A Spell in Provence

by Marie Laval

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m used to dealing with these stuffy, old-fashioned aristocrats. For now, I’m taking you all out for a pizza tonight, and that includes you, Amy.’

  ‘We don’t need to go out,’ she protested, ‘I can make pizzas here, if that’s what you want to eat.’

  ‘Oh no, you won’t.’ He gestured to the door. ‘You’re coming with us, whether you want it or not.’

  And why not, she thought as she watched him carefully lift Bona Dea off and place it into the padded box before gathering his files into a tidy pile on the table. It would be nice to go out. Not only did Laurent, Patricia and Ben have a great sense of humour, but their stories of digs all over the world were captivating.

  A short while later, they pushed the glass door of Bonnieux’s only pizzeria, a small restaurant tucked away in a winding cobbled streets. As they made their way to a table, she spotted Frédéric and a woman who looked like an older version of Claudine Loubier sitting in an alcove at the back. She waved, he smiled and waved back. She had just sat down when he walked over.

  ‘Good evening. It’s nice to see that work doesn’t keep you from enjoying yourselves. How is the dig going?’

  ‘It’s going well, thank you,’ Laurent replied, unfolding the menu in front of him.

  ‘Did you discover anything interesting?’

  Laurent nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘More than we could ever have expected. It’s a shame we must leave tomorrow, but we’ll soon be back. It shouldn’t be too hard to secure a grant. My boss will take one look at all the artefacts and the files we’ve compiled and he’ll sign the cheque straight away.’

  Ben and Patricia laughed.

  ‘And then, we’ll find the temple and the treasure.’

  Laurent shrugged.

  ‘I’ll be happy with just the temple.’

  ‘I see …’ Frédéric looked at Amy. ‘Are you coming to the hunt at Manoir Coste tomorrow morning? It should be a grand occasion. Breakfast, mulled wine, genteel company … and his lordship himself doing the honours.’

  His voice dripped with sarcasm.

  Amy shook her head.

  ‘No, I’m keeping well away. I’m not keen on hunting.’

  ‘Shame,’ Frédéric said before gesturing towards his table. ‘I need to go back to my friend, who by the way is Anne Loubier, Claudine’s mother. She owns an antique shop in rue Marceau. She was the one who would have bought your statue if you had wanted to sell.’

  He said goodbye and went back to his table.

  ‘I for one am glad you didn’t sell Bona Dea off to some shady back street dealer,’ Laurent remarked as he cast a disapproving glance towards Claudine’s mother. ‘Far too many treasures disappear into private collections.’

  They ordered pizzas and a bottle of red wine and talked about Glanum and the Gauls again. Amy was so engrossed in their conversation that she didn’t even see Frédéric and his companion leave. It was well after eleven when they paid and drove back to Bellefontaine.

  As she drove into the courtyard, the Clio’s headlights swept over the house’s gaping door. Amy switched the engine off and jumped out of the car.

  ‘Oh no. Someone has broken in. Look.’

  The front door swung on its hinges, and she caught a glimpse of a mess of papers in the hall.

  ‘Stay here with Patricia.’

  Laurent pushed her to one side and ran in, followed by Ben.

  But Amy didn’t want to wait outside. She followed the two men into the hall and trod over the papers and tourist brochures littering the floor. The burglars hadn’t ransacked the kitchen or the living room, but in the study the desk drawers had been pulled out, and their contents strewn around. Her laptop lay smashed on the floor.

  The dining room too had been turned over, the dresser’s contents emptied, its doors almost ripped out.

  A sick feeling gripped her stomach and tears pricked her eyes as she walked across the broken pieces of a vase she’d just bought and the burglars had smashed to the ground. Laurent and Ben stood next to the table, aghast.

  ‘They took my laptop, my USB sticks and all the files,’ Laurent said, pointing to the table top where he’d left his computer and the site survey reports earlier on.

  His face turned deadly white, he muttered a curse.

  ‘Bona Dea!’

  He ran out and Amy followed him upstairs, praying that the burglars hadn’t caused too much damage on the first floor.

  Her room was a mess. Clothes, shoes, cosmetics were strewn around, the jewellery box she kept on top of a chest of drawers was gone. That hurt. Her mother’s favourite brooch and pendant had been in there, and now they were gone, perhaps forever.

  Laurent emerged from his room. He raked his fingers into his brown hair and squeezed his eyes shut.

  ‘They took Bona Dea.’

  Amy put a comforting hand on his arm.

  ‘I’ll call the gendarmes. Hopefully they’ll be able to do something – anything.’

  She went downstairs, made the phone call, and prepared some coffee. Keeping busy may help fight back the tears.

  ‘It’s all my fault,’ she told Laurent when he came into the kitchen.

  ‘Of course not. Why do you say that?’

  She poured black coffee into four cups.

  ‘If I’d stayed here tonight, there would have been no burglary.’

  ‘You can’t be sure of that. A woman on her own isn’t much of a deterrent to a gang of thieves. Actually, I’m glad you were with us. The burglars may have hurt you.’

  She forced herself to take long, calming breaths but her hands shook so much when she lifted her cup that hot coffee spilled on to the table and she had to put it down.

  ‘We need to make a list of what was taken before the gendarmes arrive.’

  She took a pad and a pen and they sat at the kitchen table. For the next twenty minutes they endeavoured to draw up a complete inventory of what was stolen. All in all, it was a very strange one.

  The gendarmes were of that opinion too when they arrived.

  ‘Not your common burglary,’ the man in charge, a Capitaine Ferri, stated as he read through the list.

  ‘Why take old stones and paperwork but leave the television? And why not take both laptops?’

  He instructed his men to inspect the forced door and went inside the outbuilding from where all the potsherd and Roman artefacts had been stolen. Even though the gendarmes dusted the door handles for prints, Capitaine Ferri wasn’t hopeful as he gave Amy a card.

  ‘That’s your reference number. We’ll be in touch if there are any news, but there are too many prints, all of them smudged, so they’ll be no use for identification purposes. As for the jewellery and Professeur Orsini’s laptop, I doubt whether you’ll see them again. If it’s any consolation, at least we were able to fix your front door, so you don’t have to call the emergency locksmith tonight.’

  After they left, Laurent, Ben, and Patricia offered to help tidy up but Amy was adamant. She would deal with the mess. It was her responsibility.

  As Laurent went upstairs, nursing a headache, he sighed, ‘I can’t believe we lost Bona Dea, and pretty much everything else too. All this work, all for nothing.’

  Patricia put her arms around his shoulders.

  ‘It wasn’t for nothing, Prof. We now know there is something extraordinary at Bellefontaine, and we will find it. It’s just going to take us a little longer, that’s all.’

  Clearing up the mess took hours. After sorting out the papers and folders in the study, Amy picked up pieces of the broken laptop and put them in the bin. She then swept and mopped clean the whole of the downstairs floor. The idea that thugs had violated her home made her stomach heave. She would make sure no trace remained of them.

  As she walked into the hall, Serena Chevalier’s crystal glittering under the hallway light caught her eye. She picked it up, took it to her room, and put it on her bedside table. It was lucky the thieves hadn’t smashed it to the ground.r />
  It was well after two when she finally took a shower, slipped a thin cotton nightshirt on, and stumbled into bed. Even though weariness made her body heavy and achy, her mind raced and raced, and sleep eluded her. Noises filled the silent house tonight. The wooden stairs creaked, the pipes gurgled, the shutters rattled in the breeze.

  Amy got up, walked to the bathroom and drank some cool water straight from the tap before slipping into bed again. This time she fell into a fitful and feverish sleep, filled with shadows and whispers, and the disturbing sensations of being smothered by a wet cloth pressed against her mouth.

  As nightmares went, this was one of the worse she’d ever had. She felt as if she was lifted up and carried rough a long tunnel carved into rock, lit with flaming torches which cast shifting, breathing shadows.

  She was hot, so hot sweat stuck her hair to her face and neck and made her nightdress cling to her body. Then she was in a round chamber where dozens of candles flickered and incense filled the air with scents of rose and jasmine.

  Men and women clad in long, white robes stood still around a stone slab at the centre of a white triangle painted on the floor. She was placed down on the cold slab, and a woman started chanting nearby in a language she didn’t understand.

  A man stood close to her, and even though he was wearing a mask and she couldn’t see his face there was something familiar about him. Maybe it was his tall stature and broad shoulders, the way he moved or the deep ring of his voice.

  He took out a pinch of a white substance from a silver salinum which had had lions and snakes engraved on the sides.

  Terror made her heart beat faster. As the man threw the white powder over her and held the salinum close to her face, something shone into her eyes – his oval blue ring with letters engraved in gold. It looked like a C and a V but she couldn't be sure.

  The man put his hands on her shoulders, and his fingers slid along to her throat. He unfastened her nightdress, held the sides apart and touched her breasts. She tried to scream but no sound came out of her mouth. The man’s caresses became more insistent. Behind his mask his breathing sounded fast and raspy.

  He opened the nightdress completely until she lay naked and helpless. She closed her eyes, desperate to escape but unable to move. The drums were louder, faster and echoed her heartbeats. The man’s hands slid to her stomach, then further down. She gasped as she felt his fingers between her legs.

  Please, no. Not this.

  ‘I want her now,’ he whispered to someone standing next to him.

  ‘Not tonight,’ a woman said nearby. ‘You can’t risk it just yet, I just want her scared and confused.’

  ‘You said she was mine,’ he protested.

  ‘We’ve done enough for one night. There are others here tonight who can satisfy you. Leave her be.’

  ‘Too bad.’ The man’s hand travelled back to her throat and pressed hard.,

  Chapter Seven

  The ground beneath her shook and resonated with the beat of drums. Every part of her ached. Her head pounded, her throat was so dry she could hardly swallow. She opened her eyes onto a patch of grey sky peeping through a canopy of dark green branches. She was dreaming of the forest. She blinked, expecting to see the familiar ceiling of the room at Bellefontaine. The grey skies and tall cedars were still there. Tentatively she spread her fingers by her sides, touching pine needles, pebbles and damp soil.

  This was no dream. She was in the forest.

  She sat up straight and gasped. No wonder she was shivering with cold. She was barefoot and her only clothing was her white nightdress, now dirty and ripped, its sides hanging open. She tried to do the buttons up, but her fingers were numb with cold and she gave up.

  Wrapping the nightgown around her as best she could, she pulled herself to her feet. A spasm of pain gripped her stomach, a wave of nausea overtook her and she just had time to bend down before being violently sick.

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. How had she got here? And how was she going to get back to Bellefontaine when her legs were so weak she could hardly stand?

  The ground shook again. The sound of dogs yelping excitedly echoed in the forest, followed by the thunder of galloping horses. It was the hunt from Manoir Coste, and it was coming her way! In a panic, she glanced around for somewhere to hide. There were only trees and a couple of boulders. The dogs would find her straight away. She might as well stay where she was.

  She hardly had time to comb her dishevelled hair back with her fingers before the pack of hounds appeared between the trees and charged towards her. Two dozen riders followed after the dogs. The man heading the hunt pulled the reins of his black horse metres away from her.

  It was Fabien.

  He jumped to the ground, dispersing the dogs with the slicing of his whip.

  ‘Amy! What are you doing out here, in such a …’

  His eyes widened as he took in her ripped nightdress and bare feet.

  Without giving her time to reply he slipped off his black jacket, and stepped towards her.

  ‘Put this on,’ he said covering her shoulders with the jacket.

  It was still warm from the heat of his body and smelled faintly of leather, horse and sandalwood aftershave.

  ‘What on earth happened to you? Has anyone … hurt you?’

  Concern darkened his eyes. His hands were strong and warm on her shoulders, pulling her close and she could hardly resist the temptation to lean against him.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she replied. ‘I think I may have been sleepwalking.’

  ‘Have you done it before?’

  She thought about the incidents of the past few weeks. The taps running, the television and the radio turned on at night … Maybe she had sleepwalked in the house all this time without ever suspecting it.

  ‘I don’t know, I may have,’ she replied, hesitant.

  Still standing between her and the riders, he put his arms around her.

  ‘You’re shaking with cold.’

  He started rubbing her back, his hands leaving a warm trail along her spine.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take you home.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ A man called behind him. ‘Is she one of these crazy hunt protesters?’

  A few people laughed.

  ‘Never mind who she is, the woman is clearly deranged – or drunk,’ someone else urged. ‘Let’s carry on. We’re losing the scent.’

  ‘Isn’t that Amy Carter, from Bellefontaine?’

  Amy recognised Claudine’s voice and bit her lip. Today, she would have preferred if the woman had forgotten her name.

  Still holding Amy tightly against him, Fabien called to one the riders at the back of the pack.

  ‘Fred, will you lead the hunt for me? I’m taking Amy back home.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ Claudine cried out. ‘A Coste never abandons the lead.’

  Fabien shrugged.

  ‘There’s a first time for everything. Go ahead. I’ll meet you later.’

  Frédéric rode past, followed by the handler of the hounds who urged the dogs back on the path with a few shouts and whistles, and the rest of the hunters. Claudine looked down at Amy with a pitying smile. Others grinned or made suggestive comments about her state of undress.

  It was a nightmare. Soon the whole village would hear about Bellefontaine’s landlady wandering half naked in the forest. They might even suggest she was crazy or on drugs. She held her head high, and fought back her tears. She wouldn’t give the hunters the satisfaction of seeing her upset. She had been sleepwalking, that was all. These things happened.

  ‘Don’t worry, Bellefontaine isn’t too far,’ Fabien said once they were alone.

  ‘We’ll ride Pacha.’

  He took her hand and led her to his horse.

  Amy shook her head. There was no way she was going to be able to climb onto the horse dressed as she was.

  ‘I’ll walk, just point me in the right direction.’

  ‘You are not walkin
g,’ he replied in a steely voice. ‘You are barefoot, in shock, and hypothermic.’

  Without leaving her time to protest, he put his hands around her waist and lifted her up on to Pacha so that she sat side-saddle. He swung himself up behind her, took hold of the reins and urged the horse on. The horse’s slow pace and the strength and heat of Fabien’s body soon lulled Amy into an exhausted torpor.

  Cradled in his arms, she felt safe at last. Her cheek rubbed against the soft linen of his shirt and the regular beating of his heart echoed her own. She heaved a sigh, closed her eyes, and let herself be rocked to sleep.

  ‘We’re here.’

  The rumble of his voice woke her up.

  She opened her eyes to see that they had reached the bottom of Bellefontaine’s garden.

  ‘I see your archaeologists have been busy,’ he said dryly as they rode past the excavation site and across the garden towards the house.

  ‘They have. Although I’m afraid it’s all been for nothing.’

  Before he could ask her to explain, she added, ‘Here they are, loading up the van. They’re leaving today.’

  Laurent, Ben and Patricia were in the courtyard, and turned at the sound of Pacha’s hooves on the path.

  ‘Amy! My God, did you have an accident?’ Laurent stepped towards her as Fabien helped her dismount.

  ‘No. Yes. I don’t know.’

  In a few words she explained she’d been sleepwalking and had woken up the forest.

  ‘Monsieur Coste was kind enough to take me home,’ she finished.

  ‘To think that you went out during the night and we didn’t hear a thing,’ Laurent said, shaking his head in dismay.

  ‘Actually, we were just saying that the three of us slept remarkably well, considering last evening’s events. We only just got up, and when we found the house empty we thought you’d gone to the gendarmes in Bonnieux.’

  ‘What happened last evening?’

  Fabien frowned as he looked down at her.

  Amy had no choice but to tell him about the burglary. His lips tightened but he didn’t make any comment.

  ‘By the way, I’m Laurent Orsini, from the Arles Museum,’ Laurent said, turning to Fabien. ‘I was hoping to see you later today.’