The Lazarus Vault Part 5

When I tell him. Ellie tried not to look disappointed. Blanchard saw it anyway.

'I am not trying to steal your glory, Ellie. Not at all. But I cannot spare you. I need to send you on an a.s.signment straight away. There is a company in Luxembourg that one of our clients wishes to acquire a stake in. It is a complex arrangement and there are other bidders. At the moment we are performing due diligence. I want you to dig through their files and see if you can find anything that would affect the value of the company, anything they are trying to hide from us.'

In Luxembourg? What would she tell Doug? 'When do I leave?'

Blanchard consulted his watch. 'A car will take you to the airport in ten minutes. You are booked into the Sofitel. Not the best hotel in Luxembourg, I am afraid, but it is where the other bidders are staying. Perhaps you can get to know them. I'm sorry there is no time to pack. Buy whatever you need at the airport, or when you get there. Our local manager is a woman called Christine Lafarge. She can help you.'

Ellie turned to go. Halfway out the door she remembered something.

'Why does the Rosenberg deal have to be completed so quickly? That was the one thing I couldn't work out.'

Blanchard smiled. 'I am glad there are some secrets we can keep from you, Ellie. In a month, the Government will announce an inquiry into the possibility of building a new freight distribution terminal in Woolwich. Major infrastructure investment. The Rosenberg factory will double in value. Six months later, the Government will decide in favour and it will double in value again.'

He sounded so certain it would happen, as if he could lift the veil and peer into the future at will. Ellie remembered the ministerial Jaguar she'd seen outside the bank on the day of her interview.

The adrenaline was draining out of her; guilt had begun to set in. She thought of the old man's stubbornness, the weight of the generations on his shoulders. 'I suppose it'll be good for the business,' she said hopefully.

Blanchard stubbed out his cigar. 'Very good for business.'

Three hours later Ellie landed in Luxembourg. It was hard to believe the day had started waist-deep in rotting cardboard. She breezed through immigration, had no bag to wait for, and walked straight past the man in the arrivals hall holding a sign with her name on it. He had to run to catch up with her.

'This way, please.'

He led her out the front, where a long black Mercedes sat carelessly parked across a pair of double-yellow lines. A woman slid out of the back seat. Slim, elegant and agelessly beautiful, in a grey Chanel suit and diamond earrings, she held Ellie by the shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks.

'Christine Lafarge welcome. Vivian has told me all about you. He speaks very highly. Your journey was not tedious? Air travel is such a bore these days.'

It was the second time in her life Ellie had been on a plane and the first that included free food and drink, let alone an executive lounge and dedicated check-in. She said it had been fine, and watched Luxembourg glide past the window as the car headed for the city.

'I am sorry this is very unexpected. The work is going so slowly, and today one of my team has disappeared pouf off to a new job. Vivian has told you the situation?'

'I read the file on the plane.' Talhouett Holdings, a mining and chemicals concern. The Luxembourg government held a stake which it was trying to divest. Two bidders had been shortlisted, and were now frantically combing through the records trying to uncover any dirty laundry before they finalised their offers. There were two weeks to go.

They crawled through the outskirts of the city, a long strip of square apartment blocks and neon signs. Ellie had expected something grander.

'There wasn't much in the file about the bidder,' she said tentatively.

'Groupe Saint-Lazare. They are our biggest client, both here and across the company. They are also a shareholder in Monsalvat, so there is much pressure on us for success.'

At last they were approaching the heart of the city. The street widened into a grand boulevard lined with handsome neocla.s.sical buildings, then swung along the edge of a vast ravine filled with trees. Ellie could see houses spilling down the steep slopes of the gorge, as if the city could no longer contain itself. Across its depths, gla.s.s office blocks faced vast stone bastions, impossibly high. The setting sun shone off the ramparts and cast them in a fiery, medieval light.

The car dropped Ellie outside the Sofitel. A porter appeared to take her luggage, but all she had was a black shoulder bag she'd bought at the airport with a few toiletries and a change of underwear.

'Vivian said you had no time for baggage.' Christine clicked her tongue. 'This is my fault. Tomorrow I will show you some shops where you can buy clothes.' She gave Ellie an appraising, motherly stare. 'I think they will be very good on you. But now, I am sure you are tired after your journey. My number is in your phone if you need anything. I hope the hotel is not disagreeable.'

If Ellie hadn't had the Barbican flat to compare it to, she'd have thought it was the most perfect room she'd ever seen. The bed alone was wider than her old bedroom; the towels in the marble bathroom were almost as big as the sheets. She ordered a gin and tonic from room service, shutting her eyes to the price, and went out on the balcony. Her room looked straight across the ravine to the old city perched on its plateau. She could see spires, and the turrets of the ducal palace, with the green waves of a forest rippling behind. It looked like a fairy tale.

The beauty of it made her feel lonely. She thought of Doug. She'd tried to ring him before she left, but he'd been in the library, his phone switched off. With a pang of guilt, she realised he didn't even know she was in Luxembourg. She got her phone and hesitated. Unlimited calls, Destrier had said. Did that include calls from abroad?

It didn't matter: Doug's phone was still off. The library stayed open until eight nine in Luxembourg and Doug was quite capable of staying until it closed without coming up for breath. It was something they'd had in common.

She undressed and ran herself a bath. The gin had warmed her blood; she felt drowsy. She'd call Doug in an hour or two. She closed her eyes and let the hot water cover her.

Six storeys down and half a mile distant, the Mercedes prowled along the Boulevard de la Petrusse. Christine Lafarge sat in the back, upright in the deep leather, and spoke softly into her phone.

'She has arrived. She seems very sweet, Vivian; I can see why you like her so much. But are you sure she is suitable?'

She listened while Blanchard summarised the Rosenberg Automation deal. She smiled.

'Perhaps your little kitten has claws. Did you get my package?'

'Destrier has him on the sixth floor.'

'I hope he gets what he wants.'

'He is very thorough. But be careful, Christine. There will be others. Watch Ellie closely.'

X.

Normandy, 1132 I lie on my mattress and listen to the night. I hurt all over. My arm aches from practising my sword strokes, and my chest and shoulders from being practised upon. My hands are raw from cleaning other men's armour, working the bristles of my brush into the thin holes between the rings. I smell of sweat, oil, blood and straw.

It's been three years since I crossed the sea, puking into the bilge as the storm battered us. I've taken service as a squire in the household of Guy de Hautfort. He's my uncle's cousin: my uncle arranged that I should come here to learn the skills of a knight. There are half a dozen of us, some from England, some from Normandy. I think Guy is a good man, but he has little concern for us. We're thrown together like a litter of whelps, to snarl and chase and bite each other until we've found our places.

I'm not happy here. When I arrived, the other boys teased me for my accent and my tonsure. They called me 'monk' and 'Welshman'; they stole my food and threw my clothes in the latrine. I cried a lot in those first months. Now I've learned to hide my feelings. Even when I'm naked, I have my armour.

I knew the history of the Normans before I came here: how they conquer everywhere they go like a plague. First their own duchy, then Sicily, England, Antioch. Now that I'm in their heartland, I understand why. There are no safe havens in Normandy: their entire kingdom is a frontier. There are Bretons to the west, Angevins and Poitevins to the south, French to the east and Flemings in the north. Hautfort is in the north, a particularly troublesome region near Flanders. It breeds hard men. Guy de Hautfort is a squat, barrel-chested man, a flint protruding from the chalky Norman soil. He sparks easily if struck.

Guy's seneschal is called Gornemant. His arms are a quartered shield, each a different colour, like a fool's coat, so we call him the jester. It's ironic: he's a grim, stern man who never smiles. His beard is grey as steel, and his eyes as hard. He rode with Duke Robert and the Army of G.o.d on crusade; he was there when Jerusalem fell. We often beg him to tell us those stories, but he never does. His face stiffens and he blinks, as if a speck of that desert dust is still lodged in his eye.

Gornemant takes charge of our instruction. Day after day, he teaches us when to rein in the horse and when to p.r.i.c.k him with our spurs; how to hold the shield so that it rests on the horse's neck and how to fewter a lance so that it doesn't glance off the enemy. He watches our swordplay and tells us how we would have fared with real weapons: this blow would barely have scratched his arm, that one would have stuck him through or taken off his head. Very rarely, he lets us gallop through the orchard and tilt at the bladders he has strung from the apple trees, or crouch in the branches and try to leap on to a pa.s.sing horse. These are my favourite days. For the rest, we practise on each other. We wear quilted cloth armour, but I think its only benefit is to mimic the cramping effect of chain mail.

If it were only practice at arms, I might enjoy it more. But there are other duties. My lord Guy must be dressed and undressed, armed and disarmed; he needs his food served, his meat sliced, his cup filled. I have to fight even to win the right to perform these ch.o.r.es all the squires want the privilege, to attract his attention. You must be first outside his bedroom door in the morning, the first to his stirrup when he rides in, last to leave the great hall at night. Then you must attend to your own ch.o.r.es: sew up the tears in the cloth armour and try and stuff more rags inside, hoping it will hurt less tomorrow; wash clothes; sweep the grate. The other squires have servants of their own, but my uncle says there is no money for servants for me. He has my father's castle to rebuild, after all. I think he means to build it in stone.

When I lie in my bed, I tell myself stories to get to sleep. My adversary is always the same the black knight as tall as a house. In my stories I meet him in a glade, in a waste forest, a withered heath: I shatter his lance, break his shield, dent his armour and finally cut off his head with a single blow and mount it on a stake.

I always defeat him. But he returns in my dreams, and there he has the upper hand.

Guy has a son called Jocelin, two years older than me. If he wasn't there, I'd be less unhappy. Guy may be as cold and hard as quenched steel, but his son is still in the crucible, hot as the fire that surrounds him. His mood changes with the wind, the same way iron flushes and pales under the bellows. You touch him at your peril.

Indisputably, Jocelin is the leader of our pack of dogs. Like all leaders, he affirms his power by exercising it on the weakest me. He encourages the other boys to play pranks on me. One night he hid a rat in my bed. Another time, when I'd spent two hours painting a boar on one of Guy's shields, he walked by and tipped the bowl of paint across it so that my work was ruined. If I achieve anything, a few words from him can make it feel worthless. If I fail, which I do often, I never hear the end of it.

I hate all the other boys, but I hate Jocelin the most.

My one solace, in my few spare moments, is reading. It's something else they tease me for. Guy's chaplain is supposed to instruct us in the rudiments of reading and writing: most of the boys ignore him, or threaten to practise their swordplay on him. I have no need of him I'm already more literate than I'll ever need to be as a knight but I still seek him out. He gives me books. Not prayer books and breviaries, but proper stories. One day, when I've saved him from a cruel prank that Jocelin was planning to play, he rewards me with a particularly rare book. The pages have been worn thin by many hands, the binding's frayed and one of the gatherings has come unst.i.tched, but the words are like honey on my tongue. The author is called Ovid, and the stories are fantastic concoctions of myth and wonder. I wonder how I have lived this long and never heard them, why they are not as common as water. I think even my mother didn't know them.

One afternoon, I'm lying on my mattress reading when Jocelin comes in. The story's captivated me: I don't notice him enter until suddenly the book is s.n.a.t.c.hed out of my hands, tearing the corner of the page. I leap up, outraged, but Jocelin's already running out the door. If I let him get away, he'll throw the book down a cesspit or into the moat for sure. I race after him, brandishing my wooden sword: along the corridor, down the twisting stair and across the courtyard. A flock of geese squawk in alarm as I push through the door into the great hall straight into the back of someone.

He's too big to be Jocelin. It might be a servant laying fresh rushes on the floor, but servants don't wear camelin coats trimmed with fur. He turns angrily. He's used to collisions on the battlefield, but not in his own hall.

I stammer an apology. 'Jocelin stole my book.'

Guy's eyes switch to his son. 'Did you?'

Jocelin, standing by the hearth, shuffles in his place and flushes. He's embarra.s.sed his father has not immediately taken his side and angry. He opts for defiance.

'Perhaps you want me to kneel down, put my hands between his and swear fealty. Become his liegeman.'

'I want you to give back his book.'

'If he wants it, he can fight me for it.'

He's six inches taller than me, broader and stronger. Whenever we spar, he beats me. But on a battlefield, you can't choose your adversary. I put up my wooden sword.

Jocelin grabs the blade and twists it out of my hand. He throws it into the fireplace. 'If you want to fight me, fight like a man.'

Gornemant goes to the armoury and fetches two small bucklers and two old swords. They're iron, immensely heavy: their point and edges have been made blunt, but the weight alone could break someone's neck. The other boys push back the tables and stand on them, an impromptu grandstand. The servants forget their ch.o.r.es and gather at the back of the hall. One of them tries to take wagers, but he doesn't get any offers. The result isn't in doubt.

We face each other down the length of the hall. Jocelin swings first; I block the blow with my shield and my arm goes numb. It leaves me too dizzy to counter-attack. I step backwards and Jocelin advances. I see the smirk on his face and wish so desperately I could wipe it off. I sway to my left then drive forward. He thinks I'm going for his sword-arm and turns; instead, I swing the flat of the blade like a club, right across his face.

Blood swells from his cut lip. I wanted to break his nose, but perhaps I've dislodged a tooth. Some of the crowd gasp. Gornemant scowls: if I'd done it on the training ground, he'd call me a Welsh savage and hit me.

Jocelin spits out a gob of blood. His eyes are wild, but he knows how to control himself. With terrifying force, he gets his shield rim inside my guard and pushes my sword out of the way. It opens me up: he batters my ribs with three hammer blows, then punches me in the gut with the pommel.

There's no point resisting it'll just hurt more. I let my legs go and fall to the floor. Jocelin's poised for another blow. He looks as if he's ready to break my neck, but his father steps in and puts his hand on the blade.

'That's enough.'

Give me a javelin, I think, and I would make you regret it.

It's not the last time Jocelin and I fight. But later, the swords are sharper and the consequences catastrophic.

XI.

Luxembourg 'You're where?'

Doug's voice, hazy and confused. A silence followed, so long Ellie thought she'd lost the connection. 'Sorry. For a moment I thought you said you were in Luxembourg.'

'They gave me ten minutes' notice. I tried to call but you didn't answer.'

'What are they the Gestapo? n.o.body has to go that quickly.'

'I know it's mad. It's just the way it works.'

A yawn came at her down the phone. 'Did they put you up somewhere nice, at least?'

Ellie glanced at the designer wallpaper and the fifty-inch television on the wall. 'It's OK.'

'That's good. You know where I spent the night?'

'I thought you'd go back to Oxford.'

'I spent it on a chair in the lobby of your tower in the Barbican. I must have rung you twenty times. I tried the bank, the college in case you'd gone back. I was about to call the police.'

'I fell asleep,' Ellie admitted. She'd finished her bath and lain down on the bed, waiting for Doug to get out of the library. The next thing she knew it was six-thirty and the hotel phone was ringing with an alarm call she hadn't ordered.

'Did you sleep well?' Exhaustion slurred his words, but the sarcasm came through sharp and clear.

'Listen, I'm so sorry. I swear I'll make it up to you. We knew it was going to be like this in the beginning.'

'That's why I told you not to do it.'

'I promise it'll settle down.' She looked at her watch. 'I've got to go.'

'It's six in the morning.'

'Seven in Luxembourg. I'll call you tonight.'

'When are you coming back?'

'I don't know.'

His voice became more distant. 'It's like you've stepped through a door and I don't exist any more. You're in your world, and I'm nowhere.'

'I'll make it up to you,' she repeated.

'I'm going back to Oxford. You know where to find me if you want me. Whenever you're back in England.'

'I love you.' But he'd hung up.

Ellie's textbook defined due diligence as the careful examination of a company's records to ascertain all the material facts regarding its financial position. Pry before you buy, the lecturer on her course had called it. In fact, Ellie thought, it was more like trawling your hand through a haystack and seeing how many needles p.r.i.c.ked you.

Talhouett Holdings SA occupied one of the big gla.s.s blocks overlooking the gorge, just up the street from the hotel. The views might have been stunning, but Ellie didn't see them. The moment she arrived, a guard led her like a prisoner to a windowless room at the back of the building, the data room. The Monsalvat team five men and an empty chair huddled around a plastic table at one end of the room piled with files and cups of coffee. The rival bidder's bankers had the other end. In between, and all around, stood racks of steel shelving, overloaded with boxes, folders, discs and papers. The entrails of the company for capitalism's priests to pick over, and read the signs as best they could. They took up so much s.p.a.ce that there was no room for aisles between the shelves: instead, the company had invested in library-grade rolling stacks, digitally controlled shelves on wheels, which rolled and rumbled apart like magic doors to open a path to the shelf you needed.

It was like being stuck in a mundane corner of h.e.l.l. After an hour, Ellie wanted to run screaming from the room except the door was locked, monitored by a security guard who picked his teeth. By lunchtime, when a sullen girl brought sandwiches and soft drinks, she would have paid back her entire salary to be out of there. Her colleagues all came from the local Monsalvat office: they ignored her, and talked amongst themselves in the Luxembourgeois dialect. She got more attention from their rivals. One in particular, a thin man with a greying ponytail and a tie that drooped well below his collar, seemed to be staring at her every time she looked up. He chewed gum incessantly. That afternoon, as Ellie was coming back from the toilet, she met him going the other way. She tried to brush past with a smile, but he angled himself across the corridor to block her path.

'Lechowski,' he introduced himself. He took a pack of gum from his pocket and offered her a stick. 'I must apologise if I stare at you, but you are the only beautiful thing in that room to look at.'

Ellie had heard similar propositions in every walk of her life, from the streets of South Wales to the hallowed quads in Oxford. She knew she wasn't extraordinary to look at, but she had some unwanted aura that gave men the impression they had a claim on her. It's because you look kind, her mother had said, tart as ever. Whatever it was, she still hadn't got used to it.

'There's a lot to get through,' she demurred. She tried to edge forward, but Lechowski stood firm. He wore a cologne that he'd probably bought in Duty Free. It made a sickening confection with the minty air blasting out of his mouth.

'You are staying at the Sofitel?'

Her heart sank. Blanchard had said the other bidders were staying there too. Perhaps you can get to know them.

Reluctantly, she nodded.

'Maybe I see you in the bar this evening. Luxembourg is a graveyard at night, but I know some places to have fun.'