The Mayan Codex

15

Lamia de Bale glanced out of her bedroom window. It was midnight. The house was finally asleep.

Outside her door she could hear Philippe, the footman, resettling his chair on the tilt.

Her first idea had been to switch on the radio. Get him used to the music. But everybody knew that she never listened to music. The little pervert would come straight in to check what was going on out of sheer curiosity. And then he would probably try to inveigle her into bed, as he’d attempted to do on at least three separate occasions in the past year. And this time she was vulnerable. Not his employer’s daughter any more, but a prisoner, with no rights of her own. It wasn’t worth the risk.

She picked up the bundle of sheets, went into the bathroom, and closed the door.

First, she switched on the shower. Then she took the pair of surgical scissors out of the first-aid kit, and began slicing the sheets into strips.

I can’t believe I’m doing this, she intoned to herself. What if I fall? What if I break a bone? They will kill me.

When she’d finished dissecting the sheets, she began the laborious task of twisting and knotting them together. At one point she switched off the shower, and padded through into the bedroom, making sure to switch on the lamp by her bed and turn off the main light, just as she normally did.

Then she tiptoed back into the bathroom and continued with her task.

When she had the sheets knotted together to her satisfaction, she measured them out against her forearm. Their length came to about ten metres. She hoped it would be enough.

Her room was on the third floor of the house, over the courtyard. Once she was safely down, she intended to make inland for Ramatuelle. She knew where Monsieur Brussi, the taxi driver, lived. She had known him all her life. Even though Madame, her mother, had confiscated her purse and credit cards, surely he would agree to take her somewhere – anywhere – on credit?

She unlatched the window, and sifted the knotted sheets through her hands. She’d taken the precaution of tying a hairbrush to the bottom sheet, and she hoped, in this way, to be able to gauge, even in the dark, how much further she would need to drop if her makeshift rope didn’t stretch all the way down to the ground.

When the sheets had reached their full extent, she began swinging them from one side to the other, as gently as she was able. The hairbrush struck something a glancing blow.

Lamia stopped her swinging, and listened, one hand cupped behind her ear. After a minute’s intense concentration, she relaxed. She had learned two things. The first was that there was no one stationed down in the courtyard. The second was that there was a further potential ten-foot drop between the opened shutter that she had just struck with her hairbrush, and the ground.

She attached the free end of the knotted sheet to the central section of her bedroom window. There. Now she’d lost another foot in length. She’d have to drop down maybe eleven feet in the darkness. She racked her brains as to whether there was anything below her that might fall over and give her away. How stupid she had been not to have checked the whole area over while it was still light.

With a final, bemused glance at her room, Lamia eased herself out of the window. She was about to leave everything she had ever known behind her. Security, family, tradition, and emotional ties. For twenty-seven years she had been living a monstrous lie.

The real truth about her life, together with the true motives of the cabal that had adopted her – a cabal to which she had unwittingly and unthinkingly transferred all her loyalties – had only dawned on her following the publicity surrounding her brother’s death. If what she had been doing was by order of the Corpus Maleficus, then just how damaging had all the pathetic little courier jobs – which were all that Madame, her mother, had seen fit to allocate her over the years since her majority – actually been? How much damage had she inadvertently foisted on a society ignorant of the extent – or even the existence – of its own guilt? Now, at last, she would be able to enter the real world unencumbered by any of the baggage of the past.

Using her feet as clamps, Lamia eased herself gingerly down the knotted line. She was fairly fit in terms of her age – tennis, yoga, and the occasional dance class had been her staples – but she was prone to vertigo, and she found herself thanking Providence that she had been forced to conduct her stunt in the dark.

Once, halfway down her ersatz rope, and feeling herself in danger of freezing in fear, she had twisted the sheets violently around one wrist until the interrupted blood flow had forced her to gather her wits together and continue on with her descent.

Finally, after what felt like half an hour but which had, in practice, been no more than a three-minute descent, she encountered the hairbrush with her feet. Carefully, she eased herself all the way down until she was hanging off the extreme end of the knotted line.

Then, without allowing herself to think, she let go.

Her plan was to strike the ground running. Instead, she took two lurching paces and fell to her knees. Instantly, every light in the courtyard switched on. Lamia twisted onto her back, her face contorted in shock. This was new. Madame, her mother, had never thought to safeguard the house with automatic security lights before.

Lamia scrambled to her feet and began to run. Perhaps, when she was out of the courtyard, the lights would switch themselves off? Perhaps, if no one had been watching, they would think that a deer had wandered in from the surrounding fields and triggered the sensor?

The front doors of the Domaine burst open and Milouins emerged. He was carrying a shotgun.

Lamia struck out with all her might for the gap between the garage and the stable block. If she could only make it beyond the outbuildings, she might be able to lose herself amongst the vines.

Milouins threw the shotgun aside and started after her.

The instant he began to run it became obvious to Lamia that she stood no chance at all of evading him. He ran like an athlete, his hands pumping high above his hips, his face in a rictus of concentration.

Lamia looked wildly around. Then she stopped, and fell back against the wall, holding her heart. She watched Milouins approach with her head down, sucking in air, like a feral, tethered mare, facing up to the man who intends to master her.

‘You’ll come with me, Mademoiselle.’

Lamia shook her head.

Milouins took her arm just above the elbow. When she attempted to struggle, he changed his grip so that he was holding both of her arms straight behind her back, where he could exert any pressure he chose against her shoulder sockets. ‘Please, Mademoiselle. I have no wish to hurt you. I’ve known you since you were a little girl. Walk quietly with me. I’d be beholden to you.’

Lamia let out a sob of frustration. She nodded her head.

Milouins relaxed his grip. He contented himself with walking two paces behind her, confident in his ability to catch her once again should she attempt to flee.

The footman who had been guarding Lamia’s room skittered down the steps at the front of the house, the leather soles of his shoes echoing off the marble cladding. He stopped and made a face at Milouins as the pair came abreast of him. ‘The old woman will massacre me for this.’ He scowled at Lamia. ‘I hope she gives you to me to do over. I’ll stick a plastic bag over your head so I won’t have to look at you.’

‘Shut up,’ said Milouins. ‘And go and wake Madame la Comtesse.’

‘She’s up already. The burglar alarm must have gone off in her bedroom when you came through the front door without neutralizing it.’

Lamia, Milouins, and the footman stood in the hall, looking up towards the stairs.

The Countess, in her dressing gown, and accompanied by a similarly clad Madame Mastigou, was descending the staircase to meet them.

‘What shall we do with her, Madame?’ Milouins looked marginally uncomfortable, like an axe-man at a royal execution who is suffering from a sudden onset of lese majeste.

‘Do with her?’ The Countess came to an abrupt halt. ‘Get Philippe to tie her up, feed her a sedative, and then lock her in the Corpus chamber. That way we can all get some sleep. There are no windows in there to tempt her towards further recklessness. I shall decide on her future in the morning.’