She frowned with irritation, but then she answered, “Sixteen.”
“Claudia is a poetic name,” I now said, “but I wasn’t thinking of a gouty saint; Claudia was the name of a lady of breathtaking beauty who lived in Rome, before Christ was born.”
She blushed.
“Her full name was Claudia Pulcher, and every man in the city was in love with her. ‘Amata nobis quantum amabitur nulla.’ A poet wrote that to her. He loved her most of all.”
“What does it mean?”
“Loved by us both as no woman will ever be loved.”
She didn’t answer any more and walked away.
“But you could be loved that way too,” I said softly.
No food was to be found in the village at the bottom of the slope but it showed a surprising measure of normal life. There were women and children outside the huts, I saw hens scratching away in the ditch, and even a cow. Dammartin was legally part of the household of the King of France and that’s why soldiers and such tended to avoid it. At least that’s what I understood from the confusing story a wheezing old villager told me. I had asked him where I could buy bread and he said, nowhere; after that I had difficulty shaking him off for he had seen me descend from the house. He talked and talked at me and ended up warning me very angrily, though I wasn’t quite sure against what or whom. Finally I got rid of him and set off to Montmélian.
Far to my right lay the forest of Chantilly, but the ground there was too hilly and the undergrowth too thick for traveling. I had to stay in the plain though it was dangerous; at two places on the horizon I could see thin columns of smoke rise.
Who could say what was burning there and whether human beings were perishing in the flames? I kept the sun over my left shoulder, going northwest and as close as I could to the wooded area.
I was lucky that day for I saw more fires and they were never near me, and no one stopped me on my way. I didn’t think too much about bandits nor even about my feet; I tried to keep all thought but of Claudia out of my mind.
So I came, unexpectedly fast, to a point where the somber tower of the castle of Montmélian loomed behind a strip of almost leafless old elms covering a hillside. I reached the gatehouse shortly after.
It was different here from Dammartin. There were two walls; a sergeant at the inner wall told me that only gentlemen travelers were received at Montmélian. He wasn’t even rude, he just wasn’t interested. “Call the—” I began but he had already closed the panel in the heavy door.
I walked away. A soldier at the outer gate whistled at me to make me stop. “Don’t go down to the village, fellow,” he said. “They don’t shelter strangers there. Or when they do, they make such a good job of it that you’re sheltered till Judgment Day.” He moved his thumb across his throat and whistled through his teeth.
So I followed the inside of the wall, and found a recess with no wind and the stone still warm from the sun. I covered myself with my jacket. If I don’t think about the cold of the night, I won’t feel it, I said.
I realized then that I had nothing which had belonged to Claudia or could be associated with her, and was furious at myself for not having asked or just stolen something which could be a keepsake. I decided I had to find reasons why my meeting her was not mere chance. I wouldn’t have seen her if I hadn’t stayed so long in that room, I thought, and I stayed only because I had started dreaming about the sea. But the sea is the all-embracing, and the border of the known. Thus it twice symbolizes womanhood. The woman who led me to Dammartin House burned green wood and changed it into charcoal with its lasting glow; that symbolized making love to a maiden. And what had set me on my journey were those words about the snow changing to rain. I had some trouble with that; then I thought that ice changed to water meant a young girl’s cold heart melting into a woman’s tears through her first love. At this point I discovered that all of this was not stopping me from being wickedly cold and uncomfortable; there was a nauseating smell, too, for all along the foot of the wall litter and garbage had been dumped.
I never saw the village. I began my descent to it at dawn; halfway down the hill a group of riders galloped by me, ladies and gentlemen looking quite splendid. I stood still and stared after them, moved by an odd mixture of envy and nostalgia; I was almost run down by a horseman trailing behind and trying to catch up with the others. I thought, perhaps I’d want wealth too, and a house, and a name in that world, while it lasts.
After that I had to cross the road to Senlis, and here met a wagon going north. A man rode beside it who looked quite pleasant; he cried cheerfully, “Want to be in Senlis by nightfall, young man?” I had planned to take the Chantilly road but I suddenly couldn’t bear the thought of walking another step; I climbed on the wagon and soon fell asleep.
At sundown we rattled and squeaked through the south gate into the narrow main street of the town of Senlis. We were just in time. The setting of the sun meant curfew; they closed the gate after us and presently the streets lay deserted.
On the market square of that town stood a kind of inn; here I took a room all to myself and ordered a hot bath prepared without asking prices. I sat in the steaming water and thought, Heron, you’ve gone out of your mind; but I enjoyed it. And then I hit upon the idea of writing a letter to Claudia. First they told me the roads were too dangerous for the delivering of letters; but the following morning an ex-soldier in a quilted coat green and molded with age, on an even older horse, came around and said he’d deliver my letter for ten sous.
“And you’ll have to pay the same for the answer,” he said.
The answer! I’d never thought of expecting an answer. But of course there might be one, and I’d wait for it right there.
To Claudia de Saint-Jean
Dammartin House
I am in love with you.
Not a love to ensnare you but a love to set you free.
I know the world is sick, Claudia. But let it be sick without you or me for a while.
Rise up, my love, my fair one, for the winter is past. That’s from the Song of Solomon. And don’t let your priest tell you that that song is an ode to the Church. It’s an ode to Pharaoh’s daughter. She was beautiful but not as beautiful as you are.
I want to carry your portrait in my heart, on my journey. Let me know that I may. That way I can come back to you safely and serve you.
I will look at no other woman. There is none like you.
Did I feel all this or was it acted, like a story in a romance? A bit of both perhaps; but once I had written those words, seen them in front of me, they assumed a life of their own and became true outside my will.
And it seemed to me when I sealed that letter that I loved Claudia, loved her better than any girl before in my life, and that I had loved her that much from the first moment.
