A Spell in Provence

by Marie Laval

  He pulled a face and clicked his tongue.

  ‘The Ducros, however, are charming. They said they were spending the day in Aix and won’t be back until late this evening.’

  He dug inside the breast pocket of his white shirt and gave her a piece of paper.

  ‘You had two phone calls. One from a Laurent Orsini, the other from your sister.’

  Amy smiled at him.

  ‘You were very kind, staying at Bellefontaine last night and taking care of my guests. How can I ever thank you enough?’

  ‘I was just doing what Monsieur Coste asked, Mademoiselle,’ he replied. ‘I only hope you’re feeling better and the gendarmes catch whoever did that terrible thing to you. You hear that this kind of thing goes on in nightclubs in big towns but I certainly wouldn’t expect it around here, and especially not at Manoir Coste.’

  Once alone, she made a pot of tea and sat at the kitchen table. As if sensing that she needed comfort and affection, Michka put her head on her lap.

  Amy scratched gently behind the dog’s ears as she dialled Chris’ number but there was no reply. She tried Laurent’s mobile number. He picked up immediately. He sounded very excited about Amy’s emails.

  ‘You can join my team any time, Amy. You’d make a great historical detective. Your translations of the Latin inscriptions are correct. The Greek inscription translates as “The Good Listener”. Patricia said that she came across the same inscription in Glanum. It refers to the Gallic earth mother who became known as Bona Dea under the Romans. So once again it seems we’re back to good old Bona Dea.’

  ‘Why is it in Greek?’

  ‘The whole of Provence had strong ties with Greece,’ Laurent explained. ‘In fact Marseille was founded by the Greeks in 600 BC – they called it Massalia – and many Gallic tribes adopted Greek writing. Later, when the Romans ruled the region, Latin replaced Greek as the official language.’

  Amy asked him if the inscriptions on the fountains referred to a lost temple.

  ‘They do indeed refer to an underground sanctuary, near a fountain, and in the woods, but I find the mention of ghosts, or spectres, very confusing.’

  He paused.

  ‘Listen, I’m not going to wait for my boss to approve my application before coming back to Bellefontaine. I am due some time off so I’ll carry out my own research. I’ll be here on Sunday, that’s if you have room for me, of course.’

  ‘I did have quite a few bookings for next week,’ she said. ‘Just let me check my emails.’

  Disappointment awaited her when opened her mailbox. All the bookings she’d taken the day before from the Tourist Office were cancelled, all without explanation. Was it due to another computer problem? She would have to phone Monsieur Verdier and ask him.

  Letting out a sigh, she confirmed that Laurent could definitely have a room.

  ‘In fact, it looks like you’ll be the only guest at Bellefontaine,’ she told him.

  The Ducros came back early in the evening. After enquiring after her health, Madame Ducros declared that her sightseeing day in Aix had exhausted her and that she was in need of a good rest.

  She started up the stairs but paused half-way through.

  ‘By the way, I’m sure there were people in the garden last night. I saw some lights near the trees when I closed the shutters.’

  Amy’s heart missed a beat. If the lights were back, it meant that someone was lurking out there at night again.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she replied, doing her best to sound insouciant. ‘They were probably tourists enjoying a late walk through the forest.’

  As soon as the Ducros had gone up, she made sure she locked all doors and windows securely. As an afterthought, she even locked the door to the cellar before going up to bed.

  She could hear water dripping. The sound, repetitive, annoying and getting louder, was soon impossible to ignore. It reverberated inside the room, echoed inside her head. She sighed, glanced at the digital clock on her bedside table. The luminous display indicated that it was after 2 a.m.

  She must have forgotten to turn a tap off again. Shivering, she got up to check the bathroom. All the taps were safely turned off. She opened her bedroom door, tiptoed barefoot into the corridor, and stopped at the top of the stairs. The noise got louder. It came from downstairs. From the cellar.

  Reluctantly, she unlocked the door and flicked the switch before making her way down the steps and into the basement. She halted half way across the room. A trap door that she never knew existed gaped, wide open. A blue light glowed faintly from below the ground. Amy’s hair pricked on the nape of her neck. Sensing danger, she swirled round but it was too late. Two hands grabbed her throat and squeezed harder and harder, until she could no longer breathe.

  ‘Amy! Are you all right?’ Someone was shouting and banging on the door. A dog barked nearby.

  She sat up and put her hands to her forehead. Where was she? What had happened? She looked around her, disoriented to see that she wasn't in the cellar but in bed, with Michka yelping and growling next to her. It had all been a dream. Yet the pain in her throat had seemed so real swallowing was almost impossible.

  ‘Open up, Amy,’ Monsieur Ducros said from behind the door.

  Amy pulled the sheets down, got up and made her way across her room to unlock the door.

  ‘Thank God you’re all right.’ Madame Ducros stood in front of her in her nightdress, with her husband in stripy blue and white pyjamas next to her. ‘You screamed so loudly we thought someone had broken in and …’

  Amy rubbed her face with her hands.

  ‘I’m sorry I woke you. I had a nightmare.’

  Madame Ducros recommended a cup of hot milk laced with honey.

  ‘Hot milk? What the girl needs is brandy,’ her husband objected.

  Amy thanked them for their concern and they returned to their room, debating the pros and cons of brandy versus hot milk. She was about to go back to bed when a white, luminescent gleam on top of the dresser caught her eye. The fluorite crystal. It almost seemed to be mocking her. Suddenly the thought of having it in her room was unbearable. She plucked it from the top of the dresser, rushed down the stairs, and pushed it to the back of a kitchen drawer. She knew she was over-reacting, but right now it didn't matter. She wanted nothing more to do with it.

  Since she was downstairs she decided to take Monsieur Ducros’ advice and pour herself a large cognac which she sipped slowly whilst sitting at the kitchen table, a glossy magazine in front of her. When she had read every single article and could no longer focus on the printed pages, she dragged her weary body back up the stairs. She slipped into bed, but despite snuggling up against Michka, sleep eluded her.

  She woke up with a headache and a sick feeling at the pit of her stomach. So she’d had another nightmare. The third in a few weeks, and without doubt the most terrifying. The hands gripping her throat had felt so real. She’d really believed she was choking to death.

  Throwing open the window and shutters, she gazed for a long while at the fresh blue sky scattered with wispy white clouds. In the garden, wild flowers glistened with morning dew and swayed in the breeze. Melodic trills and whistles of blue tits, finches, and thrushes filled the air. Wood pigeons called from the forest. It should be an idyllic picture, yet even the caress of the rising sun on her skin failed to soothe her. Her eyes were drawn time and time again to the shadows lurking deep inside the cedar forest.

  She showered and dressed quickly, and went downstairs to prepare breakfast for the Ducros who planned to travel to Avignon to see the Easter parade. She made coffee, warmed some bread rolls in the oven, and was setting up a table on the terrace when her mobile beeped. It was a text message from Justin Barlow, and what Amy read made her blood run cold.

  ‘Eva is in a psychiatric ward. Doctors talk of psychosis. She wants to know how you are. She's worried about you. Justin.’

  Poor Eva. So the young woman hadn’t improved after leaving Bellefontaine, quite the contrary. Wh
at could have caused such a severe mental breakdown? Surely it couldn’t be Bellefontaine’s fault … or the crystal’s. She must have been ill before. Nevertheless, a feeling of guilt weighed down on her and she was in no mood for chatting to the Ducros when they came down to breakfast. In fact, she was so distracted she realised after they’d left that she hadn’t even wished them a good day.

  Tidying the house or sorting out her papers and accounts didn’t help with her restlessness. Images and sensations from her nightmare kept coming back, vivid and disturbing. She didn’t want silence, or to be alone at Bellefontaine today.

  An insidious doubt wormed its way into her mind. Céline and Fabien had talked about underground passages under the forest – passages linking Manoir Coste to Bellefontaine. What if there was indeed some sort of tunnel under Bellefontaine? What if there was a trap door in the basement?

  She pulled Fabien’s card from her address book. Today was as good a day as ever to research his family’s past, read the journals he said he had found, and look at his grandfather’s drawings. Perhaps they would find a mention of the underground passages.

  She rang him and he suggested she come over straight away.

  ‘I’ll get the diaries and letters together,’ he said. ‘You bring the portfolio back.’

  She locked the house up, drove to Manoir Coste, and introduced herself at the reception, expecting to be directed to his office or the Manager’s Suite. Instead the receptionist instructed her to walk across the walled garden to the gatekeeper’s cottage.

  ‘Monsieur Coste isn’t working at the Manoir today,’ the woman explained.

  The gatekeeper’s cottage was an old one-storey stone house with dark green shutters. With its façade covered with ivy, it looked old and romantic, and not at all the kind of house she imagined Fabien would choose for himself.

  The door was ajar. She knocked.

  ‘Come in,’ he called from inside.

  He was sitting on a battered cream-coloured sofa, a laptop on his knees. As soon as she came in he put the computer on the coffee table, pushed aside piles of old papers, files and books and stood up to greet her. He looked casual in a white cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of faded blue jeans.

  ‘I'm sorry, I'm a little early,’ Amy said.

  ‘Not at all,’ he replied, combing his dark hair back with his fingers. ‘I was finishing some accounts. I always bring too much work home.’

  She frowned. This little house was his home? What about the manager’s suite on the third floor of Manoir Coste? She looked around. The whitewashed walls were bare except for one large landscape painting and a modern wrought iron piece of wall art. Persian rugs with muted brown and reddish tones covered the tiled floor. A huge, flat screen TV hung on the wall, a sleek hi-fi with tall, slim speakers stood in the corner, together with a well-stocked compact disc tower.

  He gestured to the sofa, and asked if she wanted a drink. She said no.

  ‘So you don’t live in the chateau then?’ she asked.

  ‘Not any more. It was like being at work all the time. I moved in here a couple of years ago. I keep a suite on the third floor at the manoir. It’s handy for meetings.’

  For meetings and lovers’ assignments, no doubt. Amy opened the portfolio and kept her head down to hide her disappointment. For a brief moment, she had been filled with the absurd hope that it hadn’t been Fabien who had been with Claudine in the manager’s room the night of the ball.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  He leaned across towards her and put his hand lightly on her arm.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she snapped and shuffled away from him.

  He focussed on the drawings of the fountains at Buoux and Saignon she had pulled out of the portfolio.

  ‘Did you say you transcribed the inscriptions on the fountains?

  She searched inside her bag for the notebook in which she’d copied down the Latin inscriptions out and their translations.

  ‘They refer to an underground temple and a sacred spring, to a female deity and to spectres or ghosts … It would be useful to take a look at the other two fountains to see if they have similar inscriptions. Laurent seems to think they’ll help discover where the temple is. I wonder why this ancestor of yours didn’t keep some kind of record of its location.’

  ‘He wanted it that way. He wrote that he wished the temple to be lost, forgotten, hidden. Almost erased from the surface of the earth.’

  He flicked through worn leather-bound and yellowed scrolls.

  ‘No, too old … too recent …’

  Finally he picked a small volume and opened it.

  ‘I think this is it.’

  He turned to Amy and handed her the journal.

  ‘The cedar forest was planted by Renaud Coste. He bought a whole cargo ship of saplings from a famous botanist who had collected them during an expedition to Tunisia. Renaud had ordered the temple to be destroyed. This is what he wrote in May 1815:

  “ Destroying the temple wasn’t enough. This time, I do believe the villagers’ claims about evil doings in the woods and I have decided to cover the hill with a cedar forest. It will take many years to grow but then the infamy will be hidden forever.

  It is with a heavy heart that I leave Manoir Coste to join my emperor’s army on the northern border. My only consolation is that I will be leaving treachery and wickedness behind. ”’

  Fabien looked at Amy.

  ‘Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in June 1815, and Renaud was killed on the battlefield.’

  ‘Is there anything in the journal about why he so wanted to erase the temple from the surface of the earth?’

  Fabien read several entries of the diary silently, turned a few brittle, yellow pages, and shook his head.

  ‘I need his earlier diary, the one for 1813 and 1814. I think it must still be in the library. I’ll get it later.’

  ‘I wonder what he meant when he wrote about evil doings,’ Amy said.

  Fabien didn’t answer but pulled a couple of drawings out of Philippe Coste’s portfolio. Checking his watch, he turned to her.

  ‘Shall we drive round to Ménerbes and Lourmarin this afternoon and have a look at the fountains? I’d like to put your theory to the test.’

  When she agreed that it was worth a try, Fabien took his car keys out of his jeans pocket.

  ‘It shouldn’t take long.’

  They were walking across the walled garden towards the car park when Amy’s mobile phone rang.

  The voice at the other end was so muffled she didn’t recognise it straight away.

  ‘Who is this? I can’t hear you … Is that you Stéphane? Slow down, I don't understand what you're saying. What? You found Brice? Where are you?’

  She turned to Fabien.

  ‘Stéphane says he found Brice. They’re in a village. I’m not sure, he said a village of bories. Where is that?’

  ‘I know it. It’s not far. I’ll drive.’

  Fabien slipped behind the wheel of his Range Rover. Amy just had time to climb on the passenger seat next to him before he reversed at full speed and drove off in a cloud of dust.

  He told Amy to fasten her seatbelt and phone the gendarmes.

  ‘Dial 112, ask for Ferri, and tell him we’re on our way to the village of bories. It’s on the hilltop, about three kilometres away.’

  He was driving too fast. It was lucky the road was empty. Even though Amy tried to focus on taking long, deep breaths, panic soon overwhelmed her and images of the car crashing against the tall trees lining the road flashed in front of her eyes.

  Fabien glanced at her and frowned.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  She must be as white as a sheet.

  ‘I don’t care much for fast driving,’ she whispered, her fingers digging into the leather seat for a better grip.

  He didn’t slow down.

  ‘I’m sorry, but we need to get to the village as soon as possible. Who knows what state Brice is in, and if the boys are
in danger up there?’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. I’ll feel better if you talk to me. Tell me about that village we’re heading to.’

  ‘The bories are stone huts archaeologists dated back to the Gauls. Orsini may have told you that the whole hilltop used to be a Gallic settlement, with Manoir Coste being built on the location of the ancient fort. The village was where the tribe lived, and was still used by shepherds until the middle of the twentieth century. It’s completely abandoned and lost in thorns and brambles nowadays. Every summer, some idiots camp up there, light fires and then call the fire brigade because the vegetation is so dry flames quickly get out of control. Two years ago, a few acres of forest burnt down on the hill.’

  He left the main road and hardly slowed down as he started on a narrow and bumpy path. The Range Rover bounced along for a couple of hundred meters before Amy caught sight of a very strange landscape. A dozen round stone huts half covered with vegetation stood in a circle. It looked a little like an Atzec village in the Mexican jungle.

  ‘I never imagined that such a place existed up here.’

  Fabien braked and killed the engine.

  ‘Come on. Let’s find the boys,’ he urged before swinging his door open and jumping out.

  ‘Watch where you’re going. There are potholes everywhere.’

  He shouted the boys’ names once, then again, but his voice echoed in the silence and no one answered. He turned to Amy.

  ‘Do you have call back on your mobile?’

  Amy nodded, pressed the call back key. The phone rang but nobody picked up.

  Fabien narrowed his eyes to peer at the ruined huts and rugged landscape.

  ‘Where the hell are they?’

  A movement near a copse of olive trees caught her attention. She touched Fabien’s arm.

  ‘Over there. Look.’

  Fabien raced ahead and was the first to reach Stéphane, who sat on the ground, with Brice lying face down next to him. The runaway teenager’s hood was up and covered his head, but Amy could see a few blonde curls.

  ‘How is he?’ She knelt on the rocky ground next to Brice, gently tugged on his hood pull it down, but her dream was so vivid that her hand started shaking. What if the boy was dead and all she would see now was a skull and empty eye sockets glaring back at her, like in her nightmare?