The Blue Rose

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘Well, then, if the Marquis de Laborde is building such a garden, my father will want one even bigger and better,’ Viviane said. She began to fold the shutters back into place, plunging the banqueting hall back into shadow.

  ‘So I believe,’ David said. ‘I plan to give it to him. Will you show me down? I’d like to start work planning it right away!’

  David paced out the length of the outer bailey.

  Once he reached the end, he pulled out a battered notebook from his capacious pocket and began to make sketches with a pencil stub.

  Pigeons swooped through the air, darting in and out of the little windows at the top of the pigeonnière. Viviane called to them, cooing like a dove, and they fluttered down and rested on her head and shoulders and arms, hoping for corn.

  When Viviane had been a little girl, her father had ordered her locked in the pigeonnière as punishment. The tower had been filthy and dark, filled with the sound of rustling and scratching. He had expected her to be terrified. Instead Viviane had been found curled asleep in the straw, a dove snuggled in her arms. The birds had been her special pets ever since.

  David cast her an amused look. ‘If I closed my eyes, I’d think you were a dove too. However did you learn to do that?’

  She smiled. ‘Oh, I just listen and then try and repeat it. Pierrick and I used to compete to see how many different noises we could make.’

  ‘And who won?’

  ‘I did, naturellement.’

  ‘You are close to Pierrick?’

  Viviane smiled and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh la, naturellement! He is my milk-brother. Though we are not meant to speak now, bien sûr.’

  David looked as if he meant to ask more questions, so Viviane hopped to her feet, shaking out her skirts. ‘So what story shall you illustrate, with your maze, monsieur?’

  ‘I was thinking of the story of Fair Rosamund, confined within her tower in the centre of the maze.’

  Viviane did not like stories of girls confined in towers. ‘Non, non! Does she not die? Besides, it is an English tale. My father dislikes the English. It should be a French tale, a Breton tale. I know! You shall build a garden inspired by Le Roman de la Rose.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Come! I will show you.’ With Luna prancing alongside her, tail wagging, Viviane led the way back towards the château. She glanced back at David over her shoulder, laughing. ‘Vite! Vite!’

  She took him to the library. He looked about with interest at the walls lined with books, and the huge faded tapestry above the fire. Fresh flowers in an antique Chinese vase filled the air with faint fragrance. The large windows looked over the orchard to the mill, and the quaint squat tower of the pigeonnière.

  ‘Le Roman de la Rose is an old medieval poem.’ Viviane unlocked a drawer in a cabinet and drew out a heavy leather-bound book in a brown morocco case. ‘Some say it is set here in Bretagne. My family has an illustrated copy. It is very old, very rare. One of the treasures of my mother’s family.’

  She laid the book on a lectern, and carefully began to turn the pages. They were hand-lettered, with intricate drawings of birds and flowers and animals in the margins. David exclaimed in pleasure, and bent to examine the text more closely. Viviane was intensely aware of his closeness, his warmth, the smell of his skin. She stepped back and let him turn the pages himself.

  ‘The poem was written by a man named Guillaume de Lorris in the early thirteenth century but he died before he finished the tale,’ she told him. ‘Someone else completed it, half a century later, but here at Belisima we do not have that later text, only the original unfinished poem.’

  ‘What is the poem about?’ David paused to admire a painting of a young man in a blue medieval robe and red hose seeking entry to a walled garden.

  ‘It tells of a young man’s quest for the rose, which symbolises true love. He finds a walled garden, where minstrels sing for fine ladies. In the centre of the garden is a fountain where grow the most beautiful roses he has ever seen. He is shot by arrows by the God of Love, and falls for the rose, le coup de foudre. How do you say? Like a thunderbolt.’

  ‘He falls in love with a rose?’

  ‘It is an allegory, imbécile. The rose is a young woman, of course. The Lover must be tested before he can win her.’

  David grinned at her. ‘I’m an imbecile, am I?’

  ‘Mille pardons, monsieur. My tongue, it runs away with me sometimes. Though is that not yet another absurd saying you English have? As if a tongue has feet.’

  He laughed and returned his attention to the book. ‘I think it could work,’ he said after a while. ‘The maze could lead to a fountain in the centre, planted about with red and white roses like in this picture. There could be a statue of the God of Love, with his bow and arrows raised …’ David pulled out his battered notebook and began to make sketches.

  ‘We could plant the garden with fruit trees to attract the birds,’ Viviane said, ‘and all the sweetest scented flowers.’

  ‘With banks of thyme and chamomile, like they used to plant in medieval times.’

  ‘We need to plant a fig tree too,’ Viviane said, reaching over his shoulder to point at a verse.

  ‘I cannot read it – the medieval French is too difficult for me. What does it say?’

  Viviane began to read aloud, bending closer to read the strange cramped handwriting. ‘The God of Love, who watched me constantly, had followed me with his drawn bow. He stopped near a fig tree and, when he saw that I had singled out the bud that pleased me most, he took an arrow and shot it at me with such great force that the sharp point drove straight through my eye into my heart. Then a chill seized me …’

  She paused to turn the page, touching with one finger the painting of the winged god with his gold-tipped arrow.

  ‘Pierced thus by the arrow, I fell straightway to the earth. My heart failed. It played me false. For a long time I lay in a swoon, and when I returned to my senses and reason, I was so very weak I thought that I must have shed a great deal of blood. But the point that had pierced me drew no blood whatsoever …’

  Viviane paused, trying to find the right words. ‘I took the arrow in my two hands and began to pull it free. I drew out the feathered shaft, but the barbed point called Beauty was so fixed inside my heart that it could not be withdrawn. It remains within. I still feel it, and yet no blood has ever been shed. I was in great pain and anguish because of my doubled danger: I didn’t know what to do, what to say, or where to find a physician for my wound, since I expected no remedy for it, either of herbs or roots. But my heart drew me toward the rosebud, for it longed for no other place.’

  Viviane paused and looked up. David’s eyes were intent upon her face. Blood rushed up her skin. She moved away, trying to speak lightly. ‘So do you like the poem? Do you think you can build a garden inspired by it?’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ he answered, smiling at her. ‘It is perfect.’

  5

  Ghosts of the Past

  6 August – 8 October 1788

  ‘Good morning, sir!’ a sweet voice called.

  David turned, smiling. ‘Bonjour, mamzelle.’

  ‘So you ride for Saint-Malo today?’

  ‘Oui, mamzelle.’

  With Luna prancing at her heels, Viviane made her way across the courtyard, where a parterre garden had been planted in triangles of box, enclosing cones of dark yew. Enclosed within the hedges were flowering bushes of lavender and Russian sage.

  ‘It looks so pretty,’ she said. ‘My mother would be so pleased to see her old home being made beautiful once more.’

  ‘This was your mother’s home?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Belisima has been passed down mother to daughter for generations, ever since the time of the Lady of the Lake.’

  ‘Lady of the Lake?’ he asked, perplexed. ‘You mean the fairy who gave King Arthur his sword?’

  ‘Oui. My ancestress.’

  When David made a scoffing noise, she looked at him with frow
ning eyes. ‘Do not laugh. It is true. Her father served the Duke of Burgundy and was given this forest in reward. She met Merlin when she was only twelve years old, and he was enchanted by her. He taught her his magic and built her a crystal palace in the lake. On a day like this you can almost see it, can’t you?’

  David gazed out across the lake, where the reflections of the château’s towers stretched long across the sparkling water. ‘Yes, one can understand how such tales come to be invented, in a place like this.’

  ‘The tales are not invented,’ Viviane cried. ‘They are true. It is my family heritage. Merlin met Viviane in the forest, and knew at once that she was his destiny. When Viviane was grown to womanhood, he tried to seduce her but she was afraid … and so she used the magic he taught her to confine him within a hollow oak tree.’

  ‘We have similar tales in Wales,’ David said. ‘I know of at least three lakes where the Lady of the Lake is meant to have offered Excalibur to King Arthur.’

  The look she gave him was comically cross. ‘Perhaps. But those are just make-believe stories. This one is true.’

  ‘And you are meant to be descended from her?’

  ‘My mother’s name was Viviane de la Faitaud. It means “kin to the fairy”,’ Viviane said. ‘And indeed, the château is full of strange stories. Like the marquis who diced with the Devil.’

  David repeated her words incredulously, and she laughed.

  ‘It was Lent, but the marquis could not go so long without gambling, so he invited a few friends to join him in secret on the night before Good Friday. A stranger in black joined them and won every hand. He challenged the marquis to a game of all or nothing. The marquis agreed, but then in his haste dropped the dice to the floor. When the marquis bent to pick up the dice, he saw the stranger had cloven hooves. But it was too late. The Devil seized him and carried him away to hell. To this day, when the lord of the château is about to die, you can see the windows of the highest tower glaring with red light.’

  ‘You are making this up!’ David exclaimed.

  She shook her head. ‘No, no, it’s true. The château has been here many hundreds of years, monsieur, you must expect a few ghosts of the past to linger.’ She gave a little shiver. ‘The saddest story is that of the young woman who drowned herself and her baby in the lake. People see her, the babe in her arms, dripping wet, on All Souls’ Day.’

  David gazed at her, frowning. ‘Surely you do not believe in ghosts?’

  She looked away. ‘I did when I was a child. Sometimes I thought I could hear them creeping closer in the night. I used to hide under my bedclothes, afraid a cold claw would seize me and drag me away. I had to try not to cry out, in case anyone heard me and was angered.’

  ‘Did you not have someone to run to?’ David thought of his own grandmother, and how she had comforted him in the night whenever he woke up afraid.

  Viviane shook her head. ‘Madame Malfort would have been most displeased at such foolishness.’

  ‘Monsieur Stronach!’ the steward called from the stableyard. ‘It is time to leave.’

  The men had harnessed the horses to the carts, and Monsieur Corentin had brought out the rawboned gelding, bridled and saddled.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ David said. ‘I must go.’

  ‘I wish that I could go with you,’ she said wistfully. ‘But Madame did not permit.’

  ‘I am hoping to find some wonderful exotic plants in the Saint-Malo nurseries. Their ships sail all around the world, to the Americas, and even to Bengal and China.’

  ‘I tried to run away to Saint-Malo last spring. They call it the city of corsairs, you know. It sounded so romantic and exciting. I thought I could stow away on a boat and travel the world like Jeanne Baret. She was the first women to circumnavigate the globe. She dressed like a man and pretended to be her lover’s valet …’

  David could not help grinning. ‘Is that what you planned to do?’

  Viviane laughed and shrugged. ‘Oh, well, perhaps not. I just meant I would dress like a boy, and no-one would ever guess I was a girl. I’ve wanted to sail the seven seas and have adventures ever since I was little and first read the encyclopedia.’

  ‘Me too,’ David admitted. ‘One day I shall go and make my fortune. I’ll discover a wondrous new flower and Linnaeus will name it after me.’

  ‘Sometimes I wish I were a boy,’ she sighed and stepped away from his stirrup.

  I am glad you are not, David thought, but did not say.

  A few nights later, Viviane was reading in bed by the light of a candle.

  A knock on her window startled her so much she gave a little scream. Luna leapt up, wagging her tail. Viviane saw a glimpse of a grinning face. She threw a shawl on over her nightgown and went to unlatch the window.

  ‘Pierrick! What are you doing?’

  He scrambled in over her windowsill and stood, swaying slightly and dripping water all over her floor. ‘Such news!’ he slurred. ‘Just wait till you hear!’

  ‘Where have you been? Why are you wet?’ She caught up a linen towel from her wash-table and flung it at him.

  ‘Had to swim the mill-race and climb the wall. Gates were shut for the night. I didn’t want old Corentin to know I’d been out.’

  ‘But where have you been?’

  ‘Rennes,’ he answered, struggling out of his wet coat. ‘Stop fussing, Viviane, and let me tell you my news.’

  She perched on the end of the bed. ‘Go on then. Tell me. But keep your voice down. We don’t want anyone discovering you in my bedroom.’ Viviane grinned at the thought of the furore it would cause.

  Pierrick began to rub himself dry with the towel. ‘The king has called a meeting of the Estates General. For the first time in centuries!’

  Viviane stared at him. ‘Really?’

  Pierrick unknotted his lace cravat and wrung it dry over Viviane’s wash-bowl. ‘Yes, can you believe it? There was a riot in Grenoble. The people hurled tiles at the soldiers and blocked the streets. Then they all gathered together at a château – nobles and priests and common folk together – and demanded that the king call the Estates General and hear their grievances.’

  ‘And the king said yes?’

  ‘Yes. But that’s not all. They demanded that the king double the number of representatives for the Third Estate.’

  Viviane tried to absorb this. The Estates General was a general assembly meant to represent the three estates of the realm. The First Estate was the clergy, the Second Estate was the nobility, and the Third was everyone else. The first two estates together numbered about half a million people, while the latter – the peasants, the workers, the artisans and the bourgeoisie – came to more than twenty-three million people.

  She wondered why the Third Estate would ask for double the number of representatives. Each estate of the realm was only allowed to cast one vote. The clergy and the nobility obeyed the king, so their two votes always cancelled out the single vote of the common people.

  She voiced her confusion, and Pierrick nodded, his black eyes dancing with wicked joy. ‘Yes, but you see, they wish the voting to be counted by head, not by estate. So if the Third Estate have double the number of votes than the other two, they have a real chance of making some changes.’

  Viviane felt a thrill of excitement. ‘But surely the king has not agreed?’

  Pierrick weaved his unsteady way towards the door. ‘No, naturally not. But he will have to eventually. There is no more money left in the treasury, and no grain left in the barns.’

  He made a ludicrous show of checking no-one was watching, then lurched out the door. Viviane climbed back into bed with a sigh, thinking of their own empty coffers. If it was not for the fat purse her father had set with Monsieur Stronach, to pay for labour and plants, they would be in desperate straits.

  Monsieur Stronach had been hard at work these last few weeks, setting the men to plough ash and manure and seaweed into the soil. The blacksmith had been set to work making grand new gates, and a new driveway cu
t along the lake shore. It was astonishing to see how quickly the château grounds had been transformed.

  Monsieur Stronach knew exactly what he wanted and how to achieve it, she thought admiringly, and he was not afraid to spend her father’s money.

  Viviane was just worried about where the money came from. Her father the marquis was always in debt. The money must have come from his new wife’s dowry, but what would Clothilde think about her endowment being put to use in a remote little château nearly two hundred and fifty miles from Paris?

  Even more frightening was the nagging question of why Viviane’s father was investing so much money into the Château de Belisima. He had never done so before. Not even to make sure the fields and orchards kept producing income for him. He must have some kind of plan for the château.

  Which meant he had some kind of plan for her.

  David trudged back towards the château, his tools over his shoulder.

  It was a warm summer’s evening, stars glinting to life overhead. He felt pleasantly weary in every limb. He had spent the day helping the men plant tilia tomentosa along the avenue. Already the linden saplings looked beautiful, with their silvery heart-shaped leaves tossing in the breeze. They would grow fast, and by autumn would be a blaze of gold reflected in the lake. In spring, the honey scent of their starry flowers would be carried by the wind to the château, sweetening the air of every room.

  He wished that he would be here to see it. That was the worst of being a gardener-for-hire. You imagined and planned and planted a garden that would blossom for other people’s eyes.

  It was late, for David had wanted to work till the last of the twilight had faded. He put away his tools and pulled up a bucket of water from the well, washing himself vigorously. His stomach growled. He looked towards the kitchen, but all was dark.

  ‘Monsieur Stronach?’ A soft voice spoke behind him.

  He looked around, and saw a slender figure silhouetted in the doorway of the stillroom.

  ‘Mamzelle?’

  ‘Oui. Are you hungry?’

  ‘I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.’