving away his fear. ‘Are we still within our grounds?’
‘We are. This is the old mausoleum.’
‘Where they bury people?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Why are Papa and M’man not buried here?’
She hesitated. ‘Because they prefer to be outside, among the trees and the flowers. They lie together by the lake, remember?’
Louis-Anatole frowned. ‘So they can hear the birds?’
Léonie smiled. ‘That’s right.’
‘Is that why have you never brought me here?’ he said, stepping forward to approach the door. ‘Because there are ghosts here?’
Léonie threw out her hand and grabbed him. ‘There is no time, Louis-Anatole.’
His face fell. ‘Can I not go inside?’
‘Not now.’
‘Are there spiders?’
‘There might be, but since you are not afraid of spiders, you would not mind.’
He nodded, but he had turned quite pale. ‘We’ll come back another day. When it is light.’
‘That is an excellent idea,’ she said.
She felt Monsieur Baillard’s hand on her arm.
‘We cannot delay any longer,’ said Pascal. ‘We must cover as much distance as we can before Constant realises we are not within the house.’ He bent down and swung Louis-Anatole into the gig. ‘So, pichon, you are ready for a midnight adventure?’
Louis-Anatole nodded.
‘It’s a long way.’
‘Further than the Lac de Barrenc?’
‘Even further than that,’ replied Pascal.
‘I shall not mind,’ Louis said. ‘Marieta will play with me?’
‘She will.’
‘Tante Léonie will tell me stories.’
The adults cast stricken glances at one another. In silence, Monsieur Baillard and Marieta climbed into the carriage, with Pascal settled on the driver’s seat.
‘Come on, Tante Léonie,’ Louis-Anatole said.
Léonie closed the carriage door with a sharp snap. ‘Keep him safe.’
‘You do not have to do this,’ Baillard said quickly. ‘Constant is a sick man. It is possible that time and the natural run of things will bring this vendetta to an end, and soon. If you wait, it might be all this will pass of its own volition.’
‘It is possible, yes,’ she replied fiercely. ‘But I cannot take that risk. It might be three years, five, even ten. I cannot allow Louis-Anatole to grow up under such a shadow, always wondering, always looking out into the darkness. Thinking there is someone out there, waiting, to cause him harm.’
A memory of Anatole looking down at the street from their old apartment in the rue de Berlin. Another, of Isolde’s haunted face gazing ever out at the horizon, seeing danger in the smallest thing.
‘No,’ she said more firmly. ‘I will not have Louis-Anatole live such a life.’ She smiled. ‘It has to end. Now, tonight, here.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You believe this too, Sajhë.’
For a moment, in the flickering light of the lamp, their eyes met. Then, he nodded.
‘I will return the cards to their ancient place,’ he said quietly, ‘when the boy is safe and there are no eyes to see me.
You may trust me with that.’
‘Tante Léonie?’ said Louis-Anatole again, a little more anxiously.
‘Petit, there is something I must do,’ she said, keeping her voice level, ‘which means I cannot come with you at this moment. You will be quite safe with Pascal and Marieta and Monsieur Baillard.’
His face crumpled as he reached out his arms to her, instinctively understanding this was more than a temporary separation.
‘No!’ he cried. ‘I don’t want to leave you, Tante. I won’t leave you.’
He threw himself across the seat and hurled his arms around Léonie’s neck. She kissed him and stroked his hair, then firmly detached herself from him.
‘No!’ the little boy shouted, struggling.
‘Be good for Marieta,’ she said, the words catching in her throat. ‘And look after Monsieur Baillard and Pascal.’
Stepping back, she slapped her hand on the side of the carriage. ‘Go,’ she cried. ‘Go.’
Pascal cracked the whip and the gig jerked forward. Léonie tried to close her ears to the sound of Louis-Anatole’s voice calling out for her, crying, getting fainter as he was carried away.
When she could no longer hear the rattle of the wheels over the hard, frosty ground, she turned and walked up to the door of the ancient stone chapel. Blinded by tears, she grasped the metal handle. She hesitated, half turning and looking back over her shoulder. In the distance was an intense orange glow, filled with sparks and clouds of smoke, grey against the black night sky.
The house was burning.
She hardened her resolve. She turned the handle, pushed open the door and stepped over the threshold into the sepulchre.