‘What were you going to say?’
Dusk obscured the look of unease on the boy’s face. The young woman was about to repeat her question when Clément cried out:
‘Madame, Madame … Look! It’s a miracle!’
Agnès ran over to him. He was kneeling on the ground and holding up a piece of stone flecked with reddish soil. She all but snatched it from him, turning it over in her hands, examining it from all sides, dumbfounded, stifling her relief, the violent joy welling up inside her. She prodded the tiny specks of clay that appeared to cling to the rough surface of the magnetite. The infinitesimal pull, their resistance to her attempts to dislodge them, and the way they clung on again the moment she took her finger away brought tears to Agnès’s eyes.
Clément stammered with emotion:
‘… Ah … The stone from Magnesia attracts the soil! This is the proof, the scientific proof that the soil is rich in iron! It’s a mine, Madame. Your barren La Haute-Gravière is an iron-ore mine and you will have the right to exploit it until you die.’
Agnès understood the cutting reference to Mathilde, whose cruelty and betrayal had haunted her for weeks. Her daughter would never enjoy the riches of La Haute-Gravière – if riches they were, and Agnès was convinced of it – not while her mother was still alive, unless she remarried. And neither would Eudes de Larnay. God had given her the passive means with which to avenge herself on her half-brother. She addressed a silent prayer to Clémence, to the voices, the benevolent shades that had helped her during her imprisonment.
She fought the urge to fall to her knees on the soil she had so long despised, loathed, and beg its forgiveness, pay homage to its endurance. No doubt had she been alone she would have given in to this strange act of contrition. Instead, she bent down, dug her fingers into the earth she had so hated, and, grasping two muddy handfuls of clay, lifted them to her lips. She kissed the soil, inhaling the bitter metallic odour as if it were her life blood.
When she opened her eyes, Clément was staring up at her, a small, poignant figure in the middle of the unremitting bleakness.
‘Are you all right, Madame?’
‘Yes … dear Clément, I am feeling better, and it is a sensation I had long forgotten. I’m just a little overcome … And I’m ravenous!’ she added.
‘You’re getting your health back, then. Let us leave, Madame. Night is falling.’
Agnès led Églantine over to a tree stump, which she used to help her mount the huge mare more easily and less painfully. She called to Clément. The youth mounted in turn and let out a sigh as he slumped against her.
They headed for home, the animal keeping up a steady speed, spurred on by the prospect of the stable. Agnès thought aloud:
‘Let us suppose – for I still feel it is too good to be true – that La Haute-Gravière really does contain iron ore. And, speculating further, let us assume that the mine is rich …’ She trembled with nervous excitement and whispered: ‘What would we do with it? I mean how do we extract the ore? How do we turn it into knives, swords and coulters?’19
‘Monsieur Joseph once again comes to our aid. Believe me that man knows everything – he even knows about the laws governing mining! We’ll need large amounts of fuel, which your forests will supply. We’ll also need miners, but we can find those among your serfs and labourers,20 providing you respect the law that prohibits mining and conversion during harvest time because it would be detrimental to the wellbeing of the soil and the subsistence of your serfs.’21
‘Do such laws exist?’
‘They do, Madame, and with good reason.’
‘And how in heaven’s name do you know all this?’
‘Master Joseph told me.’
‘Is your Joseph a lawyer too?’
‘He is everything, Madame. He insists that to be versed in the laws of the land that gives you refuge is to avoid unwelcome problems.’
‘Then he is a wise man.’
Clément went on to list the drawbacks:
‘We will also need a river with enough water to drive the mill that will work the bellows and allow us to cool the beaten metal. However, we have no mill or powerful watercourse … But there are plenty nearby, and with our drays and oxen we can carry the ore to one of them in exchange for a fee and a percentage of our profits, which we will need to negotiate down to the last penny.’
‘You have an answer to everything, my clever Clément,’ Agnès said, smiling and stroking his hair.
Another thought occurred to her, which dampened her enthusiasm and she added:
‘I tremble with rage at being forced to hand over half of all the extracted ore to that scoundrel Eudes, a quarter of which he must pass on to his overlord, the Comte d’Authon.’
As she spoke she was struck by the sudden realisation that Eudes knew about the mine, or suspected its existence. He had not plotted her arrest by the Inquisition only out of resentment and frustrated desire. He had not turned Mathilde against her out of simple revenge. He wanted the iron ore. If Agnès had been found guilty of heresy or even complicity to commit heresy, she would have been stripped of her dower, which Mathilde would then have stood to inherit. Eudes needed only to shower the girl with dresses and jewellery – at no cost to himself since they had all belonged to his dead wife, dear Apolline. Unless he considered it more expeditious to shut the young woman away in a nunnery once he had become her legal guardian.
Agnès felt choked with resentment. She was surprised by her own reaction. Had Eudes’s debauchery and perversity – however shameful – excused his actions in her eyes? Perhaps. Perhaps she had excused Eudes in part because she saw in them a sign of mental derangement. In contrast, money, the lure of profit, all the plotting in order to lay his hands on his widowed half-sister’s dower revealed that only his rotten, scheming soul was to blame.
After a few moments’ silence, Clément remarked in a voice too casual to be innocent:
‘I see no way around that – at least while you remain Lord d’Authon’s under-vassal.’
Agnès