Gloaming, Page 3

  3

  Margot rose very early the following morning, as was her wont in the summer. The moment the first glimmers of dawn peeped through the chinks in her shutters, she was awake and swift to rise. A chunk of Seigneur Morel’s seed bread — grown a little stale, but flavoursome enough — refreshed her for the day’s labours, taken with a glass of marjoram tea. Thus fortified, and dressed in one of the simple brown cotton skirts she so much preferred, Margot ventured out to greet the morning.

  Dawn seemed all the more a miracle in the wake of the Gloaming, and Margot savoured every moment of it as she walked into the meadows on the edge of Argantel. Her ultimate destination was, of course, Landricourt, but she had some of her own business to conduct before she took up her duties. Humming a low tune under her breath, she set to work harvesting some portion of the wild thyme, dandelion and clover that grew in clusters among the grasses. It was harder to be at peace on such a morning as this; her serenity was more the product of determined labour than natural ease. Her thoughts would keep turning towards poor vanished Oriane, no matter how hard she tried to focus upon the fresh batch of soap she would soon prepare, or the chamomile cream she might venture upon making.

  A wander through the wilds could not but help. Margot had always found it soothing to be out in the meadows; when she was a sprout of a child, always coming in late with her hair wind-wild and her feet crusted with fresh earth, her mother had joked that she was a wildling herself. She resembled something woods-wrought, to be sure: her skin was brown as a nut, her unruly hair shaded russet and gold like oak leaves in autumn.

  Time passed, and the herbs in Margot’s basket grew into satisfying piles. She would have much to occupy herself with in the twilit evenings to come, and perhaps the Chanteraines would take the new chamomile cream for the emporium, once it was complete. She passed from grassy hollows to burgeoning slopes in a half-daze, her churning thoughts lulled into serenity by the peace and abundance of the early morning.

  But as she drew nearer to Landricourt, a glimpse of something untoward caught her eye: a flash of colour, something moving nearby. Another person, she thought; but that person was fleeing from her, had secreted themselves behind one of the ancient oaks that grew in the grounds of the grand old house. Margot stopped, and stared hard, but those huge, whorled trunks were more than equal to the concealment of a single person — if a person it had been. Perhaps it had only been a bird, exaggerated in Margot’s mind to much greater proportions.

  She paused a moment longer, undecided. The hour grew late, and Landricourt loomed upon the horizon, beckoning her to her day’s duties. She had gone through her scant stock of spare hours and had no more left to her; and yet… thoughts of Oriane intruded, scattering her peace. It could not be Oriane, could it? No, why should it be? For nothing reasonable could possess her friend and fellow winemaker to flit from tree to tree in so odd a fashion, concealing herself even from those who were familiar to her.

  Nonetheless, Margot could not turn away. Her feet moved almost of their own volition, and she approached the tree, calling doubtfully, ‘Oriane?’

  There came no reply, and when Margot had traversed the cool shade cast by the wide-spread branches and stepped over the knotted roots that protruded through the earth, a quick step took her behind the trunk and revealed — nothing. No one was there.

  ‘A bird,’ she sighed. ‘Fool that I am, for what business could Oriane have here?’

  Despite her logic, a mild sense of unease prickled at the back of her mind as she turned her face towards Landricourt and trudged on into the growing heat of the morning, the sun’s heat already baking the grasses beneath her bare feet. She could not shake the feeling that the flutter of colour had not been a bird, or any animal at all. But if she was right and someone had, briefly, lingered there, where could they have gone, without her noticing their flight? And why had they hidden from her at all?

  She was within a few minutes of reaching Landricourt when the stillness of the morning was split by a great shout. ‘Ho, Margot!’ came the familiar voice, and Margot turned to find Florian in rapid pursuit of her, his ruffled hair flying like a flag in the breeze.

  ‘Good morning, Florian,’ she said, unable to suppress the frown that sprang to her brow.

  Florian paused to make her his customary, hasty bow, and smiled at her. ‘I hope that doubtful demeanour does not mean that you’re unhappy to see me.’

  ‘No, only puzzled. What brings you here so early?’

  ‘My employer has dispatched me to assist you at Landricourt today.’

  This was no explanation at all, and Margot did not dignify it with a response. They required no help, which Seigneur Chanteraine must know. And if they did, they would not dragoon his shop boy into bearing them assistance. She raised her brows in mute scepticism, and waited.

  Abashed, Florian gave a slight cough and looked at the floor. ‘I believe he is concerned for the well-being of the rest of the winemakers, considering the continued absence of Oriane.’

  This surprised Margot more than she cared to show. ‘Why, does he imagine that more of us may vanish into the wind?’

  ‘He did not choose to share all his thoughts with me, but I think he does.’

  Margot felt torn between a stirring of alarm at this idea, and a bubbling of amusement at the prospect of Florian Talleyrand’s being sent to protect them from an unknown and unquantifiable threat. Laughter won. ‘And how are you to help us, should we be in some danger?’

  She regretted her words at once, for though he tried his best to conceal it, Florian was obviously cast down. ‘Why, I shall beat off all danger with my bare hands!’ he said with some bravado, and tried to make himself taller.

  Margot doubted very much that the master of the emporium had sent his youthful employee with any idea as to his defending the winemakers from vanishment. Florian was more likely dispatched to serve as messenger, should anything go amiss — or, more likely, should Oriane reappear. But she said none of this, for he clearly cherished the vision of himself as noble protector, and sent by so august a person as Pharamond Chanteraine himself. So she smiled upon him, and turned her steps once more towards the house. ‘We will put you to work, I warn you,’ she said as they turned into the courtyard. ‘We will feel Oriane’s lack today, and Maewen will not hesitate to make use of you.’

  ‘I am ready to work, as always.’

  Maewen herself met them as they came into the great hall, her face creased with concern. ‘Oriane?’ she said.

  ‘No word,’ murmured Margot. ‘She has not arrived this morning either, I take it?’

  Maewen sighed and shook her head, her gaze alighting upon Florian.

  He recognised his cue at once, and swept her one of his neater bows. ‘Madame Brionnet, I am sent with Seigneur Chanteraine’s compliments.’

  ‘For what purpose? Does he require more of the rosewater? I had thought two bottles would be enough.’

  ‘More than, ma’am. I am here—’

  ‘—to help us,’ interrupted Margot. ‘In the absence of Oriane.’ Judging from the worry Maewen was striving, unsuccessfully, to hide, her morning was not to be brightened by the suggestion that Chanteraine feared for her safety, and that of her fellow winemakers.

  ‘How kind of your master,’ said Maewen, her face brightening. ‘We will be sure to thank him by way of some suitable gift. A taste of the new wine, perhaps? Come, Florian, I will show you where you are to work. Margot, put those in the cellar,’ — she indicated Margot’s overflowing basket of herbs with a nod — ‘and it is gathering for you this morning, if you please. I declare, the rosehips have grown at double their usual rate. What a night it has been! The Gloaming has been kind to us, at least.’

  Florian wandered away after Maewen, casting Margot a brief, ironical look on his way out. Margot was amused herself, for all Maewen’s abundance of gratitude was directed at Pharamond Chanteraine’s generosity rather than at Florian’s obedience, when the labour of the gesture would be al
l performed by the latter.

  She had not needed Maewen’s information and the instruction came as no surprise, for a glance was enough: the tangled thicket of thorny vines was as heavily burdened by rosehips as it had been yesterday morning, if not more so. It was as though she had not spent some eight or nine hours yesterday collecting rose-berries from those same clambering brambles; indeed, they looked as though they had never been harvested at all. Everywhere she looked, she saw an abundance of plump, pale seed heads, and while the sight had its beauties, to her it spoke of aching shoulders and a pain in her lower back, not to mention fingers striped with thorn-scratches.

  Never mind it, she told herself sternly, for while her role at Landricourt was wearying and not handsomely paid, it had ample compensations in one form or another.

  Margot went to store the first harvest of the day in the cellars as Maewen had directed, and, collecting a pair of trugs on her way back up the stairs, she fell to the second with as much goodwill as she could muster.

  The morning passed swiftly enough, and the day wore into afternoon. Margot spent those hours clambering up and down her step-ladder, moving from the vaulted stone hall into the decayed elegance of the dining room, the first and second parlours, and beyond, filling trug after trug with rosehips gleaned from the twisting vines that covered the walls, the ceiling and in some places, parts of the floor. When the sun was at its highest she paused to devour the sweet rolls she had brought with her. Cloudy and soft, lavishly buttered, these were stuffed with the tiny, jewel-like bilberries that grew abundantly among the scattered copses of Vale Argantel, and especially within the tangled forests that crowded the higher slopes. Adelaide arrived just as Margot was licking the butter from her fingertips, her usual smile in place, though there lurked a shadow behind her eyes; she and Oriane had always been particular friends. She wore a blue scarf over her dark hair, keeping the heavy strands out of her face, and blue gems sparked in her ears. She had vanity, Adelaide, but with good reason, for Madame Quincy was generally described as the handsomest woman in the valley, and few would disagree.

  ‘Maewen has ordered double of the honey today,’ said Adelaide by way of greeting, setting down a tray clustered with glass jugs and capacious cups. ‘And the elderflower.’

  Here were treats indeed, for the eldest winemaker was usually sparing with her famed elderflower cordial, and the honey in question was gleaned from the bees in her own, flower-drowned garden. Margot would have given much to know what precisely went into the making of both, for no honey had ever tasted sweeter or more delicious, and no cordial was more refreshing after a morning’s labours in the heat.

  Whether Maewen was trying to distract the winemakers from Oriane’s absence or comfort them under it, Margot could not surmise.

  She accepted a large portion of the cordial from Adelaide, watching with relish as the other lady stirred a healthy dollop of honey into the glass, and tried to drink it sparingly. In this, she failed.

  Adelaide smiled, and refilled the glass. But the smile soon faded, and she hesitated, on the point of speech.

  Margot thought she would raise the subject of Oriane, but instead she said: ‘You were the first to arrive, Margot, were you not? This morning. Save only for Maewen, of course.’

  ‘I believe so,’ Margot agreed cautiously. ‘I did not see or hear anybody else, when I came in.’

  Adelaide nodded, but said nothing else, seeming unwilling to speak.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ Margot prompted her.

  ‘Did you… happen to see anything unusual, as you approached the house?’

  Surprised, Margot said at once: ‘I… thought I did, but it turned out to be nothing. A bird darting behind a tree, I think.’

  Adelaide’s eyes brightened, and she clutched at this meagre offering with, Margot thought, unwonted enthusiasm. ‘I had the same experience! Margot, I am persuaded it was not a bird. I am sure there was someone there, only when I went to look, she had faded into the wind.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘I think there was a woman there, for I am sure I saw the flicker of rose-red skirts.’

  Rose-red. The words sparked a feeling of recognition in Margot, for she would have used similar words to describe her own brief glimpse of colour. ‘But how could she fade into the wind?’ she asked.

  ‘I do not know, but I think… I wonder if perhaps it was Oriane? She had a skirt of such a colour, once.’

  ‘Did she?’ Margot had not known, and this snippet of information briefly influenced her. But she decided against the idea, and shook her head. ‘It cannot be, can it? What would she be doing, darting about the place like a stranger, hiding herself from us?’

  ‘Perhaps something has gone amiss with her,’ suggested Adelaide.

  ‘Such as what, that could inspire such peculiar behaviour?’

  Adelaide had no answer to give, and no further arguments to offer in support of her theory. Watching the hope fade from her face, Margot felt a brute, to have crushed her tenuous belief in her friend’s nearness; but her conviction did not waver. It could not be Oriane.

  But, then, who was it? For if Adelaide had seen something out of place this morning, and had, like Margot, been convinced of its being some other person, then Margot was more willing to entertain the real possibility that a stranger wandered the grounds of Landricourt. A stranger who did not wish to be seen.

  Her cordial finished, she set her glass back upon Adelaide’s tray. ‘Where did you see this woman?’ she enquired.

  Adelaide gestured with one slender hand: away behind the house, far from where Margot had been wandering that morning. ‘Betwixt the oaks there. But I have searched them all, Margot, and there is no one now. I have been watching all morning, too, as I could, and have not seen her return.’

  She soon afterwards took her leave, off to visit and refresh the rest of the winemakers for their afternoon’s labours. Margot set aside her own work for a few minutes more, and went in search of Florian.

  Florian had no information to offer, but he promised to be upon the watch for any further glimpses of a woman with rose-red skirts. With this Margot had to be satisfied, for the rosehips would not wait upon her convenience; several of her fellows were hard at work in the vast, vaulted cellar rooms below the house, crushing and filtering the rosehips she and Adelaide and Florian gathered and beginning the process of transforming them into wine. She could not spare the hour or more it would take to conduct a thorough search of the grounds. She resolved to take up the search later in the afternoon, when the onset of the twilight declared an end to the labours of the day. And she would take Florian with her.

  As it happened, however, she did not have to wait nearly so long for an answer to the mystery.

  For reasons best known to themselves, the majority of the rose-brambles had mostly colonised only the great dining room, the parlours, the drawing room and the bedchambers, leaving such spaces as the kitchens, the long gallery and the grand hall largely unexplored. Accordingly, Margot’s daily round ran from the dining room around and up through the bedchambers, and she paused only briefly to look in upon the rest of the house.

  But today was different. Upon reaching the long gallery, she noticed two unusual things almost at once.

  For the first: the roses had changed their minds about the gallery. Hitherto, they had only peeped tentatively into it from a far, upper corner, sending forth but few leafy tendrils to mingle with the soft, green-daubed murals arrayed across the walls. But somewhere in between Margot’s last visit and today — had it been only yesterday, that she had last looked in? — the entirety of the far wall was awash with a thicket of glossy rose leaves and thorny, tangled vines. Unlike those in the rest of the house, whose petals were falling as they formed their plump rosehips, these were in full bloom; there must be hundreds of flowers, Margot thought dazedly, and their scent thickened the air with a heavy floral pungency. Nor was their growth haphazard, to her further astonishment. The spaces upon the walls where portraits had
once hung — rectangular patches, brighter with colour than the more faded paint around them — had been left untouched, while twining ropes of thorn-clad stalks had snaked and twisted and coiled unhindered over the rest of the wall, following the shapes of the elegant curlicues and ornately coiling leaves that lay, painted and inert, beneath them. The effect was a new, curiously flourishing mural worked in living greenery, splashed everywhere about with the bright-white petals in their fragrant clusters.

  The roses were reaching for the adjacent wall; Margot fancied she could almost see them growing as she watched. A particularly enterprising tendril was reaching for the ears of a great white horse painted between two windows, the beast rearing in elegant indignation. It now wore a crown of budding roses.

  The second point of interest was this: that the grandly oversized chair lingering in solitary splendour at the distant end was now occupied.

  Margot had always secretly adored that chair. It was so stupendously overdone: more than big enough to seat two side-by-side, its back rose to a towering height, its arms too high to rest comfortably upon. It more nearly resembled a throne than a chair, especially situated as it was amidst such grandeur. And while the chair was as decayed as the gallery itself, its cream silk upholstery tattered and frayed and its frame riddled with the scars of woodworm, it had endured. Margot admired that in a chair.

  It made a strange, but strangely fitting, seat for the woman who now sat enthroned upon it, her legs crossed beneath the layered, rose-red silks of her skirts. Her bodice was of crimson velvet, and a shawl as light and delicate as tangled spider’s webs hung over her thin shoulders. One toe peeped out from beneath the vivid silks, revealing the tip of a silvery silken slipper. The shoe was stained with rosy colours, as though she had been dancing through a thick carpet of rose petals. Her thin, white fingers were held up before her, for between them a web every bit as ethereal and tangled as her shawl was strung in glittering strands, anointed here and there with diamond-bright droplets of dew. She was absorbed in the contemplation of her web, so much so that she did not appear to notice Margot’s entrance at all. Her fine-featured face was as white as the roses around her, the eyes so intent upon her work an eerily bright green against such pallor. Amber-winged moths had settled in the wispy mass of her pale, gold-spun hair; Margot thought them fanciful ornaments, until startled by the flicker of a wing into a realisation that they were quite real.