The Arrow's Arc

by John Wilcox

  “What’s this, then, Miss?”

  “It’s the entrance to the Museum.”

  “Yes, but what’s all this lot, then Miss?”

  “Well.” The teacher looked up at the strange, open canopy with some puzzlement. Then she realised. “Of course. These tube things are supposed to represent longbows and the spiked things are the arrows. Yes, that’s what it is. Rather good, really, don’t you think?”

  She looked across with a grin at her much younger colleague, who nodded with rather less enthusiasm.

  “All right, girls. Now listen.” The older teacher had a pleasant, round face with high cheek bones, strangely black eyes and grey-flecked, salt and pepper hair and her manner, although friendly and informal, commanded respect, for the rabble immediately fell silent.

  “Now this is the museum which will tell us all about the battle of Agincourt, which took place just outside this village in which year, then…?

  Several voices shouted, “Fourteen fifteen, Miss.”

  “Well done. Now, neither Miss Green nor I have been before but I am told that it is very good indeed, with some film that tells us the background to the battle and lots of hands-on special displays. As you know, tomorrow we will be going to the battlefield itself to see where the two great armies clashed, so this will help us to get some idea of what the armies looked like, their positions on the field, their weapons and so on… Yes Lizzie?”

  “Please Miss, will the film have the commentary in English?”

  “Yes, the commentaries are in various languages. But you will not, repeat not, turn on the English version. You will listen to the French.”

  The howl of derision was unanimous. “Oh nooo, Misssss…”

  “Oh yes, Miss. Miss Green and I will be watching to make sure you don’t turn on the English version. You are here to improve your French as well as to learn about the history of this important battle. And the best way of learning French,” she turned to a bespectacled girl who towered over the others, “is what, Bethan Yvonne…?”

  “To speak it and listen to it, Miss,” responded Bethan sulkily.

  “Indeed. Right. Now please stay here with Miss Green while I go in and get the tickets. Don’t stray onto the road and once inside, don’t run riot. Just take your turn at each exhibit. Remember that you are representing Wales while you are here. If you don’t behave yourselves I shan’t get my pension – and you wouldn’t want that, now, would you?”

  The reaction was unanimous once again: “Oh yes, we would!”

  “Thank you very much.” She tossed her head in mock despair. “What a lot!”

  Inside, the desk before the entrance was manned by a tiny, very elderly lady with snow-white hair arranged around her face in a plait which ended in a bun at the back. Her eyes were brown and her nose had a retroussé tilt to it. She smiled and murmured “Bonjour, Madame.”

  In competent French, the teacher explained that she led the party of schoolchildren whose visit had been arranged by letter some time before. She produced the correspondence.

  The receptionist carefully adjusted her spectacles and smiled again. “Of course,” she said in softly accented English. “We have been expecting you. Please do bring your pupils inside. This is a quiet time and there are no other visitors. But,” she peered above her spectacles, “please be kind and sign our register, we like to have a record of the visit of big parties. Just your name and the name of your school please. Perhaps you would be kind enough to print them, too.”

  “Of course.”

  This done, the teacher nodded and led in her charges who were soon subsumed within the dark interior of the museum. Some five minutes later, the teacher, engrossed in the commentary of the film, was tapped on the shoulder. The lady from the reception desk was apologetic. “Madame, excuse… is it Mademoiselle?”

  “Yes, I am not married.”

  “Ah, yes, Mademoiselle, forgive me. Could you spare me a brief word outside?”

  “Of course.”

  Frowning, the teacher followed the petite old lady to the reception desk, where the book she had signed lay open. The receptionist was pointing to the page and smiling apologetically – a smile that lit up her face but also revealed the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth that betrayed that she must have been at least eighty years old.

  “Your name is Gladwin, Mademoiselle?”

  “Oui, Madame.”

  “And that, of course, is your family name, for you are not married?”

  “Well… er… yes. Is there some problem?”

  The old lady’s eyes were dancing, but she was anxious to be reassuring. “No, no, no. Not at all. I see that your school is in Wales, near Brecon. Forgive what must seem like an intrusion, but I see that you have signed your name as ‘C. Gladwin’. Is your first name, in fact, Caitlin?”

  “Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it is, but how did you…?”

  “And do they call you Kate?”

  “Good lord, yes. But,” she peered closely at the face before her, which was now tipped to one side as the brown eyes studied her, “have we met before? Do we know each other?”

  “No, ma chère. We have not. You will think this very… what is the word… ah, yes, intrusive, importun. But one more question: are your parents still alive?”

  “Ah,” for the first time a little understanding came into Kate Gladwin’s expression. “Perhaps you knew my parents. But my mother died about twenty years ago. She was a widow, you see. My father was with the RAF during the war and he died in 1944, before I knew him, for I was only a few months old. I don’t remember him, at all. So – perhaps you knew my mother?”

  The elderly lady’s face had now adopted an expression of gentle melancholy but she ignored the question and went on briskly. “Now. Have you already visited the battlefield or do you go tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  The other shrugged, apologetically. “I am afraid that there is not much to see because it is what it has always been – just a ploughed field, really – except for that terrible day in 1415. But,” she shrugged again, “of course you must go and take your girls. I understand. You are staying, I think, at the little hotel?”

  “Yes.” Kate Gladwin was becoming just a little annoyed now, but the old lady’s manner was so charming that she tried to suppress the feeling. “We leave the day after tomorrow.”

  “Excellent. This means that, after you have visited the field, you will have time to visit me, I trust, and take a cup of tea with me?”

  “Well, I am most grateful, Madame, but I am not sure. I…”

  “Please do come, my dear. I know it seems strange to you but I would very much like to talk to you and, perhaps, get to know you a little. You see,” the air of gentle sadness returned, “I know that I have very little time left now.”

  Kate felt a shaft of annoyance at this rather bathetic touch of blackmail, but she could not deny the interest that was now aroused within her. Her mother had never mentioned having a friend in France, so why should this old lady take such an interest in her? Still, it would be enriching to talk to someone like this in her home surroundings, there would be time tomorrow, and it would be an opportunity to practice her French. Why on earth be churlish and say no?

  “That is most kind of you, Madame, I would be delighted – although I fear I will not be able to stay long.”

  The old lady’s face now positively beamed. “Splendid. Now,” she scribbled on a card, “this is my name – Madame de Vitrac, but please call me Marie – and this is where I live at Tramecourt, which is very near here. Ask at the hotel and anyone will direct you. It is within walking distance. Forgive me now for… what do you call it, yes, my shift has now finished and I must go. Until tomorrow, then, my dear. Shall we say at 5.00 pm? Good. A bientôt.”

  *

  The next day Kate and her charges tramped around the field of Agincourt. The old lady was right: there was very little to see, except a cross by the side of the field where the bodies of the French dead h
ad been buried and, at the eastern end of the field, a memorial to the battle. Except for that, it could have been any other ploughed field in France. It was all very disappointing, but Kate and her colleague tried their best to maintain the interest of the girls by pointing out the dispositions of the battle lines, the point from which an English bowman (well, she pointed out, he was probably Welsh or from Cheshire, like most of the archers in King Hal’s army) had fired the first, sighting arrow to start the battle, and where the baggage train of the British had been set up. Perhaps, she reflected, it would have been better if she had brought a class of boys. Ah well, only two more months to go…

  It was drizzling with fine rain when the time for her appointment came, so the hotel ordered her a taxi. It was an indulgence, for the journey only took two minutes. Her destination turned out to be a low-set, very old farmhouse tucked under the side of a hill, very near the site of the battle. Marie de Vitrac came to the door to meet her, looking a little younger with her hair unbraided and loose about her shoulders. Kate ordered the taxi to return in one hour but Marie overruled this and made it an hour and a half. Then she led her guest into the sitting room of the house.

  A young woman bustled in, carrying a tray of tea and what looked like delicious pastries. “This is Josephine,” said Marie, “who looks after me. She is wonderful and I could not do without her. Her grandmother was here when I first came here as a young bride.” Kate exchanged pleasantries with Josephine and then settled back in her chair with her tea, feeling somehow quite at home.

  “Your French is very good, my dear,” said Marie. “Unlike… ah, do take another little cake. Josephine makes them herself.”

  Kate did so and smiled. “Now, Madame… sorry… Marie, you really must tell me what this is all about. When did you meet my mother?”

  Marie shook her head. “I never did meet her.”

  “Well, you certainly could not have met my father, because my mother was told that his plane had been shot down in flames over central France and that none of the crew had survived.”

  “Yes, I expect you would have been told that.”

  “If you never met either of my parents why did you invite me here? I don’t understand. What is this all about?”

  The old lady thrust back a stray lock of hair and, her head on one side, regarded her visitor quizzically, as though weighing up what to say. Eventually, just as Kate was beginning to fidget, she spoke. “I see that I must tell you everything,” she said, “even some of the things I felt I should not say, about… other times and other places. So let me begin at the beginning, when I first met your father.”

  “What?” Caitlin’s jaw dropped. “Here, in France? In 1944?”

  “Oh no. Here in France, yes. But it was in 1415, just after the great battle here. Let me tell you about it all.”

  *

  Marie de Vitrac spoke for the next two hours – they sent the taxi away and asked him to return when telephoned. Kate listened for the most part in silence, except for the occasional question, her brain in a turmoil of conflicting emotions. At first, as the love story unfolded, she felt a sense of the ridiculous, listening to this very old woman relating a story of passion and commitment spanning more than five hundred years. Five hundred years, for God’s sake! Kate had rejected her mother’s Methodism in her teens and had retained a sturdy atheism throughout most of her life, this softening somewhat to what had become a kind of agnosticism as she had grown older and realised that she lacked the answers to so many questions. Her life had sadly not been fulfilling in terms of affection. She had never felt warm towards her mother, and her own affairs had been fairly brief and not satisfying in any way, so that she had become content to take solace in the successive generations of children she had taught. Religion, the afterlife and love, then, had played little part in her life and, if she thought of reincarnation at all, it was to put it in the drawer marked “not proven”. As Marie’s story unfolded, however, Kate could not help but be impressed by the detail with which the old lady painted her pictures of previous lives. Detail which, as an historian, the Welsh teacher could confirm from her own wide reading and studies.

  When Marie’s histoire reached 1944, however, Kate felt at first a vicarious pang of jealousy on behalf of her mother, then a deepening sense of sadness and respect for the intensity of the love between Marie and Will Gladewyne – Bill Gladwin, her father. Her father! The man whom she had never met but whose genes she carried – she had been told so many times as a child that she had “his” eyes – and who had loved so passionately, it seems, this little old lady sitting before her now.

  “So,” asked Kate, lifting her nose from her tumbler – they were drinking whisky now – “you never saw him again after he drove away in that van with the Maquis fighters?”

  “No.” Not for the first time, tears came into Marie’s eyes. “I stayed at the farm after Henri’s death and the Germans did not bother me. I was able to find someone to help me with the farm and we kept it going until after the war. I half expected to have a letter from Will but it never came. So I went to see Chauvin, who had become our Mayor – very Communist, you know, but a good man. I asked him to find out what had happened to Will. I knew he had left this life, I felt it inside me. But I wanted to know how and when.

  “Chauvin made extensive enquiries through his old Maquis contacts in the south and we found that, via various routes, Will and this man Proctor had reached the very border of France and Spain at the northern end of the Pyrenees. Somehow – I do not know how – Proctor had been killed in very peculiar circumstances, but Will had slipped through the Gestapo net in the border town of Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Ah!” she smiled. “He was always so resourceful and so very, very brave.”

  “He was very near the border in the mountains when he was shot down in the road by two German guards. They had been given his description, it seemed, and he had no time to defend himself because they were hidden. He would have felt no pain because they riddled his body with bullets, so he would have died instantly. But,” she paused for a moment and her sad expression was replaced by her warm smile, “I know he was happy just before he was killed.”

  “How do you know?”

  “One of the Germans told someone in Saint-Jean that he hesitated before pulling the trigger because the man was whistling.”

  Both women fell silent and Kate realised that the summer sun was sinking behind her and that its last rays were bathing the old timbers and panelling of the room with a warm, golden glow. She cleared her throat. “And where was my father buried, Marie – if, that is, they gave him a burial?”

  “He is buried, my dear, here, in Azincourt churchyard.”

  “What? How?”

  “Well. Let us have a little more whisky.” Marie poured a little into each glass. “I find I like it very much now that I am old. Tell me: there is no Welsh whisky, is there?”

  “No. Not that I know of.”

  “Pity. I would drink it, if there were. Now, where were we? Ah yes, did your mother marry again?”

  “No. There was a man, I believe, but I don’t remember him. I understood from my grandmother that he went off with some younger woman.”

  “Ah. I am sorry. It seems that she had an unhappy life – though she did have Will for a little time, of course.”

  “Um, yes.” Caitlin felt a little uncomfortable at the reference. “You said that my father is buried here, in Azincourt?”

  “Oh yes, indeed. I learned that the Germans had just put him in a hole more or less where he had fallen on the mountainside. Well, I travelled down there and, after a great deal of trouble, I found it. I had my dear Will… oh… what is the word?”

  “Exhumed.”

  “Exactly. You are so clever my dear. Exhumed. This was perhaps eighteen months after he had been shot.” The old lady put a handkerchief to her eyes. “Do you know, they had not wrapped him in anything: just dropped him into a rough grave. But, the amazing thing was,” she leaned across, “his clothes had dis
integrated, of course, and only his skeleton was left. But the little green scarf I had given him was still tied around his skull and the colour had not faded! Isn’t that strange? Oh, and also the little nock I told you about was lying with him.”

  Kate could not reply, only nod her head from behind her own handkerchief.

  “Alors. I had Will’s body brought back here, put in a proper coffin, with the handkerchief, of course, and buried in the churchyard. I have bought the little plot of land next to him and will be buried beside him, very soon now, I think.”

  Kate blew her nose. “Marie, I just don’t know what to say. But,” she leaned across and took the old lady’s hand, brown-dotted now with liver spots, “I am so glad that you told me. I feel that I know my father now.”

  “Good. I have often thought of trying to find you, but felt that, even if I did, it could be difficult if your mother was alive. I just prayed that, one day, you would walk through the door of the museum and that is why I took the occupation of helping there. It was because I felt that you would find me there.” She ended with a smile. “And you did. So the story is ended.”

  Kate put down her glass. “But it is not, Marie, is it? You don’t believe that, do you?”

  “Oh no. Of course not.” Marie’s smile this time was almost shy.

  “Will is my husband. We shall be together properly the next time, I know that. Now, one more whisky before you go.”

  Kate held up her hand. “Thank you, but I have become sufficiently maudlin for one day. And, anyway, we all have to leave early in the morning. But before we leave…”

  Marie interrupted. “Yes, of course. You would like to see your father’s grave. I will take you there in the morning, it does not matter what time, I am an early riser.”

  Kate stood. “Marie, will you be offended if I ask to go on my own? I can’t explain why, because I feel very, very warm towards you, but I feel it would be right to be alone. I have so much to think about. So just tell me where it is, please.”