The Lazarus Vault (17 page)

Blanchard nodded. ‘Do it. If she stops for five minutes, if she is not in her office or the apartment and you do not have sight of her, turn it on.’

‘Even at night?’ Destrier gave him a sly leer, which Blanchard affected not to notice.

‘Especially at night.’

‘She still hasn’t told the boyfriend, in case you’re wondering,’ Destrier called after him.

Oxford

She almost pleaded ill and called it off. Even though it was his birthday, arranged for weeks, she almost persuaded herself it would be kinder on him not to go. But that would be unforgivable cowardice. Her only consolation in the whole affair had been that Doug didn’t know how badly she’d betrayed
him. To do something to hurt him, however minor, was more than her conscience could bear. So she went.

In the second week of December, Oxford became a ghost town. The students left, taking their noise and confidence and sense of ownership; in their wake came the hopefuls, interview candidates hoping one day it might belong to them. Desperate for companionship in their solitary ordeal, they clustered together and roamed the streets in groups twenty or thirty strong. Five years earlier that had been Ellie. She scanned the faces as she passed them and wondered what would become of them.

Doug could tell that something was wrong. She kept on catching him giving her anxious looks. He asked ten times if she was feeling OK; each time Ellie gritted a smile and said fine, just working too hard. Eventually he took the hint and stopped asking, but she could see the concern on his face. Every time he opened his mouth, even to clear his throat, she had to stifle her terror.
Is there someone else? Are you cheating on me?
But he never asked.

On Saturday night, she took him for a birthday meal at a restaurant on the Banbury Road. She’d looked at the menu once or twice when she was a student and laughed at the prices; now they only seemed average. The dining room sat inside a wrought-iron conservatory, filled with fronded plants and fairy lights, a true winter garden. Ellie thought it was magical; Doug just looked uncomfortable. When the waitress arranged his napkin on his lap, he sat stiff as a corpse until she’d gone. If she came and poured more wine, he’d break off whatever he was saying and stare awkwardly at his plate. Ellie barely noticed her.

Doug tried to order risotto, the cheapest dish on the menu. Ellie overruled it and ordered him a rib-eye steak, with a bottle
of Saint-Émilion, which she thought she remembered from one of her dinners with Blanchard.

‘It’s your birthday,’ she reminded him. ‘We should celebrate.’

She handed over the small box and watched anxiously as he opened it.

‘A watch.’

It was Omega, bought from Brussels Duty Free for a price that owed more to guilt than value. Without much enthusiasm, Doug slipped off his own watch to try it on.

‘You didn’t have to,’ he murmured. ‘The old one works fine.’

She remembered it had been a present from his father when he graduated.

‘A change might be nice, once in a while.’ To her guilty ears, even that simple sentiment was heavy with double-meaning. She cringed. Had Doug noticed?

I am not going to ruin his birthday
.

He raised his glass. ‘It’s nice to see you.’

‘Happy birthday.’ They chinked their glasses tentatively, as if afraid of breaking something.

‘I was thinking about Christmas,’ Doug said. ‘I know it’s late, but perhaps we could go away, get a cottage somewhere. Maybe even go abroad. The college gave me a travel bursary for Paris and there’s some money left over. I suppose you could afford it.’ He reached across the table and put his hand on hers. ‘We could use some time together.’

Ellie squirmed.
I’m sleeping with someone else.
She wanted to scream it, so loud the glass walls would shatter, the roof fall in and the cosy warmth blow away into the night.

‘I promised Mum I’d spend Christmas with her.’

By Christmas, you’ll never want to see me again, she thought.

She couldn’t bear to see his disappointment – a proxy for all the ways he didn’t know she’d let him down. ‘Maybe in February, for our anniversary.’

I am not going to ruin his birthday
.

Doug fingered the metal strap of his new watch as if it itched.

‘How’s your work going?’ she tried.

His face brightened. ‘Very well. You remember the poem I told you about, the old guy in the wheelchair? I sent him some preliminary thoughts and he liked them a lot. Invited me up to Scotland to see the original. Offered to pay for my train fare and everything.’

‘When are you going?’

‘I went. Last weekend. He said I could bring my girlfriend, but you were in Brussels or somewhere.’

Always the reproach. In a way, she drew strength from it. It made it easier to think about what she had to do.

‘How was it?’

‘Amazing. You should have seen this place. I had to change trains at Edinburgh and again at Inverness. This gnarled old gillie type picked me up from the station in his Land Rover, drove me about an hour into the mountains. Just when I thought we must be completely lost, we came over the ridge and there’s this castle on a hill rising up out of the forest. Forget Scots Baronial revival – this was the real thing, probably fourteenth century. You could still see the moat, though someone had tried to turn it into a ha-ha when they landscaped the gardens in the eighteen hundreds.’

The waitress brought their food.

‘It was almost dark when we got there. The gillie led me into this great medieval hall, tapestries and hammer beams and a fireplace you could park a car in. There was a table with twenty
chairs and one place set – for me. Apparently, Mr Spencer couldn’t make it for dinner but would join me afterwards.’

He saw the flash of surprise on Ellie’s face. ‘Mr Spencer’s the chap in the wheelchair. Anyway, it was all kind of eerie. There were about a hundred dead deer on the walls and they all seemed to be staring at me while I ate. Venison, to make it worse. And after supper, Spencer rolled in with his minder and brought out this leather case. Inside was a single leaf of parchment with the poem on it, hand-written in gall ink.’

‘Was it genuine?’

Doug sliced off a piece of steak, relishing it. ‘I’m no expert, but it looked pretty authentic to me. You could see where the acid had etched into the parchment. I asked if he’d had any tests done and the minder said the parchment had been authenticated as twelfth century.
Twelfth century
, for God’s sake. He hadn’t had the handwriting done, because he didn’t want anyone to read it. Fair enough. I told him I didn’t know much about palaeography, but the text certainly rang true for that period.’

‘So what did he want you to do with it?’

‘Mr Spencer thinks the poem’s a riddle. He thinks it leads to buried treasure or something.’ Doug rolled his eyes. ‘At least, that’s what the minder said. The old man never says a word. Just sits there sucking on his respirator.’

Ellie topped up the wine glasses. ‘So what do you think?’

‘There’s a riddle all right, but it’s nothing to do with lost treasures.’ He leaned across the table, cupping his glass in his hand. ‘The real question is, who wrote it?’

It was obvious from his face he had an idea, that it excited him very much. Ellie played along with a wide-eyed stare. ‘And?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

She slapped his wrist across the table. ‘Cheat.’

He gave a shamefaced grin. ‘I’d love to. But I signed a confidentiality agreement.’ He inclined his head towards the next table, where a group of dressed-up young men and women were laughing loudly. He lowered his voice to a mock whisper. ‘You never know who could be listening.’

They’re listening, Ellie. All the time.
Suddenly, the glass room felt more like a cage than a garden. She pulled her shawl over her shoulders. Doug didn’t notice.

‘I stayed up half the night poring over the parchment. The poem’s only eight lines long, but I wanted to remember every detail, every fibre in the parchment. I drank it up. In the morning the housekeeper rolled it up and put it away, the gillie drove me back to the station, and I was trundling back to Oxford.’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I dreamed the whole thing.’

Talking about the trip to Scotland had warmed Doug up. He no longer looked offended by the restaurant. He tucked into his steak with unfeigned enthusiasm; the wine flowed out of the bottle until it was empty. When the waitress took their plates and asked if they wanted pudding, Ellie glanced across the table and saw a familiar suggestive smile on Doug’s face.

‘Just the bill.’

Afterwards, Ellie knew it was unforgivable. She should have told him the truth. But somehow it was never the right time. On Saturday night they slept together for the first time in weeks – a birthday present and a farewell all wrapped in one – and when she woke on Sunday morning Doug was already in the kitchen cooking her breakfast. They walked through the University Parks, pale with frost and winter sun, and each time Ellie thought she’d summoned her courage the
moment seemed too good to spoil. Maybe it was nervous energy, or the delicate knowledge it was almost over, but she felt closer to him than she had in months. All her senses were heightened: the smell of his coat when she snuggled against him on a park bench; the touch of his lips when he kissed her; the laughter as they sat outside the Turf Tavern drinking mulled wine. The intensity reminded her of their first few weeks together. Before she knew it, she was sitting on a train pulling out of Oxford station and she still hadn’t told him.

And when she went back to the Barbican flat after work on Monday, the Bentley was waiting at the kerb. The driver lowered his window.

‘Mr Blanchard wanted to know if you’ll be joining him tonight.’

She didn’t blink. ‘I’ll just get my things.’

It happened the same way the following night. When the car didn’t appear on Wednesday she almost panicked; she spent a lonely night replaying everything that had happened that day, wondering what she might have done to upset Blanchard. But on Thursday the car was there again. By Friday, it felt routine.

Soon after that Ellie realised she had become
…
what? Blanchard’s mistress? He wasn’t married, and she was barely attached herself any more. His girlfriend? That was a ludicrous word to use with Blanchard, who probably hadn’t had a girlfriend since he was twenty-five, if in fact he’d ever been that young. It was hard to imagine; he felt ageless.

Eventually Ellie decided on ‘lover’. It sounded continental and sophisticated, which she liked, and a touch old-fashioned, like Blanchard himself. It was also accurate. However many dinners and concerts she sat through, however many clients
she met, there was always a sense of biding time. The heart of their relationship remained where it had begun, in the bedroom.

Or perhaps she was more than that. Otherwise, the following Monday, Blanchard might not have summoned her from her office and taken her to the sixth floor.

Normandy, 1135

The storm drove water into the woodshed: the fire smoulders red, and smoke fills the hall. Guy paces angrily, while Gornemant, Jocelin, and the half-dozen knights he’s managed to summon stand attendance. I lean against a tapestry, woven in with the wool figures. I know I should be concentrating on their council, but all I can think about is Ada. I know she came back safely, alone, but I’m desperate to see her. I try to remember the soft skin of her breasts, her taste on my tongue and her body enclosing me. I clench my fists with frustration.

Guy is talking about Athold du Laurrier, his neighbour. I’ve never seen him, but I know his reputation. If sheep disappear from a field, or a hayrick burns, or someone steals the blades of a plough, Guy blames Athold. It occurs to me that Athold probably says the same about Guy.

‘While we were hunting, they raided Massigny,’ says Gornemant. Massigny is a village near the edge of Guy’s fiefholding. ‘They killed three men and drove off a dozen more.’

Guy slams the palm of his hand against a pillar. He’s not grieving; he couldn’t care about the lives of a few peasants. He’s furious about the insult to his authority – and the cost. Those men will need ransoms, and if Guy doesn’t contribute the peasants will start to think about switching their allegiance.

‘If he wants a war, I’ll give him a war.’

It’s a small, vicious war. There’s a lot of suffering, though not many deaths. It’s harder to kill someone when your arm’s chilled to the bone, your tunic’s soaked through and your sword is blunt with rust. It will never make a great tale. Sometimes I wonder if I brought this calamity down on Guy – if this war is God’s punishment for my sin. It doesn’t stop me sinning more. It’s hard to have an affair in a castle in a state of war – routines are unpredictable, corridors busy, eyes sharp. But we manage. Each encounter is brusque, the physical pleasure attenuated by the terror of discovery. Sometimes Ada cries and says she can’t go on. I cradle her head to my chest and tell her I love her.

When I’m alone, I sit and list the times and places.
There
in the stables behind the winter fodder;
there
in her own bedroom while Guy was away;
there
in the storeroom at the back of the tower, while mice scuttled around the grain sacks. I chart the encounters compulsively, surveying the battlefields of this invisible war we’re fighting against the world. I remember the press of her body against mine. I feel the wounds.

Guy’s war ends in March.

A misty morning: the world caught between winter and spring. Leafless trees seem to float in the fog; the rising sun makes a line of gold in the sky. Three of us are riding across a hillside meadow. We’re supposed to be patrolling for Athold’s
men, but in this mist they could ride past a hundred yards away and they’d be invisible.

Jocelin rides in front; I follow a few paces behind with William, one of the other squires. Jocelin and I will never be friends, but as we’ve grown up, we’ve found ways of ignoring each other. We’re all fully armed, except for the spurs which none of us has won yet. The weight of the armour feels natural now, a second skin, and I’m grateful for the quilted undercoat which keeps me warm.