Zipporah's Daughter (Knave of Hearts) (54 page)

“We could send over to Grasslands for the key,” said my mother.

“May I come with you?” I asked eagerly. “I should love to have a good look at the house.”

“Won’t it be rather tame going in through the front door after climbing through the window?” asked Jonathan.

“It is really something of an adventure setting foot in that house.”

So it was arranged.

Dinner was over and my mother said: “Sabrina is very tired. I shall take her to her room. And I daresay Sophie would like to retire also, wouldn’t you, my dear?”

Sophie said she would.

“Claudine will take you up.”

“I can find my own way,” said Sophie.

I went to her and laid my hand on her arm. “Please, I should love to see Jeanne again.”

Sophie gave me that rather special smile which I noticed she rarely gave to anyone else, and we went up the stairs together.

Jeanne was waiting for her in the nursery rooms. “Jeanne,” I said, “how good to see you!”

She grasped my hand and I studied her intently. There were grey strands in her dark hair. She had lived through much stress and strain.

“Mademoiselle Claudine,” she said, “I am happy to be here and have Mademoiselle Sophie safe.”

“Yes, your ordeal must have been terrible.”

Jeanne nodded to me meaningfully. “You are tired,” she said to Sophie.

“A little,” admitted Sophie.

“Then I shall say good night,” I said. “If there is anything you need…”

“Your mother has taken good care of us,” Jeanne told me.

“I have heard of a house,” said Sophie to Jeanne.

“I will leave you to talk about it,” I said. “Don’t get too hopeful. Enderby isn’t everyone’s home.”

Then I said good night and left them.

On the way down I met my mother on her way from Sabrina’s room. She put an arm round me and held me close to her.

“I am so glad you are back… and happy. Oh yes, I can see you are happy. It was wonderful in London, wasn’t it? You with David…”

“It was perfect,” I told her.

“What a pity you had to cut it short.”

“I couldn’t really see why.”

“Dickon is deeply involved with… affairs. I worry sometimes. He has secrets… even from me. I think the death of the Queen will have some important effect on things over here. In any case, you and David can go back to London later.”

“Of course.”

“What do you think of Sophie?”

“She was always a little… strange.”

“I thought she seemed more—friendly… more shall I say—normal. She must have suffered a great deal.”

“I suppose all that would change anyone. Wasn’t it wonderful about the jewels?”

“It was a terrible risk. However, you’ll hear about it. We don’t want to go through it all in front of Sophie. Jonathan will tell you all about it.”

The men were in the punch room, where a fire was burning in the fireplace. They rose as we entered.

“Come and sit down,” said Dickon. “Unless you are tired.”

“I’d like to talk a little,” I said. “There is so much to hear about.”

Jonathan had come swiftly to my side; he laid a hand on my arm. “Come and sit down,” he said; and I sat between him and David. My mother took the chair opposite Dickon.

“I didn’t want to talk too much in front of Sophie,” said my mother. “It must have been a nightmare she has been living through all this time. Just think of it. Day in, day out… never knowing when the mob would turn against them. Jonathan, do tell Claudine and David the story you have told us.”

“I had better start at the beginning,” he said. “We had already made arrangements for getting across when we left the house that day and made our way to the coast where the boat was ready waiting for us. It was a fishing boat and the owner was doing a very brisk business with émigrés. He was able to change our money into French currency, and there was a small rowing boat in which we were taken ashore at a very lonely spot on a dark moonless night.

“So we were there. Charlot was quite ingenious. He is a good actor. He transformed himself into a small trader with a cart—which we managed to acquire, with a horse, not very handsome in appearance but a strong creature of whom we all became very fond. Louis Charles and I were the servants. I was of a lower grade posing as dumb, as I was unable to speak the language proficiently. They were afraid for me to open my mouth, which they said would have given the whole show away.

“We made a slow journey to Aubigné, encountering difficulty after difficulty. I could not keep up the dumb act, so they thought my French might be mistaken for a patois. I was to be a native of the country in the south, right on the Spanish border, which was to be the reason why I spoke so badly. You’d be shocked if you could see the place, Step-mama. There are chickens running all over the lawns, the flowerbeds are overgrown and the pools full of stagnant water. I never saw it in its grandeur, but there was just enough of an outline left to show me how splendid it must have been.”

“It was splendid,” put in Dickon. “All that good land… gone to waste. The stupid vandals! They will ruin their country.”

“Well,” went on Jonathan, “our big disappointment came when we reached the
château,
for neither Sophie nor Jeanne was in residence. We dared not ask for them and we were in a quandary then. Charlot did not want to go too far away—and in any case we did not know where to go. But he was afraid he might be known and recognized if he went to an inn in the town, despite his disguise. Louis Charles also felt that. So I went to the wine shops there. I would sit about drinking and listening to the talk… not saying much and pretending to be a little foolish and not understanding what they were talking about. They were quite tolerant of me.”

“It is always a good thing to act the fool,” said David. “It makes others feel superior, and that is what they enjoy.”

“Well, I did quite well really. There was a girl who served the wine. What was her name? Marie… that’s it. She took pity on me and used to talk to me. I marked her down. I could discover a good deal from her, I believed. I could ask her what I dared not ask the others. I did rather well with Marie. I would creep out of the wine shop and join the others, who were sleeping in the cart. In time I got Marie to talk to me about the old days and the family at the
château.
What scandals I heard, dear Step-mama!”

“There are always scandals about people like my father.”

“It seems he was quite good at making it. I heard about his romantic marriage with your mother and how she died. That was shocking. I plied Marie with the grape and finally I discovered that Armand had died and they had buried him at the
château.
His companion had left, so there were only three women at the
château
then.

“They were suspicious of them. How did they live? Mademoiselle Sophie was a kind of invalid but she was an aristocrat… and Jeanne and the old housekeeper were a smart pair. They must have held something back… and what were they doing anyway living with an aristocrat!

“Someone must have warned Jeanne that feelings were rising against them and she decided to move on, and one day it was discovered that there was no one at the
château.
How long they had been gone, no one was sure. Where had they gone? I wondered. Marie was a well-informed girl. She could guess there were two places to which they might have gone. The old housekeeper who was known as Tante Berthe had a family somewhere in the country. And Jeanne Fougère came from the Dordogne district. She was a secretive person but Marie remembered that one day someone had come from Périgord, and had seen Jeanne when she was shopping and had asked her name. When this person had been told that she was Jeanne Fougère who looked after a sick woman at the
château,
he said he thought he had recognized her for he knew the Fougère family who lived in Périgord.

“That was the best clue we could get, so we left for the south at once, driving the poor old horse over those rough roads, for we had to keep well away from the towns. Few showed any interest in us, so I suppose we looked like good old compatriots. Charlot sung the ‘Marseillaise’ with fervour and I learned to sing it with ‘Ça Ira.’ These are the great songs of the revolution and a knowledge of them is considered by the peasants necessary to a good patriot.

“I won’t dwell on the details now, but I can tell you we had many a narrow escape. There were many occasions when we almost betrayed ourselves—and how near we came to disaster! It is very hard for an aristocrat—and Charlot is one if ever there was one—not to assume an air of superiority at times. I do believe I played my part with distinction—the half-witted loony from some vague spot in the south where they spoke a patois almost unrecognizable to good citizens of the République. It was easier for me than for Charlot.

“After many vicissitudes which I shall recall later—if any of you should be desirous of hearing them—we tracked down the good Jeanne’s family. There was only a brother and sister left in the little farmhouse. They had taken in the wandering jewel-laden pair and tried to make a good little peasant out of Sophie—not with any great success, and there they were.

“The housekeeper had made her way back to her own family and Jeanne and Sophie were on their own. Well, they joined us in the cart… Sophie as Charlot’s mother—a role which I think she rather enjoyed since she had to play a part—and Jeanne was the wife of Louis Charles. There was no one for me and I felt a little piqued at first—but of course it was due to necessity.”

“It must have been doubly alarming travelling as you were with Sophie and Jeanne carrying the jewels,” I said.

“Well, it was. But Jeanne is a clever woman. Sophie did as well as she could but Jeanne was wonderful. She went into the little towns to shop for us and of course she did not have to change her personality as we did ours.”

“Did she go into the town with the gems sewn into her petticoats?” I asked.

“She must have done so. She did not tell us about the jewels until we were on the boat crossing the Channel.”

“What would you have done had you known?”

Jonathan shrugged his shoulders. “What could we do? We shouldn’t have left them behind. But I think our anxieties would have been increased. Jeanne knew that, so she decided not to place that extra burden on our shoulders. One of these days I’ll tell you about some of the adventures we passed through, all the alarms and escapes. It will take weeks. And in any case I can’t remember them all. When we finally got to Ostend Charlot decided he would go back to France and the army; and of course Louis Charles went with him. So they entrusted to me the task of bringing Sophie and Jeanne to England. I remember how we slipped away and they stood on the shore watching us.” He turned to my mother. “Charlot hoped you would understand. He was very definite about that. He wanted you to know that he could not continue to live quietly in England while his country was in turmoil.”

“I do understand,” said my mother quietly.

She had been deeply moved when Jonathan was talking and Dickon watched her anxiously.

He rose and said: “Let us go up.”

He and my mother said good night and left us—myself sitting between David and Jonathan.

We were silent for a while. I stared into the fire and saw pictures there. Jonathan in the wine shop with Marie… and I wondered what that had entailed. How strange that of all the adventures I should think of that. I pictured his trundling across France, playing his part. I was sure that he had enjoyed the danger of it… just as his father had. David would have hated it. He would have seen only the squalor, the pity, and the futility of it all.

A log had collapsed, sending out a spray of little sparks. Jonathan rose and filled his glass with the port wine he had been drinking.

“David?” he said, the decanter poised.

David said: “No thanks.”

“Claudine?”

I too declined.

“Oh come, just a little toast to my safe return.”

He poured the wine into our glasses. I lifted mine. “Welcome home.”

His eyes met mine and I saw the blue flames which I remembered so well.

“You have been very lucky,” said David. “So… welcome home.”

“My dear brother, I am always lucky.” He looked at me and frowned; then he added in a low voice: “Well, not always but almost always, and when I am not I know how to make the best of the situation.”

“There must have been moments when you really thought the end had come,” said David.

“I never felt that. You know me. I would always find a way out, however impossible the situation seemed.”

“You certainly believe in yourself,” I said.

“With good cause, dear Claudine. With very good cause, I assure you.

“No wonder Lottie was a little upset by all those revelations,” said David. “That wine shop you were in with the girl… that must have been the one opposite the
mairie
where she was held on that awful night.”

“Yes,” I said. “I remember her telling how the mob ransacked the place and the wine ran out into the street all over the cobbles.”

“Our father brought her home far more dramatically than I brought Sophie and Jeanne,” said Jonathan.

“You brought them home. That was all that mattered,” I told him fervently.

“And came safely through myself. Surely that is a matter of some importance to you.”

“Of the utmost, of course.”

He leaned over me very closely and said: “Thank you, sister-in-law. That’s what you are now. You were step-sister before, weren’t you? Now you are sister-in-law and step-sister both.
Mon Dieu,
as they say in that benighted country which I am so thankful to have left, what a complicated family we are!”

We were silent, sipping our port and gazing into the fire. I was very much aware of Jonathan and it seemed symbolic in some way that I was sitting there between the two brothers.

I felt very disturbed. All the peace I had known in London was gone; and something told me that I should never know it again.

I had to get away.

“I’m tired,” I said. “I’m going to say good night.”

David said: “I’ll come up soon.”

I went to my room. I hastily got into bed. It was not true that I was tired. I was, in fact, wide awake. I was trying to look into the future and I did so with some apprehension. There was that in Jonathan’s attitude and one or two of his rather ambiguous remarks which had unsettled me.