Adam Gould (27 page)

Now, though, they get back on their mounts and head in different directions. To his surprise, his cousins’ farmhouse feels like a haven.

Sauvigny did not give much credit to the unsigned letter from the lunatic asylum.

Yet he could not dismiss it, for it revealed malevolence, and he hated to think of his niece being surrounded by that. Wondering whether to warn her, he considered posting it on to her, then rejected the notion. He thought next of sending it to the Irishman, but decided that people working in asylums were unlikely to need cautioning. They must be used to malevolence and lies! To whose malevolence did the letter testify? To the lunatic writer’s? To those of whichever near-lunatic had smuggled it out? In doubt as to whether he could have conjured the thing from his own raging imagination, he forced himself to reread it to make sure that he had not. That done, he folded it into his waistcoat pocket where a probing fingernail could, at any moment, check its small, arid, monitory crackle.

It was a season of rumours and alarms.

His cousin had advised him against going to the Congo, and Sauvigny had listened closely to his dissuasions then refuted them in his head. The worse the place was, the plainer it became that he must go there to confront the demons which had been playing grandmother’s steps with him since he was seventeen. They were drawing closer. But if evil in the Upper Congo was as impudently visible as was claimed, he could find solace by going there to do what he had been trained to do: fight.

His readiness to do this was connected with a very particular demon! ‘Call it by its name, Hubert,’ he admonished himself. ‘Your ruling passion is a carnal one for Danièle. Once distance has helped control it, you must set about finding the hare-brained Philibert, and make him see that it is his duty to come home. No sane man leaves a pretty young wife alone for the better part of two years.’

Sauvigny did not want to leave her alone either. But he distrusted his inclinations. The demons! In his mind they were an army of ant-sized parasites whose uniform he sometimes imagined as red like the Garibaldini’s shirts and sometimes black like the coats of Republican deputies. Laying siege to the seat of his emotions, they might yet adopt it as their
grand quartier général
. They would run his mind.

When he stared at a flame, then closed his eyes, the colours he saw were theirs. Flight was the way to defeat them. He
must
go to the Congo.

A more immediate reason for going was an all-too-plausible rumour about Belcastel.

The ex-Zouaves had now migrated back to their far-flung lairs and niches. Before dispersing, they had pooled their news. Many had female relatives who were senior members of religious Orders or were married to leading members of opposing parties and nations. Several knew secrets or shreds of secrets and, as a result, patchwork accounts of Father de Latour’s activities had reached Sauvigny. Some of these were made up of echoes bounced back from distant missions and embassies; others came from Republican clubs in Paris and clerical coteries in Rome. Belcastel’s name kept cropping up. Converging, the scraps pointed to an unequivocal conclusion. Monseigneur de Belcastel had joined the opposition.

Though Sauvigny would once have blamed his friend bitterly, he didn’t now. For the charges the monsignor might make were hard to refute. Far from ensuring good order, French monarchism had subverted it, and the twitching agonies of its last adherents called for a
coup de grâce
. One read of oriental widows choosing to be burned on their husbands’ pyres and of vassals killing themselves so as to join dead overlords. Christian loyalty was less extreme. Living on after the disappearance of our lovers and leaders we clearly had no choice but to adapt. And the line between doing that and turning one’s coat was hard to draw. Inside Sauvigny’s head, something had begun to turn.

News of his former mistress’s death had rattled him.

If kings with divine right had so manifestly failed, might not the Kingdom which theirs prefigured be failing too? The notion was both satisfyingly sour – the priests’ day of reckoning would avenge their betrayal of the Zouaves – and frightening since, if there were no absolutes, how did one live? With what right, for instance, had Sauvigny, who had killed for love of the pope, spurned the woman in Rome who had killed for love of him? And why, come to that, should he not try to seduce Danièle? They were fond of each other and he guessed that, if ardently pressed, she was unlikely to spurn him.

Unless the lunatic letter was telling the truth?

But there was no space in his mind for such a likelihood.

He had been having intoxicating dreams. He found he could entice them by thinking of her before he fell asleep. Her image blended with that of the Roman woman to whom he had been cruelly harsh. In the dreams he tried, remorsefully, to comfort
her
and once or twice found, with shocked pleasure, that he was embracing his naked niece.

He had thought, while drifting into sleep, of how her skin glowed like the inside of an oyster shell; of the shadow pool in each cheek; of the blue veins in the crook of each arm and of parts of her body which he had never seen. The veins were the colour of wind flowers. She was as delicate as that.

Several times he had woken up in states of vivid excitement. Had he brought them on? Connived or merely consented to them? How culpable was he? He wouldn’t consult a priest since in his mind the clergy were to blame for the whole phenomenon. Once the armouring of certainty thawed, their rules were worthless.

Mostly he deplored this licentiousness and regretted the days when he had liked and respected himself. Now he didn’t.

The thing to do was leave. Cut all ties. Do what good one could elsewhere. But first he meant to make peace with his old associate. There was a danger that Latour – a gossip and intriguer – might report some explosive comments which Sauvigny had made to his face on learning of his and Belcastel’s latest project. Sauvigny now regretted these, since, if they were repeated to Belcastel – whose conscience was a good deal tenderer than Latour’s – he would be painfully flayed by remorse. Poor, delicate-minded old B! ‘I must reassure him,’ Sauvigny decided, ‘grant him my absolution, set his mind at rest. And I’ll take the opportunity, while I’m at the
maison de santé
, to say a few wise words to Danièle.’ Maybe, he thought in a flush of optimism, he might persuade her to leave France for Belgium, a less frivolous and happier country whose Catholics had known how to keep the population on their side and hold on to power. If she was so eager to be a nurse in a madhouse, why not go to the one set up to humour the troubled brain of its only inmate, the deposed Empress Charlotte of Mexico? Surely there must be a dearth of attendants capable of pretending the place was a royal court? There Danièle would be with her own kind, and King Leopold, as Charlotte’s brother, could arrange the thing in a trice. Such a move would be honourable and edifying. After all, many well-born saints had in the past chosen to nurse lepers. Madness could well be the new leprosy. Danièle might have received a higher call.

Sauvigny planned to make this point forcefully when he saw his niece.

Meanwhile, he had to argue no less forcefully with the doubts that crept into his mind each time he thought of the lunatic’s letter in his waistcoat pocket.

Shortly before he boarded the train for Paris, a friend showed him a more cheerful and very different sort of letter. This one was from a prelate who had travelled to Rome to find out how those who mattered there felt about the pope’s policies towards France.

Many cardinals
, claimed this prelate,
think as we do and are horrified. Their outspokenness is surprising. There is a boldness in the air just now which is both very Italian and typical of the end of a regime. Leo XIII is healthy but bloodless. One thinks of a lamp running out of oil ... The real disaster is
‘
the African
’
(Cardinal L.). Some Romans claim he has hypnotized the pope. What would people say, after all, if the next pope were to force Catholics to become royalists? Anyway, good lord, what business is it of any pope
’
s to dictate our politics?

As Sauvigny sat in the train, these questions thumped through his head. One shake of the kaleidoscope could change everything: the death of an old man. Pope Leo was eighty-two. Maybe, after all, Sauvigny should open his heart to Belcastel who, in many ways, must be in the same boat as himself? The tide, he could remind him, might be about to turn.

The bog must have eyes, ears and feelers, not to mention mouths, for the cousins already knew about Adam’s meeting Kate! How? Through whom? A talking sheep? Adam was almost certain that nobody had seen them together. Never mind! Never mind how people knew things. The point was that he needed to know them too.

‘Yer ma wouldn’t like ya hobnobbing with her!’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t pretend, Adam. You must know yer da means to marry her. He’s set on doing it, and yer ma’s desperate. She’s got herself pregnant a second time so as to try to force his hand. Get the priests on her side. The English girl’s a Catholic, you see, so they might be able to stop the marriage. Father Tobin’s been trying to do that, but it’ll take more than him. He’s not in with the powers that be.’

‘So they’re not married? My parents.’

‘Ellen and yer da? Jesus, Adam, are ye that green? Hey, listen to this, lads: Adam here didn’t know he was born on the wrong side of the blanket.’

‘Ah, will yiz shut yer gobs and leave the poor bugger alone!’

Amazingly, the cousins were sorry for him. Unmanned by this, Adam had to bite his tongue to keep from crying, and, just as he heard them say that blood was thicker than water, tasted his own.

‘Don’t take it so hard.’ Owen-or-Dinny punched him lightly in the chest. Now that Adam had been taken down, not one but several pegs, they were rallying to him who was, they reminded him, ‘one of ourselves’.

God forbid, he raged haughtily. But need overrode pride and, listening to their jabber with a new attentiveness, he began to get some things clear. One was that Owen-or-Dinny had not two names, but three. He was Owen-Dinny-Dan, meaning Owen son of Dinny, son of Dan, because what was the use of calling yourself Owen Gould if half the neighbourhood had the very same name?

‘Sure we all come wan way or another from the wrong side of the blanket,’ said Owen, making no bones about this. And went on to explain that ‘
that
had been goin’ on a long time.’

‘What?’

Goulds from the big house sleeping with girls – ‘and not only girls!’– from the tenements. Bastards being defiantly recognized (by fathers), foisted (by mothers) on unsuspecting spouses or (by both) stealthily farmed out. Comings and goings. Inbreeding. Face-saving. False entries made in parish records so that nobody knew who was kin to whom. Brothers, affirmed Owen, had been known to marry their half-sisters, because those who knew what was happening lacked the nerve to tell the priests.

‘You couldn’t tell a priest a thing like that! So people made their own arrangements.’

‘That’s why there was likely no real impediment to yer da marrying yer ma. She may be his cousin twice over in the flesh but if she’s not one on paper, the story of waiting for a dispensation could be all my eye. How – or why – would anyone explain the like of that to a canon lawyer beyond in Rome?’

‘Bat, you have it wrong. It
was
on paper. Ellen said so.’

‘The word was made flesh!’

‘ It’s what held them up.’

‘Did she, personally, check the parish records?’

‘Listen ...’

‘No, you listen!’

Two cousins started to pummel each other and were separated with some violence by Owen-Dinny-Dan who wanted to get things straight.

‘If the gee-gees had still been making money, he’d a married her like a shot. He was mad for her at the start. First cousin or not!’

‘Ellen was a lovely girl.’

‘Still is.’

‘Ah, but the iron has to be hit while it’s hot! She’s afraid he’ll want to emigrate her to Canada now. A clean break.’

‘Maybe he will.’

‘I’m not so sure. That English girl is terrible plain. What if he picked a plain girl to make it easier to get Ellen to stay and accept some new arrangement?’

‘What sort of arrangement?’

‘Who knows? Foxy as he is, he’ll want to have his cake and eat it too. Two cakes if he’s let.’

‘Get away! Two on the one plate!’

‘Well, there’s Father Tobin gone to visit his mother. He never did that before. I wonder does he have a mother at all?’

‘There’s more going on than meets the eye.’

‘And some are hoping others will turn a blind one!’

‘Ellen won’t!’

‘Not yet!’

‘Maybe never.’

‘No. Ellen’s proud. The Lord between us and all harm, but she could easily do something dangerous!’

‘Listen, Adam,’ said a thoughtful Owen-Dinny-Dan, ‘yer ma’s already half out of her mind. When she hears that you and that English filly have been conniving she’ll be convinced that yer da plans to keep you here after emigrating her – which could be true. I wouldn’t put it past him to have sent the girl here today so as to encourage the pair of you to get friendly. Anyway, true or not, the danger is that Ellen will think it is. Just now she’ll be imagining the worst. Didn’t the girl say she asked one of the grooms how to find you? So by now the stables know, and that means the kitchen does, and how long can it be before yer ma hears it? So you’d best have a word with her at the hunt tomorrow. Soothe her down! Tell her you love her. Promise whatever she wants. Don’t worry. She’ll be there all right. Timmy who brought yer pony over said she would. She gave orders to get her mare ready.’

At an alarmingly early hour Dr Blanche came to the monsignor’s room and woke him to a dawn slashed by gleams as half-hearted as the shine on a scuttleful of coal.

‘Forgive the intrusion.’ Closing the door, Blanche struck a match and lit a candle.

Odd, thought Belcastel, not to have lit it before coming down the dark corridor. ‘Something’s the matter, isn’t it?’ He was anxiously alert.