Sepulchre

  He walked faster, resisting the impulse to start running. Better to keep his head up. Pretend all was well. Trust that he would make it through to the other side where there were witnesses before they had the chance to strike.

  But behind him now, the sound of running. A flash of movement reflected in the window of Stern’s the engraver, a refracting of the light, and Anatole spun round, in time to ward off a fist coming down upon his head. He took a hit above his left eye, but deflected the worst of it, and managed to land a punch. His attacker wore a flat woollen cap with a black handkerchief obscuring most of his face. He grunted, but at the same time Anatole felt his arms pinned from behind, leaving him exposed. The first blow, to his stomach, knocked the wind out of him, then a fist smashed into his face, left, right, like a boxer in the ring, in a volley of blows that sent his head cracking from side to side and pain ricocheting through him.

  Anatole could feel blood trickling from his eyelid, but he managed to twist around slightly to avoid the worst of the hits. The man holding him was also wearing a neckscarf across his face, but his head was uncovered and his hard scalp covered in angry red blisters. Anatole drew up his knee and sent his foot smashing back into the man’s shin. For an instant the hold upon him was loosened, just long enough for Anatole to grab at the open collar of the man’s shirt and, getting purchase, send him staggering against the sharp-edged pillars in the doorway.

  Anatole launched himself forward, using the weight of his body to try to get past, but the first man caught him a glancing jab to the side of his head. He half stumbled to his knees, swinging out as he fell and catching the man hard in the ribs, but inflicting little damage.

  Anatole felt the man’s fists, clenched together, come down on the back of his neck. The force of the blow sent him staggering forward, then he stumbled and dropped to the ground. A vicious kick from steel-toed boots to the back of his legs had him sprawling forward on the ground. He threw his hands over his head and pulled his knees up to his chin, in a futile attempt to protect himself from the worst of the assault. As one blow, then another followed to his ribs, his kidneys, his arms - he realised for the first time that the beating might not stop.

  ‘Hey!’

  At the end of the passageway, in the gloom, Anatole thought he saw a light.

  ‘Hey! You! What’s going on?’

  For a moment, time stood still. Anatole felt the hot breath of one of the assailants whispering in his ear.

  ‘Une leçon.’

  Then the sensation of hands crawling over his battered body, fingers pushing into the pocket of his waistcoat, a sharp tug, and his father’s fob watch being torn from its clip.

  Finally Anatole found his voice.

  ‘Over here! Here!’

  With a final kick to his ribs, causing Anatole’s body to jack-knife in pain, the two attackers left, running in the opposite direction from the inconstant light of the nightwatchman’s lamp.

  ‘Over here,’ Anatole cried again.

  He heard the shuffling feet coming towards him, then the clink of glass and metal on the ground and the old nightwatchman was peering down at him.

  ‘Monsieur, qu’est-ce qui s’est passé ici?’

  Anatole pulled himself up into a sitting position, allowing the old man to help him.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he said, trying to catch his breath. He put his hand up to his eye and brought his fingers away red.

  ‘You’ve taken quite a beating.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he insisted. ‘A cut.’

  ‘Monsieur, you were robbed?’

  Anatole didn’t immediately answer. He took a deep breath, then reached his hand up for the nightwatchman to help him to his feet. Pain shot across his back and down his legs. He took a moment to get his balance, then straightened up. He examined his hands, turning them over. His knuckles were cracked and bleeding and his palms were red with blood from the cut above his eye. He could feel a gash on his ankle where the skin was open, rubbing against the material of his trousers.

  Anatole took a moment more to compose himself, then he straightened his clothes.

  ‘Did they take much, sir?’

  He patted himself down and was surprised to find his pocket book and cigarette case still there.

  ‘They appear to have taken only my watch,’ he said. His words seemed to be coming from a long way away as the reality slipped into his head and took root. It had not been a random robbery. Indeed, not a robbery at all, but a lesson, as the man had said.

  Pushing the thought from his mind, Anatole pulled out a note and slipped it into the old man’s tobacco-stained fingers. ‘In gratitude for your assistance, my friend.’

  The watchman looked down. A smile broke out. ‘Most generous, Monsieur.’

  ‘But no need to mention this to anyone, there’s a good chap. Now, if you could find me a cab?’

  The old man touched his hat. ‘Whatever you say, sir.’

  CHAPTER 8

  Léonie woke with a jolt, thoroughly disorientated.

  For a moment she couldn’t recall why she was wrapped in a woollen blanket in the drawing room, curled up in a chair. Then she looked down at her torn evening dress and remembered. The riot at the Palais Garnier. The late supper with Anatole. Achille playing lullabies through the night. She glanced at the Sèvres clock on the mantelshelf.

  A quarter past five.

  Chilled to the bone, and a little nauseous, she slipped into the hall and made her way along the passageway, noticing that Anatole’s door was also now closed. The observation was comforting.

  Her bedroom was at the end. Pleasant and airy, it was the smallest of the private rooms, although nicely furnished in pink and blue. A bed, a closet, a chest of drawers, a washstand with blue porcelain jug and basin, a dressing table and a small claw-footed stool with a tapestry cushion.

  Léonie stepped out of her bedraggled evening dress, letting it fall to the ground, and untied her petticoats. The lace hem of the dress was grey, grimy, hanging torn in several places. The maid would have a task to repair it. With clumsy fingers, she unlaced her corset and undid the hooks until she could wriggle out, then threw it over the chair. She splashed a little of last evening’s water, now ice cold, on her face, then slipped on her nightdress and crawled into bed.

  She was woken some hours later by the sounds of the servants.

  Realising she was hungry, she rose quickly and drew her own curtains and pinned back the shutters. Daylight had brought the unremarkable world back to life. She marvelled, after the excitements of last evening, at how Paris outside her window looked entirely unchanged. As she brushed her hair, she examined her reflection in the looking glass for signs of the night upon her face. Disappointingly, there were none.

  Ready for breakfast, Léonie put on her heavy blue brocade dressing gown over her white cotton nightdress, fastening the ties at the waist with a lavish double bow, then stepped out into the passageway.

  The aroma of freshly brewed coffee rushed to meet her as she entered the drawing room then came to a standstill. Unusually, both M’man and Anatole were already seated at the table. Most often, Léonie ate breakfast alone.

  Even at this early hour, their mother’s toilette was immaculate. Marguerite’s dark hair was twisted artfully into her habitual chignon, and she had a dusting of powder on her cheeks and neck. She sat with her back to the window, but in the unforgiving light of morning, the faintest of lines of age around her eyes and her mouth were discernible. Léonie noticed she was wearing a new negligée - pink silk with a yellow bow - and sighed. Presumably another gift from the pompous Du Pont.

  The more generous he is, the longer we shall have to put up with him.

  Feeling a stab of guilt at her uncharitable thoughts, Léonie walked to the table and kissed her mother on the cheek with more enthusiasm than usual.

  ‘Bon matin, M’man,’ she said, then turned to greet her brother.

  Her eyes flashed wide at the sight of him. His left eye swollen shut, on
e hand wrapped in a white bandage, and a ring of green and purple bruising around his jaw.

  ‘Anatole, what on earth—’

  He leapt in. ‘I have been telling M’man how we were caught up in the protests at the Palais Garnier last evening,’ he said sharply, fixing her with a look. ‘And how I was unlucky enough to take a few blows.’

  Léonie looked at him in astonishment.

  ‘It has even made the front page of Le Figaro,’ Marguerite said, tapping the newspaper with her immaculate nails. ‘When I think of what might have happened! You could have been killed, Anatole. Thank goodness he was there to look after you, Léonie. Several dead, it claims here.’

  ‘Don’t fuss, M’man, I’ve already been checked by the doctor,’ he said. ‘It looks worse than it is.’

  Léonie opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it again, catching a warning glance from Anatole.

  ‘More than a hundred arrests,’ Marguerite continued. ‘Several dead! And explosions! At the Palais Garnier, I ask you. Paris has become intolerable. The city is quite lawless. Really, I cannot bear it.’

  ‘There is nothing whatsoever for you to bear, M’man,’ Léonie said impatiently. ‘You were not there. I am fine. And Anatole—’ She broke off and fixed him with a long stare. ‘Anatole has told you he is fine. You are only distressing yourself.’

  Marguerite gave a wan smile. ‘You have no idea what a mother suffers.’

  ‘Nor do I wish to,’ Léonie muttered under her breath, taking a piece of sourdough bread and spreading it liberally with butter and apricot preserve.

  For a while, breakfast continued in silence. Léonie continued to throw enquiring glances at Anatole, which he ignored.

  The maid came in with the post on a tray.

  ‘Anything for me?’ said Anatole, gesturing with his butter knife.

  ‘Nothing, chéri. No.’

  Marguerite picked up a heavy cream envelope with a look of puzzlement on her face. She examined the postmark.

  Léonie saw the colour slip from her mother’s cheeks.

  ‘If you will excuse me,’ she said, rising from the table and leaving the room before either of her children could protest.

  The moment she was gone, Léonie turned on her brother.

  ‘What on earth happened to you?’ she hissed. ‘Tell me. Before M’man returns.’

  Anatole put down his coffee cup. ‘I regret to say that I found myself in a disagreement with the croupier at Chez Frascati. He was trying to swindle me, I knew it, and I made the mistake of taking it up with the manager.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And,’ he sighed, ‘the long and the short of it is that I was escorted from the premises. I had not gone more than five hundred yards when I was set upon by a pair of ruffians.’

  ‘Sent from the club?’

  ‘I assume so, yes.’

  She stared, suspicious suddenly that there was more to the situation than Anatole was admitting. ‘Do you owe money there?’

  ‘A little, but . . .’ He shrugged and another flicker of discomfort snaked across his face. ‘Coming on the heels of all that has gone before this year, it has made me consider it might be wise to make myself scarce for a week or so,’ he added. ‘Get out of Paris, just till the fuss has died down.’

  Léonie’s face fell. ‘But I could not bear it if you left. Besides, where would you go?’

  Anatole put his elbows on the table and dropped his voice. ‘I have an idea, petite, but I will need your assistance.’

  The thought of Anatole going away, even for a few days, did not bear thinking about. To be alone in the apartment, with her mother and the tedious Du Pont. She poured herself a second cup of coffee, added three spoonfuls of sugar.

  Anatole touched her arm. ‘Will you help me?’

  ‘Of course, anything, but I—’

  At that moment, their mother reappeared in the doorway. Anatole pulled back, touching his finger to his lips. Marguerite was holding both the envelope and the letter in her hand. Her pink-painted nails looked very bright against the sombre cream of the writing paper.

  Léonie coloured.

  ‘Chérie, don’t blush so,’ Marguerite said, walking back to the table. ‘It is almost indecent. You look like a shop girl.’

  ‘Sorry, M’man,’ replied Léonie, ‘but we were concerned, Anatole and I both, that you had . . . perhaps received bad news.’

  Marguerite said nothing, just stared intently at the letter.

  ‘Who is the letter from?’ Léonie asked in the end, when her mother still showed no signs of responding. Indeed, she gave the impression that she had almost forgotten they were there at all.

  ‘M’man?’ said Anatole. ‘May I fetch you something? Do you feel unwell?’

  She raised her huge brown eyes. ‘Thank you, chéri, but no. I was surprised, that is all.’

  Léonie sighed. ‘Who - is - the - letter - from?’ she repeated crossly, spelling out each word as if talking to a particularly stupid child.

  Marguerite finally gathered herself. ‘The letter comes from the Domaine de la Cade,’ she said quietly. ‘From your Tante Isolde. The widow of my half-brother, Jules.’

  ‘What!’ exclaimed Léonie. ‘The uncle who died in January? ’

  ‘Passed away, disparu; “died” is so vulgar,’ she corrected, although Léonie could hear her heart was not in the rebuke. ‘But yes, in point of fact, the same.’

  ‘Why is she writing to you so long after the event?’

  ‘Oh, she has written on a couple of previous occasions,’ Marguerite replied. ‘Once on the occasion of their marriage, then once again to inform me of Jules’ death and the details of his funeral.’ She paused. ‘It is to my regret that ill health prevented me from making the journey and at such a time of the year.’

  Léonie knew perfectly well that her mother would never have returned to the house in which she had grown up outside Rennes-les-Bains, regardless of the season or circumstance. Marguerite and her half-brother were estranged.

  Léonie knew the bare bones of the story from Anatole. Marguerite’s father, Guy Lascombe, had married young and in haste. When his first wife died giving birth to Jules some six months later, Lascombe immediately gave his son into the care of a governess, then a series of tutors, and returned to Paris. He paid for his son’s education and the upkeep of the family estate, and when Jules came of age settled a fair annual allowance on him, but otherwise paid him no more attention than before.

  Only at the end of his life had Grandpère Lascombe married again, although he had continued to live much the same dissolute life. He dispatched his gentle wife and tiny daughter to live at the Domaine de la Cade with Jules, visiting only when the mood took him. From the pained expression that came over Marguerite’s face on the rare occasion the subject of her childhood came up, Léonie understood her mother had been less than happy.

  Grandpère Lascombe and his wife had been killed one night when their carriage overturned. When the will was read, it transpired that Guy had left his entire estate to Jules, with not a sou for his daughter. Marguerite fled instantly north, to Paris where, in the February of 1865, she had met and married Leo Vernier, a radical idealist. Since Jules was a supporter of the ancien régime, there had been no contact between the half-siblings from that point onwards.

  Léonie sighed. ‘Well, then why is she writing to you again?’ she demanded.

  Marguerite looked down at the letter, as if she could still not quite believe the contents of it.

  ‘It is an invitation for you, Léonie, to pay a visit. For some four weeks indeed.’

  ‘What!’ Léonie shrieked, and all but snatched the letter from her mother’s fingers. ‘When?’

  ‘Chérie, please.’

  Léonie paid no attention. ‘Does Tante Isolde give an explanation for why she is issuing such an invitation now?’

  Anatole lit a cigarette. ‘Perhaps she wishes to make amends for her late husband’s lack of familial duty.’

  ‘It is pos
sible,’ Marguerite said, ‘although there is nothing in the letter to suggest that is the intention behind the invitation.’

  Anatole laughed. ‘It is hardly the manner of thing one would commit to paper.’

  Léonie folded her arms. ‘Well, it is quite absurd to imagine that I should accept an invitation to sojourn with an aunt to whom I have never been introduced, and for so prolonged a period. Indeed,’ she added belligerently, ‘I can think of nothing worse than being buried in the country with some elderly widow talking about the old days.’