‘We have to stop.’
Perhaps Tristan was wise. The statue would never have said that. They’re words I’ve dreaded hearing since our first touch.
‘Why?’ I’m not sympathetic; I sound like a child.
‘Guy. Of course.’
‘Do you love him?’ I know she doesn’t.
‘He’s my husband.’
It’s not the ‘husband’ that offends me: it’s the ‘my’. I hate any implication that Guy belongs to her, or she to him. She belongs to me.
She reaches out a hand to console me, but I shake her off. I don’t want to make this easy for her.
‘We can’t go on,’ she insists. ‘Would you kill him? Fight all his knights and vassals, defy the world just so we can lie together? It’s impossible. You can’t write a happy ending to this story. If you love me, let me go.’
If I love her? Let Guy come, let him beat me and drown me or burn me at the stake — I’ll fight for her with every breath in my body. Only never deny our love.
A noise sounds on the stair. I look at the door — Ada didn’t bolt it. I start towards it, but before I’m halfway across the room it flies open with a crash. A figure stands in the entry, a burning brand in one hand and a naked sword in the other. The glare of the light blinds me.
‘Peter?’
It’s Jocelin.
XXIII
Ellie woke on Christmas morning, naked and warm under the fur-trimmed coverlet. For once, Blanchard was still asleep; she lay beside him, feeling the chasm of hot air between their bodies, listening for his breathing. He slept as quietly as a cat, no snore or murmur. Cold clear sunlight streamed through the mullioned window; in the courtyard, Ellie could hear the staff tending the castle as they must have done for centuries. She thought she’d never been happier.
She caught sight of the wolf above the door and turned away to hide it. The movement woke Blanchard. He leaned over to kiss her, twisting back as he did to reach under the bed. His hand came up holding a small fat package wrapped in gold paper.
‘Happy Christmas, Ellie.’
She sat up in the bed and slit open the paper with her nail. It was a book, bound in crimson leather with a crest stamped in gold on the cover.
‘Is this another one of your orphan assets?’
‘It belonged to the Saint-Lazare family. Michel sold it to me.’
She could tell it was old. She’d handled enough manuscripts in her year at Oxford to recognise the smell of vellum. She opened the cover.
Le Conte du Graal.
And underneath, in Blanchard’s familiar copperplate:
For Ellie, a great romance.
She couldn’t believe he’d actually written on the ancient parchment. As she touched the page the book’s history seemed to flash through her imagination: the parchmenter racking the calfskin until it was paper thin. A young boy climbing in a tree, trying not to get stung, while he removed the gall-wasp’s nest to get the acid which would sear the ink into the page. The scribe sharpening his reed pen, sitting very straight at his angled desk as he copied the text. And now her own name, graffiti on their monument.
Blanchard read her expression.
‘The past was once the present, Ellie. History is merely the accumulation of all the presents that have ever been. Those who lived in the past have no better claim to it. You lived, you owned this book. You are part of its story also.’
Ellie turned to the first page. The script was tiny, only a few millimetres high, laid out in three well-ordered columns with a boxed, gilded initial at the top. It looked like some sort of list, or an index: only if you peered closely at the minuscule text could you see that each was a line of poetry.
‘Do you know Chrétien de Troyes?’
‘Only by reputation.’ There must have been some lectures at university, but she didn’t think she’d gone.
‘He was the first and greatest of the romance writers. He took folk tales and legends, stories of the common people, and turned them into poetry for kings.’
‘Thank you.’ She rolled on top of him, rubbing her body against his as she plied him with kisses. ‘And all I got you was a pair of socks.’
While Blanchard showered, Ellie rang her mother. She knew she should be guilty, but it was Christmas morning and she refused to let herself feel bad. She let the phone ring a full minute, but her mother didn’t answer. She remembered it was an hour earlier in Wales: her mother would probably be at church.
Ellie glanced at the bathroom door, debating with herself. She could still hear the shower running. She hated calling Doug in front of Blanchard, though occasionally it had been unavoidable. It brought them into the same room, put her lies in such sharp focus it hurt. And she hated the way Blanchard looked: never jealous, or even embarrassed, only vaguely amused. Perhaps, being French, he thought it was normal.
Doug answered straight away, like someone who’d been waiting for her.
‘Happy Christmas, sweetheart.’
‘Happy Christmas.’
‘How’s Wales?’
Was there an edge in his question? A trap? Had he guessed?
‘Fine. Mum’s gone to church, I’m peeling potatoes.’
This is the last time I’m going to lie to you, she promised silently. The weeks since his birthday had slipped by in a blur; then it was almost Christmas, and she didn’t want to ruin it. January was the time, she’d decided. The worst time of year: Janus the two-faced god, looking forwards and backwards. She’d tell him in the New Year.
‘How’s the weather? Have you got a white Christmas?’
Her mind raced. She should have checked online. ‘Probably just the same as you’ve got.’
Behind the door, the shower had stopped.
‘I think I heard Mum coming in. I’d better go.’ She endured the usual sign offs with mounting impatience, staring at the door, willing it to stay shut.
‘I love you.’
She’d barely hung up when Blanchard walked out in his dressing gown. He gave her a quizzical look.
‘Were you talking to someone?’
‘My mum.’
Blanchard took a shirt from its hanger in the wardrobe. ‘You should get up. We have to earn our Christmas lunch.’
By the time Ellie got downstairs, a dozen men and women had assembled in the courtyard. If she’d met them in real life Ellie would probably have run a mile: tall and flatly handsome, dressed in fur hats and tweed jackets and riding boots, they looked like a species apart. She wondered if they were all Saint-Lazare’s guests, or if some might be family. Blanchard mingled with them, making small talk and introductions which Ellie immediately forgot. She kept waiting to meet Michel Saint-Lazare, but apparently he wasn’t there.
A convoy of Land Rovers took them halfway down the mountain, to an upland meadow studded with trees and hedges. Another Land Rover was already there with its boot open. From inside, Ellie could hear a high-pitched chirrup.
It came from a cage. A tall bird sat on a perch, clutching the wood with sharp, wizened claws. It had a tuft of white feathers at its breast, broad wings tucked up to its shoulders, and a curved beak like a cutlass. Ellie didn’t need to know much about birds to recognise the lethal power in its body. A predator. A heavy chain shackled it to the cage.
Blanchard pulled on a leather gauntlet and laced it up to his elbow. Murmuring soothing words, he opened the cage and slipped the chain off the perch, over his wrist. The bird hopped on to his outstretched arm, preening the white feathers on its breast. The assistant — a falconer? — pulled a small leather hood over its beak and fastened it around her head.