Authors: Tom Harper
He looked at her again, misreading the anguish and confusion written all over her face. Drops of blood beaded on his hand like a string of pearls where brambles had torn the skin.
‘I’m so sorry, Ellie.’
She kissed him, but only to stop him talking. Her eyes sidled over his shoulder down the path. The fisherman had vanished.
Doug had followed her gaze. He pulled back a little. ‘Who was that man you were with? He wasn’t giving you any trouble was he?’
‘He just wanted directions.’
He accepted the lie. Ellie let him take her arm and escort her back towards Oxford, pretending that the fight was all that had upset her. Delicate ridges of pink clouds furrowed the blue sky; an owl hooted from somewhere in the thicket.
She’d never felt so lost.
Normandy, 1135
Gornemant can tell I’m on edge. He says I show too much anger on the practice field. When we spar, I fight wildly and lose often, which only makes me angrier. Gornemant thinks it’s impatience. He’s seen it happen to all squires left kicking their heels too long, waiting for their spurs. He thinks I need a war to lift me. But God smiles on his people that year: all Christendom is at peace. I could take the Cross and go to fight for Jesus in the Holy Land, but I don’t have enough money for the journey.
And the truth is, I want to stay in Hautfort. All the hours of drudgery are worth it for my glimpses of Ada. To leave her would be desolation. At dinner, I can stand behind my lord Guy’s table for hours, just to be close to her. If she speaks to me, I carry her words with me like a treasure boxed in my heart. If she ignores me, I despair. I recall everything I have ever said or done to her, wondering what might have offended her. I tear my mind out wondering if she’ll ever forgive me. And the next morning she gives me a smile, or her hand
brushes mine as I help her mount her palfrey, and I’m insane with hope again.
I know I’m deluding myself. Ada has no idea: she’d be horrified if she knew what I’m thinking. Neither of us would ever betray Guy: my lord, her master. But I’m trapped in a dream, an enchantment, and for the moment I have no will to break it.
An August day, a cloudless sky. The whole world is limp with the heat. Gornemant had us in the lists all morning in full armour, charging and skirmishing until we were ready to drop. My hair’s as wet as a dog’s; my hands are sticky with the pine resin I rubbed on so my damp hands wouldn’t drop my sword. I stink of sweat, horse, leather and oil. If I don’t cool off soon, I think I might boil away.
I strip off my clothes and dive into the stream by the apple orchard. The first fruits are beginning to ripen on the trees, but there’s no one here to pick them. The labourers are all in the fields bringing in the harvest. Guy’s gone to inspect the new mill he got with Ada’s dowry. Apart from the birds, I might be the only person alive.
When I’ve washed, I haul myself out and lie naked on the grass. The sun dries me quickly; bees and hummingbirds flit about over my head. Black spots dance in front of my eyes.
I’m hungry. I pull on a clean tunic and walk along the stream, looking for an early apple, or perhaps some mushrooms. I haven’t gone twenty paces when I see her, sitting alone at the edge of the water in a plain green dress. I didn’t notice her arrive; I wonder how long she’s been there. Did she see
…
?
To hide my embarrassment, I study the undergrowth on the far side of the stream. I see a hazel and a honeysuckle, their
stems and branches twined and knotted together, and I say, ‘Do you know the story about those?’
She shakes her head.
‘They grew on the graves of Tristan and Yseult. King Mark burned them down three times, but the hazel and the honeysuckle always grew back.’
She rolls over on her stomach and peers at her reflection in the water. ‘That sounds like the end of the story. Tell me from the beginning.’
I might as well not have bothered with the swim. I’m sweating into my clean tunic more than I ever sweated under my armour. I should go, plead some chore that Gornemant has for me. I can’t trust myself.
I sit down on the bank, what I hope is a respectful distance away.
‘Long ago, when Arthur was king …’
The words are a key, unlocking my anxiety. They relax me; I find I can go on. My mother never told me the tale, but I have heard it many times in Guy’s hall. I’m surprised Ada doesn’t know it.
None of the troubadors I’ve heard entirely agreed with each other, and mine is changed again.
‘Tristan was a knight from Lyonesse, who served his uncle, King Mark of Cornwall.
In my mind, uncle Mark is a fat oaf in a vair-fur cloak that leaves powder on the table.
‘Mark sent him to Ireland to fetch his bride, Yseult the Blonde. Yseult was the fairest maid in all Britain.’
From the corner of my eye, I see Ada winding a lock of her golden hair around her finger. Is she seeing Yseult as I do, with soft blue eyes and a dimple on her chin, lying on a riverbank among the camomile?
‘Yseult’s mother was a sorceress. To ensure a happy marriage, she concocted a love potion and gave it to Yseult’s maid for the wedding night. But on the ship from Ireland, Tristan grew thirsty. He found the bottle and thought it was wine; he drank it. Yseult found him in the cabin and asked to share his drink. She didn’t know what it was.’
‘Where was the maid?’ Ada asks archly.
‘The story doesn’t say. Tristan and Yseult stared into each other’s eyes, and at that moment they fell headlong in love. The walls of the boat seemed to melt away and all they knew was each other.’
I don’t know where Ada’s looking. At that moment, I am very deliberately not staring into her eyes. I’m dizzy; the sun is hot on my skin; I drank too much beer at lunchtime. I’m desperate to make her understand, to tear down the cautious walls of protocol and speak truthfully.
Ada pulls the petals off a daisy and tosses them onto the water. ‘It must have been a strong potion.’
‘When they reached Cornwall, Yseult was married to King Mark. But on her wedding night she crept away from the marriage bed to be with Tristan. She had her maid take her place with the King. In the dark, he didn’t know the difference. Before dawn, Yseult stole back.’
‘It sounds horrible. So dishonest.’
‘She was in thrall to the potion. They both were.’ I’m quick to defend them. In the stream, a brown trout noses against the current. He doesn’t move; he barely twitches his fins. I’m the same, forcing myself to be still in the face of the vast currents swirling about me.
‘Eventually, the lovers grew careless. Rumours circulated. King Mark’s advisors went to the king and warned him he was being cuckolded by his nephew. So Mark set a trap. When
Yseult went to bed, he had his servant scatter flour on the floor. He thought it would show up any footprints left in the night.’
‘Clever.’
‘Yseult saw the trap and warned Tristan. But his love was so strong he couldn’t resist her. He leaped from the doorway and landed on Yseult’s bed in a single bound.’
‘Was that love?’ Ada’s sceptical. ‘It sounds more like plain lust.’
I blush. I’m furiously aware that she’s far more experienced than I am in this area. Suddenly my story of the lovers seems false, like an ill-tuned harp. Embarrassment ties my tongue. I turn away.
‘Go on,’ Ada says gently. ‘I want to hear how it ends.’
‘In his leap, Tristan had opened a wound he was carrying from his last battle. He cleared the flour, but three drops of blood fell and landed in it. When Mark found them next morning, he had the two lovers arrested for treason.
‘He imprisoned Tristan in a tower on the edge of a high cliff. But Tristan managed to pull open the bars on the window and leap down onto the beach. Because he was innocent, God made sure he was unhurt.’
Ada raises an eyebrow. She doesn’t think Tristan was innocent.
‘His squire found him and fetched his horse. Just as Mark was about to set the pyre under Yseult, Tristan galloped into the courtyard. He cut Yseult free from the stake and pulled her onto his saddle. They rode away into the forest where King Mark’s men couldn’t find them.’
‘And?’
‘And they lived happily ever after.’
She throws a pebble at me. ‘Cheat. That’s not the ending I know.’
It’s not the ending I know either. That has a poisoned wound; Tristan lying in agony waiting for a ship with white sails to announce Yseult has come to heal him; Yseult dying over his corpse as she arrives too late. But I don’t want that ending on a summer’s day that smells of honeysuckle.
I throw the pebble back at her. ‘If you’re the storyteller, you get to choose how it ends.’
London
‘Talhouett Holdings SA owns a thirty-five per cent stake in a Romanian mining operator which is currently on trial accused of massive arsenic spillages into the Danube basin.’
Ellie sipped her water. Her mouth felt dry as dust. In the conference room in front of her, a dozen men stared at her from around an oval table. These were the board of Monsalvat Bank: a monochrome conclave of white men and black suits, grey hair and hard grey faces. Blanchard’s tie, deep crimson, was the only colour in the room, as if a vandal had splashed paint across an ancient photograph. Some watched from behind hooded lids, half closed; others pored over the table and wrote indecipherable notes. Several eyed her as if she were something on a menu.
‘The stake doesn’t appear anywhere in their published accounts because, under Luxembourg law, it isn’t considered a controlling stake. But under Romanian law, as the largest shareholder, they’re liable for any damages.’
‘Do the other bidders know this?’ demanded a balding man
with liver spots on his skull. Flecks of spittle flew as he talked.
‘I don’t think so. The only reference I found was a letter in an unopened personnel file.’
‘The letter is no longer there,’ Blanchard added. Ellie cringed. She remembered the hard corners of the paper tucked in the waist of her skirt, the terror it would rustle or fall out as the data-room guard looked her over. If the men in the room guessed what she’d done, they didn’t seem troubled by it.
‘What are the chances of a conviction?’ fired in a hatchet-faced man on the other side of the table.
‘Romania’s under a lot of pressure from Europe to prove that they’re getting serious about environmental regulation. A high-level prosecution team from Germany have flown out to help them secure a conviction. If they find out Talhouett’s involved it’ll make a politically attractive target. It’s not a local firm, and it’ll send a message internationally.’
‘How much?’
Ellie blinked. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘How much money?’
‘Based on recent rulings, the fines might run to several hundred million euros.’
‘And to make the problem go away?’
‘I don’t –’
Blanchard stood, uncoiling like a snake. ‘Thank you, Ellie. I think you have given us all the information we need.’ He ushered her out into the corridor. ‘You did very well. The board are hard men to impress.’
Did that mean she’d impressed them? It was hard to believe from those stony faces.
‘We will take the Talhouett project from here. We need you on another job now. You’ll find the files in your office.’
Ellie walked down the corridor and sank into her chair. New
files had appeared like magic on her desk – even the sight of them made her sick. She’d spent most of the last forty-eight hours preparing her presentation and she was exhausted. At least it had allowed her to put off thinking about the other questions hammering at her mind.
Her phone rang. She stared at the glowing numbers written like runes under the plastic shell.
Why do you think they let you use your phone for personal calls?
‘How did you get on?’
It was Delamere, the lawyer she’d met in the lift on her second day.
‘I survived – thanks to you.’ It was Delamere who’d taken her through the intricacies of European corporate law, hour after hour until her head swam. ‘I owe you.’
‘How about lunch?’
Ellie glanced at her laptop.
Thirty-eight new messages
– to add to the couple of hundred she’d barely read while she prepared her report. And those new files. She thought the pile might have got taller while she sat there, though of course it was impossible.
‘When was the last time you ate?’
She tried to think. ‘There was a pizza yesterday afternoon, I think …’
‘That does it. You’re coming with me.’
He took her to an old-fashioned inn down an alley off Cornhill. A shield hung over the door: a black vulture emblazoned on a red cross. Inside, a marble bust watched possessively over the heavy tables and upholstered chairs that looked as if they hadn’t been changed since the nineteenth century.
‘Boarding-school food, I’m afraid,’ said Delamere, and Ellie
nodded as if she knew what they ate in boarding schools. She ordered fish and chips and a glass of water. Delamere ordered a steak and kidney pudding and a bottle of red wine. The waiter poured two glasses without asking.
‘Cheers.’ Delamere raised his glass. ‘Ellie Stanton. There aren’t many people who present to the board inside their first month here. Blanchard must see something pretty special in you.’
She blushed and sipped the wine, not wanting to look rude. ‘How long have you been with the bank?’
‘A year and a half. Halfway through my tour.’ He saw Ellie’s quizzical look. ‘No gold watches in this company. Monsalvat only hires on three-year contracts. Pay you a fortune then turf you out on your ear – or rather, into some plush job with one of the big boys. I assume Blanchard told you that?’
Ellie was pretty sure he hadn’t. She gave a vague smile.
‘So how are you finding it?’
‘Hard work. But rewarding,’ she added hastily, so as not to give a bad impression.
‘It’s hard all right.’ He wasn’t paying much attention. ‘Monsalvat’s a queer place. Rumour has it there’s a vault under the building stuffed full of treasure. You know, until the seventeenth-century goldsmiths acted as bankers? They had to have strong vaults anyway, so they offered them as secure storage for their customers. You took your gold cup or plate or whatever to the goldsmith, and he’d lock it up for you.’