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STONE WINDOWS
The November afternoon sun slanted away to the west, watery and pale, a ghost of its midday glory. It was in this dim light that I first wandered into the empty courtyard of the castle, a broad Norman keep built haphazardly of the local Saône Valley limestone. I reached out and slowly slid my hand along the courtyard's rough, pocked wall. A thrill of energy swept through me: voices echoing in the dark. I pulled my hand back and spun around. No one.
After a moment's hesitation, I turned and touched the stone again, resting my cheek against its comforting coolness. The voices swelled again, a confusing cacophony, frightening, yet somehow soothing. After long minutes rising and falling on the sound, mesmerized and clinging to the wall, a thought struggled through the voices.
I wonder if anyone lives here?
As though in answer, a door opened at the top of a set of stairs carved into the keep's wall. A woman, old as the stones, it seemed, stepped out, heavy gray cardigan held closed by her shaking hand over a light spring-print dress. The moment she appeared, the breeze of courtyard voices became clearer, insistent. She stared down at me; I stared back, shivering.
"Come in," she said, finally, in heavily accented English. "It is cold down there, come inside."
I nodded, and, as though in a trance, my feet were already leading me up the perilous stone stairs.
I stepped into a dark-paneled medieval hall, where the old woman was waiting for me. "Please, sit down," she said, motioning me toward two straight-backed cane chairs next to the great hearth. Behind the chairs, at the far end of the room, stood a spectacular bank of tall, narrow windows. Through them, I could see the last wisps of evening light lingering on the castle's rolling vineyards and sparkling on the winding Saône below: magical and gentle, delicate and comforting. Despite its beauty, I gave the view only a moment's consideration; the room, the old woman, the voices still called. Turning my back on the windows, I took a seat in one of the cane chairs.
The old woman settled into the broad dark oak chair across from me. She was pale and small against the chair's massive carved back, a child playing at being a queen. And yet, the tilt of her chin and slight arch to her eyebrow rendered her imposing as an empress.
After a few moments looking me over, she spoke. "You hear them?"
"I'm sorry?" I asked, startled. I looked at her, really looked at her. Her squinting eyes were yellow-green and clouded by cataracts, ghostly in her pale, wrinkled face. I had the sensation that she could see straight down to my soul. Every misstep and every sin, recent or ages old, rose to meet her gaze. I trembled, but did not move.
She nodded briefly. "You hear them."
I saw a shift in her face: aged and ageless, young girl and old woman playing across her features in an instant. In the silence, the voices soared, the words music and the music visions of every person to climb those ancient stairs. "Yes," I said at last.
She smiled and sat forward, her gnarled hands vibrating with excitement. "You see, the castle was built in 1257, enclosing a twelfth-century priory. The land was purchased in donation to the Abbot of Cluny in 1015. This was the site of a Gallo-Roman villa, and the vineyards are based on that ancient Roman stock. This land has been occupied for nearly 2000 years, n'est-ce pas?"
I heard the voices speaking, and their words brought them to life. I looked around the room, but didn't see the great hearth, or the ancient tools of winemaking and warfare lining the walls: I saw the hands that had created them, wielded them, lived by them, died by them. I rubbed my bare arms against the sudden chill.
She beckoned me closer. "You know what it is, don't you?" she asked.
"Ghosts?" I shuddered.
She shook her head. "The swirl of time. Here, in this place, in the stones," she whispered. "Alive. Time is not a line. They are gone and they are here, all at the same time."
Though she herself seemed to swirl in and out of time, face shifting and eyes ageless, she was a fixed point in the growing cacophony. I edged closer to her, a point of warmth in the cold room. "I've felt—something, before. In other places. At home, in California, this feeling of energy. But . . . never the voices. Why here?"
"They are safe here," she said to herself, gazing out to a middle space that I couldn't see. "Come," she said suddenly. "I want to show you something."
I followed her through the flitting phantoms and rising voices to a narrow limestone staircase I had not noticed before. She laid her wrinkled hand flat against the whitewashed wall. "The monks at Cluny built this staircase out of a single block of limestone, hundreds upon hundreds of years ago. Feel the stones. Feel them," she insisted.
I was frightened, but did as I was told. The stone was smooth under my hand, and cool. At first, nothing. And then, I felt myself drawn into the swirl. I heard, I saw the thread of time that wound inexorably toward me standing right here, and then back and around into history.
I shivered with the vision and knowledge, fearsome in its scope and power, yet somehow comforting. I began to shake, nearly lost in that stream of time. The old woman laid her cool hand on my heated forehead, and I stepped away from the wall.
"People believe the windows have the view, but you and I know better, don't we, ma chère?" she said, patting my shoulder. "It's the stones that have the view." She smiled a strange, small smile and tottered away.
I followed her back to the hall, where she settled again into the intricately carved chair. I sat in my cane chair across from her and leaned forward. "What is this place?" I whispered.
She shrugged. "The same as any place. Time and history living together, right on top of each other."
"Do they always chatter?"
"Oui."
"Doesn't it drive you mad?" I asked, glancing around the room at the voices made real.
She grinned, turning her cat-eyes on me. "You tell me."
I shivered again, realization and epiphany an electric jolt. "It feels as if . . . as if I stayed here, I would become part of the stones myself," I said, eyes wide.
"You will become part of your own stones. If you allow it," she said, nodding. "And you must."
The voices grew louder, the faces clearer, and suddenly I was content. "And if you leave—"
"I cannot leave this place," she said, smiling. "I preserve the view."
Julie K. Rose was short-listed for the 2005 Faulkner-Wisdom prize for an unpublished novel (The Pilgrim Glass). All of her information is available at www.juliekrose.com.
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