by Kate Forsyth
They call these rocks Le siège de Merlin l’Enchanteur,’ Pierrick said. ‘That means …’
‘Merlin’s Seat. Thank you, yes, I know.’
Pierrick sent him a sparkling glance. ‘Your French is indeed very good. And see you, the valley below? It is called the Vale of No Return. It is the domain of Morgan le Fay. She imprisons faithless lovers here, never to escape.’
David looked at him, one eyebrow raised.
‘It is the truth I am telling,’ Pierrick said, laughing. ‘Every tree and every rock in this forest has a story, most of them to do with murder and magic and betrayal. The lake is called Le Miroir aux Fées. It was once the home of seven fays. One day the youngest fell in love with a mortal man, a knight who came hunting in the forest. Her elder sisters killed him, for daring to love one of their kind. The youngest sister hunted them down, one by one, and cut their throats. She collected their blood in a little bottle and mixed it with her own, and then used it to bring her lover back from the dead. It is said her sisters’ blood flowed for seven days and seven nights. It flooded the forest, and dyed the rocks red, as you can see.’ He made an elegant gesture with one gloved hand.
‘I am in love with Viviane,’ David said. ‘I do not intend to be false to her.’
‘You English! So frank, so lacking in finesse.’
‘Is that not why you brought me here? To threaten me?’
‘To warn you,’ Pierrick said. ‘Monsieur le Marquis is not a forgiving man. I do not wish to see your blood – or Mamzelle’s – staining the ground red.’
‘So it is true what Viviane says, that he will run me through with his sword and feed me to the dogs?’ David asked.
Pierrick nodded. ‘If he is merciful. It is far more likely that he will have you arrested and sentenced as a galley slave, or thrown into a prison to rot. It is the puissance paternal. The law of the father, you would say, I think.’
‘I was hoping it was just a turn of phrase Viviane used to make her point.’
Pierrick grinned. ‘Non, malheureusement.’
‘So our only hope is to run away together,’ David said bleakly. ‘Though she swears her father will hunt us down and catch us.’
‘He will indeed try. That is why you must go now. Before he hears any whispers.’
‘I cannot. I have no money.’
‘None?’
‘My pockets are to let.’ To demonstrate, David turned the pockets of his breeches inside out. ‘I will be paid on Chrismas Day, I am told, that being Monsieur le Marquis’s usual custom.’
‘You will need to break into Monsieur Corentin’s strongbox and take what you are owed then.’
David frowned at him. ‘I am no thief.’
‘Think of it as Viviane’s dowry.’
‘No. I will not steal. When I am paid what is owed me, I shall go then.’
‘You’re a fool,’ Pierrick said. ‘Somehow, though, I am not surprised. Very well then. This is why I brought you here. If you and Viviane decide to flee the château, do not head north towards Saint-Malo. That will be expected. Head west instead, to a small fishing village called Roscoff. Go to the Hotel Le Chat Gris, and ask to speak to a man named Yves. Tell him that you are a friend of me. He will find you passage on a boat.’
‘Let me guess. This friend of yours is a good man who does his best to help the poor folk of England enjoy the luxuries of life without the fuss and bother of paying any inconvenient taxes?’
Pierrick bowed with a flourish. ‘Perhaps you are not such a fool after all.’
‘What does he smuggle?’ David asked curiously.
‘To England, tobacco, brandy and silk, mostly. To the rest of France, salt. It is a profitable business.’
‘So I see,’ David said dryly, indicating Pierrick’s fine boots and lace cravat.
He smiled. ‘Oh, my dear Monsieur Stronach, I am not in league with smugglers! I merely gamble with them. And I have the devil’s own luck, as I’m sure you can appreciate. So, if you decide to flee now, let me know and I shall advance you a small sum. With interest, of course.’
‘No,’ David said shortly. ‘I will pay my own way or not at all.’
Pierrick smiled gently. ‘On your own head be it. I just wish you to know that if you cause any harm to come to Mamzelle, I shall cut your throat, just as the youngest fairy cut her sisters’, and it is your blood that shall stain the ground red.’
9
A Gardener with the Tongue of a Poet
24–25 December 1788
On Christmas Eve, David gave Viviane a ring.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said with a smile, turning it in her fingers. It was only a small thing, enamelled with seven roses, that you might buy a child for good behaviour.
It had cost him all his savings.
‘Look, each rose lifts up to show a word engraved below.’ He took the ring and lifted one of the tiny catches to show her the hidden word.
Impossible, it read.
It seemed like a bad omen, but Viviane only exclaimed in pleasure and lifted the other catches to reveal the secret message.
For a valiant heart, nothing is impossible.
Smiling, she slipped the ring on to her right hand.
David frowned. He took her hand in his, twisting the ring round and round her finger.
‘I wish you could wear it on your left hand, to show the world that we are betrothed.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she faltered. ‘But someone would see and tell my father.’
For a moment he did not speak, still twisting the ring around. ‘One day I will buy you rubies and pearls,’ he said at last, his voice gruff.
‘And gold, silver, ivory, apes and peacocks,’ she returned at once, laughing. She reached up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. ‘I do not need rubies and pearls. This ring is all I need, and I will treasure it always.’
He enfolded her in his arms, deepening the kiss. At last she stepped away, flushed and breathless. ‘I need to give you my gift!’ she cried.
Viviane passed him a blue velvet box. Inside was a gold pocket watch with a compass attached. The back had been engraved with the words, So you may find your way back to me.
David was troubled. He had done his best to convince her that they must run away together, but Viviane could not believe her father would not track them down and have his vengeance.
‘I do not want to leave you,’ he said, again finding it hard to steady his voice. ‘Will you not come with me, Viviane? I could take you to Wales. You will be safe there, I promise.’
But she shook her head. ‘You don’t know my father. He would never forgive. He would find me wherever I run, and then he would kill you. We must wait.’
‘Wait for what?’ he demanded.
‘For him to die! For the world to change? I do not know.’ She heaved an unsteady sigh, then said, ‘In four years I shall be a minor no longer. At least then, we shall have the law on our side. Can you wait for me?’
‘If I must,’ he said reluctantly, wanting her now, this very minute.
‘You can go to China, and find the blood-red rose and make your fortune, and then come back for me,’ she said. ‘And I will plant turnips and dig seaweed into the soil and wait for you.’
David took the compass and ran his thumb over the inscription. ‘I have a better idea,’ he said. ‘We shall go home to Wales, and my grandfather will marry us, and I’ll find work to support you.’
A shadow crossed her face, and she looked back towards the château, its pointed towers silhouetted against a flaming sky.
Eagerly David went on. ‘Just one more day, and I shall be paid what I am owed, and then we can leave. We’ll go at night. I’ll order a carriage to be waiting for us in Paimpont. A few days on the road, and then we’ll be safe on the high seas, heading for home.’
‘Would I like Wales?’ she wondered.
‘You will love it,’ he promised her and drew her close so he could kiss her again. ‘Just one more day.’
At dawn on Chri
stmas Day, Viviane was standing on the bridge, listening to the children sing, when a faint thrumming came to her ears.
She looked up. ‘That sounds like …’ she began.
A dreadful premonition gripped her.
‘Hooves,’ she finished faintly.
The children broke off in the middle of their song, and clustered at the side of the bridge.
‘Look, mamzelle.’ One pointed into the distance, where the new driveway curved round the lake. A golden carriage pulled by four black horses could be seen galloping over the hill. ‘Someone is coming. Who could it be?’
Viviane stood as if frozen, her lips white.
‘Who is it? Is it someone come to stay?’ the children clamoured.
At last she managed to speak. ‘It is my father.’
‘Hurry, hurry, Monsieur le Marquis is almost here!’
David came out of his bedroom, his coat over his arm. ‘I beg your pardon? What did you say?’
Pierrick was racing down the corridor, shrugging on his blue coat, his wig askew. ‘Monsieur le Marquis is here! You fool, I told you to flee. You should have listened to me.’
David went to the bridge. He stared in fascination at the coach racing along the road. Two men ran like hares before it, carrying long golden poles. The four horses were huge and black, their coats steaming in the cold air. The postilions on their backs were crouched like jockeys, flailing their whips. Behind the golden coach rattled a dozen smaller carriages, roofs piled high with luggage.
‘Quick! Quick!’ Monsieur Corentin shouted. ‘All of you. Line up in the courtyard. Are your aprons clean? Marie, your cap is not straight. Jacques, tuck in your shirt-tails.’
All the servants hurried to obey.
‘Monsieur Stronach, you too. Stand at the back here. Take off your hat, you fool.’
David pulled off his hat and clutched it tightly.
The two running footmen crossed the bridge first. They ran right up to the gateway and then collapsed to their knees. Sweat rolled down their faces in great drops, and their gasping breaths were terrible to hear.
Then the coach arrived. It rolled up right to the gateway, the horses blowing, eyes white-rimmed. The postilions slid to the ground, grasping on to the harnesses to keep their feet. Another footman leapt down from the back of the coach and went to open the door.
A tall elderly gentleman in lilac silk and high red heels minced down the carriage steps. He carried a beribboned cane in one hand and a polished agate snuffbox in the other. His wig was very high and very white, and his lined face thick with maquillage. He must be the marquis, David thought, noting his sloe-black eyes and high-bridged nose.
Then a young lady in a huge hat laden with bows and ostrich plumes clambered down. She had to bend to the waist to manoeuvre her head through the carriage doorway. Her pink muslin dress was heavy flounced with lace and caught up at the back to show a multitude of white petticoats. Although her long ringlets were unpowdered, her hair was so fair that it was at first hard to be sure. Her eyes were pale blue, and her lashes almost white, but her brows had been drawn in thick and dark. She looked at the château with a discontented look on her face.
‘Why, monsieur, you have cruelly deceived me. It is positively medieval!’
‘I did warn you, my dear. Let us hope the plumbing is not.’
‘Do you jest?’ she said. ‘If not, I shall refuse to stay.’
‘My dear marquise, would I make you suffer so? You know I live only to please you.’
‘If you wished to please me, you would not have forced me to leave Versailles.’
‘Oh, but my dear. The ennui! It simply could not be borne another moment.’
Another elderly gentleman stepped out of the coach. He was magnificently attired in mulberry-red velvet embroidered with gold thread, with a fur cloak flung over his shoulders. His eyes were a cold blue, his lips thin and sneering, his face sagging with lines of dissipation.
‘Have we arrived at last?’ he asked wearily. ‘I had not thought it possible to travel so far in France and not cross a boundary or fall into the sea. No wonder I have never visited before, César.’
‘You see why I so rarely make the journey, Vadim. It is wearisome in the extreme. The chasse à courre should make up for the inconvenience, though, I am sure. We shall certainly find a few stags, and some wild boar, and perhaps even wolves. It certainly looks like the sort of forest where wolves may lurk, does it not?’
‘Wolves?’ The marquise gave a little shriek.
‘Compose yourself, my dear. If there are wolves, I shall kill them for you and present you with a rug for your bedroom floor.’
She pouted. ‘How awful! I do not think it is at all the thing to have wolf skins on one’s floor, monsieur. I would much prefer an Aubusson.’
‘Of course you would. Your taste is always of the most profligate, my dear.’
She pouted and turned to the gentleman in the mulberry coat. ‘What does he mean, Monsieur le Duc? Is he making another jest?’
‘César simply means that your taste is exquisite, madame. And expensive.’
‘Like my own,’ the marquis said. ‘That is why we are so well-matched, my dear.’
The marquise’s smile seemed forced and stiff to David’s eyes. He wondered how many years there were between her and her husband. It must be at least forty.
The marquis had paid no attention to the servants, standing silently in the freezing air. Now he turned towards them, lifting his quizzing glass and surveying them with a faint unpleasant sneer.
‘Where, might I ask, is my daughter?’ he asked.
At that moment Viviane rushed down the stairs and bent over the running footmen, lying gasping in the snow. ‘Oh, you poor things,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’ She turned to Pierrick. ‘They need something to drink! Can you fetch them some mulled wine?’
‘You forget yourself!’ Her father’s voice was like a whiplash.
Viviane flushed and stepped away from the men lying on the ground. Keeping her eyes lowered, she curtsied.
Her father surveyed her through his quizzing glass for a long moment, his face stiff with disapproval and disdain. At last he indicated that she could rise.
‘May I present Clothilde de Ravoisier, the Marquise de Valaine and my wife. And my old friend Vadim de Gagnon, the Duc de Savageaux, your husband-to-be.’
David jerked involuntarily. He took a deep breath and tried to compose his face.
Meanwhile, Viviane curtsied and said, in a cool polite voice, ‘Enchantée. Welcome to Belisima-sur-le-lac.’
Viviane sat at the table in the banqueting hall.
Mechanically she ate a few mouthfuls of each of the exquisite dishes put before her, cooked by her father’s Parisian chef who had travelled with him from Versailles, along with his valet, his butler, his running footmen, his postilions, his page, a quartet of musicians and the marquise’s maids.
Pierrick, resplendent in his blue coat and white wig, stepped forward and filled her empty glass of wine. Viviane drained it dry.
After dinner, everyone on the estate filed in to be paid their wages. The marquis knew every dish that had been broken, every working day lost to sickness, every misdemeanour, and deducted the appropriate amount.
When it was David’s turn, the marquis lifted his quizzing glass and examined him slowly from the unruly wave of his hair to the heels of his good leather boots.
‘So you are the English gardener?’ he drawled.
‘Yes, monsieur.’
‘You have spent a great deal of money for very little gain that I can see.’
‘It is winter, monsieur.’
‘The draughtiness of my room and the dampness of my sheets attest to that,’ the marquis responded languidly. ‘Do not be insolent, else I shall have you flogged.’
‘Pardon, monsieur. I simply meant that the garden is dormant. In spring, you shall see a thousand daffodils dancing in the park, and the lilac trees shall cascade with sweet-scented flowers. The rose
s in summer will bloom most gorgeously. In autumn, the avenue of linden trees will glow as if made of gold. All you need do is wait and let the seasons turn.’
‘A gardener with the tongue of a poet,’ the marquis said. ‘How disconcerting. It is like hearing a toad sing like a nightingale. Very well. I thank you for your service and dismiss you forthwith. I am sure you understand I cannot pay you or give you a recommendation, not having yet seen anything but a few dead sticks.’
David bowed. His face was set, but Viviane could see the spark of dangerous anger in his eyes. ‘As you please, monsieur. I shall write to you in the spring when the beauty of your garden shall be clear to even the most uncultured of eyes.’
The marquis held a pinch of snuff to his finely-cut nostrils. ‘I doubt that I shall linger here long enough to see it. Such a bore, the countryside. The Duc de Savageaux may still be here, however. Since the Château Belisima-sur-le-lac will be his once he marries my daughter.’
David looked involuntarily at Viviane. She could not meet his gaze.
‘In the meantime, your work here is done. Pack your things and be gone.’
David bowed and left the room.
‘A gentleman gardener,’ the duke commented. ‘Indeed the world is changing, César, and not for the better. A game of picquet?’
Viviane endured an evening spent in the company of her step-mama and her great-aunt, who demanded to hear every new scandal of the court.
Clothilde only yawned and declared that Versailles was nothing but a bore, that the king had banned gambling for high sums in an attempt to economise, and that the queen worried over the health of the dauphin, the young crown prince, and so held no balls or picnics.
At last Clothilde retired to bed, saying in a long-suffering tone that she was rattled from head to toe by the dreadful state of the roads and did not think she could possibly sleep a wink. Viviane then listened to her great-aunt’s rapturous opinions of the young marquise for another half an hour, before she was at last released and permitted to retire herself.
