The Soldier's Dark Secret

Jack lit the fire in the kitchen because it was the one room where there were no bad memories. They set out the picnic they’d brought with them from Marseilles. He had little appetite, though Celeste ate with her usual enthusiasm. The wine was rough and young. He drank only a little, contenting himself with watching her. She seemed different. Despite the tears she had shed, she seemed happier. He remembered the first time she’d broken down in front of him, how appalled and embarrassed she had been. She still hated to cry, but she no longer fought quite so hard not to. This afternoon, when she’d been curled up like a child in the corner of her bedchamber remembering God knows what misery, she hadn’t been embarrassed by his presence. She had shared her ghosts with him as she led him through this loveless place, not hidden them.

An odd melancholy gripped him as he watched her carefully spreading tapenade on a piece of bread. As she always did, she studied the morsel carefully, as if she was thinking of painting it, before popping it into her mouth. She wiped her mouth with a napkin before taking a sip from her wine glass, something else he had observed was an ingrained habit.

‘You’re not hungry?’ she said, looking up from preparing another morsel. She inspected it carefully, gave a satisfied nod and smiled at him. ‘Try this.’

The olives were rich and salty with anchovy. The bread was heavy with a thick crust. Jack nodded, smiled, because she was looking at him so anxiously. ‘Delicious,’ he said.

‘Tomorrow I will go to the church and put flowers on the graves,’ Celeste said. ‘Maman is buried beside Henri. They think she drowned, the people here. They don’t know that she— No one else knows about the letter.’ She handed him a thin slice of the blood sausage topped with a small square of hard goat’s cheese. ‘Try this.’

He ate obediently, aware that she was feeding him as if he were a child or an invalid, but happy to indulge her for the sake of watching her. There would not be many opportunities to watch her in the future. A few more days. A few more weeks. Too many to endure, and not nearly enough. He had already decided he wouldn’t be going back to Trestain Manor while she finished Charlie’s commission. Seeing her like this, conquering her ghosts, he had the strangest feeling, as if she was walking away from him, disappearing into the distance while he stood rooted to the spot, watching her, unable to follow.

Jack shook his head, mocking his own flight of fancy. Celeste handed him a neat quarter cut from a tart of roasted tomatoes and artichoke hearts. ‘I’m sorry I was so—so emotional today,’ she said. ‘It must have been embarrassing for you.’

He pressed her hand abruptly, perilously close to breaking down. ‘It was— I am honoured that you allowed me to— I was just thinking how horrified you would have been, only a few weeks ago, by my witnessing— I am honoured.’

‘You look so sad, Jack.’

‘No.’ He cleared his throat, took a sip of wine, coughed. ‘I did not like seeing you so sad, that is all.’

‘I was sad here, when I was little. I had forgotten how much I cried. I thought I never cried. But I’m not sad now. Today I remembered that it was not all so very bad.’ Celeste gave one of her very French shrugs. ‘Not so very good, but not always so very bad. Thank you for making me come here.’

‘I had no idea, Celeste, that this house held so many terrible memories. I was fortunate enough to have had a very happy childhood.’

‘Though you were deprived of Hector the horse?’ she teased. ‘Don’t feel sorry for me, I’ve done enough of that myself over the years, and you know, I think I have been a little bit self-indulgent. I was never hungry or cold. I have never been in want of a roof over my head. I was never beaten, and I’ve never been reduced to selling myself for money. Selling my artistic soul a few times,’ Celeste said with a chuckle, ‘but nothing else.’ Her smile faded. ‘In Paris, you would not believe the poverty which is taken for granted. Sometimes, I wonder what on earth our so-famous Revolution was for. These people don’t see much evidence of égalité.’

‘These are the people that armies rely on in times of war, sad to say,’ Jack said. ‘I doubt France is much different from England. Or Scotland,’ he added with a nod to Finlay. ‘Napoleon said an army marches on its stomach. I reckon more than half our enlisted men signed up to fill their bellies. Skin and bone, some of them are when they join, and riddled with— Well, what you’d expect from men who have spent their lives in rookeries where they sleep ten to a room, and you have to haul water from a pump fifteen minutes’ walk away.’

‘You seem to know a deal about it.’