The English Heiress (15 page)

“There is no need. We have our own family place. It is nearby also. For state funerals, the carriages went down the drive and along the main road—”

She was interrupted by Roger’s groan, which he turned into a cough. “That means the horse and carriage,” he sighed, “Well—”

“No, no,” Leonie hastened to assure him. “There is a path west of the house. You cannot see it because the maze is in the way, but Mama used it often because it was a pleasant walk and she liked to tend the graves. There is a small chapel there. We could lay Papa there while you”—her voice broke but she steadied it—”while you make everything ready for him.”

“My dear, my poor child,” Roger said gently, “would you consider saying farewell to your papa here in the house? I will do this as quickly as I can and then we will leave. I only wish to spare you pain, Leonie, but I do not know what would hurt you least. If you would stay here and pray for your papa while I lay him to rest, perhaps your memories would be less painful.”

Leonie considered that, but after a moment she shook her head resolutely. “I would have to go with you. The path branches. You might miss the way.” She sighed again. “I must go so far back to find pleasant memories…”

“But my dear, I have no—I am so sorry—I have no way to—to provide—dignity.”

Leonie lifted her face to his. Tears leaked slowly from her eyes and tracked down through the dirt on her face. “It does not matter,” she whispered. “Papa was a good man—truly good. His dignity is in himself, not in an ebony box with a satin lining, or mutes to carry it, or black plumes nodding on horses.”

Unable to do anything else for her, Roger took Leonie into his arms. “You are right, and I assure you that I will feel true reverence for his body, even if I cannot always handle it just as I would wish.”

It was, of course, impossible to handle Henry with dignity. The corpse was still in rigor and had to be carried between them, stiff as a board. Fortunately, they had laid it decently flat and were able to carry it wrapped in the hanging. However, Roger was prevented from bringing along such poor tools as he had hoped to find. As he laid Henry down in the tiny chapel and turned to start back to scrape up what he could, Leonie commented that everything here was untouched.

“And if they did not come into the chapel, perhaps they did not steal the tools from the shed behind. They were kept there for the gardeners who tended the graves and planted bushes and trees here.”

Owing either to neglect or to superstition, no one had disturbed the chapel, and the key to the shed was in the little cupboard where it had always been kept. Roger sighed with relief as he opened it and found everything he needed. He had been much concerned that, in addition to the lack of a coffin, the lack of proper tools would not permit him to dig a deep enough grave to protect Henry’s body from scavengers. The mattock and spade he took assured him that he would at least be able to provide that decency.

In the small graveyard, the first things Roger saw were two relatively new grave mounds, one larger than the other. Stooping, he made out the lettering on the temporary wooden markers—Marie Victoire Leonie de Conyers and François Henri Guillaume de Conyers. Good God! Would Leonie be racked anew to find her mother and brother buried here? Roger could only assume that the bodies had been passed on to some friends to save the “state” the cost of burial. Briefly he considered trying to hide the fact by digging Henry’s grave elsewhere, but then he reconsidered. Aside from the fact that, wherever he dug, Leonie might well notice the new graves, he also felt that when she recovered from the first shock it would probably be a comfort to her to know her family was all together. He began to dig beside Marie’s grave.

In spite of blistered hands and an aching back from such unaccustomed work, it did not take Roger very long. The ground had already been softened by the previous burials and the afternoon’s rain. When Roger had a neat trench, he returned to the chapel to find Leonie sitting quietly beside her father’s body. He told her what he had found as gently as possible and was relieved to see a sad pleasure on her face.

“I am so glad,” she sighed. “Papa wanted so much to be with Mama. Now I do not need to grieve that I could not even do that much for him. They will be together and I will not worry about them. They were always happy together.”

She did not cry when they carried Henry to the grave, even thought they were both badly startled by a sudden reappearance of the scuttling black-and-white animal. It darted at them and, when Leonie jumped and cried out, rushed away. Leonie had almost dropped her father’s feet, but she did not look down as she tightened her grip on the cloth. She stared after the creature, which had disappeared again into the shadows cast by the cypresses that bordered the graveyard. Even after they had lowered the body into the grave, she did not weep, only murmuring, “Goodbye, Papa, goodbye,” but when Roger lifted the first shovelful of earth, she covered her face.

Roger laid down the spade and embraced her carefully. “Go back now, Leonie,” he said. “Please go back to the house, or into the chapel.”

Before she could answer, a long, thin, heartrending howl came from the cypresses. Leonie jumped and Roger clutched her tighter. She shuddered in his grip, then braced her body and nodded.

“Stay in the chapel if you are frightened,” Roger urged.

“Frightened? No. I was only startled. The dog—it is silly to say one recognizes a dog’s voice—but that sounded so like my spaniel. She must be dead also, poor thing, she was so useless, so small and frail. No one would have taken her because she could not work.”

Leonie shuddered again. The dog was still howling. Then she eased herself out of Roger’s arms and began to walk back toward the house. Roger turned toward where the sound had come from, but he could see no flicker of black and white. The moon was almost down too, and he had better hurry and finish burying Henry.

Jean-Paul Marot had enjoyed his dinner far less than Leonie had enjoyed her piece of sausage. She sat on the ground in the cold and dark, but her heart was warm and full of hope. Jean-Paul had achieved all the warmth and light and elegancies that he had ever dreamed of in his present surroundings, but his heart was cold and dark. Somehow, the more his desires were satisfied, the emptier he became. For a long time after his victory, he had almost forgotten Henry de Conyers and his family, but there had been a burning, bitter renewal of his first satisfaction—when he soiled the wife and daughter—when the news of the son’s and wife’s deaths was brought to him. Little by little de Conyers would be stripped of everything. He would end where Marot had started. Somehow, de Conyers was Marot’s symbol. As Henry descended from power to nothing, Jean-Paul rose from nothing to power.

When he had been wakened by the sound of the tocsin and had been told why it rang, Marot was angry but he never associated the mob with Henry de Conyers. Marot had given orders to shoot to kill because he did not believe in revolution, at least, not against himself. Besides, the town would never miss the type of people that caused the riot. After the mob had been driven away, Marot had gone to the Hôtel de Ville to assess the damage. He had listened without doubt to Louis’ tale of the timid knock at the side door, the respectable-looking man who had a story of an emergency. Louis would not let him in, of course. He had stepped out, locked the door to protect the building and while he was so engaged, he had been seized, beaten, knocked unconscious and bound. As soon as he could free himself, he had given warning.

Louis’ disheveled and bloodied appearance gave mute testimony in his favor, and Jean-Paul accepted the lies and turned his attention to the ruin in the offices, to the loss of the special funds to ease the lot of the foundlings and the poor. Most of the night was spent in inventorying the damage and setting the buildings to rights, tasks in which Louis busied himself assiduously. So assiduously that it was reasonable he should not think of prisoners in whom he would not be expected to have had any special interest. It was nearly morning before Marot himself noticed that the cellar door was still closed while all the others had been burst open. At first that satisfied him, but later he wondered why that door alone had not been opened.

The question led immediately to the discovery of de Conyers’ escape. Marot exploded into violence bordering on hysteria. All other activity was abandoned while search parties were organized for the town and gate guards were questioned. At the gates no one had seen anything or heard anything. The disturbance in the center of the town had not reached them. In particular the guards of the southwest gate were questioned, and they swore on their souls, on the souls of their parents, children and wives, that they had not opened the gate for anyone—man, woman, dog or cat. This was true. Leonie had opened the small door beside the gate herself.

Nonetheless, Marot was convinced that de Conyers had gone back to the château. His conviction rested on a number of rational reasons—the money in the strongroom for one—but most forceful was the totally irrational conviction that if de Conyers reached the château, somehow power would be restored to him. Thus, Marot himself went with the men who searched the château to be sure, very sure, absolutely sure that de Conyers had not found his way there nor would be able to do so later.

Discovery that the house was empty had not had the effect Marot hoped for. The more carefully he searched, the stronger grew the conviction that de Conyers was there, watching him, laughing at him. The growing reluctance of the men to continue the search and to remain on guard to catch de Conyers when he came reinforced the irrational fear that somehow de Conyers was taking over, ordering the men to go away, convincing them that he was harmless—while he gathered his forces to destroy them all.

Only the glances the men cast at Marot, glances that grew more and more doubtful, gave Jean-Paul the strength to see this fear as irrational and prevent him from voicing it. However, when he was alone, it returned and grew. It was peculiar that no one else seemed to sense de Conyers’ presence, Marot mused, except to obey the commands he was giving. Perhaps there was some special affinity between himself and de Conyers. This chance thought took hold and grew in Marot’s mind until, by the time dark fell, he had reached a new conclusion. De Conyers could not be found because the other men were there. The question of who would hold the power in Saulieu must be settled only between himself and de Conyers.

As soon as he came to this conclusion, Marot was utterly convinced by it. What was more, he suddenly understood why all his achievements had brought him no satisfaction—had left him empty. It was because de Conyers still held the power. Even as a helpless prisoner, the right had been his… No! Not the right! That was de Conyers’ voice speaking in his mind. The evil influence…that was it! The evil influence that de Conyers wielded would exist as long as he did. Jean-Paul realized that his long dissatisfaction was his own fault. He had been thinking of himself, of the sweetness of revenge. What he should have done was have de Conyers killed. That would have cleaned the evil out of Saulieu—washed it away with blood, as the L’Ami du Peuple recommended.

Of course, the fact that de Conyers was alive had encouraged resistance. His evil fed the evil in the hearts of those who opposed the good Jean-Paul wished to do. When de Conyers’ evil was gone, it would draw with it or weaken all the other evil. But Marot understood that through this error de Conyers’ evil had been allowed to grow strong. That was how de Conyers had deceived the men who searched. He alone was able to resist, and it was his personal duty to return to the château and kill de Conyers. Then he would be free and Saulieu would be free.

There was no difficulty for Marot. True, the groom he ordered to saddle a horse for him looked rather oddly at him and the guard at the gate did also, but no one dared say anything. Later they talked about how strange he had looked, about how he had muttered to himself about evil forces in possession, and their tale was of considerable help to Louis. However, no impediment was placed in Marot’s way, and he rode away sure of himself and his purpose.

Because he knew with perfect certainty that de Conyers was in the château and that the confrontation between them was ordained, he was neither surprised nor angered by the fact that his men had taken shelter in the gatehouse. He did not stop to reprimand them. What was the use? Either de Conyers or fate had arranged everything. Thus it was not the men’s fault that they had abandoned their posts. That was a necessary part of Marot’s struggle against the evil living in de Conyers. Calm in the conviction that good was stronger than evil and that he must triumph, Marot rode around the house and put his horse into one of the empty stalls in the stable. Then he went to the house.

“I am here alone,” he called into the black emptiness. “Come and see if you can bend me to your will.”

No answer, not even an echo. His voice rolled into the empty, ruined house and seemed to be absorbed. Jean-Paul felt a leap of joy. Good was more powerful than evil. Even though he was alone, de Conyers was afraid to come out and confront him. But their meeting was ordained. Thus, Jean-Paul was sure de Conyers could no longer hide from him. He began another systematic search of the house.

By the time he was finished, the moon was very low in the sky and Marot’s conviction was beginning to waver. Deep inside grew a little sick fear that he was mad, that he had made up everything—de Conyers’ power, his evil, his presence in the château. There was no way he could believe that de Conyers was in the house, but there was no way he could accept that sickness inside. He crushed it down, standing in the entryway, staring back into the house. Very well, if de Conyers was not inside, he was outside. Marot turned and like a blessed assurance to wash away his ugly fear, he saw a figure in the moonlight just rounding the dark hedges of the maze and heading toward the back of the house.