Under a Stern Reign Read online

  At one point I was running out of petrol. The area was dotted with quintas, stately homes and farmhouses that had formerly belonged to nobility. Apparently many of them had been converted into hotels and bed and breakfasts run by aristocratic descendants. I drove past a few, the advertising outside and the standardised menus off-putting. Eventually, though, I spotted one rather isolated looking quinta with no big signs by the entrance, so I gave it a try.

  It turned out to be a home and not a hotel. An elderly woman lived there alone. I apologised, my Portuguese lapsing into French. She laughed, chatted with me in an odd French accent and invited me in.

  She turned out to be a very sweet woman, and luckily did not automatically assume that the man at her door was a psychopath or an escaped lunatic. Instead she asked me about myself. She was cooking, and offered me dinner.

  It was a rustic place with a kind of impoverished grandeur. Goats were loosely tethered in the backyard, cats spread themselves on sofas, and a dog lazily licked its private parts on the porch in the evening breeze. She offered me a drink and took a polite interest in my French teaching.

  Paintings lined the hallway, and she took evident pleasure in showing them to me. The first two made me fall silent.

  They were of two very pretty blondes, who looked a little like Natalie. The first had the name Genevieve de Montfort inscribed below; the other was simply called Emelie.

  Next to them was a handsome man of dark appearance with piercing blue eyes. His portrait had a distinctly Byronic quality. He was called Rodolfo de Agora, and he wore some sort of uniform with decorations.

  Beside him was a dark-haired female with captivating eyes and a sensual mouth. She was called Elise de Tranville.

  The old lady informed me that some of them were ancestors of hers, but unfortunately records did not reveal from which of them she was descended. Archives suggested that in their lifetime a number of scandalous rumours were floating around about them.

  While her husband had died and her family moved away, her origins could be traced back to both French and Portuguese nobility, she said proudly. The portraits were painted at around the time of the French Revolution, and the dark-haired gentleman had left them their family name - de Agora.

  This historical theme really got the ball rolling, as I had often planned to write a novel set during the French Revolution. She wanted to help and became excited.

  Two of those painted - Elise and Genevieve - kept journals during that period, she told me. They had not been published, and were still with her family.

  I became curious, partly given the academic value of such journals and partly with a sense of the financial value they might represent. So I asked to see them. But they were no longer with her; her son had taken them to Geneva, where he worked as a financial consultant. He considered them too valuable to leave with her.

  There were, however, some copies made. The journals were getting much the worse for wear by the turn of the century, and in 1921 her grandfather had them typed up. Two photocopies were later made and they were with her.

  Apparently, due to the fading of the family fortunes her grandfather contemplated publishing them, but censorship and decency laws and the sensitivity of their nature prevented him. So, the journals never saw the light of day.

  I became increasingly curious as to what exactly would be considered worthy of censorship, given the age of the texts. The old lady didn’t know, as like many other generations of her family, she was never allowed to read them. And when finally the opportunity arose her eyesight had waned, as had her interest. She had an inkling of what they might be about, though, she laughed mischievously... because of the other paintings.

  We dined together, and after coffee I began to worry about the time. It was then that she suggested I sleep over. Her generous hospitality was so great that I felt guilty as well as odd, but I really fancied the chance of reading the copies of the journals that night, so I accepted, and as the evening came to an end I was thrilled when she finally said she would get them for me. She needed to fetch them from the basement and asked me to accompany her.

  The basement was reached by a long flight of steps, and as she turned on the light she laughed and told me to take a look at the other paintings, whereupon I fell silent again. Painted over two hundred years ago, they were an assortment of nude and erotic works that would be considered broadminded even by today’s standards. They involved subjects reminiscent of the females in the paintings upstairs, as well as a range of others. Their condition was poor, though.

  The old lady smiled to me as I gazed at them, then handed me a bundle of yellowish, dog-eared papers tied loosely together.

  I didn’t sleep that night.

  The journals threw me into a sort of feverishness shortly after I began reading, and it continued long into the early hours.

  As I started I assumed they would more or less blend the everyday lives of people of their classes with some notable, perhaps, fresh accounts of the revolution that would be of academic interest, but instead I found two extremely intimate accounts by two very passionate women. Their experiences merged with each other’s, so the same incidents were described from two perspectives.

  As they were, though, they were disconnected and deeply personal. They were also in antiquated French. So it occurred to me that they could be translated and put together as one book, forming a whole, and with an omniscient narrator.

  The next morning I raved excitedly about the project, and the old lady laughed at my enthusiasm. However, permission would need to be sought from her son, the holder of the original copies. She gave me his details before I left and allowed me to hold on to one of the photocopied versions.

  I faxed him as soon as I got home, outlining a brief proposal, and to my surprise he not only faxed me back twenty minutes later telling me to go to hell, but also telephoned me later to make threats. Unlike other members of his family he had actually read the journals, he explained heatedly. They were scandalous and depraved, he judged, and it was for this reason that he decided they were not to be sold or reproduced in any form. For the sake of heritage they had been preserved as best as possible, but would forever remain in a family vault. I complained over his reaction and he immediately threatened me with legal action, or worse.

  So I grudgingly let it all go. The photocopied journals remained on a shelf in my study and were later transferred to a box in the loft. I got on with work at the university, but it became hard, and I thought it was the latent effects of the break-up with Natalie. It was difficult settling back to a quiet life in a tiny town without our wild afternoon adventures.

  I thought I might also be missing Samantha, or that I was trapped in an immature reluctance to deal with a dull life. Embarrassingly I started flirting more frequently, with Jeanette, with female students, and with a waitress.

  Marianne warned me to take it easy, and then one night as we watched another arty film I drank too much and ended up making love to her.

  It wasn’t so bad. Without her glasses and with a little care she wasn’t unattractive, and a relationship developed between us for the next year. She was a calming and caring influence. I had been neglecting things around the home, and despite her strong feminist leaning, she felt sorry for me and started helping out. I even gave her the keys Samantha had left behind.

  Life went on, and then Marianne began to change. She used contact lenses instead of glasses and wore make-up. She let her hair grow long and had it styled. She’d been going to the gym and there was a distinct femininity about her clothes. It was a complete transformation, and she looked good.

  So it hurt when she announced her plans. She’d decided to resign and take up a post teaching English in Barcelona. I was dumped again, it seemed.

  And then I got a call from Switzerland, from Madame de Agora’s son, Eduardo. It took me a while to remember who he was, and then he asked if I still had t
he copy of the journals. He had retired and regretted his belligerent dismissal of my approach about writing the book. Since retirement he had become an avid reader, and his literary views had changed. He apologised for having been so judgemental, and asked if I’d still be interested in carrying out the proposal I’d made, to which, somewhat surprised, I agreed.

  I completed the book not long ago, and noted that something must have been happening to me while I worked. I no longer feel like the same person as when I started. It’s as if I haven’t been sure of whether the stupor in which the characters held me has somehow taken me over, or if I belong more in it than out of it...

  I’ve called Samantha, and I’ve accepted her invitation to stay with her in Amsterdam for a while. I’ve also called Marianne and she’s invited me over to Spain.

  Lastly I got in touch with Natalie, for the first time in eight months. She says she would be delighted if I went over there too. She’s told her artist friend about me, and two weeks ago she sent me another photo. She looks as stunning as ever, and wondered if I remembered the day she came in to use my photocopier.

  Chapter One

  Count Guillaume de Tranville chewed on his lip and tapped his foot. His anticipation was making him restless as he leaned over the wall of one of the two turrets at the front of his home, Chateau Tranville, a small castle and former mediaeval fortress in the Loire Valley that the de Tranvilles had possessed since the inhabitants of the nearest town, Rency, could remember.

  Guillaume de Tranville was waiting to see a familiar coach winding along the country road and heading for the narrow stone bridge at the castle’s entrance. The count was a widower in his early fifties and had dressed more attentively than usual that day. He was a ruddily handsome man of medium height, with cropped iron-grey hair beneath his wig. He also had cloudy, grey-blue eyes that managed to hide not only the traces of grief that were still buried in him since the death of his wife some six years past, but also the knots of anxiety caused by the turn of events that had befallen France.

  The radical upheavals in Paris after the storming of the Bastille in July 1789 had been too distant to disturb de Tranville in his quiet, provincial abode, and he had not felt it necessary to leave the country along with many of his friends that year.

  But the bloody purges that swept through the land from the summer of 1793 now wracked him with worry. He would often spend his nights pacing nervously up and down in his bedchamber, unable to find sleep.

  The Reign of Terror, and the betrayals, arrests and executions of noblemen suspected of being counter-revolutionaries presented him with far greater danger than ever before. So many of his well-to-do friends and acquaintances in Paris and the provinces had been rounded up like cattle and butchered simply because of their aristocratic blood and a handful of wild allegations by resentful commoners calling themselves officials.

  And he knew the same fate could befall him. Only seven months earlier his harmless, dear old friend, the Marquis de Montvert, had been executed along with all but one member of his family.

  De Tranville remained reluctant to flee France, though, as apparent as the dangers of the revolution now were. His fears had become too well counterbalanced by both the love he felt for his ancestral home and his adulterous relationship with a local woman who would not agree to leave with him, should he ever ask her to.

  She was a buxom, discreetly licentious brunette, and the wife of the local town mayor. She had indulged in numerous affairs during her fourteen-year marriage and the count prized her as a seasoned and urbane lover. They had begun their afternoon liaisons the previous year, and as the relationship grew so his sense of personal safety waned.

  But at nights the fears flooded back and his dreams became interspersed with visions of his old friends being hounded by predatory bureaucrats, chained in stinking dungeons and decapitated before jubilant, bloodthirsty mobs.

  But the turbulent times were far from the count’s mind on that warm April afternoon in the year of 1794, as he eagerly awaited his mistress. Her arrival was seldom punctual and there was still no sight of her. But he could see his dark-haired stepdaughter Elise, walking with their new lodger Genevieve. The sweet young blonde was the daughter of his close friend, de Montvert, guillotined in Lyons seven months earlier.

  Watching Elise walking with Genevieve on the other side of the bridge sent a shiver through the count; the previous day he was gazing at the portrait of his wife in the library. When Elise’s mother had been taken from the world suddenly by pneumonia six winters ago, she left the count too devastated to pay much attention to her sulky teenage daughter. But the girl had truly blossomed. She was now even more darkly beautiful than the sultry beauty he married eight years before.

  It was strange how life could rob him of his wife and now replace her with these two beauties. Together they seemed like night and day, and either of them could stir the passions of even the most lackadaisical of men. They were his, though neither belonged to him in blood, and neither belonged to him in bed.

  For a fleeting moment he imagined himself being the lover of both young women. He studied them and pictured himself showering kisses on the napes of each of their graceful necks, caressing Genevieve’s fair, svelte and silky body, nibbling the inside of Elise’s warm limbs.

  He imagined how he might one day find Genevieve doing something wrong, and chastise her in the library, sweeping his palm down vigorously on those virgin buttocks, as he had once done with Elise, not so long ago. Then he tried to chase the thoughts away as quickly as he always did when they occurred.

  The last time he had punished Elise was a sensitive matter for him. It was two years ago and she had just turned twenty at the time. He had hired a new kitchen maid, a delightful slip of a girl, with long fair hair and doll’s eyes. Genevieve vaguely reminded him of her, and he had only just started to enjoy her young body himself after instructing her to bring him his breakfast of warm chocolate and cakes each morning. He asked her to sit with him awhile on the first morning, and she did so with an enchanting smile. His loins stirred as he watched her coy face and glimpsed the upper slopes of her creamy breasts above her corset, and seeing his manhood rise beneath his nightshirt she had no qualms about taking it in her hand, as if examining some unusual object.

  Despite her virginal looks the maid seemed to be acquainted with such practices. She rubbed it pleasingly and took it in her mouth, and the count was delighted in what seemed to be the start of a pleasant adventure for each morning.

  But soon after he discovered the perverse relationship that had developed between the girl and Elise. The little nymph would have been such a delight, but how had she become entangled in those strange incidents with Elise?

  What wicked spirits had possessed his stepdaughter at that time, and why would she be applying such cruel and intimate treatment to not only another young wench, but to the beauty he had handpicked strictly with his own pleasures in mind?

  He’d had to dismiss the comely maid, with much regret and despite her sobbing tale of innocence. He recalled how lovely he had found her and her caressing lips on that first morning... and how voluptuous he found Elise’s naked body as he thrashed her in his library.

  The punishment had seemed to do the trick, for in the two years since he had encountered no further evidence of Elise’s lusts and inclinations towards other maids.

  It was also strange how mother and daughter could be so alike, he reflected. The hot-blooded woman with long blue-black hair and dark nature seemed to have been reborn in his stepdaughter, Elise. It was not just her looks. The girl carried herself with the same natural poise and confidence in her own desirability. And it was uncanny how, along with her beauty, she had the same way of instinctively instilling fear into servants and peasants alike. It was more than just the firmness of her voice or the coldness of her tone. There was something in the eyes. The same flickering flames when anger gripped her or when she w
as up to mischief.

  How could someone as wilful as Elise now become so close to a girl as gentle as Genevieve de Montvert? As personalities went the golden-haired guest seemed to have little in common with Elise... except youthful beauty, of course.

  The count’s keen eye noted the shapeliness of Genevieve’s slighter contours each time they met, and though they were not as pronounced as those of Elise, they belied the innocence of her soft eyes and announced to the world that the fruit of her womanhood was full and ready.

  Unable to resist the distraction, the count again began to imagine being the lover of the girls. He imagined them naked, which was not hard to do with Elise, for he had seen her so and the delicious vision remained embedded.

  From afar he studied Genevieve intently, savouring her beauty, but his musings were caught short, for a coach was moving along the road leading to Chateau Tranville. It was the wife of the local town mayor arriving at last, so he hastily chased his improper thoughts of the girls away.

  Genevieve did not notice the approach of Madame Margaret Coubette’s coach as she strolled with Elise. Her thoughts were too preoccupied with her companion. Her shock over the arrest of her family had overwhelmed her, but now, seven months on, she was becoming more and more absorbed by the world of de Tranville’s chateau and his stepdaughter.

  Seven months before a faithful elderly maid, Madeleine, managed to hide her when a revolutionary committee led a mob to her home. They took away her parents and her elder brother, Gustav. Madeleine hid her in a broom cupboard while they ransacked the de Montvert estate, and it was the last she saw of her family. The terrible news of their execution was broken to her one week after Madeleine took her by coach to Count de Tranville.