The French Prize

by Cathryn Hein

  She rang the number again, but there was no answer. Four times more she tried, keening softly and rocking backwards and forwards. Each time, the number rang out. Her lifeline had abandoned her.

  Despair settled in her heart like a brick. She pressed her head against the Touareg’s steering wheel, searching for inspiration. She found none.

  Finally, when she had nothing left to grope for, when the wind blew leaves into Gaston’s pristine car and the sweat dried cold on her skin, she let the tears slip and gave into the terrible grief and guilt and fear that she had held so carefully at bay.

  Christiane and Edouard welcomed her with hugs and kisses, steering her to a seat at the kitchen table and pushing her onto a chair.

  Their faces had told her they had no news as soon as the door opened. She had thought her tears were under control, but their expressions broke her down and she collapsed into Christiane’s arms, bawling like a little girl. They were her hope. If the army would give out any information it would be to the Rosecs, but as Edouard explained, their attempts had proved fruitless. The army had no idea of Captain Blancard’s whereabouts, or none they would divulge. He was on leave, they said. His life was his own.

  She stared at the overfilled glass of wine Edouard had pushed in front of her, exhausted and afraid and filled with a helplessness that corroded her confidence and left her doubting everything she had done.

  There were so many ways she had failed Raimund. If she hadn’t refused to show Gaston where Durendal lay, he might not have been shot. If she’d called an ambulance instead of the mystery number. If she’d stopped thinking of herself for five minutes and left Raimund free to concentrate he might have been aware of Gaston’s presence before they climbed from the mound.

  If. If. If.

  The regret and guilt would rot her soul till she died. There would be no giving up until she found Raimund and spilled her remorse at his feet. And told her knight one more time that she loved him.

  Assuming he was still alive.

  The thought sent a choking sob rising in her sore throat.

  Edouard patted her shoulder and urged her to drink. She took a sip, but even Edouard’s wonderful red wine tasted sour. She returned the glass to the table and swiped at her face.

  ‘Where’s Dame Elizabeth?’ she asked suddenly.

  ‘Bed,’ said Christiane.

  Olivia glanced at her precious Breitling, the watch Raimund had given her. It was almost midnight. She hadn’t felt time pass, and thought that despite the darkness it was still early evening.

  After the failed phone calls to the Birao contact, she had returned to the mound to retrieve her and Raimund’s things. More minutes were lost staring at the enormous spill of his blood, while on the drive to Rognes, several times tears had threatened her vision and she’d had to pull over until they were cried out.

  She had called Edouard before leaving Gailhan, and although he’d sounded as worried as her, he had confidence they would easily discover what had happened to Raimund. But that had been hours ago, and still no one knew where he was, what had happened to him. And, it appeared, no one was willing to clarify the situation.

  All she wanted to know was that he lived. But even that seemed out of her reach.

  She sat with Edouard and Christiane for another hour before they finally convinced her that she needed rest. That the morning would offer more possibilities and perhaps news.

  Her legs wobbled as she climbed the stairs and she had to hold her hand against the wall as she walked down the hall. At Raimund’s room, she stopped and stared at the bed.

  Yesterday morning she had woken to find his arms circling her, his broad chest against her back, his lips caressing her neck as he whispered her awake. And she had rolled in his arms and smiled at his handsome face and kissed him good morning. She had hoped then that would be the first of many morning kisses. That she would wake for the remainder of her life in those strong arms. That every night she would share her bed with the most heroic knight imaginable. A brave, noble man whose integrity was unquestionable.

  Tears filled her eyes. She let them fall, too tired and demoralised to sweep them away. With Dame Elizabeth in her room, she would have to spend the night with these memories. Sleep would be impossible.

  Her feet dragged along the terracotta tiles to the bed. She slumped onto the mattress, staring unseeing at the wall, and then eased herself down and around until she lay with her head against the pillow Raimund had used. She turned her head to bury her nose in the smell of him, digging her hands under the pillow so she could press it harder to her face.

  Her fingers brushed against the sharp corner of an envelope.

  She sat up and threw the pillow aside. Lying on the sheet was a plain white envelope with her name printed in careful letters on the outside. Raimund had left her a note. He had known she would return to his bed, to his pillow.

  She tore it open, desperate to hear from him.

  Dear Olivia,

  By this time I will have succeeded in my task. All trace of my legacy will be gone. Durendal and La Tasse will at last be lost to me, but they will also be lost to you. You have told me it does not matter. That you do not care about Durendal. Yet I know you do. The legend has driven you in your life as much as it has driven me. And now I have destroyed it. There is nothing that will overcome your loss, not even love.

  I have only one more task to complete now before I return to my men. This, if nothing else, will leave me beyond redemption to you.

  At Patrice’s grave I made two promises. One you know, the other you do not, but the second is one from which I cannot withdraw. With La Tasse and Durendal destroyed it is now my task to kill Gaston. I will hunt him down like the animal he is, and in doing so I will become like him. A man driven by his need for revenge. A man who does not know the meaning of honour. A murderer.

  Right now, I stand on the precipice of freedom. A place you have brought me. A place I would never have reached on my own. I cannot thank you enough. For all you have done.

  I wish you the happiest of futures, filled with the love you deserve, and will remember you, and the gift you have given me, always.

  Raimund

  And with the last line, Olivia’s soul shattered.

  The morning brought no change. Christiane and Edouard called everyone they knew and many they didn’t. The French Army, the Legion headquarters at Aubagne, every hospital within Provence and Languedoc, every friend they knew and several whose names and numbers they had wheedled from others.

  Sensing her distress, Dame Elizabeth had, after a pursed-lip hug, offered to call in some favours. Olivia passed her the phone, but even those formidable contacts were unable to help.

  Angry, hurting and almost paralysed by worry, Olivia tried her hand again, only to be reminded that in Raimund’s life, she was no one.

  ‘Are you a dependent? Family?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then we cannot help you.’

  The result was the same no matter who she called. She resorted to lying. She called herself Raimund’s sister, his wife. Once, she even named herself his daughter.

  ‘You aren’t listed as next of kin.’

  ‘But I’m his daughter!’

  ‘I’m sorry. We have rules.’

  The last call did her in. She threw the phone across the table and put her head in her hands, tearing at her hair. She wouldn’t let this go. She couldn’t. She had to know what had happened to him.

  For God’s sake, she loved him.

  Even if he didn’t love her back, there was no letting go.

  She fingered the mobile phone Raimund had bought for her. The man probably wouldn’t answer, but anything was worth a try. She pressed the button.

  ‘Oui?’

  ‘Don’t hang up, please don’t hang up.’

  The German-accented man said nothing.

  Closing her eyes and praying, she said the code word. ‘Birao.’

  Edouard looked up, his wrinkled brow furrowed.
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  Her contact remained silent but she could hear him breathing. The line was still open. She had to tread carefully.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me where he is. All I need to know is that he’s okay.’ Her throat closed over. ‘I just need to know if he’s still alive.’

  ‘The Birao debt has been repaid.’

  ‘I know, but Captain Blancard must have done something to earn your loyalty. Surely you could honour that by letting the people who love him know whether he’s alive or dead.’

  Once again, she was left with no reply, but he was still there.

  After an interminable period, he spoke. ‘Hold.’

  That one word sent hope surging through her veins. She looked at Edouard and Christiane. Edouard glanced at his wife then rose from his chair, shuffled behind Olivia and placed a warm hand on her shoulder. Dame Elizabeth watched with glittery blue eyes and a look that said this is what you get for loving a Frenchman.

  The wait was unbearable. With every minute, Olivia’s thoughts turned more wretched. She wanted to believe he had survived, that the medics had arrived in time, but fear consumed her hope and she was left with only dammed-up grief. Any second it would burst.

  ‘He lives.’

  She dissolved into tears.

  Edouard snatched the phone from her hand. ‘You’re Corporal Kunze?’ He glanced at Olivia. ‘Then I remind you that your body would be rotting in the Central African Republic were it not for Captain Blancard. You will tell me his condition. Now.’ After several beats, he nodded. ‘Yes. I understand. Thank you.’

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Olivia when Edouard had hung up.

  The old man’s shoulders sagged. He reached out for the back of a chair and then slumped into it, his eyes watering.

  ‘His condition is critical, but the consensus is that he’ll pull through. That’s all Corporal Kunze knows.’

  She leaned across the table and grasped his hand in both of hers. ‘And where is he? When can I see him?’

  Edouard looked away and Olivia understood that was all the information he’d been granted.

  All that mattered was he was alive.

  And she would see him again.

  CHAPTER

  23

  ‘It’s time you returned to England,’ said Dame Elizabeth.

  Olivia took a sip of wine and waited for the usual nag. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and as always, Dame Elizabeth was perched in the front row of tables at her favourite restaurant on Aix’s Cours Mirabeau, sipping pastis and watching the world go by.

  And, as had also become her habit, giving Olivia a hard time.

  ‘It’s been over two months. That pompous twit, Rodney, won’t grant you any more leave, no matter how much I threaten.’

  Olivia stared at the pedestrians. People without cares, without worry. People, whose loves weren’t missing, hadn’t left them tormented, with snarls of regret and unexpressed emotion forever tangling their insides. A knot that grew tighter with each day of his absence.

  She and Raimund had once sat at this restaurant and for one brief moment in time, she had experienced the man he could be: playful, sexy, admiring. She had also seen the cold and dangerous man he had forced himself to become. Both had irrevocably branded her heart, never to be lost.

  ‘I rang him yesterday.’

  Dame Elizabeth sat up, knocking the table and slopping pastis over the menu. Her bright-blue eyes narrowed.

  ‘And?’

  ‘I told him I’d return next week.’

  The words sent a punch of anguish into her already bruised heart. She didn’t want to go but she couldn’t keep relying on Christiane and Edouard’s kindness. No matter how many times they told her she was welcome to stay as long as she liked. And money was becoming a problem. Part of her original deal with Raimund had entailed him covering the rent on her Oxford flat while she was on sabbatical, but without his approval for the continued transfer, payments had ceased. Week by week, her savings eroded. Soon there would be nothing left.

  It had been the hardest decision of her life. She didn’t want to leave France, not until she knew what had happened to Raimund. Not until she saw him, touched him one more time. Not until she could purge herself of this crippling remorse and regret.

  If she hadn’t found the cup, if she hadn’t solved the riddle. If she hadn’t given him the means to find Durendal, if she hadn’t defied Gaston, none of this would have happened.

  Ifs. There were so many she hadn’t slept properly since it happened. Her eyes had developed new lines and a permanent vacuity, as if she were always looking inward instead of out. Or so Dame Elizabeth had told her.

  That he was alive, she knew. Where he was, she had no idea, although she had no doubt Edouard would tell her if he could. Because he knew about Raimund’s bravery at Birao, the German-accented man would now report only to Edouard, but the information he passed was minimal. Raimund lived. No other information was necessary.

  It had taken a lot of persuasion and a very expensive bottle of 1989 vintage Châteauneuf-du-Pape before Edouard would relate the story of Raimund’s courage, and even then she was provided with only a basic outline. Raimund had saved half a dozen men from a rebel attack, dragging two of the wounded to safety while under heavy fire, and earning that scar on his head in the process. It was an astonishingly selfless act that earned him rebukes and approbation in equal measure, but Olivia wasn’t surprised. It was typical of the man Raimund was.

  Although they pleaded for information as to his whereabouts, Raimund’s colleagues still refused to tell the Rosecs anything except that his recovery was progressing, and, all faring well, he would return to duties within a month or two.

  That he had made no effort to contact her, or his adored godparents, made Olivia suspect a conspiracy. Perhaps they were keeping him isolated, away from the people who loved him and wanted him to leave the army. But what she really feared was that his silence was simply because he didn’t want to see her.

  She bit her lip and stared with clouded vision across the Cours Mirabeau.

  Dame Elizabeth let out a disgusted tut. ‘You aren’t going to cry again, are you? It’s far too embarrassing.’

  ‘I’m not going to cry.’ She wouldn’t either. Her tears had run out, giving way to a constant aching grief from which she thought she’d never recover. She shifted in her seat to face Dame Elizabeth, deliberately deflecting the subject onto more stable ground. ‘Christiane wants to know if you want to come to dinner tonight. She’s making lapin à la moutarde.’

  As it inevitably did with Dame Elizabeth, her ruse failed. The old lady tutted and eyed her with distaste.

  ‘I really thought you had more backbone than this, Olivia. Apparently, I was mistaken. I did warn you Frenchmen cannot be trusted.’

  ‘Raimund can, and I assure you I have plenty of backbone, which is why I’m not giving up on him. My problem is I just don’t have plenty of money. But I’m coming back every weekend. EasyJet’s cheap and it won’t be a problem once I have a regular income.’

  ‘To do what? Hide in that cave some more? What sort of life is that?’

  A lonely one, but at least the archives made her feel close to Raimund. She breathed him in that space. Every artefact, parchment, manuscript, painting and file was a part of his history. It was all she had. She couldn’t let it go.

  ‘Quite an interesting one, as it happens.’ She smiled. ‘You wouldn’t believe what I found yesterday.’

  That sparked Dame Elizabeth’s interest. Since that fateful day she had been denied access to the archives. Without Raimund, there was no one to carry her up and down the stairs, and no matter how much Dame Elizabeth protested that she was perfectly capable of climbing a few steps, Olivia couldn’t risk her falling.

  ‘Well? I don’t have all day, you know.’

  ‘A portrait of Hildegarde de Vinzgau. I think it belonged to Guy of Narbonne.’

  Dame Elizabeth’s eyes fairly danced. ‘Charlemagne’s wife!’ She sat
back and picked up her pastis. ‘Now wouldn’t that be interesting. Mind you, Charlemagne was a shocking philanderer. When can I see it?’

  ‘One day.’

  Dame Elizabeth let out an irritated sigh. ‘When are you going to accept he might not come back?’

  ‘Probably never.’ She toyed with the stem of her wine glass. ‘I’m stubborn, remember? Anyway, you’re not exactly one to talk. How long did you wait for Jean-Luc? Forty years?’

  ‘At least I had no doubt he wanted to see me. I, at least, managed a very satisfactory affair, thank you very much. Besides, she’s dead, you know.’

  ‘Evette? That’s sad.’

  ‘Sad? Don’t be so ridiculous. What’s sad is that she didn’t do it sooner!’

  Olivia rolled her eyes heavenward, although she wasn’t in the least surprised by Dame Elizabeth’s uncharitability. Especially when it came to Evette Reynard, her long-term lover’s wife. A Frenchman will always break your heart, she had told Olivia many times over the last two months, yet it hadn’t prevented Dame Elizabeth from loving one, and a married one at that.

  Jean-Luc Deleuvre, a scholar as distinguished as his English mistress. Handsome, charming, and it appeared, possessing a heart big enough for two women. She should have realised only love would be powerful enough to make Dame Elizabeth retire to France. It certainly wasn’t anything else.

  Olivia smiled. One day, when she had herself organised, she would come and live here, too. Metaphorically journey in her mentor’s footsteps, although without the married lover.

  ‘Am I a fool?’ she asked Dame Elizabeth suddenly.

  The old lady clutched a bony hand around her fingers. ‘Of course. But love makes fools of us all.’ A statement that left Olivia wondering if she wasn’t the biggest fool of all.

  *

  Olivia gritted her teeth and took another sip of wine—a cheap chardonnay that would no doubt give her a disgusting headache in the morning, and yet another reminder of what she was missing in France. As if she needed one. It had been almost four months since she’d seen him, yet her longing for Raimund remained a constant ache in her chest. An ache she knew would never fade until she faced him again.