Sustenance (15 page)

“Did he tell you why?”

“I didn’t ask. We’ve been married nearly ten years, and I know when he doesn’t want to discuss something. He keeps telling me to take advantage of any opportunities coming my way. You’d think I were on sabbatical, not fleeing persecution. He wants me to send fewer letters to the kids; the FBI or someone keeps opening them, and Harold is worried that it is upsetting the boys—I think it’s Harold who’s upset. And it was his idea that I come to Europe. He said he wanted to spare the boys pain and me frustration.” Her tone made it clear that she would not venture any opinion against her family’s interests. “At least he let me know I wouldn’t have the money until next week, and I’m grateful.”

“It seems to me that your husband owes
you
an apology, not that you owe
me
one.” He had reached the ground floor and now stood beside the registration desk. “It’s bad enough that you were constrained to leave your home.”

“Well, neither of us wanted what was likely to happen if I stayed,” she said quietly. “And there are the boys to consider. Can we talk about something else, please?”

“Certainly. How are you coming with your new book?”

“Well, it’s not something I could have tackled from the US, that’s a fact; I think I have to be in Europe to do the research and have a look at what’s left, so in a way, this self-exile is a good thing: Harold certainly thought so when I told him about it,” she said with a hint of a relieved giggle. “We have so few Dark Ages convents and monasteries in the US, you know.”

He offered an answering smile. “And that lack makes being here an advantage. I agree. There are times you must see the place, taste the air, feel its earth beneath your shoes, to have any sense of it.”

“Yes. I hadn’t realized how much of one until I began to study the history in detail. It’s really a much more complex system than I thought at first. I’m hardly the first to think that, but I didn’t comprehend it until I came here and could see how they were organized.” She tried to show her interest by speaking faster. “Some of those institutions were more like towns and cities than the towns and cities were.”

“Quite true,” said Szent-Germain, remembering the monasteries in Poland before Karl-lo-Magne summoned him to Franksland, and established Szent-Germain on an estate in what was now Belgium.

“It’s hard, not having someone to talk to. The Coven is a great help, but so often I need to speak to someone who isn’t interested in my field of study, to see if I can create some flicker of curiosity in them—you know, as you do with students. I’ve even talked to Madame Gouffre about it, but she showed no sign of interest in Dark Ages monasteries.”

“How much have you told your landlady?” he asked as he reached for the door to tug it open; street noises flooded in with the cold morning air. “Not just about Dark Ages convents and monasteries?”

“In my incomprehensible French? A fair amount. When I first moved in, she asked me to tea a couple of times and spent most of the time plying me with questions about my background. The FBI couldn’t have done better. I wanted to be sure she watched my mail and notified me if anyone came to speak to me here. I think that worried her.”

“And has she … told you about anyone calling here?” He stood, waiting for her.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I think she suspects I’m some kind of spy, just like the Committee does back home—they see spies and Communist sympathizers everywhere. I’ve told her that it is a matter of politics that brought me here.”

“You’ve given her a lot to think about. She may be worried about you doing something that could redound to her discredit.”

“I’m a little old for prostitution,” said Charis wryly. “What else could discredit her if I live in her building?”

“Smuggling, perhaps, or some association with Nazis.” He softened this remark with a quick smile that crinkled the skin at the corners of his eyes; in that instant there was something in his face that was ancient, like the texture of parchment in books many centuries old. His smile vanished and he was Szent-Germain again; he offered her his arm once more as she stepped onto the narrow sidewalk next to him. “If that’s the case, and she believes you have a secondary motive for being in her building, you’re being prudent not to offend her. She may start looking for confirmation of her suspicions.” The hard sunlight struck his face, making him wince, thinking he would need his dark glasses before they set out. His jaw was still discolored from his fight with the two potential robbers.

“My dorm monitor didn’t place those kinds of restrictions on me, and I was nineteen at the time. You think she’d like a note from my mother?” She stopped, raising the collar of her coat. “Where did this wind come from?”

“Greenland would be my guess,” he said lightly, moving a little ahead of her to open the door to the passenger side of the Delahaye. “There’s a lap-rug folded up on the floor, if you want it. There’s a heater in the auto, but this wind might need something more substantial to keep you warm.”

“I probably will use it. Thank you,” she said, suddenly feeling shy. “How long will it take us to get to Sainte-Thecla of Iconium?”

“Not more than an hour, I should think,” he said, waiting until she had gathered her coat inside the car before he closed the door and went around to his side. By the time he slid in behind the steering wheel, Charis had the lap-rug half-open and was spreading it across her legs.

“I want to thank you for doing this for me,” she said, a bit stiffly. “I don’t want to—”

He took his dark glasses from the glove-box. “You will be able to begin work on your new book as soon as this and a few similar expeditions are done,” he interjected, and started the engine. “Oh, there’s a camera in a case behind you, in case you want photographs of the ruins. You may take as many photos as you like; I have four more rolls of film in the camera’s case.”

She blinked at him, and managed to say something that sounded like
thank you
as they pulled away from the apartment house, realizing as they did that the camera would come in handy once they reached their destination. “That’s thoughtful of you, Grof.”

Traffic was moving fairly well, and they made their way toward the southeastern part of the city in good time, on their way to the remains of a sixth-century convent that was now little more than a pile of old, weathered stone. Szent-Germain had seen it during his time at the court of Karl-lo-Magne, and a few times since then, and thought that the ruins would help Charis to get a better sense of convent life from visiting what was left of the place, seeing the lay of the land and its relative emptiness even now. It was more than a matter of layout and scale; it was also a reminder of the isolation of such places that could be conveyed there.

“Do you know what Order of nuns the women were at the convent?” Charis asked after a long silence.

“I don’t think they had that level of formality, being part of an Order as such; that came later: in the seventh and eighth centuries, many religious communities were self-defined, and so long as they heard Mass daily and they prayed the Hours, the Church recognized them. This was more true of women’s establishments than men’s. The nuns usually called themselves the Sister of Sainte and added their patron’s name, so I would suppose they were the Sisters of Sainte Thecla,” said Szent-Germain, easing into a busy round-about, and setting himself to exit its merry-go-round chaos at a good clip, his recollections more than a millennium away. “They followed a Rule of sorts developed by them from Boniface of Crediton, or so some of the local people say. There’s no proof either way about that, but it is a reasonable guess, given some of the other old religious houses in the area. I don’t know how zealously the nuns pursued their religious obligations at Sainte-Thecla.” This was true enough, for he had only visited the convent twice when it was active, and both times he was bound for Roma, without more than a night to spare for the convent. He maneuvered the Delahaye through a street crowded with lorries and a few horse-drawn vans, then slipped past the remains of an ancient gate and out into the suburbs and the countryside beyond. The road was not made for speed, and there were notices of improvements being made ahead. “We’ll turn before we reach the work-crews,” Szent-Germain said as he noticed Charis’ gaze light on another announcement of repairs ahead.

“Thanks. By the way, who was this Sainte Thecla the convent was dedicated to? I don’t recognize her name, do I?” Charis asked. “Why her?”

“Now that, I can tell you: she was one of those early Christian martyrs, or so her legend says. It is pretty standard fare: a young noblewoman betrothed to a young nobleman coverts to Christianity, repudiates the engagement in favor of perpetual virginity for Jesus’ sake, is punished by her non-Christian family but remains adamant, so is persecuted and tortured by the warlord or king or pagan priests, still remains Christian, and at last is martyred. And as a result of her piety, her former affianced husband, her family, and those who abused her are converted to Christianity, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. She had a substantial following in the … Dark Ages. A fair number of girls preferred the convent to marriage in those times.”

“Was she real, do you think, this Sainte Thecla?”

“I doubt it,” he said, slowing to pass a woman herding a gaggle of geese along the side of the road, her birds making sounds like a choir of rusty hinges. “But the story appealed to the people of the times, or there wouldn’t have been so many versions of it.”

Charis nodded thoughtfully. “Um-hum.” Then she fell into a silence that lasted nearly five minutes.

They went by a section of new fence, with an elderly tractor plowing the field beyond. “He’ll try to get it done before it rains,” Szent-Germain said conversationally.

“You drive very well,” Charis remarked as they reached the first small group of farms after the Parisian suburbs.

“Thank you,” said Szent-Germain as if her long stretches of silence did not concern him. “It helps when you know the way.”

“That’s one of the things that surprises me,” she told him. “That you actually know the way, and aren’t just meandering about the countryside. I was afraid that might happen.” She took a second or two to realize how this had sounded, and began to apologize.

“Why should I not know the way?” he asked, cutting short her abashment. “I have a few small holdings in this part of France that have been in my family for centuries; I should have mentioned them to you. One is near the convent. As soon as the war was over, I went to see what had become of my properties, to assert my claim to them, and to reacquaint myself with the people.” It was near enough to the truth that he felt no qualms in revealing it. “And there are records in the muniment room at my holding that go back quite a long time; the convent is mentioned in them.” The records went back to the time when Karl-lo-Magne had bestowed it upon him for his service to his court scholars, before he fell from favor, but he made no mention of this.

Charis’ eyes brightened. “Do those records still exist?”

“A few do: not very many, and some of them are suspect, as is the case of so many things from that era. You may have a look at the ones I have, if you like.” He reached a crossroad and chose a narrow lane marked by a row of poplars. “We should be at the convent ruins in twenty minutes.”

The road was graveled, not quite wide enough for two cars to pass on it. It was flanked on either side by fields of blighted sunflowers that still stood up straight, reaching for the sun, their husks rattling in the wind. In the distance there was a pasture filled with thick-wooled sheep; even on so cold a day, there was something lovely about its isolation in the clutches of late autumn.

“You wouldn’t think something like this would be located so near Paris,” Charis remarked as they approached a hamlet consisting of eleven houses, a general store, a travelers’ inn where locals gathered to gossip, and a granary. “Talk about a wide spot in the road.”

“A very apt description,” said Szent-Germain. “Bear in mind that Paris has grown since the convent was built, and that horses travel more slowly than automobiles.” He paused. “Most of this was forest interspersed with farmsteads—if the old maps are to be believed.”

“So that would make going from Paris what?—a day-long excursion?”

“Two days, more likely; the only good roads then were the Roman ones, and half of them were in disrepair.” He stopped at the first of two single-lane cross-streets. “If you are hungry later, you can get a lunch-basket at the store.”

“We’re going farther?”

“Not much more than two miles.” He slowed to a stop for a man with a curly-coated bull on a lead coming along the road.

Charis stared in surprise. “Nothing more than a lead in a nose-ring for that behemoth?”

“That’s a prize bull; he makes an appearance at every fair and festival around here. He’s used to people and traffic and was taught when he was just a calf to mind his manners. His name is Frisé, and he’s almost six,” said Szent-Germain, waving at the farmer, who gave a desultory wave in return.

“Are you making this up?” she demanded while laughing.

“It’s all true,” he assured her. “If you like, we can stop and you can ask Giraud if I’m telling tales.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, although she was suddenly very curious about what the farmer would say.

“As you wish,” Szent-Germain said, and continued on as soon as Frisé was across the road. “Giraud—”

“Is that really his name or are you inventing things?” she challenged him, not quite laughing.

“It is really his name: would you like to roll down your window and ask him?”

“Is Frisé really his name?”

“Yes it is. Look at the curls in his coat,” Szent-Germain replied with a genial chuckle. “He is one of the leaders here in Sainte-Thecla, as the place is called now, and the convent is nothing more than an untidy pile of stone. Giraud is a very careful fellow. He worked with the Resistance throughout the war even while he sold meat and grain to the Germans in Paris. If you ask about Frisé, he’ll probably assume you’d like to buy him or want to ask about stud fees. Frisé has done much to make his owner a very successful man. During the war, Giraud kept his sheep and goats with him here, but had to hide his family and his cattle—too many hungry soldiers roaming about, taking livestock for food.”