Capcir Spring Page 4

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  Edouard and his wife were due to arrive at eight to eat at 8.30. Mary knew this would give her ample time to have a full day on the site, return home, and write up the most pressing notes, and still have time buy some last minute provisions from the village supermarket before she got the meal ready. The day had worked out according to her plan. The chicken was roasting on the tiny spit rotisserie that seemed to be the standard fitting of all skiing flats.

  The apartment was really too small for entertaining but the alternative of a meal together in a restaurant or hotel would have meant a long drive to a nearby town to find somewhere open out of season. When she had suggested at her previous rather formal meeting with Edouard in his office that they had a meal to share their stories in a more informal setting she had hoped for an invitation to his house. Indeed she almost expected it from his helpfulness with all her other requests but for some reason they had wanted to come to her tiny flat.

  Pleased that everything was going according to plan, Mary allowed herself the luxury of a shower and the few minutes it took was ample reward she felt for her busy day. As the steaming water removed the sweat and dust and tingled the inevitable bramble scratches she again thought of the mystical meditating hippy that she had seen at the beginning of the day.

  She could recall clearly their conversation but however hard she tried to analyse what he said, she could get no further in understanding his point of view.

  She felt that she knew something about people with a religious mania and thought that she could recognise the signs but Andre didn't fit into this category either. He was a mystery and would remain so. If he were indeed living his life on the fringes of sanity inhabited by drug addicts and new age travellers then no amount of logical analysis would ever unravel the web of confusions that made up his personal self-understanding.

  As she dried herself she eyed the apartment critically and was pleased with the ambience she had created. The maps and diagrams on the walls, the books and files filling the shelves and the more homely feminine touch of the fresh flowers she had collected on her walk back to the car. Here indeed was the image that she wanted to create. The temporary home of an academic who had imprinted her feminine personality on a bland, rented skiers apartment.

  Dried and dressed she turned her attention to the sauce and checking the temperature of the wine that was breathing beside the stove.

  The bell went at precisely eight and it was John, carrying a bottle of wine. He was no sooner in and had started making small talk when the bell rang again and the other guests arrived. They had brought a box of chocolates and a bunch of flowers.

  "My dear Maria" exclaimed Edouard "May I present Monique my wife"

  "Enchante"

  "And this is John. John...?

  "Browning" John quickly interjected.

  "He is English and is also staying in the village. "

  "Another historian?" enquired Edouard.

  "I'm just on holiday," John replied. "I am making the most of the excellent walking country, the wonderful scenery and the fine weather in this part of the world."

  "So this will be a very good opportunity for us to practice our English tonight" suggested Monique. "The tourist board tells us that we must know English if we are ever to attract the English packaged tourists. At a presentation in the Marie last year the regional tourist chief told us this is where the big money is." Monique was unstoppable. "As well as being interested in local history Edouard is also the chairman of the local chamber of commerce. And he is on the council and is standing for election to mayor later in the year and he runs the ski lift company and has an interest in our family hotel as well". Monique's pride in displaying her husbands business activities and successes was for her like flashing the rich gemstones from her bejewelled fingers.

  This, thought John, is probably "Mr Les Angles." "Has your family always lived in these parts?" he asked.

  "We have been here for as many centuries as you can trace settlement of the land. We were farmers, woodsmen, traders, smugglers.. you name it if it could be done in a mountainous region near an international border then we have done it. My father worked with you English during the last war guiding escaping prisoners across the mountains into Spain by the routes that only the shepherds and their families know. From him I started my English vocabulary. So that is how I am acquainted with your cor blimey and bloody hell."

  Monique tittered, in the way supporting wives titter at an old family joke they have heard many times before.

  Edouard was in his fifties. He was short, stocky dark and swarthy with a deep tanned complexion from prolonged exposure to the high altitude sunshine. His appearance and colouring meant he could easily have been mistaken for a Spaniard but with the border was only a stones throw away, the same could be said for many of the locals. His round face was fixed in a permanent smile showing clean white regular teeth and his neatly trimmed moustache moved up and down in line with his smile.

  John recognised in Edouard a likeable rogue and was sure he would be good company even if his wife were all show. She was still stunningly attractive in the way that only French women manage in their middle years and giggly in a little girl sort of way that John found irritating. She was perhaps thirty something, perhaps forty something, her deep raven hair piled high on her head. Her clothes achieved the casual look that comes from careful planning for affect without over concern about budget. She was, thought John, a twitterer. Someone who helped conversations along, laughing gasping or sighing at the right point but never interjecting in the flow of the main protagonists.

  John quickly struck up a light-hearted banter with Edouard. He prided himself that he was a professional at being nice and getting on with people. He also knew all about French anti-clerical prejudices so he resolved not to reveal too much about himself.

  As they started on the main course Mary considered it was time to get down to the real business and so asked, "As you know I am interested, as a historian, in the ancient chapel and settlement at Igessiattes. I wonder if you know any local folk law or stories associated with that place."

  An even broader smile swept over Edouard's face as he settled himself into his favourite role of story teller to an eager and appreciative audience. Mary bent over and flicked the switch on her dictation machine to record.

  "You have asked the right man." he confirmed. "Not only have I studied local history but my family has lived hereabouts for generations, I would perhaps even say going back to the days of that chapel but I could not prove that. But as well as that I know too all the old wives tales, the legends that have some sort of basis in fact but really over the years no one now knows whether they are true or not. You are a historian. You will be used to such evidence and you must do the assessment. I will just tell you the stories."

  "Let me begin with one of the earliest stories of all. Your site is in a little sheltered valley high above the stone village. There is an ancient story of a man who had an illicit affair with a young girl from the village. His wife found then together and we are talking of over 1000 years ago when such violations of property rights were controlled by a different law to the way people think today. The young girl was the village chieftain's daughter and his wife was the cousin of the Chieftains wife. This man had done the unpardonable thing of bringing shame on his family and had insulted the chief of the village. So he ran away. He headed for the hills, coming up and into the woods hoping to escape to a neighbouring valley. Well legend has it that he was swift of foot and he got up as far as this wide part of the valley where the Iglessiettes chapel and ruin is now and the pursuers from the village, who would have been mounted, caught up with him. He put up a fight but he was outnumbered and he was killed. The murderous villagers rode back to the village leaving his body up there for the wild animals to feed on.

  "OK so far. A sad story but this is where legend perhaps takes over with its embellishment. The next day the man's wife and the girl who had been his lover went out t
ogether to tend the body. They were kin and they both loved the man apparently and the custom would have been to create a cairn of stones to cover the corpse. The two reached the site where the body had been left and there was nothing there. No body, no bones no blood, nothing. This gave the two women a shock. They thought they must have got the directions slightly wrong so they searched around the whole area. Surely even if he had been carried off by a bear or a wolf there would have been a trail left to follow. Further up the valley, in a clearing they came upon the man, sitting on a tree stump talking to some fairy folk. I told you the story was fantastic, but there is more. The chief fairy asked the two women which of them loved him the most. They argued about this because they both loved him deeply in their own way. The fairy saw this and smiled. A man can have two wives in the fairy realm and so the man and the two women disappeared and were all transported to the fairy realm.. And the two women were never seen in the village again."

  "But they couldn't agree even there on who loved him the most. And though no human has even been to the fairy realm to see the truth of this sometimes the local people you hear women's screams across the valley. This is the sound carrying in the woodlands in the area around the chapel as the two women continue their eternal battle in fairy land as to which of them loves the man the most."

  John bit his tongue. He'd thought of a quip about screams in the woods but didn't think Mary would appreciate it.

  "A lovely story " nodded Mary, reaching for another bottle of wine to replenish the glasses.

  "That one was set far back in the time before time was measured," agreed Edouard, "but there are many other stories about the people who built the chapel. Why a chapel there you may ask when the village is on the Capcir plateau? The truth is it was nothing to do with the village at all. You have to understand that many powerful local barons controlled all of France in the 13th century. Each area had its noble family and they had their retainers and underlings and the whole system was one great hierarchy. Religion comes in to this of course. The predominant influence on the church in all the south of France were the Albigensians, called after the region of Albi where they were most numerous. They are otherwise known as the Cathars. The pope objected to the political influence over this region of the church. He probably saw the holiness lived out in simplicity by these devout people and it pricked the conscience of the wealth and trappings of the Roman courtly church. So the Pope sent in the inquisition. Now this wasn't a sudden crusade but a slow process that took over 50 years to penetrate the whole region and sweep the Cathar influences out from every section of society. Up here in the Pyrenees the inquisition took a long time to arrive. And one particular group of devout believers came up here and built the chapel and set up a sort of monastic community high in that hidden valley. They lived there self sufficiently for many decades. The villagers knew of their existence of course but they had the patronage of the nobility who were our masters in the village too so they were left alone.

  "Of course the inquisition eventually arrived. By which time the power of the noble families had been considerably reduced and as a result the local people were forced into betraying the whereabouts of the Albigensian settlement. The small, secretive and devout holy group were captured, and dealt with using the full force of the inquisition. Some of the leaders were executed and the others were forced to repent of their evil heresies and sent on their way.

  "There is a story that the group who came here brought with them a hoard of treasure from the big church that they had escaped from but no trace of that has ever been found. Another old tale tells of the oldest holy man leaving the settlement with two young servants to carry his holy books and they went high up into the mountains and lived the rest of their lives in a cave. But again nothing is known for sure and no proof has ever been found."

  "There is a more recent story which ties in with this too. Sometime in the eighteen nineties a shepherd was spending the night up in the valley with his grazing goats. He made himself a little shelter in the ruins of what probably was the old chapel and he often spent the night there. One night there was a fierce storm and the shepherd huddled in his shelter waiting for dawn and he kept hearing unearthly howling noises. He thought of course of the story of the two women arguing in fairyland so being a superstitious person he was quite scared. Then suddenly there was a huge rumbling noise, and then silence. During this lull in the eye of the storm he went out to try to see what had happened. Even the rain had given over. A distant flash of lightening lit up the whole area of the valley and he looked and saw that the rumble had been a landslide that had exposed a cave. He ran over to it and the next flash of lightening showed him that it was a cave used to store chests and bundles that looked very old. But the storm then started up again and the rain again lashed down so he retreated to his shelter to wait until it was over but when morning came imagine his disappointment when he found the stones had moved again and there was no sign of any cave. He looked and looked all round that part of the valley but he could find no clues as to where the landslide had been. You know how the steep parts of the hillside here are. They are many huge piles of large rough boulders. He told his story in the village and he brought a large, excited crowd up with him, but he couldn't pinpoint the exact spot and so no one in the village ever believed him.

  "That man never married. He became obsessed with the cave that he believed he had seen in the flash of lightening. In every spare moment of his life he would spend digging around up there, shifting boulders, poking under big rocks. He must have rearranged quite a part of the valley side and floor. It eventually became an overpowering obsession and he virtually gave up all semblance of normal life, living in the wild up there, searching for the cave an listening out for the arguing fairy voices.

  Edouard paused, watching the impact his story had had on his enraptured audience before delivering his punch line. "I know that part of the story is true because the man in question was my grandfather's elder brother. He was taken away to a lunatic asylum in Perpingan in 1912 and he remained there the rest of his life. He died in 1932."

  "And no one has seen sight of the treasure since?" asked John.

  "Not at all. I was hoping Mary here would find our lost heritage and restore the reputation of my great uncle in the process but I suppose that is too much to hope for."

  Mary switched off the tape recorder and said carefully "I've not found any signs of any caves but your last story would explain certainly the large number of big boulders moved around at the edges of the valley. They didn't look as if they were sitting where they now lie as the result of natural movement or were the ruins of any wall or building. But being levered off the cliff face in a manic search for treasure could explain things."

  She cleared up the empty plates and pulled out a rolled up chart and spread it out on the table.

  "This is my best estimate of the Cathar settlement layout. The chapel was this stone area in the middle, the spring here perhaps a well and this area would have been where all the houses and other buildings would have been situated. There is a ridge here and here which suggests that there would have been a stockade fence and ditch surrounding the whole settlement.. I'm having to guess at a lot but if I'm on the right track it should be possible to get a full archaeological dig arranged for next year. The houses and wooden buildings though having rotted away completely can still be uncovered and plotted and a great deal learnt about a settlement using modern archaeological methods."

  John watched Edouard pore intently over the map, transported immediately into a world of his own. Monique sat quietly with a serene smile on her face while Mary removed a cover to reveal that for desert there were dishes of fresh strawberries.

  "Please Edouard can you roll that up now" Mary asked " Please feel free to study my research in greater detail, but after desert." Her mind was racing. How easy would it be to tell which of the rocks were displaced in the last hundred years by this manic treasure hunter?

  "Of course, but you mu
st please let me examine this document after we have eaten. I have been visiting that area since I was a boy but I have never seen it all plotted out so carefully before. It is the relative position of the buildings and the stockade fence and the well that intrigues me. I've never put it all into perspective before and I'm trying in my mind to prepare an impression of what it may have looked like."

  The strawberries were excellent and the after dinner conversation flowed freely and effortlessly. At about 11pm Edouard said that they really must go as he had an early start in the morning. He thanked Mary for sharing her research and she thanked him for sharing the legends. And Monique slipped away beside him with the minimum of pleasantries.

  John was still seated on the sofa after Mary closed the door behind the French couple.

  "Let me help you clear up" he said, "Its the least I can do after such an entertaining and informative evening"

  "OK but I will throw you out as soon as the washing up is finished as I want to make an early start too. If I push on I reckon I can finish my fieldwork here in about another three or four days."