Our house on its hill off the road between Plazac and Rouffignac is reputed to have ties to the Chateau de L’Herme a few hilltops over. It is reputed to have a tunnel, in fact, linking it directly to that castle. I have not found one yet while digging in the garden. The lords and ladies of the time did dig escape tunnels under the threat of revolution, but this would have had to have been a 5km tunnel crossing hill and dale and that might not have been possible, even under those circumstances. This castle is associated with revolutions and other violent incidences. Its lineage has been lost as it has stood uninhabited these last 300 years. The history is mysterious and incomplete. Our house is thought to have been a dependence of that castle in any case. It was likely built as a hunting lodge for the lords or barons and their friends. And it may thus have served as an escape hatch of sorts.

We visited The Chateau early on in our first summers at Prouillac. We took the long route following the road signs, not knowing we have a direct path across the valley and through Lucette’s farm. We also could have walked there, 8 k on the GR 36, a national walking trail that runs right by our front yard to the chateau, but my mom was in tow and she is not much of a walker.

The Chateau de L’Herme is a beautifully preserved ruin of a castle, roofless, floorless, and unfurnished. It is not move in ready. It is a more a castle carcass; its central palm tree staircase is its showcase feature. There remains the oak drawbridge over the empty over grown moat. It has a few impressive clouté doors; the heavy brass nails apparent, and grand fireplaces in each of a dozen grand rooms. You can take the stairs to the top floor and look down on the four stories below, as there are no floorboards to block the view. It’s like being in a little girl’s dollhouse with the fourth wall missing. It allows you to imagine what it must have been like to live in such a place, a long, long time ago.

The display case on one of the landings holds photos from a made for T.V. movie that was shot on this site in the 70’s. Philippe recognizes the images. The film version of a classic novel, Jacquou le Croquant was very popular made for TV period piece. It is nice to see the film producers insisted on this level of authenticity. The chateau ruin played itself in this epic tale, a sort of Les Miserables for Dordogne. Jacquou is only fictional, but he is a national hero anyway. The 20th Century novel tells of the 19th C revolution which came late to this part of France. After the storming of the Bastille and the rolling of certain heads in Paris, the nobles in the faraway provinces continued to wield their habitual power, and the peasants continued to crave their daily bread.

Jacquou’s fictional father wasted away and died in the debtors prison dungeon of this castle in the tale, and the fictional Jacquou led a peasant revolt against it. The book references local sites, villages, streets and house names from around here. We pass the farm he toiled in as an indentured servant, Jaripigier, each time we go to the lake. Jacquou slept here, it ought to state. In reality, many roads, hospitals and parks in the region are named for the hero and for his creator, Eugene Le Roy. That the 70’s mutton chop and peasant dress mini series was filmed here marks a perfect full circle. Our rebellious Perigord neighbors are proud of their revolutionary history, and we are proud to be in the proximity of this star in that story.

On the top floor another informational display presents the history of the castle. I only noticed this signage on a subsequent visit. Evidently this is a work in progress. The artisan sky blue painted plank for the family tree is posted in a nearly inaccessible corner, across the narrow bridge encircling the fourth story’s floorless ballroom. The De L’Herme lineage is completed in various hands, some typed cards, other chalked on scribbles. The patriarch, and first lord of the manner was a Msr. Jean de Calvimont. The name Jean de Clavimont shows up in several more generations. Jean de Calvimont sired many Juniors and as many lords to reign over an ever expanding fiefdom. His name is attached to the lovely Chateau Chabon, for instance, a castle in good repair on its own hilltop at the far end of the valley.

The wikipedia.fr entry for Chateau de L’Herme reads: Construit à la fin du XVe siècle, le château de l'Herm sera abandonné suite à de nombreux crimes. Plus tard, Eugène Le Roy y placera le décor de son roman Jacquou le Croquant, adapté à la télévision en 1969 et au cinéma en 2007. Ce lieu romantique «à cœur ouvert» s’offre à vous pour une découverte inoubliable…

And this from another random historian’s website:
Au XVIIème siècle, une nouvelle période s’ouvre par l’assassinat de Marguerite de Calvimont en 1605, qui marque le déclin de la seigneurie. En 1655, après 11 crimes ayant rapport avec l’héritage de l’Herm, on ne sait plus à qui appartient le château. Le 16 juin 1679 a lieu l’adjudication de l’Herm et de sa seigneurie à la cour du Parlement de Paris. C’est Marie de Hautefort, amante platonique de Louis XIII, qui rachète l’ensemble. Elle place un régisseur à la tête du domaine et n’habitant pas le château, celui-ci est peu à peu pillé. En décembre 1714, un inventaire des lieux précise que l’Herm est abandonné, la toiture effondrée et la terre démembrée.
Posté le 21.08.2007 par titelive

Scribbles in this time line showed two of the eleven supposed murders that were committed here over inheritance disputes and jealous rivalries, were intrafamilial. It seems there was at least one infanticide and one matricide in this family’s tree. Perhaps due to its violent ways, the family line runs out before the turn of the 18th Century. The castle belonged to no one in 1679. It was basically auctioned off at the central office of castles at Versailles.

I am concocting visions based on these rough histories. The castle is rightly considered haunted by the many murder victims done in within its high walls. When it was abandoned by the Calvimont clan and left untended it fell into the hands of Marie d’Hauteforte, a countess of the next greatest land holding family in the region. I can imagine the writhing in the graves of the late rivals over this development.

The new chatelaine is often referred to as the “amante platonique” to LouisXIII. While the term platonic lover (?) smacks of oxymoronism, the two of them must have been friendly. So in my imagining, she would certainly have invited her friend the king on hunting expeditions with her and setting out from her newly acquired castle, through the Foret Barade, she would certainly have stopped by our place, Grand Prouillac, the conveniently placed hunting lodge that came with it. Which begs the question, if women had garconniere’s what did they call them? Also the notion of them here inspires me to acquire a plaque to place near my bed, stating The king of France, Louis XIII, probably slept here.

When we bought our house from the long lost second cousin once removed’s second husband, Andrew’s dead sister Xenia, we got a lot more than the house. We also got all these tales: his tales, his dead sister’s tales, the long lost cousin’s tales and the circumstance of that, her art work about it. And then there are the tales that came with the house itself.

There are layers and layers of stories in this house, much like the stacks of fabric left in the sewing cabinet upstairs. There are some really good ones, fine swatches of ancient embroidery which may have a real value if the Antiques Road Show folks were to cruise through here. And there are ugly bolts of satin draping. It has been my self-elected assignment to sort through them, the stories. I have already made my selection of the fabric I consider worth saving, for no discernable reason. These samples will likely stay in the pile in the closet that I first discovered and then left them in. Sometimes we sort through the pile when looking for something we can fashion into a Roman Toga, or cave man’s costume but I am not a seamstress and so I won’t ever give the fancier swatches of silk brocade their due. As with the pile of stories that I am trying to archive, I am the only thing standing between them and their intrinsic glory. And sometimes this is a bit intimidating and just plain complicated. There are so many strands to consider. I am no seamstress.

And as I explained earlier, I have been highly distracted from this chore. There was the fashion show and the Fete du Village, the friends I made and received invitations from, the reciprocations and all the accompanying shopping, cleaning and cooking involved. I got a job, as I mentioned, and went to it, daily. And in this flurry of activity, my research projects took a back seat, way back.

I did try to keep up on my reading about my royal forbearer, the former owner of this curious castle: Mme Xenia Romanoff Tooth. I have a pile of magazine articles, and related clippings outlining the Romanoff genealogy. There are books in English and French and Cyrilic on the topic on the bookshelves. The Tooth’s subscription to Hello Magazine ran out, but a stack of this British Royalty Rag still lies in a closet upstairs, Romanoff history included. This research is hence, pretty easy to do.

My research reveals: Xenia Romanoff, or Eugenia accordingly, and her two brothers were born in exile from the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Their parents fled in time to be spared the bloodletting to which their cousins, the Czar’s children, succumbed along side their parents in that basement of their Siberian Palace. Xenia was born in Paris. But she spoke very poor French. The neighbor, Mme Chaumont imitates her, repeating “je suis idiot-ique” not a French word even if it sound like one. She and her brothers were raised primarily in London where they were received by their cousins from that royal family. Poorly.

Brother Andrew has published a memoir from this period with his own illustrations, in the medium of shrinky-dink. I kid you not. He’s an 80 year-old, upright gentleman of royal heritage in an ascot whose artistic medium is shrinky dink. He has made a beautiful collection of pieces reflecting his earliest memories. This very accessible little tome tells of his time at Windsor Castle where he was burnt more than once by his snooty British cousins. He was taught that he was not to address them. If ever he was to cross them on a visit of the grounds, bowing silently was the only appropriate response. Upon one formal introduction, princess Anne, it must have been, remarked that she believed Russians were all named Ivan. Imagine the hilarity. Even if Xenia and Andrew’s aunt Alexandra, the last Empress, had called Queen Victoria Granny and was practically raised by her at Windsor Castle, her successor, King George was not as warm to this branch of the family. He refused exile to this cousin and her husband when given the chance to save them from their own guards. And the rest is, as they say, history, newly fascinating history to me.

The most appealing research material for me turned out to be a paperback romance novel proclaiming its success as a major motion picture: Nicolas and Alexandra. This harlequin style page-turner relied heavily on the collected letters of Alexandra and Nicolai; the most documented royal couple in all of the history of documenting royal couples. Apparently, Brad and Angelina would have buckled under the weight of the media attention these two engendered. This was the first generation of photographers. Photojournalists, aka paparazzi, captured them everywhere they went but they also photographed one another, constantly. There are piles and piles, books and books of Romanoff family portraits. Their story was also captured in the vast quantities of carefully archived letters that they all dutifully wrote to their extensive family, to supporters and to their nearest and dearest.

I could stay up late with this love story, getting better and better acquainted with Russia’s last royal family. Getting to know them through their own writing perhaps helps, but they honestly seem like truly lovely people, so erudite, well bred, well connected, and in love. They were truly and deeply in love. They wrote each other breathtaking love letters when separated. They longed for each other. And as their relationship matured, they impressed all those around them with their compatibility and kindness; at least those who accepted Alexandra’s conversion to the orthodox faith, and those who saw beyond her protective cold front. I cringed my way towards the last chapters of this enduring love story, and then stopped. Unfortunately, I know how it ends.

Where did I get my last Romanov reader, I am wondering now. I am pretty sure I read The Kitchen Boy in English. But I don’t remember where I would have gotten it in English. I remember it as a library book. Why would my one room, small town library have this book in English. I can’t quite believe it did. And if it didn’t, where did this book come from in English? If I acquired it, bought or borrowed it, where is it now? I can’t figure this one out. Maybe I read it in French. Did I? I feel that I integrated this book into my core. I didn’t read it, I digested it, bit it chewed and swallowed it whole. I made it part of my personal experience.

The Kitchen Boy is a first person account from the perspective of a servant of the Romanoff’s in their last days at their Siberian Palace. It is a fictional account but follows the Romanoff’s history very faithfully. The dust jacket verifies the author’s thorough research. This is a Russian scholar at work using a romantic premise to get at the facts. There are some unexpected plot twists where the fiction sneaks in, but the Romanoff’s fate is sealed from the beginning, even in this fictionalized version.

The narrator of this tale, the kitchen boy, had privileged access to the Romanoff family that his insignificance allowed. He was able to witness the tedious isolation and torturous deprivation they withstood. He could only observe as food became sparse, conditions worsened and medical attention was withheld from the young son, a hemophiliac.

He continued to serve them and took to protecting them from the comrades as best he could though his orders were issued from the red army headquarters. His continued service helped preserve the last shreds of their once revered royal dignity; this and their pride, their manners and the jewels sewed into their bodices and undergarments. His account, albeit fictive, represents the family as stoic, brave, kind and dignified to the end. When it was finally all over, he was there, a witness to the final blow.

He had prepared the family in his care unwittingly for their descent down the 29 famous steps to the concrete basement where they met their end. He heard the wild ricocheting of bullets, the screaming, and confusion. He smelled the clouds of gunpowder and smoke. He saw the bloody soldiers resurge from this hellish cavern.

As an inside servant, he feared for his life as well, and instinctively “disappeared”. From his hiding place, he observed the evacuation of bloody bodies, their hasty shallow burial, and the soldiers’ urgent retreat. And then while still in hiding from what he feared would be a certain silencing, he ran into the one other escapee. Their surprise at this fateful reunion blossomed into a lasting love. They got out and made a life together in the U.S. They remained in hiding under false identities to the end. Their only child recognized the shrouded reality but never fully understood who her parents were until their death, their history her greatest inheritance, along with the life-saving jewels her mother had kept hidden all along.

Ynez’s experience was very much the same. Ynez is the long lost cousin who married a Romanoff. She is my link. The whole reason I am here at all. Her mother is my grandfather’s cousin. And it was her mother who escaped Nazi Germany in the early 30s, and disowned her own past. She got out early, before the writing was on the wall and surprised her family when she cut all ties and erased her Jewish heritage to marry a German Catholic. They raised their four children on rosaries and confession in Beverly Hills, surprisingly close to where my grandparents settled, lucky last minute evacuees themselves.

Ynez did not know any of this growing up. She only learned of her Jewish blood as her mother lay on her deathbed. The mystery and shroud of secrets lifted as one of her mother’s final requests was to see a Rabi. After she passed, my aunt closed the gap, writing a condolence note to the cousins she had never met. Ynez, an artist, produced two catalogues of work about this whole experience. The first, before we met, spoke to that missing history: empty suitcases, blank slates. The second, after our family reunion, speaks of the recovery: ships making the crossing, found objects, family. It is an experience I cannot otherwise imagine, getting one’s history back, having a whole past restored. Her artwork has a quality which haunts you. What if you had no history, no family, no tales to tell.

And then the ghost stories starting coming out of the woodwork. Our house has a lot of woodwork. And there are a lot of stories attached to it. And I decided that I ought to learn them. I was not really focusing on ghost stories. The house’s own history and the history of its previous occupants were good enough. One or two princesses out weigh an elusive ghost it seemed to me at the time.

This is the year that we took the sabbatical. And for the record, it was never actually a sabbatical. We called it that as short hand for “year off”. People recognize sabbatical and respect the notion over dropping out, dropping everything, and taking a chance on life in a depressed foreign economy. Who gets to do that? We didn’t do that exactly, but almost. Phil had some fairly good assurance that he would have a job to return to if things didn’t work out. So we took to calling it our “Année Sympatique” instead of sebatique/our “nice” year. It was nice enough of his employers to allow him the freedom to quit, but not really. Sans solde/Without pay. That is what it was. And it may have been several years with out pay, if we could have kept it up. We were planning on making a go of it even if we hadn’t really defined what that meant. We were looking to work though. I rewrote and sent out a couple hundred resumes, and we both signed up with the job development agency. But the real work I assigned myself was to learn about the house and then to write about it.

Most people who hear the brief version of this remarkable house’s story say something like that. “You ought to write about it.” Yes I know I ought to. And then it ought to be published and promoted and then turned into a major motion picture. I couldn’t agree enough.

I set down to do that. But I got distracted.

Living in the house was something all together different from summering in it. From very near the first day of that adventure we became residents and members of a very interesting community as opposed to being visitors to it. And that was very distracting.

First there was the fashion show in Plazac. Then the fashion show in Rouffignac. These are blogs in and of themselves. I will get to that. Ask me. But in brief these two events are remembered for quite frankly transforming my life. I honestly met everyone, or almost everyone I now know in Dordogne as a result of those two hilariously self-serious comedy acts. It was upon our annual first foray down to Plazac’s local café/bar/hangout, La Marjolaine, for a stamp and a match that I was stopped and stumped. “Mademoiselle”, I think the woman seated at a terrace table addressed me, “Vous vivez Plazac?” Do I live here? Why yes. Yes I do. And so yes, I guess I can participate in your first ever fashion show to be held at the salle de fete as part of the annual Fete de Plazac next week. Why not? I have oft replayed the moment when I accepted this rather random invitation under the very accurate instinct that I would probably meet people.

I met people. And then I made friends with people and then made friends with their friends. I got hired to an unwanted job by one of these people. Got involved in the personal problems of others. Juggled the issues between still others of them. I integrated, “quoi”.* And there went all of the free time in which I was planning to write my house’s memoirs.

But they continued to write themselves. Luckily.

Pauline had kicked things off with her revelation of having been haunted right out of our house earlier that same year. Soon I was meeting people who knew our house before they knew us to be its owners. This became a common encounter: “Oh you live up at Prouillac! How is the ghost?” Pauline’s father is a big believer. He was scared to visit his daughter during her sejour there. And our previous tenants, Dom and his son, and his girlfriend, and his son’s girlfriend, and his son’s girlfriend’s kids, and his kids on the days he had them, and their dogs and their dogs’ puppies had had sightings too, when they had lived there the year before. Now we get to hear about them. Gael says he always felt someone looking over his shoulder or slipping through the place when we used the upstairs bathroom. Emmy felt a presence under the eaves in an upstairs bedroom. Dom says he called the ghost our one time. He pulled up a chair, sat down and addressed her. “We live here now. Hope that’s cool.” It seems to have been. Mostly, if I understand it, they kept out of the big room upstairs. There were, what, twenty of them? and this, the largest of rooms was never put to use. It was considered her space. Off limits. It is the “oldest” room in the house. It is the coup de grace on any home tour, where we pause to let people soak in the very with 15thC feel of it. It’s the room that the historians wanted to check out for its reputed renaissance fireplace. (Good story) It is the room they held Mme Tooth’s funeral services in and the room we sleep in.

I make the bed religiously. The first years we slept elsewhere, upstairs and down. I felt that this room was too grande to be a bedroom, too awesome, not too haunted. I realize that I stayed out of this room because I thought it was too good for us. But I got over that. And we moved a bed in. And then a loooong time later, we moved a decent mattress in too and a dresser and the like. I’d still like to furnish it appropriately for its stature, with a four-poster bed or so, one of those giant trunks, leather couches. Meanwhile, I like to keep this room on the tour and try to entertain here occasionally. I think we poisoned our friends and ourselves though the time we entrapped them into shelling walnuts with us up there one winter evening in front of that very poor-drawing fireplace. I slept in very late the next day and then I washed all the bedding to get that forest fire smell out of them.

Then we invited new people over. People even newer to Plazac than we were. These were the parents of the other new kids at school. Their two boys were in the classes of my two kids that September. They seemed nice, cool. They got to rent the old postmaster’s house right across from La Marjolaine. The mayor got them that privilege after selling him one of his parcels. Sweet. Seems like an interesting house. They set up shop as potters in the garage. I liked their stuff. Whimsical. She was whimsical. She had a constant smile and wore bright colors which set off her pinkish strawberry blonde curls. I had one of my surges of magnanimous friendly pluck when I insisted that they come over for dinner some time. Friday! How about it?

They came. And for some reason I tested out my experimental faux sushi on them. I question this now that I have enough distance to realize the French don’t even know real sushi if they have not lived in a cultural capitol. My Californized rice based assimilation of cucumber, fish, and seaweed did indeed seem weird to them. But they seemed weird to us. So we’re even. She sat and smiled while her husband and his piano key sized teeth recounted his study of harmonics and the effects of resonating vibrations on our psychological health. I love this stuff. But my darling “Cartesian” husband has a short attention span when it comes to anything smacking of new-ageism; and more than that, he hates being cornered in one-sided conversations. He knows nothing about the healing virtues of harmonic resonance you see. The kids were excused from any pretense of testing or tasting the seaweed or rice or fish I had prepared as they asked me for bread and nutella. Alright.

I still managed to maintain a nice conversation with Ms. Potter. She is the artist, her husband the fire tamer. Pottery interests me. And I love learning about that sort of thing. I also love to hear about people’s forays into the esoteric. I find it fascinating. So I was wrapped by her declaration that she can “enleve le feu.” Here we were in the presence of a fire healer. I was practically tempted to burn myself so as to be able to testify to her magical touch. I got to ask loads of questions. She could not rightly explain how she does it. Her grandmother could and now she can. That is the mystery. When the kids continued to jump up and down on the upholstered dining chairs I did make tired noises though, and gently, eventually, ushered them out.

I commiserated with Philippe, did a hundred dishes and left it. The next school day, I was happy to have one more “friend” I could gossip with as the gaggle of mostly mothers huddled to usher off the school bus of little one’s on their way to “maternelle” the village over. It always seemed like the first day of summer camp or worse and not a daily 10 k school bus ride. Moms like to huddle is what it is. So I joined my pink haired partner in her curbside conversation with one of my closest neighbors; closest in proximity that is. They were making a date to meet so the one, or maybe it was her husband who was going to geographically purify and demagnetize the property of the other. Apparently, as Laeticia hosts regular purifying sweat lodges on her rather large plot of land, she had accumulated a lot of the spiritual muck that the sweat lodge attendees had burned out of their systems in that native American transplanted tradition. I love it more. The date was set.

And then my friend, the potter, turned to me, thanked me for the lovely meal, and then advised me, with real friendly concern, “You have got to do something about your house. C’est occupé. C’est veçu. You really need to do something about it. Reclaim your house. Its lived in. The spirits occupy your house. It’s not healthy to live like that.

I began to think about taking her advice.

Cache Cache Peur is still the kids’ favorite game. Whenever a crowd of kids convenes this is the one that keeps them all, big and little, boys and girls happy for hours. It is the one activity that always creates cohesion and keeps them out of fights and out of our hair the longest. Which is strange, because the object of the game is to scare one another half to death. It’s hide and seek with the bonus that you get to escape from your hiding place to shriek spookily at, the seeker, just as they were about to catch you. The game works I think, because it has the vindictive revenge response built right into the rules. The scariest hider wins and he or she gets to be the seeker in the next round. No one even seems to fight for that honor. Everyone will get their turn to be freaked out of their wits as they hunt for friends in the dark closets on that scary third floor. What I don’t particularly like about this game is how it reinforces my kids’ fear of their own third floor.

There is a bathroom on the third floor and two perfectly good bedrooms, lots of storage. The kids won’t go up there alone. At night Lucien continues to wake me to accompany him on potty runs long after he gave up that routine at our S.F. apartment. I accept the late night sleepy and sloppy hug gladly in exchange for lost sleep. But I still would rather the kids felt safe here in their house. Lucien is clear he prefers the “castle” on an acre next to the woods, over his city bound two bedroom apartment in S.F., but only barely, because “the France house is scarier.” He would like to live in a biiiiggg castle with a biiiigggig yard but with no ghost. I keep telling him, the ghost is gone.

We never see or feel or hear the ghost. Philippe and I are immune. He is a safe and sound cynic. You can’t fear a ghost you don’t believe in. I am not as certain. I don’t want to offend the believers in my community. I also hope to avoid the sneers of nay-saying scoffers, mostly American. I am agnostic in this as in many other questions of faith. Who am I to say? Let the ghosts speak for themselves. I haven’t had any personal experiences with ghosts, not since ours became an owl. But I am becoming more and more of a believer every day living among the mystics here in this corner of France.

There are lots and lots of magical events in this part of the world. You catch wind of the little miracles around here all the time. The latest one is particularly interesting to us. Philippe has a bad case of eczema on his hands. This doesn’t keep him from using and abusing his hands sun up till sun down every day all summer long out in the garden. But it does keep him from doing the dishes. And they hurt and are rough and ugly. Creams aren’t helping.

A friend of ours saw them and told him about a geurisseur. Later we met with Hippo directly. It was Hippo who took his daughter to see this old farmer reputed to have powers. The girl has been suffering from eczema since she was a baby. She’s 13 now. The farmer, HIppo recounts, got off his tractor, out in his field where they had tracked him down. He apparently took a look at Louanna, her skin, her dad, nodded and told her to write her name on a piece of paper, go home, drink a lot of water, and rest up. She would be tired. They did as they were told. And with in three days her eczema was all cleared up. He apparently works with handwriting. She got a light case again afterwards. But not like before. I want for Philippe to go.

You bring things like this up, and you start to hear about the fire healers. Many people here apparently have the power, in their hands to heal the pain and effects of burns. A treatment takes a few moments, or in worse case scenarios, a few treatments may be necessary. But people with serious burns all over their bodies can be healed, completely, with no pain or scars or drugs or medication. I have heard about a dozen of these cases. Everyone around has seen the results.

The magnetizeurs can relieve back pain, sciatica and other internal ailments with a simple laying on of hands. My friend experienced this healing on her debilitating lower back pain. I called for one when my dad arrived from America with a disc squeezed out of alignment. The local magnetizeur, Gurloff, from Holland, gave dad much appreciated relief. And then Alexis did. And the doctor’s recommended operation has been put off indefinitely now.

The plumber we had over to discuss the excellent work he did on our pipes, and to plan for future plumbing adventures we will have together, stayed on, for a pastisse and we talked about his experience with Les Sourciers. Not sorcerers like witches but sourciers, the sort who find water. He turns to these guys when nothing else works. One of them uses a stick, another one a pendulum, and within minutes they can find the source of water on a 10 acre property, the leak in a house full of pipes, or the puddle under the foundation indicating something else more serious again. He might know a healer as well who works on skin. He will ask his wife. She keeps the family memories. He is sure there is a guy in Thonac or maybe it’s Rouffignac. No one can logically explain how this stuff works. But no one doubts that it does.

I thought Philippe was barking up the wrong tree when he asked about the rumor of a local healer at the pharmacy in Rouffignac. But no one scoffed, deferred to their white-coated scientific supremacy, prescribed any drug-laden creams or mental health aids. The pharmacist asked the lady in line behind us if maybe she could remember the name of that geurriseur just out of town. They had to think a while. But they gave us a name. Philippe hasn’t called yet. As Hippo mentioned, maybe he should put off healing the ailment that gets him out of doing dishes. Or maybe he’ll call the guy tomorrow. It’s a difficult step for a self-identified Cartesian to take, leaps of faith going so against the grain.

The kids on the other hand have no difficulty leaping. They are fearless believers in all they can imagine. Lucien asks great questions about how light sabers really work, how big pokeman is in “real life” etc. And Cleo has a beautiful theology about the tooth fairy. In France, the agent of tooth redemption is a mouse, not a fairy. So Cleo has had to reckon her belief system against her friends’ belief systems. She wisely concluded that, “it is what you believe it is.”

But now the kids believe our house is haunted by ghosts. They have a couple of good sources on this. One of their gang, Babou, is the nephew of one of our winter tenants. His aunt Pauline was really our first friend here. She served us our first beers at the Marjolaine where she worked during our first summers here. She also knew Mme Tooth. She is one of the few people who attended Mme Tooth’s service here, in the grand room. She dated Mark Lawrence for years, and his parents were the Tooth’s closest friends. They fill the pages of the Mme’s dinner party record.

Pauline lived here for a year with her next boyfriend, a young man very erroneously dubbed Sunshine. He wasn’t. And their year together here wasn’t sunny. They were on the skids. And Pauline spent a lot of lonely nights here while Sunshine was out DJing the party circuit. There are parties here and near here.

One night, alone and cold and sad surely, she was woken by a loud bang. A second loud banging struck the ceiling above her head. There is a guest room up there, nothing in it. She is not under the roof or an attic where weasels or badgers could be fooling around. She knows the sound of the owl. The cats slept outside; the squeaks and squawks of the house were familiar to her. This was none of those. The bang came again and she says it was aimed at her. It said to her “Go, get out of here.” And she did. She grabbed her clothes off the floor and she pulled them on as she ran down the stairs. She finished putting her shoes on in the courtyard. She fled to her car and was going to drive to a friend’s house. But the neighbors had a light on. So she pulled up there to finish the night curled in a ball on their floor. The ghost in the house was thereby outed to the world. From then on the stories started coming in.

And there are more. Many more.

So, whether we have a ghost or an owl, it turns out to be very much the same thing. The owl under our eaves is just as spooky as any ghost would be. And just as baffling. Any time of night, her cries may pierce the quiet of our deep rural darkness. The sound is eerie and foreboding. And even when the source is known intellectually, on an emotional level, the screeching still elicits a heart pounding apprehension. It still sounds like someone is heaving out there, somewhere.

Our first couple of summers, our screech owl seemed to get into a number of territorial battles, and the shrieking and swooping would last late into the night. Two shrieks moving in opposite directions around the grounds make an even more ghoulish impression. For some reason, the winter we lived in the house, the car pulling into the drive would often roust her from her niche and she would swoop low to greet us, or to scare us to death, accordingly. Her bleak color scheme matching the grey and white scenery. In summer she stays up later. And wakes us up more. Till we generally scare her away with our noise.

Houseguests have to be warned, while she is with us, not to be frightened. “It’s just an owl.” And this inevitably launches one of us into the telling of the tale of “our ghost” who, it turns out, is only an owl. But then again, this is not really a concession. It may be that our owl is a ghost or that our ghost is an owl. It is hard to say. And as I said earlier, it doesn’t really matter.

There is a castle near here which seeks to distinguish itself from all the other castles near here by proudly claiming to be the “haunted” one. A spooky white nightshirt rises out of one of its towers on the brochure. The text declares the presence of “La Dame Blanche” and her “mysterious apparitions.” I haven’t been on a tour of this historic site myself, but I think I know the punch line. We don’t sell tickets to tour our haunted mansion or charge to hear tell the spooky tales of our dame blanche, but we could.

We share the story of our ghost as we share aperitifs. We are generous that way. Our ghost and our ghost story along with the history attached to this ancient demure and its past residents are real crowd pleasers. And so whether we admit it or not, we love our ghost, and this damn “dame blanche” who continues to embellish the story with us.

For me, the owl and the ghost are indistinguishable. La dame blanche has so much in common with Mme Tooth, Mme Romanoff Tooth, the past tense princess who inhabited this demure till her death in 2000. Both of them grand and imposing dames with stories to tell in their very particular voices.

In these early summers, the presence of Mme Tooth, nee princess was still very strong. We got to know her little by little through the echoes of our neighbors, from the titles on her book shelves, from the photos in the bottom of the cabinet that her husband had evidently developed and printed repeatedly, seeking the ideal contrast and grain. In the best one, she is a perfect peasant in a headscarf and modest skirt, eyes tilted down. Her aquiline nose hints only subtly at her regal heritage. The ancient stair way in evidence. The skirt in the photo is hanging in an upstairs closet. And her white slip hangs next to it, glowing in the dim hallway light at night, as would her ghost.

It is in that closet, now my closet, that I once found an 1860’s halfpence, with a picture of Queen Victoria mysteriously waiting for me in one of my old river walking tennis shoes and a 1890’s kopek in the pocket of an unworn pair of jeans. Pennies from heaven? I can’t be certain. I will ask Mme Tooth upon her next visit.

A couple of years running, the chouette effrai living under our roof, has ejected one of her babies from the nest, too soon for it to fly off on its own wings. The runt maybe, or the over run. A couple of times, when they survive the fall, we have made the effort to rekindle these babies back to health. Once we were successful. The scared little peeping ball of plumes had the will to live.

It accepted the little nuggets of ham or raw chicken we proposed it. Lucien was particularly fearless, at 5, holding out scraps of meat, too yucky for his big sister to touch. He waited patiently for the little beak to rip it from his fingers. The littler we are, the more we identify with the vulnerable. For Lucien, this downed bird was another pet. He was the one who had tamed the unruly baby chicks when we had them, and he’s the one to put a frog or snake or grasshopper in a box and name it.

When we brought the reinvigorated baby owl back out to the point of its shoot days later, it succeeded in hopping out of the box, on the power of its desperate little wings. Mom and child screeched their greetings. Impossible to say if the clumsy mother was happy to see her offspring encore en vie. Mama did a fly over. Baby flapped its weak little wings and managed to escape any further meddling on our part. That beak is sharp.
It managed to hop into the neighboring rose bush, and scaled the branches. From that vantage point it surveyed its future runway. Mother bird made some taunting and or encouraging sounds and occasionally swooped in to admonish baby to be careful, or otherwise, to get lost. Again it is hard to comprehend the pronouncements of a bird whose very name predicts its fowl mood. (Wow two puns in one)

In any case, baby owl did eventually venture out. It flapped and flapped hopped and flopped and dropped right down onto the stone terrace. But it managed to scramble back up to its rosebush perch to contemplate its next move. We observed it when we could over the course of that afternoon and evening, the days still short that early spring. I was at work and had to catch up with its progress from the kids pictures. Not currently available. It was still there though when I got home, shortly before dark. It was fascinating to see it launch and flap only to gain a rung or grip on a larger branch. It slowly moved into the Lilac bush and on to higher perches. And then, unbeknownst to us, at some time in the night, it flew off. Or so we presume. There were no feathers found to attest to its failure or to its capture. It was just gone leaving our dame blanche alone in her haunt.