The Lazarus Vault

by Tom Harper

  ‘Why?’ I’m not sympathetic; I sound like a child.

  ‘Guy. Of course.’

  ‘Do you love him?’ I know she doesn’t.

  ‘He’s my husband.’

  It’s not the ‘husband’ that offends me: it’s the ‘my’. I hate any implication that Guy belongs to her, or she to him. She belongs to me.

  She reaches out a hand to console me, but I shake her off. I don’t want to make this easy for her.

  ‘We can’t go on,’ she insists. ‘Would you kill him? Fight all his knights and vassals, defy the world just so we can lie together? It’s impossible. You can’t write a happy ending to this story. If you love me, let me go.’

  If I love her? Let Guy come, let him beat me and drown me or burn me at the stake – I’ll fight for her with every breath in my body. Only never deny our love.

  A noise sounds on the stair. I look at the door – Ada didn’t bolt it. I start towards it, but before I’m halfway across the room it flies open with a crash. A figure stands in the entry, a burning brand in one hand and a naked sword in the other. The glare of the light blinds me.

  ‘Peter?’

  It’s Jocelin.

  XXIII

  Mont Valois, Switzerland

  ELLIE WOKE ON Christmas morning, naked and warm under the fur-trimmed coverlet. For once, Blanchard was still asleep; she lay beside him, feeling the chasm of hot air between their bodies, listening for his breathing. He slept as quietly as a cat, no snore or murmur. Cold clear sunlight streamed through the mullioned window; in the courtyard, Ellie could hear the staff tending the castle as they must have done for centuries. She thought she’d never been happier.

  She caught sight of the wolf above the door and turned away to hide it. The movement woke Blanchard. He leaned over to kiss her, twisting back as he did to reach under the bed. His hand came up holding a small fat package wrapped in gold paper.

  ‘Happy Christmas, Ellie.’

  She sat up in the bed and slit open the paper with her nail. It was a book, bound in crimson leather with a crest stamped in gold on the cover.

  ‘Is this another one of your orphan assets?’

  ‘It belonged to the Saint-Lazare family. Michel sold it to me.’

  She could tell it was old. She’d handled enough manuscripts in her year at Oxford to recognise the smell of vellum. She opened the cover.

  Le Conte du Graal.

  And underneath, in Blanchard’s familiar copperplate:

  For Ellie, a great romance.

  She couldn’t believe he’d actually written on the ancient parchment. As she touched the page the book’s history seemed to flash through her imagination: the parchmenter racking the calfskin until it was paper thin. A young boy climbing in a tree, trying not to get stung, while he removed the gall-wasp’s nest to get the acid which would sear the ink into the page. The scribe sharpening his reed pen, sitting very straight at his angled desk as he copied the text. And now her own name, graffiti on their monument.

  Blanchard read her expression.

  ‘The past was once the present, Ellie. History is merely the accumulation of all the presents that have ever been. Those who lived in the past have no better claim to it. You lived, you owned this book. You are part of its story also.’

  Ellie turned to the first page. The script was tiny, only a few millimetres high, laid out in three well-ordered columns with a boxed, gilded initial at the top. It looked like some sort of list, or an index: only if you peered closely at the minuscule text could you see that each was a line of poetry.

  ‘Do you know Chrétien de Troyes?’

  ‘Only by reputation.’ There must have been some lectures at university, but she didn’t think she’d gone.

  ‘He was the first and greatest of the romance writers. He took folk tales and legends, stories of the common people, and turned them into poetry for kings.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She rolled on top of him, rubbing her body against his as she plied him with kisses. ‘And all I got you was a pair of socks.’

  While Blanchard showered, Ellie rang her mother. She knew she should be guilty, but it was Christmas morning and she refused to let herself feel bad. She let the phone ring a full minute, but her mother didn’t answer. She remembered it was an hour earlier in Wales: her mother would probably be at church.

  Ellie glanced at the bathroom door, debating with herself. She could still hear the shower running. She hated calling Doug in front of Blanchard, though occasionally it had been unavoidable. It brought them into the same room, put her lies in such sharp focus it hurt. And she hated the way Blanchard looked: never jealous, or even embarrassed, only vaguely amused. Perhaps, being French, he thought it was normal.

  Doug answered straight away, like someone who’d been waiting for her.

  ‘Happy Christmas, sweetheart.’

  ‘Happy Christmas.’

  ‘How’s Wales?’

  Was there an edge in his question? A trap? Had he guessed?

  ‘Fine. Mum’s gone to church, I’m peeling potatoes.’

  This is the last time I’m going to lie to you, she promised silently. The weeks since his birthday had slipped by in a blur; then it was almost Christmas, and she didn’t want to ruin it. January was the time, she’d decided. The worst time of year: Janus the two-faced god, looking forwards and backwards. She’d tell him in the New Year.

  ‘How’s the weather? Have you got a white Christmas?’

  Her mind raced. She should have checked online. ‘Probably just the same as you’ve got.’

  Behind the door, the shower had stopped.

  ‘I think I heard Mum coming in. I’d better go.’ She endured the usual sign offs with mounting impatience, staring at the door, willing it to stay shut.

  ‘I love you.’

  She’d barely hung up when Blanchard walked out in his dressing gown. He gave her a quizzical look.

  ‘Were you talking to someone?’

  ‘My mum.’

  Blanchard took a shirt from its hanger in the wardrobe. ‘You should get up. We have to earn our Christmas lunch.’

  By the time Ellie got downstairs, a dozen men and women had assembled in the courtyard. If she’d met them in real life Ellie would probably have run a mile: tall and flatly handsome, dressed in fur hats and tweed jackets and riding boots, they looked like a species apart. She wondered if they were all Saint-Lazare’s guests, or if some might be family. Blanchard mingled with them, making small talk and introductions which Ellie immediately forgot. She kept waiting to meet Michel Saint-Lazare, but apparently he wasn’t there.

  A convoy of Land Rovers took them halfway down the mountain, to an upland meadow studded with trees and hedges. Another Land Rover was already there with its boot open. From inside, Ellie could hear a high-pitched chirrup.

  It came from a cage. A tall bird sat on a perch, clutching the wood with sharp, wizened claws. It had a tuft of white feathers at its breast, broad wings tucked up to its shoulders, and a curved beak like a cutlass. Ellie didn’t need to know much about birds to recognise the lethal power in its body. A predator. A heavy chain shackled it to the cage.

  Blanchard pulled on a leather gauntlet and laced it up to his elbow. Murmuring soothing words, he opened the cage and slipped the chain off the perch, over his wrist. The bird hopped on to his outstretched arm, preening the white feathers on its breast. The assistant – a falconer? – pulled a small leather hood over its beak and fastened it around her head.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Ellie said. ‘So noble.’

  ‘A peregrine falcon. Falconry has always been the true sport of kings.’ Blanchard took out a lure tied to the end of a long string and held it in his right hand. ‘It requires infinite patience and deep pockets.’

  Blanchard strode across the field with Ellie in tow. A black hound trotted at his feet, while the other guests followed at a wary distance, watching Blanchard and sipping coffee that the driver had brought in the Land Rover. The falcon wore a bell tied to its t
ail feathers which trilled whenever it moved.

  They stopped in the middle of the meadow. Blanchard pulled off the hood and unclasped the chain. The falcon looked around, its head twitching. For long moments man and bird stood absolutely still, dark figures against the white field.

  With a trill of the bell and a clap of feathers, the bird rose off Blanchard’s arm. Its wing almost caught Ellie in the face. It shot into the air so fast she barely saw it, climbing to a point above a small copse at the end of the field.

  ‘She’s seen something.’

  From the deep pocket of his fur coat, Blanchard took what looked like a miniature radio and turned it on. Through a burst of static, it began to emit a regular low-pitched tone. When he pointed it towards where the bird was hovering it grew louder.

  ‘The bird has a radio beacon attached to its leg. If we lose sight of it, this will help us find it.’

  The falcon hovered, flapping its wings against the breeze to stay in place. Ellie squinted at the sky. The air was so clear she could see everything: the black feathers under its wings and the fleck of white at its breast; the curved point of its beak. She almost imagined she could see its eyes, scanning the air. Waiting, waiting –

  – And down. It happened so fast Ellie didn’t even see the prey. The falcon swooped and vanished behind the trees.

  ‘Come on!’ Blanchard shouted. In an instant they were running across the field, staggering through the deep snow. Blood rushed in her ears: the wind, the crunch of snow, the baying of the hound. They scrambled over a fence and pushed through a hedge into the copse. Blanchard waved to his right.

  ‘The trees disrupt the signal. It is better if we keep apart.’

  She veered away through the virgin snow, pushing into the undergrowth. She crossed a narrow stream, tripped on a buried tree-root and just caught herself on the trunk of a birch.

  You’ll never find it like this. She stopped, resting her hands on her thighs to ease the cramp, breathing hard. Heavy branches creaked under their coat of snow; a robin called. Away to her left she could hear distant barking. And somewhere ahead, not far off …

  There. The trill of a bell, like a sleigh harness.

  Moving more slowly now, Ellie crept through the trees. The bell grew louder. She peered round a bush.

  The falcon sat triumphant on the grey carcass of a goose. The goose’s wings had cratered the snow like a bomb blast, though it lay still now. The falcon leaned over, mewling softly as it pecked out the bird’s heart. It was very clean – the only evidence of death were three drops of blood spattered on the snow, so cold and precise beside the corpse.

  Ellie stared at them. She suddenly felt dizzy. The snow dazzled her, so bright that the drops of blood seemed to lift off it and swim in front of her eyes. She thought she’d never seen such a colour.

  Through her daze, Ellie heard another trill. It was such an alien sound it took her a second to realise it was her mobile phone. She fumbled it out of her pocket.

  ‘Eleanor? It’s Mrs Thomas. From No. 96.’

  Ellie knew her: a short woman who lived down the road from her mother, with round cheeks and a terrier. But why –?

  ‘I knocked but you weren’t at home. I got your number from your mother’s bag. I didn’t know if you were down – or if you were spending Christmas somewhere … Such a shock. Such a terrible thing.’

  She was babbling, talking around something too awful to come at directly. Ellie stared at the falcon gobbling the heart out of the bird it had killed.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Mrs Thomas was saying something about ambulances, about hospitals and doctors and whether she’d be all right. Her words made no more sense to Ellie than the falcon’s mewl.

  ‘Who?’ But she already knew.

  Snow shivered off a cluster of branches as Blanchard pushed into the clearing. He held the radio receiver like some sort of remote control, pointing it at the bird. He looked at it with delight, something almost approaching rapture, then saw Ellie.

  ‘What has happened?’

  From down the mountain and across the sea, a voice in her ear said it’s your mother.

  Saint-Lazare’s plane was in Vienna for maintenance and a storm had closed the runway. Ellie spent the night at the airport and took the first flight next morning, a budget airline filled with screaming families and returning skiers. The cabin blazed aggressive colours; it smelt of sweat, old sunscreen and fresh beer. Two rows back, a child was sick all over the floor. At Bristol, she waited an hour for the skeleton-staffed airport to produce her baggage.

  No trains were running on Boxing Day. Ellie took a cab from the airport all the way to Newport – forty miles that cost almost a hundred pounds. She stared out of the window at the tired city, the few high-rise towers that struggled above the skyline and the tangled attempts at public art. She hadn’t been back since she started at Monsalvat. She’d forgotten how grey it was.

  To enter a hospital, even as a visitor, is to surrender yourself – as if the only way to manage so much human suffering is to build something incomprehensible to humanity. The Royal Gwent was no exception. The moment Ellie stepped through the doors she became a captive: to unwritten schedules and rules, Byzantine hierarchies that never came to a head. Even the architecture seemed designed to dislocate. She remembered something Blanchard had said in the vault about time becoming space. By the time she reached the room in the stroke unit, both time and space had compacted into a fluorescent-lit void.

  Her mother lay in a curtained-off corner of a four-bed ward. There was a window, but the only view it offered was a brick wall. Her mother couldn’t even see that. Her eyes were closed; there was something subtly asymmetric about her face, though Ellie couldn’t say what. Needles and tubes probed her body, while screens and monitors brought second-by-second news of what was happening under the skin.

  Ellie sat and fished out the box of Swiss chocolates she’d bought at the airport. She laid them on the plastic bedside table.

  ‘She can’t eat at the moment.’

  A doctor had appeared, a tall man with fair hair and a smile that offended Ellie.

  ‘What happened?’ Ellie heard the crack in her voice and realised how close she was to falling apart completely. ‘I’m her daughter,’ she added.

  ‘She went to church on Christmas morning. Apparently, she’d gone to light a candle after the service when she collapsed.’

  Ellie could imagine the scene. The grey austerity of Saint David’s, whose vicar would never allow a Christmas tree inside his church. The white-haired ladies – they were mostly ladies – drinking their Christmas morning sherry, the news going through them like a panicked flock of birds. Father Evans pushing through, calling for calm. The ambulance in the churchyard. How long did you have to wait for an ambulance on Christmas day?

  ‘They brought her straight here. She hasn’t regained consciousness yet.’

  ‘Will she …?’

  Ellie couldn’t finish the sentence. Her mind rebelled; her imagination refused to supply the necessary possibilities.

  ‘I don’t know. Her signs are good. It depends if there’s any, ah, underlying damage.’

  He means brain damage, Ellie thought dully. She looked at her mother’s face again, the thin bones and sharp creases. In a horrid way, she looked more at peace than Ellie could ever remember seeing her.

  The doctor gave a subtle glance at the clock on the wall.

  ‘She’s in the best possible place. We’ll take good care of her, I promise.’

  *

  Ellie didn’t know how long she sat with her mother. The doctor said it might help to talk, and so she spoke. Halting and awkward, often tearful – honest in a way she’d never dared when her mother could hear. She told her about Doug and his poem; about Blanchard and the ring he’d given her; about the cities she’d visited and the places she’d stayed. She described Saint-Lazare’s fairy-tale castle, and the dead goose with its blood so bright on the snow. It made her realise how l
ittle there was in her life any more that wasn’t connected to the bank. Sometimes her thoughts drifted away; she didn’t know she’d stopped speaking until uncounted minutes had passed.

  Visiting hours ended. Ellie made her way out of the hospital, trailing her suitcase down the corridors like guilt. I should have been here. She’d found a set of house keys in her mother’s handbag. With nowhere else to go, she went home.

  Ellie slept in her mother’s bed that night. As soon as she woke, she phoned the hospital. No change, better or worse. They told her it was a Sunday: no visitors until the afternoon. She picked through the impractically formal clothes in her suitcase until she found a pair of jeans and a woollen jumper. The house was freezing, and when Ellie went to have a shower the water wasn’t much better than ice.

  With vague memories of a tank in the loft, Ellie unhooked the ladder in the ceiling and clambered up. A sign nailed under the rafters warned that the joists wouldn’t support her weight, though perhaps that was just because every inch already had to contend with the mass of boxes stacked as high as the roof would allow. The hot water tank, she thought, lay somewhere at the back.

  There was no way through. With a sinking heart, Ellie pulled on one of the boxes nearest to her. The old tape holding it together was brittle and dry: the moment she touched it it snapped like rice paper. The box fell open, spilling papers and photographs across the floor.

  Ellie wanted to cry in frustration. For a second, she imagined walking away and checking into a hotel downtown: abandoning this cold, broken past for functional anonymity. But something in the sprawl of old documents caught her eye. It was a photograph of her mother, younger than Ellie could ever remember her, with long straight hair and a skirt so short it made Ellie cringe. She was standing in front of a cathedral with her arm around a man: the camera must have snapped just as something distracted him, for his head had turned and he was staring off-camera. He looked handsome in profile, with strong features and a deep, questioning look on his face.

  Aneurin Stanton. Ellie recognised him at once, though she’d only ever seen half a dozen photographs of him. She turned over the photograph and saw her mother’s small neat handwriting, efficient as ever.