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Monday mornings in France had a peaceful silence all their own. Most shops stayed closed out of tradition, and people clung a little longer to their pillows. In all my hour’s walk, I only met two people in the shuttered winding streets. From the river’s edge, I turned along the road and sauntered up around the château walls to where the white house of the Clos des Cloches slumbered in its field of green; then round and up again, past the château’s entrance tower with its silent bell, to the narrow breach in the cliff wall, where the steps from the fountain square wound their breathless way upwards.
Here I rested, tucking my hands into the pockets of my jeans and lifting my face to the warmth of the morning sun. Below me, in the patchwork jumble of turrets and church steeples, tightly walled gardens and blind shuttered windows, I heard a swallow singing. O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow… What was the rest of that poem? I couldn’t remember. Tennyson, again, at any rate—I’d read it at school. Something about a prince wanting the swallow to carry a message to his true love, to tell her he was coming.
A bird, perhaps the same one, broke, rustling, from a fruit tree in the garden just beneath me, and went winging out across the town, its dancing flight and joyful song dissolving my clinging mist of melancholy. “So my prince is coming, is he?” I asked the swallow, just a speck now in the brilliant sky. Well, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
But when, a moment later, I heard footsteps coming up the steps below me, that’s exactly what I did—I held my breath for no good reason and leaned forward to peer over the wall. My chest relaxed. I exhaled, and it sounded like a sigh.
Not a prince, certainly. Only Garland Whitaker, laboring upwards, her fingernails flashing blood-red on the iron handrail. The auburn hair, I thought, looked artif
icial in the sunlight—too bright, too tightly curled. She puffed a little, and her face was flushed.
More footsteps echoed to my right, punctuated by a trill of childish laughter. I straightened away from the wall and turned in time to see a tall man coming round the corner further up by the château, with a lively child swinging on his hand. The man’s dark head was bent low, to catch the chatter of the little girl. He hadn’t seen me yet.
Thinking fast, I ducked my head and scurried off, away from the château, away from the steps, away from all of them. I was not, I thought firmly, going to hang about while Garland and Armand bumped into each other, with me in the middle. She was a hopeless gossip, he was a hopeless flirt, and I’d never hear the end of it.
My getaway would have done credit to a bank robber, I moved that quickly, though no doubt a bank robber would have had a better sense of direction. It should have been easy to find my way down into town, but the first sloping crossroad I came to was blocked, completely blocked, by an idling lorry, and instead of waiting for the driver to move on, I decided to walk along the cliff a little further. Surely there’d be other roads, or even stairs…
The narrow road curved upwards and became a lane. Still hopeful, I moved briskly between the silent houses and garden walls, past thick falls of fading ivy and red clay-tiled roofs, painted gates and painted shutters. The houses crowded closely on both sides, parting now and then to give a glimpse of the dizzying drop to the terraced gardens on the cliffside, and the quiet river snaking past the rooftops far below.
I appeared to be the only person about, which was just as well, since there wasn’t room for two on the narrow strip of pavement. For a short while I enjoyed the solitude, the scent of roses drifting from the gardens, the spectacular view. But when I reached the first cluster of troglodyte caves, I began to feel uneasy.
I blamed it, to begin with, on the caves themselves. They were not the neatly chiseled cliff dwellings pictured in my Loire Valley guide books, cozily supplied with curtains and carved fireplaces. These caves, cut from a thrusting rise of rock, were eerie and abandoned, black windows crumbling over hollow doors, broad chimneys giving way to the grasping growth of weeds and vines that spilled down from the burning cloudless sky. It was an easy thing, in this apocalyptic settlement, to fancy eyes that watched from every yawning door.
All right, I admitted, so maybe it wasn’t too clever of me to be walking up here, on my own. When I crossed the next path cutting down from the cliff, I’d descend to the safety of town.
The path that I was on grew more wild and lonely the further I walked. There were few houses now. On my right, a low rubblestone wall, spattered with lichen and moss, was the only barrier between me and a sheer vertical drop through cedar-scented scrub and tangled weeds. Even the roofs of Chinon, far below, seemed somehow less hospitable.
The paved path turned to yellow soil beneath my feet, and a second crumbling cliff of troglodyte dwellings rose from the weed-tangled hill beside me. A warning prickle chased between my shoulder blades. Oh, bloody hell, I thought. I turned. The breeze caught a withered leaf and sent it tumbling end over end across the dirt path, until it was trapped by the long waving grass. Nothing else moved. “Hello?” I called, just to be sure. “Is anyone there?”
Silence. Slowly I turned around again, pushing on more cautiously. The solitary house that rose blackly from the path ahead did nothing to reassure me. It was an ugly house, unwelcoming, its sagging door wrapped round with barbed wire coils. As I passed by, the wind swept past, rattling the tightly-shuttered windows like a viper’s warning to the unwary. Again the shiver struck me and again I turned my head to look behind. The path was empty.
But this time, when I started to walk on, I heard a sound. The faintest shuffling footfall, and a breathing that was nothing like the wind. Behind me in the house some creature flung itself against the door with a savage growl, and I broke into a half run. I stumbled twice on the uneven ground, and my shoulder brushed a trailing vine and loosed a shower of small white petals that clung to my skin, but I didn’t slow my pace until I reached a less neglected place.
There were troglodyte houses here, as well—a neat, low line of them, fronted by a level sweep of gravel. But these houses looked inhabited, not ragged and abandoned. At their farthest end one lovely tree spread green against the white stone walls, and beside the tree a carved and ancient archway sheltered a wooden door with heavy iron hinges.
Here, in this oasis of ordered beauty, I stopped running. There was no logic to it, really, but my racing mind said: Sanctuary. Here, I knew beyond all reason, I was safe. With trembling legs I leaned against the wall and drew a ragged breath. I didn’t move, even when the sound of footsteps rose above the pounding of my heart. This was not the sound that had pursued me down the path. These steps were different, sharper, climbing from the bottom of the cliff, and there was nothing furtive in their measured tread. Stairs, I thought. There must be stairs nearby. My eyes searched out and found the spot. The steps grew louder, mingling with a voice I recognized, and I felt myself relaxing.
I believe I looked quite normal when Martine and Christian finally appeared above the tangled grasses of the cliff edge.
Martine recovered first from the surprise. “Hello!” Her widow’s veil had been emphatically cast aside this morning, in favor of a yellow windcheater so bright it almost hurt one’s eyes to look at it, worn over smartly-pressed black denim jeans and a yellow roll-neck jersey. Even in casual clothes, I decided, she outshone me fairly, but the only thing of which I was truly jealous was her smile. She had perfect teeth. I hadn’t ever met a person with really perfect teeth before.
I returned the greeting, straightening away from my supporting wall. “Out for a walk, are you?”
“Yes. Christian is bored with moving,” Martine told me, “and so he makes today the sketches for his painting.” Which would explain, I thought, the decidedly battered leather satchel he was lugging about with him this morning, its broad strap digging into his hunched shoulder. He looked half-asleep still. Martine, on the other hand, was wide awake and talking brightly. “You are admiring the chapelle, Mademoiselle?”
“Please,” I said, “call me Emily.” And then I frowned. “What chapelle?”
“The Chapelle of Sainte Radegonde, behind you.”
I looked round at the silent wall, the bolted door. “Is that what this place is? I didn’t know.”
“But yes, this is most famous, here in Chinon. Christian often sketches here. You must come in with us, and see it. The chapelle,” she informed me, “is not to be missed. Is it, Christian?”
“What?” His head came round a quarter turn, the blue eyes vague as he pulled them away from a contemplation of a floating tuft of clouds. “Oh, yes, of course. You must come.” He didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic, but I didn’t take it personally. He seemed to move in a solitary world of his own creation, did Christian Rand.
“The chapelle is kept locked, now,” Martine said. “Most people, they must ask at the Tourist Office if they wish to see inside. But Christian has a key.”
He was fiddling with it now, in the lock—a long, old-fashioned key like something from a Gothic film. At last it turned, but before he opened the door he did a most peculiar thing. He looked at me with a serious expression, and said: “You will close your eyes, please.”
