by SUZAN STILL
The ink was faded and in some places almost invisible, and the handwriting was more showy than legible. It took her the better part of an hour to decipher its message. As she did, she wrote an English translation on a yellow legal tablet.
I write in haste. News has reached me of terrible events in Paris, Lyons and Nantes. As a nonjuring priest, I am now condemned as refractory clergy, and fear for my life. It is said that three of our holy bishops and hundreds of priests have been massacred by angry mobs, as the Legislative Assembly has dissolved into chaos. The noyades for treason under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Carrier have killed many hundreds of both nuns and priests, along with many simple folk who were stalwarts of their parishes.
Until now, revolutionary fervor has been mild here, involving only the removal of the bell from the church tower, and the sealing of the church doors. Tonight, however, a mob is gathering in front of the Mairie, and I fear for my life. With the aid of good Monsieur M., I have removed the sacred figures from the church, hiding them for who can say how long, until such time as it is once again safe, through the agency of Our Lord, to worship as a Catholic again.
I write this in full faith that such shall be the final outcome, as an apostate priest of the constitutional clergy, and a faithful servant of our Holy Church, and its head, Pope Pius VI.
So be it. May God have mercy on those who make such desperate measures necessary, and upon his humble servant,
Father Xavier S.
This 6th day of September, 1792
Calypso put down her magnifying glass with a troubled heart and wrote the final words of her translation on the tablet. She went to her laptop and looked up the word noyades, discovering that, as she had thought, it meant drowning. Her mind was agitated by the drama of the priest’s terror. What became of him, she wondered? And was that tarp-covered mound in the vault, then, the holy figures from the local church?
Her memory of French history from the time of the Revolution was sketchy and she decided to do a little research to settle herself. She spent the remainder of the day at her computer, tracking down bits and pieces of information that fleshed out the priest’s letter.
She discovered that in August, 1789, the state cancelled the power of the church to levy taxes. The new revolutionary government made the issue central to its policies, declaring that all church property in France now belonged to the nation. Confiscation began and church properties were sold at public auction.
Then, in July 1790, the National Constituent Assembly published the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, stripping the clergy of their special rights and making them employees of the state. All priests and bishops were required to swear an oath of fidelity to the new government on pain of dismissal, deportation or death.
The pope at that time, Pius VI, spent almost eight months deliberating on the issue of whether to grant French priests Papal approval to sign such an oath. On April 13, 1791, the pope instead denounced the new French Constitution, effectively splitting the French Catholic church. Abjuring priests, called jurors, became known as constitutional clergy, while nonjuring priests were called refractory clergy, the term with which Father Xavier had been labeled.
During those disordered months as the Legislative Assembly, the successor to the National Constituent Assembly, also dissolved into chaos, the church was increasingly viewed as counterrevolutionary. Social and economic grievances among the people boiled over and violence directed toward the church and her clergy erupted all across France.
In Paris, during a single two-day period beginning September 2, 1792, three church bishops and more than two hundred priests were massacred by angry mobs—the beginning of what would become known as the September Massacres. Calypso found that the noyades, or drownings, were mass executions for treason under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Carrier and involved thousands of people, including nuns and priests. The executions took place in the Loire river, which Carrier himself called the national bathtub—all of this a precursor to the Reign of Terror the following year, with its use of the guillotine called the national razor.
Obviously, Father Xavier had good reason to fear for his life and it was only reasonable for him to assume that his church would be desecrated. Who, she wondered, was the good Monsieur M. and what was his fate for helping the priest? Perhaps the Mairie, the city hall of Brignac, would still have records from that period. She made a note to do some research there when time permitted.
Toward the end of the afternoon, she went again to the house, where Monsieur Signac was just finishing up for the day. She found him sweeping up in the corner where she had left him earlier.
“Ah, Madame!” he exclaimed. “Come and see if you approve. I have fashioned a door here, you see, and affixed the tiles.”
He demonstrated to Calypso that he had created a door from thick exterior plywood and attached it to a floor joist with a piano hinge. Already the tiles were mortared in place and a single tile, its center bored through, held a flush-mounted lock surrounded by a metal ring for lifting the door. The level of the tile aligned perfectly with the surrounding floor.
“You’ve done a fine job, Monsieur Signac,” she said warmly. “The door simply disappears.”
“Yes, and I’ve made a metal loop on the under side. When you want to open the door, you can put the loop over this hook I’ve installed in the wall, so the door won’t fall shut while you’re inside.”
He demonstrated by opening the door, swiveling the metal loop outward, and then hooking it over a stout steel hook set into the plaster of the wall.
“This is excellent,” Calypso said. “I’m very pleased with what you’ve done.”
Mr. Signac beamed and handed her the key to the lock.
“This should keep your insurance liability safe,” he said with a knowing smile.
Calypso wondered if he had already been down the stairs, even before he had come to fetch her that morning. Something in his smile told her that he knew she was protecting something more than just her insurance premiums.
§
She hadn’t been back at the orangerie for more than five minutes when the telephone rang. To her amazement, it was Javier. It was the first time he had called her in all the months of their separation. She braced for bad news.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing, nothing, Caleepso. Not to worry. I just called you to let you know the house is finished.”
“Finished! That’s wonderful! Congratulations!”
“I thought you might like to see it.” His voice held a ghost of his old teasing tone.
Calypso hesitated only for a moment but already she knew it was a moment too long.
“I’m just finishing up here, Javier. In a couple of weeks I’ll be able…”
“Never mind,” he snapped. “Is not important.”
“Javier…”
“I have to go. Bye.” And he hung up.
Calypso replaced the receiver slowly, not sure if she wanted to cry or scream in rage. In the next couple of days, Monsieur Signac had promised, the house would be ready for the gang of cleaners he had assembled from the village.
Floors would be scrubbed and waxed, windows washed, fixtures polished. Draperies would be hung and carpets unfurled, all in preparation for moving in the furniture and the dismantling of the annoyingly moderne metal sheds in the front yard.
It was almost more than she could bear to think of leaving now. It would be a psychological coitus interruptus that would only make her resentful of Rancho Cielo. She had pages of diagrams for the placement of furniture and hanging of paintings. She even knew which of the heavy old handwoven linen sheets, with their looping hand-embroidered monograms and tatted edgings, went on which bed in which room. It was unthinkable, unbearable, unfair to have to leave now.
She sat staring out the window of the orangerie, gnawing on her thumbnail. This was like a return to the earliest days of their relationship, when Javier had turned abruptly cranky and impossib
le, and she had expended every wile in her arsenal to break through, without success.
The garden was darkening toward evening. Down the dusky, shadowed path came the tortoise, lumbering along in innocent expectation of his evening slices of fruit. Something in his blameless and irreproachable assumption of friendly plenitude mirrored her own.
She had made a bond with the creature, almost a pact. They were partners in the rediscovery of this mysterious and neglected place. At that moment, her loyalty to the reptile felt greater than the one to Javier and her heart swelled with affection for the simple old creature, even while her eyes stung with tears.
She went to the kitchen, washed a handful of cherries and pitted them, and then went out into the cool, windy evening, where the tortoise was just arriving at the kitchen stoop. She sat on the bottom stair and offered the creature his first piece of fruit. He waved his nose in front of it like a perfumer appreciating a new fragrance and then took the cherry from her fingers in one gulp.
“It’s just you and me, kid,” Calypso said mournfully. “I’m not going back, you know. Not yet, at least. So stick with me, okay?”
The tortoise raised his creased, leathery head and gazed at her with his bottomless black eyes. Was it her imagination or did she feel in that moment a jolt of love and understanding that almost rocked her off the step? She reached into the bowl for another cherry and she continued to supply her friend’s supper as the sun sank and the penumbra of evening descended upon the garden.
§
She slept poorly that night. Sometime in the blackest hours of the early morning, she awoke with the stirring conviction that she needed to see the figures in the vault. She lay under the soft, cozy duvet and tried to talk herself out of so rash an adventure.
It was dark. There was no one to help her lift the door, which was heavy with tiles. The stairs were steep and treacherous—if she fell, no one would find her for hours. And lastly, why didn’t she just go back to sleep and gratify this urge in the morning?
She stayed in bed, following the conviction that rationality would win in the end. She turned on her side, organized her pillow just so and composed herself for slumber.
Within minutes she was thrashing about, seeking a new position, as if to ward off the attack of the idea, which insisted itself upon her relentlessly. Finally, feeling disgruntled with herself, she turned on the bedside lamp and lay staring at her clothes, where they lay flung over the back of a chair.
She imagined getting up, putting them on, finding the flashlight and shears, opening the door to the chill and windy darkness, and setting out for the house. Even this dismal scenario, however, would not quiet the inner promptings.
At last, with a sigh she threw back the covers and lunged through chilly air toward her clothing. In minutes, she was crunching down the garden path toward the house behind the round disk of the flashlight’s beam.
The big building stood against the night sky, a blacker blackness. She rounded its western flank, hearing the sostenuto of rustling olive leaves beneath the fountain’s treble. She inserted her key into the lock, threw one glance into the surrounding darkness, as if looking for someone to stop her in this madness, and entered the house.
Monsieur Signac had, of course, closed and locked the door to the stairwell. Calypso knelt and inserted the brand new key into the lock, aware of the sharp, limey smell of fresh mortar. She hoisted the heavy door by its inset ring, hoping that the mortar was fully set and the tiles wouldn’t all slide off when the door went vertical. Holding the flashlight between her knees, she wrestled the door upright, and managed to secure its metal loop over the hook in the wall.
Below her, the stairs spiraled down into darkness like the grinding screw in a meat grinder. She felt the hair on her arms rise at the thought of descending, all alone, into their depths. She set the flashlight on the floor with its beam angled over the opening, sat down on the floor, and swung her feet onto the first stair. Picking up her light, she aimed it into the darkness below her and began a slow, very cautious descent.
§
Her heart was jarring in her ribcage as she stood, finally, before the low wooden door to the vaulted room. The space between the foot of the stairs and the door was so narrow that she felt as if she were in her own coffin. Reflexively, she reached for the locket and fingered it beneath her sweater. Then, drawing in her breath, she depressed the latch, shoved the door open with her shoulder and ducked into the secret room.
She had shoved a couple of votive candles and a book of matches into her pants pocket before leaving the orangerie. Setting the flashlight on the floor, she knelt and lit the candles. The two small flames threw weak illumination over the room, but their warm light was comforting after the harsh glare of the flashlight. She set them to either side, where they would not throw her own shadow over the work to come.
Then, pulling the shears from their holster on her belt, she rose and turned toward the mysterious tarp-covered teepee in the center of the room.
Old and rotten as it was, the tarp resisted the blades of her shears. She bore down until her fingers felt raw, cutting stroke by stroke into the covering, realizing that the shears would be sprung and have to be replaced after this night’s work. She managed to cut three long slits up the side of the mound before she developed a blister on her finger.
After that, she set the shears aside and began inserting her fingers into the rotted rips in the tarp. With sufficient strength and a few sharp jerks, she managed to open the rips into long vertical tears.
After about an hour she was covered in dust and grit, and the tarp hung in tatters but what lay captive underneath was still obscure. Taking up the shears again, she began to cut horizontally across the thin strips with a kind of desperate determination. As each strip fell away, a lengthening incision appeared across the face of the mound.
When the horizontal cut was a couple of feet long, the tarp suddenly shifted backward from its own weight, startling Calypso. She jumped back with a yip. It was almost as if human hands had tugged the covering sheet from behind. Then, her eyes fell on the incision again and she gasped.
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed.
Picking up the flashlight from the floor, she aimed it into the cut and then stared. Looking back, from where he was cradled on a sturdy arm, was an infant, smiling at her with sweet serenity.
She was frantic, then, to see the rest of the statue. Cutting, ripping and tugging, she managed finally to dislodge the tarp. With a final yank on its backside hem, she felt its inertia give way and in one sliding movement, it released its hold and crumpled to her feet. She raced around to the front and taking up her flashlight again, spotlighted the entirety of the statue.
What she saw took her breath away. Her legs buckled and she sank to her knees.
“It can’t be!” she breathed in wonder that bordered on terror.
Centered in the cone of the flashlight’s beam, a statue almost four feet high of a mother and child stood resplendent upon an elegant Louis Quinze table. Carved in wood, colored in polychrome, and shining with gold gilt, the Queen of Heaven and her Son gazed with divine, untroubled calm into Calypso’s astonished eyes.
Calypso shook her head dazedly and exclaimed, “You!”
She switched off her flashlight and let it fall to the floor. In the light of the two candles, the figures above her seemed to move and breathe in the soft, flickering light.
Calypso felt a hot wave of emotion erupt from the very pit of her being. Sobs spewed from her like molten lava. Cradling her forehead in her hands, she bent at the waist and with her elbows braced on her thighs, fell into an attitude of obeisance. Cries arose from her that even she could not interpret with what was left of her rationality. They ripped from her throat unreservedly, a mixture of grief and ecstasy.
She howled her stark amazement and disequilibrium. Her body seemed to fly through undifferentiated space at warp speed, with fragments releasing and falling away, until she was only a soul, hurtling thr
ough endless void like a comet. With one imperious glance, Our Lady had released her from earthly bounds and set her on a timeless and infinite journey.
When she returned from it, she found herself still kneeling before the Mother of God. Her knees ached, her thighs screamed for release, and her shaking hands were saturated with tears.
How she was able to climb from the depths and to lower and lock the door, she was never able to remember. The only image that remained of the time between her return to consciousness and her arrival back at the orangerie was of her own hands, moving as if disembodied, taking the two candles from the floor, and placing them reverently before the throne of the Queen of Heaven.
§
“This is truly remarkable.” Calypso read the e-mail from her friend Eleanore with weary, strained eyes, the day following her discovery. “If this is real—and of course we would have to do many tests to prove it—then you have discovered a kind of missing link.”
Calypso could imagine Eleanore in her office in the depths of the Louvre, that was crowded with files and diminished by three looming walls of shelved reference books, bending in disbelief over the photos Calypso had e-mailed her. Her friend, an art historian of the Middle Ages, was almost as amazed as was Calypso.
“This image clearly draws its iconographic references from Egyptian prototypes of Isis suckling Horus,” Eleanore’s email continued. “If testing shows that it predates other Black Madonnas—and I suspect it will—then this image is a perfect example of the transition between the worship of Isis as Queen of Heaven and the veneration of Mary by the same title.” She ended the message with a question, “When can I see Her?”