But this time, when I started to walk on, I heard a sound. The faintest shuffling footfall, and a breathing that was nothing like the wind. Behind me in the house some creature flung itself against the door with a savage growl, and I broke into a half run. I stumbled twice on the uneven ground, and my shoulder brushed a trailing vine and loosed a shower of small white petals that clung to my skin, but I didn’t slow my pace until I reached a less neglected place.
There were troglodyte houses here, as well – a neat, low line of them, fronted by a level sweep of gravel. But these houses looked inhabited, not ragged and abandoned. At their farthest end one lovely tree spread green against the white stone walls, and beside the tree a carved and ancient archway sheltered a wooden door with heavy iron hinges.
Here, in this oasis of ordered beauty, I stopped running. There was no logic to it, really, but my racing mind said: Sanctuary. Here, I knew beyond all reason, I was safe. With trembling legs I leaned against the wall and drew a ragged breath. I didn’t move, even when the sound of footsteps rose above the pounding of my heart. This was not the sound that had pursued me down the path. These steps were different, sharper, climbing from the bottom of the cliff, and there was nothing furtive in their measured tread. Stairs, I thought. There must be stairs nearby. My eyes searched out and found the spot. The steps grew louder, mingling with a voice I recognised, and I felt myself relaxing.
I believe I looked quite normal when Martine and Christian finally appeared above the tangled grasses of the cliff edge.
Martine recovered first from the surprise. ‘Hello!’ Her widow’s veil had been emphatically cast aside this morning, in favour of a yellow windcheater so bright it almost hurt one’s eyes to look at it, worn over smartly-pressed black denim jeans and a yellow roll-neck jersey. Even in casual clothes, I decided, she outshone me fairly, but the only thing of which I was truly jealous was her smile. She had perfect teeth. I hadn’t ever met a person with really perfect teeth before.
I returned the greeting, straightening away from my supporting wall. ‘Out for a walk, are you?’
‘Yes. Christian is bored with moving,’ Martine told me, ‘and so he makes today the sketches for his painting.’ Which would explain, I thought, the decidedly battered leather satchel he was lugging about with him this morning, its broad strap digging into his hunched shoulder. He looked half-asleep still. Martine, on the other hand, was wide awake and talking brightly. ‘You are admiring the chapelle, Mademoiselle?’
‘Please,’ I said, ‘call me Emily.’ And then I frowned. ‘What chapelle?’
‘The Chapelle of Sainte Radegonde, behind you.’
I looked round at the silent wall, the bolted door. ‘Is that what this place is? I didn’t know.’
‘But yes, this is most famous, here in Chinon. Christian often sketches here. You must come in with us, and see it. The chapelle,’ she informed me, ‘is not to be missed. Is it, Christian?’
‘What?’ His head came round a quarter turn, the blue eyes vague as he pulled them away from a contemplation of a floating tuft of clouds. ‘Oh, yes, of course. You must come.’ He didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic, but I didn’t take it personally. He seemed to move in a solitary world of his own creation, did Christian Rand.
‘The chapelle is kept locked, now,’ Martine said. ‘Most people, they must ask at the Tourist Office if they wish to see inside. But Christian has a key.’
He was fiddling with it now, in the lock – a long, old-fashioned key like something from a Gothic film. At last it turned, but before he opened the door he did a most peculiar thing. He looked at me with a serious expression, and said: ‘You will close your eyes, please.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I am sorry,’ he looked half embarrassed, ‘but it is … you will only have one chance to be seeing this for the first time, and it is better to be surprised. Please.’
I shrugged and stepped up to the door, screwing my eyes tightly shut like a child waiting to receive a present. I heard the creaking of old iron hinges as Christian pushed the great door open, and I caught a gentle breeze upon my upturned face, a breeze that faintly smelled of flowers and warm stone.
‘There,’ said Christian. ‘You may look.’
At first I couldn’t seem to move at all, I could only stand there with my face uplifted to the naked sky and stare and stare until my eyes grew moist. Before me, framed by the open doorway, rose two colossal pillars, smooth and richly white. They seemed to soar towards the heavens, supporting on their curving capitals the arched remains of a ruined wall, capped softly by a golden fringe of grass. Tall iron gates set in between the pillars shielded the inner sanctum, within whose cool and sloping shadows slender columns stretched along a sacred aisle, and the eyes of sculpted saints gazed blindly back at me.
Between the saints and me a garden grew, a wild garden, mindless of man’s will or rules of order. Here and there the sunken forms of graves spoke of the time when this wild place had been a proper church, with nave and transept, altar and aisles. But the graves were empty now, the bodies moved and buried elsewhere. Above where they had lain the roof had long since fallen and been cleared away, and the once-high walls had crumbled to uneven contours, their jagged stones yet softened by a trailing growth of ivy.
‘My God,’ I whispered.
Christian seemed to understand. ‘It is most beautiful, this place.’