“Let’s pretend we’re tourists,” she said. We dashed to Lumani. We arrived there in search of a guidebook; we departed with not only a guidebook but also a car: In a gesture of remarkable trust and generosity, Jean and Elisabeth loaned us their car, so—ensconced in an aging Peugeot and armed with a tattered English-language guide to Provence—we set out. Gingerly, for it had been years since I’d driven a car with a clutch, I eased us into the street and along the base of the ancient wall, which bristled with watchtowers every fifty yards. I checked the mirror often to see if we were being followed. Unless an eleven-year-old girl on a bicycle had been trained as an assassin, we were in the clear.
We started with a detour through the town across the river, Villeneuve-les-Avignon. Villeneuve meant “New Town,” Miranda translated; it was a name that had been accurate once upon a time, but that time was a thousand years gone. During the thirteen hundreds, Villeneuve, which was not so tightly cramped as Avignon, became a wealthy suburb of the papal city, and fifteen cardinals built palaces there, though none, as far as we could see, had survived. What had survived were two monumental structures: a 130-foot tower that once controlled the western end of Saint Bénézet’s Bridge, back when the bridge spanned the entire river; and a massive fortress that encircled the town’s hilltop. Both the tower and the fortress had been built to send a clear message to the uppity people of Avignon: The pope might hold the keys to heaven, but the king’s earthly army could break open the city gates on an hour’s notice, if papal push ever came to sovereign shove.
From Villeneuve we took narrow country roads, Miranda navigating with the guidebook and a large-scale Michelin map on her lap. As the tires sang on the asphalt, my heart hummed along, and I felt lighter and freer than I had since my arrival. Ten miles or so north of Avignon, Miranda pointed to a ruined fortress on a hilltop. “Chateauneuf-du-Pape,” she announced. “It translates as ‘New Castle of the Pope.’ ”
“All these ancient places with modern-sounding names,” I commented. “I guess five hundred years from now, people will say the same thing about New York, huh?” I threaded my way up through the village and parked beside the ruins. The structure had been built in the early thirteen hundreds, according to the guidebook, and had survived the ravages of time and the elements for six centuries. Unfortunately, it had not survived the ravages of Hitler’s soldiers. During World War Two, German troops filled the castle with dynamite and blew it up, destroying all but an L-shaped section of wall and tower.
Clambering along the edge of the ruins, we had a good view of the broad plain below, which was filled as far as the eye could see with vineyards, the neat rows of vines lined with river rocks. “The rocks capture the heat of the sun,” Miranda read, “to keep the vines warm at night.” Both the castle and the vineyards were the legacy of Pope John XXII, the second of the Avignon popes. “He was well known for his love of wine,” she went on, “and also for his sour disposition.” She laughed. “After he drank it, I guess it turned to vinegar in his soul.”
As we made our way back to the car, I noticed a stone staircase burrowing into the hillside, ending at a door set deep in the foundations of the fortress. I nudged Miranda and nodded down toward the doorway. “Pope John’s wine cellar?”
“Looks more like Pope John’s dungeon to me.” She was right. The steps were narrow, steep, and crumbling; the arch of the doorway was low; the door itself was recessed a couple of feet into the thick stonework. “Holy heretics, Batman,” she muttered. “This place feels haunted. Let’s get out of here.”
As the Peugeot clattered and corkscrewed back down through the town, Miranda announced, “I’m starving. How about lunch?”
“Sure. Can you make it back to Avignon?”
“I can make it back to that little café we passed two seconds ago. Look, there’s a parking place. On the right. Here, here, here.” I whipped the car into the spot, forgetting to push in the clutch, and we lurched to a stop as the engine stalled. “Smooth, Dr. B.”
“Thanks. Anybody ever tell you you’re bossy?”
“Nobody who valued life and limb,” she said, and I laughed.
The café, La Maisouneta—“Proven?al dialect for ‘The Little House,’ I think,” Miranda said—was as humble and homey as La Mirande had been elegant and expensive. The handful of other customers seemed to be locals, not tourists: a rumpled young couple with a toddler crawling beneath the tables; a stocky older woman, her hair in curlers; a middle-aged man in paint-spattered coveralls. The menu was scrawled on a blackboard behind the counter, but most of the dishes on it were unavailable, the hostess informed Miranda. Lunchtime was just ending, and the kitchen had run out of everything except salad and something called reblochon, a traditional local dish consisting of melted white cheese with a potato on the side. “White on white,” I muttered. “Sounds terrific.”