Lucy walked with him along the platform. ‘I must tell my father who he is.’
‘Yes … and I must tell Robert Brownlow whose son he is.’
Lucy felt the first stirrings of an idea that she knew would fulfil itself. She had a sense of festival, streamers, a family outing. Father Anselm stopped by the train door and said: ‘Did you know that Salomon Lachaise was saved by The Round Table?’
‘No.’ She thought of the gentleman who had become her friend, having at one definite point in the course of the trial sought her out, along with Max Nightingale. ‘And yet he didn’t sit with the other survivors.
The monk looked at her curiously ‘How strange. I didn’t realise that …’
Lucy’s idea took a firm shape:
‘I’d like to bring all these people together, before my grand-mother dies. They all belong in the same room.
Surprised agreement lit the monk’s face.
She said, ‘Would you come.’ Father?’
‘Thank you, and remember … I’m also a messenger from the past.’
A messenger: somehow, despite the long, unrelenting conspiracy of misfortune, a letter had been passed on, as by runners at night, despite the guns, despite the wire. It would be brought to Agnes just before she died.
A man in a tired uniform appeared, urging stragglers to get on board. The one remaining question fell from her lips as the door began to swing on its dirty hinge: ‘I wonder what Mr Lachaise said to Schwermann …’
‘Yes, I wonder,’ replied the monk.
The door banged shut. A loud whistle soared over the carriages. The train heaved forwards, clattering on the rails. The man in uniform walked quickly past, his job done. And Father Anselm, his face framed by a grimy square of glass, moved away.
Chapter Forty-Six
Salomon Lachaise said he wanted to come to Larkwood. He needed some time to be alone and asked if he might stay at The Hermitage. The Prior granted his permission. For three days the Priory’s guest wandered in the woods, along the stream and round the lake. Then, one morning, Anselm found a note in his pigeonhole. Salomon Lachaise would welcome a visit.
Anselm walked quickly through the fields after lunch. About two hundred yards from The Hermitage was a narrow wooden footbridge, without railings, spanning the stream. The small man sat upon the timbers. Silently, Anselm joined him. Their legs hung loose over the edge.
Salomon Lachaise said, ‘Do you remember, before the end of the trial, saying you had been one person with me while all the while you were another?’
‘Yes. You replied that that was true of all of us.’
‘Your memory serves you well.’
‘I wondered what you meant. ‘
‘I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to explain. But I will try. You know that I learned early on in my life that I was one of the few who had escaped … that my whole family had been taken away. I kept the memory of their names alive. I told you that I found peace in scholarship, that I owed the outset of my academic life to a survivor.’
‘Yes.’ I remember.’
For a short while Salomon Lachaise pondered the rush of water beneath his feet. He said, ‘My life changed on a bright, cold morning just after a lecture on feudal iconography I walked into the common room at the University and picked up a newspaper. A journalist had discovered that … that man … had found refuge in Britain after the war.’
‘Pascal Fougères was the author?’
‘Yes. I decided to contact him, and told my mother. No, she said, dear God, no. Leave the past alone. I turned to Mr Bremer — I told you about him when we first met — the lawyer who had become my guide. He, too, had seen the article. He, too, advised me to get on with my life … to forget what I had read.’
‘Did you?’
‘No.’
Salomon Lachaise proceeded in a low monotone. ‘I went to see Mr Bremer. I told him my mind was made up; I was going to join myself to those who were seeking that man. I asked for his support before I told my mother.’
‘You received it?’
‘No. It would be right to say he lost his professional detachment.’
‘Why?’
‘The article we had both read gave the name of the small town that man had come from …Wissendorf … Mr Bremer recognised it from his dealings with the lawyer retained by my benefactor. He made what I think is called a reasonable assumption of fact. My refusal to heed his advice forced him to tell me that the German lawyer acting on behalf of the “survivor” was the family solicitor for … that man.’
‘Schwermann was the … survivor?’ asked Anselm, aghast at the appropriation of the word.
‘Yes. And to think … I made my name in a field of learning that is known as the age of patronage.’
Salomon Lachaise watched his dangling feet, carefully trailing the soles of his shoes against the heavy pull of water. Blackened silver spurted either side at every sweeping touch.
Anselm said, tentatively ‘Why you?’
Very slowly Salomon Lachaise said, ‘I was the last child saved by The Round Table, taken to safety by Agnes Aubret just before her arrest.’
Anselm turned and scrutinised the face of his companion. It was a miracle of calm, a screen of chalk that would fall into powder if touched. Uncomprehending, Anselm said, ‘He must have seen your existence as a salving of conscience.’
‘My entire academic life rests upon contamination. Everything 1 have achieved rises from poison, bright flowers out of filth. I shall never practise my art again.
Anselm struggled to remonstrate, ‘But surely …’ He floundered, lacking conviction, for he knew that the most costly decisions are often not made — they happen.
‘I did not contact Fougères and my mother thought that I had taken her advice. Shortly afterwards she died, peacefully. And while that brought grief, it set me free.’
‘To do what?’ Anselm had sensed something specific … something crucial.
‘Mr Bremer was a meticulous man, a keeper of detailed records which he never destroyed. By chance there had once been an error in the transfer of funds from the solicitor in Germany. to him. In sorting out the tangle he’d learned the name of the client. At my request he dug out his old papers and there it was… Nightingale.’
‘And you passed that on to Pascal Fougères?’ asked Anselm.
‘Yes. When that man claimed sanctuary.’ I took early retirement and followed his route of escape, from Paris to Les Moineaux. I had an inkling he’d somehow taken the same route as my mother. Then I came here, to Larkwood. After that it was a matter of waiting for the outcome of the trial.’ He breathed deeply, like one bent over.’ preparing to heave a rock to one side. He said, ‘I waited for him to speak, to hear what he had to say to those he had robbed. But in the end he said nothing, and they freed him. He was exactly what he appeared to be, only the jury had a doubt. The moment I’d waited for had come … and I did not want it. I told an usher I wanted to see him and I gave my name.
Again he ran his feet upon the surface of the stream, watching the sweeping cuts in the silvery rush, opened up, now closed, then opened up again. Salomon Lachaise described how he was shown through to a room rather like a post office counter.
A window of thick glass lay seated in the wall. Beneath, on each side, was a wide sill — a table passing through the divide — and a chair.
‘A door opened and suddenly there he was. For a long while I just looked at him, each line upon his face, the nails upon his fingers. He raised a hand, putting it against the glass.’
Schwermann had spoken first across the divide:
‘I didn’t realise it was you, in the woods …’
‘Yes.’
‘I can hardly believe that you are here, that you have come. Gratitude and fearful wonder loosened his drawn features.
‘Yes, I have come.