“Prie Dieu…Caprice de Coeur-the names these villages have!” he exclaimed at one point. Nora thought they sounded lovely. She could see the occasional settlement as they passed, groups of lights winking from the forest or perched in a hanging valley overlooking the Doubs, which flowed through the plains far below. Some of the landscape looked familiar, and when the car abruptly veered away from the valley and crossed a stone bridge over a stream, she knew they were close.
“It’s up here somewhere,” she said. “A road on the right, I think, leading into the forest. There was a sign, as I recall-There it is!”
The wooden plaque hung from a beam extending out from a post, swinging slightly in the breeze. Black Gothic lettering was burned into the lacquered blond surface: Pinède. Jacques slowed and prepared for the turn.
“Wait,” Nora said. “Stop the car. Park right here.”
As usual, he asked no questions. He immediately pulled the car over onto the shoulder in front of the sign and switched off the ignition. The headlights died, leaving them in darkness. She sat a moment, thinking, listening to the rustling of the wind in the pines and the soft ticking sounds as the engine cooled. The village was invisible from here, so she peered down the little paved lane, trying to remember the layout.
The lane disappeared into the forest, emerging after a hundred yards in a large clearing beside the stream they’d just crossed. She recalled that the road continued past the church to a cluster of some fifty cottages, a general store, a pub, stables and barns, and a big structure at the far end of town for tractors and woodcutting equipment. The population when she’d been here last was just over two hundred, and she doubted it had grown much in twenty-one years. The opposite, if anything: The new generation probably preferred the electronic liveliness of the modern cities far from these mountains.
One of the larger towns down the hill had a supermarket and a drugstore, one had a Gendarmerie Départementale station and a firehouse, a third had an infirmary, and a fourth, the schools for all the children in the district. Each town up here had its specialty, and Pinède’s contribution to the community was the church, Notre Dame des Montaignes. The handsome stone building with its bell tower and stained glass windows was the gathering place for worshipers from miles around. The priest and his retainers lived in the rectory beside it, and the iron-fenced field behind the two buildings was the local cemetery. The church stood on the left side of the lane at the entrance to the town, separated from the nearest houses by parking lots on both sides of the road, which were discreetly screened from view by green hedgerows.
It was 9:50; she had ten minutes. The last evening bell-evensong or compline, or whatever it was called-was rung at eight, Jeff had told her, and by nine everyone was in bed. She was walking to a shuttered church in a sleeping village. It seemed secure enough, but she couldn’t help thinking of her husband’s secrecy with the coded messages. Nora had no idea what was going on, but she knew Jeff was going to great lengths to keep it hush-hush. Why else would she be here, at this end of France, at this hour? And why else would Jeff have created the elaborate hoax that he was dead, a car crash and a corpse with his name and a grieving widow? Better safe than sorry.
“I’ll walk from here,” she said.
Jacques didn’t like that idea. “No, mademoiselle, I take you inside. The village is around a curve, no? There are no lights here but those streetlamps along the road down there, and they are not very bright-”
“You don’t understand, Jacques. I don’t want anyone in town to-to know that I’m here. Those streetlamps are enough to get me around the bend, and I’m only going as far as the first building there. I’ll be fine. You wait right here, with the car. We-I should be back very soon.”
He still didn’t like it, but he didn’t argue with her. “Very well, mademoiselle, but take this.” He handed her a small plastic flashlight.
“Thanks.” With a quick smile for him, she grabbed the roses and got out of the car. The chilly, damp night air struck her, so she rested the flowers on the hood and buttoned the London Fog raincoat, tying the belt and thrusting the flashlight in a pocket. She picked up the wrapped bouquet and began to walk.
A dull streak of lightning tore through the clouds, nearly invisible, and the subsequent low rumble of thunder was barely audible through the loud sighing of the wind in the trees. Nora set off down the paved road, passing under the first blue light and heading for the next one. These lampposts weren’t placed here for maximum illumination, merely to keep the occasional late vehicle on the road until it was safely in or out of the town. The crunch of her boots on the loose gravel beside the blacktop was swallowed by the wind. There was no sidewalk here; this turnoff was far from the next area of civilization, and the roads were steep, so walking outside the village itself wasn’t a good idea. In these hills, you drove or rode a horse to your destination.
As she walked along, her earlier self-assurance began to desert her. What on earth was she doing here in the middle of the night? Why was Jeff here, in Pinède of all places? Was he hiding? If so, from whom? Well, it was too late to change her mind. Whatever this was, Nora was part of it now, but she hoped they could leave here as soon as possible.
She came around the curve, and there was the village, spread out in the clearing before her, barely visible in the darkness. The church was just ahead on her left, up a wide flight of steps. A porch light above the big oak doors and a faint glow from the stained glass windows at the near side of the building were the only illumination she could see there now. The windows of the rectory beyond it were dark; the priest and his servants were presumably asleep. Farther down the road, past the hedgerows, a few tiny glimmers shone in cottage windows here and there. Otherwise, nothing.
The high wrought-iron fence began on this side of the church, with an arched gate facing the road near the steps. She was moving up the steps toward the gate when she heard a sound from the road behind her, a crunch, a small displacement of gravel. She froze, feeling a thrill of terror rise in her, straining to listen. The wind continued strong in the branches above her, but now there was no other sound. She turned around and peered into the dark behind her, back the way she’d come. The nearest pool of blue lamplight was empty, and she couldn’t see any movement along the lane. A squirrel, she thought, or a village dog out late, nothing more. She uttered a small giggle of relief and turned back to the gate.
It wasn’t locked; there probably wasn’t much need for locks around here. She pulled up the drop latch and pushed the big gate open. It creaked slightly, and the metal was freezing against her fingers. Leaving the gate ajar, she moved slowly forward, allowing her eyes to adapt to the gloom. After a moment she made out the walkways, which ringed and crisscrossed the lawn, and the nearest rows of headstones. There were probably some four hundred townspeople buried here, with stones of every shape and size, and four-no, five small buildings here and there among them: family mausoleums.
Beyond the fence on both sides, rows of cypresses had been planted, forming a sort of outer fence, and behind the rear fence the pine forest had been cleared for some fifty feet to make room for a grove of fruit trees. Apples, pears, lemons-she’d inspected them on her previous visit, delighted by the way their rich scents mingled with the overriding aroma of the forest around them. On this breezy summer night, before the rain, she could smell it all from where she stood just inside the gate. She inhaled deeply and moved forward.
The faint spill of light from the stained glass windows on her right showed her more rows of graves, and she could even read the name above the door of one distant structure: Vanel. She remembered the name; a Mme. Vanel had been Jeff’s great-aunt’s closest friend in the town. That small building was her family’s crypt. Nora shut her eyes, trying to remember the placement of Grand-oncle René and Grand-tante Jeanette’s white marble headstone.