by Michelle Wan
“Get lost, Denise,” said her brother.
“Get stuffed,” she retorted over her shoulder. She, like her brother, was dark, but in a polished, glamorous way. There was also something very tough about her. “I want something better than a car park, Pierre, and you’d better see I get it. We haven’t spent a fortune on this building to slap asphalt around it.”
Work on the interior of the pavilion was still going on around them. Carpenters were finishing the area that was to be the site of tasting events. Denise seemed to be able to oversee the men, do her own job, and find time to antagonize her brother without breaking stride.
A moment later, she was back and leaning seductively over Julian.
“Don’t let the little crotte talk you out of a thing,” she urged. The frown lines on her carefully made-up face were more deeply grooved than the laugh lines. “I’ll back you with Papa. I want this place absolutely outstanding for my marketing launch next month. Look at it this way: if you shoot your budget, Big Brother here will merely blow a valve. If I’m not happy with your landscaping, I’ll have your hide. Take your choice.”
“Denise,” her brother yelled. He threw down his pencil and lurched to his feet. He looked like a man trying to swallow a hedgehog. “Piss off! I mean it.”
“Yes, darling.” She mouthed him a kiss and sashayed away.
Unfortunately for Julian, this interchange put the Crotte (the epithet, which meant “turd,” was going to stick, as far as Julian was concerned) in a foul temper.
“I can’t work under these conditions,” Pierre shouted to no one in particular, revealing a wet, purple expanse of gums that Julian, despite his dislike of the man, found momentarily fascinating. The carpenters paused to look their way. “See me Friday—no, not Friday—next week. And you’d better have a scaled-down plan and a reasonable budget or the whole things is off.”
“I’d like to point out,” Julian argued hotly, “that your father approved this plan. His only requirement was that the work be completed by June. I have very little time to work with as it is. Delaying until next week is going to seriously jeopardize—”
“I don’t give a damn,” Pierre snarled, showing more mouth lining. “He’s turned the whole thing over to me, and you do what I say, when I say, or you can take your shovel—”
“My, my, sweetums,” murmured Denise on her way past again. She was carrying stacks of brochures this time. “Tossing your weight around? Don’t give yourself a hernia.”
Pierre leaned forward threateningly on his fists. “Haven’t you anything better to do?”
Julian rolled up his plan and walked swiftly out of the pavilion.
He sat fuming in his van and wondering if his fight with Pierre was going to bring on another of his stress headaches. Thumpers, he called them. He had expected to spend the better part of the day at Coteaux de Bonfond doing preliminaries for the project. Now, as he gunned the engine and drove off, Julian wasn’t even sure if there was going to be a project. Or if he wanted any part of it. By the time he reached the main road, however, his blood pressure had eased and the thumper seemed less of a threat.
Cooling down, Julian realized that the Crotte had simply been feeling his own importance. And his sister had taken immense pleasure in goading him. He wondered about Denise. There was something restless and predatory about her, a kind of hipless, reptilian allure. He remembered the quick tap-tapping of her sharp heels as she strode back and forth across the wooden pavilion floor, her narrow face, her large, black, malicious eyes. A vivid, disturbing woman. He wondered briefly if she could be an ally. On reflection, he decided that it would be like bedding down with a cobra.
It was a little past one. Nothing for him to do but go home, have a bite, and spend the rest of the day revising the plan. Trim a little here, a bit there, reduce the bottom line. Something to placate Pierre. Anything so he could get on with the work. It was early May, and he would have to go like the clappers to get everything ready in time for Denise’s marketing launch.
He drove out of the valley, again taking by preference the network of small roads that linked the villages, hamlets, and farms of the Dordogne. About him spread a peaceful landscape of planted fields, market gardens of broad beans and artichokes, and grassy meadows where blond cows grazed. A lone tractor worked its way over the brow of a distant hill. As he took the turnoff toward home, he rolled down the window to smell the last of the lilacs, sweet on the wind. In the village of Grissac, climbing roses were coming into bloom against old stone walls. The roofs of the houses, steeply pitched and hipped, created their own peculiarly Périgordine outline against the cloudless sky.
Bismuth emerged from the bushes just as Julian pulled up alongside his cottage. Julian liked dogs, but had his doubts about this one. He had originally named the animal Rugby, in honor of his favorite sport, but later renamed him Bismuth (pronounced “Beez-mute” in French) because the dog had so often caused Julian to reach for an antacid. Julian’s grievances against his dog were many: he was ungainly, with a rangy body, large feet, and a bony tail; in puppyhood he had soiled every carpet in the house, gnawed the bindings off books (he liked the glue), and destroyed Julian’s favorite hiking boots; finally, the beast wore an air of constant, timid apology (“hang-dog” suited him well), as if he knew he was destined always to be in the wrong, at least where his master was concerned, and this served only to make Julian feel guilty. Besides, Bismuth still chewed things. It was unfortunate from Julian’s viewpoint that Bismuth could not be got rid of. He was the gift of a neighboring goat-farmer who owned Bismuth’s mother, Edith. And his sire was Mara’s own dog, Jazz. It was a situation typical of life in the Dordogne, Julian thought resignedly. Everyone was related, things were inextricably intertwined, and the consequences of acting badly were endless.
Bismuth looked doubtfully at Julian, sensing that his owner was not in a good mood.
“You might at least have got lunch ready,” Julian growled as they went in. His cottage was a low, square stone structure with a leaky roof. Its best features were a spacious kitchen with a flagstone floor and a front room with a fireplace that sometimes did not smoke. The rest of the rooms were dim and poky. A general air of disorder bespoke its owner’s untidy habits.
Julian rummaged around in the shelves and found a tin of cassoulet. He cranked it open, scooped the contents into a bowl, and heated it on high for four minutes in the microwave. He dumped the bean-and-meat mixture onto a plate. Bismuth watched him longingly. Julian tried to ignore him, but a long line of drool was now dropping from the corner of the dog’s mouth onto the floor.
“For Christ’s sake.” Julian gave in irritably and scraped a portion of his meal into Bismuth’s bowl. The food was gone before Julian had even seated himself.
After lunch, Julian realized that he did not feel at all like dealing with the Coteaux de Bonfond landscaping plan. He decided instead to call on Iris. He had purposely put off seeing her until he knew how the media would treat Baby Blue, or, more precisely, the child’s accoutrements. To his relief, attention had been focused entirely on the baby, with only passing mention of the rosary and the shawl, and little or no reference to the embroidered orchid motif. He felt safe going back with the sketch of Cypripedium incognitum and advising her how to complete it without giving anything away to Géraud. He was surprised, when he came out of the house, to find that clouds were banking up in the northwest. The smell of rain hung heavy in the air. Before he even reached the main road, fat droplets were spattering his windshield. By the time he reached Malpech, rain was sheeting across the fields.
Iris received him cheerfully as usual and gave him a towel to dry off with—he’d had to gallop through the downpour from his car to the house. Géraud for a change was in surprisingly good humor. The drawback to this, however, was that Iris did not shoo him away, and though Géraud did not sit down with them in the front room, he hung about, fiddling with this and that.
“Don’t let me stop you,” he said blandly. “I�
��m just puttering.”
“The slipper is larger than you have it.” Julian peered at Iris’s new sketch, which she had put before him on the coffee table. He was uncomfortably aware of his botanical nemesis hovering in the background. “And strongly veined. You have the color about right, but the veining needs to be more pronounced, a kind of reddish maroon.”
This produced a soft snort from Géraud.
“Honestly, you must have X-ray vision,” Iris marveled, “because I looked at that photo until my eyes hurt, and I really couldn’t make anything of it.”
“Yes. Well, I viewed it again under—er—ultra-high magnification and—er—made a few extrapolations.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. He had looked at the print through a magnifying glass, but that had only increased the blurring of the flower without providing more information.
“And there’s one other thing.” Julian stopped, wishing desperately that Géraud would vanish.
“Yes?”
“The bottom sepals. In the sketch you have them joined.”
“You told me to.”
“I know, but I’ve revised my opinion. I believe now that they should be shown as—er—separated.”
“What?” Géraud exploded, giving up all pretense of being otherwise engaged. “You’re mad. Every species of Cypripedium except arietinum and plectrochilum”—Géraud insisted on taxonomical names—“has the ventral sepals united mostly or all the way to the tip.”
“This one is different.”
Géraud surged forward. “Then it’s a case of peloria, anomalous reversion to the norm.”
“No, it’s not,” Julian said stubbornly. His hunch was that the embroidery had been modeled on a typical plant rather than that the embroiderer had purposely depicted an aberration. He appealed to the woman. “Look, Iris, I’d like you to draw them as separate, hanging down one on either side of the labellum.”
Iris shook her head. “Julian, the lower half of the flower is mostly obliterated by that streak running across the photo. Even ultra-high magnification can’t show you something that isn’t there.”
“Ha! You see?” Géraud crowed. “Even she won’t go along with this poppycock.”
Julian rose to go. “Trust me. I know what I’m talking about.”
All at once, Géraud was suspicious. His nostrils flared as if he had caught a telltale odor. “You’re awfully sure of yourself all of a sudden. What’s going on? Have you found out something? Why the mystery?”
“Will you do it for me, Iris?” Julian pleaded.
“If you’re sure, chéri,” she sighed.
He gave her a kiss on her weathered cheek.
“This whole thing’s a monstrous scam,” roared Géraud, trailing him to the door. “Your publisher should be told what you’re trying to do. You won’t get away with it. Don’t forget, claiming credit for a new species involves more than a trumped-up sketch. You have to photograph the plant in situ, you have to dry-press a specimen, present an authentic—authentic, mind you—botanical drawing, and you have to publish your find. The only thing you won’t have difficulty with is naming it, since I’m sure you intend to call it Cypripedium woodianum. Ha! You’ll never get away with it. You’ll be a laughingstock. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
With Géraud’s abuse ringing in his ears, Julian almost ran from the house.
11
MONDAY AFTERNOON, 3 MAY
Give him his due, Jean-Claude was prompt with his results. But, then, he already knew a lot about the family. He proposed a rendezvous at five o’clock at Aurillac Manor. His research notes were there, plus other material and family artifacts that Mara might find interesting.
Mara arrived twenty minutes late. Thérèse met her at the door: Christophe was still keeping to his room, and Monsieur Fournier was waiting for her in the library. She left Mara to find her own way to the large, handsome chamber on the ground floor.
“Ah, Mara.” Jean-Claude strode forward to meet her, taking her hand and brushing the back of it with his lips. He did not, however, venture any farther than her wrist. She caught again the musky whiff of his cologne. He was dressed this time in shades of cream that emphasized his buttercup-yellow hair. His burgundy loafers sported overlying brass G’s for buckles. Mara, who had spent the afternoon prospecting a work site, wore jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt that read: I Blow Raspberries on My Dog’s Stomach. Do You?
“I hope you approve.” Jean-Claude waved a hand about him. “We’re well chaperoned.” The walls were hung with stern-looking ancestral portraits. His assurance was at odds with the fact that he still held her hand.
“Good,” she said, disengaging herself and ignoring the ever-present tease in his voice. “What do you have for me?”
“It depends on how much you want to know.”
“I have the basic facts. They’re an old, titled family. The house goes back to the early 1500s and Christophe’s great-grandmother was a celebrated soprano.”
“Hmm. Yes. Well. Perhaps we’d better begin at the beginning, or as close to it as I can get. Let’s start with the family motto, shall we?”
He took her elbow lightly and guided her to a massive fireplace at one end of the room. Four words were carved into the high front of the marble mantelpiece.
“Sang E Mon Drech,” Mara read aloud, puzzling over the familiar and yet unfamiliar letter combinations. “What is this? Occitan?” She referred to the old tongue of the region, more closely related to Catalan than to French, which still survived in many parts of southern France.
“Quite right. ‘Blood And My Right,’” he translated. “In French, it would be Sang Et Mon Droit.”
“Oh yes.” Mara recalled Christophe’s bragging rights. “Something about the privileges conferred by bloodline.”
Jean-Claude said dryly, “Something like that. At any rate, it suggests an old family of noble lineage, does it not? Which brings us to the family tree.”
He now steered her toward a large library table in the middle of the room. An ornately lettered parchment covered the tabletop, protected by a sheet of beveled glass. It showed generations of de Bonfonds going back to the tenth century.
“Looks terribly old,” she murmured, squinting at the faded, ancient script.
Jean-Claude laughed outright. “It’s terribly”—he lowered his voice—“bogus. In fact, the earliest entry I could verify is here.” He tapped a spot three-quarters of the way down the chart. “Xavier, Christophe’s four-times-great-grandfather, 1730–1810, a man with a reputation for violence. He whipped a servant almost to death for spilling a flagon of wine. In the end, he was killed by his own dog. That’s him over there.”
He walked her over to the life-sized portrait of a man, done in middle age and compellingly posed in a dark cape with a touch of scarlet at the collar. Mara stared at a gaunt face with a big jaw, long nose, and ginger-colored hair and eyebrows that ran together above pale, protuberant eyes. Beside him stood a large, unfriendly-looking dog. The artist had rendered man and beast in such a way that their two bodies almost blended. One of the man’s powerful hands grasped the dog’s collar, as if restraining the animal. Maybe it was the one who had turned on its master. The other hand held an opened scroll. Stepping closer, she saw the family motto repeated, with a slight variation of spelling, on the scroll.
“He was titled,” said her guide. “Le Baron de Bonfond. On paper, anyway.”
“On paper? What are you saying?”
Jean-Claude laughed again. “Pure fabrication. I suspect a twist of his real surname, Lebrun, to which I have found reference, suggesting that our so-called Baron started out life as plain old Mr. Brown. He took the name ‘Bonfond’ from an upstream relative, inserted a ‘de,’ cleverly converted ‘Lebrun,’ to ‘le Baron,’ arrived newly made in the Dordogne, and married well. Interestingly, Bonfond was also the family name of Xavier’s wife, Séverine, to whom he was distantly related. An insignificant little thing”—the genealogist waved at a bland, featureless face captured in a small ov
al frame—“who died in childbirth. Her branch of the family were Huguenots, wealthy but nonaristocratic.”
Mara turned to him, dismayed. “Are you saying there’s no title in Christophe’s family at all, not even on the distaff side?”
“Exactly. Moreover, far from being a baron, our Xavier actually belonged to a much-hated class of men, the gabelous, salt-tax collectors—don’t tell Christophe I told you. Although he seems to have used his position to do very nicely for himself, thank you.”
“Salt?” Mara was incredulous. Was this the invaluable service rendered to the crown that Christophe had spoken of?
“Indeed. La gabelle was one of the most hated taxes in French history. In fact, it was one of the causes of the Revolution. The rich were exempt, of course, so the poor carried the load. Smuggling salt from regions where the tax was lower to high-tax areas was a profitable enterprise. That’s where the gabelous came in. It was their job to enforce the tax and hunt down violators, and they were merciless. They raided homes, sent innocent people to prison, and lined their pockets with bribes. They were also notorious for carrying out body searches of women.” Here Jean-Claude smirked. “Women were very much engaged in petty smuggling, you see. The faux cul—more delicately put, false fanny—was a favorite hiding place for contraband salt.”
“And this house?” Mara asked, her faith in Christophe’s account of his family collapsing like a mudslide in rain. “I understood it to be in the family for five hundred years.”
“Séverine’s, not Monsieur Xavier’s. In fact, although he made himself out to be a son of the Dordogne, it seems our fake baron came from Le Gévaudan, a dirt-poor region at the edge of the Massif Central. Beyond that and his profession as a gabelou, I could find little about his background. Shall we move on?”
His arm pressed her forward toward more de Bonfond men. “This one’s Auguste, Séverine and Xavier’s son, and Auguste’s sons, Dominique and Roland. Dominique was Christophe’s great-great-grandfather, while Roland was the great-great-grandfather of Christophe’s cousin Antoine, whom you may know. Roland founded the Coteaux de Bonfond winery, although Antoine expanded it to its present dimensions.” Jean-Claude guided Mara farther down the wall. “Here we have Dominique’s son Hugo, Christophe’s great-grandfather.” Mara saw in the latter a large, aggressive-looking man with the family eyes, nose, and jaw. “Hugo was a great hunter.”
