Chapter Ten
Despite her best efforts to keep up with the rest of the party, Mathilde had lagged behind, and now dusk was falling and she had no idea where she was.
All she knew was that they’d been heading towards the mountains, but surely she should have reached the chateau by now?
She seemed to have been walking for hours.
What if she’d already passed it? She’d skirted the few houses she’d come across so far, conscious of her prison uniform and filthy condition, yet the fear of being caught in the open after curfew made her reckless.
Spotting an isolated cottage ahead, she walked cautiously towards it, keeping to the hedgerow until she could get a better view.
A red-haired woman was standing in the front garden, unpegging washing from the line and tossing it in a basket.
She picked up the basket as Mathilde approached and stared at her.
It was an appraising glance, but not a hostile one.
‘Madame, I’m looking for Chateau Albertine,’ Mathilde said, prepared to bolt if things turned nasty. ‘Do you happen to know where it is?’
‘I might,’ the woman said, balancing the basket on her hip. ‘What business do you have there?’
‘Employment,’ Mathilde replied, snatching an idea out of the air. ‘I’m to be the new housemaid.’
The woman smiled. ‘Looking like that? You’ll be lucky.’
Mathilde smoothed her hands down her sackcloth skirt. ‘It’s been a rather trying journey.’
And now the woman burst into peals of laughter. ‘I’ll say. You look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards. Come inside before someone sees you. It’s all right,’ she added, seeing Mathilde hesitate. ‘I won’t turn you in. That’s the best laugh I’ve had in ages.’
So Mathilde followed her down the path and into a dark little house, where an old man sat in a rocking chair beside the fireplace, smoking a pipe. ‘Another one, Papa,’ the woman said, and he nodded philosophically.
‘I don’t want to cause you any trouble and I’m late already,’ Mathilde said. ‘If you could just point me in the right direction . . .’
‘You can’t risk the police catching you in those clothes,’ the woman told her. ‘And you’ve time to wash your hands and face, I imagine. Better not turn up at the chateau in that state, no matter what you’re there for.’
She filled a basin with water and brought it to the table with a sliver of soap, then sorted through the clothing in the basket, still chuckling to herself. Her plump arms were covered in freckles and her auburn hair flamed in the dingy room.
‘Here you are,’ she said, passing Mathilde a frock of faded blue cotton, worn threadbare in places. ‘This’ll be too big but you can tie it at the waist.’
‘Are you sure?’ Mathilde asked, drying her face with her blouse. ‘I can’t give you anything in return – apart from my old clothes, and I should imagine you’ll want to burn them.’
‘What about those boots?’ the woman asked, nodding at Mathilde’s feet. ‘They’re too big for you but they’ll fit my son.’ She fetched a pair of canvas plimsolls from the hearth and held them out. ‘Fair exchange no robbery?’
A few minutes later, Mathilde was back on the road with a lighter heart, more comfortable feet, and a clearer sense of where she was heading.
She’d missed the crucial turning a few kilometres back that would have taken her to the house.
Night had fallen by the time she finally reached it so she had only the vaguest impression of a vast, pale building rising out of the dark, with the denser shadows of mountains looming behind.
The Patron stood in the shelter of a small house beside a pair of ornamental gates. Looking out for her? It would seem so.
‘You made it,’ he said. ‘Well done. And with a change of clothes along the way.’
‘I met a good person,’ she replied. ‘Maybe one day I can pay her back.’
They walked up the drive together under cover of the black, whispering trees.
Mathilde was too weary to ask any questions but every fibre of her being was alert as they approached the house.
Despite his reassurance, they might be heading into an ambush; she couldn’t afford to let down her guard for a moment.
Her feet were sore, she was faint with hunger, and the euphoria of her escape had long since ebbed away.
He led her around the side of the house and rattled the shutters on a downstairs window.
Seconds later, a nearby door opened and they were ushered through into a large kitchen, full of people and noise.
His comrades were sitting around a table covered with empty plates and half-full glasses, and a deliciously savoury smell hung in the air.
A young woman stood by the stove, stirring a saucepan while simultaneously rocking a crib with her foot.
She turned as they entered the room, and Mathilde saw that one side of her face was splashed with a large port-wine birthmark.
‘Odile, the last straggler has arrived,’ the Patron said. ‘We’re all here now. Is there any stew left?’
‘Just about,’ she replied, nodding at Mathilde. ‘Take a seat and I’ll bring you a plate.’
‘After you’ve eaten, I’ll take you to meet the countess,’ the Patron told her.
Mathilde drew out a chair without acknowledging the others.
She didn’t feel the need to be friendly: none of them had looked out for her and anyway, she wouldn’t see them again after the next day.
The two men who’d carried out the rescue looked younger than the prisoners – in their late teens or early twenties, perhaps – and were still in high spirits.
The friendlier of the pair poured her a glass of cider and introduced her to the rest, whose names she didn’t bother to remember.
Only one stuck in her mind: the broad-shouldered man who seemed to particularly resent her presence, known as Sanglier.
She could see why he had the nickname: the coarse black hair sprouting from his scalp looked very like that of a boar.
He was talking to one of the others in Provencal, glancing at her occasionally.
She ate steadily, sucking bones clean – rabbit, she thought, or possibly even squirrel – and mopping up gravy with a crust of bread.
After she’d finished, her young friend asked her how she’d come to end up in prison, and she told him the story of her cousin’s death at the hands of the French police.
When she mentioned that his name was Pierre Bouchon, Sanglier swore under his breath.
He refilled her glass, looking at her with a softer expression.
The Patron touched her on the shoulder. ‘Come, I should introduce you to the countess, Madame de Courcy, before it gets too late.’
They walked down a long corridor and across an entrance hall with a fireplace big enough to roast an ox, then through a succession of vast, empty rooms to a shadowy salon dotted with groups of spindly chairs.
In the far corner, a woman sat reading by the light of a standard lamp, a large dog asleep at her feet.
Nerves shot through Mathilde’s stomach, which was already roiling uneasily.
She had met people from every background in her previous life at the museum, but that life seemed as remote as if it had been a dream.
Now she was an escaped convict with broken fingernails and lice in her hair.
The woman lifted her head to watch them approach, and those few steps seemed to take an age. Her white-blonde hair was pinned back in a chignon, and she wore a black evening dress with a pearl choker at her neck.
‘And who is this unexpected guest, Yves?’ she asked the Patron, laying the book aside and rising to her feet.
‘Madame, this is Marie Garnier,’ he replied. ‘She escaped from the van at the same time as we did.’
Mathilde wondered for a moment whether she should curtsey, but she didn’t want to fall over, so she merely inclined her head as the countess regarded her coolly.
She was beginning to feel ill, bloated after a meal that she’d eaten far too quickly after a long day in the sun.
Beads of sweat broke out on her brow as the awful suspicion dawned on her that she was about to be sick.
Madame de Courcy was talking but she only caught the odd word: ‘rest’, ‘morning’, ‘Odile’.
She put her hand over her mouth, unwilling to accept her predicament, as the bile rose in her throat.
Madame de Courcy’s face swam closer. ‘What on earth is the matter?’
Mathilde shook her head, her eyes frantic. Just in time, the Patron thrust an ice bucket towards her, which she seized and filled to the brim with the partly digested contents of her stomach.
The rest of the night was a blur. Mathilde was dimly aware of being helped into a chair, burning with shame, and sometime later escorted down long corridors and up a back staircase to a bathroom, where a woman she was too faint and embarrassed to acknowledge washed her down, combed vinegar through her hair to deal with the nits and helped her into a nightgown.
She was then taken to a small, stuffy room in the attic where a sleeping bag lay waiting on a camp bed.
She crawled into it, hoping she would go to sleep and never wake up.
The fact she’d vomited in front of the Patron – Yves, as Madame de Courcy had called him – only made her feel worse.
Yet there could be no escape; morning came and she was still alive.
Staggering to her feet, she managed to find the bathroom on the floor below and confront her reflection in the mirror.
Who was this gaunt, hollow-eyed stranger staring back at her?
Well, she would have to give some account of herself one way or another.
Answering a knock at the door, she found Odile standing there with a clean blouse and skirt under one arm, carrying the baby on her hip.
‘Thank you so much,’ she said, accepting the clothes. ‘And for taking care of me last night, too. I’m sorry to have caused so much trouble.’