Sepulchre (51 page)

 

Despite his wretched appearance, Anatole smiled. He held up his hand, as if to deflect the volley of questions.

 

'Calme-toi,' he said, placing his arm around her shoulder. 'The worst is over.'

 

'But-'

 

'Isolde will be fine. Gabignaud was excellent. Gave her something to help her sleep. She is weak, but the fever has gone. It's nothing that a few days' bed rest will not cure.'

 

Léonie shocked herself by bursting into tears. She had not realised how much affection she had come to feel for her quiet, gentle aunt.

 

'Come, petite,' he said affectionately. 'No need to cry. Everything will be fine. Nothing to get worked up about.'

 

'Let's not ever argue again,' Léonie wailed. 'I cannot bear it when we are not friends.'

 

'Nor I,' he said, pulling his handkerchief from his pocket and handing it to her. Léonie wiped her tear-stained face, then blew her nose.

 

'How very unladylike!' he laughed. 'M'man would be most displeased with you.' He grinned down at her. 'Now, have you breakfasted?'

 

Léonie nodded.

 

'Well, I have not. Will you keep me company?'

For the rest of the day, Léonie stayed close to her brother, all thoughts of Victor Constant pushed to the side for the time being. For now, the Domaine de la Cade and the love and affection of those sheltering within it was the sole focus of her heart and mind. Over the course of the weekend, Isolde kept to her bed. She was weak and tired easily, but Léonie read to her in the afternoons, and, little by little, the colour came back to her cheeks. Anatole busied himself with matters concerning the estate on her behalf and even sat with her in her chamber in the evenings. If the servants found such familiarity surprising, they did not remark upon it in Leonie's hearing.

Several times, Léonie caught Anatole looking at her as if he was on the point of confiding something. But whenever she questioned him, he smiled and said it was nothing, then dropped his eyes and carried on with what he was doing.

By Sunday evening, Isoldes appetite had returned sufficiently for a supper tray to be taken to her room. Léonie was pleased to see that the hollow, drawn expression had gone and she no longer looked so thin. Indeed, in some respects, she looked in better health than before. There was a glow to her skin, a brightness to her eyes. Léonie knew that Anatole had noticed it too. He walked around the house whistling and looking much relieved.

The main topic of conversation in the servants' quarters was the severe flooding in Carcassonne. From Friday morning to Sunday evening, town and countryside alike had been racked by the sequence of storms. Communications were disrupted and in some areas suspended altogether. The situation around Rennes-les-Bains and Quillan was bad, certainly, but no more than one might expect during the autumn season of storms.

But by Monday evening, news of the catastrophe that had struck Carcassonne reached the Domaine de la Cade. After three days of relentless rain, worse on the plains than in the villages higher up in the mountains, in the early hours of Sunday morning, the River Aude had finally burst its banks, flooding the Bastide and the low-lying river areas. Early reports had it that much of the quartier Trivalle and the quartier Barbacane were completely under water. The Pont Vieux, linking the medieval Cité to the Bastide, was submerged although passable. The gardens of the Hôpital des Malades were knee-deep in black floodwaters. Several other buildings on the left bank had fallen into the torrent.

Further up the swollen river, towards the weir at Païchérou, whole trees had been uprooted, twisted and clinging desperately to the mud.

Léonie listened to the news with increasing anxiety. She feared for the well-being of Monsieur Constant. There was no reason to believe any ill had befallen him, but her worries played remorselessly upon her. Her anguish was all the worse for being unable to admit to Anatole that she knew the flooded neighbourhoods or that she had some specific interest in the matter.

Léonie reprimanded herself. She knew it was perfectly absurd to feel so strongly for a person in whose company she had spent little more than an hour. Yet Monsieur Constant had taken residence in her romantic mind and she could not shake her thoughts free of him. So whereas in the early weeks of October she had sat in the window and waited for a letter from her mother from Paris, now, at the tail-end of the month, she instead wondered if there was a letter from Carcassonne lying unclaimed in the boxes at the poste restante in Rennes-les-Bains.

The question was how she could make the trip to town in person? She could hardly entrust so delicate a matter to one of the servants, not even the amiable Pascal or sweet Marieta. And there was another concern: that if the patron of the hotel had not delivered her note to the Square Gambetta at the appointed time, in the event the concert had not been postponed, then Monsieur Constant - who was clearly a principled man -would be honour bound to let the matter drop.

The thought that he would not know where to find her - or, equally, that he might be thinking ill of her for her discourtesy in not keeping to their discreet arrangement - played endlessly on her mind.

CHAPTER 70

Her chance came three days later. On Wednesday evening, Isolde was improved enough to join Anatole and Léonie for dinner in the dining room. She ate little. Or, rather, she sampled many dishes, but none seemed to her liking. Even the coffee, freshly brewed from the beans Léonie had purchased for her in Carcassonne, was not to her taste.

Anatole fussed around her, endlessly suggesting different collations that might tempt her, but in the end only succeeded in persuading her to eat a little white bread and churned butter, with a little chèvre trois jours and honey.

'Is there anything? Whatever it is, I will endeavour to get it for you.'

 

Isolde smiled. 'Everything tastes so peculiar.'

 

'You must eat,' he said firmly. 'You need to recover your strength and . ..'

 

He stopped short. Léonie noticed a look pass between them and again wondered what he had been about to say.

 

'I can go down into Rennes-les-Bains tomorrow and purchase whatever you would like,' he continued.

Léonie suddenly had an idea. 'I could go,' she said, trying to keep her voice light. 'Rather than tear you away, Anatole, it would be my pleasure to go down to the town.' She turned to Isolde. 'I am well-acquainted with your tastes, Tante. If the gig could be spared in the morning, Pascal could drive me.' She paused. 'I could bring back a tin of crystallised ginger from the Magasins Bousquet.'

To her delight and excitement, Léonie saw a spark of interest flare in Isolde's pale grey eyes.

 

'I confess, that is something I could manage,' she admitted.

 

'And perhaps, also,' Léonie added, quickly running through Isolde's favourite treats in her mind, 'I could visit the pâtissier and purchase a box of Jésuites?'

 

Léonie detested the heavy, sickly cream cakes, but was aware that Isolde could be occasionally persuaded to indulge herself.

 

'They might be a little rich for me at present,' Isolde smiled, 'but some of those black pepper biscuits might be quite the thing.'

 

Anatole was smiling at her and nodding.

 

'Very well,' he said. 'That is settled then.' He covered Leonie's small hand with his. 'I am more than happy to come with you, petite, if you wish it.'

 

'Not at all. It will be an adventure. I am certain there are plenty of things to occupy your time here.'

 

He glanced across at Isolde. 'True,' he concurred. 'Well, if you are certain, Leonie.'

 

'Quite certain,' she said briskly. 'I will leave at ten o'clock, so as to be back in good time for luncheon. I shall compile a list.'

 

'You are kind to go to so much trouble,' Isolde said.

 

'It is my pleasure,' Léonie replied, truthfully.

She had done it. Provided she could slip away to the poste restante without Pascal's knowledge some time during the course of the morning, she would be able to put her mind at rest as to Monsieur Constant's intentions towards her, for good or ill.

When Léonie retired for the evening, she was dreaming of how it might feel to hold his letter in her hand. What such a billet-doux might say, the feelings that might be expressed therein. Indeed, by the time she finally fell asleep, she had already composed, a hundred times over, a beautifully drafted response to Monsieur Constant's - imagined - elegantly stated protestations of affection and regard.

The morning of Thursday 29th October was glorious.

The Domaine de la Cade was bathed in a soft copper light, beneath an endless blue sky, spotted here and there with generous white clouds. And it was mild. The days of storms had gone out, bringing in their place the memory of the scent of summer breezes. An été indien.

At a quarter past ten, Léonie stepped down from the gig in the Place du Pérou, dressed for the occasion in her favourite crimson day dress, with matching jacket and hat. With her shopping list in her hand, she promenaded along the Gran'Rue, visiting each of the shops in turn. Pascal accompanied her to carry her various purchases from the Magasins Bousquet; from Les Frères Marcel Pâtisserie et Chocolaterie, boulangerie artisanale; and from the haberdashery where she purchased some thread. She paused for a sirop de grenadine at the street-side café adjoining the Maison Gravère, where she and Anatole had taken coffee on their first expedition, and felt quite at home.

Indeed, Léonie felt as if she belonged to the town and the town to her. And although one or two people with whom she had a passing acquaintance were a little cold to her, or so it seemed - the wives looking away and the husbands barely lifting their hats as she passed Léonie dismissed the notion that she could have given some offence. She now believed wholeheartedly that although she considered herself thoroughly Parisian, in point of fact she felt more alive, more vital, in the wooded landscape of mountains and lakes of the Aude than ever she had done in the city.

Now, the thought of the dirty streets and soot of the 8th arrondissement, not to mention the limitations placed upon her freedom, appalled her. Certainly, if Anatole could persuade their mother to join them for Christmas, then Léonie would be more than content to remain at the Domaine de la Cade until the New Year and beyond.

Her tasks were quickly accomplished. By eleven o'clock, all that remained was to slip away from Pascal for long enough to make her detour to the poste restante. She asked him to convey the packages back to the gig, which had been left in the care of one of his many nephews by the drinking trough a little to the south of the main square. She then declared that she intended to pay her respects to Monsieur Baillard.

Pascal's expression hardened. 'I was not aware he had returned to Rennes-les-Bains, Madomaisèla Leonie,' he said.

 

Their eyes met. 'I do not know for certain that he has,' she admitted. 'But it is no trouble to walk there and back. I shall meet you in the Place du Pérou presently.'

As she was speaking, Léonie suddenly realised how she could engineer an opportunity to read the letter in private. 'In point of fact, Pascal,' she added quickly, 'you may leave me. I believe I shall walk all the way back to the Domaine de la Cade instead. You need not wait.'

Pascal's face flushed red. 'I am certain Sénher Anatole would not wish me to abandon you here to make the return journey on foot,' he said, his expression making it clear that he knew how her brother had scolded Marieta for letting Léonie slip from her charge in Carcassonne.

'My brother did not give you instructions that I should not be left unaccompanied?' she said immediately. 'Did he?'

 

Pascal was forced to concede that he had not.

'Well, then. I am confident of the path through the woods,' she said firmly. 'Marieta brought us through the rear entrance to the Domaine de la Cade, as you know, so it is not unknown to me. It is such a fine day, possibly the last of this year's sun, I cannot believe my brother would not wish me to take advantage of the good air.'

Pascal did not move.

 

'That will be all,' Léonie said, more sharply than she intended.

He stared at her a moment longer, his broad face impassive, then suddenly he grinned. 'As you wish, Madomaisèla Leonie,' he said in his calm, steady voice, 'but you shall answer to Sénher Anatole, not I.' 'I shall tell him that I insisted you left me, yes.'

And by your leave, I shall send Marieta to unlock the gates and walk to meet you halfway down. In case you mistake the path.'

Léonie felt humbled, both by Pascal's good nature in the face of her ill temper, and also by his concern for her well-being. For the truth was that despite her fighting talk, she was a little anxious at the thought of going alone all the way through the woods.

'Thank you, Pascal,' she said softly. 'I promise I will be quick. My aunt and brother will not even notice.'

 

He nodded, then, with his arms full of the packages, turned on his heel and walked away. Léonie watched him go.

As he turned the corner, something else caught her eye. She glimpsed a person in a blue cape darting into the passageway that led to the church, as if he did not wish to be seen. Léonie frowned, but put it out of her mind as she retraced her steps back towards the river.

As a precaution in case Pascal should take it upon himself to follow her, she had decided to walk to the poste restante via the road in which Monsieur Baillard's lodgings were to be found.

She smiled at a couple of Isolde's acquaintances, but did not stop to pass the time of day with anyone. Within minutes, she had reached her destination. To her intense surprise, the blue shutters of the tiny house were pinned back.

Léonie stopped. Isolde had been certain Monsieur Baillard had quit Rennes-les-Bains for the foreseeable future. At least until the feast day of St Martin, or so she had been told. Had the house been let to someone else for the interim? Or had he returned ahead of time?

Léonie glanced down the rue de l'Hermite, which led, at the river end, to the street where the poste restante was situated. She was in a fever of excitement about the possibility of receiving her letter. She had thought of little else for days. But having enjoyed a period of exquisite anticipation, she was suddenly fearful that her hopes might be on the point of being dashed. That there might be no communication from Monsieur Constant. And she had been regretting the absence of Monsieur Baillard now for some weeks. If she passed by without stopping and later discovered she had missed an opportunity to renew her acquaintance with him, she would never forgive herself.