King of the Castle

by Виктория Холт

  “But I often come here too.”

  “Your mother is dead?”

  “Come, I’ll show you where she is.”

  She drew me through the long grass to an ornate monument. It was like a small house and on top of it was a beautifully sculptured group of angels holding a large marble book, on which was engraved the name of the person who was buried there.

  “Look,” she said, ‘there’s her name. “

  I looked. The name on the book was Francoise, Comtesse de la Talk, aged thirty years. I looked at the date. It was three years ago.

  So the girl had been eleven years old when her mother died.

  “I come down often,” she said, ‘to be with her. I talk to her. I like it. It’s so quiet. “

  “You shouldn’t come,” I said gently.

  “Not alone.”

  “I like to come alone. But I wanted you to meet her.”

  I don’t know what prompted me to say it but I blurted out: “Does your father come?”

  “He never does. He wouldn’t want to be with her. He didn’t want to before. So why should he now?”

  “How can you know what he would like?”

  “Oh, I do know. Besides, it’s because he wanted her to be here that she’s here now. He always gets what he wants, you know. He didn’t want her.”

  “I don’t think you understand.”

  “Oh, yes, I do.” Her eyes flashed.

  “It’s you who don’t understand. How could you? You’ve only just come. I know he didn’t want her. That was why he murdered her.”

  I could find nothing to say. I could only look at the girl in horror.

  But she seemed unaware of me as now she laid her hands lovingly on those marble slabs.

  The stillness all around me; the warmth of the sun; the sight of those mausoleums which housed the bones of long dead de la Talles. It was macabre; it was fantastic. My instincts warned me to get away from the house; but even as I stood there I knew that I would stay if I could and that there was more to fascinate me in Chateau Gaillard than the paintings I loved.

  Two

  It was my second day at the Chateau Gaillard. I had not been able to sleep during the night, mainly because the scene in the graveyard had so startled me that I could not get it out of my mind.

  We had walked slowly back to the chateau and I had told her that she must not say such things of her father; she had listened to me quietly and made no comment; but I would never forget the quiet certainty in her voice when she had said: “He murdered her.”

  It was gossip, of course. Where had she heard it? It must be from someone in the house. Could it be the nurse? Poor child! How terrible for her! All my animosity towards her had disappeared. I felt I wanted to know more of her life, what her mother had been like, how those terrible suspicions had been planted in her mind.

  But the matter made me very uneasy.

  I had eaten a lonely dinner in my room and had gone through the notes I had made; then I tried to read a novel. The evening seemed long; and I wondered whether this was the life I should be expected to lead if I was allowed to stay on. In other great houses we had had our meals with the managers of the estates and sometimes with the families themselves. I had never before felt so lonely when working. But of course I must remember that I was not yet accepted; this was necessarily a period of waiting.

  I went to the gallery and spent all the morning examining the pictures, assessing darkening of pigment, failing of paint which we called ‘chalking’ and other deteriorations such as cracks in the paint which had caught the dust and grime. I tried to work out what materials I should need

  beyond those which I had brought with me, and I planned to ask Philippe de la Talle if I could look at some of the other pictures in the chateau, particularly some of the murals I had noticed.

  I returned to my room for lunch and afterwards went out. I had made up my mind that today I should have a look at the surrounding country and perhaps the town.

  All about me lay the vineyards and I took the road through them although it led away from the town. I would look at the town tomorrow.

  I imagined what activity there must be during the harvest and wished that I had been here earlier to see it. Next year. I thought, and then laughed at myself. Did I really think I should be here next year?

  I had come to several buildings and beyond them I saw a house of red brick and there were the inevitable shutters at all the windows green in this case. They added a charm to the house which I realized must be about one hundred and fifty years old built, I guessed, some fifty years or so before the Revolution. I could not resist the temptation of going a little nearer to examine it. , There was a lime tree in front of the house and as I came near a high shrill voice called: “Hallo, miss.” Not ‘mademoiselle,” as might have been expected, but ‘miss,” pronounced ‘mees,” which told me of course that whoever was calling was aware of my identity.

  “Hallo,” I answered, but looking over the iron gates I could see no one.

  I heard a chuckle and, looking up, saw a boy swinging in the tree like a monkey. He took a sudden leap and was beside me.

  “Hallo, miss. I’m Yves Bastide.”

  “How do you do?”

  “This is Margot. Margot, come down and don’t be silly.”

  “I am not silly.”

  The girl wriggled out of the branches and slid perilously down the trunk to the ground. She was slightly smaller than the boy.

  “We live there,” he told me.

  The girl nodded, her eyes bright and inquisitive.

  “It’s a very pleasant house.”

  “We all live in it… all of us.”

  “That must be very nice for all of you.”

  “Yves! Margot!” called a voice from the house.

  “We’ve got miss, Gran’mere.”

  “Then invite her to come in, and remember your manners.”

  “Miss,” said Yves with a little bow, ‘will you come in to see Gran’mere? “

  “I should be pleased to.” I smiled at the girl, who gave me a pretty curtsy. How different, I thought, from Genevieve.

  The boy ran forward to open the wrought-iron gates and gravely bowed as he held them for me to pass through. The girl walked beside me up the path between the bushes calling: “We’re here, Gran’mere.”

  I stepped into a large hall and from an open door a voice called:

  “Bring the English lady in here, my children.”

  In a rocking chair sat an old woman; her face was brown and wrinkled, her plentiful white hair piled high on her head; her eyes were bright and very dark; her heavy lids fell like hoods over them; her thin veined hands, smudged with brown patches which at home were called ‘the flowers of death,” gripped the arms of her rocking-chair.

  She smiled at me almost eagerly as though she had been expecting my coming and welcomed it.

  “You will forgive my not rising, mademoiselle,” she said.

  “My limbs are so stiff some days it takes me all of the morning to get out of my chair and all of the afternoon to get back into it.”

  “Please stay where you are.” I took the extended hand and shook it.

  “It is kind of you to invite me in.”

  The children had taken a stand on either side of her chair and were regarding me intently and proudly as though I was something rather rare which they had discovered.

  I smiled.

  “You seem to know me. I’m afraid you have the advantage.”

  “Yves, a chair for mademoiselle.”

  He sprang to get one for me and carefully set it down facing the old lady.

  “You will soon hear of us, mademoiselle. Everyone knows the Bastides.”

  I settled in the chair.

  “How did you know meY I asked.

  “Mademoiselle, news travels quickly round the neighbourhood We heard that you had arrived and hoped that you would call on us. You see we are so much a part of the chateau. This house was built for a Bastide
, mademoiselle. There have been Bastides in it ever since. Before that the family lived on the estate because Bastides were always the wine growers. It is said there would have been no Gaillard wine if there had never been Bastides.”

  “I see. The vines belong to you.”

  The lids came down over her eyes and she laughed aloud.

  “Like everything else in this place the vines belong to Monsieur Ie Comte.

  This is his land. This house is his. Everything is his. We are his work-people, and although we say that without the Bastides there would be no Gail lard wine, we mean that the wine produced here would not be worthy of the name. “

  “I have always thought how interesting it must be to watch the wine-growing process … I mean, to see the grapes appear and ripen and be made into wine.”

  “Ah, mademoiselle, it is the most interesting thing in the world … to us Bastides.”

  “I should like to see it.”

  “I hope you will stay with us long enough to.” She turned to the children: “Go and find your brother, my children. And your sister and your father, too. Tell them we have a visitor. ”

  “Please you mustn’t disturb them on my account.”

  “They would be very disappointed if they knew you had called and they had missed you.”

  The children ran away. I said how charming they were and that their manners were delightful. She nodded, well pleased; and I knew that she understood why I had made such a comment. I could only be comparing them with Genevieve.

  “At this time of day,” she explained, ‘there is not so much activity out of doors. My grandson, who is in charge now, will be in the cellars; his father, who cannot work out of doors since his accident, will be helping him, and my granddaughter Gabrielle will be working in the office. “

  “You have a large family, and all engaged in the wine growing business.”

  She nodded.

  “It is the family tradition. When they are old enough Yves and Margot will join the rest of the family.”

  “How pleasant that must be, and the whole family live together in this lovely house! Please tell me about them.”

  “There is my son Armand, the father of the children. Jean Pierre is the eldest of them and he is twenty-eight- he’ll be twenty-nine soon. He manages everything now. Then there is Gabrielle, who is nineteen a gap of ten years, you see, between the two. I thought Jean Pierre would be the only one all those years, and then suddenly Gabrielle was born. Then another gap and Yves came, and after that, Margot. There’s only a year between those two. It was too soon and their mother was too old for childbearing.”

  “She is… ?”

  She nodded.

  “That was a bad time. Armand, and Jacques, one of the workers, were in the cart when the horses bolted. They were both injured. Armand’s wife, poor girl,

  thought he would die, and I suppose it all seemed too much for her.

  She caught the fever and died leaving little Margot. only ten days old. “

  “How very sad.”

  “The bad times pass, mademoiselle. It is eight years ago. My son is well enough to work; my grandson is a good boy and really head of the family now. He became a man when it was necessary to shoulder responsibilities. But that is life is it not?” She smiled at me.

  “I talk too much of the Bastides. I will weary you. “

  “Indeed you do not. It is all very interesting.”

  “But your work must be so much more so. How do you find it at the chateau?”

  “I have only been there a very short time.”

  “You are going to find the work interesting?”

  “I don’t know if I am going to do the work. Everything depends on .”

  “On Monsieur Ie Comte. Naturally.” She looked at me and shook her head.

  “He is not an easy man.”

  “He is unpredictable?”

  She lifted her shoulders.

  “He was expecting a man. We were all expecting a man. The servants talked of the Englishman who was coming. You cannot keep secrets in Gaillard, mademoiselle. At least most of us can’t. My son says I talk too much. He, poor boy, talks little. The death of his wife changed him, mademoiselle, changed him sadly.”

  She was alert, listening, and I heard the sound of horse’s hoofs. A proud smile touched her face, changed it subtly.

  “That,” she said, ‘will be Jean Pierre. “

  In a few moments he stood in the doorway. He was of medium height, with hair of a lightish brown bleached, I imagine, by the sun; his dark eyes narrowed to slits as he smiled, and his skin was tanned almost to copper colour. There was about him an air of immense vitality.

  “Jean Pierre!” said the old woman.

  “This is Mademoiselle from the chateau.”

  He came towards me, smiling as though, like the rest of the family, he was delighted to see me. He bowed ceremoniously.

  “Welcome to Gaillard, mademoiselle. It is kind of you to call on us.”

  “It was not exactly a call. Your young brother and sister saw me passing and invited me in.”

  “Good for them! I hope this will be the first of many visits.” He drew up a chair and sat down.

  “What do you think of the chateau?”

  “It’s a fine example of fifteenth-century architecture. I have not had much opportunity so far of studying it but I think it has characteristics similar to those of Langeais and Loches.”

  He laughed.

  “You know more of our country’s treasures than we do, mademoiselle, I’ll swear.”

  “I don’t suppose that is so, but the more one learns the more one realizes how much more there is to learn. For me it is pictures and houses, for you … the grape.”

  Jean Pierre laughed. He had spontaneous laughter, which was attractive.

  “What a difference! The spiritual and the material!”

  “I think it must be exciting as I was saying to Madame Bastide to plant the vines, to tend the grapes, to watch over them and then to make them into wine.”

  “It’s a matter of hazards,” said Jean Pierre.

  “So is everything.”

  “You have no idea, mademoiselle, the torments we suffer. Will there be a frost to kill the shoots? Will the grapes be sour because the weather has been too cold? Each day the vines must be examined for mildew, black rot and all the pests. So many pests have one ambition and that is to spoil the grape-harvest. Not until the harvest is gathered in are we safe and then you should see how happy we are.”

  “I hope I shall.”

  He looked startled.

  “You have started work at the chateau, mademoiselle?”

  “Scarcely. I am not yet accepted. I have to await…”

  “The decision of Monsieur Ie Comte,” put in Madame Bastide.

  “It is natural, I suppose,” I said, moved rather unaccountably by a desire to defend him.

  “One could say I had come under false pretences.

  They were expecting my father and I did not tell them that he was dead and that I proposed to take over his commitments. Everything depends on Monsieur Ie Comte. “

  “Everything always depends on Monsieur Ie Comte,” said Madame Bastide resignedly.

  “Which’, added Jean Pierre with his sunny smile, ‘ma demoiselle will say is natural since the chateau belongs to him, the pictures on which she plans to work belong to him, the grapes belong to him … in a sense we all belong to him.”

  “The way you talk it would seem we were back before the Revolution,” murmured Madame Bastide.

  Jean Pierre was looking at me.

  “Here, mademoiselle, little has changed through the years. The chateau stands guarding the town and the surrounding country as it did through the centuries. It retains its old character and we whose forefathers depended on its bounty still depend upon it. There has been little change in Gaillard. That is how Monsieur Ie Comte de la Talle would have it, so that is how it is.”

  “I have a feeling that he is not greatly l
oved by those who depend on him.”

  “Perhaps only those who love to depend, love those they depend on. The independent ones always rebel.”

  I was a little mystified by this conversation. There was clearly strong feeling concerning the Comte in this house hold, but I was becoming more and more anxious to learn everything I could about this man on whom my fate depended, so I said: “Well, at the moment, I’m on sufferance awaiting his return.”

  “Monsieur Philippe would not dare give a decision for fear of offending the Comte,” said Jean Pierre.

  “He is much in awe of his cousin?”

  “More than most. If the Comte does not marry, Philippe could be the heir, for the de la Talles follow the old royalty of France, and the Salic law which applied to the Valois and the Bourbons is for the de la Talles as well. But, like everything else, it rests with the Comte.

  As long as some male heir inherits he could pass over his cousin for some other relative. Sometimes I think Gaillard is mistaken for the Versailles of Louis the Fourteenth. “

  “I imagine the Comte to be young … at least not old. Why should he not marry again?”

  “It is said that the idea is distasteful to him.”

  “I should have thought a man of his family pride would have wanted a son for he is undoubtedly proud.”

  “He is the proudest man in France.”

  At that moment the children returned with Gabrielle and their father, Armand. Gabrielle Bastide was strikingly lovely. She was dark like the rest of the family, but her eyes were not brown but a deep shade of blue and those eyes almost made of her a beauty. She had a sweet expression and was more subdued than her brother.

  I was explaining to them that I had had a French mother, which accounted for my fluency in their language, when a bell began to ring so suddenly that I was startled.

  “It is the maid summoning the children for goiiter,” said Madame Bastide.

  “I will go now,” I said.

  “It has been so pleasant. I hope we shall meet again.”

  But Madame Bastide would not hear of my going. I must, she said, stay to try some of the wine.

  Bread with layers of chocolate between it for the children, and for us little cakes and wine, were brought in.