A Gown of Thorns: A Gripping Novel of Romance, Intrigue and the Secrets of a Vintage Parisian Dress (26 page)

‘Of Henri, you mean?’

‘Of the precious time they were about to share. She wanted to make love, not betray her lover.’

‘I’ve grown up with Albert’s version. The traitor was a woman. I
have
to believe it.’

‘And I believe that ghosts come from a whisky bottle and that psychic communication is a form of temporal lobe sensitivity. And yet I know what I’ve seen, what we’ve both seen and heard. Take me to the clearing where the stone is, Laurent, because somebody is waiting.’

T
he temperature had dropped
, the mist lay thicker. Their clothes were clammy and they’d probably end up catching chills. But now was not the moment to leave. A channel was opening in Shauna’s mind, and she felt superlatively receptive. Maybe being chilled helped. When Laurent placed her hand on the memorial stone, she instantly heard Yvonne’s no-nonsense voice:

I don’t mind being the last name on there. I mind not being there
…

‘That last night, the household went to bed,’ Shauna murmured. ‘Henri left a decent interval before climbing to the tower room. He set his candle down outside the door and knocked. Yvonne let him in. The next moment, gramophone music filled the air. A sad ballad, “
Vous, qui passez sans me voir
”. The singer’s voice, toffee melting over flame. Yvonne said—’

‘
D
ance with me
.’

Henri took her in his arms, but immediately stepped back. ‘What are you wearing?’ It was an accusation – he already knew the answer.

‘Don’t be angry. What harm, borrowing something that’s been shut away in a cupboard for years? It’s just cloth, Henri, and I want to feel something beautiful against my skin. I’ll be wearing government issue for heaven knows how long and I won’t have you remembering me as the woman in overalls. This dress—’

‘Yvonne, I told you – you may not wear it. Take it off.’

Had he used a softer tone she might have complied, but the autocratic note echoed the one he’d used with Albert earlier.

‘I will take it off, when we’ve danced. Bring in your candle so we can see each other.’ He made no move, so she fetched it herself, saying, ‘I’ve hung a blanket across the window. See? Not even an arc light would show in the courtyard. And look, I’ve hung that dismal picture across the other window. We are quite invisible, except to ourselves.’

The candle had burned halfway down and she placed its holder on the post at the foot of the bed. She stood in front of Henri and indicated that she would like to dance.

As the singer crooned his sorrows, Henri measured her in long sweeps of the eye. She held herself still, willing him to see through the artifice of dye and pleats to the yearning body beneath. She knew she was different from all the women he’d known. She was no high-born lady, no poised clothes-horse, nor a compliant peasant girl. Just a schoolteacher from England, lately re-baptised as an intrepid agent, in sore need of courage and hope. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ she whispered.

‘I
am
, Yvonne. Every woman who has worn the Gown of Thorns has wanted something we men of Chemignac cannot give. Oh, we provide what is needed, but never what is wanted. That is our curse, the thorn in our sides.’

She pinched him. ‘I want you,
Écharde
, splinter and thorn. What a prickly couple we make! If you won’t dance with me, I suppose I’ll take the dress off.’ It had to be pulled over the head, which would put her in an undignified posture. ‘Let’s dance,’ she coaxed, ‘until the candle burns down, then I’ll undress. Let’s prove this thing has no power to hurt us.’

With a sigh, he put his arms around her and they swayed as another song began, this time by Lucienne Boyer. They didn’t hear the intruder’s advance until the door thumped open and a shrill voice cried, ‘I knew you’d be here! I knew I would catch you! I hope that dress kills her too!’

H
enri made
a barrier of his arms in time to stop his daughter leaping with teeth and fingernails at Yvonne. Once again, he lifted Isabelle off the floor, but this time she fought back, kicking and screaming, arms flailing. She whacked the candle into the middle of the bed.

Yvonne hastily retrieved it and retreated to the side of the room, her back to the landscape painting. In the candlelight, Henri’s face was a mask of shock and distress. Yvonne felt more detached. In her professional life, she’d met many unhappy young girls. She’d dealt with hysteria. Girls weren’t all the good little mice they were supposed to be.

Isabelle certainly was not. That was a full-blooded, adult cyclone ripping through her vocal chords. ‘You send me away so you can be with
her
! That’s wicked, wicked, wicked!’ A child’s unexamined morality. Surely Henri would see the misery at its heart?

But he did not – or perhaps he was simply afraid that the tower was insufficiently soundproof and someone might hear. ‘I certainly will send you back to the Valles,’ he told the child, ‘and you will not come back here until you have learned to control yourself. I will tell Audrey I don’t want to see you, until you behave!’

‘Henri, don’t. That’s not going to help.’ Yvonne’s intervention was smothered by Isabelle’s answering shriek and the hiss of the gramophone. It needed re-winding. The singer’s voice had sunk to gruff maunderings, like a corpse communicating from beyond the grave. And then the song exploded in a scratch as Isabelle’s kicking feet flipped the gramophone upside down. The shock of it sent the child limp, and Henri seized his opportunity, heaving Isabelle over his shoulder, clamping her legs against his ribs.

‘I’ll take her down,’ he said, turning for the door.

‘Be careful—’ A second crash cut short Yvonne’s warning. In a bid to stay in the room, Isabelle had grasped the oil painting and its new wire snapped. Yvonne was suddenly in front of a naked window, holding a candle, wearing the Gown of Thorns. The moonlit sky was the washed-out blue of a prayer book.

‘Come away,’ Henri warned.

She froze. Surely, that was a flare of light in the fringes of the wood. At first, Yvonne hoped it was a reflection of the moon, but when it came again she knew it for a torch. The beam was aiming directly at the château. On, off, on, off, in short, irregular bursts. It wasn’t Morse code, which she knew, so it must be a private signal. ‘Henri, come and look!’

He put Isabelle on her feet, and joined Yvonne. Frustratingly, the bursts stopped for maybe half a minute, but just as Henri was turning away, they returned in quick-fire sequence. ‘See it?’ she hissed. ‘It’s a torch conversation.’ Which meant that somebody was responding from the château. ‘Henri, is anyone else here a member of your Resistance circuit? Could it be one of your colleagues sending a message?’

‘No.’ He bit the word off. ‘No to both questions. We pass on messages in person, in verbal code. God help us, Yvonne, we are betrayed.’

I
t was
like trying to outrun an avalanche. Yvonne blew out the candle as Henri said, ‘Get dressed, then come down and rouse Jean-Claude. Get him to the trapdoor – in his underwear if necessary. I’ll bring Cyprien. Fast. We may only have minutes. Isabelle, find Audrey and
stay with her
.’

Yvonne dragged on her day clothes, screaming curses as buttons and clasps evaded her shaking fingers. She shoved her feet into her shoes, her socks inside-out. No time to tie laces. Her last act was to grab a wad of emergency currency, her papers and her pocket knife with its folding blade. Down the tower steps at breakneck speed, pushing her arms into her jacket sleeves. At ground level, she spared a glance for the barrels still arranged four-square over the trapdoor. She didn’t have a hope of moving them unaided, and anyway, who would replace them after they’d all made their escape? Raymond? Albert? Logical deduction said that one of them was likely the traitor.

She decided to rouse Jean-Claude. Stepping between huddles of geese, unpleasantly aware of what she might be treading in, she reached his pallet and crouched beside it, poking at his solid shape. He sat up immediately. ‘Problem?’

During their training, they’d often been hauled out of bed in the small hours, a non-commissioned officer bawling in their ears to acclimatise them to emergencies like this. She said, ‘We have to get out.’

Jean-Claude shoved his blankets aside without protest. ‘Ready and able,’ he said, before yelping in pain, having forgotten his swollen ankle. ‘Ready, at any rate.’

As he struggled into his trousers and shirt, Yvonne collected up everything she could see, stuffing his knapsack.

He asked, ‘Where did our host hide my camera?’

She had no idea. ‘You’ll have to leave it. With luck, this is a false alarm.’ But she didn’t really believe that. As she helped Jean-Claude through the old laundry room, she saw the dark shape of a man in the courtyard, and smaller silhouettes. It was Henri, instructing the nursemaid to remove the children. Audrey must go straight to her parents’ farm by way of the vineyards. ‘Go now and don’t look back.’

Isabelle was crying, ‘Papa, don’t send me away. I didn’t mean to break the picture or the gramophone. I’ll be good forever, I promise.’

Yvonne hissed at Jean-Claude, ‘Start shifting those barrels off the trapdoor. Do your best.’ She stepped outside and, grinning like a clown in her effort to sound cheerful, she said, ‘Henri, I’m sure you want to tell Isabelle you forgive her, that you don’t think she’s at all naughty.’

Instead, Henri said to his daughter, ‘I love you,
chérie
. Now be a good girl and help Audrey with Pierre-Gaston.’ He unlatched his daughter’s arms and pushed her gently but firmly away. ‘I will see you tomorrow.’

‘Where’s Cyprien?’ Yvonne asked when the young ones were gone.

‘Raymond’s getting him dressed. It’ll be a swine, dragging him along the tunnel.’

‘It was done before.’

‘But my good friends were not too bothered if Cyprien lived or died. Me, I’m tender-hearted. Where’s Jean-Claude?’

‘Rolling barrels, or trying to. More to the point, where’s Albert? Where is your brother?’

‘Not in his bed. I checked.’

‘Where’s Albert?’

This time, it was Jean-Claude asking. He’d failed utterly with the barrels.

Henri muttered, ‘Hunting rabbits, I hope. Or drinking in Garzenac.’

‘Hope or believe?’ Jean-Claude asked and when Henri shook his head, said in a rare, peppery outburst, ‘The lad won’t stand a chance of pushing these bloody barrels back single-handed once we’re in the tunnel.’ By ‘lad’, he meant Raymond who, having dressed Cyprien and brought the wounded man to the tower, was waiting quietly for his next instructions.

‘Raymond isn’t going to hang around after we’ve left,’ Henri replied tersely, then said to the boy, ‘Ready,
gamin
?’ Together, he and Raymond heaved three of the barrels aside. Yvonne could hear their muscles straining. The final one defeated them, however. Through gritted teeth, Henri muttered, ‘It’s heavier than when we moved it before, I swear it. Raymond, fetch the axe from the wood store. We can’t mess about at this.’ Raymond sped off. Meanwhile, Yvonne checked on Cyprien, conscious of precious seconds ticking past. The young agent was propped against the wall, his pallor worryingly similar to the stones behind him. Would he survive a rough transit to the woods?
After all our tender care, he’s going to peg out.

She glared at the wall as a cruel thought passed through her mind; better he dies than falls into German hands. Those matinée idol looks would not survive …

Raymond returned with an axe whose ash-wood haft was half as tall as he was.

Henri took possession of it and ordered them to stand well back. His first swinging blow took a chunk off the barrel’s rim. The second drew sparks out of the metal hoop. The third breached the wood and liquor began to trickle out. The next let out a flood that cascaded across the stone floor. The air was suddenly thick with the smell of fermented grape.

‘What a waste,’ Jean-Claude murmured.

Henri and Raymond threw aside the broken staves and the escape hatch was finally exposed. Ignoring the fact that she was stepping in a puddle of wine, Yvonne levered open the trapdoor with her penknife, wrinkling her nose as dank air rushed out. Scared as she was, she wasn’t relishing a second trip along that rat-run. ‘Jean-Claude should lead,’ she suggested to Henri. ‘You and I will carry Cyprien.’

Henri disagreed. ‘Jean-Claude last, because if he falls over, he will block our way—’ He stopped, listening.

They all listened. Deep in their sanctum, the geese were honking in rising discord. Had the striking axe roused them?

‘They hear something, that’s for sure.’ Henri jumped down into the tunnel, telling Yvonne and Jean-Claude to lower Cyprien down to him. ‘Raymond, go to the front of the house, see what’s coming.’

Because something
was
coming. By the time Raymond returned, he had to shout over the geese’s cackling.

‘Germans, coming from the direction of Garzenac!’ They couldn’t see the boy’s expression but his voice warned that he was not talking about one or two soldiers. ‘A stream of cars and trucks.’

‘How do you know they’re Germans?’ Henri demanded.

‘Because they’re all together. The
Milice
never all set off at once, they don’t like making a target of themselves, and where would they get so many vehicles?’

Henri told Yvonne to join him in the tunnel, adding, ‘Raymond, close us in then run. Don’t wait.’ He clapped his hands furiously when Yvonne hesitated. ‘Come on, woman!’

‘It won’t work!’ she shouted back, marvelling that her mind could still rationalise. ‘Unless the remaining barrels can be put back, the Germans will find out soon enough how we’ve escaped. We’ll never outrun them, unless we abandon Jean-Claude and Cyprien in the tunnel. And we won’t do that, will we?’

‘All right. You take my place.’ Henri braced his arms to heave himself back up. ‘The boy and I will deal with the barrels and meet up with you later. Head west, towards the river. Can you find your way by the moon?’ He didn’t wait for Yvonne’s reply. ‘Raymond, did you fasten the gatehouse door? Yes? Good lad! That will give us a few extra minutes. Yvonne?’ She hadn’t moved. ‘Get in the tunnel.’

Her answer was to smack his hands away from the mouth of the hatch. ‘Even if I could drag Cyprien half a mile along a shaft,’ she yelled, ‘I’d be no good once I left it. They need a guide who knows the ways through the woods. I’d probably stumble into whoever was flashing that message. I’ll remain here.’

To end up in Albert’s clutches?
Part of her hoped so, so that viper could finally know how ruthless she could be. ‘Damn you, go!’ She dropped the trapdoor, forcing Henri to whip his fingers back and duck into the darkness. ‘I’ll find you!’ she yelled through the boards. ‘I love you.’

Y
vonne and Raymond
started with the lightest of the barrels, but Raymond was spent and her hands were too slender to get a proper grip. She tore her fingernails as the wine sloshed inside the cask, threatening to upturn it. Any moment, they’d surely hear the hideous splintering as the Germans broke through the gatehouse.
Any moment
...

Except they didn’t hear it. After a while, they crept out into the courtyard. ‘The geese have gone quiet,’ Raymond said.

It was true. Still reluctant to believe they’d been victims of a false alarm, Yvonne whispered, ‘They might be creeping up on foot. I need to get to the woods, but can you lead me by the safest route?’

Raymond took her through the stables into the vineyard, tracking through the rows with the confidence of a fox crossing its territory. It was such a clear night, anybody watching from a vantage point might have seen their flitting forms. But nobody challenged them, and there were no sounds of break-in or pursuit from the château either. Yvonne wondered if Raymond hadn’t perhaps mistaken a routine
Milice
night-patrol for a German advance.

They learned more when they reached the highest ridge and looked over the château roofs towards the forest. Powerful lights that could only belong to military trucks stole the beauty of a near-full moon and exposed whole sections of forest.

Yvonne cried out, ‘The convoy was going to the woods, not coming here. Oh, Raymond!’ Had the boy lingered another minute, he’d have seen the column pass by, and Henri would not have entered the tunnel. ‘We could have been safe out here, together. Oh, my poor Henri! What’s waiting for him?’

He would come out of the tunnel, hampered by his injured fellows, and would be pinned down by lights. Only if he abandoned Jean-Claude and Cyprien and ran through the undergrowth like a wild boar had he a chance. Those woods were his back garden…

Rattling gun fire from the woods cut hope dead. On and on it went, like muffled like firecrackers. ‘Someone brought the enemy to us.’

‘We know who,’ Raymond whispered. ‘Monsieur knew too, but what could he do? Kill his own kin?’

Under the pure moon, they stood hand in hand, helpless witnesses to a brother’s treachery.

S
hauna spoke
in weary continuation of Yvonne’s grief. ‘Albert signalled to the Germans, then made himself scarce. Five men paid and he’s spent the last sixty years blaming a
woman
.’

Laurent’s doubts had vanished too. ‘Yvonne melted away into the dark. With her gone, Albert could pervert the story any way he wished.’ They were sitting with their backs to the commemoration stone, slumped like two rucksacks left at a bus stop.

‘Why didn’t Raymond speak out?’ Shauna asked. She felt Laurent shrug.

‘In a tiny community, silence is sometimes necessary for survival. Raymond would want to protect his family, and Audrey’s, and the children of course. I don’t really know how he got through the war, but I know he eventually went to work for the Valles, married Audrey and took over his father-in-law’s farm. Only when his eldest son took over in his turn did Raymond ever come back here, to work for my father. Have you noticed, Raymond never comes near the château? He works only in the
chai.
’