The Priest's Madonna

by Hassinger, Amy

  “Our church is in need, Marie.”

  “But you lied. You promised him something in exchange for his money with plans never to deliver it.”

  Bérenger lunged forward and swiped the surface of his desk. A glass paperweight flew against the wall, shattering. Papers sprayed into a momentary storm before settling haphazardly at our feet. He stood before me, glowering with rage. “And how do you make your living, I ask you? Preying on a man’s weakness! Wriggling your way into his home and his heart through your constant, unrelenting temptations! Don’t pretend to such purity, my dear Marie. You’re wiser than that.”

  I exhaled sharply, feeling his words as a blade in the gut. I reached behind me for support and found the back of a chair. “I hadn’t thought my presence to be so reprehensible to you,” I said quietly.

  He turned toward the hearth, his shoulders a stone wall.

  “I’ll leave, then,” I said. And I did, shutting the door firmly behind me. I did not begin to weep until I reached the crest of the hill, where the path continued downward through the broom and brush toward Espéraza. I walked for a long time, until my tears had dried, and my hands had stopped trembling.

  BÉRENGER APOLOGIZED LATER that day. He brought me a small bouquet of early anemone and woodrush. “I spoke rashly, Marie,” he said. “I took my anger at the Austrian out on you, unfairly. Please forgive me.”

  I accepted the apology and the bouquet. But his fury left me shaken, and I found it difficult to return to my former unfettered joy in his company, not only because of the violence—the shattered paperweight, his accusation—but because I feared he was right. I had been selfish. All this time I had been so focused on my own desire to be with him that I had been blind to his anguish, how I wore him down. I was ashamed and saddened, and profoundly confused. Hadn’t we entered into things together? Hadn’t he wanted my company? His words had cudgeled the story of our companionship, knocked its features askew.

  I avoided him for the next several days, asking my mother to bring his supper. When I had to address him, I did it with a new reserve in my voice and my demeanor.

  Bérenger noticed. He became overly jovial, trying to lighten my mood with jokes and little kindnesses. He brought flowers often—“to brighten the house,” he said, smiling sorrowfully at me—and requested my company when he went for his daily walk. He had embarked on a project to collect a hundred round stones for a grotto he intended to build in the church garden, and said that he needed my help. I refused, declaring I had too much to do at home.

  Finally, one day, he insisted. “I won’t leave your side until you accompany me,” he said. “I’ll be in your way all day.”

  I relented. I wiped my hands and hung my apron on its hook. But I walked at a remove, keeping my eyes on the ground, ostensibly in search of stones.

  “Why are you punishing me, Marie?” Bérenger asked after we’d walked in silence for some time. “I’ve apologized, haven’t I? What more must I do?”

  I looked away, embarrassed. “I do not mean to punish you, Monsieur le curé.”

  “Monsieur?” he said, and laughed bitterly. “You haven’t called me that for years.”

  I kept walking.

  “Won’t you even look at me, Marie? Marinette?” He stopped and took my arm, gently, in his. “Please.”

  I turned to face him. “I am only trying to avoid tempting you. You were right. I have been selfish.”

  “No, no, Marie,” he said, pressing his thumb into my palm. “No, I was unfair. Please. I desire your friendship. I am not myself without it.”

  I nodded, unable to keep a tear of relief from sliding down my cheek.

  He rubbed it away with his thumb. “How I cherish you,” he whispered.

  I WAS GLAD for our reconciliation, glad to be relaxed and natural once again in his presence. But I remained cautious, and grew more judicious with my affection.

  I was curious, too, about the old leather-bound book. When Bérenger was out, I took to snooping: I tunneled through his closet, rustling each of his shirts and pants and standing on a chair to look in the corners of the top shelf. I knocked along the length and breadth of each wall, searching for hollow spots. I wrested off the panel of the crawlspace, and sullied my skirt and hands feeling around in the dark. I even attempted to pry up one of the floorboards—but I was neither strong nor skilled enough to do it.

  I was rewarded for my efforts one afternoon as I was replacing the freshly laundered linens in the sacristy chest. The drawer would not close properly, it felt as if something was blocking it, and so I opened the cabinet below and leaned into the dark chamber, feeling around for the obstacle that might have gotten lodged behind the drawer. My fingers found leather, gripped and pulled, and moving back into the room, I found myself holding the leather-bound book that had been buried beneath the church floor.

  With no regard for the time of day or the chores I should have been attending to, I sat in a shaft of blue light—sunlight filtering through the stained-glass window—and began to read.

  The pages were irregularly cut and brittle, their bottom edges broken and torn. I held the book between my knees, keeping it only partially open so as to preserve the binding, and handled the pages gingerly. It was just what Bérenger had said, an old church register, a record of the marriages, births, and deaths that had transpired in the parish between 1694 and 1726. Mercifully, the handwriting was legible, though the ink had partially faded, and despite the indirect lighting, I could decipher the text tolerably well. The first several pages held nothing of interest—names upon names, none of which were familiar. But when I arrived at the pages detailing the events of 1705, I stopped short.

  In the year one thousand seven hundred five, the thirtieth day of March, died, in the castle of this place, Lady D—, about seventy-five years old, widow of Sir A. D—, lord of Pauligne, old treasurer of France in the generality of Montpellier. She was buried the thirty-first of said month in the church of this place, in the tomb of the Lords that is beside the Balustrade.

  I shut the book, then opened it again. The tomb of the Lords that is beside the Balustrade. I held the book on my lap, my pulse racing. There was a tomb, after all. Amazed, I walked into the sanctuary and knelt before the knight’s stone, running my fingers along its surface as if the tiny dips and swells of the stone might provide a tactile code I could decipher. Was this the exact location? The balustrade that separated the choir from the nave was just here, two stair-steps removed from the stone. I gripped the edge of the stone with my fingers and gave it a perfunctory tug, but it did not budge. Absurdly, I put my ear to it, as if I might be able to hear the voices of the dead calling out to me, but I felt only the cold floor against my skin.

  I sat in the front pew and opened the book once more, rereading the page where I’d found the entry. The tomb of the Lords. I knew it was customary, during the ancien régime, for aristocrats to be buried beneath the church. This entry seemed to be proof that there was a tomb—or had once been—in which the notable people of the community were buried. But this Lady D—had been buried there as late as 1705, a thousand years after the Merovingian presence on this land. So what of my imagined Merovingian tomb? Was that pure fantasy? Or had this tomb been remembered and used all those many years? The numbers of corpses, then, that might have been put to rest beneath this church … they would be incalculable. The church would be resting on foundations of human bone.

  I read further in the register, searching for other mentions of the tomb, but found only one: a lieutenant colonel who had been buried there in 1724. The tomb was not mentioned again, and as the register only recorded events through the year 1726, I had no way of knowing whether the tomb had been used after that date.

  I closed the book, smoothing the cover absentmindedly. Why hadn’t Bérenger told me about the tomb? He knew of it—that much was certain. He said he’d read the book cover to cover. Did he not think it important? It was, admittedly, not unusual for old churches like ours to house the corpse
s of local dignitaries. Perhaps Bérenger had thought it too mundane to mention. But why had he hidden the book so carefully? What was he afraid of?

  Had he been at home, I would have gone to him at once and confronted him with my questions. But he was away yet again—in Montazels, helping his mother nurse a dislocated shoulder (inflicted by his father). How I wished Madame were there! I would have brought her the book that very moment, shown her the mentions of the tomb, asked her about the Templars, about Blanchefort, about the lords and ladies who were buried here, somewhere beneath my very own feet. I might even have brought her to the church and asked her to help me lift the stone and dig beneath the surface earth. But Madame had been gone a long time—I had begun to doubt whether she would ever return—and I was left only with my memory of our discussions, which had yielded little about Rennes-le-Château’s recent history.

  But though Madame was not available, her library might be. All I needed were the proper resources—records of Rennes during the ancien régime—and I might be able to find out more information about the tomb and who was buried there. If I could get permission from the mayor to peruse the library, I might find what I was looking for.

  The mayor had become a different man since Madame had left. He spent most of his time in the tavern. When he wasn’t drunk, he was asleep. He no longer stopped in for visits throughout the village, as he had been used to doing, often just on the cusp of meal-time. Some of the villagers assumed he had grown lazy without a wife to check his appetites. He had become the butt of jokes.

  I was not surprised when, after going to the château in search of him, Mme Siau directed me to the tavern. I stood at the door, unsure whether I should knock. I had never set foot in the tavern. It was a place for men—except for Jeanne, the barmaid and wife of M. Chanson, the new owner. But it was a bright morning and the place would be at its most sedate. I hesitated outside the door, listening for any activity within, and then purposefully pressed the handle to lift the latch.

  It was dark inside; only the smallest crack of daylight leaked in beneath the shutters, casting a thin line of light across several of the tables in the middle of the room. The room smelled of stale smoke, but it had been neatly arranged—chairs pushed beneath tables, glasses washed and arrayed on the shelves behind the bar, bottles lined up like obedient children. At first the place seemed empty, but a human rumbling awakened me to the presence of a man asleep on the floor beneath the bar.

  It was the mayor. His vest was unbuttoned and his hat had fallen to the floor beside his head. Each reverberating inhalation sent his mustache vibrating, and when he exhaled, he emitted the scent of metabolized liquor.

  I heard footsteps on the stairs, and straightened up to face M. Chanson, freshly shaven and cheerful. The Chansons were a young couple—relatives of the Ditandys, who had recently sold them the tavern. I did not know them well, though they seemed kind and well-meaning. “Oh, hello, Marie,” he said, surprise in his voice. “What can I do for you?” He followed my gaze to the floor. “Is it the mayor you’ve come to see? Well, then.” And, ignoring my protests, he straddled the mayor’s broad chest and, grunting a little, lifted him to an upright sitting position and balanced him against the bar. “Come on now, monsieur,” he said in a loud voice, gently slapping the mayor’s face with the back of his hand. “It’s morning and you’ve a lady to see you. Wake up now.”

  With a snort, the mayor awoke. His eyes fell on me, as I was standing directly in his sight. He stood and nodded once to me, then turned his back to button his vest. M. Chanson handed him a glass of wine mixed with water.

  “Pardon me, monsieur,” I offered, for I was embarrassed and wished I had not come. “I don’t mean to bother you.”

  “No, no,” he said. “It’s all right.”

  We sat at one of the tables near the door. “I’ve been missing my wife, you see,” he said, laughing awkwardly, perhaps aware of my discomfort, perhaps ashamed of the looseness of his own tongue. “A man without a wife is a sad sight indeed. I’ve no one to live for, no one to care for me.”

  “You’ve the village,” I offered.

  He spluttered. “The village doesn’t need me. Anyone can do what I do—sign a few papers, stamp a few letters. Chanson, you could,” he shouted, scraping his chair against the floor. “You’d be a great mayor.”

  “Not like you,” Chanson said, sorting through a stack of receipts.

  “Or you, Marie.” The mayor turned back to me, his chair tipping with his weight.

  “No, monsieur.”

  “You must think me weak. Well, you’re right. I am. I want my wife back. Why won’t she come home to me?”

  “Monsieur,” I began, searching for some words of comfort.

  “I’ll tell you why. She doesn’t care for people. She’s always got her head mixed up in her books. I should have known she’d never change. But I thought once she had children, she’d become, you know, more like a woman. Instead, I’ve become the woman. Crying day after day for a lover who doesn’t come.” He laughed scornfully.

  “Marie came here to ask you something,” M. Chanson offered.

  “It’s all right,” I said, standing up. “I can come back another time.”

  “No,” said the mayor, grabbing my wrist and pulling me back down toward the table. “Sit down. Ask away. How can I be of service to you, mademoiselle?” His voice became obsequious, and he made a small bow with his head and a grand gesture with his arm, which again sent his chair off balance.

  “Really,” I said, standing. “I’ll come back some other time.” I looked toward M. Chanson for help.

  “I’ve only myself to blame, of course,” the mayor continued. “For following her here. I should have listened to my mother. Ha! Hear that?” He directed this last to the ceiling. “But I was young and arrogant, and she was so exotic, so beautiful—such a princess. You should have seen her in her youth, Marie.” And he closed his eyes, as if transported.

  What he said took me by surprise. “What do you mean, ‘fol lowing her’ here?” I asked. “I thought she came here to stay with you and your family when her father died.”

  He opened his eyes again, and studied me quizzically. “No,” he said slowly, as if thinking it through. “My family is from Couiza.”

  “And isn’t Mme Laporte your cousin?”

  His eyes opened wider. “Who told you that?”

  “She did.”

  He regarded me once more and then burst out laughing, slapping his hands on his thighs. “Ha! You’re joking. I like a woman who can joke.”

  I glanced at M. Chanson, who raised his eyebrows at me and shrugged.

  “Yes,” I said, affecting a generous smile, and sat down again at the table. “I do like to joke.”

  Over the next hour, Mayor Laporte told me his version of the story of his marriage to Mme Laporte. Granted, he was still drunk and most likely prone to exaggeration, but the details he provided gave me much to wonder about. Madame, he told me—or Simone, as he called her—had come to Couiza all the way from Paris with no one but a maid when she was twenty-five. They arrived in a horse and carriage, stopping in the village square, and when Simone descended, she drew the eyes of every man in the square. Her height, her severe beauty, her evident wealth and air of calm intelligence fascinated everyone. He had been playing boules in the square with a bunch of friends, but they stopped their game and watched the coachman approach them. He asked if anyone might serve as a guide to take the lady and her maid up to Rennes-le-Château. Philippe won the small skirmish that broke out, and moments later found himself loading luggage onto a mule and leading the small procession toward the hill.

  As they walked, Philippe managed to learn that Simone had come to inspect the château, which had just been put up for sale. Simone was a distant relative of the Berthelot family—the family that had owned and managed the affairs of Rennes-le-Château and the surrounding area for centuries until the death of the woman who was long thought to be the last in the line, Anne Marie
de Berthelot. Upon her death, the castle was sold to a family from Toulouse who came only infrequently.

  “That Anne Marie was crazy,” said the mayor. “Just like her mother before her. Of course, there was reason for the mother to be mad, poor woman—she’d lost her son and heir when he was eight. She died just before the Revolution. They said she used to disappear for days at a time, and then reappear in the church graveyard with dirt in her hair and beneath her fingernails. You’ll have heard of her, of course,” he added. “Or seen her gravestone in the churchyard at any rate.” I thought of the woman Bérenger had described—the lady of the village, sadly unhinged.

  Simone’s family, the mayor continued, had been estranged from the Berthelots since Simone’s grandfather, the cousin of Anne Marie, had converted to Judaism. He had fallen in love with a peddler’s daughter and, as she would not leave her family to marry him, he decided to leave his. His conversion—let alone his marriage—was unheard of at the time, and his family could not accept it. They had cut him off from his inheritance. He and his bride moved to Lyon. There he began experimenting with silkworm cultivation and eventually grew a prosperous business, which made him wealthy, independent of his aristocratic family. He and his wife had many children, including Simone’s father. Simone, the sole descendant now of this branch of the Berthelots, had nursed a fascination with her Christian relatives, and when she read that the château at Rennes was again up for sale, she had been compelled to come and see it.

  The residents of Rennes came out of doors to greet Philippe, Simone, and her maid as they walked the narrow footpaths through the town, leaving the mule to graze on the hillside. (So different from how we were greeted when we first arrived! I could not tell whether this was the truth or an embellishment of Philippe’s.) Philippe felt like a lord as he escorted her through the village, showing her the castle and the grounds, the decaying church and cemetery, and the breathtaking views. He knew the village, having discovered it as a young boy exploring the hills, and felt possessive of its rare beauty and proud to share it with a woman as rare and beautiful as Simone.