Abelard may have been temporarily pacified with Felicity’s contrived explanation but there was much to rekindle his unease. Nothing here even remotely resembling the world he remembers: sacked and burned villages; large blackbirds feeding on a steady supply of the recently dead; armed men at every turn and; a desolate, ruined landscape. Had he been asleep long enough for so much to change? Had an unusually durable peace interrupted normal warfare? He would know more at the castle.
As the stone fortress grew larger he was able to make out portions of crumbled wall, a partially destroyed keep and when they finally pulled into the visitors parking lot, an uncountable mass of vehicles and more people than he remembers ever seeing in one place not actually engaged in killing each other. He finally understood that something fundamental had changed but he could not furnish a plausible explanation, a task to which his imagination was not quite adequate.
Felicity thought it best not to just yet delve into Abelard’s first impressions and he was much too engrossed with his surroundings to ask any questions. Even as she watched his head slowly swiveling, looking for the obvious to wipe away the confusion, she was secretly hoping, against all odds, that he would be able to sort all this out for himself. She paid the admission and they made their way onto the site in silence.
She kept a close watch on Abelard, who seemed to suddenly shake off his bewilderment and begin moving about as though in familiar surroundings. He now walked purposefully, without regard for his presumed captors. They simply fell in behind him. Felicity felt another surge of optimism that Abelard might be having his memory jogged by what seemed to be a familiar environment. He made straight for the north wall, which faced the river and then stopped, a look of childish perplexity softening his wasted features.
“Stairs,” he asked, pointing to the top of the wall? How could he have known that there was once a staircase against the wall Felicity wondered, there remaining but a faint outline, which would not have been visible from the entrance? Here Abelard reverted to his ancient speech and asked how he might get to the top for a better look at the countryside. She quickly found a grounds employee and was told that they could get a view from the north east tower but, not unexpectedly, it would be 10 euros for the privilege, per person.
To a flaccid, emaciated Abelard, the steep stone stairs were a laborious effort. By the top level, which held a small observation deck, Abelard was gasping for air. Quickly as he was able, he made his way to the guard rail and, disregarding all else, he fixed his gaze on a small village bordering the Dordogne, directly north east. He had evidently known exactly what he was looking for and where to find it.
“Church, we go church,” he shouted, pointing to the massive stone structure dominating the small village. “Now,” he insisted! Believing they were on the cusp of his real memories Felicity and Oliver were only too happy to ignore his imperious manners and accommodate his wishes.
They were very soon before the Romano-Gothic building, the main massive double doors in a simple façade, with the barest minimum of small head sculptures and protruding gargoyles. Just then the priest, in full regalia, doubtlessly returning from some official function, appeared at the entrance to the church cemetery. He was about to slip around the side of the main building when Abelard shouted something in Latin. This got the priest’s immediate and full attention. He remained motionless, eyeing Abelard with no little suspicion, which increased substantially as soon as Abelard began to speak.
Their conversation was quite animated, as though they were old friends. It was not long before the priest asked Abelard to follow him and they disappeared into the cemetery, from which a small group of mourners had just emerged. This was a working graveyard. After what seemed an eternity, Felicity and Oliver thinking it best to be patient and wait for a signal, saw the priest emerge and wave for them to approach. He was visibly agitated, his gait halting and his face ashen. It was an effort for him to regain his composure, his first words no more than an incoherent babble, as though he had an urgent need to all at once blurt everything out. After a considerable effort he regained enough control to relate to Felicity the details of his encounter with Abelard. Although unable to make out what was being said, Oliver saw her jaw dropping as the priest spoke; she was very plainly receiving an unpleasant account.
“Abelard,” she began, disenchantment stripping all the usual optimism from her tone, a tear rolling down her cheek, her shoulders gently heaving at each sob, “has repeated the same story to the priest, entirely in Latin. To try and set him straight, the priest gave Abelard a quick tour of the cemetery, which has graves dating as far back as the late fifteenth century right up to today, with a fresh grave just filled in. But the effect was not as happy as the priest had hoped. Abelard apparently collapsed at the latest tombstone inscription and cried inconsolably. He then asked the priest to hear his confession, which he agreed to do, expecting a brief litany of ordinary transgressions against divine regulations. What he heard instead so frightened and concerned him that he felt it permissible in this instance to break the sacred bond of secrecy to which confessors are held. The avowals were so gruesome the priest could only conclude that Abelard was a madman. I don’t think he was any more at ease when I told him that Abelard had amnesia and that these were but placeholder memories.”
She paused here for a moment and added, more to comfort herself than to calm any further suspicions Oliver would now have as to just how dangerous Abelard may actually be, “but it is very encouraging that he recognizes the difference between right and wrong. He surely understands that the worrisome stuff we have been hearing during his somnolent flights of rhetoric is wrong. Why would he otherwise confess?” Oliver only nodded, more of an acknowledgement that he had heard than any tacit agreement. He was far from reassured.
“Confession, my dear Felicity, is more like an IOU, which is eventually called in by the church, for the right to wallow in delicious sin. It is a pass for the unrestrained, as is common for most humans, to behave as nature has designed us; nasty, brutish, grasping and utterly selfish. Sorry to burden you with reality, but we should remain very vigilant.”
They slipped somberly through the cemetery gate to collect Abelard, who was sitting propped against the latest tombstone, his eyes still red from the weeping. He didn’t say anything, stood and began walking towards the gate. The silence hung somberly about them until they were cruising along the main road on route back to the farm.
“You lie,” he began, “you not believe me.”
“It is an amazing story,” Felicity answered. “Would you believe me if I woke up near your castle and said I was a Roman general?”
Abelard didn’t respond. He stared out his window at the rushing countryside, examined his boney hands, felt his hollow face, massaged his sagging chest and then seemed to be having trouble catching his breath, making a sort of snorting, gasping sound. The sound grew and changed until it developed into complete, uncontrollable belly laughter. Oliver was now fully alarmed. He regretted not having brought a sedative. He was preparing to restrain him when Abelard lifted his right hand, seemed to be slowing his locomotive like laughter and said as best as he could over the hoarse hooting, “it is fine, do not worry.
“I have much to learn,” he continued after a moment, only a thin smile remaining, “will you teach me?” Abelard had a very practical bent. Now that the charade was over, the nonsense about trebuchets powering the cart without horses a sham, he needed to be realistic. He was in a world he did not know. No one believed his story and he needed to adapt. He was also a man of supreme self-confidence. To his mind he had a personal history, all of it in the turbulent and violent fourteenth century. To everyone else’s he had a memory loss and the rest was make believe. He now knew this but it mattered little. He was inexhaustibly cocksure and knew with near certainty that he could survive and prosper anywhere.
And so began four years of education, adaptation, preparation, murder and mystery.
Chapter X
The Societ
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