"That was absolutely criminal,” Elizabetta sighed as she looked forlornly at the clean bones from the sumptuous goose confit, carelessly scattered about her plate. She drained the last of her coffee and announced, "I'm about ready for a short walk and then bed." She would get her walk and some fresh, cool air but not quite in the way she expected.
"I need to go back to the castle, now!" Abelard suddenly broke in with a crashing abruptness. There was also a touch of menace in his voice. He was not prepared for a refusal.
"Why?" Felicity was surprised by his insistence. "What do you expect to see in the dark that you missed in the daylight? It's quite late. Besides, we would probably be trespassing."
“The treasure, my dear, the treasure. We certainly can’t just arrive tomorrow, bid a good morning to the work crews and the engineer and begin excavating, can we?”
“You have our attention,” Oliver spoke for the others.
"Then let’s be on our way," he said, not wasting a moment to thank them for their accommodation. He was now conducting serious business and expected their cooperation.
"At the castle, over a period of five years, Abelard de Buch had been burying his share of spoils from brigandage," he revealed in the car as they headed back to la Teste and the ruins.
"But, Abelard," Oliver exclaimed with some surprise and not a little bit of sarcasm, "be realistic, it’s been almost 650 years, there's no way it's still there."
"You may be right, Oliver, but I must see for myself." There was no mistaking that he was now just humouring him. Oliver could tell he was fairly certain it was in fact still there. Something he had spotted during the arcing ritual must have told him so.
"Abelard, what's made you just now so desperate for all that wealth?" Oliver needed to know why he was suddenly consumed with his mission to find the treasure.
"Because, Oliver, wealth is everything today, as it was in Abelard’s time. Without it you are at the mercy of those who have it,” spoken as to a child who had asked a stupid question.
"Thank you gramps,” he responded in the same spirit.
“That, young Abelard, is only true if you play the same game they do," Felicity stepped in to set his mind right. "If you embrace the same values. If you are unable to break away from how they define the world. Wealth, Abelard, is only as important as you make it. Break the rule and stop desiring it and it becomes meaningless."
"Then how would you defend yourself against those who would pay to have you killed?"
"You do have a valid point there," Oliver said, without his earlier mockery. “I suppose those men were after you and we were just in the proverbial wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Alas, my friends, the sad reality is that you are all three now also in their sights,” he said in a sombre voice.
“Felicity, I’m mentally ready to decouple from worldly values but I don’t believe it is possible to do so in reality. What I have been able to observe during my brief tenure at VBI has convinced me that human culture, not just the Western variety, is very much defined by business, by the deal, by success in the accumulation of wealth; that giant corporations are central to the welfare and social activity of a great many of this planet’s citizens; and that these large institutions that make up the corporate world are controlled by sometimes very autocratic, egocentric individuals, just like the leading nobility in Abelard’s time."
Oliver acted as though this was nonsense. But had there been enough light, the surprise that Abelard's words sent through him would have been apparent in his eyes, where emotion tends to show off like a bright window display. He had no idea that Abelard had to such an extent become disenchanted.
The rains had stopped, the clouds evaporated and the almost full moon filled the night with sparkling water and glistening sand. Even in the bright night light, except for the rocky promontory extending the ancient manorial plot into the sea, it would not have been possible to detect any signs that there had ever been a castle on the site. They had to get much closer to see anything. Huddled against the damp windborne cold, near where the entrance would have been, they were able to make out the faint outlines of the ruined foundations.
They followed Abelard along the traces of the long gone wall, the swirling mists captured in the sharp, narrow cone of light illuminating the ground before them. The waves washing against the near shore drowning out, at precise intervals, their anxious breathing as clumsy footfalls in the soft spongy ground drained their energy. Oliver sensed that only Abelard actually truly believed that there would be a hidden treasure at the end of this expedition. Elizabetta and Felicity were certainly not taken in. He was sure the moisture in their eyes was but generous pity at Abelard's delusional dream. Oliver was confident they never even supposed there actually was a treasure. Bizarrely, Oliver had no trouble accepting that somewhere there was a treasure. He just did not believe that it would be found. He was wrong about the women, though. Their expressions were in fact ones of anxious anticipation.
For Oliver it was evident, as were too many things, that the attempt on their lives had formed Abelard’s unshakable resolve to become independent. What would happen to his world after tonight when his dream was shattered? They had been powerless to stop his building preoccupation. He had kept everything hidden until the last moment. Events had raced towards this moment at breakneck speed. Abelard had been so quickly, so completely possessed by this idée fixe, it caught them all by complete surprise. Oliver’s only comfort, cold at that, was to at least be prepared for the worst during this anxious night.
"Stop," Abelard whispered, a little too loudly, shooting adrenaline through the others, tightening their muscles, preparing them for flight. They resembled more the three stooges than determined, quasi criminal treasure hunters, walking too closely one behind the other. The halt had been so abrupt that Felicity painfully bumped her nose against Oliver’s back and Elizabetta stepped on Felicity's heels. Abelard was arrogantly oblivious to their discomfort. He was single minded in his mission.
"Oliver," he continued, "you stand here," taking both his arms and positioning him with exaggerated precision, "and do not move, even a little, until I tell you. Felicity, Elizabetta come with me."
Oliver stood at his assigned station, dumbly watching them and their cone of light move away, leaving him alone in the pale illumination cast by a nearly full moon. Then he became conscious that he was standing in a slight depression and he suddenly understood why Abelard had appeared to be shuffling his feet earlier in the day as he traced those eerie arcs against non-existent walls. He was deliberately marking the axes of a 90 degree quadrant. Abelard was locating a point in two dimensional space through intersecting coordinates on a Cartesian plane. Oliver watched him stop at a point on the line that would have defined where the perpendicular wall had stood and position one of the women, Elizabetta, he guessed from the dim features of her head he was able to make out in the moonlight. He then played his narrow beam at ninety degrees away from the imaginary wall and Oliver saw Felicity walk along its beam. She used the position of her shadow to keep her in a line defined by the centre of the widening beam.
"Stop," he said, this time just loud enough for Felicity to hear. She was now almost directly in front of Oliver. Abelard then ran over to where Oliver was standing and shone the light at ninety degrees to their imaginary wall.
"Felicity, now walk directly back towards Elizabetta."
She did so, following his instructions as obediently as Oliver had.
"Stop," he said, as she stepped into the centre of the beam. "Stay right there."
"You can both come here now," he said to Elizabetta and Oliver after he had placed himself next to Felicity.
Some of the few surviving old paving stones from the original castle under foot, the four of them stood in the glow of the electric light, now paled by Abelard's positively radiant smile. If he had any doubts, they were imperceptible. He was clearly certain about recovering his treasure; he was a portrait of anxiety that builds around '
when', not 'if'. Oliver, of course, was quite alarmed. When the disappointment came, Abelard would be inconsolable.
Why was he so worried? Felicity and Elizabetta were also anxious, but for different reasons. Oliver had finally understood they were hoping to find the treasure but lacked Abelard's confidence that it would still be there. They were looking at him with great expectation, not pity as he had originally thought. They were part of his world. But Oliver couldn't be. That was his nature, always focusing on the dark side of potential consequences. Always needing to be prepared for the worst, Oliver payed a price for being that way. When the best happened his ecstasy would always be so excruciatingly intense, burning like a bright flame, too rapidly consuming its fuel and leaving him with little lasting joy, a great void, after only a very short happy experience. But he so feared not being mentally wired for the despair of disappointment he could not do otherwise.
"This is it," Abelard began, still with that happy assurance of a child playing a game whose outcome he knows. He put down the heavy sack holding the shovels and crowbars Felicity had purchased at the same time as the flashlight.
"It should be somewhere under these stones, about one of my leg lengths down."
He took a crowbar and began prying at a paving stone. The others just stood there dumbly watching. He was acting as though he owned the place which, in some sense, in his memories, he actually did. The cracks between the flat, rectangular stones were filled with earth and moss. There was still some old, disintegrating mortar, but not enough to demand great exertion.
"Oliver," he said, pulling him out of his hypnotic reverie, "would you please help me pull up on the stone." He had pried it loose and wedged the crowbar underneath, leaving a space for fingers to grab hold. Oliver did so, and they heaved it to a standing position. It was very thick and heavy. They removed six of the stones that way. The work was strenuous and despite the cold night air Oliver had begun to heavily perspire. Abelard pulled two shovels from the bag and they began digging in chain gang fashion.
"We are there," Abelard let it be known, at about three feet or so down. They had hit a solid barrier and heard the clink of metal against stone. Abelard on his knees began clearing the dirt with his hands. Beneath the dirt cleared away by Abelard was a stone slab about two by two feet, with indentations on two sides plainly made for grasping. Neither wood, which would have rotted, nor metal which would have rusted, had been used. It was as though the artisan wanted whatever was under the slab to be accessible even at the end of time. They each slipped their fingers into the grips and hauled the stone slab up. It was the tight perfectly fitting top of a small sarcophagus. There it was, as Abelard firmly knew and as Oliver had fearfully denied; a moderately sized metal and wood chest, dry as bone, ready to be retrieved from its crypt. The vault had been so well constructed no water had seeped in. They hauled up the very heavy box and set it on the paving blocks beside the hole. Only Abelard remained as he was, very pleased. He had known all along it was there and was not suddenly more surprised. The others were gaping. This was buried treasure. The stuff of children’s tales. Elizabetta was on her knees caressing the plain heavy timber box, running her fingers over the metal bands reinforcing the top and onto the clasp holding it closed. Felicity, trying to be detached, nudged her foot over to the box and rubbed her booted toes against its sides, just to satisfy herself that it was not an illusion.
"Felicity, please shine the light on the box," Abelard asked, handing her the flashlight, much more civil, now that the quest was done. He then pulled a skeleton key from his pocket, which he inserted into a small hole on the face of the chest and just as quickly removed it. Then he looked up and smiled that broad Abelardian smile of self satisfaction, when he has cleverly fooled everyone.
"You missed this, “nodding at the key which he was now waving about, "when you removed my armour. A very skilled blacksmith, the same one who built this clever little vault, had fitted the inside of the breast plate I was wearing with a small receptacle, just big enough to keep the key. The armour you found me in was indeed very old.” He had been careful not to include himself in the dating of the armour.
"But how did you know he hadn't come back to take the box at some later time when it was full?" Oliver asked, innocently of course, already suspicious as to what the answer would be.
"Because," as Oliver had guessed, "he was already dead."
"Eliminated the only witness, eh? Good idea." he remarked, with considerable, naked sarcasm.
"Oliver, Oliver," he said, looking at him with a mixture of hurt and sadness, shaking his eerily illuminated head from side to side. "You really do not think very much of Abelard’s morals, honour, loyalty, do you? I have sensed that for some time now. You are judging by other world standards, not even your own. I am very sorry, but I forgive you."
Oliver didn't know what to think, or how to respond. Had Abelard become so skilled at manipulating people? Had he, Oliver, been so unwittingly cruel, so unfair as to judge with retroactive morality? But Oliver didn't have to fret for long; Abelard jumped right back in to move the drama forward.
"No, Oliver, Roncival died in battle, saving Abelard’s life. They were riding with a company of Navarrois, on their way to an Italian war when they were attacked by a large French force, quite illegally, since a peace treaty was in effect which forbade such aggression. It looked pretty hopeless, they had lost a number of good men and the Navarre captain prudently and wisely chose to withdraw. Abelard could not follow. He was unable to extricate himself, being surrounded by a very determined group of knights and peasants carrying crude weapons. He was not worried about the knights, knowing that they were looking for ransom and would have preferred to have him alive. The peasants, however, did not care for these games and were determined to do him to death. Abelard was furiously slashing and butchering those small, stunted men, but they kept on coming. Suddenly, mercifully the great battle cry of 'death to all, Buch' pierced the screams of the dying and of those doing the murdering, Roncival had dashed through the mob, swinging his great axe and leaving a trail of limbless bodies in his wake. But, as he came up beside Abelard, he took a boar spear through the middle of his face, throwing him to the ground, dead, long before the peasant soldiers, wielding their dull blades, began cutting him to pieces. But he had succeeded in opening a wide swathe through the enemy ranks long enough for Abelard to get away, pursued by the mounted knights, but only until he was too close to his own people for their comfort and then they broke away, without their prize. Abelard’s loss was heavy; he was very sad at losing Roncival. He paid for 5000 masses and two perpetual lamps to keep his eternal soul.” All three were staring at Abelard, Oliver deeply shamed, the treasure momentarily forgotten.
Abelard was now speaking in the third person. He had a very detailed story about most events of the time but was no longer the central character. Elizabetta noticed this before the others and took it as a hopeful sign that Abelard, the Abelard of today was finally snapping out of his delusions. But Felicity and Oliver didn’t catch the nuance.
“Oh, Abelard,” Felicity said, sadness weighing down her words, “when will all this stop? Can’t you just drop the medieval knight persona?”
“It’s alright Felicity,” Elizabetta said softly, “he wasn’t talking about himself just now. You probably missed that because he had so many details it was almost as though he were actually there. These are his only memories. He’s been very good about keeping them hidden for all these years. Imagine if we asked you to never talk about anything you remembered unless it occurred only after we met. I don’t think it can hurt and might even help him disassociate from them.”
“You really had me going there,” Felicity quickly changed tack, “those details you make up, no, that you have at your fingertips, had me completely off base.”
Oliver was almost in tears over poor Roncival. He felt himself an absolute ass in the eyes of the two women, having accused Abelard, the elder, of such vile treachery. And who comes to th
e rescue? Yes, Abelard again.
"Don't blame yourself, Oliver," he said, a small, sly grin across his lips, "in your place I would also have had suspicions about Abelard. Let's forget it and look to the future."
Oh, stop it you jerk, stop it, Oliver silently commanded. Any more and the two women will pick up the handy sharp edged spades and lance him like some giant, suppurating boil.
"Felicity," he said, abruptly, again, as though commanding an obedient dog, "the light, please."
He turned the key, the mechanism, as though newly installed, clicked and he lifted the latch. Then, carefully, like picking up a baby, he began opening the cover. The box had been so well preserved, the creaking was barely audible. The electric beam was trembling in Felicity's nervous grip, giving Abelard's movements a silent film flavour. At last, the first light to penetrate into the chest in over 600 years splashed against the brilliance of its contents.
"Who said crime doesn’t pay," Elizabetta was the first to speak after what must have been several minutes of complete silence, even the waves no longer registering. They were transfixed, staring, no, gaping at the contents of the box from the high Middle Ages. Their faces were illuminated by the reflection from Felicity's tremulous light off the glittering spoils of medieval brigandage. Even Abelard, still kneeling before his booty, was stupefied by what he saw, obviously well beyond what he remembered. In his memories, by the time he fell into his deep sleep, more than a year had gone by since he had last made a deposit to the treasure chest.
There were no coins that they could see, only assorted valuables; rings, necklaces, brooches, crosses, most jewel encrusted. There were many little cloth and leather bags, all containing unset stones; emeralds, sapphires, diamonds. There was a very considerable fortune in that small box.
"We should be going," Felicity whispered, not wanting to drag them too rudely back to the present. "It is getting on towards morning and we don't know when the work crews will show up." Besides we still have to fill the hole and replace the paving stones. We shouldn’t leave any trace of our visit."
In the hazy pre dawn light, clouds moving in to cover the clear night sky, they replaced the last paving stone and headed back. There was no question about stopping for breakfast. In La Teste they picked up some croissants at the early opening pastry shop and drove straight back to see Martin Dumouchel. The box was in the trunk, away from potentially prying eyes and barely a word was said during the three hour trip. Mercifully, for Oliver. After the embarrassment of last night's insinuations that Abelard had murdered his friend, he found solace in silence. Felicity was thinking back to Abelard's confession which the priest had revealed to her. All the riches in the small casket were tainted with gruesome reminders.
When they arrived at the inn Martin was not there. He was in Paris on business and would not be back until the following day. They brought the box up to Abelard's room and then got some sleep before worrying about the major problem of fencing the loot, which in any event was to be Martin’s responsibility. Well, to the extent that all the brigandage occurred so long ago it was not technically your traditional stolen goods. But they were certainly historical, archaeological artifacts. The French government would take a dim view of someone claiming them as private property, even if they were to believe Abelard's original story. And then, that would attract far too much unwanted attention.
*