Well in Time (39 page)

Then, like a surgeon unwrapping bandages, she began the careful extrication of the box from its knitted wrappings. Prongs holding the jewels caught in the yarn and the little metal legs with their lion’s paw feet were poking rudely into the knit. It took several minutes before the crystal container stood in the light of day on the marble tabletop.

She went for a damp cloth to wipe the crystal clean. As she did, the beauty of the box became more and more remarkable. Now she could see that the interior was lined with crimson silk, although to her relief, no saint’s bones appeared to be present.

Finally, she put her thumb to the delicate clasp and released it. Raising the lid with great care, fearful of breaking a hinge, she surveyed the interior. The red silk lining was striated with minute tears, all down its length. Only one thing was contained within—a small piece of paper, rolled like a scroll. Gingerly, she picked it up between thumb and finger and then lowered the lid.

Going to her desk, she placed the scroll on the desktop and began with careful fingers to unroll it. Although its edges were dog-eared and it was plainly of some antiquity, the paper was surprisingly supple. Soon writing in an elegant hand, in sepia ink, began to appear. Unrolled, the entirety was about eight inches long. She weighted it with books, top and bottom and along the side edges to keep it from curling up again and went for her magnifying glass.

The ink was faded and in some places almost invisible, and the handwriting was more showy than legible. It took her the better part of an hour to decipher its message. As she did, she wrote an English translation on a yellow legal tablet.

Calypso put down her magnifying glass with a troubled heart and wrote the final words of her translation on the tablet. She went to her laptop and looked up the word
noyades
, discovering that, as she had thought, it meant
drowning
. Her mind was agitated by the drama of the priest’s terror. What became of him, she wondered? And was that tarp-covered mound in the vault, then, the holy figures from the local church?

Her memory of French history from the time of the Revolution was sketchy and she decided to do a little research to settle herself. She spent the remainder of the day at her computer, tracking down bits and pieces of information that fleshed out the priest’s letter.

She discovered that in August, 1789, the state cancelled the power of the church to levy taxes. The new revolutionary government made the issue central to its policies, declaring that all church property in France now belonged to the nation. Confiscation began and church properties were sold at public auction.

Then, in July 1790, the National Constituent Assembly published the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, stripping the clergy of their special rights and making them employees of the state. All priests and bishops were required to swear an oath of fidelity to the new government on pain of dismissal, deportation or death.

The pope at that time, Pius VI, spent almost eight months deliberating on the issue of whether to grant French priests Papal approval to sign such an oath. On April 13, 1791, the pope instead denounced the new French Constitution, effectively splitting the French Catholic church. Abjuring priests, called
jurors
, became known as
constitutional clergy
, while nonjuring priests were called
refractory clergy,
the term with which Father Xavier had been labeled.

During those disordered months as the Legislative Assembly, the successor to the National Constituent Assembly, also dissolved into chaos, the church was increasingly viewed as counterrevolutionary. Social and economic grievances among the people boiled over and violence directed toward the church and her clergy erupted all across France.

In Paris, during a single two-day period beginning September 2, 1792, three church bishops and more than two hundred priests were massacred by angry mobs—the beginning of what would become known as the September Massacres. Calypso found that the
noyades
, or drownings, were mass executions for treason under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Carrier and involved thousands of people, including nuns and priests. The executions took place in the Loire river, which Carrier himself called
the national bathtub—
all of this a precursor to the Reign of Terror the following year, with its use of the guillotine called
the national razor
.

Obviously, Father Xavier had good reason to fear for his life and it was only reasonable for him to assume that his church would be desecrated. Who, she wondered, was
the good Monsieur M
. and what was his fate for helping the priest? Perhaps the
Mairie
, the city hall of Brignac, would still have records from that period. She made a note to do some research there when time permitted.

Toward the end of the afternoon, she went again to the house, where Monsieur Signac was just finishing up for the day. She found him sweeping up in the corner where she had left him earlier.

“Ah, Madame!” he exclaimed. “Come and see if you approve. I have fashioned a door here, you see, and affixed the tiles.”

He demonstrated to Calypso that he had created a door from thick exterior plywood and attached it to a floor joist with a piano hinge. Already the tiles were mortared in place and a single tile, its center bored through, held a flush-mounted lock surrounded by a metal ring for lifting the door. The level of the tile aligned perfectly with the surrounding floor.

“You’ve done a fine job, Monsieur Signac,” she said warmly. “The door simply disappears.”

“Yes, and I’ve made a metal loop on the under side. When you want to open the door, you can put the loop over this hook I’ve installed in the wall, so the door won’t fall shut while you’re inside.”

He demonstrated by opening the door, swiveling the metal loop outward, and then hooking it over a stout steel hook set into the plaster of the wall.

“This is excellent,” Calypso said. “I’m very pleased with what you’ve done.”

Mr. Signac beamed and handed her the key to the lock.

“This should keep your insurance liability safe,” he said with a knowing smile.

Calypso wondered if he had already been down the stairs, even before he had come to fetch her that morning. Something in his smile told her that he knew she was protecting something more than just her insurance premiums.

§

She hadn’t been back at the orangerie for more than five minutes when the telephone rang. To her amazement, it was Javier. It was the first time he had called her in all the months of their separation. She braced for bad news.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing, nothing, Caleepso. Not to worry. I just called you to let you know the house is finished.”

“Finished! That’s wonderful! Congratulations!”

“I thought you might like to see it.” His voice held a ghost of his old teasing tone.

Calypso hesitated only for a moment but already she knew it was a moment too long.

“I’m just finishing up here, Javier. In a couple of weeks I’ll be able…”

“Never mind,” he snapped. “Is not important.”

“Javier…”

“I have to go. Bye.” And he hung up.

Calypso replaced the receiver slowly, not sure if she wanted to cry or scream in rage. In the next couple of days, Monsieur Signac had promised, the house would be ready for the gang of cleaners he had assembled from the village.

Floors would be scrubbed and waxed, windows washed, fixtures polished. Draperies would be hung and carpets unfurled, all in preparation for moving in the furniture and the dismantling of the annoyingly moderne metal sheds in the front yard.

It was almost more than she could bear to think of leaving now. It would be a psychological
coitus interruptus
that would only make her resentful of Rancho Cielo. She had pages of diagrams for the placement of furniture and hanging of paintings. She even knew which of the heavy old handwoven linen sheets, with their looping hand-embroidered monograms and tatted edgings, went on which bed in which room. It was unthinkable, unbearable, unfair to have to leave now.

She sat staring out the window of the orangerie, gnawing on her thumbnail. This was like a return to the earliest days of their relationship, when Javier had turned abruptly cranky and impossible, and she had expended every wile in her arsenal to break through, without success.

The garden was darkening toward evening. Down the dusky, shadowed path came the tortoise, lumbering along in innocent expectation of his evening slices of fruit. Something in his blameless and irreproachable assumption of friendly plenitude mirrored her own.

She had made a bond with the creature, almost a pact. They were partners in the rediscovery of this mysterious and neglected place. At that moment, her loyalty to the reptile felt greater than the one to Javier and her heart swelled with affection for the simple old creature, even while her eyes stung with tears.

She went to the kitchen, washed a handful of cherries and pitted them, and then went out into the cool, windy evening, where the tortoise was just arriving at the kitchen stoop. She sat on the bottom stair and offered the creature his first piece of fruit. He waved his nose in front of it like a perfumer appreciating a new fragrance and then took the cherry from her fingers in one gulp.

“It’s just you and me, kid,” Calypso said mournfully. “I’m not going back, you know. Not yet, at least. So stick with me, okay?”

The tortoise raised his creased, leathery head and gazed at her with his bottomless black eyes. Was it her imagination or did she feel in that moment a jolt of love and understanding that almost rocked her off the step? She reached into the bowl for another cherry and she continued to supply her friend’s supper as the sun sank and the penumbra of evening descended upon the garden.

§

She slept poorly that night. Sometime in the blackest hours of the early morning, she awoke with the stirring conviction that she needed to see the figures in the vault. She lay under the soft, cozy duvet and tried to talk herself out of so rash an adventure.

It was dark. There was no one to help her lift the door, which was heavy with tiles. The stairs were steep and treacherous—if she fell, no one would find her for hours. And lastly, why didn’t she just go back to sleep and gratify this urge in the morning?

She stayed in bed, following the conviction that rationality would win in the end. She turned on her side, organized her pillow just so and composed herself for slumber.

Within minutes she was thrashing about, seeking a new position, as if to ward off the attack of the idea, which insisted itself upon her relentlessly. Finally, feeling disgruntled with herself, she turned on the bedside lamp and lay staring at her clothes, where they lay flung over the back of a chair.

She imagined getting up, putting them on, finding the flashlight and shears, opening the door to the chill and windy darkness, and setting out for the house. Even this dismal scenario, however, would not quiet the inner promptings.

At last, with a sigh she threw back the covers and lunged through chilly air toward her clothing. In minutes, she was crunching down the garden path toward the house behind the round disk of the flashlight’s beam.

The big building stood against the night sky, a blacker blackness. She rounded its western flank, hearing the sostenuto of rustling olive leaves beneath the fountain’s treble. She inserted her key into the lock, threw one glance into the surrounding darkness, as if looking for someone to stop her in this madness, and entered the house.

Monsieur Signac had, of course, closed and locked the door to the stairwell. Calypso knelt and inserted the brand new key into the lock, aware of the sharp, limey smell of fresh mortar. She hoisted the heavy door by its inset ring, hoping that the mortar was fully set and the tiles wouldn’t all slide off when the door went vertical. Holding the flashlight between her knees, she wrestled the door upright, and managed to secure its metal loop over the hook in the wall.

Below her, the stairs spiraled down into darkness like the grinding screw in a meat grinder. She felt the hair on her arms rise at the thought of descending, all alone, into their depths. She set the flashlight on the floor with its beam angled over the opening, sat down on the floor, and swung her feet onto the first stair. Picking up her light, she aimed it into the darkness below her and began a slow, very cautious descent.

§

Her heart was jarring in her ribcage as she stood, finally, before the low wooden door to the vaulted room. The space between the foot of the stairs and the door was so narrow that she felt as if she were in her own coffin. Reflexively, she reached for the locket and fingered it beneath her sweater. Then, drawing in her breath, she depressed the latch, shoved the door open with her shoulder and ducked into the secret room.