Well In Time Part 4

Maria-Elena was embarra.s.sed and had no idea how to answer, so she fell back on the gracious habits instilled in her by the elder Mansart women. "But Monsieur le Comte, how could one not have a lovely time with one so gracious as yourself?"

Henri de MontMaran threw back his head and laughed, a sound still hearty despite his ninety-plus years. "Oh, non-non-non-non-non, ma cherie, do not be alarmed. It's just that you sounded exactly like your grandmother, when she spoke those very words over seventy years ago! I knew then that the Mansart women were gently reared and not easily dismayed, and I see nothing has changed!"

The meal proceeded in a light-hearted vein. At its conclusion, Maria-Elena, feeling by now relaxed and a little giddy from the wine, was again guided by the Count into a smaller room walled with books. Here, too, a bright fire awaited them and the Count seated her near it.

Saladin, the ancient saluki, came in just as the Count was about to close the door. Head down, his long toenails clicking on the glowing parquet, the dog came to the fire and with a groan, lowered himself to the rug beside his master's chair.

"Now, ma cherie"-the Count began, settling himself with only slightly less stiffness-"we have pa.s.sed our first evening quite pleasantly, and I should let you trundle off to bed. But you must know that the true vice of the very old is talk and also that we cannot sleep well at night. These two factors make a lethal combination for one's poor, captive guest, I fear." He smiled sweetly at her and then leaned forward, capturing and holding her eyes with a mesmerizing stare.

Maria-Elena was suddenly aware of him in a very unexpected and uncomfortable way. A mysterious power exuded from him that had been masked completely by his former charm. His eyes glimmered in the caverns of their sockets and his voice was commanding.

"Rather than sending you off to sweet dreams, I must hold you prisoner here awhile. We have a great deal to discuss, you and I."

Maria-Elena gazed at him in fascination, studying the long, thin nose, its bridge bent aristocratically, the high cheekbones and fine, round brow that made him, even in great age, a handsome and imposing man. To what could he be referring, she wondered? Was he somehow aware of her difficulties with Grand-Mere? Had he read between the lines of her few comments about the situation?

A cold wind rattled the panes of the long windows. A draft laid itself across her lap in an icy blanket and made the fire leap and dance. She was suddenly aware that it was winter-true winter such as was never experienced in Mexico-and that she was in a faraway land, in the home of a man she knew and trusted only from tradition. She felt the small hairs along her arm p.r.i.c.kle and rise, perhaps not from the chill air.

Madeleine entered silently through the high paneled door, bearing a silver tray with demita.s.ses of black coffee, a decanter of Cointreau, and two tiny, gold-rimmed gla.s.ses. She set it on a small tea table beside the Count and went wordlessly to pull the drapes.

Maria-Elena was aware of ambient sounds as if they were words spoken with deepest sincerity-the thin trickle of liqueur into crystal, the rough slide of wooden curtain rings across the iron rod, the soft flapping of velvet as Madeleine flounced drapes together to seal out the draft, the snapping of sparks, the soft, irregular breathing of Saladin, and the muted click as Madeleine departed. And behind it all, the thin, high wail of wind, blowing up for a storm.

"I'm afraid I don't know to what you are referring, Monsieur le Comte," she said at last, in a small voice. "What matter in particular must we discuss?"

His elbows on the arms of his chair, he held his small gla.s.s in both hands, observing her through it as a child might look through a crystal prism, delighting in distortion. He remained silent for quite a long time, during which Maria-Elena was acutely aware that they sat in a small cave of firelight, while the rest of the room was curtained in deep shadow. An eerie sensation again covered her with a chill.

"You did not know, of course," he began suddenly, "that you are sleeping tonight in my wife's room? No, to be sure, you would have no way of knowing that. But I want you to know that you are the first of the Mansart women to be accorded that honor." He continued to stare at her in a way that made her distinctly uncomfortable.

"And you would know little of my wife, of course. Her brief transit through my life fell between your grandmother's sojourn here and your Aunt Isobella's, which came a decade or so later. Dearly, as I have loved the Mansart women, I have not spoken of my wife to any one of them-or to anyone else for that matter-these many years. One does not complain of the strokes of ill-fate. But now I feel the necessity to speak of this matter." He hunched his shoulders as if he, too, felt a chill, and settled deeper into his chair.

"Did you know that I had, as well, a son? Perhaps your grandmother has told you? And that he was killed in the War? One of those brave and foolhardy young Resistance fighters, betrayed by his own countryman-a baker, I believe-into the hands of the Gestapo. Shot at dawn at la Conciergerie, I'm told." He looked down to his lap, his lips twisted in an agonized grimace.

"You are wondering why I am telling you these things, I know," he continued, his voice hoa.r.s.e with emotion. "Is he senile, you are wondering? Is he besotted with the curse of the aged, to endlessly dredge up the past? But no..." his voice fell almost to a whisper, "there is still reason to my story, chere Maria-Elena, so please hear me out, because I am about to lay a tremendous burden on you. And at the same time, to gift you with the rarest of gifts."

He pushed himself from his chair, threw a log on the fire, and went to fuss with the draperies at windows now rattling incessantly in the rising wind. a.s.sured that no gap in the rich blue velvet was allowing a draft, the Count returned to his chair and filled their gla.s.ses again.

"It would be usual, you see, for me to tell these things to my own child..." His voice broke and he waited, head down, to regain his composure. "But as we have seen, I have none."

He sipped his Cointreau. "Or perhaps to some relative. But all mine are dead. Except for a small lot of them that took off for America during the Revolution, fearing for their heads. They landed in Indianapolis-a place one can scarcely imagine, let alone inhabit. They sent home once, I think it was in the eighteen-fifties, for vines of wine grapes. They had a wastrel son who intended to begin a vineyard in California, where he had gone to the Gold Rush.

"My grandfather sent them, of course, all wrapped and crated. They went around Cape Horn in a sailing s.h.i.+p and actually reached San Francisco alive. For all I know, they may be growing there yet."

He paused to poke at the fire with an ornately wrought poker. "After that, we lost track of them. Oh, we've received various announcements of marriages, births, commencements, and deaths over the decades. Announcements, I might add, which are no longer handwritten but purchased from stationery companies, with lines to be filled in with pertinent information. I fear this branch of the family, therefore, has succ.u.mbed to the American way, as it is called, and cannot be entrusted with what we are about to reveal."

Maria-Elena listened, bemused. How interesting to speak of the generations of one's family in the multiple we, as if each generation were party to and answerable for the decisions and deeds of all preceding and succeeding generations. She wondered if she unconsciously yielded such total identification to her own family.

The Count continued to lay out his argument: "Non! I distinctly feel that this information is for someone who comes of generations of careful breeding and rearing. Rarefied genetic stock. Call me a sn.o.b. Tell me I am unbearably ultraconservative. This has nothing to do with politics nor the rights of the poor."

He leaned forward from the shadows of his wing chair and peered at her. "I understand from your Grand-mere that you are psychic? Is that true?" His eyes glowed within their pools of shadow as he stared at her.

"Oh, oui, monsieur!" she stammered. "It is true. Since childhood, I have had dreams. In them, a beautiful lady comes to me and tells me things. The information is always, it proves, correct. I can't take credit for knowing what I know. It is she who tells me. But I suppose you would call me mildly psychic as a consequence."

The Count nodded his head slightly in approval, so that Maria-Elena hastened to add, "But I must tell you that these dreams are extremely rare. And as I become older, they are increasingly so."

The Count regarded her now with a fixity that was almost trancelike. The atmosphere between them, within the little circle of firelight, was charged with potent expectation and a mysterious immanence. Saladin groaned at his master's feet and s.h.i.+fted restlessly.

"As you may know," the Count began again, "my family is extremely ancient. We have been present for every major turn of French history at least since Charlemagne's grandfather was walking this Gallic soil. What you do not know, because no one outside the family has ever been allowed to know, is that we have a family secret even more ancient than our lineage. And because there is now no one left in this family to receive this secret, I am pa.s.sing it along to the Mansart clan with my blessings," he said with a momentary surge of his former charm. "So bear with me, while I tell you a story that will amaze you...Do you need coffee?"

"Coffee? Oh, heavens, non! How could I possibly drowse through this?" Her heart felt swollen with antic.i.p.ation and curiosity. Only vaguely in the back of her mind, where unpleasantries so often are deposited, did she wonder if this gift the Count was about to bestow were something she might actually want and not, at some future date, regret possessing.

The Story of Le Comte Henri Charlemagne de MontMaran

"As you may know," the Count began, sinking so deeply into his chair that Maria-Elena could no longer see his face and so perceived his voice to be issuing from a shadowy void within its wings, "there was once a region in the south of France referred to as the Languedoc, because the tongue-langue-of its people p.r.o.nounced the word 'yes'-oui-as oc. The area was ruled over by the Count of Provence, and the speech of one of his va.s.sals, upon his arrival in Paris, would be almost unintelligible in that more northerly city.

"I am telling you this because it is difficult for us in this modern age of relative stability to imagine the divisiveness of the thirteenth century, which is where my tale begins. It seems that every petty chieftain who could raise a scruffy army could set himself up as a count or a duke.

"Consequently, the waging of war was endless. City fought against city and duchy against duchy. If they were lucky enough to have a strong leader who could unite a few of these warring areas, then there would be war of nation against nation.

"It was a terrible time. The clergy alone, and a few of the n.o.bility, could read and write. The vast majority of the populace existed in the starkest ignorance and superst.i.tion and were really little elevated above the beasts they tended.

"It was against this flood tide of desperate ignorance and violence that a strange phenomenon arose in the Languedoc region. A group of people deliberately separated themselves from the Catholic church. These heretics, as people deemed them, called themselves the Cathari, which simply means 'Pure Ones'.

"Disgusted by the many degeneracies of the church, these people sought after holiness by attempting to dispense entirely with the material side of life. In the extremes of their belief, many refused to marry, giving rise to terrible rumors of debauch among them, which I believe modern scholars have largely refuted. They were, as well, vegetarians, refusing to eat flesh, eggs, or cheese."

Maria-Elena, already engrossed in the tale, gazed into the fire, quietly sipping her Cointreau. Like the rising wind outside, the Count's deep voice, lubricated by eloquence, seemed an element of eternity.

"Now, you would think that such people would be so completely harmless and inoffensive that no one would bother them and that they would be able to live long and peacefully, communing with G.o.d. But like most true innocents, they failed to consider the power of politics in the larger world over their very small and local existence.

"Now, the First Crusade occurred in 1094 or thereabouts. It had been very successful in uniting the squabbling clans of Europe and in directing their warlike energies against a common enemy in the Holy Land. So after Urban the Second, succeeding Popes used the same ploy when their political fortunes seemed shaky or when it suited other of their purposes.

"Pope Innocent the Third-and if ever a man were misnamed it was he-was the head of the church at the time of which I speak. And he had not one, but three Crusades at his command at the opening of the thirteenth century. These were directed, however, not against the Infidel in the Levant but against the inhabitants of Europe, for the pope now applied the name 'crusade' to all wars in which he was interested.

"One war was waged against unbelievers in Eastern Europe, the Prussians. In the West, there was a Crusade against the Saracens in Spain. But of the three, the Crusade against the Cathari, called the Albigensian Crusade, was the most terrible and unjust.

"The spirit of the times was such that the church, and the church alone, could decree one's beliefs. The Cathari, who despised marriage and s.e.x because it perpetuated life on earth, were viewed, therefore, as a cult of madmen. They committed the ultimate heresy, as well, in believing that an individual might commune directly with G.o.d, without the intermediary of a priesthood.

"Now nothing could be more an anathema to a bureaucrat-and the church is the most pernicious sort of bureaucracy-than the notion that someone is trying to do away with his job. The purpose of any bureaucracy is, after all, self-perpetuation and maintenance of the status quo. To Pope Innocent, this Albigensian madness seemed so dangerous that he decided it must be suppressed by force. He therefore ordered a Crusade against Raymond, Comte de Toulouse, who had the temerity to attempt to protect those among his subjects who insisted on rejecting the yoke of Rome.

"The Count's realm was, at that time, the fairest and richest district in Europe, and so the prospect of plundering it soon raised an army of great size. A coa.r.s.e and brutal man, Simon de Montfort, became their leader. He was called by the misnomer The General of the Holy Ghost. In the name of G.o.d, this man, who for all his brutality was a skillful general, began a reign of terror and persecution that is ghastly to consider.

"In battle after battle, he was victorious. After each of these, all captives were put to death. No one was spared. Women, children, and the elderly were equally murdered along with their defeated soldiers. It was a bloodbath. This was at the command of Pope Innocent, who, when asked how to tell a Catholic from a heretic, replied, 'Slay all; the Lord will know his own!'"

The Count's voice broke with emotion, as if the intervening eight hundred years had done nothing to dim the horror he recounted. To break the spell, he said lightly, "I hope I don't make you feel as if you were plunged back into some dreary grade school history cla.s.s. I simply am setting the stage, because it is during this time that the first coherent history of my family emerges.

"You see, we did not always have our lands here in the Loire valley. This castle is part of a property that was acquired much later. Originally, we came from Languedoc and it was there that the dark stain of fate seeped into the warp and weft of our family.

"We were not then, you see, MontMarans, because this, this chateau, sits on Mount Maran. We were then of the town of Muret. My ancestor was called simply Richard de Muret. He was a va.s.sal under the Comte de Toulouse and so was under duty to his liege to raise an army to fight the oncoming Crusade. It was a terrible decision not only for him, I am sure, but for men like him who were both staunch defenders of the True Church but also loyal va.s.sals to the Count. Richard chose to support the cause of the Count and paid, in the end, a high price for his loyalty.

"But there was more to it than that. There was a secret that influenced his decision, I am sure-his wife, Eleanore, came from a Cathari family. Not only that, but despite her decision to marry and bear children, she practiced, in secret, the heretical forms of wors.h.i.+p in the family chapel and her husband, while not completely won over, had great sympathy for her pure and simple ways.

"These two had two children, a son named G.o.dfrey and a daughter, Blanche. As the army of the Crusade advanced, burning, looting, and murdering as it came, Richard and Eleanore made a desperate decision. Sensing that their cause was already lost before it was truly undertaken, they arranged to have the children removed from the south to St. Denys, near Paris, where his brother was a member of the bishop's staff.

"The children, both under the age of twelve, were mounted on swift horses and given into the responsible hands of Richard's closest lieutenant. They left Muret in the middle of the night, leaving behind heartsick parents whom they would never see again.

"That was in 1212, and one year later, you see, the Battle of Muret put an end to all organized resistance on the part of the Cathari. The banner of the Cross waved in victory over a devastated land; the armies of the General of the Holy Ghost performed unspeakable atrocities and orgies, surrounded by their booty; and Pope Innocent was informed that false religion and immorality had been extirpated. Isn't it ironic how inextricably mixed are tragedy and comedy?"

The Count paused in thoughtful silence. Outside, the night wind was rising sharply as the leading edge of the storm advanced. Despite the warmth of their fire-lit circle, the peaceful crackling of the hearth fire and the slow, lambent flame of the candles, the wind's incessant violence created a background of eerie tension.

The long French doors and windows rattled in their cas.e.m.e.nts. Waves of air rolled against the castle walls, cras.h.i.+ng like the sea. As the night wore on into the early hours of the next morning, its ba.s.s voice rose to a shrieking wail that was a Greek chorus of woe, underscoring the tale of terror and loss related by the Count.

Maria-Elena had worried at first that with a fine, rich dinner and two gla.s.ses of Cointreau behind her, she might fall into a stupor of relaxation and fatigue. But the Count was a fine raconteur. His deep voice was nuanced and compelling, rising and falling contrapuntally with the wind.

She leaned back in her chair and its deep and brocaded wings sheltered her like guardians standing watch. Her imagination was electrified and she could almost see the terrible doings of 1213 enacted amidst the fierce embers on the hearth.

Saladin wheezed in his sleep and turned, groaning, onto his side. A log s.h.i.+fted on the grate and collapsed in a wave of lava-red coals. Shadows reached out of the corners of the room as the fire burned low and the candles guttered in an errant draft.

It was a timeless scene. She felt it might actually be 1213. It would not truly surprise her to hear music of lutes from the hall or laughter of a banqueting crowd. Time had a limen here, she sensed, a flexible portal where the centuries could mix and pa.s.s one another, like celebrants at a masked ball.

The Count cleared his throat and recommenced his tale: "Because they were members of the n.o.bility, Richard and Eleanore were given more important deaths than the run-of-the-mill citizen, who was simply put to the sword. Eleanore was burned at the stake in what was left of the town square. And Richard was drawn and quartered before her, as she stood awaiting her fate. These are terrible matters and I don't wish to distress you, but this is how it was at that time of unbelievable barbarism.

"The children, however, arrived safely in St. Denys and were welcomed kindly into their uncle's home, only to fall into a still more curious fate. It is, in fact, one of the strangest occurrences of that strange time, in which those two children were full partic.i.p.ants.

"It is hard to imagine now just what it was that motivated the Crusades. Pilgrimage was an important part of Christian wors.h.i.+p then, and to go to the sacred shrines of the East and to the Holy Sepulcher itself was, of course, the ultimate such journey.

"Since the First Crusade of 1094, the Holy Land had gradually fallen again into the hands of the Infidel and Christian pilgrims, while still allowed access to the sacred sites, now returned home with reports that the shrines were being desecrated by the Musalman and that by virtue of being under their rule, these sacred places were in jeopardy.

"We of this century, who hold nothing sacred but our bank accounts, are hard put to imagine the furor this caused and the fighting spirit it aroused. Wave after wave of English, French, and German armies embarked on the futile mission of reclaiming holy soil.

"It was an age of faith, not reason. Yet, religion was at a low ebb and while men fought under the banner of the Cross, few knew the true teachings of that emblem. The instruction they received from the church of the time was a system of absurd superst.i.tions, laced with the questionable deeds of the saints and martyrs."

The Count stopped to poke the fire and to add another log. Glancing to make sure Maria-Elena was still conscious, he smiled encouragingly and sank back within the wings of his chair. He cleared his throat briefly and began again to speak.

"Consider for example, if I may digress, the Feast of the Fools observed each year in all the cathedral cities of France. On that day, the priests and clerks met and elected from among themselves an archbishop and a bishop. They were arrayed in great pomp and taken by procession through the streets to the cathedral.

"Once inside, these solemn men of the cloth began orgies of the most sacrilegious nature. They wore masks and dressed in the skins of animals or as women or buffoons, and then cavorted about, screaming blasphemies and singing obscene songs. They ate, drank, and played dice, using the altar as their table.

"They vied with one another, exerting their ingenuity to devise desecrations of the place, such as burning their sandals for incense. They sometimes dressed a donkey as the pope. The debauch was not suitably ended until drunkenness, nakedness, and lewdness of all sorts had taken the day. This was the state of the church in those times-and great must have been the credulity of a people who would follow such leaders!

"The whole idea of the Crusades and the reconquest of Jerusalem was really a kind of collective myth and a ma.s.s delusion. And no event of that time was more deluded than the ma.s.s movement into which G.o.dfrey and Blanche de Muret were about to be swept.

"It seems that in that same spring of their flight to safety in 1212, a young shepherd named Stephen from the village of Cloyes, just west of Orleans, heard the call. That is, he claimed to have had a divine vision that he was to lead a great crusade to retake the Holy Land.

"What was unique in this was that Stephen was only twelve years old, and the army he intended to lead was to be made up not of soldiers but of unarmed children, who would not conquer the Infidel by force but convert him through the strength and sweetness of their faith. He claimed as well to have met Jesus, face to face, while idling in the fields with his flocks. Jesus had brought him a letter proclaiming the validity of this mission, which Stephen was to show to the King.

"No one knows for sure where it came from, but the child did have in his possession a well-written letter on fine parchment, to that effect. Since neither he nor anyone else of his acquaintance in the miserable hamlet of Cloyes could either read or write, his claim was taken, locally at least, for truth.

"There are two interesting theories about how he came to be in possession of that letter and of the grandiose ideas to which it pertained. Neither, I might add, have to do with divine intervention!

"One is that emissaries of the pope, seeking to stir up still another crusade to liberate the Levant-that being the prime foreign policy of Rome at the time-duped this simple shepherd into believing he had been divinely visited and provided him with a letter to prove it.

"A second, even less plausible tale held that The Old Man of the Mountain, the mysterious Chief of the a.s.sa.s.sins who lived in an impregnable castle in Syria, had sent two released Crusader hostages to France. The price of their liberty was to send an entire army of children to him for his use as slaves and future a.s.sa.s.sins.

"Both of these explanations seem impossibly far-fetched. The fact remains, however, that this Stephen, a lad with no education and no background or training, became, following this supposed incident, a highly skilled orator.

"He began locally, stirring up the children with his ideas. Then moving into a larger arena, he went to the great cathedral town of Chartres and preached there, challenging the children to go with him and to take, through saintliness, what adults had not been able to gain through force.

"He pa.s.sed from Chartres to Paris, stopping briefly to preach there, and then moved on to the greatest pilgrimage site of the time, St. Denys. There, as you may know, the martyr Dionysius, one of the seven founders of the Church in Gaul, was buried. In his behalf, since the time of Dagobert, all the kings and many of the royal family have been buried there. Additionally, this is the city where the sacred Oriflamme, the holy standard of the realm, was kept. All these attractions made it a much-visited pilgrimage spot.

"In St. Denys, Stephen proclaimed his holy mission and was heard by pilgrims from many parts of the country, who returned home fired with his zeal. Minor prophets arose among children everywhere, who claimed also to have had visions and instructions regarding the crusade of the children. The news ran through the cities and villages of the country like a flash flood.

"Suddenly, without warning, children were deserting their homes, collecting into bands, and heading off toward St. Denys. All attempts to stop them were futile. Today, I suppose, it would be called ma.s.s hysteria. Then, it could be explained only as a holy calling. Children who were detained from joining their fellows often fell ill and the only remedy was to allow them to go.

"By early summer of 1212, thirty-thousand children had gathered under the banner of Stephen of Cloyes in the city of Vendme. Finally, near the end of July, the army of unarmed Christian soldiers took to the road, moving southward. The amazing thing about this phenomenon was, the vast majority of these souls were under twelve years of age! And among them, as you already may have guessed, were Blanche and G.o.dfrey de Muret.

"I cannot say I am proud that members of my own family were involved in such ma.s.s delusion. I have puzzled over it all my life and can find no corresponding urge in myself that might help me to understand it. Perhaps it's a little like those young women in America who tear their blouses open and scream like lunatics when they see that popular singer of theirs, Sinatra. I don't know.

"But, that they were in this train there can be no doubt. The children went striding out, singing songs, southward toward Ma.r.s.eilles. There, they had been informed by Stephen, the Mediterranean Sea would part and they all would walk to Palestine on the dry ocean floor. There was a terrible drought that summer, which was burning the crops and drying up the streams, and this he took as confirmation that G.o.d had already undertaken the great work of drying up the Sea so that the task would be complete by the time they arrived.

The Count reached for a log and tossed it on the fire, saying, "That this sort of thing could happen is unimaginable to us, in this age, when we have all manner of protective agencies to both monitor and defend children. But it is a fact of history that these thirty thousand children walked the entire three hundred miles to Ma.r.s.eilles in the s.p.a.ce of about a month, begging and foraging as they went.

"The shepherd Stephen was now elevated to new estate and rode in a carriage decked in colored flags, surrounded by the minor prophets on horseback. The children of the n.o.bility were mounted, as well, some with retainers to guard them and carry their belongings. But the vast majority, including my two forebears, were afoot.

"It was sometime in August when their army, greatly thinned through discouragement, malnutrition, kidnap, and death, arrived in Ma.r.s.eilles, still singing songs, carrying their crosses high and waving their cross-embroidered banners. And still, according to contemporary accounts, at least twenty thousand strong.

"The city of Ma.r.s.eilles was in amazement and granted the children only one night's stay there, fearing they might riot or cause some other untoward civil disturbance. But this fitted perfectly with Stephen's plans as, he explained, they needed but a night's rest before the sea parted and they began their walk to Jerusalem.

"And so they slept that night at their jumping-off point, in the streets, in monasteries, or in the private homes of friends, depending on their social status, and the money they could afford to spend. Blanche and G.o.dfrey, we are told, spent that night in a church, though which one I do not know. Nor, I imagine, did they. These children had absolutely no understanding of the simplest geography. Many of them, in fact, while en route, would ask as each new town was approached, "Is this Jerusalem?"

"In the morning, these innocents a.s.sembled on the sh.o.r.e in the patient expectation that the sea was about to open before them. They waited the entire day and when their spirits flagged, they were exhorted to further faith by Stephen and the minor prophets, Dieu le vaut! G.o.d wills it!