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“I’m not sure, it was so long ago. I always thought…”
“Not the river,” François said, with certainty. “She might have said ‘the water,’ but not ‘the river.’”
His tone, his words, had finally penetrated past my fog of Calvados. I turned in my seat to stare at him. “Do you mean… you don’t mean that you know where the diamonds are?”
“Of course.” He smiled. “I helped her, I was there. She told me they were stained with blood, those diamonds, and she knew only one way to make them pure.” He shrugged, and looked an apology at Jim. “She didn’t throw them in the river Vienne,” he said. “She gave them back to God.”
Chapter 32
…all the past
Melts mist-like into this bright hour,
The ancient door swung open with a heavy groan as Christian’s key turned creaking in the lock. A shaft of torchlight caught a pillar’s gleaming edge, then traveled up to where the grasses waved upon the ruined wall. Beneath the clouds that raced across the moon, the Chapelle of Sainte Radegonde slept still and peaceful, sacrosanct. Nothing moved.
And then the silence blinked.
Christian’s keys dropped jangling to the ground and at the muttered German curse my cousin swung the torch around to help. “Just there,” Harry pointed out the keys, “beside the… no, beside that clump of flowers. Right.”
“This would be easier,” said Christian, “in the daylight.”
Harry grinned. “Well, we’re here now, so there’s no point having second thoughts. Besides, it’s all well and good for Jim and François to put off exploring until morning—they’re old men. They’ve lost their sense of adventure. Not like us.”
“Jim Whitaker’s not old,” I contradicted.
“Of course he is. He must be over forty, surely.”
“Thanks,” said Neil, behind my shoulder. “I’ll just stop here and have a nap then, shall I?”
“I didn’t mean…”
“I know you didn’t.” Neil’s smile forgave my cousin’s blunder. “Emily, my dear, could you just shine your torch in that direction, so Christian doesn’t trip on anything? Thanks, that’s lovely.”
Christian walked ahead, pinned by the torchlight like a cabaret performer in a follow spot. His shadow loomed macabre on the frescoed wall behind the sturdy iron grille. Again he clanked the ring of keys, selecting one to fit the lock. “Let us hope that Sainte Radegonde does not mind to be awakened.”
“She won’t mind.” Harry’s tone was confident. “And anyway, it’s not as if we’re doing anything we oughtn’t. We’re just having a bit of a peek, that’s all. Giving in to normal curiosity.”
Still, I half expected the saint’s statue to be frowning at me, disapproving, as I passed between the iron gates and entered the hushed chapel proper, where the cave-like walls arched up to rest upon the ghostly row of pillars. But when I glanced at Radegonde’s stone face she looked back benignly. Evidently, I thought,
even saints could understand the pull of curiosity.
Thierry would be terribly put out when he learned we’d come up without him, but he’d gone to bed before us—it was really his own fault. The Chamonds, too, had given in to weariness, and Jim as well, and François had gone back up to the Clos, to help with Lucie. Which had only left the four of us—Harry, Christian, Neil and me—quite pleasantly awash in Calvados and irretrievably beyond the point of being tired.
I had, for my own part, reached that magical plane of inebriation in which time begins to float and anything seems possible, which went a long way toward explaining why, when Harry had leaned forward and said: “Listen, I’ve got an idea…” instead of running in the opposite direction as experience would warrant, I had donned my jacket and trailed after him. Completely sober, I’d have had more sense. And I would never have come up that cliff path in the dark, alone or no.
“I’ve got it open,” Christian announced, twisting the key to the third and final gate. Harry had wandered down the aisle to stand below the Plantagenet fresco, his torchlight angled up to catch the vibrant figures of young Isabelle and John. “Well done,” he said, in absent tones. He stood a moment longer, looking up. “I was afraid it might have changed, since I last saw it.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Changed? In one week? Hardly likely.”
“Not one week, love. It’s been at least two years since I’ve been up here, to the chapelle. Had I known my hiding place was quite so close I might have tried to sneak in another visit. One forgets how very beautiful—”
“Hold on,” I stopped him, frowning. “You were here last week. You must have been. That’s how I knew that you were missing in the first place—you left your coin, your King John coin, there on the altar, as an offering.”
“No chance.”
“You did.” My chin rose stubbornly. “Or at least, if you didn’t leave it there yourself, perhaps the gypsies…”
“Darling Emily.” My cousin strolled toward me, hand in pocket. “I’m not all that daft, you know. I mean, they’re lovely people, gypsies, but they will take things unless you’re careful. My watch is gone, and my wallet… but they haven’t taken this.” He held his hand out, with the coin upon it, to show me. “With this, I was very careful.”
