The Lazarus Vault Part 14

It was like no other aircraft Ellie had seen. The eight seats looked more like leather armchairs than anything that belonged on an aeroplane, with seatbelts discreetly recessed out of sight. Ellie sank back into the chair and fell asleep to the sound of turbines and Blanchard talking on the phone in French.

At Lausanne a black Range Rover was waiting for them on the runway. They climbed in, their bags were thrown in the back, and before Ellie realised it they were on the motorway climbing towards the mountains.

'Shouldn't we have shown our pa.s.sports or something?' she wondered.

'Mr Saint-Lazare has an accommodation with the Swiss authorities.'

Ellie supposed that he would. According to Fortune magazine, he was Switzerland's seventh richest man. Despite diligent research, that was almost as much as she knew about him. The combined weight of Who's Who, the Lexis/Nexis database and the World Wide Web supplied little more than a reputation as a generous charitable benefactor and a ruthless corporate raider, buying and selling companies the length and breadth of the continent. 'Who is Michel Saint-Lazare?' a plaintive article in The Economist had asked a few years ago. 'Behind an impenetrable wall of sh.e.l.l companies and cross-holdings, Groupe Saint-Lazare is reputed to be one of Europe's largest privately held companies. Yet its owner, Michel Saint-Lazare, is so reclusive some claim he died years ago.' The only photograph she'd found was fifty years out of date, a black-and-white playboy on a post-war beachfront. Nowhere did it mention his connection with Monsalvat Bank.

The Range Rover turned off the highway, following a twisting road ever-upwards. Mountain peaks loomed in the near distance. Snow began to appear at first small patches in the hollows of the bends, then spreading across the landscape until it drowned it completely. It dazzled Ellie; she wished she'd brought her sungla.s.ses. In the grey, tired atmosphere of London, it hadn't occurred to her.

The car turned again, this time onto an unploughed road through a forest. The chauffeur engaged the four-wheel drive. The trees started to fall away: when Ellie looked out the window, she saw they were on the edge of a precipice that plunged to a foaming river far below. She looked the other way for rea.s.surance, but the mountain had disappeared. They were driving along a ridge, a thin spine of land along the top of a promontory. Ellie peered anxiously through the front window, looking for any glimpse of the house, but the low winter sun shone straight in her eyes. She hoped the driver could see where he was going.

And suddenly they were there. They rattled over a bridge, through a gate where portcullis teeth still p.r.i.c.ked out of the arch, and into the courtyard of Michel Saint-Lazare's home.

Christine Lafarge had called it a chateau. Blanchard described it, wryly, as a chalet. In plain fact it was a castle. It rose from a fist of rock at the end of the ridge, half severed from the mountain's arm by a narrow ravine. A wooden bridge was the only access: on every other side, the rock face dropped three hundred feet sheer to the valley below. The whitewashed walls stood almost invisible against the snow: the steep black roofs seemed to hover in the clouds.

All of which Ellie only saw later. For the moment, she had only the vaguest impression of high walls and lofty turrets looking down on her; attendants hurrying out of what had once been stables to take their bags; a butler bringing cups of steaming wine almost before they were out of the car. The sun shone through an arch in the western wall, reflecting on the snow to fill the courtyard with light.

A dark-suited servant led them into the house, up a spiral stair to a long corridor. It looked like a museum: spears and s.h.i.+elds hung on the walls, side by side with the trophy heads of long-dead game. But behind the doors the rooms were warm, with thick carpets and heavy curtains and an enormous four-poster bed swagged with lace. Peering out of the window at the s...o...b..und valley below, Ellie felt she'd landed in a fairy tale.

'Do you like your room?'

Blanchard had appeared. For a second Ellie thought he'd stepped out of the tapestry on the wall, until she saw the door beside it leading to the adjoining bedroom. She put her arms around his waist and linked her hands behind his back.

'Do we need two rooms?'

'Sometimes it is good to have your own s.p.a.ce.' He leaned forward, burying her in his embrace. 'But not too much.'

'Michel is away tonight,' he whispered in her ear. 'We will have to amuse ourselves.'

Ellie nodded, happy. Over his shoulder, she saw a stuffed wolf's head set over the doorway, its jaw open and its eyes staring down.

She closed her eyes.

XXII.

Normandy, 1136 I kneel in front of Guy. The stones on the floor are cold and hard against my knees. On the altar, a burnished sword gleams in the candlelight. The white linen s.h.i.+ft is smooth against my skin. Gornemant has drilled the symbolism into us since the day I came to Normandy. White for purity, for the law of G.o.d you will defend.

White as naked skin in moonlight. In the depths of the night, when I should have been keeping my vigil, I crept through the castle to the storeroom by the orchard. Ada was waiting for me. It's never warm enough to remove our clothes, but we pulled my tunic and her dress down to our waists to feel each other's bodies, nothing between us. The room smelled of last year's apples, sweet and cidery. The barrels were almost empty, but the ripeness lingered in the air.

When we'd made love, we lay on a piece of sackcloth on the floor. The moon shone through the grated window; shadows criss-crossed Ada's back. I stroked her bare skin, breaking the shadow bars. I heard snuffles in the darkness her crying. The tears made tracks down her cheeks, a silver cage. I wiped them off.

'We'll be all right,' I whispered in her ear.

Gornemant steps around me and fastens a red cloak over my white s.h.i.+ft. Red for the blood I will shed in the service of the Lord.

Ada shed blood last night. Just a scratch, a cut on her finger where the scab had torn off. As she fumbled with my tunic, a few spots smeared on the white wool. I panicked; in a few hours I'd be standing in the chapel, the entire household watching me. Ada crept to the kitchen and fetched vinegar, a rag. By the time she'd finished, the stain was little more than a watermark.

A narrow belt girds the s.h.i.+ft around my hips. Gornemant says it's to remind me to shun the sins of the flesh. I loosen it so it hangs lower, covering the worst of the stain. When the priest comes to the part of the oath where I swear myself to a life of purity, I hope he doesn't look down.

You swear by almighty G.o.d to defend the church, your lord, and to protect the defenceless from the mighty.

I repeat the oath. Guy lifts the sword off the altar and holds it above my head while the priest says his blessing. For a second I see the image of Guy as he was in the copse that day, the hiss of air as the sword cut through the knight's windpipe, the drip of blood falling on leaves. If he knew what I've done with Ada, he'd cut my throat right here in the chapel. Instead, he slides it into the scabbard and buckles it around my waist. I stand, so that Gornemant can fix my gilded spurs on to my boot.

My leggings are brown, brown for the dust that is every man's destiny, proud or humble. I'm no stranger to dust and earth these days. Dust on the flagstones in the storerooms and cupboards; dust in the stable straw; damp soil under the rock where we first kissed. We are creatures of earth, and the gold rings or spurs we wear to flatter our n.o.bility mean nothing but vanity. The spurs aren't even mine, only borrowed for the day. Tomorrow they'll be iron.

Guy swats my shoulder with the palm of his hand.

'Receive this blow in remembrance of Him who ordained you and dubbed you.'

I don't need to be taught the symbolism to know what it all means. It means I am a knight.

Gornemant suspects. Last week, he told me a long story about a Flemish count. One of his knights had been sleeping with the count's wife: when the count discovered them together, he had his butchers beat the man raw, then held him upside-down in a latrine until he suffocated. Or choked on effluent no one could tell afterwards. Gornemant gives me a heavy look. 'A lord must be able to trust his knights in all things,' he says, 'as much as his own right arm.'

In the Bible it says, 'If your right arm offends you, cut it off.' We both know that.

I want Guy to be able to trust me. I want to honour my oaths. I thought that sleeping with Ada might be an ending, that possessing her body would cure my desire. Instead, it's only made it worse. From the moment I met her, my love has been a wound. Now, a fever is spreading. The more often I have her, the more often I want her. Instead of being grateful for the times we have, hasty and s.n.a.t.c.hed, I resent the times we're apart. On the nights when I see Guy leave the hall to follow her to her room, I want to s.n.a.t.c.h a candlestick from the table and ram it through his eye.

My frenzy makes me reckless. Last week, one of the grooms surprised us in the stables as he came to fetch a cropper. Thankfully, the hinge on the stable door squeaks. We were able to cover ourselves, and made a great production of having come to show Ada Guy's new colt. But servants gossip. I know I should rein myself in, temper my pa.s.sions unless we can be absolutely safe. Next time, we wait until Guy's away visiting one of his outlying tenants. We meet in the guard room at the top of the north tower: you can bolt it from the inside, and since Athold's death Guy hasn't bothered with a sentry there. It's as safe as can be had.

I get there first. It's a cloudless night and the moon is full: it s.h.i.+nes through the windows and arrow slits, gleaming off the heads of the spears in a rack on the wall. The whole room is filled with silver light. I spread a cloak on the floor and wait.

I see Ada's approach by the candlelight creeping up the doorframe. The stairs are steep and uneven: she doesn't trust them in the dark. When she appears, she's wearing a spotless white s.h.i.+ft. No coat or dress, just a mantle of marmot fur.

The candle she carries lights up the tower like a beacon. Anyone could see it. I pinch out the flame with my fingers and hug her close, pressing my mouth into hers. She doesn't reciprocate. There's a stiffness in her, a withdrawal. I step back.

'Are you all right?'

She stands so still that in the moonlight she looks like a statue of herself, a stone Ada. It reminds me of a telling of the Tristan story I've heard, where Tristan builds a wooden likeness of Yseult in a cave so he can stand and watch it hour after hour while she's separated from him.

'We have to stop.'

Perhaps Tristan was wise. The statue would never have said that. They're words I've dreaded hearing since our first touch.

'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 va.s.sals, 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 a.s.sets?'

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

She could tell it was old. She'd handled enough ma.n.u.scripts 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 acc.u.mulation 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 Chretien 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 embarra.s.sed, 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: Ja.n.u.s the two-faced G.o.d, 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 a.s.sembled 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 cutla.s.s. 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 a.s.sistant a falconer? pulled a small leather hood over its beak and fastened it around her head.

'It's beautiful,' Ellie said. 'So n.o.ble.'

'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 tail 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.