Home > The City of Tears (The Burning Chambers #2)

The City of Tears (The Burning Chambers #2)
Author: Kate Mosse

 

PROLOGUE


FRANSCHHOEK


28 February 1862

The woman is lying beneath a white sheet in a white room, dreaming of colour.

Hier Rust. Here lies.

She is no longer in the graveyard. Is she?

The woman is caught between sleeping and waking, surfacing from a place of shadows to a world of harsh light. She lifts her hand to her head and, though she feels the split skin on her temple, finds there is no blood. Her shoulder aches. She imagines it purple with bruises where his fingers pressed and pinched. Pictures now how the tan leather journal fell from her unwilling hand down onto the red Cape soil. That is the last thing she remembers. That, and the words she carries with her.

This is the day of my death.

The woman opens her eyes. The room is indistinct and unknown, but it is a typical room in a Cape Dutch homestead. White walls, plain but for a piece of embroidery with verses from the Bible on the wall. Bare-board floors, a chest of drawers and a nightstand made of stinkwood. On her journey from Cape Town, through Stellenbosch and Drakenstein and Paarl, she has lodged in many such houses. Settlers’ houses, some grand and some small, but each with a nostalgia for Amsterdam and the life left behind.

The woman sits up and swings her legs off the bed. Her head spins and she waits a moment for the sickness to pass. She feels the wooden floor through her stockinged feet. Her white shirt and her riding skirt are stained with red dust, but someone has removed her boots and placed them at the foot of the bed. Her leather hat is hanging from a hook on the back of the wooden door. On the chest of drawers stands a brass tray with an earthenware jug of wine – strong local wine the colour of cherries – and a piece of white bread and strips of dried beef beneath a cloth.

She does not understand. Is she prisoner or guest?

Unsteady on her feet, the woman moves to the door and finds it locked. Then she hears the whistling of a chattering of starlings outside. She laces her boots, walks to the window. A small square frame with thin metal bars on the inside. To keep her in or to keep others out?

She reaches through the bars and pushes open the glass. The sky at dusk in the Cape is the same as it is in Languedoc. White, with a wash of pink as the sun sets behind the mountains. The woman can see the chapel at the top of the town; another small white building in the Cape Dutch style, with a thatched roof and peak-arched windows either side of the arched wooden entrance. Ever since the new church opened its doors to its Protestant congregation a few years ago, it has served as the school. The sight of it gives her hope, for at least she is still within the boundaries of the town. If he meant to kill her, surely he would have taken her up into the mountains and done it there?

Away from prying eyes.

She can make out the fruit orchards, too, growing Cape damsel and damask plums, sweet saffron pears and apples hanging from the trees; in these weeks she has learnt to identify each variety and the farmers who grow them: the Hugo family and the Haumanns, the de Villiers and descendants of the du Toits.

Now she can hear the rise and fall of girls’ voices playing a skipping game. A mixture of Dutch and English, no French, the legacy of years of struggle for control of this stolen land. The Cape is once again a British colony, the main road renamed Victoria Street in honour of the English Queen. Further away, the plangent singing of the men coming home from the fields. Another language, one she does not recognise.

Her feeling of relief is fleeting. Quickly, it gives way to grief at the loss of the journal, the map, the precious Will and Testament which has been in her family for hundreds of years. Though the journal is gone from her possession, she knows every word of it off by heart. She knows every crease of the map, the terms and provisions of the Will. As she waits and waits, and the light fades from the sky, she thinks she hears the voices of her ancestors calling to her across the centuries.

‘Château de Puivert. Saturday, the third day of May, in the year of Grace of Our Lord fifteen hundred and seventy-two.’

Then her sorrow at the loss of the documents turns into fear. If he has not killed her yet, it can only be because there is something more he wants from her. She regrets her caution now. Remembers reaching to scrape the lichen from the stone. She shivers at the memory of the cold muzzle of the gun and his pitiless voice. His shadow, the smell of sweat and clinker, a glimpse of white in his black hair.

She’d drawn her knife, but had only grazed his hand. It was not enough.

The light is fading from the sky and the air is still, though filled with the whining and the buzzing of insects. The children are taken inside and, in every house, pinpricks of light appear as candles are lit. Though she is tired, the woman keeps vigil at the window. She picks at the bread and drinks only a little of the smooth Cape wine, then pours the rest out of the window. She cannot afford to dull her senses.

She sits on the end of the bed, and waits.

The church bell in its solitary white tower chimes the hour. Nine o’clock, ten o’clock. Outside, darkness has fallen. The mountains have faded into shadow. On Victoria Street and the criss-cross of smaller roads and alleyways, the candles are extinguished one by one. Franschhoek is a town that goes early to bed and rises with the sun.

It is not until past eleven o’clock, when she is fighting sleep and the throbbing in her head has started again, that she hears a sound from inside the house. Instantly, she is on her feet.

Footsteps on the floorboards beyond the door, but quiet. Walking slowly, as if trying not to be heard. She has had hours to decide what to do, but it is instinct that takes over now.

She slips behind the door, holding the empty wine vessel in her hand. Listens to the rattle of a key being pushed into the lock, then the clunk of the catch as it gives and the door is slowly opening inwards. In the dark, she cannot see properly, but she glimpses the flash of white hair and smells the leather of his jacket so, the instant he is within reach, she launches the earthenware jug at the height of his head.

She misjudges. She aims too high and though the man staggers, he does not fall. She throws herself towards the open door, intending to try to get past, but he is faster. He grabs her wrist and pushes her backwards into the room, clamping a hand over her mouth.

‘Be quiet, you little fool! You’ll get us both killed.’

Immediately, she is still. It is a different voice. And in the moonlight filtering through the window, she can see the back of his hand. No sign of where her knife grazed her assailant’s skin. And, seeming to trust her, the man releases her and takes a step away.

‘Monsieur, forgive me,’ she says. ‘I thought you were him.’

‘No harm done,’ he says, also speaking in French.

Now, in the silver shadows, she can see his face. He is taller than her attacker in the graveyard and his black hair is shorter, though split through by the same twist of white.

‘You do look like him.’

‘Yes.’

She waits for him to say more, but he does not.

‘Why am I here?’ she asks.

He holds up his hand. ‘We have to go. We have little time.’

The woman shakes her head. ‘Not until you tell me who you are.’

‘We –’ He hesitates. ‘I saw what happened in the graveyard. I’ve had to wait until now. He’s my brother.’

She crosses her arms, not knowing whether she should trust this man or not. Waits.

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