AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You see?” Neil smiled at me, vindicated.
Christian lowered his head. “And also,” he went on, “you have a quality quite unique that I try to capture. This most amazing stillness.”
“Well, naturally,” said Neil. “You won’t let me move.”
But I knew what Christian meant, and it was something deeper than the seated man’s motionless hands or his calm deliberate voice. It was a thing intangible, yet clearly felt—the sense that time was moving round him, past him, leaving him untouched. Even when the drawing was completed and Neil was finally able to stand, rising stiffly from the hard ground and stretching, the aura of stillness clung to him.
Martine smiled. “You are too old, I think, for climbing walls,” she told him.
“Have a heart, love,” was Neil’s reply. “I’ve only just turned forty-three—I’m not quite ready for the eventide home.”
Not by a long shot, I agreed, turning my gaze from his boyish face and snugly fitting denim jeans to the crumbling wall above his head, which at its lowest point must still have been some ten or twelve feet tall.
“You climbed that wall?” I asked, incredulous. “Is that how you got in?”
“Could be.” He smiled again, refusing to appease our curiosity. Turning to Christian, he asked: “Have you got the keys for this gate with you? Emily might like to see the murals.” He said my name so easily, as though we were old friends, or something more. I thought I saw a flash of curiosity in Martine’s sideways glance, but Christian found his keys again and came forward to unlock the towering black grille that sealed the sculpted saints within their inner chamber. They had an odd effect on me, those saints. Though they were trapped in shadows, while I had open sky above me, I felt somehow that it was me, not them, shut in behind the iron bars; that their eyes saw a wider world than mine.
The blind stone faces stared at me as Christian swung the great gate open and we passed into the chapel proper, where our voices echoed as we walked between stone columns soaring high to meet the ceiling many feet above our heads.
“This has been carved from the cliff,” Martine told me. “You can see here the marks of the chisel. It is very old, this chapelle. Christian,” she said, turning, “you must tell the story of Sainte Radegonde. I never can remember it properly.”
Christian shrugged uncomfortably and hurried through an abbreviated version. “She was a German, like myself—a princess. In the sixth of centuries her people were destroyed by the Frankish king, Clotaire, who took Radegonde for his bride. She was then eleven years old. But she was not happy with Clotaire, and so she left him and became a nun. She founded, here at Chinon, a small convent.”
I looked around. “What, in this spot?”
“No, not here. The hermit Jean was living here, a holy man. I will explain.” He frowned a little, trying to collect his thoughts. He was clearly unaccustomed to the role of tour guide. “When Radegonde was living at Chinon, there came an order from Clotaire, her former husband, that she should be going south to Poitiers to make a convent, for which he would provide the money. But Radegonde, she was not certain this was good, so she came here to visit Jean the hermit, to ask him what to do.”
“And what did he tell her?”
A second shrug. “He said that this was a good idea, to go to Poitiers. And so Sainte Radegonde went there, as Clotaire wanted, and built in Poitiers a great church. It is there that she is buried.”
There was an altar of sorts at the end wall, a heavy stone table laid with a white lace covering, set in a hollowed niche that glowed with ancient paintings.
“This mural,” Martine said, pointing to the flaking pigments, rich blue above a deep wine color, “this is not the oldest here. This one is only seventeenth-century.”
There were fresh flowers on the altar, and a wooden standing crucifix flanked by bronze candlesticks. Beneath the drape of lace, a broken sculpture bore the likeness of a medieval woman lost in meditative rapture, a royal crown upon her head.
“Is this her?” I asked, bending for a better look, “is this Sainte Radegonde?”
Christian nodded. “Yes. And also this,” he said, showing me a daintier statue that graced a second table in the adjoining painted niche. At the feet of this Radegonde were more cut flowers, and a shallow plate with several coins laid in it. Offerings to the saint, I thought, until Christian set me straight.
“Those are donations to the Friends of Old Chinon,” he said. “To help with the upkeep of the chapelle.”
Always the practical intruded into the romantic, I reminded myself with a wry smile.
Martine was at my shoulder, pointing. “The chapelle, it goes even further into the rock, through there.” She showed me a smaller iron gate that spread to fill an opening in the rear wall. There were no saints behind this gate, no kind benevolent eyes, only a few feet of visible stone floor and then an inky darkness. “There are more caves, and many fine museum items, and an ancient well, from Sainte Radegonde’s time. She must see the well, Christian. Do you have the key?”
But the young German shook his head, expressionless. “No, I have not brought it with me. We can show the well to her another time.”
“But Christian, surely…”
“I have not brought the key, Martine.” His tone was firm. “I am sorry.”
I wasn’t overly d
isappointed, myself. The dank smell of stone that rose from behind the iron gate was acrid and unwelcoming. Besides, my roving gaze had just that moment fallen on a painted frieze at the opposite end of the covered aisle.
“I don’t believe it,” I said abruptly. “There’s John.”
