Keith also sent me a link to something called
Les Ostensions.
This, I learned, is a yearly ceremony to which the faithful are invited to view the relics housed by the Confrérie de St-Martin. They are paraded around the town and the priests in attendance implore God to intercede with the saints. It is an ancient custom, revived some years ago after St Martial’s crypt was discovered. As Keith put it, ‘This could be interesting, no?’
I emailed Noor and told her we would talk about Symi later when I got back to London. I told her how happy I was to hear that we would, after all these months, be together again. I emailed Keith to thank him for his work. I found myself plumped up with optimism. I thought how odd it is that often, just when you are at your lowest, the gloom can clear unexpectedly, even arbitrarily.
I took a taxi to a village near Châlus. The driver told me that Richard the Lionheart was killed in Châlus and that the English do tours of the castles of this region. ‘
Mais Richard Coeur de Lion ne parlait pas même un seul mot d’anglais
.’ I had an appointment with a woman called Cathérine Sieff, whose brother I had met in England. He told me that his sister owned a bookshop called Parola, Occitan for ‘words’, in a small village near Châlus, and she had become the local historian. She was very well known in the region and her bookshop was, as he put it, a ‘destination’; she had a café in the old mill that housed her bookshop where she made wonderful coffee, served with
madeleines
or
friandises
. She also loved exotic teas; Emily would have been right at home. Cathérine Sieff had been married for eight years to an Englishman who had died less than a year ago. Jean Sieff said she would be delighted to see me.
The taxi pulled up in a small square, priested by plane trees, with a fountain in the middle. I walked through an old, rounded doorway that might once have been the main entrance to the mill. The bookshop was just as a bookshop should be: roof to floor it was stacked with books in those evocative and serious paperback French covers. There were photographs and paintings of local interest, there was a small art gallery upstairs and there were giant pots of bougainvillea on the terrace at the back, which looked over the stream that had once powered the mill. A half-sized piano rested in a corner of a room on a lower level.
She appeared from the café.
‘You are Richard, I am sure. I am Cathérine. It is wonderful to meet you. Come, my brother says you like good coffee,
à l’Italien
.’
‘I do. And he says you make great
madeleines
.’
‘I hope. I have just made some.’
She was wearing a simple light dress in blue cotton, and her hair was long and darkish blonde, falling down to her shoulders, artfully natural. She was in her early thirties, I guessed, very young to be widowed. She was slim in that French way. I was reminded of a picture of a 1960s singer, Françoise Hardy, with my father. She is holding his arm lightly in the picture. He hinted that he had had an affair with her in St-Tropez. It’s not impossible: after all it was the 1960s and he was one of the new species of laughing freemen, complete with Jim Morrison hair, poised silkily on his head. His hair had a life all of its own.
Cathérine made me a latte and decorated it with two hearts. She watched my reaction. Wonderful, I said. The bookshop had been financed by her husband and they had a house in the countryside near by, where she now lived full-time. He was a banker –
not a crook, not at all
– and she was devastated when he died suddenly of pancreatic cancer, aged thirty-six. He died within three weeks of diagnosis. I had another coffee. I was beginning to feel the effects of the caffeine: I was overrun by the possibilities a life could offer and, despite my plans for Symi, one of these was to have sex with Cathérine. We talked in general terms about my mission here. I told her that I was writing a dissertation on the art of the Latin Kingdom and its influence on Eleanor, and that some treasures of Jerusalem were sent to Normandy, but documents I had read suggested that they had been held up near Limoges. I needed her help to locate a church, only identified as St Martial, just south of Châlus-Chabrol. Now that, thanks to Keith, I knew something of
Les Ostensions
, I asked her if she could help me get to see the relics in storage.
I had two
madeleines
. They were the shape of a scallop-shell, quite large and destined to rest in the memory for ever.
Cathérine knew about the church of St Martial. She told me that there was nothing much to see, because it had been destroyed during the Hundred Years War, but I would be able to walk the outlines of the building and look at some collapsed parts of the crypt. I thought this crypt might be the
grotte profonde
on Huntingdon’s chart. She told me about
Les Ostensions
, which she described as kitsch: the relics and bones of various saints, some of them local, were processed around town. A reliquary holding St Thomas’s finger bone was one of the main attractions, as well as various other reliquaries, one containing a piece of the lance that pierced Christ’s side.
‘It makes me a little mad to see them parading this stuff around the city. Anyway, what exactly are you hoping to find?’
‘I am looking for reliquaries of Latin Kingdom or Byzantine origin, which are being recognised as important artworks. They demonstrate that, over a hundred and fifty years, artistic fusion was going in Outremer. It may be that one or more of these ended up here. I am sure you know that when Richard besieged Châlus-Chabrol, just before he was killed, he was looking for hidden treasure, which the Viscount of Limoges would not surrender to him?’
‘Yes, I do know the story, but in those days hordes of treasure were often mentioned in a miraculous way to explain things. You know, like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, or by a mythic holy quest. The story of the treasure that the Viscount would not surrender is fiction. It was supposed to be a fabulous horde of Gallo-Roman gold. But it is strange that it was never found, no? The treasure of Rennes-le-Château is another example. This crooked nineteenth-century priest, Bérenger Saunière, made a huge amount of money from selling thousands of indulgences, but the source of his money was said to be from some treasure he had found in his church.’
In the afternoon, she drove me to Châlus-Chabrol. The remaining tower was quite small and unimpressive. She told me where Richard was supposed to have been killed; nobody really knows for sure, because a new castle was built on the site.
‘Most of the original castle, except for the keep, has been demolished, and this later castle, these ruins over there, was also destroyed,’ she said. ‘OK, I must go now.’
She smiled, and shrugged apologetically. I thought I could detect sadness, a certain wariness about the eyes. As I stepped out of the car she said, ‘Do you have a hotel reservation?’
‘Yes, in Limoges.’
‘Would you like to stay at my house? I can come with you to the church tomorrow. I am free in the morning.’
‘That would be great. My room is a dog-kennel. But, by the way, I have no clothes. Obviously.’
‘You can have a clean shirt from my husband’s cupboard. There are many. I haven’t been able to throw anything of Harry’s clothes away.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Now I will try to persuade the
Confrérie
to let you see the relics. They have no idea what they have and they don’t really care as long as the – how do you say? – the credulous, come out to look.’
I was leaning on the windowsill of her car, looking across at her, and for a long moment, as she leant towards me, I saw her breasts; small but not negligible. It was impossible to look away, because that would have suggested guilt. Instead I tried to look serious.
‘Thank you for that. I will see you later.’
‘OK, Richard, that is great. I will come and get you here just after six when the shop will be closed.’
I walked round the castle tower and entered the keep, where Pierre Basile, the man with the frying pan, could have been positioned with his crossbow. It was not possible to climb up to the top of the remaining battlements. But it was clear that the scale of the siege was unworthy of the attention of the most famous king in Europe, unless he had something else on his mind.
Later that night when we were lying in bed, Cathérine told me that her brother had said she would like me.
‘And was he right?’
‘Absolutely, although maybe he was not expecting us to jump into bed.’
‘No, probably not. Men are protective of their sisters.’
‘Do you have sisters?’
‘Just one half-sister.’
‘Are you close to her?’
‘She lives in Toronto. I didn’t even know about her until a few months ago.’
‘Do you have
une petite amie
?’ Cathérine asked.
‘No, not at the moment. Do you miss your husband very much?’
‘I miss Harry, and every day I think of him, and every day when I wake up I have to remember that he has gone. It is terrible.’
I couldn’t tell her about Noor while lying under the old Limousin oak beams on her big, lavender-scented bed, a foaming cataract of embroidered sheets and pillows. I couldn’t tell her that I had fallen in love unwittingly with my half-sister and that in Egypt she had been gang-raped. My relationship with Cathérine, so far, was more like a bitter-sweet French romance of a young widow and an English stranger meeting fortuitously and consoling each other, although down the road there was undoubtedly going to be a phase of existential angst and introspection. My true story was far too implausible, with dark undertones that would not survive the examined life.
‘Why did you come to live in this place?’
‘
La France profonde
. Just because it is deepest France, that is why I come. We had a small apartment in Paris, just by St-Sulpice, but I have for a long time an idea of a bookshop in
la France profonde
, and we bought this place. Harry was working in Paris and I spent more and more time here. I became fascinated by Occitan – we have our own Limousin dialect even now – and I was looking more and more deep in the history of our language, which is endangered. Anyway, I become over the last eight years known and now our bookshop – and our tea and coffee – are well known.’
Her body has a fine, aromatic sheen. A new lover has intriguing little aromas and textures. I feel blessed to be lying next to her.
‘Are you happy? You don’t think it is a mistake?’ she asks, looking genuinely concerned.
‘I am ecstatic. I have been through some bad times.’
We kiss. Her lips have calmed down now and are gently solicitous, tenderly exploratory. This kissing business surprises me even now, because it is so intimate. I remember my first proper kiss in Aqaba, with Judy McAllister, and the shock of her wet and falafel-flavoured tongue exploring the inside of my mouth.
‘Cathérine, did you intend to seduce me?’
‘No, no. In French we say it was
un coup de foudre
. Do you know what that means?’
‘Yes. I do.’
‘I had not planned anything at all. In fact you are the first man I have fucked with since my husband died.’
I am taken aback for a moment by the word ‘fuck’, but I guess that she thinks it is nothing more than argot, like ‘
merde
’.
‘I am honoured.’
‘We only meet this morning. Is that a matter of concern for you? Do you think I am a
salope
?’
‘A cause of concern? No, it is beautiful. A miracle. I haven’t been so happy for many, many months.’
‘In our local Occitan we say “
gorrina
” for “
salope
”.’
‘You are the most wonderful
gorrina
I have ever met.’
‘Have you met many?’
‘Quite a few.’
In the morning she is not quite so serene. We have slept a little uneasily.
‘Are you all right?’ I ask, as she brings in some tea.
‘I am fine, but I found it strange. This was our bed, and two or three times I woke up and thought that it was Harry next to me. I had dreamed about that so often.’
I put my forearm under her thigh, and pull it gently onto my stomach, and we press against each other, taking counter measures against doubt. I feel a little anxious, aware that I am in the unseam’d bed. I could even things up by telling her all about Noor, but it is not possible at the moment – or ever. In truth Cathérine is lovely in the morning, hardly rumpled, and radiating a gentle warmth. We go out to a café for breakfast and I am pleased because I think that this means she is happy to be seen with me. She has given me one of her husband’s shirts to wear: perhaps unconsciously, she has chosen nothing particularly distinctive. It fits me well; Harry appears to have been about the same size as me.
There is something wonderfully conspiratorial about breakfast after a first night of passion, of intense longing, of secret appraisal.