“There are stone steps leading from the attic to a very old wooden door. Why does it look like that? Where does that door go? What’s behind it?”
Reluctantly she explained that in the fifteenth century a church had stood on this plot of land. At some point it had been torn down except for its bell tower, and the house had been erected abutting the ancient structure. A structure my grandmother insisted was not safe. It was too old, too fragile to hold the weight of a person. It was empty, she said, and absolutely not a place to explore. “The steps are broken, and you could trip. The bell tower is only scaffolding now. If you even tried to walk there, you would fall right through!”
I had never completely believed her. And now, as I walked up that last flight of steps, I thought about how solid the stones felt. Narrow and steep, yes, but sturdy and strong. Three hundred years of bell ringers had tramped up and down them. Could the tower they led to be any less well constructed?
At last I came to the door. It was not even as wide as my outstretched arms, but every inch was carved with the most extraordinary tiny bas-reliefs, each one intricately detailing events similar to etchings I’d seen in my father’s alchemy books. In the center of this whole amalgam of magick and religion was a facsimile of the same bronze hand from the front door downstairs. But here the hand was flat, not three-dimensional, and in its very center was a keyhole.
I was out of breath. I’d run all this way to stand here, in front of this strange door. Why? My grandmother had told me it had been locked since she was a little girl and that no one had ever discovered the key.
“This is astonishing,” Monsieur Duplessi exclaimed as he examined the door. “Where are we?”
I hadn’t even known he’d been following me, but I was glad. It felt right to have him here with me.
I explained what my grandmother had told me about this part of the house. He agreed that it looked sturdy, noting that often these old structures made of stone in the Middle Ages withstood time better than most of our modern buildings would.
“Let’s see what’s here, shall we?” And without waiting for my answer, he reached out and tried the knob.
Of course it didn’t turn.
For no reason that made any sense, for certainly he was stronger than I was, I reached out and tried the handle after he had. The most peculiar thing happened. Without any great effort, without pushing or pulling, the door opened for me.
“But it was locked,” he said incredulously.
Together we stepped into a large circular stone room. In its center was a spiral staircase. Looking up into it was like gazing into a seashell, a perfect nautilus spiral leading up and up and up. At its summit was the bell chamber itself beneath a pitched roof crisscrossed with wooden beams, and hanging from those beams were three large brass bells.
Long ruby-red velvet cords, frayed and faded, dangled from the bells all the way to where we were standing. At the end of each was a hand-sized sandbag covered with iridescent muslin.
Smells assaulted me: dust, mold, years and years of stale air, and something familiar that I couldn’t identify. As I stood there, looking around, taking in the sights and odors, I heard something. Listened harder.
“Do you hear that?” I asked Monsieur Duplessi.
He listened for a moment. “No, what is it?”
I shook my head. How to tell him I thought I heard tears being shed? Tears can’t be heard. They are silent as they slide down a cheek. Except I was, I was, hearing the silken slip of them. I was listening to someone’s broken heart.
But whose? There was no one here but Monsieur Duplessi and me.
As I looked around, trying to pinpoint the sound, I noticed different-sized shapes shrouded in sheets.
Monsieur Duplessi saw them, too, and pulled off one of the coverings. “Look at these,” he said as he revealed a stack of paintings.
“Look at the walls,” I said, pointing. “Beneath all that dust it looks like all the walls are decorated with frescoes.”
“It’s clearly an artist’s studio,” Monsieur Duplessi said as he opened the doors to a cabinet filled with dusty bottles and jars of brushes and a tall stack of wooden palettes.
I walked closer, ran my finger over one bottle and then another, bringing bright red pigment to light in one and verdant emerald in another.
How long since anyone had touched these things?
“Your grandmother isn’t a painter, is she?”
I shook my head.
“Perhaps she was renting it out to an artist?”
“I don’t think anyone has been here in a long, long time. Since before . . . since before she was born.”
“How do you know?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I can smell the centuries, can’t you?”
He sniffed the air.
“Your grandmother never even mentioned this part of the maison existed,” Monsieur Duplessi said.
I was listening to him, but at the same time thinking that I had to let fresh air into the studio. It wanted to breathe.
Long iron rods hung against the walls. Approaching one, I began to twist it. The shutters covering the windows that were cut into the stone high in the tower began to open. With a final creak, a whoosh of fresh air poured in.
I opened the next window, and then the next, until all six were open and the room was filled with light and cool air.
Gently I took hold of one of the sandbags, pulled the crimson cord, and held my breath as the first bell let out a lovely peal. I pulled the second cord. Then the last. The sounds were pure and deep but ominous, too. A glorious warning rising up to the heavens. Beautiful and portentous, like snow falling on a dark lake on a moonless night.
I shivered. Something in the room shifted and altered.
I looked at Monsieur Duplessi. “Do you feel that?”
“What?” He didn’t seem surprised by my question. The expression on his face suggested he might have felt what I felt, but first wanted to hear what I thought it was before he acknowledged it.
“As if . . . someone just flew in . . .”
“Or maybe flew out. Certain cultures used bells to chase away unwanted spirits and negative energies, especially from a place of worship.”
The bell’s last reverberations surrounded us, embracing us in a final melancholy echo.
“Do you believe in unwanted spirits?” I asked.
He had a faraway look in his eyes. “I don’t believe in spirits, wanted or unwanted, but fascination in the occult and the supernatural has exploded, and we hear about such things all the time. A few years ago more than forty thousand occultists attended a Congrès Spirite et Spiritualiste here in Paris. On the one hand it’s a phenomena. On the other, it’s nothing new. There have been mystics and Freemasons in France since the 1700s, but interest does seem to be greater than ever.”
“Do you think there’s a tangible reason?”
“I’ve read it’s not unusual for people to become overly superstitious and nervous at the end of a century—perhaps that’s all there is to it. Or perhaps we are experiencing a backlash against positivism, naturalism, and secularism. It’s possible the occult movement has escalated because we are searching for answers that we can’t find through science, reason, and facts. Sometimes I think this preoccupation with the supernatural demonstrates the real tensions wrestling for the soul of France.”
From his expression and the tone in his voice, even I, who didn’t know him well, knew that all this was troubling him.
“Let’s see what is under this dirt.” I picked up a rag and swiped the wall. “Aren’t you supposed to be here inspecting the rooms and making an inventory? This is definitely something that should be included in the museum.”
As I spoke, I felt a burst of chill air blow through the windows. It seemed to reach down, as if it had arms, and press against me, almost as if it were trying to communicate.