Léonie felt suddenly reluctant to enter the sepulchre. But the alternative, remaining alone, unprotected in the clearing, seemed far worse. With the blood pounding inside her head, she reached forward and grasped the heavy metal ring upon the door, and pushed.
At first, nothing happened. She pushed again. This time there was the sound of metal grinding out of place and then a sharp click as the catch gave. She put her narrow shoulder against the timber and, with the weight of her whole body, gave a sharp shove.
The door juddered slowly open.
CHAPTER 40
Léonie stepped inside the sepulchre. Chill air rushed to meet her, together with the unmistakable scent of dust and antiquity and the memory of centuries-old incense. There was something else too. She wrinkled up her nose. A lingering smell of fish, the sea, the salted hull of a wrecked fishing boat.
She clenched her hands at her sides to stop them from shaking.
This is the place.
Immediately to the right of the main door on the west wall was the confessional, about six feet tall by eight wide and no more than two feet deep. It was made of dark wood and was very plain, nothing like the elaborate or ornate carved versions in the cathedrals and churches of Paris. The grille was shut. A single drab curtain of purple hung in front of one of the seats. On the other side of the compartment, the curtain was missing.
To the immediate left of the main door was the bénitier, the stoup for holy water. Léonie recoiled. The basin was of red and white marble, but it was supported upon the back of a grinning, diabolic figure. Blistered red skin, clawed hands and feet, malevolent eyes of piercing blue.
I know you.
The statue was the twin of the engraving from the frontispiece of Les Tarots.
Despite the burden upon his back, the defiance remained. Carefully, as if afraid he might come to life, Léonie edged closer. Beneath, printed upon a small white card, yellowed by age, was the confirmation: ASMODÉE, MAÇON AU TEMPLE DE SALOMON, DÉMON DU COUROUX.
‘Asmodeus, builder of the Temple of Solomon, the demon of wrath,’ she read aloud. Standing on her cold tiptoes, Léonie peered inside. The bénitier was dry. But there were letters carved into the marble. She traced them with her fingers.
‘Par ce signe tu le vaincras,’ she murmured out loud. ‘By this sign shall you conquer him.’
She frowned. To whom did ‘him’ refer? The devil Asmodeus himself? Straight away another thought. Which had come first, the illustration in the book or the bénitier? Which was the copy, which the original?
All she knew was that the date in the book was 1870.
Bending down, her worsted skirts making swirling patterns in the dust on the flagstoned floor, Léonie examined the base of the statue to see if there was any date or mark upon it. There was nothing to indicate either its age or its provenance.
Not Visigoth, though.
Making a mental note to research the matter further - perhaps Isolde might know - Léonie stood up and turned to face the nave. There were three rows of simple wooden pews on the south side of the sepulchre, facing front, like a classroom in elementary school but no wider than could accommodate two worshippers apiece. No decoration, no carvings at the end of the row, and no cushions on which to kneel, just a single thin wooden footrest running the length of each.
The walls of the sepulchre were whitewashed and peeling. Plain arched windows, no coloured glass, let in the light, but stripped the space of warmth. The Stations of the Cross were small illustrations set into the frame of wooden crosses, hardly paintings at all, more medallions, and all unremarkable, at least to Léonie’s untrained eye.
She began to walk slowly up the nave, like a reluctant bride, becoming more anxious the further she travelled from the door. Once, thinking there was someone behind her, she spun round.
Again, no one.
To her left, the narrow nave was flanked by statues of plaster saints, all half-sized, like malevolent children. Their eyes seemed to follow her as she passed by. She halted from time to time to read the names painted in black on wooden signs beneath each: Saint-Antoine, the Egyptian Hermit; Sainte-Germaine, her apron full of Pyrenean mountain flowers; the lame Saint-Roch with his staff. Saints of local significance, she presumed.
The last statue, closest to the altar, was of a slender and petite woman, wearing a knee-length red dress, with straight black hair hanging to her shoulders. With both hands she held a sword, not threatening nor as if she was under attack, but rather as if she herself was the protector.
Beneath it was a printed card with the words: La Fille d’Épées.
Léonie wrinkled her brow. The Daughter of Swords. Perhaps it was intended to be a representation of Sainte-Jeanne d’Arc?
There was another noise. She glanced up at the high windows. Just the branches of the sweet chestnut trees tapping like nails upon the glass. Just the sound of the sombre call of the birds.
At the end of the nave, Léonie stopped, then crouched down and examined the floor, seeking evidence of the black square the author had described, and for the four letters - C, A, D, E - she believed her uncle had marked upon the ground. She could not see anything, not even the faintest memory, but she did uncover an inscription scratched into the stone flagstones.
‘Fujhi, poudes; Escapa, non,’ she read. She copied this down too.
Léonie straightened up and stepped forward to the altar. It matched precisely, to her memory, the description in Les Tarots: a bare table, none of the artefacts of religion - no candles, no silver cross, no missal, no antiphoner. It was set in an octagonal apse, the ceiling above a bright cerulean blue, like the opulent roof of the Palais Garnier. Each of the eight panels was lined with a patterned wallpaper decorated with thick faded horizontal pink stripes, divided by a frieze of red and white juniper flowers and a repeat detail of blue discs or coins. At the intersection of every papered section were plaster mouldings, batons or wands, painted gold.
Within each was a single painted image.
Léonie gasped, discerning suddenly what she was looking at. Eight individual tableaux taken from the Tarot, as if each figure had stepped out of its card and up on to the wall. Printed beneath each one was a title: Le Mat; Le Pagad; La Prêtresse; Les Amoureux; La Force; La Justice; Le Diable; Le Tour. Black antique ink on yellowed card.
It is the same hand as the book.
Léonie nodded. What better evidence that her uncle’s testimony was based on true events? She moved closer. The question was - why these eight, of the seventy-eight cards her uncle’s book had detailed? With excitement fluttering in her chest, she started to copy out the names, but she was running out of space on the tiny scrap of paper she had found in her pocket. She cast her eyes around the sepulchre looking for something else on which to write.
Peeking out from beneath the stone feet of the altar, she noticed the corner of a sheet of paper. She pulled it out. It was a leaf of piano music, handwritten on heavy yellow parchment. Treble and bass clef, common time, with no flats or sharps. The memory of the subtitle on the front cover of her uncle’s book volume came into her mind and his testimony - he had written the music down.
She flattened out the music and attempted to sight-sing the opening bars, but could not catch the melody even though it was very plain. There were but a limited number of notes, which at first glance reminded her of nothing so much as the sort of four-finger exercises she had been obliged to struggle through in her childhood piano lessons.
Then a slow smile came to her lips. Now she could see the pattern - C-A-D-E. The same notes repeating in sequence. Beautiful. As the book had claimed, music to summon the spirits.
Now another thought, quick, following on the heels of the last.
If the music remains in the sepulchre, why not also the cards?
Léonie hesitated, then scribbled the date and the word ‘Sepulchre’ across the top, as evidence of where she had found the music, then slipped it into her pocket and began a methodical search of the stone chapel. S
he pushed her fingers into dusty corners and crevices, looking for concealed spaces, but finding nothing. There were no pieces of furniture or furnishings behind which a deck of cards could be hidden.
But if not here, then where?
She moved around behind the altar. Now her eyes were accustomed to the sombre atmosphere, she fancied she could make out the outline of a small door concealed within the eight panels of the apse. She reached out, looking for some disturbance in the surface, and found a slight depression, perhaps the markings of an old opening that once had done service. She pushed hard with her hand, but nothing happened. It was quite firmly fixed. If there had been a door here, it was no longer in use.
Léonie stood back, hands on her hips. She was reluctant to accept that the cards were not here, but she had exhausted every possible hiding place. She could think of nothing else for it but to go back to the book once more and seek answers there. Now she had seen the place, surely she would be able to read the hidden meanings in the text.
If indeed there are any.
Léonie again glanced up at the windows. The light was fading. Shafts of tree-filtered light had slipped away, leaving the glass dark. Now, as before, she felt the eyes of the plaster statues were turned upon her, watching. And as she became aware of their presence, the atmosphere within the tomb seemed to tip, to shift.
There was a rushing of air. She could discern music, inside her head, coming from somewhere within her. Heard, but not heard. Then a presence, behind her, surrounding her, skimming past without ever touching, yet pressing closer, a ceaseless movement, accompanied by a silent cacophony of whispering and sighing and weeping.
Her pulse started to race.
It is but my imagination.
She heard a different noise. She tried to dismiss it, as she had dismissed all other sounds from within and without. But it came again. A scratching, a shuffling. The clip of nails or claws upon the flagstones, coming from behind the altar.
Now Léonie felt as if she was a trespasser. She had disturbed the silence of the sepulchre and of the listeners, the watchers who inhabited its dusty stone corridors. She was not welcome. She had looked upon the painted images on the walls and stared into the eyes of the plaster saints that kept vigil. She turned, held in the malicious blue eyes of Asmodeus. The descriptions of the demons of the book came back to her with full force. She recalled her uncle’s terror as he wrote of how the black wings, the presences, bore down upon him. Tore into him.
The marks on the palms of my hands, like stigmata, have not faded.
Léonie looked down and saw, or imagined she saw, red marks spreading across her cold upturned hands. Scars in the form of a figure eight on its side upon her pale skin.
Her courage finally abandoned her.
She picked up her skirts and bolted for the door. The malignant gaze of the Asmodeus seemed to mock her as she passed, his eyes following her down the short nave. In terror, she threw the full weight of her body at the door, succeeding only in closing it more firmly shut. Frantic, she remembered it opened inwards. She grabbed at the handle and pulled.
Now Léonie was certain there were footsteps behind her. Claws, nails, slipping on the flagstones, coming after her. Hunting her. The devils of the place had been released to protect the sanctuary of the sepulchre. A horrified sob escaped from her throat as she stumbled out into the darkening woods.
The door fell heavily shut behind her, rattling on its ancient hinges. She was no longer afraid of what might be lying in wait in the twilight of the trees. It was as nothing compared to the supernatural terrors within the tomb.
Léonie picked up her skirts and ran, knowing the demon’s eyes were watching her still. Realising, only just in time, how the ancient gaze of spirits and spectres kept guard over their domain against intruders. She plunged back through the chill air, dropping her hat, stumbling and half falling, retracing her steps all the way along the path, over the dry stream, through the dusk-draped woods to the safety of the lawns and the gardens.
Fujhi, poudes; Escapa, non.
For a fleeting moment, she thought she understood the meaning of the words.
CHAPTER 41
Léonie arrived back at the house frozen to the bone, to find Anatole pacing the hall. Not only had her absence been noted, but it had also caused great consternation. Isolde threw her arms around her, and then quickly withdrew, as if embarrassed by her display of affection. Anatole hugged her, then shook her. He was torn between chastising her and relief that no ill had befallen her. Nothing was said about the earlier quarrel that had driven her out alone into the grounds in the first place.
‘Where have you been?’ he demanded. ‘How could you be so thoughtless?’
‘Walking in the gardens.’
‘Walking! It is almost dark!’
‘I lost track of the time.’
Anatole continued to fire question after question at her. Had she seen anyone? Had she strayed beyond the boundaries of the Domaine? Had she noticed or heard anything out of the ordinary? Under such a sustained verbal interrogation, the fear that had taken hold of her in the sepulchre loosened its grip. Léonie rallied and started to defend herself, his determination to make so much of the incident encouraging her to do the opposite.
‘I am not a child,’ she threw back at him, thoroughly irritated by his treatment of her. ‘I am perfectly capable of looking after myself.’
‘No you are not!’ he shouted. ‘You are only seventeen.’
Léonie tossed her copper curls. ‘You talk as if you feared I had been kidnapped!’
‘Don’t be absurd,’ he snapped, although Léonie intercepted a glance passed between him and Isolde.
Her eyes narrowed. ‘What?’ she said slowly. ‘Whatever has happened to make you overreact so? What is it that you are not telling me?’
Anatole opened his mouth, then closed it again, leaving Isolde to step in.
‘I am sorry if our concern seems excessive to you. Of course you are perfectly at liberty to walk wherever you please. It is just that there have been reports of wild animals coming right down into the valley at dusk. Sightings of mountain cats, wolves perhaps, not far from Rennes-les-Bains. ’
Léonie was on the point of challenging the explanation when the memory of the sound of claws on the flagstones of the sepulchre came sharply back to her. She shuddered. She could not say for certain what had turned the adventure into something altogether else, and so abruptly. Only that in the moment she began to run, she had believed herself in danger of her life. From what, she did not know.
‘See, you have made yourself quite ill,’ Anatole raged.
‘Anatole, enough,’ Isolde said quietly, lightly touching him on the arm.
To Léonie’s astonishment, he fell silent.
With an exhalation of disgust, he spun away, his hands on his hips.
‘There are also warnings of more bad weather coming in from the mountains,’ Isolde said. ‘We were fearful you would be caught out in the storm.’
Her comment was interrupted by an ominous rumble of thunder. All three looked to the windows. Brooding and malevolent clouds could now be seen scudding across the tops of the mountain. A white mist, like the smoke from a bonfire, hung suspended between the hills in the distance. Another rumble of thunder, closer at hand, rattled the glass in the panes.
‘Come,’ said Isolde, taking Léonie’s arm. ‘I will have the maid draw you a hot bath, then we will have supper and a fire in the drawing room. And, perhaps, a game of cards? Bézique, vingt-et-un, whatever you wish.’
Léonie remembered. She looked down at the palms of her hands, white with the cold. There was nothing there. No red marks branding her skin.
She allowed herself to be taken to her room.
It was only some time later, when the bell for supper had rung, that Léonie paused to contemplate her reflection in the looking glass.
She slipped on to the stool in front of her dressing table and stared with unflinching eyes at the mirror.
Her eyes, although bright, were feverish. She could see plainly the memory of the fear etched upon her skin and wondered if it would be evident to Isolde or Anatole.
Léonie hesitated, not wishing to stir her unsteady nerves, but then got up and retrieved Les Tarots from her workbox. With cautious fingers, she turned the pages until she came to the passage she wanted.
There was a rushing of air and the sensation that I was not alone. Now I was certain that the sepulchre was full of beings. Spirits, I cannot say they were human. All natural rules were vanquished. The entities were all around. My self and my other selves, both past and yet to come . . . It seemed to me they flew and swept through the air, so that I was aware always of their fleeting presence . . . Especially in the air above my head there seemed ceaseless movement, accompanied by a cacophony of whispering and sighing and weeping.