A Spell in Provence

by Marie Laval

  He sounded rather casual for someone who was supposedly victim of a deadly curse.

  ‘Then I hope La Bonne Dame, if it’s indeed her, won’t be angry with me,’

  Amy forced a smile.

  He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t worry too much about that.'

  'What about the team from the museum?' Lily asked.

  'I have no intention of granting anyone the authorisation to dig in the forest,' Fabien said.

  Lily closed her eyes briefly, let out a breath and

  muttered, ‘Thank goodness for that.’

  Opening her eyes again, she turned to Amy.

  ‘Adèle said that you saw lights in the garden.’

  ‘Please Lily, you’re not going to talk about the lights now,’ Paul said as he put down his empty liqueur glass on the coffee table. ‘Every time we get together, we have to go through the same old tales.’

  ‘I saw them once, when I was little,’ Madame Verdier joined in.

  ‘My father had taken me for a walk in the forest. It was getting late and we cut through Bellefontaine’s garden to reach the main road. Madame Bruni – Rosalie – had just died. The bastide was empty, yet I had the strangest feeling that someone was watching me, and when I turned round I saw a light flicker in the trees. Then more lights appeared. My father pulled my hand and we ended up running. I’m sure he was scared, too, even though he never talked about it afterwards.’

  ‘People always used to say the forest was haunted,’ her husband agreed.

  ‘Will o’ the wisps, that’s what the lights are,’ Lily explained. ‘The goddess’ guardian spirits.’

  ‘Here we go again,’ Paul shook his head. ‘The goddess and her fancy lights. Next, you’ll mention the people who disappeared - or got hurt - in the forest. There are far too many stories going round about spirits, the goddess and the …’

  ‘The cult?’ Lily darted her piercing brown eyes towards Paul. The lines on her face appeared harder in the light of the fire. ‘We all know it’s true, you included.’

  ‘Aunt Lily, please stop now. You’re making Amy nervous,’ Adèle remonstrated. ‘She’s already had a couple of nasty shocks since she arrived.’

  Fabien turned to her. ‘What nasty shocks?’

  Amy shrugged, embarrassed.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ he insisted.

  She sighed. ‘Alright. On my first night at Bellefontaine, there were lights in the garden, and later someone nailed a dead rabbit to my front door.’

  Fabien put his hand on her arm. It was warm and made her skin tingle.

  ‘You didn’t say anything the next day when you came to Manoir Coste.’

  She shrugged again.

  ‘Did you call the gendarmes?’

  ‘No, but I did call them today.’ She pursed her lips. ‘For all the good it did.’

  ‘Why today?’

  ‘During the night my car tyres were slashed, and a dead crow was left on my windscreen and red paint sprayed all over my car. The gendarme who made a report treated it like a nasty joke.’

  Fabien frowned.

  ‘This sounds like a lot more than a nasty joke.’

  ‘It will probably be all right now I reported it,’ Amy remarked with forced optimism before diverting the conversation on to the safer topic of gardening. She didn’t want to be reminded of the incident, and of her vulnerability, alone at Bellefontaine.

  It was well into the evening by the time Monsieur Verdier and his wife left, followed shortly after by the Michons and Lily. When Amy walked back to the living room, she found Fabien poking at the logs in the fireplace. Ribbons of sparks flew up the chimney, the fire popped and crackled.

  ‘I would love another coffee, he said, standing up. ‘It’s been a long day.’

  ‘Sure. No problem,’ she replied, surprised that he was making no move to leave.

  He followed her into the kitchen, glanced at the brightly coloured notes she had stuck all over the cupboard doors and smiled.

  ‘What’s with all the Post-its? Are you trying out a new colour scheme already?’

  She laughed.

  ‘Oh no. I’ve been getting forgetful over the past few weeks so I write myself reminders to check that everything is turned off and all the doors closed before I go to bed … although it didn’t work last night. I left the freezer door open and all the contents melted away.’

  He read a couple of notes and shook his head.

  ‘You ought to be more careful. Something could happen to you, or the house. Something serious.’

  It already has , she thought, remembering the fire in the living room.

  When the coffee was ready, she handed him a cup, and they went back into the living room. She sat opposite him, and sipped her hot drink while he stared, silent, at the flames.

  ‘You must let me know if there’s anything – I mean anything – troubling you,’ he spoke at last. ‘And please don’t let these silly tales about vengeful goddesses and curses frighten you. Old ladies like Lily like to dig out stories, especially when members of my family are concerned. We Costes were always a favourite topic of gossip.’

  ‘Are you referring to your grandfather?’

  Fabien nodded.

  ‘Finding the temple and the fountain became his pet project, his obsession. Personally, I suspect he was really after the treasure. He gathered extensive research material, journals and sketches, and even paid a team to investigate the forest.’

  He paused.

  ‘In the summer of 1935, there were torrential rains here. The Durance and the Calavon overflowed, the plain was flooded, but my grandfather forced his workers to carry on excavating anyway.

  ‘The dig in the cedar forest collapsed. My grandfather and three of his men drowned in the mud slide.’

  Amy gasped.

  ‘So that’s why Lily talked about the goddess’ curse.’

  His face hardened, and in the light of the dying fire, his eyes looked very dark with a speck of red glowing at their centre.

  ‘There was no curse, just greed and stupidity. My grandfather knew nothing about archaeology. He was a deluded fool who caused his own death and the death of innocent men by not following basic safety rules.’

  ‘Was your father interested in finding the temple too?’

  His jaw clenched, making his face look even more uncompromising.

  ‘My father. Yes, I believe he was. Among other things.’

  He glanced up and their eyes locked.

  In the living room the only sound was the crackling of the logs in the fireplace. Amy felt herself grow warm and tense. Her chest tightened, her heart beat fast, too fast.

  There it was again, the indefinable attraction between them. The air seemed to sizzle around her. Her whole body tingled. She held her breath, parted her lips.

  The phone ringing in the hallway startled her. Her heart still pounding hard, she jumped to her feet and ran into the hall.

  ‘Laurent Orsini, from Arles Museum here,’ said the man’s voice on the line. ‘Sorry to ring so late but I have just returned from a dig in Italy and I wanted to tell you the good news straight away. My boss at the Historic Monuments Department is giving me the go ahead for a ground survey. My team and I will be with you a week on Monday.’

  The Archaeology professor booked three rooms and promised to confirm the details by email in the next couple of days.

  ‘I have my first hotel guests. Archaeologists from the Arles Museum,’ she announced proudly when she returned to the living room.

  Fabien stood up.

  ‘So they’re going ahead with the dig at Bellefontaine?’

  ‘That’s right. Isn’t it exciting?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Somehow he didn’t look in the least excited or pleased.

  ‘It’s late, I should leave. Would you like any help tidying up?’

  ‘Goodness no. It was my party, I’ll deal with the mess.’

  She locked the front door behind him and heaved a deep sigh. It
was over. After a disastrous start, the day had been a success in the end. The party had been well attended. And now she even had her first paying guests.

  Piles of food, empty bottles, dirty plates and glasses awaited her in the kitchen and utility. Her shoulders sagged a little but she cleared everything up. It was well past midnight when she finally went upstairs. She put her pyjamas on, opened the window to reach for the shutters, and froze.

  They were back.

  At the bottom of the garden, a few shimmering lights danced in the darkness.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Patricia, look at this salinum!’

  Ben called across the dig site, holding a small object above his head.

  A young woman stood up, her short red hair vibrant as a flame in the sunlight.

  ‘Prof will be pleased,’ she said. ‘With the patellas and fragments of oil lamp we’ve found, it’ll confirm his theory about the Roman temple. Give me a moment, I need to finish tidying up here.’

  Amy turned back to the pink geraniums and sunny marigolds she was planting along the terrace. It looked like another good day for Laurent Orsini and his two assistants. In the short time they’d been at Bellefontaine they had unearthed several carved stones, a collection of potsherds and some oil lamps.

  ‘If we managed to find all that in four days,’ Laurent had said, his eyes shining with excitement the previous evening, ‘think how much we’ll dig up once we extend into the forest.’

  When he had jumped down from his van, Amy had at first been a little disappointed by his youth. Far from the rugged, weather-beaten adventurer she had pictured, Laurent Orsini was tall and skinny, with floppy brown hair. He wore corduroy trousers and old-fashioned checked shirts, and there wasn’t a leather jacket, hat, or whip in sight. Then again, she didn’t need an Indiana Jones look alike, just a competent historian, to shed some light on Bellefontaine and its hidden treasures.

  And competent Laurent was, as well as relentless. Every day, he and his team were out from seven in the morning through to lunchtime. In the afternoon, Laurent worked on his laptop or catalogued the potsherds and artefacts unearthed that day, whereas Ben and Patricia carried on outside until after six, when they had a review meeting.

  Amy checked her watch and wiped her hands on her jeans. The preliminary stage of the ground survey was now complete, and Laurent had invited her to his last briefing. He and his team were driving back to Arles in the morning and taking all their finds with them, including the statue.

  She rose to her feet and went into the house to make tea and coffee.

  ‘I believe there is a major pre-Roman religious site around Bellefontaine.’ Laurent started when his team gathered around the table.

  ‘We found relics indicative of the cult of Bona Dea and possibly an earlier goddess – a Gallic goddess.’ His voice became dreamy, his brown eyes thoughtful.

  ‘Ben said he found some kind of container this afternoon,’ Amy said as she placed a tray of homemade lemon biscuits, a pot of tea, and a cafetière on the table.

  Ben handed her a rectangular container. ‘This is it,’ he said, ‘a salinum, in perfect condition. It was used to keep salt, a substance which in ancient times was considered powerful, magic even, and was used in religious ceremonies to purify both the victims and the temple before a sacrifice.’

  ‘You don’t mean a human sacrifice?’ Amy winced and her fingers gripped the metal container more tightly.

  Ben nodded. ‘I do. You see, although they were outlawed by the Roman senate sometime around 200 BC, human sacrifices carried on in remote provinces of the empire for much, much longer. This salinum bears the mark of the Emperor Severus, whose reign ended in 211 AD. Therefore it is likely that sacrifices carried on around here until then. Maybe later …’

  A shiver crept along Amy’s spine. She gave the salinum back to Ben.

  Laurent turned the screen of the laptop.

  ‘This is an enhanced photo of the Latin inscription on one of the garden stones we found today. It’s fascinating. The reference to a fountain is clear … NITIDUS FONS translates to ‘pure spring water’. So this place was associated with a fountain for a long, long time.’

  Laurent’s finger pointed to the letters on the screen.

  ‘This one is more intriguing.’ He clicked on the mouse and another photo appeared. ‘Lucus erat … The sacred wood … quem medium ex opaco specu fons perenni rigabat aqua … in which flowed an eternal, sacred spring … Quo quia se persaepe … coming out of the dark cave … at congressum deae inferebat … where you meet the goddess.’

  He narrowed his eyes and read on. ‘And listen to this. The spell flows with the spring, binding hearts together until death tears them apart. A love charm, how romantic.’

  ‘There is a spring between here and Manoir Coste,’ Amy remarked.

  Laurent glanced up and smiled. ‘Really? Then you’d better watch out or you and Monsieur Coste could get entangled in that love spell I just read out.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. He is an arrogant, big-headed, patronising boor.’ He was also impossibly attractive and he made her heart beat wildly every time he was near. She breathed in and looked at the ancient writing on the screen again. A love spell between her and Fabien Coste? Not in a million years.

  ‘The reference to the eternal sacred spring does surprise me,’ Laurent mused. ‘I would expect to find such a religious reference in sites like Entremont or Glanum, but here?’

  ‘Where is Glanum?’ Amy asked.

  ‘Near St-Rémy-de-Provence, about fifty kilometres to the west. It’s one of the most important Salyen settlements in France,’ Patricia answered. ‘I worked there for a few months last year.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of the Salyens. Who were they?’

  ‘A powerful Gallic tribe who established important settlements in Provence in the seventh century BC. Glanum was built around a sacred spring and dedicated to the earth mothers and their god Glan – hence the name. It was taken over by the Greeks, then the Romans who built temples and villas, enclosed the sacred spring in a nympheum and renamed all the Salyen earth mothers. One of them became Bona Dea – the goddess dedicated to women.’

  Amy frowned. ‘Didn’t the Romans have their own gods?’

  ‘They did, but they often adopted the local divinities of the territories they conquered,’ Laurent explained.

  ‘This Bona Dea, could she be La Bonne Dame? An elderly lady from the village said that was the name of the goddess of the lost temple.’

  ‘Yes, that sounds about right,’ Laurent agreed.

  He lifted the statue’s head from a padded crate.

  ‘Here she is. Our Beauty. Bona Dea.’ As always when he touched – or even looked at the statue – his voice was hoarse with emotion.

  ‘Be careful, Prof,’ Ben said then. ‘You know that we men aren’t supposed to say her name.’

  ‘Technically, it’s her secret name you males are forbidden to say,’ Patricia interrupted.

  Amy stared at the statue’s empty eyes. ‘She has a secret name?’

  Patricia nodded. ‘Yes, it’s Fauna.’

  ‘Now you’ve lost me. What did she need two names?’

  Laurent smiled. ‘Probably because like all women, she is a complicated creature. No, seriously, Bona Dea was the goddess of life and fertility and Fauna was her dark alter ego, and the goddess of sex and prophecy. Both are the opposite sides of the same goddess. We academics think that the Romans found the original Gallic earth mother too complex, so they divided her into two distinct deities who would be easier to worship.’

  He stroked the statue smooth stone face. ‘Our beauty here wears a crown made of oak leaves – a symbol of fertility for the Gauls – together with snakes which represent sex, and Fauna. I think this is a representation of the first, original earth mother. The one who came before all other representations of Bona Dea ever discovered.’

  Patricia tapped her fingers on the table top. ‘If it’s the case, then this
site is of huge importance for the whole of Provence.’

  ‘I don’t understand why all the writing is in Latin,’ Amy said then. ‘Didn’t the Salyens have their own writing?’

  Patricia shook her head. ‘If they had, we haven’t found it yet. We only know about them from their art, ceramics, and statues, and a handful of accounts by Roman and Greek writers. That’s why these engraved stones are so fascinating. It’s the first time we have some written account of a Salyen cult.’

  Laurent switched his laptop off, flipped the cover down, and tidied up his files and photographs into piles.

  ‘I have to make a case to my boss at the museum for more funding. Like everything else, our budget is being squeezed, but with all the evidence we found, I’m sure it won’t be a problem.’

  He looked at Amy. ‘I hope you won’t mind having a hotel full of hungry and muddy archaeologists.’

  ‘Not if it means finding out what exactly is out there – the sanctuary to Bona Dea or Fauna, or whatever her name is, the ruins of the Roman fountain … or the treasure.’

  Laurent laughed.

  ‘You never said anything about treasure!’

  ‘Fabien Coste said the Romans hid a treasure trove before retreating in front of barbarian hordes. It’s supposed to be somewhere in, or near, the lost temple.’

  Laurent closed his eyes a moment.

  ‘Imagine if we were to discover a treasure as well as a new goddess,’ he said. ‘Now that would make us as famous as our colleague Professeur Dupré who found the greatest Roman hoard ever in the bed of the River Rhône in Arles a few years ago.’

  He stood up.

  ‘I must speak to this Fabien Coste tomorrow morning before we leave for Arles. I need his authorisation to extend the excavation site.’

  Amy let out a sigh.

  ‘I think you’re in for a tough challenge there. He said he’d refuse anyone the authorization to dig in the forest.’ She told him about the papers Philippe Coste had left in the library at the Manoir.

  Laurent smiled, rubbed his hands together.