THE BURNING CHAMBERS KATE MOSSE (PAN MACMILLAN)

PROLOGUE

Franschhoek 28th February, 1862 The woman stands alone beneath a sharp blue sky. Evergreen cypress and rough grasses bound the graveyard. The grey headstones are bleached the colour of bone by the fierce Cape sun. Hier Rust. Here lies. She is tall, with the distinctive eyes of the women of her family going back generations, though she does not know it. She bends forward to read the names and dates on the tombstone, obscured by lichen or moss. Between her high white collar and the dustcaked brim of her leather hat, the white skin on the back of her neck is already burning red. The sun is too strong for her European complexion and she has been riding across the veldt for days.

She removes her gloves, folding one inside the other. She has mislaid too many to be careless and, besides, how would she acquire another pair? There are two general stores in this hospitable frontier town but she has little left with which to barter and her inheritance is gone, spent on the long journey from Toulouse to Amsterdam, then from Amsterdam to the Cape of Good Hope. Every last franc has been spent on provisions and letters of introduction, hiring horses and a trustworthy guide to lead her through this unfamiliar land.

She drops the gloves to the ground at her feet. A powder of copper-red Cape dust puffs into a cloud, then settles. A black beetle, hard-backed and resolute, scuttles for cover.

The woman draws breath. At last, she is here.

She has followed this trail from the banks of the river Aude and the Garonne and the Amstel, over the wildest seas to where the Atlantic Sea meets the Indian Ocean, to the Cap de Bonne Espérance.

Sometimes the trail has blazed bright. The story of two families and a secret passed down from generation to generation. Her mother and grandmother, then further back to her great-grandmother and her mother before that. Their names have been lost, taken up in those of their husbands and brothers and lovers, but their spirits live in her. She knows it. Finally, her quest ends here. In Franschhoek. Ci gît. Here lies. The woman removes her leather riding hat and fans herself, the wide brim shifting the blistering air. There is no respite. It is as hot as an oven and her flaxen hair is dark with sweat. She cares little for her appearance. She has survived the storms, the assaults on her reputation and her person, the theft of her possessions and the loss of friendships that she had thought were built to last. All to bring her here.

To this unkempt cemetery in this frontier town.

She undoes the buckle on her saddlebag and reaches inside. Her fingers skim the small antique bible – a talisman she carries with her for luck – but it is the journal she pulls out: a soft tan leather cover, held shut by a thin cord wrapped twice around it. Tucked inside are letters and hand-drawn maps, a Will. Some pages are loose, their corners spiking out like the points of a diamond. This is the record of her family’s quest, the anatomy of a feud. If she is right, this sixteenth-century notebook is the means to claim what is rightfully hers. After more than three hundred years the fortunes and the good name of the Joubert family will, finally, be restored. Justice will be done. If she is right. Still, she cannot bring herself to look at the name on the gravestone. Wishing to savour this last moment of hope a little longer, she opens the journal instead. The spidery browned ink, the antique language reaching forward to her across hundreds of years, she knows every syllable like a catechism learnt in Sunday school. The first entry. This is the day of my death. She hears the whistling of a red-wing starling in flight and the shriek of a hadida in the scrubland at the boundary of the cemetery. It seems impossible that a month ago such sounds were exotic to her ears, and now they are commonplace. Her knuckles are white, clasped tight. What, after all, if she is wrong? What if this is an end, not a beginning?

As the Lord God is my witness, here, by my own hand, do I set this

down. My last Will and Testament.

The woman does not pray. She cannot. The history of the injustices done in the name of religion – to her ancestors – surely proves that there is no God. For what God would allow so many to die in agony and fear and terror in His name?

All the same, she glances up as if she might glimpse heaven. The sky here in the Cape in February is the same vivid blue as it is in Languedoc. The same fierce winds catch the dust in the hinterlands of the Cap de Bonne Espérance as they do in the Garrigue of the Midi. A kind of heat, a breath that sets the red earth swirling and scatters a veil across the eyes. It whistles through the grey and green mountain passes of the interior, tracks worn by the movement of men and of animals. Here, in this outback land they once called the Elephant’s Corner, before the French came.

Now the air is still. The air is hot. Little stirs in the heat of the noonday sun. The dogs and the farm workers have taken shelter in the shade. Black railings mark out each plot – the de Villiers family, the le Roux family, the Jourdan family – all those of the Reformed Religion who fled France in search of sanctuary. The year of Grace of the Lord sixteen hundred and eighty-eight. Her ancestors too? In the distance, behind the stone angels and the headstones, the Franschhoek mountains frame the picture and the woman is suddenly pierced by a memory of the Pyrenees: a sharp and desperate longing for home, like an iron band around her ribs. The mountains are white in winter, green in the spring and early summer. In autumn, the grey rocks turn to copper before the cycle begins once more. What she would give to set eyes on them again.

Then she sighs, for she is here. She is a long way from home.

From between the well-worn covers of the leather journal, she takes the map. She knows every mark, every crease and drip of ink, yet she examines it all the same. Reads again the names of the farms, of the first Huguenot settlers who found themselves here, after years of exile and wandering.

Finally, the woman crouches down and reaches out to trace the letters carved on the headstone. She is so absorbed, that she – who has learnt to be vigilant – does not hear the footsteps behind her in the dirt. She does not register the shadow blocking out the sun. She does not acknowledge the smell of sweat, of clinker and leather, of a long journey across the veldt, until the push of the muzzle of a gun is at her neck. ‘Get up.’ She tries to turn, to see his face, but the cold metal is jabbed against her skin. Slowly, she stands.

‘Give me the journal,’ he says. ‘If you do, I will not harm you.’

She knows he is lying, for this man has hunted her for too long and there is too much at stake. For three hundred years his family has tried to destroy hers. How could he let her go free? ‘Give it to me. Slowly, now.’ The coldness in her enemy’s voice is more frightening than anger and, instinctively, her grasp tightens on the journal and the precious papers it holds. After all that she has endured, she will not make it easy. But now his sharp fingers are pinching at her shoulder, driving into the muscle hard and fierce, through the white cotton of her shirt. Her grip cannot hold. The diary falls to the dirt and bursts open, scattering the Will and the deeds into the dust of the graveyard.

‘Did you follow me from Cape Town?’ There is no answer. She has no gun, but she has a knife. When he leans down to pick up the papers, she pulls the dagger from her boot and stabs at his arm. If she can disable him, if only for a moment, she might steal the papers back and outrun him. But he has anticipated such an attack and shifts his weight sideways. Her blade only grazes his hand.

She is aware, just before it connects with the side of her head, of the downward strike of his arm. A glimpse of black hair, divided by a seam of white. Then an explosion of pain as the pistol splits open her skin. She feels the split of blood on her temple, the heat of it, and she falls.

In her last seconds of consciousness, she grieves to think this is how the story will end. In a forgotten corner of a graveyard on the other side of the world. The story of a stolen journal and an inheritance. A tale that began three hundred years ago, on the eve of the civil wars that brought France to her knees.

This is the day of my death.

This is the day of my death. She hears the whistling of a redwing starling in flight and the shriek of a hadida in the scrubland at the boundary of the cemetery.