love with you in the end, but what a Godsend for me! He
tried not to, though, didn’t he? He tried everything in his
power not to succumb, but finally even he couldn’t resist
you. Who would have thought it? That Francois the
Invincible could actually fall prey to his own heart. But then,
how could any of us resist you - those tempting eyes, that
succulent mouth, and that exquisitely hungry body? Hah!
what a prize that was, knowing that I, Halunke, the man
Francois feared above all others, was all the time copulating
with his wife - and with his permission! He even asked me to
protect you, how I laughed at that. He never suspected me
once. But you did, didn’t you? In the end. You worked it out.
But Francois, he believed Helber when Helber told him
that Lucien was Halunke. Did he ever tell you the price he
paid for that information?’
Again, Armand snorted with laughter. ‘Such a pity that
after you two are dead I am forced to kill Francois too. I
wanted him to see his brother hang for a murder he didn’t
commit. A murder I set him up for. But an even greater pity
is that he won’t know what it is to live without you, to know
what it is to suffer the way he’s made me suffer. That he
won’t…’
Suddenly, Armand’s eyes shot to the arch. It was only the
breeze rustling a piece of litter across the wasteland outside,
but it had broken his concentration, and Claudine seized
her chance to speak, to bring him back to the present.
‘Armand, please,’ she begged. ‘Louis - he’s just a child.
Please let him go.’
‘Papa,’ Louis sobbed. ‘I want my Papa.’
Claudine gasped as Armand slapped him across the face
-but as she sprang towards them Armand jammed the gun
into Louis’ neck.
‘All the unarmed combat in the world won’t save you
now,’ he snarled, kicking her back against the bales, ‘so
don’t even try it.’
Claudine looked helplessly at her son as tears rolled down
his cheeks and little sobs choked from his throat. She had
never in all her life felt so desperate or so impotent. ‘Papa
will come, cheri,’ she said, trying to force some comfort
through the anguish in her voice. ‘He will be here soon.’
‘Yes, he will be here,’ Armand jeered. ‘Von Liebermann
will send him. This is a set-up, Madame la Comtesse - or
didn’t you realize that?’
‘Armand, tell me what he’s done,’ Claudine pleaded.
‘Tell me, and perhaps we can …’ She stopped as his
stranger’s eyes shot back to hers.
‘Nothing,’ he snarled. ‘He’s done nothing. It’s what I’ve done because of him.’ The light suddenly dimmed in his eyes and he looked down at Louis, fixing on the point where
the gun met his jaw.
Claudine watched him, seeing his concentration slip
again as he became engulfed in his thoughts. She started to
edge towards him, sliding her feet under her, trying to
position herself to dive straight for the gun. But then he
turned back, and though his eyes were unfocused she didn’t
dare to make another move. ‘What did you do?’ she asked,
sinking hopelessly back against the hay.
When at last he spoke, his voice trembled. It was as
though each word he uttered came from the core of a wound
so deep, a pain so profound, that she couldn’t begin to
comprehend it. ‘I killed my son,’ he said. ‘I murdered my
own son.’
For a long time she simply looked at him, and he stared
back, watching the shock register on her face, until finally
his own stiffened with contempt. She whispered, ‘But I
thought…”
‘I know what you thought,’ he snapped. ‘It was what
everyone thought. He was a weak child, his health gave out, that’s what everyone thought. But he died because I put a pillow over his face and smothered him.’
Claudine squeezed her eyes tight shut. ‘Why?’ she
gasped, forcing herself to think rationally. ‘You must have
had a reason,’
‘Oh yes, I had a reason. I did it because he wasn’t my son
at all. He was your husband’s son. The son of Francois de
Lorvoire.’
Outside, birds were chattering in the trees, the river
bubbled and gushed, and in the distance, the town hall clock
was chiming the midday hour. Claudine’s head had started
to throb. She looked around for something to hold onto, but
the dizziness was coming over her in such paralysing waves
that she was afraid to move.
Seeing her reaction, Armand gave a dry, caustic laugh.
‘That’s what I thought,’ he sneered, ‘because that’s what
she told me. But he wasn’t. He was my son. I was his father,
but I only found that out when it was too late.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she cried. ‘What are you talking
about?’ Oh, Francois! If only he would come and deliver her
from this nightmare! Then Armand started to speak again,
and she bit her lips to stop herself screaming as his voice
washed over her in gentle, familiar waves. It was a voice as
sweet as honey, a voice she knew and had once loved.
‘I’ll go back to the day it all really began,’ he said, ‘to the
day Hortense de Bourchain died.’
Claudine lifted her head and looked into his face. He was
gazing absently at the floor, a strange smile on his lips and a
frown creasing his forehead. ‘Hortense?’ she breathed, now
more confused than ever.
He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘He killed her
because she loved him, but you know that, don’t you? You
know how she wanted to die rather than live without him so
he put her out of her misery.’ Suddenly his head snapped
up and the savagery had returned to his eyes. ‘Tell me,
Claudine, what is it about him? What is it that makes women
half-demented with love for him? I want to know why you’ve
loved him ever since you came to Lorvoire. We both know
how he treated you, the contempt, the abuse you suffered in
those early days. Yet you loved him. Oh, you tried not to, you
even managed to convince yourself you detested him, but I
knew. I always knew. Even when we were making love, I
knew you were thinking of him, wishing I was him. So tell
me, Claudine, how is it that Francois de Lorvoire can
command love as though he were God Almighty Himself?’
‘He can’t,’ Claudine answered, echoing his anger.
‘He can create love, he can manipulate it and destroy it. I
know, because I’ve seen him do it. He destroyed my wife’s
love for me and made her love him. He possessed her. Like
a demon, he consumed her from within and turned her into
a monster. Until she met him she was content, fulfilled,
happy. She loved life, she loved me. Then she met him, and
everything changed. She started to despise me because I
wasn’t strong like him, I wasn’t brilliant like him, not an
aristocrat like him. She ridiculed me because I cared about
her and loved her when all she wanted was him. She adored
him, there was nothing she wouldn’t do for him. Can you
explain that to me, Claudine? Can you explain how a woman
can turn her life inside out, yearning for a man who hardly
knows she exists?’
Claudine looked down at Louis’ pale, frightened face. ‘I
didn’t know Jacqueline,’ she answered. ‘So no, I can’t
explain it.’
‘She said I was jealous of him,’ Armand went on. ‘She
taunted me day and night with it, comparing me with him.
She drove me half out of my mind. But I loved her, I
couldn’t stop loving her. And I began to hate him. I hated
him more and more, until I wanted to kill him. Then she
became pregnant and I thought then that maybe things
would change, that at last she would stop torturing herself
with wanting him. But if anything it became worse. She was
obsessed with him. On any pretext she would go to the
chateau, just to look at him. Then she would come back
and tell me how she had felt when she’d seen him, what
she had wanted to do to him. She fantasized about him all
the time.
‘Then Hortense started to come to Lorvoire. At first
Jacqueline was beside herself with jealousy. It was all I could
do to restrain her from going to the chateau and causing a
scene. Then she locked herself in the bedroom and refused
to come out. She stayed there for almost a week, until one
morning she came downstairs, put her arms round me and
cried as though her heart would break. She begged me to
forgive her and swore she would never try to see Francois
again. Of course I forgave her, and I thanked God that she
was at last back to her normal self. She was calmer, easier to
live with, and she never went to the chateau at all.
‘It was some time before I realized she had stopped
eating. I thought, in my ignorance, that the pregnancy was
making her weak. In the end she became so ill that I was
afraid she would die, or lose the baby, or … I don’t know
what I thought. I never knew in those days. All I knew was
that my life had become a nightmare, and that Francois de
Lorvoire was the cause.
‘Then one night Jacqueline and I had a terrible fight. It
was about Francois, of course, though it was the first time
his name had been mentioned for weeks. I could see she was
no closer to getting over him than she’d ever been. We both
said some terrible things that night, things I shall never
forget. Finally she worked me up to such a pitch that I had to
leave the house. I went to the wine caves to escape. That was
how I came to see what happened between Francois and
Hortense. Another woman driven half out of her mind for
wanting Francois de Lorvoire. What is it about him?’ he
groaned. ‘Why do you all love him so much?’
‘Did Francois ever know how Jacqueline felt about him?’
Claudine asked gently.
‘Even if he did, what would he have cared for a woman
like her? What does he care for anyone?’
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘What happened after you saw
Hortense and Francois?’
He bowed his head for a moment. Then taking a breath,
he looked at her again. ‘When Louis finally let me go, having
sworn me to secrecy about what had happened, I went home
and told Jacqueline everything I had seen. I knew Francois
hadn’t killed Hortense intentionally, but I told Jacqueline
he had. I asked her how it felt to be in love with a murderer. I
asked her if she felt the same way now, knowing that he
could kill a woman just for wanting him? And do you know
what she said?’
Claudine was very still, her face drawn with pity.
‘She said, how could she stop loving him when he was the
father of her baby? And how did I feel now, to know that
every day I looked upon my child I would know it wasn’t
really mine? That I was so inadequate that…” He broke off,
pushing his fingers hard into the sockets of his eyes. ‘She
even described the way he made love to her, the way he
made her feel, she went on and on and on until I finally lost
control and hit her. She laughed. So I hit her again. She fell
down the stairs, and when I got to her she was still laughing.
She was hysterical - and delirious with joy, because
Hortense de Bourchain was out of his life.
‘She gave birth two weeks later, and with every contraction,
every push and every breath she called his name. She
screamed at the top of her voice that she was giving birth to
his child - that I should never forget that it was his child.
‘When the baby was born, after Doctor Lebrun had
severed the cord, she told me she wanted to call the baby
after his father. I didn’t argue, I couldn’t. There was no fight
left in me. My mother sent me out. I walked around for
hours, trying to tell myself she had been lying, that the child
was mine, but I couldn’t make myself believe it. I knew,
because I’d always known, what power Francois had over
women. He had no morals, no scruples, he wouldn’t have
thought twice about fornicating with my wife.’
Again Armand rubbed a hand over his eyes, and for a
moment Claudine thought he was crying. But then Louis,
seeing his chance, tried to break free - and when Armand
grabbed him back she saw that his eyes were as dry as the
dust at his feet.
‘When I got back to the house, Father Pointeau was
there,’ he went on, ‘Jacqueline was already dead. She had
haemorrhaged just after I’d left. The last words she said to
me were, “I want to call his son Francois.”
‘I lived with it for a year, but as the child’s features began
to form, all I could see was Francois. I know now that it was
Jacqueline he resembled, his dark complexion, his black
hair, his deep brown eyes, they were all hers, but at the time
all I could see was Francois. What was more, Francois
visited us a lot that year and the child took to him - more
than he did to me. I would watch Francois swinging him up
on his shoulders, and the child would laugh in a way he
never laughed for me.
‘Then one day, as I was returning from the vineyards, I saw
Francois carry him from the house and put him on a pony. He
couldn’t walk, he wasn’t strong enough, he’d been sickly since