Two hours later they were on their way to La Teste, where Abelard assured them a great treasure was waiting to be reclaimed. Martin would make all the necessary financial arrangements. The day was more typically winter; damp, cold, a cloud mass coloured in infinitely varying tones of the same sombre grey darkened the early light. Much of the woods were still obscured by milky white fog banks rising from the water logged earth. Spring had matured in name alone.
Thanks to Abelard’s elaborate ploy, their pursuers would not know that their quarry had left until they would see them return the following morning. They would also never know where they had been.
The road from Bordeaux to La Teste was surrounded by the great southern pine forests. These were so quintessentially French. Perfectly cultivated, all the trees closely identical in width and height, branches clustered near the top. Truly a model forest, the product of Cartesian minds. But boring as hell to look at for longer than needed to take in a curiosity. Boredom did sometimes give way to beauty, when slow moving fat fog banks rolled in to impose on the forest the charm of variability and the interest of randomness. Trees appeared and disappeared, varied their height and looked to be changing clothes as rare sunlight succeeded in penetrating the thick mist, here sometimes and there at others.
They soon came upon the small sign announcing that they were entering la Teste, population 17,035. These were the outskirts. Occasional small workshops in dilapidated, corrugated tin structures, leaving a third world flavour, squatted at the roadside. Rough stone houses and familiar two story brick and concrete buildings were becoming more numerous as they approached the town centre. It had the allure of an industrial area, grimy and particularly sombre in the black drizzle that had been hounding them since Bordeaux.
The centre was extraordinarily similar to so many other little towns they had passed through; as though the same urban plan was circulated to all builders and applied with only the barest minimum of modification. All along the wide, two lane street, which wound right around the hippodrome shaped square, stood two story stone and masonry buildings crammed with small shops. The church, relatively modern looking, perhaps less than 200 years old, dominated all with its imposing stone facade and easily visible buttressed sides, receding endlessly into the background. While all the other buildings were wedged into their minimal slots, the church alone stood in splendid solitude, presiding over the entire gathering.
"Where to," Oliver asked as he parked close to the church?
Abelard walked up the stone steps and onto the front porch of Notre Dame de La Teste to read the inscription on the small bronze plaque fixed to the wall beside the main entrance. The church had been built on the site where St. Éloi had stood, over the ashes of the original building, utterly destroyed by the French Revolution. There were two towers, the right one had been built directly over the one which had stood with the original church from about 1300 through to the bloody fall of the Ancien Regime.
“The treasure,” Abelard informed the others, “is directly south east from this tower.” He waited for approval, perhaps even some applause, but got only blank stares.
“How far south east, exactly,” Felicity ventured?
“Oh, about 25 minutes by horse at a walking pace,” Abelard mumbled, knowing that this was where he was going to be roasted by the others.
“Is that a big horse, small horse, toy horse, perhaps,” Oliver asked with feigned gravity?
“What colour was the original horse,” Felicity added?
“Abelard,” a calmer, no-nonsense Elizabetta, piped in, “is that all the information you have as to the exact location of the presumed treasure,” she thoughtfully added to remind everyone that their enterprise was still not a certain thing.
“Don’t blame me, but that’s the way people at the time, would measure stuff. But, not to worry, I’m sure it’s accurate,” he tried to reassure them in a voice utterly lacking conviction. “Come on up here,” he urged from his vantage at the top of the fairly high church porch, “and you will be able to see the housing development directly south east.”
“I’m sure you found a good way to exactly measure the distance a horse,” Felicity posited, sarcasm greasing her every word, “and I’m supposing a medium horse here, would walk in 25 minutes. I’m not going to even ask how the original map maker measured twenty-five minutes at the time, perhaps with a small wristhourglass.”
“If you must know, there is a farm about three kilometres from here where I rented a horse and did the ride to get an exact location.”
“And, I suppose you just rode right through all the buildings and other structures which seem to be cluttering the straight line south east of this tower,” it was Oliver’s turn to mock Abelard.
“No,” Abelard answered, infinitely patient and hugely thick skinned, “I rode east until I could turn south, then I rode south as far as I could and repeated the process, compensating, in my mind for the extra riding this added.”
Felicity had fallen silent for a moment and was concentrating on her small calculator, into which she was furiously punching data. Then she looked up with a smile and asked, “Abelard, how far east did you ride, all together, do you remember?”
“Of course,” he growled, fishing from his pocket the little notebook, which he always carried. “Nine minutes east and, in case you need to know, 17 minutes south,” he finished, smug satisfaction larding his voice.
“Abelard,” Felicity observed, you have obviously forgotten your Pythagoras and some basic trigonometry. Unless this calculator is not functioning as it should, your meandering brought you to a point only about 19 minutes’ medium horse walking distance south east of this church tower. You needed to go about 13 minutes east and 21 minutes south if you wanted to get to your destination.”
“But that would have brought me down to the beach and I don’t remember,” he hesitated a moment, “I mean the map didn’t mention water so close by.”
“There was never a map, was there,” Felicity asked, incredulous?
“No, there was not.” He said emphatically. “I lied because I knew you would never go along if I told you it was all from my memories. Am I right?”
This was too much for Felicity. She turned away, ran to the car and once inside put a finger to each ear and yelled at the top of her lungs. Oliver was much less discreet than Felicity. He stepped onto the roadway to pick up a discarded tail pipe he had earlier on spotted and waving it wildly over his head he began to chase Abelard around the square. Elizabetta had missed the last bits and was unaware of the brewing crisis. She had wandered across the square to look at the shops, hoping to find a charcuterie or pastry, the chilly weather having made her quite hungry. She had found what she was looking for and was about to shout for the others to come when she first noticed Oliver attempting to murder Abelard and quickly concluded that something had changed. She began shrieking until she caught their attention, as well as that of all the people wandering about the square.
“Food and coffee here,” she shouted to be sure someone would hear. Felicity, who had by then joined the chase, also stopped when she heard the suspicious shriek. The brief but intense exercise had succeeded in calming their murderous instincts and they slowly made their way towards Elizabetta.
“Never mind, Abelard,” Felicity finally said, wiping away tears on her sleeve, her stoicism taking over, as she realized brooding would get them nowhere. “Let’s get some food and think about this. Ok?” He agreed and walked with a sad step and stooped shoulders, as though carrying a great load.
“Let’s get our goodies,” Elizabetta said, quite cheerfully, yet unaware of the earlier tensions, “and we can wander down to the beach to eat and look at the historical site.”
“Historical site,” Abelard asked, suddenly a bit perkier?
“Yes, it’s on that sign over there,” she said pointing towards the corner where a very narrow street gave onto the main road.
There it was, the familiar yellow gothic lettering on a navy blue background,
official French government indications for historic sites. One and a half kilometres down the narrow street would bring them to the ruins of a 12th century castle. Abelard could not seem to tear his eyes from the sign. Felicity tugged at his arm but was unable to move him. Oliver finally raised his hands to Abelard’s ear and clapped very loudly. This brought him around.
“That’s it,” he said, to no one in particular. “That’s where it is. It still exists. I didn’t know. We don’t need to buy any houses or dig through any foundations.” A great big smile had banished his earlier gloom.
“You’re not being coherent,” Oliver said. “What is it, I’m afraid to ask?”
“That’s what we were looking for. That castle. I didn’t know it was still standing. I thought it was much further from the water than it is. I guess the sea must have reclaimed some of the land here. The 25 minute ride was actually meant to indicate the distance from the church to the castle.”
The narrow street ran into a small departmental road surrounded by forest for about the first kilometre. Further on the vegetation became sparse, grassy, clinging precariously to giant undulating sand dunes. Then the road ended at a beach, on the Bay of Arcachon, about 200 meters deep. Nothing, not even a stone that might have been a castle was visible. Only the rising and falling dunes. There were no signs indicating where the castle ruins might be. They had decided to drive back to town for more information when they spotted the little girl watching them from her perch on the dune to their right.
Felicity walked over to speak with her. She stopped at the bottom of the little girl's mountain. There was some pointing between bits of conversation and then Felicity climbed the dune towards the girl to look at something on the other side. She bent down to thank her, appeared to button up the little girl's coat for her and, kicking up great clumps of wet sand, she ran as fast as the clinging grains would allow back to where the others were waiting.
Her laboured breathing could not mask her excitement. "It seems that there were too few visitors to justify keeping an unrecognizable pile of ruins on one of the few pieces of solid ground with beach frontage in this area. It is almost all sand everywhere else. They’re going to build a hotel and her father is there now doing the preliminary surveys. She also assures me she is not being naughty since today is a school holiday."
The little girl reacted quite predictably when she saw Abelard making towards her at full tilt. She ran down the far side of her dune, presumably towards her father. Abelard stopped at the top and stood still, hair plastered to his skull by the drizzle, which was now just tapering off. His great lined gabardine coat of black and white diamond pattern, unbuttoned to let go the heat of his excitement, was flapping like the cape of the medieval Italian horseman riding between the two warring camps of Siena and Florence.
The others joined him on his perch. But the scene from the top was terribly unimpressive. Easy to understand why the guide books kept so silent; more dunes and sand, except for a flat, rock strewn patch at the beginning of a short rocky promontory jutting into the bay. That was it. The castle. Not much left. Hardly worth redecorating. With all that beach though, they could easily imagine a nice little 50 to 100 room hotel for the summer tourist trade.
Carefully as they looked they could detect not the tiniest discouragement in Abelard. They didn’t quite know for sure what he might have been expecting but what they were seeing should have been, well, a little disappointment, at the very least.
They walked briskly towards the rubble. As they got closer, however, the rubble began to look less random. There was not much, but traces of tantalizing foundations, suggesting a larger organized structure, were evident. From their vantage the lines etched into the small patch of solid ground had deliberate, intelligent patterns. Abelard had seen this from the very first moment he laid eyes on the ruins.
The surveyor halted his work when he saw the small group approaching. He looked to be a fairly big man, a wool sailor’s cap on his head and a long heavy blue coat giving him considerably more bulk than he actually had. His little girl, minuscule next to him, in her navy pea coat and rainbow coloured scarf was clinging to his leg, as much out of sight as she could manage. Felicity approached, introduced herself as a Canadian studying the works of Froissart and particularly interested in the Captal de Buch, Jean de Grailly III. This evidently pleased the surveyor who himself turned out to be an amateur historian with a strong interest in local lore. This was not very surprising since every place in the entire country with even the merest history was crawling with them. Had she heard some of the unrecorded gossip about the Captal and his amorous adventures he asked, displaying all the characteristic enthusiasm of the chronic ear hunter. And, of course, the story about Abelard's disappearance was pure nonsense. He had it on very good authority from the monastery at Dax, where they keep unclassified fragmentary records, that Abelard had faked his own disappearance because he was being pursued for brigandage. He then retrieved the stolen treasures he had buried and moved to Lombardy where he set himself up in a sturdy castle.
Here Abelard, standing behind Felicity, could no longer contain himself. "Do you really believe all that rubbish?" Abelard asked through a broad smile that was squeezing back a strong urge to openly laugh. "I heard from someone claiming to be the Captal’s direct descendant that he was inducted into a shady society of surviving Templars, and from them learned the secret of immortality. He, so this descendant claims, is still among us, keeping his identity secret."
The astonishment in the surveyor's face made it seem even longer than it already was. Gawking to reveal missing back molars, he resembled, more than anything, a smiling boar. Here was a man who thought he knew more about this relatively obscure medieval Gascon nobleman than anyone else unexpectedly talking to someone who apparently knew more than him. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a hoarse croak. He cleared his throat, in a nervous gesture wiped his already dry, creased brow with the back of his sleeve and tried again. But before he could get in another word Abelard offered to send him the name of this descendant and even arrange a meeting if he would be kind enough to allow him to visit the site. Done. The surveyor was only too happy to comply.
Abelard hurried towards a water filled rut, his steps tracing a path in the mud along its edge. The small ditch was not perfectly uniform. There were occasional obstacles. The jagged blackened stone piles must have been part of the ruined wall whose remaining foundations were now the water filled ditch. He stopped where the ditch appeared to come to an abrupt discontinuity. A space about the width of a small driveway was flat ground, creating a break in the sunken earth. The main entrance. This had been a small castle, probably with only one protective wall.
In the gathering dusk, made even more sombre under ever blacker clouds, Abelard positioned himself just at the spot where the right front wall section would have extended off from the entrance. He then raised his arms, extending them straight out to either side, his long, black and white diamond gabardine, now soaked to the lining, stretching over his back like an outer of a large creature. He stood there for a moment, a giant painted bird of prey, fingers splayed and taut, as though preparing to cast its dreadful shadow across the landscape.
"Bizarre," muttered the surveyor, as Abelard began to trace consecutive arcs against the imaginary wall, the chord length of each being equal to the distance from tip to tip of outstretched arms. From where the others stood it resembled a ritual of some sort. Felicity whispered something to the by now quite anxious surveyor. This appeared to reassure him, judging from the knowing nod and shake of his head.
"I've told him," Felicity whispered to the others, "that Abelard had come here only to perform this ancient, quasi Druidic ceremony. He dabbles in the occult."
About a third of the way along the imaginary wall tracings, Abelard appeared to become disoriented, stopping, his arms falling to his sides and feet beginning to shuffle and stamp. But only for a moment. He looked around and as though by random impulsion he moved
along the same axis, not stopping until the corner where seven centuries earlier stout front and side walls might have joined in their protective embrace. There he resumed his mysterious arcing ritual along the imaginary perpendicular wall. Once again the momentary apparent disorientation and rather violent shuffling of feet, this time about a quarter the way along the ditch outlining where the thick wall would have stood. Then he stopped as suddenly as he had started. He walked over to a circular impression, well inside the original walls and strewn with rubble, all that remained of the original donjon, the castle keep, a central structure in medieval military architecture where desperate defenders would make a last stand against determined attackers. He stopped for a final, lingering glance around the ruined bastion.
"I don't know how I could ever thank you," he said to the surveyor. "Give me your address and I will send you the name of the alleged immortal descendant."
The site was becoming more difficult to see, the sun completely obscured by the dark, moisture laden clouds.
"I am very hungry," Abelard continued. "Would we be able to eat in the area somewhere?" he asked the surveyor.
It was now a little after five and the restaurants would not yet be open for the evening meal. Oliver suggested they go to Bordeaux and also arrange to stay the night at a hotel. But Abelard was intent on remaining in the area. Oliver would soon understand just why he was so insistent.
The surveyor recommended an inn, whose restaurant he described in mouth watering detail, about eight kilometres down the road, just beyond Arcachon, the big town at the southern tip of the bay. La Teste apparently had but one flea bitten hotel which also obliged its guests to suffer its meals, renowned for their inedibility.
They left with much hand shaking and appreciative noises. Once inside the car, Abelard looked at the others with a deep, blissful sigh, the closest they had yet seen to what could almost have been mistaken for genuine, uninhibited love. It didn't feel like the pure thing yet, the eyes still had that calculating, judging furtiveness. But it was certainly a great improvement. He had this little grin, no, more of a smirk, but a sweet smirk, one telling them that he was almost embarrassingly happy with his lot, his friends, his existential experience at being in familiar surroundings. Even without the walls, without the bare stone structures, without the people, he seemed to know exactly where he was. His level of comfort was delicious, sumptuous, exquisite. But he was also a bit anxious. When the surveyor's daughter had begun to imitate his arcing ritual he watched her with unusual intensity. It was only when her father had called her back that he again relaxed, his shoulders slumping back from their tense heights.
"I want to buy a flashlight," Abelard announced, rather than said, as they drove past the shops in Arcachon. “A good one that has a strong narrow beam like a laser light.
"You must be joking," Oliver said, "hotels here all have electric lighting. Are you worried about a power failure? Afraid of the dark?" he asked, with a smile.
"Indulge me, please, Oliver," he said, pointedly ignoring his gratuitously stupid remarks.
"Is this one to your liking monsieur?" Felicity inquired after returning with a black, rubber encased flashlight. "It even comes with batteries and all for the modest sum of 24 euros."
Abelard was being very deliberate, everything he did was purposeful. He was deadly serious, playing another game, a secret game. He categorically put a damper on all attempts at levity. He heard from the others only what he needed, remaining untouched by all else. There was a child-like quality to the way in which he examined the flashlight, playing with the mechanism, testing the intensity of the beam, as though it were a weapon with nothing less than his life depending on its proper functioning.
*