Season of Light (29 page)

‘But we must go to Caen. I have to call on the Paulin family.’

‘You must learn to keep quiet. We are in France, where every word can be used to incriminate us.’

Asa looked about her at the cattle grazing and the springy turf of the clifftop. ‘It is one day’s difference. By tomorrow afternoon we will be on the road to Paris. I promise to say nothing out of turn from now on.’

‘Do so.’ For a moment they faced each other under the hot sun. Madame pointed to the bags, which Asa must carry, and they took the road west for Caen.

After hours of plodding through flat, sun-drenched countryside, they were overtaken by a diligence at Varaville. While their papers were examined by the coachman there was a deathly silence and then, when they were allowed inside, faint smiles of greeting from fellow passengers, though Madame acknowledged no one. She kept herself rigidly apart from Asa, who was sweating in her ill-fitting clothes. No doubt now who was the mistress and who the near-invisible maid. But as the Normandy hedgerows lurched past, Asa’s heart beat strong and steady. The softness of doubt, of wanting to change her mind and go home, was gone. Didier had called, she had answered and France had embraced her. In another few hours she might actually be with Beatrice Paulin and then the way forward would be clear. She even thought, in an ecstasy brought on by hunger, tension and sleeplessness, that perhaps she would find Didier in Caen, waiting for her.

It was as if the streets of Caen had been swept bare by plague. At nearly seven in the evening heat still curdled the air, beat against the sand-coloured walls and carried the stench from the river. A child scurrying along a shady alley was plucked off his feet and whisked inside while his abandoned ball went bouncing into a gutter. Madame, since alighting from the coach, had been oddly passive, or perhaps it was that she was weakened by heat and hunger. Her head was down, her shoulders rolled forward and the frill of her bonnet obscured her face. When Asa hesitated, her companion halted too. ‘You are the maid,’ she murmured, ‘it is for you to find us a bed.’

‘I thought you were anxious that my English accent would give us away.’

‘Then you must speak without an accent. It is not fitting that I, the mistress, should procure the room.’

By instinct Asa walked south, avoiding the belligerent mound of the castle, until they came to yet another church, the fourth they’d passed in the city, in a little tree-lined square. Sure enough, on the corner of a narrow alley, was a swinging sign;
Auberge
. It took some time before the landlady answered the door, a forbidding affair that creaked as it opened, admitting them to a dank courtyard, and even longer for her to study their papers. She was thin, a little bent in the back and with plaits wound on either side of her head. ‘I no longer provide dinner or breakfast, you understand. Food is very short in Caen.’

The money for the room was set on a scratched tabletop beside a crocheted mat. The proprietress’s eyes flicked from the coins to Asa and then to Madame, who kept her face averted.

‘I have a room,’ she said finally, seating herself at the table and dipping her pen, ‘but first there are some formalities required these days by the authorities.’ Her pen squeaked as she inscribed Asa’s replies to a volley of questions. Why were they in Caen, exactly? Where had they come from and where were they going? Why were they travelling unaccompanied?

‘We are accompanying each other,’ said Asa, ‘being mistress and maid.’ For this attempt at light-heartedness she received a cold-eyed stare.

They were eventually allocated an unpleasant room on the third floor overlooking the courtyard and furnished with one narrow bed and a washstand. The latrine, up two further dismal flights of stairs, was windowless and therefore pitch black; a hole had been cut in the stone floor and beneath it was a drop to the river.

Madame sat on the edge of the bed, eyes hard with reproach. ‘Do not answer back or make jokes. Do you not understand that one hint of suspicion will send that woman running to report us at the town hall and we’ll find ourselves in irons?’

‘For what?’ cried Asa. ‘We’ve done nothing wrong.’

‘You’re a foreigner with a false passport. When will you realise that this is not a game?’

‘Madame, you are very low. We are both hungry.’

‘I refuse to leave this room. I am too ill.’

‘Then I’ll go and find us some supper.’

So Asa went out alone, darting across one street after another as if the town’s fear were infectious. First she ran north by the church of St-Pierre, then turned west, deeper into town, through streets of close-built timbered houses until she came to a main thoroughfare, the rue des Bras, where she found a queue of women outside a bread shop. Their eyes, though sharp with curiosity, avoided hers, until eventually someone said: ‘You’re a stranger, I think.’

‘I am. We are passing through. We have been staying in Le Havre with a relative of my mistress.’ She had said too much, perhaps, in her accented French, but her answer seemed to satisfy and the queue shuffled forward. Thankfully they were in shade; even late in the day it was still hot. Asa glanced from the unfamiliar paving stones to the honey-coloured wall against which she leaned and thought:
He
would have known all this. I have re-entered Didier’s world.

She returned to their lodgings with the bread tucked under her arm, but the stale air within the auberge soon quelled her excitement. There was hardly any light in the stairwell and she had to grope her way from landing to landing. With relief she pushed open the door to their room. Madame de Rusigneux was seated on the bed, exactly as she had been when Asa had last seen her an hour ago.

All night they lay top to tail without speaking. Asa was sure that Madame was awake most of the time but found it impossible to break the silence. When the clock struck three she thought to herself that Didier would have heard that same clock, night after night, when he was a boy. Later, she heard the clop of hooves and the rattle of cartwheels and remembered lying with Didier in his first-floor room, behind the green and brown screen which smelt of varnish in the heat of the sun. It was as if he were reconstructing himself inside her, cell by cell, so that her desire for Shackleford and the treacherous memories of Compton Wyatt were fading.

She must have slept, for when the clock struck six she was jolted awake.

Madame said: ‘I will go to mass. For the sake of my brother.’

‘Would you like me to come?’

‘That is for you to decide.’

‘Then I shall come to church, if you don’t mind. I should like to pray too.’

The church was very cool; the yellowish air gritty and smelling of plaster dust. There was an endearing lack of symmetry – each pillar began at a different level on the floor and no arch was quite true – but gradually Asa realised with a surge of dread that there were also signs of recent violence here. The plaster images of saints had been savagely defiled – index fingers snapped off and noses severed – and the wounds were chalky and fresh. The atmosphere was altogether bleak and the responses from the congregation who clustered in the pews farthest away from the altar barely audible. Asa’s Protestant ears were offended by the gabbled Latin prayers and her eyes shunned the bloodied figure on the crucifix. Fortunately Madame had chosen the back pew and they were pressed inconspicuously close to a pillar so that no one would notice Asa’s unfamiliarity with the proceedings. After a few minutes Madame began to tremble so much that she had to fold her arms across her chest and grip her elbows. She did not queue for communion but sat close to Asa with her head down.

As soon as the priest had said the blessing and scurried away, Madame set off towards a side chapel, tucked behind a pillar, where there was a life-sized statue of the Virgin. Even Asa could not quite resist the charm of a Madonna whose cloak was painted a shade of blue-green lined with gold, and whose features were as ruddy and cheerful as a milkmaid’s. Her robust, round-cheeked son grasped her neck with one confident hand and clutched a golden ball in the other.

Kneeling, Madame threw back her head so that her face was exposed to gashes of blue and red light from the window above. Tears trickled from her eyes and hung on her long lashes. Asa knew better than to approach her and offer comfort and she wondered whether she, as a Protestant, was even permitted to pray to the Virgin: Help me find Didier. Don’t let my family worry about me. What will Shackleford say when he finds out what I’ve done?

All of a sudden, Madame thrust her hand backwards, waited until Asa had crept within reach, then fiercely seized her wrist. For a few minutes they remained locked together, then Madame got shakily to her feet. ‘I am too ill to go with you to your friends’ house,’ she said at the church door. ‘I need to rest. There is a long journey ahead.’

‘I will be back by midday, I promise.’

Madame crossed the square, paused before the door of the auberge to raise her hand in a wave, then disappeared from view.

The route to the Paulins’ house on the rue Leverrier took Asa for the first time under the walls of the castle, a vast stone fortress complete with round towers and moat of the sort which, in England, might have been allowed to fall into ruin. To the north-west, near the university, the streets were lined with trees, and with each step Asa felt more connected to Didier. The old feeling of significance had returned; Madame, the journey to France, this city of Caen, all formed part of her own momentous story. If she turned her head suddenly she might even glimpse him, head held high, papers under his arm, dashing to some engagement.

Number 15, rue Leverrier was a low old house, timbered like many others in the city and set behind railings. She trembled as she unhooked the gate, marched up to a green-painted front door and, before she could lose her nerve, pulled on the bell.

Out came an elderly woman with a hook nose and suspicious eyes. ‘
Oui?
’

‘Mademoiselle Paulin?’

‘
Elle n’est pas ici
.’

‘
Le professeur?
’

‘
Non plus
.’

‘
Monsieur Paulin, le fils?
’

The maid’s expression tightened.

‘
Est-ce que je peux les attendre?
’

‘
Ce n’est pas possible
.’

‘
Alors, si j’écris un petit mot?
’

‘
D’accord
.’

‘
Excusez-moi, madame, mais je n’ai pas de papier
.’

The servant sighed gustily but allowed Asa inside, indicated an upright chair, then picked up her skirts and toiled up the stairs, presumably to fetch pen and paper.

Five years. In her dreams, in those heady days of knowing him in Paris, Asa had dared to imagine visiting this house as Didier’s bride. The entrance hall was exactly as it should be, beautifully proportioned with delicate brass lamp holders and a red tiled floor; a room of which Caroline Lambert would certainly have approved, its furnishings acquired over centuries rather than bought to impress. For generations it must have smelt of lamp oil, of baking bread and some scented plant. Presumably the boy Didier had whooshed down the curve of that same polished banister, plucked his shoes from the rack and stood on tiptoe to admire his dark curls in the mirror above the marble-topped commode.

Asa got up and peered more closely at the three paintings hanging over the stairs: one a rather fanciful picture of the castle, another a watercolour of a rustic scene complete with church, village and the distant sea, the third a portrait of a young man, hands behind his back, wearing a neat blue coat, plain cravat and with a turquoise handkerchief in his breast pocket.

So here, after all, was Didier, his blue eyes fixed on Asa. In the portrait Didier was perhaps younger than when she’d met him in Paris; his cheeks were more boyish though his skin was that same flawless ivory, his beautiful mouth curved in a well-remembered smile. She crept closer until five years of separation faded away and she was standing in his arms by the window of his apartment, pressed so close that her forehead touched the fine-shaven skin of his cheek.

The stairs creaked; the housekeeper was descending with quill and paper. With shaking hand Asa wrote
Thomasina Ardleigh: Je retournerai bientôt
. But the servant, who read the note, shook her head as if to say another visit would be pointless, then ushered Asa to the door.

Light headed, she rushed back to the city centre. Caen at eleven o’clock in the morning was seething with heat and bustle. Asa bought cherries and cheese from the food market near St-Sauveur, though the cost of each purchase was exorbitant. The cherries were blood red and sweeter than those from the Ardleigh orchard. Juice dripped down her chin as she savoured a few, but what did it matter since she was just a maid? She walked away, still buoyant, until she discovered that she was beneath a scaffold upon which was erected not the customary gibbet but a tall instrument bound with canvas and ropes.

Although hidden, the instrument of execution cast a cold shadow in the square, and the other passers-by were giving it a wide berth. Averting her eyes and taking care not to scan the cobbles for the bloodstains of the doomed Monsieur Bayeux, Asa hurried south towards the auberge. The streets were so crowded now she could barely struggle through and she dared not take a detour for fear of losing her way. When she reached the Place de Liberté it was crammed, but the crowd was silent, huddled in groups and clutching children to their skirts as they listened to a man in shirtsleeves and loose-fitting breeches who was proclaiming excitedly from a mounting block. A leaflet was thrust into Asa’s hand and then another.

‘Make no mistake,’ cried the orator, ‘the Convention of Paris is treating the citizens of Caen with contempt. We sent a delegation of nine distinguished commissioners, all trusted friends, to Paris, at great expense. But we hear that they were dealt with disgracefully, refused a hearing and then fobbed off by being sent from one committee to another. Worse still, an entire section of that same Convention – all those who opposed the rule of the mob and the hectoring of the likes of Marat, Danton and Robespierre – is under house arrest.