Free The Splendour Falls by Susanna Kearsley Page A

not a fairy tale, I’ll grant you. But then real life never is.’
    He turned his head to look at me, squinting a little against the sun. ‘You don’t believe, then, in a love that lasts a lifetime?’
    ‘I don’t believe,’ I told him drily, ‘in a love that lasts till teatime.’
    ‘Cynic,’ he accused me, but he smiled.
    We sat on several moments in companionable silence while Paul smoked his cigarette, his eyes half narrowed, deep in thought. I couldn’t help but think again how different he was from his brother Simon. One had room to breathe, with Paul.
    ‘Tragic,’ he said, quite out of the blue.
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    He shrugged. ‘It’s just a kind of game I play, finding the right adjective to suit a place. I try to distil all the feeling, the atmosphere, down to a single word. Château Chinon’s been a tough one, but I’ve got it now – it’s tragic.’
    He’d hit the nail precisely on the head, I had to admit. In spite of all the sunshine and the blue sky, and the brilliant golden walls, the place did seem to be pervaded by an aura of tragedy, of splintered hopes and unfulfilled desires.
    The swift breeze stole the sunlight’s warmth and, shivering, I glanced up.
    ‘Simon’s coming.’
    ‘Damn.’ Paul stubbed his cigarette against the wall, setting off a shower of red sparks that died before they reached the ground. By the time Simon reached us, the telltale evidence lay crushed deep in the gravel underneath Paul’s shoe.
    ‘I got a map,’ said Simon cheerfully.
    Paul’s eyes were knowing, but he held the innocent expression. ‘Map of what?’
    ‘The tunnels, stupid. Now, according to the woman at the gate, there should be something we can see , just over here …’ And off he went again, with purpose, heading for a spreading box tree several yards away. ‘Come on, you two,’ he called back.
    With a sigh, Paul straightened from the wall arid stretched. ‘I told you so.’
    I smiled. ‘Well, not to worry. When my cousin turns up he’ll be glad of the help.’
    It took us some few minutes to find Simon, round the far side of the box tree. At first it seemed he’d vanished into thin air, until we stumbled on the narrow shaft sunk deep into the well kept lawn. A flight of stairs, worn smooth with age and damp with fallen leaves, descended here to end abruptly at a blank stone wall. And at the bottom of those steps stood Simon.
    ‘Hey, come down here,’ he invited. ‘This is really neat.’
    I frowned. ‘But it doesn’t go anywhere.’
    ‘Of course it does.’ He pointed off to one side, into darkness. ‘Come and see.’
    I wasn’t really going underground, I reassured myself. The sky was still above me, calmly blue. But when I reached the bottom step the air was dank, and the only thing that kept me from bolting right back up the steps was the fact that I’d have flattened Paul in the process. He leaned in now, behind me, looking where Simon had pointed. One had to focus past the iron bars to see the dimly stretching corridors beyond. ‘You’re right,’ he told his brother. ‘This is neat. Where does it lead?’
    Simon consulted the hand-sketched map he held. ‘I’m not sure. The woman at the gate said there are tunnels all over the place, not just under the château but all around Chinon. I think she said Resistance fighters used them in the war.’
    It was easy to imagine that. Easier still to imagine the echo of earlier times. I could almost see the torchlight casting shadows on the arched stone walls, and hear far off the furtive rustle of a velvet gown against the eerie silence. I wondered if this was the tunnel Isabelle had passed through, on her way to hide her treasure …
    I was so deep in my imaginings that the sound, when it came, caught me unawares. A sound quite real and not imagined: the quiet closing of a door, somewhere in the dark and stretching shadows.
    I cleared my throat. ‘Did you hear that?’
    ‘Hear what?’ Both brothers looked at me