Cupid's Arrow (10 page)

He said, 'It really did scare you, didn't it?'

I shrugged. 'It's okay. Just that it looked similar. But I think now that it didn't. I was imagining things. That's all. Sorry I acted so stupidly.'

'You didn't,' he said. He put a hand on my shoulder, and gently drew me towards him. 'It's quite all right.' And then he bent his head and kissed me full on the lips: a soft, warm, but definite kiss that was over almost as soon as it had begun. He released his hold on me and said, his eyes with that flicker of laughter in them, 'And I'm not sorry about this, Fleur. Are you?'

'No-no ...' I wanted to kiss him again, to hold him, to disappear into his arms and stay there always, but I was too scared. I could feel the touch of his lips on mine still and I was shaking, but I tried to stay cool and as if things like that happened every day to me. 'I'm very – I mean, I'm glad I met you. I–I like you. A lot.'

He laughed. 'Good. And I like you. Very much. So that's settled.'

How could he speak like that? How could he sound so – so calm? I don't know what I said after that, but I think I mumbled something about having to get back and then he pointed out to me that we were almost back. I looked and saw we were at the bend in the river where you could see the house and I hadn't even noticed. I said that I could find my own way now. I thought he might kiss me goodbye, but he didn't, he just smiled at me and asked if I wanted to meet him tomorrow at eleven, near the willows, for a swim? I blushed, remembering the first time we'd met, but I said okay, I'd bring my swimmers and we could have a picnic maybe. That'd be nice, he said, and then he whistled to Patou, and after a wave and another smile at me, he was off, with his dog at his heels, while I stood there for a moment, just staring and staring after him.

I was quite over my shock about the Lady's House now. I'd reasoned myself out of it. It was just the atmosphere in those woods, and the atmosphere of the day, which had made me think otherwise. But caught up in my thoughts about the day, I didn't see Nicolas Boron pacing and smoking at the back of the house till I was almost on top of him. He looked angry.

'Fleur! Your mother's been looking for you. Where have you been?'

I didn't like his sharp tone. He wasn't my dad or my guardian or anything. He had no right. I said, shortly, 'Walking,' and was going to push past him and into the house when he said, 'Where did you meet Wayne Morgan?'

I turned and stared at him. 'What?'

'Where did you meet him? Why is he here now?'

'I don't know what you're talking about. I've never met him. He rang Mum yesterday.'

'Where did she meet him then?'

'Mr Boron,' I said, coldly, 'we had never heard of him till yesterday.'

'I've heard of him,' he said tightly. 'He pestered Raymond with letters. He thought they should write a book together.'

I shrugged. 'I know nothing about that. He rang up out of the blue. He said he had a letter from Raymond giving him permission to do stuff.'

'But don't you see,' he snapped, 'this man is obviously intent on subverting my client's wishes.'

I shook my head. 'Sorry, this is too much for me. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm going in to see Mum,' and this time I did walk past him and up the back steps into the house. I could feel his angry gaze on me, and it made the back of my neck prickle.

I could hear voices coming from the dining room, and for a moment I thought of just sneaking upstairs and not braving Mum's annoyance straightaway. But if I did that I'd only cop an earbashing later so it was better to go and get it over with. I marched along to the dining room, pushed open the door and went in.

My first impression was that the room was full of people, there was so much noise, talk and laughter in there. But soon I realised there were only four – Mum and three strangers, two men and a woman. The woman I recognised at once, though I had never met her – she was the beauty in the photos upstairs. In the flesh, she was even more amazing: the dark blue of her eyes brought out even more by the dark blue silk blouse and beads of the same colour she was wearing, her pale skin set off by the jet-black hair that swung in a graceful line against her jaw. She wore a cream-coloured pencil skirt and strappy dark-blue sandals, and a jacket, the same colour as her skirt, hung on the back of her chair. The man beside her was much more ordinary-looking, and a good deal older than her, too. Of average height but with a bit of a potbelly, he was balding, with a comb-over anyone could have told him was pitiful. His shirt was smart but rumpled, and he wore a designer suit that looked a bit tight for him. He had nice eyes though, grey, fringed with dark lashes. But they were full of anxiety, and I noticed that his hands were shaking too, and that he was tearing little bits of bread into shreds on his plate.

The other man, the man who was talking loudly when I came in, was quite a different story. He was tall and broad-shouldered and handsome in a cheesy kind of way. His thick dark hair was longish, sort of windswept but deliberately so, he had a neat black goatee, his eyes were brown behind very smart glasses, and the hands he waved about were covered in several silver rings. His pale blue shirt was open at the neck and you could see some kind of silver medallion nestling on the bits of chest hair that curled there, and he wore a white linen jacket and trousers. I knew who he was too. Wayne Morgan, the Glastonbury guy. I'd seen his picture on the internet. How had he got here so quickly?

Seeing me, Mum gave me a glare, of the
where the hell have you been
kind, but all she said was, 'Fleur. There you are. Come and meet everyone.' Then I had the embarrassing experience of having to go round the table in turn, shaking hands and saying hello. After shaking hands with Wayne Morgan, I was introduced to Oscar Dulac and his fiancée, Christine Foy. They all spoke really good English, not surprisingly of course in Morgan's case – he had a British accent – but it turned out not only that Oscar had lived in Canada, which I kind of remembered someone telling me – Nicolas, maybe? – but that Christine Foy was Irish, she'd just lived in France for a fair while. They were all very nice to me but you could tell they weren't really that interested in talking to a teenager so I was relieved when Mum said, 'If you go to the kitchen, you'll find some leftover chicken in the fridge, we're up to coffee now I'm afraid.'
Because you were so late getting back, and I'll be wanting an explanation for your rudeness later,
her eyes told me, and I scuttled out pretty quickly after that.

When I went out, they were getting back to their discussion and I could hear Morgan's voice rising again to dominate everyone else's but though I listened for a moment outside the door, all I could make out was that they were talking about King Arthur. I couldn't understand why that would make Nicolas Boron so angry, but then maybe it wasn't that but something else. Maybe he didn't like the idea of Mum giving Morgan the notebooks she's found, but then, it was no business of his, was it? Despite what he'd said about 'subverting the wishes of his client', which I supposed referred to Raymond – there was really nothing to say Raymond had not wanted Morgan to have them. Or he'd have said so, wouldn't he? He had just said Mum should choose what she wanted. There were no conditions. But perhaps, I thought, perhaps he simply didn't like the fact that Morgan was paying a lot of attention to Mum – his nose was out of joint and he felt he wasn't going to get a look-in now that the groovy Glastonbury millionaire was on the scene.

He'd certainly got there quick enough, I thought as I went off to the kitchen. He must want those notebooks really badly. Or maybe it was just because he was a very rich man with a whim and he wanted it satisfied right now. I'd heard very rich people can be like that. Well he wouldn't get the dream book I'd found, I thought with satisfaction. That was
my
secret.

Marie Clary was in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the paper. She looked up and smiled when I came in. 'Bonjour.'

'Bonjour,' I replied. 'Er, Maman said there was some chicken.'

'She was not happy with you,' said Marie Clary, going to the fridge and getting out a plate. 'She was worried about where you were.'

'I just went for a walk.'

'I see.' She glanced at me as she put the plate of chicken in front of me and got me another plate and some cutlery. 'Remy Gomert is very handsome, no?'

I blushed. 'I suppose so,' I mumbled.

'Did you meet his mother?'

I didn't want to talk about it, not to her, nor to anyone, till I sorted out my feelings about it all. Besides, the memory of the day was too precious to me to want to gossip about it. So I lied. I said, 'I didn't go there.'

'I see.' Her expression had hardened, and it annoyed me. It was no business of hers what I had been doing. To change the subject, I said, carefully, 'Monsieur Morgan – how did he arrive?'

She looked startled. 'Pardon? Oh, I understand. He arrived in a car.'

'A car? From England?'

'No, no. From Paris. He was already in France. He hired a car, yes? It does not take long if you go on the
autoroute.'
She looked at me. 'Why?'

I shrugged. 'Just wondered.'

'He is a very rich English businessman, yes? I think he wants to buy this house.'

'This house?'

'I heard him say something to Oscar about it when he arrived.'

'Really? What did Oscar say?'

Her eyes were suddenly bright with malice. 'Oscar has money but he spends, spends. And now, with this woman, even more. He liked his uncle and he knows Monsieur Dulac loved this house. You know, he used to call it his kingdom of peace. But Oscar does not have that feeling for it. He could sell it, especially if his fiancée says so. He denies her nothing.'

Clearly she did not like Christine Foy. I did not know why – she seemed nice enough, and at first glance at least not a grasping sort – but then maybe it was just because she was a stranger muscling in on a household Marie Clary knew well. Or maybe she thought Christine was a gold-digger who was just after Oscar's money. Maybe that was true, I had no idea, but it still seemed a bit harsh. I said, half to myself, 'That was why Nicolas Boron was so angry.'

'Pardon?'

'Monsieur Boron. He seemed angry.'

'Ah.' She nodded. 'It is a pity Monsieur Raymond did not leave the house to Nicolas. He loves it dearly. He knows this place. He knows what it means.
He
would never sell.'

I stared at her. 'But he's not family.'

'No, but family is not always the best to leave things to. Like your mother. She loves those books. Monsieur Raymond knew she would. So he leaves them to her, not to Oscar, who would just sell them.'

Her mouth was set in a thin line. I thought, wow, she
really
doesn't like Oscar, does she? Poor guy, he hadn't seemed that bad when I met him. Pretty harmless, really. A bit pathetic. I said, 'Yes, but books are different to a house.'

'Monsieur Raymond was too good,' she said. 'He always thought the best of people. He trusted Oscar. And this is the way he repays.'

'He has not sold the house yet,' I said. 'And maybe he won't.'

She gave a short laugh. 'And maybe hens will grow teeth made of gold. That one, she will make him do it, you mark my words.'

I didn't answer but attacked my chicken instead, and after a little while she gave up trying to talk to me and went out of the room.

They were all still busy in the dining room when I slipped out of the kitchen and made my way to the library. It was only now I remembered Raymond's dream book, still in my jeans pocket. I'd completely forgotten about it but now I took it out and looked at those sketches again. Having seen Valerie's drawings, I didn't think the style was like hers, so maybe the better ones were Remy's instead. But maybe he'd been working on it with Raymond. I would ask him about it tomorrow, ask him whether it had been his nightmare or Raymond's depicted in its pages. Yes, I'd ask him tomorrow. Tomorrow, when we'd be together again.

I'd decided I wanted to have a look at Raymond's other notebooks, see if there was anything in them like what I'd found. After all, he had said in his letter from beyond the grave that they might interest me.

The library was very quiet. I went in, shut the door and looked around. There were piles of books everywhere but I knew Mum wouldn't just have put them randomly down, she'd have put them in order of subject. Yes. Not only had she done that but she'd helpfully labelled the piles with slips of paper. Here was a pile on Greek myths. Here was another on Norse myths. Another on Celtic stuff, several piles on King Arthur – historical, legendary, literature, extras. There was a pile labelled 'Rare' and another one labelled 'Curiosity'. And so on and so on.

I found the notebooks in a corner, in a pile labelled 'Avallon'. There were various guidebooks to the region, dusty-looking books about archaeological digs in the area, a pamphlet called
Avallon Gallo-Romain,
which was about Avallon in Gaulish and Roman times, and a paperback book, in English, called
The Discovery of King Arthur,
by a guy called Geoffrey Ashe. I turned it over. 'Did King Arthur of legendary fame really exist?' the blurb asked me. 'This question has haunted the popular imagination for centuries.' Okay, I thought, but not mine. I put the book down, and pulled out the first notebook from the bottom of the pile.

Mum was right. It was all just notes for books. Pretty random stuff too. Didn't make sense, a lot of the time, if you ask me. You'd think writers would need to plan their books pretty carefully or else they'd get confused, but that must not have been the case with Raymond. He was all over the place, with cryptic kinds of things like 'remember the letter comes the next day' or 'CS – black hair, PT – blond', or 'when he gets back from the war, she's disappeared', those sorts of things. The only clue as to what he was talking about was dates – he dated every entry – but no mention of what books were called, or anything like that. If Wayne Morgan was really planning a book about Raymond Dulac's writing, based on his notebooks, he'd have an uphill battle, that's for sure!

I flipped through several more notebooks. It was in the seventh one I looked at that I found two or three sketches of a knight and a woman, standing on a forest path. I picked up the dream book and compared. Yes, those awkward, rather clumsy sketches were definitely Raymond's. Then, as I was flipping through the notebook to see if there were any more, I came across a passage that was much more together than anything else I'd seen so far. And it was an account of a dream, dated just over a year ago. It was in French, unlike the dream book.

I am in the woods. I am me but not me. I am wounded. Badly. I am carried on a
(here I puzzled at the word he used –
litière –
not sure what it meant, but some sort of stretcher, maybe?).
I will die soon. I know that. It is silent. My men hurry. My men? Then I must be someone important. I feel my spirit ready to leave. Then we arrive at a place. Tall grey walls. A woman standing at the gate. Beautiful, dressed all in white. I ask where we are. Someone says, 'Oh great king, we are at the Lady's House.'

And then I wake. I know that I have been granted this vision for a reason. It is there that I must look first.

I stared at the entry, my heart thumping. The Lady's House! Once again, I felt as if his presence was so close to me, as if he was there, trying to show me something. I reread the entry. What had he been looking for at the Lady's House? Had he found it? I flipped through the rest of the book. There was no more about the Lady's House, or the dream, or anything. I read over the dream again. Who had he been in the dream? Someone had called him a 'great king', and he was obviously mortally wounded. Then I almost cried out loud as I realised what a thicko I was. Of course. He'd been dreaming he was King Arthur. The legends said he'd been mortally wounded in a battle with his treacherous son Mordred, and that he'd been taken to the Isle of Avalon, where his enchantress sister Morgana and her ladies would look after him – was the Lady of the Lake one of them, or was that another name for Morgana? I wasn't sure. Anyway, he was supposed to disappear then from all human knowledge. Some people said he still slept in that place, sleeping off his wounds, and that he would rise from his sleep if ever Britain needed him.

But this wasn't Britain. This was France. Okay, so maybe Raymond Dulac was convinced the 'real Arthur', if such a person existed, had vanished somewhere near Avallon. But that didn't mean it was true. It especially didn't mean that you'd find clues as to his fate at the Lady's House. That was all too weird. But I couldn't help my scalp and hands prickling with excitement. What if he
had
found something? Maybe the tomb of the great king? Or something belonging to him? Something that proved, for sure, that he had existed?

I might not be all that interested in King Arthur but millions of people out there were. Mum had said once that the legend of King Arthur was the biggest and most important legend of the West. If it was true, and not just a legend, then there would be a worldwide sensation. The person who found it would be famous. There'd be headlines in papers all over the world. TV crews. The place would be overrun by tourists and pilgrims and weirdos in no time, like Glastonbury. Hell, much bigger than Glastonbury, probably. Was this what Wayne Morgan suspected? Was this why he'd turned up so quickly, why he wanted to get his hands not only on the notebooks but on the house, because he thought Raymond had discovered something really big, something he wanted to claim himself?

Feverishly, I rummaged through the next notebook, the most recent one there. Nothing. Or, at least, nothing but notes about books. And not books about discovering King Arthur's tomb, either. Or whatever it was he thought he might find. Did he have any diaries, I wondered. How could I find out? I went to the shelves and looked carefully in between the books that were left there – not many – and behind them. Nothing. Maybe he might have kept his diary in his study or his bedroom? I'd have to have a look.

I picked up
The Discovery of King Arthur.
If I was going to find out anything, maybe I had to have at least a bit of a clue as to who this 'real King Arthur' supposedly was. Or had been. I flipped through it. There was lots of stuff about the background of ancient Britain, Arthur in literature, lots more like that, but in a chapter called 'New Discoveries', I found what I was looking for. Apparently, a Roman historian called Jordanes mentioned a British king he called Riothamus – which the author said just meant 'High King' in Latin – who in the fifth century, when the Roman Empire was falling apart, went across the sea with a body of men to Brittany, where he picked up a lot more troops and marched in aid of the Romans, who were fighting the Gothic barbarians in Gaul. He was successful at first but then he was betrayed by one of the Romans, called Arvandus, was defeated by the Goths, and fled with the remains of his army across France to Burgundy, where he had friends. Avallon lay on the line of march for him, and Avallon was an important town at the time and well-defended. It was there that he disappeared from history.

Riothamus had certainly been a real person. He was mentioned not just in Jordanes' history, but also in a letter of the time and in a book about the life of some saint. Geoffrey Ashe, the author, said that no-one knew what his given name had been, but that it could have been Arthur. Or that maybe that name had come from some other story and been grafted on to the story of the real British High King who disappeared in Avallon. Anyway, that's what it sounded like.

I flipped through the rest of the book, trying to find out if there had been any attempt to do any archaeological investigation as to where Riothamus might be buried, or whether there had been anything found anywhere near Avallon that was linked to him. But there was nothing about it, just stuff about the legend itself and how it had grown, and I wasn't really interested in that. I then looked at the pamphlets and books about archaeological digs near Avallon but there was nothing about King Arthur or Riothamus. Maybe the archaeologists didn't know about it? Or maybe, I thought, they don't believe it. Or being scientists, in a way, they can't go looking for a legendary king because it might look bad. Still. Mum had told me once about some German guy back in the nineteenth century who'd been obsessed with finding Troy. But everyone thought it was just a legend and there was no such thing as a real Troy. They'd laughed at him and told him he was a loony, but guess what? He'd gone out to this place, which is in Turkey I think, and he'd actually found the remains of Troy and proved it was a real city and that it wasn't just out of the imagination of the storytellers of Ancient Greece. They'd taken a real place, a real war, a real story, and made it into something bigger and better and more exciting and more magical, because that's what writers did when they were inspired by things. Maybe it was the same with King Arthur, only even more so, because there were all those millions of extra characters, like Merlin the magician, and Morgana and the knights and the quest for the Grail and the love story of Lancelot and Guinevere and all the rest of it.

I was just about to get up and go to see if I could get into Raymond's study without being sprung, when the door opened and Mum walked in, with Wayne Morgan behind her. She stared at me. 'What are you doing?'

'Just having a look at the books. They're really interesting, aren't they?' I moved away quickly from the 'Avallon' pile and picked up a book at random from a nearby pile. Mum looked at me suspiciously, which wasn't exactly surprising, because the book I'd picked up was a handbook on the tarot, and she knew what I thought about tarot. But it was still not a bad thing to have laid my hand on, because it triggered a memory, something I thought she'd be interested in, and which would divert her from wanting to know what I'd really been doing. 'Mum, guess what? You know the Lady of the Lake Tarot that Raymond gave you? Well, Remy's mother painted it.'

'Remy's mother? Oh, that boy you told me about. Is that where you were? Really, you could have –' She glanced at the blandly smiling Morgan, who was discreetly looking at a book he'd picked up. 'Anyway, never mind.'

'Mum, did you hear me?' I said, patiently. 'It was Valerie Gomert who painted the figures in that tarot.'

'Really? That's great. I really will have to meet her one day and thank her for it. But was she ... was she okay? I mean, from what Marie Clary said –'

'I think Marie's just prejudiced,' I said. 'I mean, because they're alternative-type people, you know. Valerie's really nice, Mum, you should see her house, it's beautiful, and she's such a good artist.'

'I've seen her work around the place,' said Wayne Morgan, raising his head from the book he'd been pretending to study. 'There is a magic and spiritual energy to it that is quite exceptional. But then she must get nourishment from such an exceptional place as this area, with its deep resonances of spiritual meaning. I would like to meet her too. Perhaps we could visit her together one day, Anne.'

Yuck, I thought. His tone was too intimate. I didn't want him muscling in on us. I didn't like him. I don't know why but I was sure he was the sort of guy who would rabbit on about spiritual energies and crystals and star signs and positive forces and all that sort of thing but really it meant nothing to him and all he was interested in was selling expensive things to suckers with more money than sense. I reckoned he was interested in Bellerive, not for its 'deep resonances of meaning', but because somehow he had an idea of what Raymond had been up to and suspected he'd found something big.

I said, 'They don't have a phone. And you can't just turn up. It was only because Remy invited me that I went.' That wasn't strictly true, but never mind. I didn't want him nosing around that place. He was already pushing in where he wasn't wanted. He didn't have to crowd in on everything.

Mum frowned at me. 'Don't speak like that, Fleur. It's rude.'

'Sorry, I didn't mean to,' I said, lying through my teeth.

'I'm sure you didn't, Fleur,' said Wayne Morgan, smiling at me with all his teeth, but his eyes were cool and appraising. 'I am sure we will all become great friends. After all, we share the same interests and beliefs, do we not?'

In your dreams, mate, I thought, but I forced a pleasant smile on my face. 'Mmm. Yeah.' I turned to Mum. 'Can I borrow your Blackberry? I just need to check my emails.'

'Okay. But look, Fleur, next time don't go haring off on your own without a word as to where you're going. It's not very responsible. And do be more considerate about things. You did promise to be back by lunchtime, and you weren't.'

'I'm sorry, okay? Time just got away. I didn't mean to be late.' I knew I sounded sullen, but I couldn't help it. I hate being told off in front of strangers, especially people like him.

I took the Blackberry and managed to get away without any more of a lecture than that, which was lucky, because when Mum's in full flow about responsibility and trust and keeping your promises and stuff like that, she can go on for ages. So maybe I should be grateful Morgan had been there to distract her. But hell, I hoped she wasn't going to fall for that New Age phoney. I'd much rather Nicolas Boron, all things considered, despite his aggressive attitude to me earlier. It wasn't me he'd been angry at, really, just the intrusive presence of Wayne Morgan. And who could blame him for that?