Realms of Gold

by Terry Stanfill

  She promises herself that the minute she returns home she’ll begin her research on the Vix Krater, and Troyes. When she gets home she'll read Chrétien's Romances.

  And Chrètien. She racks her brain. She knows so little about him. And why was he the first to tell the Grail stories as we know them today? She remembers reading about Chrètien in Jessie Weston’s book From Ritual to Romance. Since her job is writing about objects in ritual, often she memorizes certain passages important to her. She takes another swallow of wine and closes her eyes as she gropes for Weston’s words, hoping they’ll return to her at this moment of dazzling clarity. She takes a deep breath, drawing out the lines from memory, softly whispering each word aloud.

  That the man who first told the story, and boldly, as befitted a born teller of tales, wedded it to the Arthurian legend, was himself connected by descent with the ancient Faith, actually himself held the Secret of the Grail, and told in purposely romantic form, that of which he knew,

  She pauses, and, trying fiercely to push the rest from her brain, entwines her fingers tightly, pressing them hard against her chin until Weston's words float to the surface of consciousness.

  I am firmly convinced, nor do I think that the time is far distant when the missing links will be in our hand and we shall be able to weld once more the golden chain which connects Ancient Ritual with Medieval Romance.

  The Krater, la Dame de Vix, Chrétien de Troyes, the Grail story, Avallon. The missing links. She’s found them. She’s convinced. Totally, irrevocably convinced. No one, no one would ever be able to make her believe otherwise. Leaping from her seat, she opens the overhead bin for her laptop, boots it up, and begins to write.

  Chrétien

  Vix, Burgundy, France Circa 1140 A.D

  After a long day’s journey, a woman and her young son arrive at Vix, a village at the foot of Mont Lassois. They tether their horses and stop to rest by the old fieldstone bridge. Ancient oaks, their branches thickened with lichen and mistletoe, cast flickering shadows over the riverbanks.

  The boy quenches his thirst from a flask of sacred water filled at the nearby source of the Douix, a sanctuary of Sequana, the old goddess of rivers and springs. He picks up a pebble and tosses it across the narrow stream that will soon become the Seine, the same river that flows by his home near Troyes; but at Troyes, the Seine courses broad and stately, its quays and docks crammed with all manner of boats and barges laden with tin ore from Cornwall.

  From a pouch at her waist, his mother takes an object bought from a peddler at Sequana's shrine, a small limestone figure carved in the shape of a serene-faced, bare breasted woman with double fish tails. A melusine. As she admires her curious keepsake, the boy reminds her that he has seen another such creature carved in a stone capital in the crypt of the Church of the Magdalene in Troyes.

  Before long, mother and son begin their ride up the winding road to Mont St. Marcel. As they near the summit, the boy jumps from his horse to look out over the surrounding valley, its fields spread with a blanket of ripened wheat. In the distance he can see the already widening Seine teeming with punts and rafts.

  When darkness begins to fall, they reach their destination—a cottage shaded by a copse of tall trees. It belongs to the Wise Woman. The traveling woman is her daughter, the boy her favorite grandson, Chrétien. The Wise Woman is cared for by her niece, the homely, still unwed Blanchefleur, almost the same age as Chrétien, her cousin thrice removed.

  The lad is tired, his body aches, his stomach rumbles. Blanchefleur has cooked up a pot of barley. He gulps his share down with bread and goat cheese, and, when his stomach is full, he climbs a ladder to the alcove. Stretched out on a straw pallet and warmed by chimney stones, he lays his head against a coarse blanket and closes his eyes. As he begins to drift off, strange images flash through his head, but they quickly fade when he hears his grandmother whisper, “Has Chrétien fallen asleep yet? We have much women’s work to do this night.”

  “You must not worry,” his mother replies. “He will not hear us. I have stirred a dose of poppy and yarrow into his porridge.”

  “My daughter, you have yet many words to commit to memory. Let us now begin as I fear it will not be long before my soul passes to the Otherworld.”

  Chrétien struggles to stay awake. He wonders why his grandmother, who has often told him stories, does not want him to hear these.

  The old woman draws a deep breath and heaves a profound sigh before she begins to intone in a voice strangely unlike her own.

  Listen, daughter, as I sing of who we are,

  Of how we came to be.

  I sing this song as it was sung to me

  In the voice of my mother

  And all mothers before,

  In the morning of time,

  On our distant shore.

  She pauses. Then Chrétien hears his mother recite the words exactly as his grandmother has chanted them.

  The boy’s heart hammers in the darkness as the Wise Woman goes on.

  I tell this story as my mother told it,

  As did hers before

  Back, back, back in time,

  Before the seasons of my life,

  Those seasons before hers.

  Night had fallen

  And the ramparts of Vix

  Opened for the Woman.

  From strange lands she came,

  Crossed seas, came up rivers

  To the River that flows through our village

  A woman wearing raiment never before seen,

  The King met her at the city gates,

  Bade her tell her story,

  And this is what she sang.

  ‘From across the seas I come.

  From a sanctuary so rich

  Our maidens offer thirsty travelers

  Fresh water in golden cups

  Until the maidens were taken

  by the enemies' men,

  When the outrage was done,

  And the battle won,

  These wicked men changed the river’s course

  To run over the golden city.

  And so the land of wheat and bulls,

  Of purple and gold,

  Became Wasteland.’

  The old woman stops to sip from her cup of tisane.

  “Aunt, what happened to the outraged Woman? Where did she go?” Chrétien hears Blanchefleur ask.

  Over the mountains she fled

  Fled from the flooded land,

  Her heart as wild as the waves,

  Crossed seas, sailed up rivers

  Her spirit journeying.

  And when at last she reached our gates

  The people knew she was the Queen

  We'd waited for.

  And queen she was until she left this world.

  So she was buried with her cart.

  Around her neck, her amber beads, her golden torque.

  Still she lies by her Sacred Cauldron,

  Cauldron of plenty that will never empty,

  Cauldron of life after death.

  From her we claim our descent.

  We hold the secret of all who come here to seek it.

  Our women are the guardians of the Grail

  That lies buried in the earth of Vix,

  Book II

  New York City

  The taxi turns the corner of 75th Street by six o’clock. Bianca pays the driver and asks for a receipt, intent on turning over a new leaf with her expense account, all part of The Improved Bianca.. She lugs her rolling bag down the steps to the door of her basement apartment and rummages in her handbag for the tiny squeeze battery flashlight she always carries on her key chain. She drags the cart over the doorsill, then turns on the light. She gasps.

  Books, papers, magazines, CDs, DVDs, tapes strewn about, drawers dumped out, chairs, tables upside down. The TV still sits on its stand, the stereo and video equipment on its shelf. Her heart feels as though it will leap right out of her chest. She runs straight to the kitchen. Just as she feared, Nina’s cookie
jar from Rhodes, with its lovely image of a double-tailed mermaid, lies shattered on the floor. She stoops to pick up the fragments. Even in her desperation, she counts the seventeen pieces before she finds a plastic container and carefully places them inside, consoling herself that she knows a ceramics curator at the Met who moonlights by restoring broken objects. She’s relieved that Nina’s earrings are in the felt sack safely pinned to the inside of her bra. Then she goes to the bedroom. Nina’s little painting of the Campanile is gone!

  She feels violated—hollowed and sick. But she won’t allow herself to collapse.

  Should I call Sergio? Or Giovanni? Mom? The voice inside her shrieks, “Call the police!”

  *

  Looks like an inside job to me,” Officer De Vita tells her. “Think hard, Ms. Caldwell. If they haven’t taken your TV or your appliances, they were probably after something else that has nothing to do with resale value. What do you think the burglar—or burglars wanted? What other valuables do you own?”

  “A new laptop, a pair of gold earrings, a diary left to me by my grandmother —and my passport.” She reaches for her purse. “But they’re all with me—right here in my roll-on bag, and they’ve been with me during my entire trip to Venice. When I’m in New York I keep them in a safety deposit box at the bank.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Some antique plates my grandmother left me. But they’re still in the kitchen cupboard. And a very small framed watercolor of Venice painted by my great-grandmother. But it just occurs to me that it wasn’t where it should have been the day I left, I’m assuming that my helper put it away somewhere.”

  “Do you have any enemies, Ms. Caldwell?”

  “I never felt as if I did, though from time to time I get a nasty letter from a reader accusing me of black magic or witchcraft. But my boss never shows them to me. I only learn about these crank letters from his secretary.”

  He raises an eyebrow and continues to probe her about Eyes and Soul, her column, her relationships with colleagues, with Luisa. “Think hard. Maybe someone in your office wants some of your work. Most likely information from your personal computer. From what you’ve told me, you must have lots of fascinating stuff in that little laptop of yours.”

  “You’re not implying that the burglar could be someone from the magazine, are you?” She hears her defensiveness. “There’s no way I’ll talk about my job or my colleagues.”

  “Whoa…Hey, lady—I’m not implying anything! If you don’t want to cooperate, that’s your decision. Our switchboard rings its head off. We usually don’t have time to bother with this kind of stuff. This happens to be my old neighborhood so I decided to take the call.”

  She feels sheepish and assures him that not cooperating never entered her mind.

  “I see that there’s no knob handle on either side of your bedroom door.”

  She hopes he doesn't notice her blush. “It’s been that way for almost a year—I keep meaning to get it fixed.”

  “Have you ever seen this before? I found it on the kitchen counter.”

  She looks at the scrap of paper. On it is written in a spindly, shaky, old-fashioned Italian hand, Sacra Corona Unita.

  “Sacred Crown United? I wonder what that’s all about.”

  “Sounds like someone from the Mafia left this little bit of information for you. Perhaps as a warning. Sacra Corona Unita is the name of the Mafia organization in Puglia. I’ll keep the message as part of the police report.”

  “A warning for what—I have no idea what this is all about.”

  “Well, keep your eyes open if you ever go to Italy again. Didn’t you tell me that you were in Venice?”

  “Yes, for a wedding. I met a lot of Italians there.” She immediately thinks of Giovanni, but she doesn’t mention his name, then wonders why she wanted to protect him. Protect him from what?

  *

  After Officer De Vita leaves, she double bolts herself in, makes sure all the windows are locked, and heads for the bedroom to clear up the mess. She opens the suitcase and pulls out her raincoat. And instead of throwing it over a chair as is her habit, she puts it on one of the puffy pink satin hangers her mother sent her, most likely hoping that they would encourage her to hang up her clothes. When she begins to pick up old underwear strewn about the floor, a black spider scurries along the baseboard. She watches in horror as it disappears. She continues her search for the painting. Not here, not there, not anywhere. She won’t give up. She’s convinced that Luisa has hidden it in a safe place. Her heart still knocking, she rummages inside the roll-on for her eye mask and ties it on tight. Breathes in, blows out, three times. This time the black curtain fades to whitest white.

  “When did you see the watercolor last, Bianca?” the voice inside her asks.

  “The night my mother called me before I left for Italy.”

  “Where do you think Luisa might have put it?”

  Nothing appears on the inner screen. She hears only the sounds of her breathing, her heartbeats. All she can think of is Zitomer’s. Zitomer’s! Remember to renew your prescription at Zitomer’s. She’d worn her trench coat to the pharmacy!

  She yanks the coat from the hanger and pummels and squeezes until she feels the frame. The painting is still buttoned up in the inside pocket of her raincoat where, before leaving for Italy, she’d absent-mindedly put it! Nina’s watercolor of the Campanile has traveled all the way to Venice, then back again, in the coat she’d folded into her suitcase and never once worn. She feels like singing as she pulls out the painting and presses her lips to the protecting glass.

  *

  The bed is stripped, sheets and pillows tossed on the floor, feathers all over the place. She gathers up the sheets and begins to make the bed, trying her best to square each corner. Even when she lived in the all white room, she was scolded for never tucking the corners neatly enough. Looking at the crumpled sheets, she is suddenly fed up with tops that don’t match bottoms that don’t match pillowcases. From now on the Brand New Bianca will buy matching sets.

  *

  At nine, she finally musters the courage to get into bed, where she worries about those three words, “Sacra Corona Unita” on the slip of paper. A message from the Mafia? She doubts it. What’s the Mafia to do with me? Get some sleep, she urges herself. What’s there to be afraid of? No one was harmed, nothing’s been taken. She’s more terrified of her own dark visions than of a burglar. Or of the Mafia, for that matter.

  Now she’s sorry she ever met Giovanni. If she hadn’t, she would have stayed on in Venice, roaming through the Accademia, gazing at Saint Ursula’s sweet face turned upward to heaven, as she dreams of angels under the tasseled baldacchino of her bed. Or she could have stood in wonder before Giorgione’s La Tempesta, the courtier leaning on his staff as he observes the half-naked woman nursing her baby under a tree, and in the distance, beyond the castle, the sky dark with storm clouds. What would happen if a lightning bolt hit that tree, she wonders. Whenever she looks at La Tempesta, a curious run-for-cover feeling comes over her.

  She staggers to the kitchen and makes coffee by heaping espresso crystals into her favorite mug and sticks it under the boiling water tap. The mug has a faint hairline crack but she can’t bear to throw it out. By now she’s ravenous, and since there’s no milk, she pours Rice Krispies into a bowl and eats them dry.

  She goes back to bed and wakes up at five with the word sinope repeating itself over and over in her head—sinope. To her, it sounds like the Italian word for mustard, but no, that’s spelled s-e-n-a-p-e. She’s sure there’s more to this dream, something about entering new rooms, but sinope is all she can remember. What is sinope, she wonders. She looks it up on Google. Sinope. In Turkey. At the southern shore of the Black Sea. She heaves a great shuddering sigh, the kind of sigh that makes her feel good about herself, as though she’s somehow touched a distant place within her soul.

  *

  By noon the place is beginning to look like Thursday, as though Luisa has ju
st left. She looks in the hall closet where Luisa has stocked the shelves with toilet paper, Kleenex, and soap.. Even before the break-in, the flat never ever looked this neat. She keeps walking in and out of the rooms, admiring them. She doesn’t feel quite at home with such orderliness. Maybe it’s better for her work, living and writing in chaos, but someday she’ll fix up the place so she can invite Giovanni for dinner, or at least a drink.

  With her coat hanging in the closet, clothes tucked into drawers, sweaters folded neatly and stored in hotel laundry bags, scattered books now shelved and categorized, the place looks forbiddingly barren, like that all white room on Boar’s Hill. She thinks about adding some personal touches to make it look less sterile, to transform it into a cushion-comfort bower where The New Bianca Fiore might welcome her would-be lover, Giovanni.

  On Wednesday afternoon, just before the bank closes, she rents a safety deposit box for Nina’s diary, the watercolor, and the earrings, taking no chances in case the burglar turns up again. On her way home from the bank, as she walks up Lexington Avenue, she notices an advertisement for still another Starbucks Coffee shop, soon to be opened. She stops to look at the green and white logo. Is she seeing things or is it a mermaid, framed by her wide-flung tails? Yes—there she is with a five pointed star above her forehead. She is so much like the melusine on the shattered Rhodian jar! Why, she wonders, was this image chosen as the Starbucks logo, and why has she never noticed it until today? She decides that when she has time, she’ll do more research on the origin of the melusine.