Authors: Tom Harper
Ellie hadn’t heard anything from Christine Lafarge, so she assumed their shopping trip was off. She didn’t mind. She wandered through the streets, looking at the bright windows and the passers-by. Many of the shops were familiar, the same chain stores and fast-food franchises you’d find in any major
city. But somehow, filled with people speaking other languages, they felt foreign.
The lights and crowds faded away as she moved east, into the oldest part of the town. Here the cobbled streets were narrower and the walls taller, with high-set windows far above the street, as if they still distrusted the world outside. Remnants of the old fortifications began to appear: the stub of a rampart hacked off like a limb; a gateway without gates arching across the road.
The night was getting cold and Ellie had no coat. She decided to go back. She’d reached the bottom of the hill, a small enclave in the ravine where gabled houses peered over a still river. She wasn’t sure if she could get up on the other side; she turned to retrace her steps. And that was when she saw him.
A dim figure stood on the bridge at the bottom of the hill. He wore a white plastic rain cape with the hood pulled up, though there was no rain about. She didn’t know how long he’d been there.
You’re in the middle of a big city in the heart of Europe
, she told herself.
Of course there’ll be other people about
. Except he was the only one, and the bright lights on the plateau above seemed far away, like passing aeroplanes.
The man lifted his head. He seemed to be staring straight at her, though in the shadows of his hood it was impossible to tell. He raised an arm as if in greeting. The plastic cape spread like a bat’s wing. Slowly and deliberately, like a child stalking a pet, he began walking towards her.
Ellie turned and ran. Back up the hill, back towards the lights and safety. Her shoes were impractical: the heels skidded and teetered on the uneven cobbles. She pulled them off and ran in stockinged feet, feeling the damp ooze between
her toes. There was no one to see her. Through the gateless arch that was no protection, along undefended ramparts, until she came out in a square between the looming blocks of some government ministry. She glanced back, but there was no one, no rush of pursuing footsteps or shadows advancing along the wall.
She looked around to get her bearings. Which way was the hotel? It couldn’t be more than a quarter of a mile away, but she was desperate for a cab. She had a cramp in her side; her legs burned and her feet ached.
And there he was.
She couldn’t believe it. He’d appeared like a ghost, like a vampire out of the air. The spectral white coat flapped in the breeze as he walked towards her across the square.
Ellie’s brain was in meltdown. All she could think was that it was impossible. Impossible. How do you escape a man who can scale a cliff in the blink of an eye?
She ran.
‘Wait,’ a voice called from behind her.
She ran. Past an unmanned guard booth, round a corner and down a windowless alley. At the far end she could see street lights and cars flashing by on Roosevelt Boulevard. If only she could make it. A crack echoed off the walls like a shot. Did the man have a gun? Did ghosts need guns? A split second later she realised it was one her shoes: she’d dropped it. She left it in the gutter where it had fallen.
She reached the main road. A taxi was coming round the bend and its light was on. She waved frantically to flag it down and almost threw herself onto the back seat.
‘Sofitel.’ She had to repeat it three times to make herself understood.
The driver didn’t want to take her. It was only a few
hundred metres, she was wasting her money. She pushed a twenty-euro note into his hand and he stopped complaining.
As the car pulled away, she looked back. Condensation blurred the windows; the lights of the cars behind dazzled her. She thought there might be a figure standing under the lamp at the end of the alley, but she couldn’t be sure.
Ellie made the taxi do a full circuit of the city centre before it dropped her at the hotel. She wasn’t sure who she thought she would fool. She kept her face pressed to the window, but didn’t see anyone. At the Sofitel, she hurried into the lobby and made straight for the lifts. All she wanted was to be in bed behind a locked door. Unless the ghost could walk through walls.
‘There you are.’
A hand clamped down on her shoulder. She would scream, she decided: call security, the police, anyone. They couldn’t just grab her in a public place. But the air wouldn’t come out of her lungs.
‘You left work without me,’ an aggrieved voice complained.
It was Lechowski. He’d lost his tie. Could he have been the ghost? He looked too short; he certainly smelled as if he’d spent the evening in the bar. He looked her up and down in a way that was supposed to make her feel sexy, but only made her cringe.
‘What happened to your shoes?’
She managed a weak smile. ‘They were giving me blisters. I walked up from the bottom of the valley.’
‘You should have taken the lift.’
Ellie stopped trying to edge past him and stared. ‘What?’
‘The public lift. It takes you up from the valley to the city. By the
Cité Judiciaire
.’ He laughed, assailing her with another blast of mint-edged alcoholic vapour. ‘Only in Luxembourg
are they so lazy. Maybe we go tomorrow, ride it together? For now, I buy you that drink I promised.’
He made a swipe for her elbow. But Ellie hadn’t run for her life through the streets of Luxembourg to be cornered by a creep like Lechowski. She pirouetted away, stepped neatly past him and was inside the open lift before he could move.
‘Maybe another time.’
England, 1135
Jocelin’s mother – my lord Guy’s wife – died some years ago. It’s something Jocelin and I have in common, though it doesn’t bring us any closer.
Guy has decided to remarry. I think, cruelly, perhaps he’s so disappointed in his heir he wants to try again. But in fact, Jocelin will be a perfectly acceptable heir. He’ll keep his boot firmly planted on his vassals and tenants; he’ll collect their tithes and their taxes enthusiastically; if there’s a war, he’ll fight energetically for his Duke and probably win lands and favour.
But Guy can’t wait for a war to expand his territory. Jocelin has three sisters, and they’ll need dowries soon. For a long time, Guy has had his eye on an estate across the river: good pasture, forests with rights of hunting and firewood, fields to grow corn and a mill to grind it. The land belongs to the Beauchamp family, but they are rarely there. Most of their interests are in England now: crossing the sea each time one of their tenants demands justice, or if the King decides to visit, has become tedious. They have a daughter, and they are willing
to endow her with the Normandy estates as her marriage portion. Messengers go to England with a proposal, return with a price, risk themselves at sea once more with a counteroffer. Guy holds two farms in Berkshire whose rent he never sees: they become part of the bargain too.
At last the contract is agreed. Gornemant the seneschal sails to England to collect Guy’s new bride. He takes four knights, three grooms, six servants, a butler, a cook – and me.
When I left England I was a boy with the tonsure raw in his scalp. Now I am sixteen: a man, in some ways. My hair has grown out, though my companions still call me ‘monk’, and I have a credible beard. I will never be as big as Jocelin, but I occasionally beat him in the training ground. Every time I do, it feels like one step nearer my revenge.
We step ashore in Dover, a mean little town at the mouth of a river. High cliffs loom over us. I only ever saw England on my way to Normandy, and that through my tears. But I can tell the country is prospering. King Henry has been on the throne some thirty years, and peace makes England flourish. When I meet my uncle in Windsor, he wears a scarlet cloak and a vair mantle, fresh from the furrier. When he rests his elbows on the table, it leaves a residue of chalk dust.
He serves me larks’ tongues and capons, and wine he has brought from Burgundy. Then he tells me the king has appointed a new castellan to my father’s castle. I don’t know, but I guess, that my uncle has profited in some way from this arrangement. It’s quite clear that I’ll never claim my inheritance.
‘But look at you,’ he says, with gruesome joviality. He hasn’t looked at me properly all day. ‘You’re a man, now. You can make your own way.’
I know what he means. I’ve grown up; his obligations are discharged. He’s rid of me.
I stare at my plate. ‘I’m still a squire,’ I mumble.
‘You’ll be a knight soon.’
‘What about the men who killed my father?’
My uncle shifts uneasily on his stool. Once a year or so I write him a letter reporting my progress, and each time I ask this question. He has never answered it.
‘It was impossible to find them. There were no witnesses.’
‘I witnessed it.’
My uncle wipes the gravy from his mouth with a napkin.
‘Wales is a dangerous place. Many die violently. It’s impossible to bring all the perpetrators to justice.’
Afterwards, I’ll always wonder what that signified. Did my uncle connive in his own brother’s destruction? I could believe it.
Wales is a dangerous place; many die violently.
It would be easy to arrange one more death – and the men who killed my father spoke French, not Welsh.
From Windsor, we follow the Thames upriver to Wallingford, then strike west. It takes three days, but it’s a pleasant journey. There are frosts at night, but at dawn they dissolve into spring mists. The sun shines from a creamy April sky and makes the world mellow gold. Up on the hills, the trees are in bud. I’ve never seen a country more at peace with itself.
The Beauchamps live in a fortified manor house in a broad valley west of Wantage. It’s a handsome house that, like its owners, has sprawled away from its original military purpose over the past decades. Handsome outbuildings and new wings almost completely obscure the stout fortress at its centre. A mound still lifts up the tower, but it seems less formidable when surrounded by terraced vegetable gardens. Its builder
once diverted the river for a moat, but the current generation have constructed weirs and dykes to make fishponds.
That evening, we dine on carp and trout, stuffed with raisins from the local vineyards. Walter Beauchamp doesn’t need to impress us much: the marriage benefits Guy more than him. Ada is his youngest daughter, and he could always send her to an abbey if needs be. But he sets out the table in his great hall and brings in his household to entertain us. In the gallery, a minstrel plucks his psaltery.
I have no place at the table. I stand in the folds of the heavy fabrics which line the wall, like a green man half buried in foliage. Every so often, I emerge to refill Gornemant’s cup, or recharge his plate. Otherwise, I listen and observe, always learning.
As a result, I’m probably the first man in the hall to notice Guy’s bride. Her father has waited to unveil her until the first two courses are under our belts, until wine has softened our eyes. While servants clear dishes, I glimpse a flash behind a curtained doorway, a head peeping round to see the men who’ve come for her. All I can make out in the gloom is the gleam of precious stones, the pearls she wears in her hair and the gems at her throat. At least, I think that’s all I see. Later, she’ll tell me that I stared straight into her eyes without realising it.
The psaltery falls silent. The men at the table look up as Guy’s bride makes her entrance. She carries a silver dish in front of her, humble as a servant, but she’s beautiful, noble and richly attired. Two squires escort her. Beauchamp has them carrying candelabras, ostensibly replenishing the lights at the table, in fact casting a shimmering nimbus around their mistress. The candles make her skin as soft as ivory, her hair like gold leaf, her jewels a bright constellation.
I’m transfixed. The moment she enters the hall, it seems to
me that the room grows so bright that the candles and the fire lose their brilliance, like stars washed away in the sunrise. I feel like the knights and wanderers in my mother’s stories, encountering their wayward damsels and enchantresses. I’m gripped by magic.
At the end of the table, Gornemant’s reaction is more businesslike. The stars haven’t dimmed for him. He examines her with clear-eyed purpose, like a cook appraising a doe brought in from the hunt. Will she do? Will she please Guy? Was she worth surrendering the Berkshire estates for?
She puts down the grail-dish she’s carrying and curtsies. A poached lamprey swims in its own juices in the silver platter. Her father’s steward carves it and serves the portions on whole flatbreads, while Gornemant asks her a few trivial questions. She answers demurely, her eyes downcast. So as not to stare, I make myself watch the other knights. They can’t believe Guy’s luck. Even if she looked like a horse, he’d have taken her just for the land. As it is
…
Ada Beauchamp curtsies and retreats. The candles stay, but the light goes with her. On the pretext of fetching more wine, I follow. I find her in a courtyard, leaning against the wall with her head tipped back to the stars. Her breath makes small clouds in the chill night. Through the kitchen window I can see the cooks preparing a sugared cake in the shape of a boar, Guy’s emblem. But here, we’re alone.
‘When you’re the lady of Hautfort, you’ll have servants to bring the fish.’
She laughs. ‘My father says that men like to know a woman can serve.’
Her voice is deeper than I expected, mellow. She looks at me as if she expects me to say something, but every word I ever knew has suddenly flown out of my head.
She says, ‘How long have you served Guy de Hautfort?’
‘Six years.’
‘What sort of man is he?’
I want to talk about her, not Guy. ‘Fair.’
She’s looking at me intently. For a moment I think she’s disappointed, then I realise she wants to hear more. She wants reassurance, to know that she isn’t being led across the sea to some ogre.
‘He’s a good man.’ Maybe. ‘Kind and gentle-hearted.’ Less plausible. ‘Handsome.’