by Lee Carroll
Seeing those oysters made me hungry myself, so after a quick stop in my room I went down to the hotel restaurant, which was on a terrace overlooking the old abbey and lake. Quite a few seafood offerings were on the menu even though we were miles from the sea. I supposed that even in the landlocked section of Brittany the sea wasn’t so very far. Even here, something in the soft lambent light, shading toward evening, the lush wild roses on the side of the road, and the rough stone cottages spoke of the sea.
I ordered a bottle of the local Breton apple cider and the Moules Frites Mariniers, which arrived in a bath of bright saffron yellow broth, and ate them, scooping the flesh out with one of the pointed shells, looking out on the lake—the Étang de Paimpont, as the guidebook called it, the pool of Paimpont. The water was pink where the setting sun was reflected, but dark closer to the shore where dense forest cast its shadow. Perhaps it was the effect of my second tankard of the deceptively strong cider, but as the sun sank behind the tops of the trees across the lake and their shadows lengthened, I had an impression that the woods on the opposite shore were creeping toward me. Consulting the local map on the place mat, I saw that the Val sans Retour was part of those woods. So this lake might well be the pool where Morgane was trapped—at least its earthly equivalent. I wasn’t entirely sure I understood what Octavia meant about the forest and the pool not being of this world, but as the water darkened from pink to red to violet, I could almost imagine that the thin membrane that separated the worlds was stretched taut over the surface of the lake and that it might at any moment break …
Then a loud group of British soccer players descended on the restaurant, a radio from the nearby campground drifted across the water, and with a mingled sensation of relief and regret, I was very much in this world again.
I paid my bill and then, because my nerves felt too on edge to go back to my empty and unfamiliar hotel room, walked across the street toward the abbey. The path was quiet, most of the tourists only now having dinner. I had the abbey to myself save for a lone worshipper sitting in the back of the church, who muttered her prayers, with bowed and deeply shawled head. I walked up the center of the nave, hoping the sound of my footsteps wouldn’t disturb his or her meditation. The space was so vast and bare that my footsteps echoed as if from the bottom of a well. Looking up, though, I thought I was at the bottom of the sea. From the thirteenth-century Romanesque style of the church I was expecting a plain stone, rounded vault, but what I found instead was a wooden roof lined with thin, interlocking strips of wood springing out from a center seam so that it looked like the hull of a boat. It was the hull of a boat, I realized after staring at it for several minutes, the overturned hull of a massive, ancient ship.
“Let the dove, or the fish, or the vessel flying before the wind be our signets.”
Startled at the voice, I jerked my head down so quickly that I made myself dizzy. The long, narrow, dark shape before me spun like an arrow on a compass and then settled into the figure of a black-robed priest, with a grizzled but kindly face and an Irish accent.
“I noticed you were surprised by our ceiling. Our founding fathers often used ships to represent the church, but only a few went so far as to craft their church from a ship. Local legend has it that this was the original ship that brought the seven founder saints from Wales to these shores, but,” he said, winking, “some of my more unorthodox and fanciful parishioners believe that this is one of the ships that sailed from Ys when that benighted island was drowned.”
“And what do you believe?” I asked before considering what a rude question that was to ask a man of God.
But the priest only laughed. “I believe the people who built this church were grateful for safe harbor in a storm and built it to give thanks to God—whatever name they gave their God.” He smiled and lifted pale blue eyes to the curved hull of the ceiling. “And I have always thanked God for the shelter of his ship and prayed to be steered on my way by a beneficent wind.”
“That’s a good prayer,” I agreed, returning the priest’s smile and thinking of those ominous shadows stealing across the lake outside. “I’ll remember it.”
The old priest bowed his head and made the sign of the cross in the air between us. Then he turned and made his way back down the long nave, his own otsteps curiously quiet on the stone floor. Perhaps he went barefoot, I thought, as he turned in the single ray of evening light coming through the stained-glass window at the back of the church. For a moment his face shone red-gold—the same color as the Breton cider I’d drunk earlier. Then, as he turned away, his black cloak merged with the shadows and he vanished.
I took a step forward, a cry rising in my throat, but stopped when I felt a breeze waft against my face. What had the priest prayed for? To be steered by a beneficent wind? I turned in the direction of the breeze until I was facing a side chapel. The small niche was dominated by a raised sarcophagus upon which lay an effigy carved out of black stone. Moving closer, I saw that the figure was of a medieval knight laid out in all his armor. I’d seen dozens like it at the Cloisters—armored knights sleeping for eternity equipped with sword and mace, often at their feet a loyal dog or crouching lion. The feet of this knight, though, lay on the bent neck and broken wing of a dying swan. Dying because an arrow had been shot through her heart. I let my eye travel upward from the swan’s long neck to the knight’s face. There, carved in blackest stone some seven hundred years ago, lay the familiar face of Will Hughes.
21
Love in the Woods
Madame La Pieuvre had proven to be a spectacularly different sort of person, Will reflected with some bitterness, a few days after his interview with her. But the results of her guidance had been exactly the same as with all the other “signs” he had tried to follow to Marguerite.
He was sitting on a boulder in the dense woods adjacent to the gardens at Fontainebleau and felt as bleak as he had in his most discouraged moments in Paris. Madame La Pieuvre had been part octopus and had numerous arms to prove it, she was as witty and charming as anyone he’d ever met, and she had a flotilla of servants in her enormous mansion to serve him an exceptional dinner and a variety of gorgeously colored drinks, all of which he’d never heard of or tasted before. Madame La Pieuvre had freely told him that she had heard from Marguerite recently, that Marguerite was in Fontainebleau, and that she would love for a man named Will Hughes to come there and see her; hopefully Madame might run across Will in Paris and tell him! All Madame asked in return for this priceless information was a bit of advice from Will on investing, upon learning of his own interest in the nascent stock markets of England and France.
But, having scoured Fontainebleau from end to end now, from the château’s most beautiful corner to the forest’s thickest bramble, from the most intricate walk in the garden to the finest gleam on the château’s sloping roof, from the most obscure window to the noon-splashed depths of the pond in the woods, he’d found no sign of Marguerite. And he was prepared to admit to himself that Jean Robin, church steps’ note, and all else notwithstanding he might be no closer to Marguerite now than he was in their most painful days of separation back in London.
Will could not gain entrance through any of the château’s heavily guarded doors, for this was one of Henry IV’s most zealously secured residences. Will could have been impaled for giving a guard the wrong look. But he’d managed, climbing thick-foliaged trees that afforded concealment on a moonlit night, to lok fruitlessly into quite a number of the château’s rooms. No one.
Marguerite must have known, when she chose to summon Will here through Madame La Pieuvre, of the obstacles to entry. She’d had ample opportunities to leave him a new sign and had left him none. If she had seriously summoned him here … for his most excruciating thought now was that she hadn’t summoned in any benign way, that she merely toyed with him like wind with a leaf, a dark wind of lingering anger over their last fight, a wind that she lashed out at him with. Marguerite’s inaccessibility, her invisibility, her absence,
seemed to suggest one thing: as in Paris, the purpose of offering hope was to torment him. Will was being tortured to death by his own love!
On the second day he purchased a spyglass in a nearby town and concealed himself in a bramble in the woods to avoid the suspicion of capital espionage. Then he relentlessly scanned all the château’s windows day and night, hoping for the merest glimpse of that ineffable face, her glide past a window in profile or shadow. A look directly at him was by now his wildest ambition. Indeed he would have settled for the sight of her in rapt conversation with an attentive courtier—with a prince—settled for their rapturous kiss!—rather than this void. He could not settle for what he did get out of all his desperate scrutiny: nothing.
On this third day at Fontainebleau, Will was sitting on a rock he had come to regard as his friend, on the edge of tears, staring into a stand of poplar trees across a rough path on a gray, wind-split afternoon. It hadn’t taken much for Will to convince himself that the rock was his friend. Wasn’t it composed of atoms just as he was? They had that in common. People used the term flesh and blood to refer to their family members. But atoms were an even more intimate bond, as they made up flesh and blood. Look at the lifestyle and mentality of his friend the rock. Much to admire there. He/she was self-sufficient, no disastrous entanglements for the heart and mind, even if it had such organs. It certainly didn’t travel wildly from place to place in pursuit of disingenuous and possibly malevolent signs; it didn’t travel at all. The rock was a soul mate. Will would sit here right now and soak up the gray air, and the breeze with its hint of rain, alongside the rock. The rock was quiet, but at least now Will needn’t feel so all alone.
Then Will suddenly noticed, amidst the poplars, that one tree seemed different. He knew it could be his imagination, and a desperate imagination at that, but the tree seemed to have a slender, angular face near the top of its branches. Almond-shaped, sap-glistening eyes were staring directly at him. Other trees were bending away from him in the recurring gusts, but this tree leaned consistently toward him, peering at him to get a closer look. Will gasped in amazement as the tree stepped fully out of its grove and took a gigantic stride across the path toward him.
A face was clearly visible near the top of its crown, but the trunk, several feet below the face, shrouded in underbrush, turned out to be not quite a trunk. It forked midway down into two bark-sheathed legs …
Will was tempted to flee, but decided to maintain his ground. He wasn’t going to get far anyway against the giant strides this creature could take. So far she—something in the way the tree moved made Will think of her as female—hadn’t displayed anything n the way of teeth, her apparent mouth an irregular pink gash in the silver, speckled bark of her highest branch. Her fingers and hands were glossed over with benign-looking leaves; her feet were shaggy roots like slippers. No cutting edges.
Tree woman, if that’s what she was, continued to gaze down at him from a few feet away, at last shaking her slanted head as if in disapproval. Long branches coming out of her scalp that seemed to be her hair but resembled a myriad of bark-covered snakes rippled with her motion. All the branches were greened with poplar leaves, except for one of bright gold.
“What are you doing here, Sad Boy?” the creature asked him in a rasping voice, as if her vocal cords were pieces of broken wood, roughing up against one another as she spoke. “You’ve been haunting these woods recently, with some sorrow of yours. I’m watching you and wearying of it. These are my woods, except when that horror of horrors comes around. So fess up! Now!”
“I fess up, as you put it, to few. Actually, right now, to none.” Will appreciated her interest, but saw no reason to confide in this ungainly stranger. “I can’t fit you in as a confidant after such a brief introduction.” He glanced upward, as if to emphasize how little room there was to fit her in anywhere.
Then he felt twigged fingers grasping his right shoulder from above, an arm shadowing his face against the gray light, leaves that dangled against his neck not altogether displeasing in their silken touch. The hand began to draw him toward her, and Will felt the undeniable strength of this creature, and he felt a bit fearful. He tried to surge out of her grip. After a stalemate he felt her let go, with the snapping of a few twigs; whether that happened from his tugging or hers, he couldn’t tell. The let-go was sharp, and he fell and sprawled flat on the rough ground, his hands bracing his fall at the last instant. To add to this ignominy he heard a high-pitched, brittle crackling high above him. Laughter! The witch—or whatever she was—was laughing at him.
The nerve!
Will leaped up and drew himself up to a rather flamboyant full height. He was angry, but under sufficient control that he took a few precautionary, further steps back once standing. He was surprised to see the creature, branch-arms, twig-fingers, and all, drooping, as if she was disappointed in his retreat. Will saw a new glistening in her eyes, as if resin had dripped there all of a sudden.
Tears?
“Why can’t you confide in me, Sad Boy?” the creature asked in a softer tone. “I live in a world of silent trees, rocks, and dirt. Am I cursed to never hear meaningful speech again?” She extended her right arm toward him, slowly, as if she shyly sought an embrace.
Despite his wounded pride over falling, Will felt sympathy for her. He stepped forward and took one of the leaved twigs on her right hand between his thumb and forefinger, gently. “What’s your name? I can’t confide in someone without knowing”—he hesitated over gender again, but, after glancing up at the lengthy branches that were her hair, went on—“her name!”
“I am Sylvianne the Dryad.” After a moment’s hesitation she added, shocking Will, “And the truth is, I love you.”
“You what?!” Will was tempted to respond sarcastically, but he caught himself and instead replied, “Why how very magnificent of you to say that, my dear.” Given her treesomeness, he didn’t see much risk of this entanglement going further. Isolated and despondent as he was, was he supposed to turn away an unexpected admirer completely?
Her lips—faint pink lines in bark—barely fluttered, but Will guessed this was a smile. “Does ‘magnificent’ mean hope?” she asked in a plaintive tone.
Will let go of her twig finger and grasped her entire right hand firmly in his. “It might under nearly all circumstances, my dear, but common decency now makes me warn you that there is another.”
“Another?! Is that whom you’re looking through your Galileo cylinder for? But you don’t even seem to know where she is!”
Will wondered if her sharpness was jealousy. Sylvianne appeared mercurial in her moods.
“You queried me on my sadness, madame. Do you want illumination on this point or not?”
“Unburden yourself in a wordspill, Sad Boy!”
Despite wondering at her peculiar language—perhaps English was not her native tongue—Will unburdened himself. Sylvianne listened impassively for the most part, though at one point crossing her leafy arms and shrugging in a way that seemed to make the entire forest tremble. When Will finally got to Marguerite’s immortality, his burning need to attain it, and his current frustration, Sylvianne bristled.
“Stop! You insolent human!” she shrieked at Will, who felt her voice as if he were wood and it a saw. He retreated a half dozen steps from her.
“How dare you speak of immortality to me as something inaccessible, impossible, that only this lady of the night”—Will bristled in turn at this reference—“Marguerite or whatever her name is, can grant you. I am one of the grandest immortal creatures in the the universe. And I can grant immortality to whomever I choose. Insulting me, Sad Boy, is not the way to gain my favor. By imputing my powers to another, no less. Believe me, it just isn’t.”
An angry tear dripped down gleaming from Sylvianne’s almond eye.
“I am so sorry, madame,” Will said humbly. “I did not mean to give offense.”
Something like a sly look settled then over Sylvianne’s features. “And why sho
uld I grant you immortality anyway, Sad Boy? So that—that—slut”—she coughed in disgust, and spit a clump of resin on the ground—“can perpetually enjoy your charms?”
Two contradictory emotions boiled up in Will, one blinding him with rage, the other exalting him with hope. Even as he recoiled from this monstrous mischaracterization of his bloved, it crossed his consciousness that Sylvianne could make him and Marguerite whole through eternity if he engaged in just the right bit of flattery, if he massaged her delusion, if he seduced her into thinking …
“Can you really grant immortality?”
She looked at him shrewdly. “Not to just anyone. It could only be given to a … loved one. And I don’t exactly grant it. But I can take you there, Sad Boy. Let’s put it that way. I can take you there.”
“You can?” Will looked Sylvianne up and down as lasciviously as anyone could, a gaze she appeared to bask in.
Then she gathered herself together again, more coldly. “And what of it?” she barked at Will.
“You do have a certain elegant beauty,” he mused aloud. His eyes met hers for a lingering gaze. “In fact, I hear my poet’s voice speak within when I gaze at you:
You are more elegant than any swan,
or monarch, star: you make all numbers one.
Alluring as sunlight in winter’s storm,
you turn eternity so bright and warm!
Sylvianne began to blink rapidly, and then her eyes were glistening once again.
“Note that I’ve simply said before that there was another,” Will went on provocatively. “I didn’t say she was an insurmountable obstacle.”
“You’ve painted her as the center of your world,” Sylvianne complained.
“Ah, but women love a romantic,” Will explained. “So why shouldn’t I try to appeal to you? I am a poet. Poets exaggerate because they do not really live in this world.”
