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Simon perked up behind us. “So we’re going to see the cellar now?”
“Yes. I have set out a few good vintages for you to taste.”
“Terrific.” The bounce was back in Simon’s step. Moving past us, he assumed the lead, his eyes fixed with a hunter’s single-mindedness upon the huge white house.
I wished I could share his enthusiasm. Wine cellars might be interesting places, and impressive, but underground was underground no matter how one viewed it, and the French didn’t call their cellars caves for nothing. The only thing that cheered me was that Harry wasn’t here to announce to everyone that I was phobic. “She has a thing,” he would have told them, “about going underground.” He always said it just like that, as if it were some random illness, inexplicable, and though I sometimes did remind him of the day he’d locked me in the neighbor’s bomb shelter, Harry never would admit he was to blame. “I shot an arrow at you, too,” he’d once retorted, “and you didn’t develop a phobia about that.”
He had a point, I thought. Given the choice between facing a field of archers or spending an hour in someone’s basement, I’d pick the archers every time. But now, without a single bowman in sight, I found myself with no real option but to take a deep breath and follow along with the tour.
The cellars of the Clos des Cloches lay deep within the cliffs beneath the house. They were enormous, high-arched and spacious like the soaring nave of some fantastic cathedral. The ghostly limestone caught the light and cast it back upon us, and when I let my breath go I inhaled the sweeter scent of oak and wine above the dank aroma of the stone. Along one curving wall the bottles ran in ranks, neatly stacked, awaiting labels, their glass dark green beneath the thickly sifted dust. But the barrels dwarfed them easily.
They were everywhere, those barrels—great monstrous ones that might have served Gargantua himself, and row on row of smaller ones that seemed to stretch for ever, an aisle of darkened oak illumined softly on all sides by countless burning candles whiter than the walls. The candles, set with care upon the rim of every barrel, seemed to be the main source of light in this medieval hall of wonder. Beyond their reach the shadows crept, to claim the farther corners and the dimly rising stacks of bottled wine.
In the middle of it all stood François, tall and gray and elegant, arranging polished glasses on a small table that already groaned beneath the weight of several vintages. He looked round as we came in, his inscrutable face relaxing as he noticed me beside Armand. Only a statue could have failed to be flattered by his smile. “Mademoiselle,” he greeted me, in French, “it is indeed a pleasure to see you again.”
To my surprise he welcomed Neil with similar warmth, framing his words in halting English. There was no hint of the bitterness, the tension, that had marked Neil’s conversation with Armand. In fact, I thought, they spoke like friends.
Paul, at my shoulder, waited patiently to be introduced, gazing at the arching dome of the cave’s ceiling with eyes half-closed in rapt appreciation. I’d only known him two days, but I fancied that I recognized that look already.
“Go on, then,” I teased him, with a nudge. “Shatter me. What’s the word for this place?”
He smiled. “That obvious, eh?”
Armand looked sideways at the two of us. “The word…?”
“Oh,” said Simon, “it’s just this kind of game Paul plays, trying to find the perfect word to describe a place. He’s pretty good, most of the time, except he hasn’t got the word for Château Chinon, yet.”
“Yes he does,” I said. “It’s ‘tragic.’”
Armand studied Paul’s face closely, as though he hadn’t seen him properly, before. “That is indeed the perfect word. Tragic…” He tasted the feel of it, on his tongue. “And my caves
?” he asked. “How would you call them?”
Paul looked a shade embarrassed, but he met the challenge squarely. “Clandestine,” he said, in his quiet voice.
“So,” Armand said, softly. “So… a place for intrigue, yes? Or secret lovers.” His eyes slid past me, smiling, and came to rest on François. “Well, who can say you are not right? There is much history here, and in my family there are many secrets.” François glanced up, and Armand looked away again. “The making of wine,” he said to Paul, “it is an art wrapped well in secrets. As in your game of words, one tries to find the essence of each vintage, removing that which complicates. Come, I will show you.”
It was more work than I’d imagined, tasting wine. With François guiding me, I sampled the estate’s great vintages, trying to follow each instruction—how to hold the glass, how to inhale the wine’s “nose”—there were so many things a true wine-lover ought to notice.
And I did try, really I did. I swirled and sniffed and scrutinized, and in truth I very nearly saw the purple edge that Armand said was such a telling characteristic of his clear red wine. But when he spoke of complex structure and of “legs,” and breathed the scents of strawberries and vanillan oak, I had to admit my own deficiencies. It was a lovely wine, I thought, a great one even, but to my untutored palate it tasted… well, like wine. And the more I drank the more like wine it tasted.
Neil knew. His eyes touched mine and held, smiling, and the faintest shiver crawled between my shoulders.
“Cold?” Paul checked, missing nothing. He was well into the fourth vintage. Paul, I felt sure, could see with ease the violet edge, and catch the scent of strawberries. I shook my head, and shrugged to clear the shiver.
“No, not really.”
Simon looked at Armand, his expression casual. “How old,” he asked him, “would your cellars be?”
Armand shrugged. “Older than the house. Our cave, our cellar, it was once used by the kings who stayed at the château.”
Paul eyed his brother warningly over the rim of his wine glass, but Simon had already seized the opening. “Really? So this was connected to the château, somehow?”
I might have imagined the flickering glance François sent his employer, and the careful pause before Armand replied. “Yes. The kings built many souterrains, or tunnels, as you call them. Ours is among the oldest, I believe.”
“It still exists?” Simon feigned surprise. “You mean you have a tunnel that goes straight to the château?”
Before Armand could answer that, Neil set his own glass on the table. “I haven’t seen the souterrain in years,” he said. “Perhaps, Simon, if you ask him very nicely, Monsieur Valcourt will show it to us.” There was a sort of challenge in his voice, and in the way his level eyes met those of our host.
