A Love Like Blood by Marcus Sedgwick Read Free Book Online Page B

Saint-Germain.
    I recognised the first stretch of manicured parkland as an old riding gallops, and set off that way. The only road was far behind me now, away to my left. From time to time a motor car trundled along it, sending long shadows of tree trunks raking across the park like dark fingers. Otherwise, I was alone.
    My hunch was right: at the far end of the ride stood a small chateau. Dusk had come and gone and the lights of the building twinkled warmly, a gentle orange spilling from each one across the wet grass towards me, where I stood at the tall black railings. Even in the dusk I could see that though the chateau was old, it had been refurbished very recently, and I knew it was almost certainly the margrave’s.
    Knowing that in the growing darkness I could not be seen from the house, even if someone were to look straight at me, I stood and let my gaze wander over the small but grand building. I don’t know what, if anything, I expected to see, but I considered the story Marian had told me.
    Anton Verovkin.
    An Estonian margrave, to boot. His life in exile presumably began as a small boy on the outbreak of the Revolution – maybe the troubles in 1905 , maybe 1917 . I knew nothing about Estonia, and that was a problem. There was nothing I could find fault with in her account of her patron’s life, but that was perhaps simply because I was ignorant. I didn’t even know if Verovkin was an Estonian name. It sounded more Russian to me, but almost the only thing I did know about Estonia and all the countries in that region was that they had been fought over and owned by many different rulers in their time, Swedish, German, Russian, and so the names of nobility might therefore descend from almost anywhere, and might have been altered half a dozen times as battles were fought and lost and allegiances changed.
    I didn’t even know what a margrave was. Was that higher or lower than a count? I had no idea, royalty not being something I had ever taken much interest in.
    I stared at the chateau.
    There was a little movement inside, and one or two curtains were drawn.
    I shivered. There was nothing to be found here, and I turned back to the town, walking briskly to try and get warm again.
    I had an hour before I was due to meet Marian, and as I came back past the Musée, I saw it was still open.
    I headed inside, to warm up as much as anything else, and wandered around the museum, remembering my last visit there: the American soldiers amused by the Major and me, and little Monsieur Dronne.
    Lost in reverie, I realised I’d wandered into a room of Palaeolithic artefacts. A museum guide stood a couple of feet away; a middle-aged woman looking tired and bored, flexing her ankles uncomfortably from time to time.
    ‘ Monsieur Dronne travaille toujours ici? ’ I asked, and had to ask again because my accent was so poor.
    The guide looked vaguely puzzled.
    ‘ Je ne vois pas qui c’est, ’ she said.
    So he’d retired, or maybe he had died. It was only seven years, but it was very possible.
    An impulse entered me. I wanted to find those little figures I had seen with the Major that day.
    ‘ Madame, s’il vous plaît, la Venus de Bastennes, où est-elle? ’
    The guide looked at me strangely then. I had obviously said something that changed the way she thought about me, and she seemed even more puzzled than before.
    ‘ Non, monsieur. Elle a été perdue. Pendant la guerre. Pendant la guerre, nous avons perdu beaucoup de choses. Trop de choses. ’
    I opened my mouth to argue with her, trying to scrape the correct French together to tell her that I’d seen it, that I’d seen the Venus of Bastennes with my own eyes, and had held it, and other pieces, in my own hands, but then I thought that maybe it was best not to tell her. Who knew what had happened in the last days of the war?
    Maybe old M Dronne had retired and now had a private collection of his own, kept in secret in his little apartment somewhere. Or maybe it had just