The Staircase: A haunting romantic thriller

by Deryn Lake

  “Then how can we?” said the blonde, and spread her hands.

  The Parisienne came over to where Hal and Helena stood by the counter. “Leonardo’s home at Clos-Luce is my speciality,” she said. “What exactly is it you want?”

  Helena spoke for the first time, saying, “I know it sounds silly, but I have become really fascinated by one of his sketches because the girl in it looks very like me. We thought we would extend our holiday in France for a few days and track down the name of the original sitter.”

  The girl smiled. “If the Louvre were unable to help, then I really would recommend that you go to Clos-Luce. It was where Leonardo spent the last four years of his life. He died there, you know.”

  Hal brightened up. “Where is it exactly?”

  “In the Loire Valley, near Amboise. He lived there under the protection of King François. The house has an exhibition of models based on da Vinci’s sketches. He invented the aeroplane, the helicopter . . .”

  Her voice went on, but Helena was no longer listening; instead, she was looking at the poster on the wall of the tourist office to which the girl had pointed. It showed a small Renaissance manor house with the words Clos-Luce beneath, but it was to the photograph next to it that Helena’s eyes were drawn, almost against her will.

  In the foreground of the picture she saw a grassy drive, flanked on either side by tree-filled banks; in the distance a chateau, its roof like a dream from the Arabian Nights, full of towers, cupolas and minarets. Standing there in the tourist office in Paris, on an ordinary business-like day, Helena found herself suddenly drenched in a cold sweat.

  A memory had come, a memory half grasped at, a memory that brought a suffocating sense of fear in its wake. When had she stood on that very spot, looking to where the chateau, partially hidden by trees, gleamed so white? When had she run lightly down the drive, through the arched entrance, across the courtyard and into the chateau itself? When had she passed, silent and unseen, through the palace’s open doors and into the building’s very heart, to see, winding and omnipresent, the staircase?

  “Oh God,” said Helena aloud, as the world spun about her.

  “Are you all right, madame?”

  The Parisienne was suddenly at her side, bringing a chair for Helena to sit on and producing a glass of water almost simultaneously. Hal’s outline blurred and then became clear again.

  “Helena, darling! What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Nothing, I’m all right. Did I faint?”

  “Not quite. I caught you on the way down,” he answered tenderly.

  “Oh, how awful. I am so sorry.”

  Her gaze took in the French girl who said, “It is no problem, madame. It is the travelling. It is more tiring than one imagines.”

  Helena smiled. “You’ve been very kind. Thank you.”

  The girl, whose lapel badge identified her as Marie-Laure Rolin, became business-like. “So, may I help you with road maps? You are travelling by car, are you not?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hal uncertainly, “perhaps we ought not . . .”

  Helena stole a lightning look sideways, seeing what she had failed to notice at first. The chateau which so fascinated yet terrified her had a name beneath.

  “The Chateau de Chambord,” she read aloud, “royal residence of the Loire Valley.” Helena stood up. “Hal, I really do want to go. I can’t wait to see the Loire and all those marvellous chateaux. Please don’t let a moment’s faintness spoil everything.”

  “Are you sure you’re up to it?

  “Positive,” she answered as Marie-Laure smiled, and the blonde, after a cool appraising stare, muttered, “These English,” under her breath, before turning all her charm onto a middle-aged but wealthy-looking American.

  *

  Leaving Paris, Hal took one of France’s beautiful D roads which ambled along through pleasant villages, at one of which Hal and Helena stopped for lunch. It was only then, sitting beneath a striped awning in a narrow but picturesque one-way street, that Hal said, “Was it really tiredness that made you faint?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Helena innocently.

  “Because, my darling, you were staring so fixedly at that poster of the chateau I wondered if it had anything to do with it.”

  “How could it?” Helena eyed Hal narrowly, surprised at his unexpected perception.

  “That I don’t know.”

  She hesitated, on the brink of confession, and then drew back. How could she share with Hal the details of that claustrophobic dream? She had already told him more than she meant to, but not for anything would she discuss the feel of the man’s hand on hers, the touch of those long cool fingers before she fell away from him.

  “You’re mistaken,” said Helena firmly, hoping he believed her. “I just happened to be looking at it, that’s all.” She deliberately turned the conversation away. “Do you think we will find anywhere to stay in Amboise? And what on earth shall we tell the parents?”

  “That we’re getting on better than we hoped. That will shut them up.” Hal looked just a little wistful. “You haven’t forgotten my birthday, have you?”

  *

  Helena leaned forward, wondering at herself for wanting to kiss him so much. “Of course not. It’s on Sunday, and I’m taking you out to dinner.”

  “Don’t forget,” said Hal, and gave her such a smile that she felt quite stricken.

  They reached Amboise just as the light began to fade, having followed the course of the river Loire west of the town of la Chapelle past Blois and on to Amboise, once seeing a sign post marked Chambord, at which Helena had craned her neck.

  “Want to stop?” Hal had asked but she had refused.

  “I’d rather see what Clos-Luce has to tell us first.”

  “But you do want to visit Chambord while we’re here?” asked Hal, his face expressionless.

  “Oh yes,” answered Helena, trying hard to sound casual.

  Both of them had seemed to find conversation difficult from then on and it had not been until they had found a delightful hotel outside the town, once the home of an Amboise banking family, that they had settled again to chatting easily.

  Sitting together on the terrace, a sea of geraniums, all spilling out of earthenware pots, they comfortably watched the sun go down, and everything suddenly seemed to be more than right between them.

  “I love you, Helena,” said Hal, staring steadily into the middle distance not glancing in her direction.

  “I know,” she answered quietly.

  “And you?”

  “Still that wretched hang up. Hal, I’ve got the oddest feeling that this visit will decide everything, one way or another.”

  He frowned. “But that’s why you came, remember? To make your mind up.”

  “It’s not a question of that,” Helena answered slowly. “I somehow think that all the answers will come, here in France.”

  Hal looked at her quizzically. “You’ve lost me.”

  “I believe we will get more than we bargained for.”

  “It’s because of that picture, isn’t it?” Hal drained his gin and tonic and called to the young girl at the bar who brought him another.

  “I don’t know.”

  “How is it possible,” Hal went on, almost as if she hadn’t spoken, “that a woman was alive four centuries ago who looked exactly like you?”

  “Perhaps she wasn’t,” Helena answered thoughtfully. “Perhaps she was just a figment of Leonardo’s imagination.”

  “Somehow I don’t think so. He mostly worked from life, with the exception of his inventions.”

  “Then I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.”

  “Helena,” said Hal grimly, “don’t bluff. I know that look. You won’t rest until you’ve combed the poor man’s life right through. You’ll find the name of his model if it is the last thing you do.”

  She shivered. “I hope it isn’t.”

  Suddenly solemn, Hal answered, “So do I.”

 
*

  Next morning they went to Clos-Luce early, seeing it before the house became too crowded. The rooms, lovingly adorned with furniture contemporary with Leonardo, were full of atmosphere, while the collection of models, made from the great man’s sketches, was astounding. Helena found herself looking at a tank, a swinging bridge, a parachute, even an aeroplane and automobile. It was almost unbelievable and in a way unnerving, too much to take in at once. But there was nothing that gave any clues as to the origins of the sketch, Mystery. Yet, after reading her guide book, Helena realised with a slight sense of shock that there was a connection between Leonardo da Vinci and the Chateau of Chambord.

  “The great painter spent the last four years of his life in the service of King François,” it said. “Some say that it was on da Vinci’s designs that the Chateau of Chambord was based. For it was in 1517 that Leonardo signed a project for a huge castle at Romorantin, proving that he was already at work as an architect. However he did not live to see his grand design come to fruition, dying as he did in 1519 in the arms of the King himself.”

  “So,” she said to Hal, as they walked through the Renaissance rose garden, “we are no further forward.”

  “Perhaps we will be after you have seen that chateau that so attracts you.”

  “But Leonardo could never have gone there.”

  “It seems to me that he could visualise something without actually seeing it. Look at that exhibition. It was mind blowing. I’m almost beginning to believe he could time travel.”

  “Perhaps he did and saw me,” said Helena, and was surprised when Hal didn’t laugh.

  By mutual agreement they went on to Chambord early that afternoon, the car turning into the vast walled forest land through a pair of magnificent gates, beneath the full glare of the sun at its highest point.

  Hal looked at her out of the corner of his eye and Helena was only too pitifully aware that she had started to shake, that for some perverse reason she could not control her body, was having to fight to keep still.

  She drew breath in wonderment as into view came a huge dome adorned at the top by a stone crown, the fleur-de-lys carved triumphantly above. Then she glimpsed towers and roofs and skylights, and the most glorious selection of decorative chimney stacks she had ever seen. The top storey of the chateau was so fantastic as to be almost a city in its own right, each blue-slated dome an imaginary dwelling place.

  “Pure fantasia,” said Hal, shaking his head.

  Helena nodded automatically, then felt utterly bereft as the car went round a bend and the chateau was lost to view.

  Why am I feeling so odd? she thought wretchedly, what is it that both draws and repels me?

  And then realisation came as they rounded another bend and Chambord was once more in their sight. It was so familiar to her that if she had not known for sure that this was the very first time she had set eyes on it, Helena would have sworn she had visited the chateau before. The memory half recalled in the tourist office had become a reality. She would have staked her life on the fact that the staircase lay within the chateau.

  “You’re very quiet,” said Hal, so suddenly that Helena jumped. “Is there something wrong?”

  “What could there be?” she answered defensively.

  Hal skimmed into the car park and pulled up rather fast. “Listen,” he said, “you seem to forget that I’ve known you since you were born. You can’t deceive me, Helena. This place scares you, doesn’t it? Now why?”

  Helena lowered her eyes, feeling near to tears. “I’ve never been here, but it’s part of my recurring dream,” she said eventually.

  Hal sat back in his seat. “You realise that there’s probably a perfectly logical explanation. Everything that one ever sees or hears, ever, is registered somewhere in the subconscious. You probably saw a book about Chambord when you were a child, maybe even before you could read. Then you stored it away and began to dream about it.”

  Helena nodded doubtfully and Hal went on, “I presume that this is the dream about the staircase?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then, it’s probably here. Shall we go in?”

  She had never known a feeling like it; half of her wanting to run into Chambord and absorb it, to become part of its very fabric; the other half cringing with fear and foreboding.

  “Darling,” said Hal gently, “it’s no good sitting there shaking. You must slay your dragon, whatever it is. Remember that I’m right here beside you.”

  They got out of the car and walked through the car park, packed with coaches and other vehicles despite the fact that it was late in the season. Tourists were everywhere, thronging the tree-lined street where every shop sold postcards and souvenirs of the chateau. With every step Helena and Hal took the amazing place grew nearer and more huge: comparable in both size and grandeur with a palace.

  They were approaching the building from the side, and could see from this angle that the chateau was built in a square courtyard, protected by a single storey wall culminating at both ends in two round pill boxes, like towers with their tops sliced off. Helena felt at once that they shouldn’t have been there, that the chateau had at one time been fully moated. But the only evidence of this was some neat canals going two-thirds of the way round, looking dull and turgid in the brilliant afternoon light.

  The path which she and Hal now took, along with a throng of others, turned left and Helena found herself approaching a door in the outer wall which gave admittance to the chateau. Despite the blazing sun she shivered, wishing she could turn away.

  To the right of the entrance was a huge vaulted room, now given over entirely to the selling of tickets and souvenirs. Hal bore down on a series of tape recorded tour guides. The one he hired had two ear pieces coming from a central player and having made sure that Helena could hear from hers, he led her out into the glaring brilliance of the courtyard. Before her the chateau reared like a place of legend, full of soaring arches and windows.

  “All right?” said Hal as they crossed the square.

  “Fine,” answered Helena, and desperately wished it were true.

  The tape player which had been running silently now burst into sudden life.

  “Welcome to the Chateau of Chambord,” it said. “You will see two doors ahead of you. Enter through either and then look around you at the breathtaking spectacle. Stare and wonder at the hunting lodge of the hunter King, François I.”

  Hal laughed out loud. “Some hunting lodge!”

  And as if it had heard him, the voice of the commentator chuckled. “Yes, that is how François liked to describe it. But as you will see for yourselves Chambord is no lodge but an enormous palace with 440 rooms, 14 great staircases and 70 secondary staircases and a chimney for every day of the year. 365 in all!”

  Hal and Helena exchanged a smiling glance but said nothing.

  “The Chateau is designed in the shape of the Greek cross at the centre of which is the great staircase,” the commentary continued and Helena felt her blood run cold. “At the corners of the cross are four towers — the François I Tower, the Dieudonné, the Bell or Henri IV, and the Caroline de Berry. Please make your way to the King’s Hunting Party room by the de Berry tower and switch the tape on again when you get there.”

  Hal hesitated and Helena suddenly realised that he was nervous, but desperately trying to conceal the fact.

  “Do you want to go there, or do you want to see the staircase straight away?” he asked.

  “I’d rather do the tour properly,” she answered, afraid to proceed too fast.

  He nodded and they obediently made their way to the tower, gazing in silent admiration at the wonderfully carved stone ceilings, alternate squares revealing the letter F and the King’s personal emblem, the salamander.

  “What a place.” breathed Hal but before Helena was able to answer they were surrounded by a party of Americans, twenty strong, all carrying the taped tour and following it to the letter. In fact the group even watched their leader, a sort stub
by man bristling with self-importance, for the signal to switch on.

  “Right, everybody,” he was calling, waving his arms to attract attention. “We are now at the Caroline de Berry tower — and boy, oh boy, do we know that she was no lady! Mistress to the King and all.”

  Someone argued, “Wasn’t that du Barry?” and got a withering look for their pains.

  “As I said we are now at the tower so we’ll all step into the King’s Hunting Party room.”

  He stumped off to the left but lost his way and had to come back. Meanwhile, several members of his party had used their initiative and found the right place. The little man swelled with indignation.

  “Please, everybody. We really must stick together. Who knows who might go missing!”

  At any other time Helena would have been giggling uncontrollably, but now a finger of fear once again laid itself on her spine as she turned the tape back on.

  “In this room you will see the only known portrait of a ghost.”

  Helena and Hal stared at one another soundlessly. “Yes, the great staircase is supposedly haunted and, so it is said, several members of François’s court actually saw the phantom. In fact there is a legend that the ghost was the basis of a sketch by Leonardo da Vinci who, so it is said, designed both chateau and staircase. Be that as it may, in the sixteenth century the Vicomte de Fleurmont claimed that he saw the spectre and painted her likeness in oils. There are several paintings on the walls, but hers is on the far left.”

  The tape ran on but Helena was no longer listening. It was as if every morsel of terror had suddenly become focussed. Without a word she scrambled through the Americans who were now laughing uproariously.

  “Gee, think of that! A real live ghost.”

  “Did you hear yourself? A real live ghost.”

  “I said that? Oh my!”

  Right behind her she could hear Hal apologising and pushing his way through the crowd but she did not even turn to look at him. For Helena had stopped short before a painting which could only be a portrait of herself, her hair loose about her shoulders, a strangely wistful smile on her lips, and wearing the satin nightgown her mother had given her last Christmas.