Well In Time Part 31

With cautious fingers, Maria-Elena turned the latch, carefully lifted the lid and allowed her eyes to fall upon what was cached within. Her brow knit with confusion and astonishment as her hand withdrew from the depths, where it had been pillowed on a frayed linen cus.h.i.+on, a gold chain and at its end, a round locket the size of a large coin.

Maria-Elena brought the locket close to her face and examined it carefully. "Oh," she breathed. "It's beautiful!"

Lying on her palm, a jewel of extraordinary workmans.h.i.+p, was an enameled disk, surrounded by cunningly wrought gold. In itself a precious object, it was the image worked in enamel that was truly wondrous-an exquisitely rendered portrait of a bare-breasted mother with a boy child upon her lap and extending a golden orb, as if offering it to someone.

"It is an image of Isis suckling Horus," the Count said. "But you have seen the same image in Christian churches, I know, of Mary with the infant Jesus. You see, one secret that this object encodes is that the Great Mother is present in all religions. Her names may change but her presence is ever One and the same. That was one of Sa Tahuti's lessons to Blanche de Muret.

"And there was another: whomever would take owners.h.i.+p of this necklace did so because it was foreordained that she should do so. No man is allowed to wear this chain about his neck. He is not even to consider himself the owner of this jewel but only its conservator, until such time as its rightful owner should appear." With a sigh and a cracking of his knees, the count sat down heavily into his chair.

"I am an old man now, Maria-Elena. I have waited a lifetime for that one to come. And I believe life has reserved the best for last: it is to you, Maria-Elena Villanova y Mansart, that I now bequeath the locket of Sa Tahuti."

The Story of Maria-Elena Villanova y Mansart Continues

"And so you see, my dear Roberto, that what I have here is a very precious thing. And because I will not be able to guard it any longer, I am pa.s.sing it on to you." She ran a loving hand over the top of his head.

"But, Maman! Why don't you use the locket to heal yourself? You said it is magic!"

"Yes, my darling, that it is. But it is not that kind of magic. It is the magic of foreseeing the future. That is how I knew I was ill. Long before the tumor was visible on the doctor's X-rays, I knew it was there. I was told it was there! There is a voice that speaks, sometimes in dreams, sometimes during the most mundane tasks of the day. Never has it been proven wrong."

"What use is it, then, if it can't heal you? What good does it do to know you're sick before you're even sick? I think it's a terrible old thing and I don't want to have it. Give it to Tia Isobella or to Grandmother!" Roberto's smooth brow furrowed beneath his thick black fringe of bangs.

"No, Roberto. This locket cannot be given to Isobella or to my mother. They are women of the world. They have no interest in such matters. They care about banquets and ball gowns and how much money is tucked away in the bank. They would not understand the importance of this locket. In fact, if they had it they would probably sell it and use the money to buy a jewel of modern design. You are the only one to whom I can entrust it, Roberto."

She scooted Roberto away from her and sat on the edge of the bed.

"See this?" She picked up the inlaid box from her bedside table. "You must always keep it in this box. Keep it by your bedside. It will bring you vivid dreams."

"But I'm a boy! The locket doesn't like me."

Maria-Elena laughed.

"Oh, Berto! The locket loves you! Don't you see, the heart of the Great Mother is attached to this locket. She will never fail you. Her love is even greater than my own."

"No! I don't believe it! Give it back to the Count then."

"Berto, that isn't possible. You see, I hadn't been gone from the Count's chateau for more than a week when I received word that he had pa.s.sed away quietly in his sleep. And do you know what, son? His old saluki, Saladin, died the exact same night! Isn't that remarkable?"

"If you own the locket and you are sick and about to die, then the locket is bad luck. I don't want it."

"Roberto, you don't understand. You are fighting fate, my child. This is the life I agreed to live before I ever came to this world. And you, my son, have agreed as well. You knew before your soul entered my womb that you would one day be the conservator of the locket. It is more important than you know. The locket must go on. It must move toward its next owner."

"Why?"

"Because the power of the locket can intervene in events, Roberto. It helped Sa Tahuti lead the Count's grandmother to the well that saved her from the harem and helped her escape persecution by the church. It has transformed the lives of all who own it, even my own.

"I was a careless young woman, Berto, when I went to the Count's chateau. When I came away, I was changed. I knew in my heart that what he had told me was true. I knew it was my duty to protect the locket throughout my life and to send it onward to its next owner at my life's end.

"All these things come from the power of the locket, Roberto. I ask you .

The Story of Father Roberto Villanova y Mansart Continues

"At last, the boy that I was capitulated, Senor Hill. Who can say if it was the power of the locket that overcame his resistance or the power of his love for his mother? Either way, the locket pa.s.sed that day from Maria-Elena Villanova y Mansart to me, her son. And within a week she, like the Count before her, was gone.

"Throughout my life I have protected the locket in its box. It has sat by my bedside and given me strange dreams and caused me to awaken with unusual knowings. Who can say why, Senor Hill? It is not for us to know these things but only to honor what we know to be true.

"So that, my friend, is the very long and involved answer to your question about what I am doing here in the forests of Chiapas. I was urged by these inner messages to be here. That is all I know and all I need to know.

"In the meanwhile, there is plenty for me to do. It's not as if I were stranded on a desert island. Everywhere I turn in this place, there are those who need my counsel and encouragement.

"Thank you for listening so patiently to this long story. You are a good listener, my friend."

Calypso stopped reading and let the sheaf of pages fall into her lap. The three friends sat for quite a long time in silence, until Hill finally blurted, "You ended your book with me?"

Calypso turned to him with a smile.

"Not really," she said. "The book's not done yet. There's something more, but I don't know what it is."

"Something you forgot? Maybe you could write to Berto and ask."

She shook her head.

"No. I've spoken with Berto and he feels the story's complete." She gazed pensively into the flames. "I think whatever it is will come to me, while I'm editing the ma.n.u.script in the South." She shrugged and flicked a smile toward him. "That's all I know."

Javier was sitting lost in thought. Finally, he said slowly, "Do you think we are in that story? That we have lived those events?"

Calypso shrugged. "Who can say? Does it sound familiar to you?"

Javier frowned. "It's the repet.i.tion of the pattern that makes it familiar. The cave, the destruction of an old life, and the terrifying pa.s.sage toward a new one. The friends.h.i.+ps that save lives. The old, wise women like Allia-and Atl, in Chiapas. Doesn't it all sound familiar?"

Hill nodded. "I got a twinge when Blanche was saved by the young n.o.bleman. I felt very sure that he loved her deeply but was forced by circ.u.mstances to be with someone else."

His eyes s.h.i.+fted from Calypso's to Javier's and back again to Calypso's.

"It's no secret among us that you're the love of my life, Calypso. The only difference is, I never married anyone else, this time around."

Calypso reached for his hand, brought it to her lips and kissed it.

"Then, thank you for rescuing me from the power of the church. I really have no desire to be tortured, in this or any other life."

The golden Empire clock on the mantel chimed the half-hour. Slowly, the conversation turned to other matters.

"We've got to be up early," Calypso said at last. "The train to the South leaves at eight."

They stood. Each recognized a certain awkwardness among them, and each realized it came from the profound deepening of their bonds with one another. "I'm going to miss you," Hill said and raised his arms to embrace them both.

The three stood entwined by the fire for several moments. No one could speak because tears constricted their throats. At last, with a final squeeze, they broke apart.

"You'll come to the South then, Walter?" Calypso asked softly.

"Of course. How could I stay away?"

"Good. We shall meet again. Over and over again we consecrate ourselves to the work."

Her smile held a hint of mischief as Javier pulled her away toward bed.

Brignac, Languedoc, France

Spring was just beginning to touch the garden of the rental property on the edge of the old stone village. Rosebuds opened their thick, silky petals like the sensuous eyelids of the G.o.ddess. Deep in blue shade, acanthus lifted its softly purple spires amid ruffs of black-green leaves. In vigne vierge scrawled across the stone facade of the converted orangerie, an energetic pair of wrens labored over a nest. Swallows swooped and chittered in a pale, misty sky.

They had been on the property less than a week and Calypso was still discovering its secrets. Where she sat, a thick canopy of plane trees sheltered the sun's scant warmth, despite the seething of their upper branches in chill tramontana.

Like water cascading, the roar of wind drowned other sounds, so that she was startled by her visitor. Lumbering down a pathway of pale golden gravel, its head stretched forth in earnest effort and its tiny black toenails pus.h.i.+ng aside stones like a bulldozer, came a tortoise big as a salad plate.

"Well, bonjour!" Calypso crowed with delight. "Would you like to share my strawberries?"

Her hand darted into the old Chinese blue-and-white bowl in her lap and she flourished a succulent red fruit. The movement attracted the tortoise. He turned his leathery neck and gazed at her with sad black eyes that seemed to speak of a strawberry-less life and mult.i.tudinous other sorrows.

Calypso knelt beside him and offered the strawberry in front of his hooked and armored nose. In one snap, the tortoise bit the fruit in half, closed his eyes in apparent bliss, and savored.

Having swallowed, his eyes flew open. They had lost their dolorousness and looked at her with dawning wonder and expectation. Calypso kept supplying strawberries until her bowl was empty.

"That's all," she said, shaking her head. "I'll bring you more tomorrow."

As if understanding perfectly, the tortoise blinked at her and then turned away, resuming his ponderous promenade.

"For a French tortoise," Calypso called after him, "you understand English very well."

She set the empty bowl on the rusted and listing cafe table and pulled the metal chair at an angle so she could gaze at a different part of the garden.

Down an allee of plane trees shading a path lined in overgrown boxwoods, she could glimpse the facade of another building. This, the rental agent had told her, was the former great house of the owners of the mas. Far from her notion of a farmhouse, it was three stories of the same pale golden stone as their rental, which was a remodel of the estate's former orangerie.

The rental agent had said that the mas was owned by the same family that had built it in the eighteenth century.

"But now the children don't care about it," the slender, chic French woman had said in charmingly accented English. "They want the city life now. Someday, they will sell this place to a developer and there will be little houses here, instead of a garden."

She sighed, as if this conjecture were already an inevitability.

Almost without realizing it, Calypso left the table and drifted down the allee toward the old house, drawn by the melody of wind and birdsong as by a Siren's song. Her feet crunched on gravel. A nightingale sang from the depths of a pomegranate tree starred with vermillion blossoms. The scents of mint, of myriad blossoms, of water, and, of sun-warmed soil rose to greet her. Walking almost on tiptoe, she was mindful of rupturing a deep, dreaming peace.

The great house stood silent and shuttered behind its ap.r.o.n of pale gravel. Faded blue wooden shutters showed signs of rot along the bottom edges, and the lintel was softly crumbling above tall double front doors. Under the verge of rosy terra cotta roof tiles, swallows swooped around a small village of mud nests.

All around the house, in sharp contrast to its stolid bulk, the overgrown garden danced and flounced in rus.h.i.+ng air. A rich warmth, the fecundity of earth, hung like perfume beneath the thick canopy of old trees. A small grove of old olive trees off its western flank hummed with wind, flas.h.i.+ng the silvery undersides of leaves like the tongues of mechanical birds.

It was a scene of enchantment. To Calypso, the great house was as potent a container of mysteries as had been the now-incinerated locket box. She felt the magnetic languor of it in her bones and it held her captive.

The house stood with its ma.s.sive weight rooted in the fertile, vine-bearing earth of Languedoc, austere in its gravitas, yet somehow welcoming. There was a b.u.t.tery softness to its hewn blocks of stone, a giving quality. Were she to accidentally brush against its walls, she felt her sweater would come away marked with pigment, a calligram communicating the soul of the old building. The house held the same sad, dreaming quality as the eyes of the tortoise, as if human company and events had bypa.s.sed them for too long and left them lonely.

Slowly, she made a circuit of the house. Its facade, facing south, presented the dignified central entrance portal, capped by a simple Greek pediment, with long windows on either side, balanced in number down its length. She imagined how the long, narrow fenestration would let in light in a special way, illuminating rooms with n.o.bly high ceilings, rooms zinging with the force and energy of perfect proportion, with the cosmic intelligence of the Golden Mean.

On the east side, the house dreamed under the shade of a huge plane tree, perhaps eight feet in circ.u.mference. Calypso imagined lying in bed at night in a second-story bedroom, the windows thrown open to incessant s.h.i.+fting and rustling of leaves.

The north side of the house had smaller windows and clearly turned its back on the icy blasts of the north wind. A door on its eastern corner led, she imagined, to a mud room where work shoes would be shed and hands washed after a day in the fields or garden.

On the west side, to her delight, a central double French door opened onto a pergola covered in vines. She stepped into the shaded s.p.a.ce. Simple Ionic columns upheld an iron basket-like superstructure, over which grape, wisteria and vigne vierge clambered enthusiastically. A rustic table, sloping and chapped from weather, sat outside the shuttered doors. In her mind's eye, Calypso saw the lady of the house coming through the open doors of a morning, tray in hand, bringing coffee and croissants for pet.i.t dejeuner.

Beside this kitchen door, a Roman fountain with an austere triangular pediment still spilled spring water from its lion's-mouth aperture into a basin shaped like a scallop sh.e.l.l. The water rippled across the mossy green bowl and spilled over the edges to fall into a still larger seash.e.l.l, four feet below. From between the hewn blocks of the fountain's body, maidenhair ferns hung down the facade, dripping water from their delicately incised leaves. The soft splas.h.i.+ng of the water sang a contrapuntal melodic line against the ba.s.so of the wind.

Surely ghosts lodged in this enchanted place, trailing veiled memories of vanished ages-perhaps even astonishment at the pa.s.sage of Hannibal's elephants that had lumbered through Languedoc two hundred years before the birth of the Christ. The house stimulated her imagination: the clatter of hooves and crunch of gravel as a coach arrived; the heavy drone of cicadas in summer heat; workers coming in from autumnal fields, sheened with sweat, carrying scythes or baskets of grapes; snow edging the cornices like frosting, during the long, silent winter. History, culture, and memory would flow from the opened doors and windows as surely as spring water flowed from the Roman fountain.

She was so deep in reverie that his voice startled her.

"Here you are."

She jumped guiltily. "Oh! I didn't hear you come." She stood uncertainly, as if caught in a questionable act.

"What are you doing?" Javier approached her curiously.