I was assuming the Bible had come from around Le Pont de Montvert, but I knew it could have been brought from anywhere, with people moving to the area and bringing things with them. When I suggested this, however, Mathilde and Monsieur Jourdain both shook their heads.
‘They would not have brought it to the mairie if they were outsiders,’ Mathilde explained. ‘Only a true Cevenol family would have given it to Monsieur Jourdain. There is a strong sense of history here, and family things like this Bible don't leave the Cévennes.’
‘But families leave. My family left.’
‘That was religion,’ she replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. ‘Of course they left then, and many more families after 1685. You know, it's funny that your family left when it did. It was much worse for Cevenol Protestants 100 years later. The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew was a –’ She stopped and shrugged, then waved a hand at Jean-Paul. ‘You explain, Jean-Paul.’ She was wearing a pink leotard and plaid miniskirt.
‘A bourgeois event, more or less,’ he continued smoothly, smiling at her. ‘It destroyed the Protestant nobility. But the Cevenol Huguenots were peasants and the Cévennes too isolated to be threatened. There could have been tensions with the few local Catholics, I suppose. The cathedral in Mende remained Catholic, for example. They could have decided to go terrorize a few Huguenots. What do you think, Mademoiselle?’ he addressed Sylvie. She regarded him with a level gaze, then stuck her legs out, wiggled her toes and said, ‘Look, Maman painted my toenails white!’
Now I turned back to the list of Tourniers and studied it. Here was the family that must have ended up in Moutier: Etienne Tournier, Isabelle du Moulin and their children Jean, Jacob and Marie. According to my cousin's note, Etienne had been on a military list in 1576 and Jean married in 1590. I checked the dates; they made sense. And this Jacob was one of the Jacobs in the long line that ended with my cousin. He should know about this, I thought. I'll write and tell him.
My eye was drawn to writing on the inside cover that no one had noticed before. It was dirty and faint, but I managed to make out ‘Mas de la Baume du Monsieur’. Farm of the Balm of the Gentleman, clumsily translated. I got out the detailed map I'd bought of the area around Le Pont de Montvert and began looking. I searched in concentric rings out from the village for a similar name. After only five minutes I found it, about two kilometres northeast of Le Pont de Montvert. It was a hill just north of the Tarn, half covered with forest. I nodded. Here was something for Jean-Paul.
But he couldn't have seen the name of the farm the night before or he would have pointed it out. What was he talking about when he said he knew something about my family? I stared at the names and dates, but could only find two things unusual about the list: a Tournier had married a Tournier, and one of the Jeans had been born on New Year's Day.
When I arrived at the library the next afternoon with the Bible in a carrier bag, Jean-Paul made a show of presenting me to the other librarian. Once she clapped eyes on the Bible she stopped looking suspicious.
‘Monsieur Piquemal is an expert in old books, in history,’ she said in a singsong voice. ‘That's his domain. But I know more about novels, romance, things like that. The more popular books.’
I sensed a dig at Jean-Paul, but I simply nodded and smiled. Jean-Paul waited for us to finish, then led me to a table in the other room. I opened the Bible while he pulled out his scrap of envelope.
‘So,’ he said expectantly. ‘What did you discover?’
‘Your last name is Piquemal.’
‘So?’
‘ “Bad sting.” Perfect.’ I grinned at him and he frowned.
‘Pique can also mean lance,’ he muttered.
‘Even better!’
‘So,’ he repeated. ‘What did you find?’
I pointed to the name of the farm on the inside cover, then spread out my map and pinpointed the spot. Jean-Paul nodded. ‘Good,’ he said, scrutinizing the map. ‘No buildings there now, but at least we are sure that the Bible is from the area. What else?’
‘Two Tourniers married each other.’
‘Yes, probably cousins. It was not so uncommon then. What else?’
‘Um, one of them was born on New Year's Day.’
He raised his eyebrows; I wished I hadn't said anything. ‘Anything else?’ he persisted.
‘No.’ He was being irritating again, yet I found it hard to sit next to him and talk as if nothing had happened the other night. His arm was so near mine on the table that I could easily brush against it. This is the closest we're going to get, I thought. This is as far as it goes. Sitting next to him seemed a sad, futile act.
‘You found nothing else interesting?’ Jean-Paul snorted. ‘Bah, American education. You would make a bad detective, Ella Tournier.’ When he saw my face he stopped and looked embarrassed. ‘I'm sorry,’ he said, switching to English as if that would soothe me. ‘You do not like my teasing.’
I shook my head and kept my eyes on the Bible. ‘It's not that. If I didn't want you to tease me I could never talk to you. No, it's just –’ I waved my hand as if to chase the subject away – ‘the other night,’ I explained quietly. ‘It's hard to sit here like this.’
‘Ah.’ We sat side by side, staring at the family list, very aware of each other.
‘Funny,’ I broke the silence. ‘I've just noticed. Etienne and Isabelle married the day before his birthday. May 28th, May 29th.’
‘Yes.’ Jean-Paul tapped a finger lightly against my hand. ‘Yes. That is what I noticed first. Strange. So I asked was it a coincidence? Then I saw how old he was. He had twenty-five the next day after his marriage.’
‘He turned twenty-five.’
‘Yes. Now, among the Huguenots then, when a man turned twenty-five he did not any longer need permission from his parents to marry.’
‘But he was twenty-four when he married, so he must have had their permission.’
‘Yes, but it seemed strange to marry so close to twenty-five. To give anyone doubt about what his parents thought. Then I looked more.’ He gestured at the page. ‘Look at the birth date of their first son.’
‘Yes, New Year's Day, like I said. So what?’
He frowned at me. ‘Look again, Ella Tournier. Use the brain.’
I stared at the page. When I figured out what he meant I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed it before, me of all people. I began to calculate rapidly, counting back on my fingers.
‘You understand now.’
I nodded, working out the final days, and announced, ‘She would've conceived around April 10th, more or less.’
Jean-Paul looked amused. ‘April 10th, eh? What is all this?’ He pretend-counted on his fingers.
‘Birth is calculated at roughly 266 days from conception. More or less. Gestation varies from woman to woman, of course, and it was probably a little different back then. Different diet, different physique. But in April, anyway. A good seven weeks before they married.’
‘And how do you know this 266 days, Ella Tournier? You have no children, no? Have you hidden them somewhere?’
‘I'm a midwife.’
He looked puzzled, so I said it in French. ‘Une sage-femme. Je suis une sage-femme.’
‘Toi? Une sage-femme? ’
‘Yes. You never even asked what I did for a living.’
He looked crestfallen, an unusual expression for him, and I felt triumphant; for once I'd gained the upper hand.
‘You always surprise me, Ella,’ he said, shaking his head and smiling.
‘Come, come, no flirting or your colleague will tell the whole town.’
We both instinctively glanced at the doorway and sat up straighter. I leaned away from him.
‘So it was a shotgun wedding,’ I declared to get us back on track.
‘A gun wedding?’
‘Shot gun. It's like a rifle. Her parents forced him to marry her once they found out she was pregnant. In the States there's this stereotypical image of the father holding a shotgun to the man
to get him to the altar.’
Jean-Paul thought for a moment. ‘Maybe that is what happened.’ He didn't sound convinced.
‘But?’
‘But that – a rifle wedding, you say – does not explain why they married so close to his birthday.’
‘Well, so it was a coincidence that they married the day before his birthday. So what?’
‘You and your coincidences, Ella Tournier. You choose which ones you want to believe are more than coincidences. So this is a coincidence and Nicolas Tournier is not.’
I tensed up. We hadn't discussed the painter since disagreeing so strongly about him.
‘I could say the same thing about you!’ I retorted. ‘We just choose different coincidences to be interested in, that's all.’
‘I was interested in Nicolas Tournier, until I found out he was not your relative. I gave him a chance. And I give this coincidence a chance too.’
‘OK, so why is this more than a coincidence?’
‘It's the date and the day of the wedding. Both are bad.’
‘What do you mean, bad?’
‘There was a belief in the Languedoc, never to marry in May or November.’
‘Why not?’
‘May is the month of rain, of tears, November the month of the dead.’
‘But that's just superstition. I thought Huguenots were trying not to be superstitious. That was supposed to be a Catholic vice.’
That stopped him for a moment. He wasn't the only one who'd been reading books.
‘Nevertheless it is true there were fewer weddings in those months. And then the 28th of May 1563 was a Monday, and most weddings were on Tuesday or Saturday. They were the favourite days.’
‘Wait a minute. How could you possibly know it was a Monday?’
‘I found a calendar on the Internet.’
The most unlikely nerd. I sighed. ‘So you obviously have a theory about what happened. I don't know why I bother to think I have any say in all this.’
He looked at me. ‘Pardon. I've stolen your search from you, yes?’
‘Yes. Look, I appreciate your help, but I feel like when you do it, it's all in the head, not the heart. Do you understand that?’
He pushed his lips out in a kind of pout and nodded.
‘Still, I'd like to hear your theory. But it's just a theory, right? I can still keep my idea that it was a shotgun wedding.’
‘Yes. So, maybe his parents were opposed to the marriage until they found out about the child. Then they hurried with the marriage so their neighbours would believe the parents had always consented.’
‘But wouldn't people have suspected that, given the dates?’ I could easily imagine a sixteenth-century version of Madame working that one out.
‘Maybe, but it would still be better to be seen to consent.’
‘For appearance's sake.’
‘Yes.’
‘So nothing's changed much over 400 years, really.’
‘Did you expect it to?’
The other librarian appeared in the doorway. We must have looked deep in consultation, for she just smiled at us and disappeared again.
‘There is one thing more,’ Jean-Paul said. ‘Just a little thing. The name Marie. That's a strange name for a Huguenot family to give to a child.’
‘Why?’
‘Calvin wanted people to stop worshipping the Virgin Mary. He believed in direct contact with God rather than through a figure like her. She was seen as a distraction from God. And she is a part of Catholicism. It is odd that they named her after the Virgin.’
‘Marie,’ I repeated.
Jean-Paul closed the Bible. I watched him touch the cover, trace the gold leaf.
‘Jean-Paul.’
He turned to me, his eyes bright.
‘Come home with me.’ I hadn't even realized I was going to say it.
Outwardly his face didn't change, but the shift between us was like the wind switching direction.
‘Ella. I'm working.’
‘After work.’
‘What about your husband?’
‘He's away.’ I was beginning to feel humiliated. ‘Forget it,’ I muttered. ‘Forget I even asked.’ I started to get up, but he put his hand on mine and stopped me. As I sank back into my seat, he glanced at the doorway and removed his hand.
‘Will you come somewhere tonight?’ he asked.
‘Where?’
Jean-Paul wrote something on a scrap of paper. ‘It is a good time to come around eleven.’
‘But what is it?’
He shook his head. ‘A surprise. Just come. You'll see.’
I took a shower and spent more time on my appearance than I had in a long while, even though I had no idea where I was going: Jean-Paul had simply scribbled down an address in Lavaur, a town about twelve miles away. It could be a restaurant or a friend's house or a bowling alley, for all I knew.
His comment the night before about my clothes had lingered in my mind. Though I wasn't sure he meant it as a criticism, I looked through my wardrobe for something with colour in it. In the end I wore the pale yellow sleeveless dress again, the closest I could get to a bright colour. At least I felt comfortable in it, and with brown slingbacks and a little lipstick I didn't look too bad. I couldn't begin to compete with French women, who looked stylish wearing just jeans and a T-shirt, but I would pass.
I had just shut the front door behind me when the phone rang. I had to scramble to get to it before the answering machine did.
‘Hey, Ella, did I get you out of bed?’
‘Rick. No, actually I was, just, uh, going for a walk. Out to the bridge.’
‘A walk at eleven at night?’
‘Yeah, it's hot and I was bored. Where are you?’
‘At the hotel.’
I tried to remember: was it Hamburg or Frankfurt? ‘Did the meeting go well?’
‘Great!’ He told me about his day, giving me time to compose myself. When he asked me what I'd been up to, though, I couldn't think of a thing to say that he would want to hear.
‘Not much,’ I answered hurriedly. ‘So when are you coming back?’
‘Sunday. I have to stop in Paris first on my way back. Hey, babe, what are you wearing?’ This was an old game we used to play on the phone: one of us described what we were wearing and the other described stripping it off. I looked down at my dress and shoes. I couldn't tell him what I was wearing, or why I didn't want to play.
Luckily I was saved by Rick himself, who said, ‘Hang on, I have a call waiting. I'd better take it.’
‘Sure. See you in a few days.’
‘Love you, Ella.’ He hung up.
I waited a few minutes, feeling sick, to make sure he didn't call back.
In the car I kept saying to myself every few minutes, You can turn back, Ella. You don't have to do this. You can drive all the way there, park, get to the door of wherever and turn back. You can even see him and spend time with him and it'll be perfectly innocent and you can come back pure and unadulterated. Literally.
Lavaur was a cathedral town about three times the size of Lisle-sur-Tarn, with an old quarter and some semblance of nightlife: a cinema, a choice of restaurants, a couple of bars. I checked a map, parked next to the cathedral, a lumbering brick building with an octagonal tower, and walked into the old town. Even with tantalizing night-time activities there was no one around; every shutter was shut, every light dark.
I found the address easily: it was hard to miss, marked by a startling neon sign announcing a tavern. The entrance was in a side alley, the shutters of the window next to the door painted with what looked like faceless soldiers guarding a woman in a long robe. I stopped and studied the shutters. The image unnerved me; I hurried inside.
The contrast between outside and inside couldn't have been greater. It was a small bar, dimly lit, loud and crowded and smoky. The few bars I'd been to in small French towns were generally grim affairs, male and unwelcoming. This was like a chink of light in the middle of darkne
ss. It was so unexpected that I stood in the doorway and stared.
Directly in front of me a striking woman wearing jeans and a maroon silk blouse was singing ‘Every Time We Say Goodbye’ in a heavy French accent. And though his back was to me, I knew immediately that it was Jean-Paul hunched over the white upright, wearing his soft blue shirt. He kept his eyes on his hands, occasionally glancing at the singer, his expression concentrated but also serene.