David Dickinson - Death of a wine merchant

A thin sunshine illuminated the last stage of the Powerscourts’ journey from Dijon to Beaune the following morning. They were following the route of the Cote de Nuits in the heart of Burgundy, one of the most famous wine routes in the world. Powerscourt remembered travelling the same path years before with his father when his three sisters had been left in London with their mother while the men went off to taste the wines of France. Louis the Fourteenth, his father told him, had been devoted to the Cote de Nuits, Madame de Pompadour had more expensive tastes with Romanee Conti, and Napoleon never set forth on campaign without a decent supply of Chambertin. Lady Lucy had fallen asleep, still weary from the ordeals of yesterday. Stretching away on the south-and east-facing slopes the vines reached out in ordered rows like soldiers on parade. The villages with the numinous names, Powerscourt remembered, Marsannay la Cote and Gevrey Chambertin, Chambolle Musigny and Nuits St Georges, Vougeot and Reulle Vergy, Vosne Romanee and Aloxe Corton all had a number of features in common. They all seemed to be virtually uninhabited, windows shuttered, gates to the store rooms locked and barred. Sometimes an occasional peasant could be seen tending the vines as they stretched across the hillside but nobody could describe the art of the vigneron as being arduous. And every now and then there was a sudden glimpse of hidden wealth, an imposing new house, a brand new car, a Citroen come to grace the hills and the sleepy villages of Burgundy.

The Alchemist’s brother Marcel had not heard of the terrible storm in the Channel. He had expected Powerscourt to arrive in Beaune the day before. One of his men, Jean Jacques, a slim young man with only a couple of teeth left from street fighting, had been posted at the railway station for most of the day to vet the arrivals. The Alchemist had sent descriptions of Powerscourt and Lady Lucy over from London.

‘They’re not coming, boss,’ Jean Jacques had told Marcel at the end of the day. ‘They’re probably still in London. We could head back to Lyon.’ Jean Jacques thought he had a girl in Lyon.

‘Don’t hurt yourself trying to think, Jean Jacques,’ had been Marcel’s reply, ‘just get yourself back down the station first thing in the morning.’

Powerscourt overheard his neighbours on the train talking in a very excited fashion. Most French conversations, he would have admitted readily, took place in an excited fashion but this was something more. After a moment or two he looked at the date on his newspaper. He stared out at the vines of Comblanchien going past his window. He looked again at the prosperous pair conducting the conversation. They were both in their Sunday best, boots polished, dark waistcoats and great jackets to conceal their girth, hair washed and moustaches waxed. Powerscourt didn’t think they were going to church. Gradually it came back to him. He remembered the hotel-keeper telling his father and himself about it late one night at their hotel in Meursault when the other guests had gone to bed. He remembered even more clearly the very special bottle the hotel-keeper had fetched from his cellar to keep them company. Powerscourt told Lucy the story as soon as she woke up.

‘This is a special day in Beaune, Lucy, one of the most special days in the year. Hundreds of years ago, in the middle of the fourteen hundreds or somewhere around there, a Chancellor of Burgundy and his wife decided to endow a hospital for the sick here in Beaune. It was going to look after everybody, rich or poor. They’d just had a lot of plagues in these parts, I seem to remember. Nicolas Rolin, that was the man’s name. Anyway, he endowed his hospital not with money but with vineyards. And not just any old vineyard but ones that sat between Aloxe Corton and Meursault, two of the finest wines in Burgundy, or anywhere in the world come to that. I think the hospital may have been left other parcels of land and vineyards over the years.’

‘What’s all that got to do with today, Francis? There’s nothing special going on in the wine world today, is there?’

‘There is here,’ said her husband triumphantly. ‘On the third Sunday in November the Hospices de Beaune – that’s the all-purpose name for the hospital and its various sections – have an auction where they sell off all their wines from that year. It’s considered a great honour to have acquired one of these great vintages and sometimes the wine goes for far more than anybody expected. But this is the important thing, Lucy. All the money raised at the Hospices de Beaune auction goes to pay for the hospital, the nurses, the doctors, everything is paid for out of the funds realized at the wine auction. And today is the third Sunday in November.’

‘What happens if they have a bad year, Francis?’ asked Lady Lucy.

‘No idea,’ said her husband cheerfully, ‘I expect they keep some over from the good years.’

Beaune station was packed with visitors when they arrived. Small local trains seemed to have been bringing in more people from the surrounding villages. Lady Lucy noticed Jean Jacques staring with particular interest at her husband and resolved to make appointments with the dentist for all her family as soon as she reached home.

‘Would I be right in thinking, Francis, that you would like to go to this auction?’

Powerscourt laughed. ‘I would, definitely. It can’t take very long and we don’t have to stay till the end. It would be a bit like being in London on the day of a Coronation and not going to see the parades and the procession. This notice here says the auction is to start at eleven o’clock in the courtyard of the Hotel Dieu. I presume God’s hotel must be part of the hospice. We just have to follow the crowd.’

They made their way through streets devoted to the complexities of wine making, shops selling staves to hold the vines, bottle makers, barrel makers, label makers, exporters, blenders, even some shops selling the wine itself. Twice more Lady Lucy noticed the man with no teeth drawing very close to them. His eyes seemed to be locked for the moment on Powerscourt’s back.

The Hotel Dieu had an innocuous-looking frontage. As they handed over what seemed to be an enormous sum of money to gain entrance to the courtyard they saw that they were in an extraordinary building complex. It was long and rectangular in shape. A balcony ran all the way round the first floor. The wings to the left and rear had spectacular roofs of coloured glazed tiles of yellow and blue and red broken up by double rows of dormer windows. Powerscourt thought they had been transported back hundreds of years. A King Henry or a King Edward might ride past on some magnificent horse. Beautiful ladies of the court in long dresses might peep out of the windows. At a high table on the balcony at the opposite end from the entrance there sat four middle-aged men. One was wearing the robes of the Mayor. Another, dressed in white, might have been the superintendent of the hospital. In the very centre, another official-looking figure sat as if he were the centre of attention, the gavel in his hand, his eyes scanning the potential customers on the balcony and in the courtyard below. The table was decorated with bottles of wine, red to the left and white to the right. Right at the front of the table a couple of Nebuchadnezzars holding twenty bottles each kept watch on the proceedings. Powerscourt rather wished that Chancellor Rolin and his wife could return in their fifteenth-century garments to preside over it all. Lady Lucy broke into his reverie and whispered close to his ear.

‘Francis, there’s a man behind us. I think he’s following you. He’s been behind us all the way from the railway station. You can recognize him from the teeth, or rather the lack of them. He can’t be more than twenty-five but he’s hardly got any left. Teeth, I mean.’