Family Secrets & the Saint's of our Fathers
1944, France
How many parents long to shield their children from pain and sorrow? How many families have within their history some buried secret, some skeleton who’s bones still rattle within locked closets?
While my family’s secrets are bound to the Countess and the land from which she came; our skeletons are not near so well hidden. In fact it was the greatest one that was for the longest time a cornerstone to our local village legends, and made into both a poem and and a song for children.
Marie LeGarde. Saint? Witch? Summoner of demons or simple village madwoman? She has been called this and more. Charlatan and whore of Satan, I heard these words whispered behind my back as I walked the roads, or yelled to my face while stuck within a circle of school children, who’s faces were stark and contorted with youthful, petty cruelties.
"Wicked mistress Marie LeGarde. Summoning spirits out in the yard…" I know every stanza of that song, it is etched into my heart and mind. I could not, even if I tried, forget such a thing.
The few history books that I’ve managed to find tell of a woman of the Rochefort area of France who had husband and child, and who grew up thinking she could speak to the spirits of the departed. Her mind was not quite sound so the historians say, though she was healthy otherwise. Slender figured and pretty of face, she was the younger sister of the childhood friend of a local nobleman. And it was her sorrow to come on the sharp side of a witch-hunter’s blade.
Some say that he found her attractive, that hunter of witches, and that she spurned his advances for the love of her husband and child. Some wrote that she told him freely the answers to the questions he asked; telling him of the dead that she saw, the ones she spoke with and the ones who followed her, who haunted her. In either way, she fell to her doom, becoming imprisoned and later tortured by the inquisition and finally? Burned at the stake.
This is where the stories-the controversy comes into play. For it is said among those who say they believe; that Marie LeGarde never once gave up another witch to the inquisitors. She continued, through her screams of agony and her tears of anguish to call upon the Lord on high for forgiveness to her abusers, she sang his praises while she had breath to speak. She called out to him even as they… even as they put out her eyes. Marie called out until she could call no more, until she was twisted, and wrecked shell of a woman, fit only for the fires. And with her last breath upon the pyre of wood and oil, she whispered the Lord’s prayer and was dead before the flames ever touched her broken, mangled body. And even now, when prayed to, the local Saint Marie can give ease to troubled minds. Local only, she has never been beatified by the Church, nor mentioned beyond our local borders.
And this in why upon All Saint’s Day, even today her name is mentioned in prayer by the local priest, held in a position of honor against the horrors of those long-ago days. Simple she may have been, and insane as well; still her faith in God was stronger than those who opposed her.
The villagers, some of them; many of them - were-are not quite so understanding as our local clergy. Mother’s will hide their babes from my eyes as they walk down the street, afraid that I could see some hidden danger in the child’s future, as if I had even the power to do such things. Fathers have warned their daughters against me; and more so - they warn their sons.
It is not so that they were mean to me, ah well, I must rephrase; once I was picked by the lady that long ago day to be her student and then protégé; they hunted me no longer to be the sport in such childish games. It was at about that time that my defenders became my childhood companions, Jocelyn and Caroline were their names and woe to the child - or the adult - that would say such things where they could hear! My companions, my only friends back then were the sisters of the house de Rochefort. And slowly, the young man JeanPierre came to know me beyond what his mother would have wanted, became my defender as well, and elder brother in play. Just as the traveler boy, the gypsy child Alix Pestola was my elder brother in heart and soul. But Alix is another story and I shall not speak of him here.
I hated to leave them when my mother called for me to come to Paris; but there at least I had the benefit of anonymity. I was Justine’s daughter; nothing more or less. Three years did I remain in the land of city of light and love. Ah, Paris! Beautiful, treacherous, full of gaity and great sorrow. That is the mystery of that great city in France, it is like a woman in so many ways. I stayed in the shadows and watched as my mother rubbed shoulders with poets, designers, courtesans and queens of the night.
And then, only a few months ago and just prior to my first woman’s blood, the Comtesse sent for me to come home.
"Little mistress Marie Legarde worships the devil in her back yard! Hell will swing open and corpses arise, with naught but a blink of her demons’ blue eyes".
I too have blue eyes. Like my grandmere before me and back beyond that. A recessive gene they say; it shows up now and then for some strange reason. And too, so does the other gifts of my blood, those dubious gifts of my heritage. The ability to see, and communicate with the dead.
But unlike my ancestress burned those hundreds of years ago; I have never told of what I see, who I see. Not even to the children who taunted me, who bullied me with their words and their laughter, their sharp small fingers twisting in my hair, scratching my skin or their legs stretched out to trip me.
I have never told. And though I have never asked, I have longed to ask the one person who would truly know what happened at that time. The man in black would know. He was there.
He was the one who put her to the rack, and mangled her body and mind The man who's ghost haunts the walls of this chateau where his lady still resides. It was him.
The Comte de Rochefort.
I will never ask.
How many parents long to shield their children from pain and sorrow? How many families have within their history some buried secret, some skeleton who’s bones still rattle within locked closets?
While my family’s secrets are bound to the Countess and the land from which she came; our skeletons are not near so well hidden. In fact it was the greatest one that was for the longest time a cornerstone to our local village legends, and made into both a poem and and a song for children.
Marie LeGarde. Saint? Witch? Summoner of demons or simple village madwoman? She has been called this and more. Charlatan and whore of Satan, I heard these words whispered behind my back as I walked the roads, or yelled to my face while stuck within a circle of school children, who’s faces were stark and contorted with youthful, petty cruelties.
"Wicked mistress Marie LeGarde. Summoning spirits out in the yard…" I know every stanza of that song, it is etched into my heart and mind. I could not, even if I tried, forget such a thing.
The few history books that I’ve managed to find tell of a woman of the Rochefort area of France who had husband and child, and who grew up thinking she could speak to the spirits of the departed. Her mind was not quite sound so the historians say, though she was healthy otherwise. Slender figured and pretty of face, she was the younger sister of the childhood friend of a local nobleman. And it was her sorrow to come on the sharp side of a witch-hunter’s blade.
Some say that he found her attractive, that hunter of witches, and that she spurned his advances for the love of her husband and child. Some wrote that she told him freely the answers to the questions he asked; telling him of the dead that she saw, the ones she spoke with and the ones who followed her, who haunted her. In either way, she fell to her doom, becoming imprisoned and later tortured by the inquisition and finally? Burned at the stake.
This is where the stories-the controversy comes into play. For it is said among those who say they believe; that Marie LeGarde never once gave up another witch to the inquisitors. She continued, through her screams of agony and her tears of anguish to call upon the Lord on high for forgiveness to her abusers, she sang his praises while she had breath to speak. She called out to him even as they… even as they put out her eyes. Marie called out until she could call no more, until she was twisted, and wrecked shell of a woman, fit only for the fires. And with her last breath upon the pyre of wood and oil, she whispered the Lord’s prayer and was dead before the flames ever touched her broken, mangled body. And even now, when prayed to, the local Saint Marie can give ease to troubled minds. Local only, she has never been beatified by the Church, nor mentioned beyond our local borders.
And this in why upon All Saint’s Day, even today her name is mentioned in prayer by the local priest, held in a position of honor against the horrors of those long-ago days. Simple she may have been, and insane as well; still her faith in God was stronger than those who opposed her.
The villagers, some of them; many of them - were-are not quite so understanding as our local clergy. Mother’s will hide their babes from my eyes as they walk down the street, afraid that I could see some hidden danger in the child’s future, as if I had even the power to do such things. Fathers have warned their daughters against me; and more so - they warn their sons.
It is not so that they were mean to me, ah well, I must rephrase; once I was picked by the lady that long ago day to be her student and then protégé; they hunted me no longer to be the sport in such childish games. It was at about that time that my defenders became my childhood companions, Jocelyn and Caroline were their names and woe to the child - or the adult - that would say such things where they could hear! My companions, my only friends back then were the sisters of the house de Rochefort. And slowly, the young man JeanPierre came to know me beyond what his mother would have wanted, became my defender as well, and elder brother in play. Just as the traveler boy, the gypsy child Alix Pestola was my elder brother in heart and soul. But Alix is another story and I shall not speak of him here.
I hated to leave them when my mother called for me to come to Paris; but there at least I had the benefit of anonymity. I was Justine’s daughter; nothing more or less. Three years did I remain in the land of city of light and love. Ah, Paris! Beautiful, treacherous, full of gaity and great sorrow. That is the mystery of that great city in France, it is like a woman in so many ways. I stayed in the shadows and watched as my mother rubbed shoulders with poets, designers, courtesans and queens of the night.
And then, only a few months ago and just prior to my first woman’s blood, the Comtesse sent for me to come home.
"Little mistress Marie Legarde worships the devil in her back yard! Hell will swing open and corpses arise, with naught but a blink of her demons’ blue eyes".
I too have blue eyes. Like my grandmere before me and back beyond that. A recessive gene they say; it shows up now and then for some strange reason. And too, so does the other gifts of my blood, those dubious gifts of my heritage. The ability to see, and communicate with the dead.
But unlike my ancestress burned those hundreds of years ago; I have never told of what I see, who I see. Not even to the children who taunted me, who bullied me with their words and their laughter, their sharp small fingers twisting in my hair, scratching my skin or their legs stretched out to trip me.
I have never told. And though I have never asked, I have longed to ask the one person who would truly know what happened at that time. The man in black would know. He was there.
He was the one who put her to the rack, and mangled her body and mind The man who's ghost haunts the walls of this chateau where his lady still resides. It was him.
The Comte de Rochefort.
I will never ask.