by Lazlo Ferran
She looked terrified.
I heard men’s voices shouting out. I knew she was in trouble. I moved further into the doorway hoping the dark of the night would hide us both as the men passed.
“Who are they and what do they want you for?”
Her eyes were liquid pools of passion and pain and I could resist them no longer. I leaned into her and I kissed her soft ruby lips. Yes, I really badly wanted to do that.
Softly, so softly with her lips, she held my kiss for a few seconds, then pulled away. She slapped my face and ran away into the night.
Oh no! Not again! Damn. This woman will kill me.
She had a really hard shell but I remembered something in the kiss. It was something so soft and innocent and lovely that I already missed it even though I could never have imagined its existence a moment before. Her full name was Rose Nikolaeva Paneva and I later found out that she was the sole-survivor of a resistance group called the Jazz Club Gang and used the codename Dora. It turned out that M.I.6 wanted very much to get Dora and her baggage back to London. I was to accompany her, when I had located her. This proved to be a very difficult and dangerous task, but after a chance surveillance photograph allowed me to identify her by that unusual snake ring, a meeting was set up using a go-between and I finally managed to win Dora's trust. We were not out of the woods yet, however as the documents we needed were hidden in a cave in the mountains. A gunfight ensued during which I shot my first man. This was followed by a car chase which ended in an overnight stay at a farmhouse owned by her friend who I knew only as 'Bear'. It was in that farmhouse that the chemistry of wartime comradeship turned into the chemistry of love for Rose and me. After a narrow escape from more of the NKVD we finally made it back to Sofia with the documents. I was sure somebody had put in a good word for me because we were on the next flight home in an RAF Lysander.
By the time Rose was fully debriefed, war in Europe was over and she was not inclined to do any more spy-work so she started her civilian life. I remained in London, acting as a liaison officer for her but I was looking for a change of career. Rose and I continued to see each other and our romance blossomed. In September 1945, we were married. Because in England Rose was still in her minority at eighteen and both her parents were dead, a priest had to act as proxy to give his consent.
We moved in to a little house in Wales. It reminded Rose of the mountains around Sofia and it was as far away from the War and spies as we could get. I commuted up to London each week and stayed with Paul who was now a Civil Servant in the Foreign Office. I dropped subtle hints that I was interested in joining too, and he pulled some strings. I attended an interview at Whitehall and soon enough I was pushing a pen for the Government.
Meanwhile, things were not going so well in Wales. Rose was happy enough pottering out in the considerable garden, planting flowers and joining in local community projects, but soon she grew bored. It was my first experience of what women wanted being something completely different to what they said they wanted. Now she wanted somewhere closer to London and so, with the help of my parents, and some cash I had saved, we moved to a small two-up, two-down just outside Reading, close enough to get to London in two hours.
Just before we left Wales I was standing in the lounge one day,with a cup of tea, looking out of the window at the beautiful garden under the bright July sun, when I noticed the little bronze figurine from Bulgaria standing on the sill. I had put it there when we unpacked and it hadn’t been moved or touched since. I picked it up and hefted it in my hand. I turned it over to look at the base. There were some crude characters scratched into the bronze, or into the mould that created it; it was hard to say. I had noticed it in Sofia but never had time to ask anybody what it meant.
“B’vs IV sk” The ‘sk’ was in very small script.
I wished now that Rose and I had had time to visit the place in the north of Bulgaria she had mentioned, where there were many such statues.
I went in search of Rose. “Rose, are you sure you have seen more like this in Bulgaria? The workmanship seems more French than Bulgarian”
“Yes… Definitely. They are made in Bulgaria, I think. They are considered a sort-of charm in the mountains. Wolves can be a big problem there but many years ago, I mean in medieval times, some worshipped a minor god who took the form of a wolf-man.”
My interest sparked. “That’s really interesting. My grandfather once told me a tale that the earliest known of our family had run away from Prague to France because he and his young wife had been attacked by a flying wolf and she had been killed and eaten. My father thinks it’s a total fabrication and told me to pay no attention to these tales. There was a distance like a gulf between my father and grandfather, an acknowledged gulf as if something had happened many years ago and neither made any attempt to heal the rift.”
“Were you close to your grandpa?”
“Well, not really close but he fascinated me and I felt a lot of affection for him. We all did, except my father.”
Rose held out her hand and I placed the little statue in it. She turned it over and read the markings. “Yes, it does seem French. How strange, but who knows?”
“Maybe you could take me to that place Rose? How would you like to take a holiday there? Your last name is mine now so nobody would spot you at customs and you could keep sunglasses on all the time or die your hair.”
“Oh could we? You know I didn’t want to say but I ree-ally miss it! Oh I am not worried about being spotted, I think it would be quite exciting.”
So it was, a month later, that I found myself in a bazaar in a little mountain town called Gomi Lom, not far from the Romanian and Yugoslavian border and within the same mountain range that extended up into Romania.
“Oh look at this!” said Rose, tugging at the sleeve of my jacket. It was only a locally woven rug and I was keen to find anything to do with wolves. I had the little statue with me in my pocket and not knowing what I was looking for, I looked for something like this. We had hired a car and parked it on the edge of the town and now we were jostling with the locals who were after food and clothes.
“Where are the wolves?” I asked playfully.
“Oh, you are so impatient! We will get to them soon. Just be patient.” She pulled me into a shop to buy locally made bread, and catching the look in my eyes of patience almost expired, she led me to an arched alcove in the town wall. Behind an ancient and rickety table sat an old woman with current eyes in a face like an old loaf. She eyed us suspiciously, especially Rose, until Rose asked her something in Bulgarian. The woman smiled at me then and pointed to the back of the alcove. There on a crate, at knee height, were just what I had been looking for. Four little statues stood there, similar to the one I had, two of them identical in fact, and on the floor beside the crate, something much larger. I knew it would be too expensive but I had to look at it. It was about two feet high and was a confidently carved statue of a wolf-satyr, battling a snake which was entwined around it. What was unusual to somebody who was already familiar with the wolf-men statues was that the snake had tiny horns. The old woman cackled something behind me and warily I glanced at her. She seemed to be indicating I should lift it which I then did, with some difficulty as it weighed about fifty pounds. I turned it over in my hands to see the base and I could just glimpse something similar to my little statue. I couldn’t hold it up long enough to look.
“Write down what it says. There is a pencil and notebook in my jacket pocket,” I said to Rose.
“I can’t do that. It would be an insult to her. If we are not going to buy it then we shouldn’t let her know. I will memorise it and then write it down outside the shop.”
“Alright. Got it?”
“Yes.”
I put it down and guided Rose out of the shop, smiling at the proprietor who watched us with suspicion.
“Right,” I said outside. “Where next?”
We searched through many shops and stalls that day but never found anything nearly
as interesting as the tall statue, so when we had exhausted all other opportunities, we went back there. The old woman cackled when we entered the alcove. She said something to Rose.
“What did she say?”
“She told me it’s original. Not like the others. She said there is no other like it.”
“Hm. I bet.” However, as I looked more closely I began to believe her. The smaller statues which were identical to my own, each had a patina that one associates with fairly new bronze statues. Also the edges were still sharp and there was not the discoloration you get with very old bronzes. The large statue had smooth, worn edge. It was just possible this one was an original. My own statue had always given me a good feeling when I handled it, as if it were giving off some good energy. I always felt as if the person who made did so with good intentions, something that confirmed what Rose had told me about locals worshipping such a god. The energy I felt from the large statue was of a different order of magnitude entirely.
“Ask her where she got it, dear.” The woman shrugged and said something to Rose.
“She says they come from all over. There is never one single source. She says many believe that once they were kept in the castles all around these mountains, and in Romania, and that when the castles were captured during wars in Medieval times, the looters sold these things onto the market and they have been here ever since.”
I ran my hands over the big statue again. I wanted it but I wasn’t sure if it was original, and worth anything. The old woman could see my indecision.
She said: “It’s real,” in Bulgarian that I could just understand now I was getting used to her dialect, spoken as it was by someone with hardly any teeth. “Some of those statues are fake but that one is original. Two hundred dollars”
I whistled. “Two hundred. No way. Seventy.”
She cackled and slapped her knee. “One hundred and fifty,” she said.
“Ninety,” I said.
“I must go to cook. Take it one hundred and forty or leave,” she said, and started to take things from display on the front of her table.
“One hundred,” I said, but it was a half-hearted offer and she knew it. I knew now I would have to pay her more than I wanted.
She indicated I should go away with her hand, palm towards me. “Leave the shop,” she said, and the look in her eye was of one who was determined to hold her ground.
I was unsettled by this so I quickly offered one hundred and forty.
“Yes,” she said, and held out her hand. I had to search my pockets to find the amount. It was almost all I had.
Back in the car, Rose showed me her note of the markings on the bottom of the statue. This one had slightly different markings on the bottom. It had the usual ‘B’vs’ but then it had the roman numeral ‘V’ and ‘ep’ instead of ‘IV’ and ‘sk’.
The rest of the holiday passed almost without incident. Rose met her remaining brother, who had been in hiding until the end of the War. Then in a bazaar near Sofia, where I would have least expected to find anything of interest, I saw another little wolf-satyr statue. At first I smiled to myself as they were ten-a-penny, but then I saw that there was something different about this one. I picked it up and it felt different, worn, with the sharp edges removed. Also it had a very mottled pattern on its surface, typical of really old bronzes. This one also had the ‘B’vs’, the roman numeral ‘V’ and ‘ep’, just like the large statue which confirmed for me that it was different to the rest. Perhaps both this and the large statue were made by a master craftsman and the others by a copier or apprentice.
“God! It must be original!”
“Not another one! You and your wolf-men. Can’t you leave it? We have enough stuff,” said Rose.
“No, this is different. Until now I only half believed the story that they were originally talismans. Now I believe it.”
I bought it and added it to the increasing collection I was bringing back to England. Friends would later offer me good money for some of the antiques and we went back the following year to start what became, over time, a small antiques business. Shortly after the second trip, I heard, on the grapevine, that a post would be available in Sofia for a British Diplomat, and after talking it through with Rose, I applied. It wasn’t long before I received a letter of acceptance. My experience during the War must have been in my favour, but it would not surprise me if Paul had again spoken up for me. He smiled when I asked him.
“They just asked me for a reference.”
We had a few months before we were to leave, and not wanting to take our feet completely off of the property ladder, Rose and I took a holiday in Burgundy to look for a small cottage there. After the War, the French railways had remained completely destroyed until now. Recently the Orient Express had begun running regular services again and passing through Sofia, it went on to Lausanne and then into France at Lyon, before reaching Paris. Not far south from Lyon was the town of Nevers. It seemed fairly sleepy which suited us, but still had good amenities and communications. Property was cheap there too, and we soon found a small cottage which needed some work, about five miles north of the town. We received the keys from the irascible previous owner, and sat in the dusty lounge on sheet-draped furniture for only about ten minutes, before leaving. An old black, white and brown cat sat licking its paw on a wall around the front garden and glanced at us blankly as we drove by. I thought I could detect some Gallic inscrutability in its green eyes but Rose just said “Ahh.”
The job of Envoy, as was my title now, was at first fairly mundane. We had a nice flat in one of the more salubrious suburbs of Sofia, and I spent much of the day reading and responding to diplomatic correspondence. I knew that I would have to endure a few years of this before progressing onto more interesting work, so I just decided to get on with it. In the meantime, since the salary I earned was so substantial, paid as I was in pounds against the local currency, I had no trouble at all accumuLating a great deal of antique artifacts, and where they turned out not to further my own study, I boxed them up and shipped them back to my parents’ house in Highgate. Selling these would be a ‘nice little earner’ for me and would offer some security against the vagaries of diplomatic life. A rude word here or insensitive remark there were sometimes all that was necessary to end a career.
The house in Nevers turned out to be a very good idea. If we left Sofia late on Friday we could take a sleeper and then have all weekend in the French countryside before catching the train back on Sunday night and waking up just in time for work on Monday. We could also meet friends in Paris if we stayed longer, and sometimes family came from England or we would go there.
We also started camping in the beautiful region around Nevers. Camping really caught on as a craze around this time and we bought a full-sized tent which would accommodate deck chairs and a double mattress as well as a stove. It was made of canvass and there was a trailer available for it, which we bought, to tow behind an old Citroën I had also bought. At first we struck out in any direction, reveling in the freedom that camping brought, but we soon homed in on the Forêt de Folin, a forest, about 40 miles East of Nevers, in gentle rolling hills. It was almost unspoiled, with hardly a house to be found in a day’s walk.
I read my grandfather’s book during one of these camping trips and discovered many interesting and strange things. Early on in the book there was a description of a secret temple to Ordo Lupus, which translates as ‘Brotherhood of the Wolf’; or perhaps not so secret, as there was a newspaper-clipping taped into the book describing the Aachen Temple. It is entered by the Wolf Door, named after the legendary wolf who apparently tricked the Devil out of possession of the temple. The Temple was built by Charlemagne and contains his bones. The book went on to describe flying Wolf Men in Bulgaria. None of this helped me understand the markings on the bases of the statues I had collected. The latter parts of the book talked in more detail about history of this supposed secret society, Ordo Lupus. One, the most interesting part of the book, described how O
rdo Lupus had been a breakaway sect from The Knights Templars and that even earlier than this, one of the two monks who had escaped from Montségur Castle during the persecution of the Cathars in the 13th Century with a mysterious treasure, had been the founder of Ordo Lupus.
There was also a description, in an unrevealed location, of a secret chamber in the roof of a Cathedral, which contained the stone coffers of many former members of the Brotherhood, and also mention of female seductresses, servants of both the evil snakes and the good Wolf-Men. Finally there was a description which was the most fascinating of all; flying Snakes which were invisible and ‘constricted’ the fabric of the world making evil things happen to people, and living off the souls of the dead. The images were almost Biblical, difficult to believe, and at first I didn’t take it too seriously.
***
It was in the winter of this year, 1968, that Rose and I thought there was something wrong with our marriage. At first the sly family references to children were taken in good spirit by us, but then when questions started appearing in letters, I started to feel uncomfortable. Eventually Rose and I began to feel pressure in our love-making, which had always been glorious and I still thought she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. We talked about it, and I regret to say, in those uninformed times, when she volunteered to see a doctor alone about it, I simply agreed. The doctor in London said there was absolutely nothing wrong with her and that we should go on trying. We did, but by the following summer we were both feeling the strain.
We took a break in Burgundy and packed for a one-week camping trip to Forêt de Folin. We were starting to avoid talking to each other and during the journey to the forest, window down, wind tussling her brown curls, Rose stared out of the window and smoked, something she had recently taken up. I wanted to say something and spent hours trying to think what to say.