‘I prefer not to answer the question, Madame la Comtesse.’
‘But I am requiring you to answer the question.’
‘Madame, you know I would never lie to you or to anyone. But you cannot make me answer a question.’
‘Your father and I, Melusine, have a history of mutual respect that stretches back many years. We were children together. When I was born, your grandfather was the manager and the viticulteur of the chateau. Neither of us was ever permitted to leave the estate. We had only each other as companions.’
Ti-Loup flicks astonished eyes at Cap. ‘Did you know that?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘Yes. I suppose I did. I don’t know if I did.’
‘We were childhood playmates who understood our respective stations in life,’ the countess says.
‘But since the war …’ Cap says.
‘Exactly,’ the countess admits. ‘The war changed things. But it did not change everything. Your father, Melusine, is deeply uneasy about your brother’s relationship with the butcher’s daughter. Has your father told you that Monsieur Monsard will terminate Petit Christophe’s services if he has any further contact with Mademoiselle Chantal?’
Cap’s sudden intake of breath is audible. ‘No, Madame. Papa did not tell me that.’
‘That just shows,’ Ti-Loup says hotly, ‘how stupid Monsieur Monsard is. If he fires Petit Christophe his business will suffer. The best butchers in Chinon and Tours will compete to hire Petit Christophe. He may even be snatched up by Paris.’
‘You seem to be very knowledgeable about him,’ the countess says.
‘I talk about my brother a lot,’ Cap offers. ‘I brag about him. Ti-Loup is reporting what I’ve told him.’
‘I see. There appears to be some history that I, however, do not know, Melusine, because for five years after the war, I was in New York. Why is there enmity between your family and the family Monsard? Your father would not speak of it.’
‘I do not wish to speak of it either, Madame.’
‘Nevertheless, Melusine, I am requesting that you do speak of the matter and that you speak on your word of honour. Since both your father and the butcher are dependent on my patronage, I believe I have a right to know. And if there is enmity between the manager of my estate and the butcher, why would Monsieur Monsard offer an apprenticeship to your brother?’
‘Because he is afraid of what Petit Christophe might tell about his past, Madame. About the butcher’s past, I mean.’
‘The butcher’s past? Everyone knows the butcher’s past. He was born here. He has lived all his life in St Gilles. His father was the butcher before him. What do you mean, his past?’
‘During the Occupation, Madame.’
‘Ah …’ the countess says, pressing a hand over her heart. Agitated, she strokes the carved arm of her chair. ‘Melusine, you have no sense, no awareness at all, of acceptable boundaries. You have absolutely no sense of what may be said and what may not be said. We must be calm.’ The countess rises and kneels at her prie-dieu. ‘Let us pray, mes enfants.’
Cap rises and kneels at her assigned prie-dieu.
‘Gwynne Patrice!’ the countess commands.
‘I do not wish to pray, Maman. I have no need.’
The countess is trembling. She bows her head so low that it touches the lectern on which her missal rests, but after only two decades of the rosary she turns to Cap and says: ‘You are implying something very grave, Melusine. Terrible things – terrible things – were done in the wake of the war to anyone who was accused … In Paris, after the Liberation, I saw things that no one should ever see. You should not even suggest …’
‘Everyone knows there were informers and collaborators in St Gilles, Madame, but nobody knows for certain –’
‘Enough, Melusine! Enough! You are not to speak of these matters. Do you know that your father, if not for me …?’
‘Yes, Madame, I do know. My father is profoundly grateful and so am I. But what of the lives of my mother, and of my brother’s mother, and of the husband of Marie-Claire? It is difficult for me … it is, to be honest, impossible for me to understand how you could have let German officers live in the chateau, how you could have fed them and offered the chateau wines.’
Madame la Comtesse clutches a hand to her chest. ‘Do you think I had any choice?’ she gasps. She fingers her rosary.
Ti-Loup and Cap observe her in nervous silence.
15.
A mutinous silence presides over morning literature and Father John Gabriel is visibly apprehensive. Between two acts in Racine’s Bérénice, he abruptly demands: ‘Why is Madame la Comtesse so displeased with me? What have you said to her?’
‘She is not displeased with you,’ Ti-Loup tells him, ‘but with me.’
‘And with me,’ Cap says.
‘Not with you,’ Ti-Loup says bitterly.
‘What have you said about me?’ Father JG demands.
‘I said nothing about you,’ Ti-Loup says. ‘This has nothing to do with you.’
‘Then why have I been told that all field trips are now forbidden? This is a major disruption.’
‘Not for you,’ Cap says. ‘You can go wherever you want on weekends. You can’t take us with you, that’s all.’
‘We are prisoners of the chateau,’ Ti-Loup says glumly.
‘I am hired at the pleasure of la comtesse.’ Father JG paces the classroom. ‘I have been instructed that we will now hold regular classes on Saturdays. And on Sunday afternoons, we will have readings and discussions on the history of Holy Mother Church.’
‘So you too have had your wings clipped, Father,’ Cap says. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m particularly sorry,’ Ti-Loup says. He meets Father JG’s eyes.
‘We’re both sorry,’ Cap assures Father JG. ‘It’s really our fault.’
‘I am to monitor your movements,’ the Jesuit says. ‘I hope there will be nothing negative to report.’
‘What’s next?’ Ti-Loup demands morosely. ‘Will the windows be locked?’
Cap shoots him a warning glance.
‘That is a strange thing to say, Monsieur le Vicomte.’ A reflex moves through the Jesuit’s body like a mild electrical current. Cap sees the flash of intuition in his eyes. ‘Ah … Does the matter of windows have anything to do with the fact that you are never in your room when I knock?’
‘What makes you think I’m not in my room, Father? I wouldn’t hear anyone knock in the evening because I’m listening to music. I keep the windows open to hear the night birds and the rain. Now that I’m clapped in irons, I’m afraid even that tiny porthole will be slammed shut.’
‘An extravagant and completely unnecessary fear, I would suggest,’ Father JG says, gesturing at the open French windows. ‘Your mother is religious to a fault about fresh air, even in winter.’
‘Ti-Loup’s speaking metaphorically,’ Cap interjects. ‘We feel as though we’re being sealed in. Cut off from fresh air.’
‘That is rather the way I myself feel at present,’ the priest says.
‘You get all the air you want, you,’ Ti-Loup accuses Cap. ‘Whenever you want. You take it.’
‘Anyone who wants it can take it,’ Cap says.
‘Not true.’
‘It is true. I’m not saying there aren’t penalties. But anyone willing to face the penalties can break the rules.’
‘That’s not true because the rules aren’t fair. They’re not equal. Some people get punished more than others.’
‘You are very distressed, mon petit vicomte,’ Father JG says. ‘And so am I. Why don’t we discuss this in my study this evening?’
Cap notes the instant – though almost invisible – recoil of Ti-Loup’s body. She runs interference. ‘I’m the one who needs comfort, Father. How am I going to live without the art museum in Tours?’
‘We all have to live with our losses, Mademoiselle.’
‘But you know so much and have so many books on art. Can I come to your study thi
s evening to look at them?’
‘I will be happy to lend them to you,’ Father JG says. ‘One at a time. You will have to sign for each volume, Mademoiselle.’
Across the breakfast table in the chateau, a meal for which neither the countess nor Father JG is ever up and about, Cap raises her eyebrows at Ti-Loup. ‘Well,’ she says, when the housemaid returns to the kitchen. ‘Did you manage to climb out and back in?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was the window locked?’
‘No.’
‘So no problems?’
‘Petit Christophe slept in the loft with me. He has been fired.’
‘Merde!’ Cap thinks about this. ‘But he loves the vineyard and the potager. He’ll be happy. He’ll work with Papa again.’
‘No, he won’t. He knew this was coming. That’s why he went into Tours, and he is going into Chinon today to visit the butchers. All of them want him.’ Ti-Loup rests his elbows on the table and presses his temples with the palms of his hands. ‘It’s not fair. You can go back to your father’s whenever you want, but I’ve got nowhere to go. I’m caged.’
‘No you’re not. You climbed out of your window last night.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Ti-Loup says.
‘I do.’
‘No you don’t. You’ve never been caged. You’ve always been free as a bird.’
‘You’ve always been rich and spoiled, tu con! Being free is something that happens in here.’ Cap taps her forehead. ‘Just how much does it take to make you happy?’
‘I can’t ever remember being happy until the first night I slept in your loft. But I’m happiest when I’m with Ti-Christophe and when I’ve got a boning knife in my hands. And my mother has taken that away.’
‘Lots of people have much worse happen.’
Ti-Loup rests his forehead against the breakfast table. ‘You’re right,’ he confesses. ‘And so is Michel Monsard. I’m a fifi boy with no backbone.’
‘You’ve got plenty of backbone. You faced down Michel Monsard when he came looking for his sister and you made him back off.’
‘And for that the butcher snitched to my mother and she is punishing me.’
‘Only if you let her.’
‘I can’t stop her.’
‘Yes you can. You plan your safe house. If your escape route is blocked, you plan a new route.’
‘My safe house is the loft in your cottage.’
‘So plan a new route. For after Ti-Christophe is hired in Chinon or Tours.’
‘How could I go there,’ Ti-Loup asks, ‘when I’m not allowed to leave the chateau?’
‘Before you moved back from New York, I’d never been inside the chateau. You told me I wasn’t even allowed in the grounds, but I came in anyway.’
Ti-Loup passes a note to Cap during Latin translation.
My father is coming to get me, it says. I’m to go to boarding school in Massachusetts, the same one my father went to. Turns out my mother suggested it. Deeply ironic since she’s always been paranoid that he’d kidnap me to send me there. Meet under the apple tree when Fr. JG takes morning tea.
Beneath the apple tree boughs, Cap asks: ‘When is your father coming?’
‘Don’t know exactly, but soon. Read this. It’s the letter my mother wrote to my father. He sent me a copy.’
My esteemed husband,
I know we have always had different views about our son’s education. You wanted him to attend your own boarding school (for what I consider a barely competent American education) and I felt strongly that the least I owed him was the excellence of a Jesuit and French education with the Sorbonne as goal. However, I regret to report that unanticipated connections with the village have arisen and I now think it advisable to put a moat between our son and current influences which we would both find undesirable.
‘So I’m an undesirable influence,’ Cap says. ‘That hurts.’
‘Not you. Your brother. We descendants of the de la Vallières and the Vanderbilts are not supposed to dirty our hands.’
‘Your kind already have blood on their hands.’
‘My kind? What do you mean, my kind? Whose side are you on?’
‘I don’t know. Whose side are you on?’
‘Ti-Christophe’s side. Your father’s side. The side of the gardener’s cottage. But you – you’ve crossed over. You’d rather live in the chateau.’
‘I do love the chateau and I love spending time with your mother. I love what she’s taught me. And I love Papa’s cottage and I love working in the potager and with the vines. I would die for Papa and Ti-Christophe. I would die for you too. I don’t want you to leave.’
‘Then speak to Maman. Stop her.’
‘I’ll try.’ Impulsively Cap puts her arms around Ti-Loup and kisses him on the lips. For two seconds, Ti-Loup leans into the embrace then pulls sharply away.
‘Father JG will see us,’ he says nervously. ‘He’ll tell Maman.’
‘I don’t care,’ Cap says.
16.
Something urgent to tell you.
The words are pencilled in the margin of Ti-Loup’s Cicero. He slides it across the table to Cap. His hand is shaking, his face pale. He looks ravaged. He looks as though he has not slept a wink all night.
‘Your translation, Monsieur le Vicomte. Next paragraph please.’
‘I’m sorry, Father. I haven’t prepared it.’
‘Monsieur le Vicomte?’ Father JG is shocked silent. He reaches for Ti-Loup’s copy of Cicero but Cap closes it and hands it back to Ti-Loup. ‘This is unprecedented.’
‘I’m … you know, I’m not sleeping well. My father’s coming for me in two weeks and I don’t want to leave.’
‘Focus on Cicero, Monsieur le Vicomte. You will find that linguistic and rhetorical perfection induce calm.’
‘But I have to take the entrance exam for my father’s school. I can’t focus on anything else. I need extra study time, not Cicero.’
‘I believe Cicero can survive that distorted perception of his value. You must keep up with your regular assignments.’
‘My mother says the entrance exam has priority.’
‘Your mother has said nothing to me.’
‘She will. I have to sit for the exam two days after I arrive in New York.’
‘I do not for one second doubt,’ Father JG says, ‘that you will outperform any American student who takes the exam.’
‘I wish my parents were as confident, Father. No one believes that the school won’t let a Vanderbilt in, but just the same, my parents, both of them, will blame you if I don’t pass with distinction. There’s no Latin test. But I have to know all the American presidents and the order they came in. You haven’t taught us that, Father.’
‘I suspect I have taught you more United States history than the average American schoolchild knows, not to mention more tools for critical and philosophical evaluation of the American system of government. Nevertheless, I defer to the wishes of Madame la Comtesse. And you do seem extraordinarily agitated, mon petit vicomte. Mademoiselle Melusine, let us leave le vicomte to his presidents and their chronology.’
‘No, no, Father.’ Ti-Loup objects. ‘I need her to stay and study with me.’
‘Am I to understand that Mademoiselle Melusine will also be taking the entrance exam for the American school?’
‘No, she won’t. It’s a boys’ school. But we study better together. My mother always says so and you’ve said it yourself.’
‘You may have extra study time,’ Father JG says stiffly. ‘You may study together. I will pray for your success. I don’t doubt that you will pass with distinction.’
Ti-Loup rolls his eyes at the closing door. ‘I thought I’d never get rid of him. Listen. Something terrible happened.’
‘What?’
‘All hell broke loose last night. Someone was banging on the cottage door, banging and banging. Gave all of us a horrible fright, especially your father.’
‘That always happens. He ha
s nightmares when he hears a knock at night.’
‘Wasn’t a knock. It was a battering.’
‘Who was it? What time?’
‘We were asleep, all three of us, your father, Ti-Christophe and me, deep asleep, so we were slow to wake up, but the banging went on and on. I don’t know what time. After midnight.’
‘Who was it?’
‘Chantal.’
‘Chantal?!’
‘She had a black eye. She was hysterical. Bruises on her face and her arms and thighs. She said she was pregnant.’
Cap crosses herself.
Ti-Loup asks irritably: ‘For God’s sake, what good do you think that will do?’
‘None. It’s a reflex. Makes me feel less anxious, that’s all. Is my brother the father?’
‘He thinks so. He hopes so. He asked who beat her up but she couldn’t answer, she couldn’t speak. She kept sobbing and Ti-Christophe kept saying, It’s okay. It’s okay. We’ll get married. She couldn’t catch her breath and she started turning blue around the lips. Your father gave her brandy and she passed out.’
‘Yes?’ Cap prods, to nudge Ti-Loup from a lengthy pause.
‘I can’t help wondering if that’s what my father was like. Is like.’
‘Like Ti-Christophe?’
‘Not remotely like Ti-Christophe. Like Olivier. Like Michel Monsard. I mean someone who treats women badly. This morning, Chantal told us her brother and Olivier came into her room last night. Her father must have known, she said. He must have heard. There’s no way he wouldn’t have heard. She said her brother watched while Olivier raped her. They both beat her. Her brother told her she was a whore.’
‘Where is she now? Where’s Ti-Christophe?’
‘Both in the cottage. Chantal said her father and brother found out she was pregnant. She told the village priest and the priest told the butcher. They knew before Ti-Christophe knew. Chantal said her brother and Olivier are planning to kill Ti-Christophe.’
‘He’s not here,’ Grand Loup tells his daughter and Ti-Loup. ‘A village boy came with a message. He has gone to meet Michel Monsard in the woods.’
The Claimant Page 26
