No Sweeter Heaven: The Pascal Trilogy - Book 2

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Copyright © 1993 by Julia Jay Kendall
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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First Diversion Books edition October 2013
ISBN:
978-1-62681-148-5

Once Upon a Dream

Call Down the Moon
The Sound of Snow
In the Presence of Angels
Lilies on the Lake
In the Wake of the Wind

No Greater Love

No Brighter Dream

Song From the Sea

For He shall give His angels charge over thee,

to keep thee in all thy ways.

Prayer Book,
91:11

They said it all began the night that the duke succumbed to the typhoid epidemic that swept through Saint-Simon like the last of the ten plagues of Egypt. It took his infant son hours later, then claimed his wife the next morning.

The bodies were laid to eternal rest in the château’s chapel, where all of the Dues de Saint-Simon and their progeny had been buried, with the one notable exception of the duke who had been martyred in the Wars of Religion. It was a terrible thing—the sixth duke and his wife had been seen kissing under the walnut tree below the south vineyard only three weeks before, his dark head bent over her bright one, both healthy and happy and deeply in love. And now they were gone and their only child with them.

The mood of the villagers was decidedly grim, for not only had they lost many of their own, but the duke’s brother was the next in line. He was rumored to be a cruel and ambitious man, fond of his pleasures and careless where he took them. As it turned out, rumor was correct, and all of Saint-Simon suffered as a result. The vines withered from neglect. The people swore there was a curse on them as the crop failed year after year, and the village grew poor.

The seventh duke died only two years after his brother, and his wife took their son back to England. The estate was left without guidance, and the vineyards continued to fail. Overtime the legend took hold: until the heir to Saint-Simon came back to the land, it would not thrive.

But the heir had been back three years now, a man full grown, and still the vines suffered. The people began to despair whether there would ever be another harvest.

“T
his is absurd,” Lily murmured, gingerly shifting her weight on the branch beneath her feet. “It might … just possibly … even be preposterous,” she added, wondering whether she’d finally managed to fulfill all the dire things said about her character. She adjusted her grip, then hitched herself up onto the natural fork joining two sturdy branches, pushed down the annoying bulk of her skirts, and peered through the leaves to watch the cloisters and any monks that might be gliding about below.

After an hour her bottom grew numb and her leg hurt where she’d scratched it during her climb. Lily began to wonder if she would ever achieve her objective. It was just her luck that her quarry had to be a religious recluse. Her heart had sunk the moment she’d rung the bell on the great abbey door and a wizened old man appeared, dressed from head to toe in black. It took all of two minutes for the monk to dismiss her.

“I am sorry, mademoiselle,” the porter said, not looking particularly interested in her or her dilemma. “We do not allow the world inside these walls. Perhaps you might write to the abbot, Dom Benetard, with your questions.”

The door closed in her face.

Dejected, Lily turned to leave, then spotted the large elm tree that towered well over the forbidding wall of the abbey. An idea began to take hold. She had to do something or her beloved half brother was sure to lose everything.

So now, for better or for worse, here she was, sitting in the elm’s higher limbs, admiring a particularly fine view of the Abbey of St. Christophe de Montebon.

Lily knew it was very wicked to spy. She knew she would probably burn in hell if God happened to be watching His servant, the wayward Elizabeth Mary Bowes, at that particular moment. But as God had more than likely given up on her long ago, and Jean-Jacques needed her services far more than God did, she felt her loyalties really ought to go to her brother. Anyway, from the look of those black-garbed monks drifting about below, God had more than enough servants enlisted in His cause. He could afford a stray sheep or two.

She shuddered to think that she might well have ended up consigned to a convent—indeed, if she hadn’t been her father’s only child, he would have dispatched her to the sisters at the very first opportunity. But instead of marrying her to Christ, he was determined to see her married to a mortal. Lily was equally determined not to oblige him. At each refusal, Father Mallet presided over the raging argument, his fixed mask of spiritual piety no doubt covering a very sincere desire to wring her neck.

He would wring her neck too, he and her father both, if they
ever
discovered what she was doing at that moment. She would never be allowed to see Jean-Jacques again, for they’d blame it all on him. Still, it was worth the risk.

“Oh, Jean-Jacques,” she whispered, “I love you more than anything or anyone on the face of the earth. I swear, somehow I’ll find a way to fix things. Papa will never know about your troubles; I swear that too, for I couldn’t bear to see you humiliated. I’ll find this stupid monk, somehow I will, and he’ll know just what to do for your crops.”

A long stream of monks emerged from the cloisters and crossed the courtyard to the church for midday prayers. She waited impatiently, wishing they would get on with it. Not that she had any firm plan as to how to locate her particular monk. It all seemed quite hopeless, really. But maybe if this monk had such a special way with miracles, as the village priest had insisted, he’d be obliging enough to sport a halo.

Lily remembered Father Chabot standing in the chateau’s shadow, looking down at her poor brother’s barren vineyards.

“It will take a miracle, Lady Elizabeth,” he had said doubtfully. “Hmm. A miracle. A miracle … now what does that remind me of?” He scratched his balding head as if he’d just jostled a thought and it was rattling around in a fog. And then he smiled brightly as the memory finally emerged into the light. “Ah, yes! I remember now. A friend of mine, a priest, wrote me a letter a few months back. He lives farther north, you see.”

“No, I don’t see,” Lily said impatiently. “What does your friend up north have to do with anything?”

“There is a man at a monastery in Montebon … apparently he has become something of a legend in the Loire Valley for his ability to work wonders with living things. ‘A maker of miracles,’ they call him.”

Lily, who had no use for old wives’ tales, or for so-called miracles, had scoffed until Father Chabot added that the monk was a botanist, which naturally explained his ability to Lily. She had a healthy respect for science, far more than she had for religion. It had taken her no time at all to make her way directly to Montebon.

The monks streamed out again from the church and crossed the quadrant toward what she imagined was the refectory, for by now it was lunchtime. She wondered what would happen if she called down to them:
Excuse me, but I’m looking for one of your brothers, although I don’t know his name. Does one of you happen to be a botanist?

But that was an absurd strategy, she knew, with no likelihood of success. There’d be monks littered everywhere. Still, there had to be a way…

Her heart skipped a beat as a solitary figure exited through the rear of the refectory. Unlike the monks, this man was dressed in a simple white shirt, jacket, and trousers, and his dark head was bare.

His back to her, he walked across the park, past the large, sunny clearing where the working gardens for the abbey kitchens stood, and finally stopped in a smaller, partially enclosed area that looked as if it contained seedlings.

Lily watched as he fetched a basket of tools from a large shed, took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, and settled down to work in a tilled patch among the young plants, weeding and watering, working the soil with his fingers and a trowel, his back turned away from her.

“Perfect,” she murmured. “A gardener.”

Here was someone who might actually be willing to speak to her, might even know of the monk she was seeking. If her luck held, the gardener might even be willing to carry a message. Her heart pounding with excitement, she started to climb down toward the top of the wall. And then she froze as two monks followed the first man’s path over to the kitchen gardens. To Lily’s dismay, they set to work, hoeing and weeding only a few feet from her quarry.

Suppressing a very strong desire to scream with frustration, she rearranged herself in the tree and prepared to wait some more. Maybe the monks would suddenly feel a pressing urge to return to the church and she’d have her gardener to herself again.

Restlessly she shifted, and shifted again. A dead branch fell to the ground with a thud loud enough to make one of the monks look up, but after a moment he went back to his work. Lily released a long sigh of relief and, for lack of anything better to do, focused her attention on the gardener.

He moved rhythmically, with the easy grace of a person long used to physical activity, a man comfortable with himself and the outdoors. It was a pleasant and compelling sight to Lily. Simplicity was in short supply in her life at the moment, and there was something comforting about observing this man going about his chores, something soothing about the way in which he blended into the peaceful surroundings of the monastery.

For one fleeting moment Lily wished that she had nothing more to worry about than working a small plot of land, perhaps going home at the end of the day to a small family who demanded nothing greater than food on the table and some pleasant conversation.

Yes—that was probably how it was. No doubt there were a few small children running about and a homely but welcoming wife who greeted him cheerfully, as the smell of baking bread drifted out the door of their little cottage. Lily could just see it. And at night, when the children had all been tenderly tucked up in their beds, he would turn to his wife and enfold her with those strong arms, bend that dark head of his to hers, and do wonderful, passionate things with her…

Lily shook her head, dispelling the mists of fantasy. The man probably looked like her father’s favorite hound, despite the broad back and powerful legs. They usually did. In any case, what did she know about passion? Absolutely nothing, at least not since she’d been eight and was smitten with the new butler. For a full three months she’d decided that all she wanted in life was to be a footman so that she could serve under her beloved. She had followed devotedly in Robert’s footsteps until one day the passion of her life had mysteriously disappeared, to be replaced by a stiff old martinet.

Ever since, all the male staff at Sutherby had been extraordinarily unattractive.

Her gaze returned to the gardener, and she sighed with pleasure. There was a certain appeal in a strong, well-made figure, even if it wasn’t proper for her to admire it. But who was to object, given that she was hidden in a tree, with no one to see? And it
was
only his back she was admiring.

The gardener suddenly glanced up over his shoulder as if to check the position of the sun, and Lily nearly fell off her perch.

The first shattering image that came to mind was that of an angel—a fallen angel. His eyes, a deep, clear brown, held something that she’d never seen before. She couldn’t even define it to herself beyond the impression that he didn’t quite belong to this world, as if he possessed a knowledge that humans ought not to possess. She saw something else too, something dangerous and unsettling, like looking directly into the eye of a hurricane.

Lily swallowed hard. What was a man that extraordinarily handsome doing working in a monastery? Gone was the vision of the homely wife, the sweet young children. This was a man more suited to running about the brothels of Paris, disporting himself with loose women.

She imagined that he had sinned terribly, perhaps ruined some poor innocent—maybe even killed someone in a duel—and was now paying his penance, which would explain that … well, that
haunted
look in his eyes. The man was a repentant rake, an exile from society.

Lily had always wanted to meet a proper rake. Her father had drilled into her head the terrible dangers such men presented, their complete lack of ethics, their unconscionable desires. She wasn’t exactly sure what an unconscionable desire was, but she did know that it led to ruin and worse.

The rake’s eyes returned to earth and Lily shivered. She felt as if she had just been turned inside out, turned right side back again, and a piece of her, somewhere in the region of her stomach, hadn’t gone back into its proper place. Lily wasn’t at all sure she liked the feeling.

At last the two monks drifted back to the building, and the rake continued his work, as Lily had hoped. She was just wondering how best to get his attention when he stood and put his tools away. For a moment she was afraid that he might follow the monks, but her luck continued, for instead of heading toward the abbey he walked directly toward her.

It appeared he might actually pass under her tree, and her heart began to beat faster with anticipation.

To her intense irritation, he stopped before he reached her and sat down on a stone bench that was a good twenty feet short of the elm, his back to her. But instead of behaving like a normal person and sitting there enjoying the view, he pulled his legs up, crossed his ankles so that his thighs rested flat on the stone, placed his hands in his lap, and closed his eyes.

At first Lily didn’t know what to make of this extraordinary performance, but then she realized that he must have gone to sleep, for the rise and fall of his chest changed almost instantly and became slow and deep. It was beyond her how anyone could sleep in such an uncomfortable position, but she didn’t have time to worry about it. She would have to return to the inn soon, for Coffey would begin to worry, and she had taxed her old nurse’s patience enough as it was.

She bit her lip. The rake really was too far away to be hailed, certainly not without shouting. There was only one thing to be done. Lily cautiously lowered herself onto the wall.

Pascal drifted, lost somewhere between the stars and heaven. Meditation was as natural and essential to him as breathing, but this evening something tugged at the back of his mind, an annoyance, like an insect buzzing too close to him. He resettled himself on the bench, trying to concentrate on inner peace. But peace continued to elude him. In its place there was a hiss, not unlike that of a distressed toad, he thought, opening his eyes just a fraction and peering around. There was nothing to be seen, at least nothing immediately apparent, and, in any case, he was certain that toads did not reside in this particular part of the world. Perhaps it was a demented frog.

Pascal closed his eyes again and took a deep breath, concentrating on clearing his mind completely, but this evening he was finding it difficult to focus; the annoying hiss just would not go away. His eyes snapped open in frustration and he looked about him, searching the ground for the intruding reptile. He realized that the noise was coming not from the ground but from higher above, and he turned around, his gaze wandering slowly upward. It traveled over the coarse stone of the wall that formed the west boundary of the monastery—and stopped in disbelief.

There was a young woman—a woman, of all things—creeping precariously along the top of the wall, her hair, a burnished bronze in color, tumbling over one ear in a lopsided loop. Her skirts were hitched up about her knees in a most unseemly fashion, and there was a tear in the stocking on one exposed calf.

Perhaps she was an escapee from an insane asylum, he decided in alarm as the creature stopped, closed her eyes, and hissed again for all she was worth, then bowed her head, breathing hard.

As aggravating as it was to have his meditation interrupted, Pascal had never turned away a person in need, most certainly not a sick one. He quickly rose from his bench and went to a spot directly underneath her.

“Madame,” he said, squinting up at her through the sun’s lowering light, “are you in need of aid? Is there something I might do for you?”

The creature’s eyes flew open and she lurched upright from a crouch like a praying mantis preparing to do battle. Her mouth moved as if to speak, but nothing came out save for a long sigh, and her eyes closed again. She leaned to one side and slowly toppled off the wall, her body landing with a thud at his feet.