To travel hopefully is better than to arrive……well sometimes……
Early morning
The cool interior of a cathedral
Coloured light through the stained glass windows illuminates a pathway.
A labyrinth. The labyrinth of Chartres.
The flower patterns of the glass, the pinks, yellows and blues reflecting off the floor illuminating the tiled shape and regular patterns in blue, red, green, gold and brown that make up the maze, the labyrinth hidden at the east end of the cathedral behind the main altar.
From the west of the cathedral, a priest is walking down the long aisle. A path he has followed every morning for many years. Occasionally he stops to rearrange the candles or to dust with the back of his hand the seats of one of the pews. From time to time he looks up into the vaulted arch that disappears into the darkness high above him.
He feels the weight of stone, the invisible gargoyles gazing blindly down at his small figure in black moving slowly towards the altar.
His name is Pére Jean Luc, the curate of this vast cathedral. A job he has been doing since the last occupant of the post, Pére Martin, disappeared in unusual circumstances over a decade ago. He is sure that he will never rise any higher in the hierarchy of the Catholic church, but he doesn’t care. The stone walls, passages, altars and windows of this place are parts of his body, he knows them as well as the shape of his own soul. He would not exchange this job with the Pope himself, though there have been days recently when he has wondered where the God whose magnificent house he cares for has gone.
He had stood on the steps of the cathedral and watched the first German soldiers enter the square at the end of June 1940. The red flag with the black swastika that now flew over the town had first been raised on that hot Friday afternoon on the flagpole in front of the Mairie opposite the cathedral. Tanks, troop carriers and columns of marching young men, exhilarated from their recent parade through Paris along the Champs Elysée and under the Arc de Triomphe. The regiment that had been assigned to garrison the cathedral town was the 8th Wehrmacht Panzer Division from Bavaria and many of these young conquerors had been brought up as Catholics in a nation that gave lip service at least to the Lutheran Church though it’s new religion was one of the Will to Power and Ein Reich Ein Fuhrer.
Some of them had come to mass in the cathedral and he had been able to befriend a few of them, outwardly arrogant and sure of the rightness of the Nazi vision, but inside he had found uncertainty and fear. They had seen awful things in the course of their Blitzkrieg across Europe into Czechoslovakia, Poland and France and in the privacy of the confessional had expressed disquiet and doubt about what they had seen in the occupied countries of the people whose homes they had destroyed and whose lives they had smashed wide open as well as what was happening in the Homeland, in Germany itself.
One young man had wept when he told Jean Luc that his fiancée was Jewish.
“Such a beautiful girl father. My lovely Lisa. Soft brown eyes and long dark hair. …..and now my mother writes to tell me that Lisa and all her family have been taken away, in the middle of the night by the Wafen SS ….. nobody knows where they have gone. Probably to a labour camp. Oh god in heaven I feel so helpless. So many miles between us and I love her so much. We are engaged to be married on my next leave, whenever that will be. But now…”
Jean Luc sighed at the memory. But what could he have said? Offer words and comfort about her being held in God’s hands. But a Jewess? Would God really look after her? He didn’t know. This war had made him question everything he believed in, with daily news of atrocities and suffering reaching his ears.
Why was God allowing these awful things to happen?
He stopped halfway down the aisle with the altar in front of him. The sunlight streaming through the windows. At any moment now the first worshippers would arrive on their way to work. Such work as there was in the town was controlled by the Vichy administration that had settled into the mayor’s office, though in reality the German military made decisions about all the important posts. Most of these had been re-allocated to supporters of the new regime or as some would call them “collaborators”.
He sighed again and was about to continue his journey towards the altar when he heard the large door at the West entrance to the cathedral open. A sound he had heard many times, someone no doubt arriving early for morning mass.
It was the next sound that surprised him. No, shocked him.
Cut to extreme close up of Father Jean Luc’s face turning within frame.
Glasses on the end of his nose. Thinning grey hair. Face weather beaten and care worn. Bright hazel eyes.
The sound of horse’s hooves........
It had taken Slinger and the Horse 5 days to reach the cathedral after riding through the Italian trenches and their sudden unexplained time jump from 1917 to 1940.
Though they both suspected that the piece of illyrium mosaic in the handle of one of Slinger’s pistols might have something to do with their jump from one 20th century European conflict to another.
They had set off east and then turned south avoiding Paris, its surroundings and any German patrols by travelling across fields and through the woods, where the leaves were beginning to turn and fall and the nights had a chill to them.
It was beautiful here, still and tranquil, with only the sound of occasional Stukas and Messerschmitts away in the distance to break the silence. That was how they had travelled mostly, in silence, feeling the quality of late summer as it turned to autumn and knowing that time was running out for them.
At the end of the 2nd day they came to a farmhouse where Slinger explained that he was travelling on horseback from Rotterdam to the Cathedral to say a special mass for his recently departed mother. He would be asked in to the old stone built farmhouse to share a meal and then offered a place to sleep by the fire while the Horse was put in the barn with fresh hay and some oats to eat. The couple whose farm it was did not seem to question his story or be surprised by his rather odd accent, which was probably more to do with the fact that though his French was near perfect, the last time he had spoken it much had been in 1794 at the fall of the Bastille, so his pronunciation was rather dated.
The man had admitted that they did not see many Dutch people in this part of France though there was a slow trickle of refugees along the main road a few kilometres away on the other side of the hills. He had admired Slinger’s long black leather coat and told him that his wife and he had stayed on their farm when the Germans had arrived in the vicinity a few months ago and so far they had been left alone. They travelled occasionally to the local market at Aubon to buy provisions but mostly produced everything they needed on the farm. Fruit, vegetables and their animals provided them with milk, eggs, meat and company.
The man’s name was Dominique Roget and though he was too old to fight in this war, he had fought the Germans before in that “Grand Guerre” which he described so vividly that it brought back to Slinger their recent days in the trenches. He told him that before those awful events he had lived North of Paris and it was in that great city at the end of hostilities that he had met his wife during one of the many wild celebration parties on the streets, in the parks and boulevards. It had been love at first sight. They had married a few months later, in spite of her family who strongly opposed the match telling both of them that he was not good enough for her and anyway she shouldn’t be marrying a man who was nearly 20 years older than her, which indeed he was.
They had insisted that this was what they wanted and Slinger could see from the faded black and white photo of their wedding day in 1919 that in their youth he had been extraordinarily handsome and she stunningly beautiful, both of them determined people full of love for each other and the certainty of their future together. They stood smiling into the camera, with the wall of the church ending behind the bridegroom’s left shoulder and the bride in a white dress and veil holding a massive bunch of flowers.
The man had shown him the photo in its silver frame while he told him bits of his life story on the evening of their arrival, as the woman, whose name was Francine, crocheted, smiling and nodding, her long hair held up in a bun on the top of her head. As Slinger had been about to put the photo back on the table next to the window that looked out across the darkening cobbled yard towards the fields and woods beyond he had with a shock recognised the view over the bride’s right shoulder.
The two rows of plane trees leaning against each other at that crazy angle, even in the background of the faded old photograph, were unmistakeable. It was the same landscape that he and the Horse had walked through only 36 hours or 21 years before on their travels through place and time from the trenches of the Somme.
He had pointed them out to the old woman, who had laughed and said that they had been the freak result of a number of shells landing in the middle of the wood during a bombardment in 1917. Nobody had bothered to cut them down and so it had become a feature of the landscape until eventually nature had taken her course and one by one they had collapsed returning over many years into the soil to grow new saplings in that corner of woodland.
Early the next morning Slinger and the Horse, already looking better for her meal of fresh hay and oats and a deep sleep on the soft straw of the barn, had taken leave of Dominique and Francine. He had promised to say a Hail Mary and light a candle for them in the cathedral and Dominique had wished them a safe journey.
“Bon Voyage mes amis. Faire attention a les boches. Nous, nous sommes sauf ici dans notre grande amour. Il y a toujours la guerre mais une journée nous aurons encore la paix par tout. Mais je ne sais pas…. peut etre c’est que un reve, peut etre l’homme il sera toujours l’animaux le plus sauvage”
They had both embraced Slinger kissing him on either cheek. He was wearing the wide brimmed and rather battered leather hat that Roget had given him, insisting it would keep the flies and the rain off . Francine had laughingly commented that in that hat and with that coat on he looked “Comme un vrai cowboy American”
He had left the farm with the Horse walking beside him along a narrow track that lead down into the long valley that would eventually bring them the last 50 kilometres to Chartres. As they began to turn the corner that would hide the farm from view, Slinger looked round and waved a final farewell to them as they stood watching their departing guests, arms on each other’s shoulders with the warm light of another day around them.
While they walked he had told the Horse about the photograph, after first enquiring about her accommodation and food, which she had given a most positive rating.
“Fantastic. Almost as good as meadow grass”
“The strangest thing Horse, it seems that his family had farmed the land before the war near the trench where we were stuck until….what day of the week is it anyway?”
It didn’t matter how often he did this time jump thing, it still phased him and scrambled his sense of linear time, of the normal procession of days, weeks and months.
“Sunday”.
The Horse had told him.
“Yeah right….back last…whenever it was….back last week…that field in front of our trench with all those dairy cows in it, it seems they may have belonged to his family and he only ended up living here because the woman….”
“Francine”.
The Horse had helpfully informed him.
“Yeah. Francine. She’d kind of insisted that after they got married he move down here and live with her family, even though he knew nothing about growing grapes…which is how they got the farm because after her parents died ..”
“ I see” said the Horse “So what does this imply? That it’s easy to transfer dairy herding skills to viniculture?”
“No not really. It’s just an odd coincidence that the one place we stop on our way and the only people we’ve met in this time section, one of them just happens to have been married only metres away from us in the last time sector we’ve visited…..”
“Strange”
The Horse cut into his monologue
“I know” said Slinger “Doesn’t matter how often it happens I still find these temporal synchronicities difficult to accept”
The two of them stood on the track with the sun behind casting long shadows ahead of them
“That wasn’t what I meant”
The Horse had stopped suddenly
“What did you mean?”
“Quiet!”
She stood there, nostrils quivering, ears twitching. Apart from those movements her whole body was stone still, every last centilitre of concentration focused outwards.
“We better get off this track. There’s a car, Mercedes S class staff car at a guess with two motorcycles coming our way and they’re travelling fast”
Slinger could hear them now, faintly in the distance but getting louder by the second. He could not have told from the engine sounds the precise details that the Horse had decoded with her superior senses, but they were certainly heading towards them at some speed.
“My guess is they’ll be German so we better get into the field” said Slinger.
“My question would be, what is a Mercedes Staff car with 2 outriders doing driving up a little track like this” the Horse had replied as they hurriedly entered the field of late maize ripening in the August sun and stretching down into the valley below.
“You better hide in the maize and I’ll just graze at the edge of the track. It’ll look as if it’s something I do every day. Go on, I’ll be fine,”
Slinger slipped into the first few ranks of maize and within moments was hidden from the road. He found himself lying down on his back, gazing up at the dried heads of corn framed by a blue sky with high white clouds passing overhead. He heard the car and motorbikes approaching, the engines cut out and the sound of German voices drifting down from the road.
The ground beneath his back was warm, comforting, soft and secure. Safe in the arms of Mother Earth. Pacha Mama. He realised that he had not turned to her for help for a long time. Here he was an immortal, a warrior lying in a cornfield, hiding, while his Horse companion dealt with a bunch of Nazis whose presence in this valley might well have something to do with him. He was about to raise himself from his prone position to do what he wasn’t sure, when he heard a voice in German shouting orders, the car and bikes start up again and drive off up the track in the direction that he and the Horse had come from a few minutes before.
He waited for a long moment as the sound of the engines disappeared to be replaced by the hum of insects, the song of the birds high above him and the swish of a gentle wind through the maize stalks. A regular repetitive rhythm.
He rolled onto his front.
The sound of his heart against the ground echoing into the bones of the planet.
Like a hoop drum in the sweat lodge.
He began to journey.
His spirit left his body and travelled.
Quite spontaneously.
Out and into the lower world.
When he returned to feel the wind on his back and his chest pressed to the moist earth he sensed the Horse standing above him. He turned over and opened his eyes to see her long face gazing down at him.
“I wondered when you’d wake up”
“ I wasn’t sleeping. Lying here I started to journey. How long have I been away? ”
“ Not long. Probably not the best time to leave your body”
“I didn’t have any choice. You know how it is sometimes, it just happens”
“Anything interesting” she enquired.
“Yes, but I’ll tell you later. What about the Germans?”
He rose to stand next to the Horse resting his right hand on her mane while with his left he brushed himself down.
“Interesting. They didn’t stay long. 2 SS officers and a blonde woman I almost recognised........ in an open topped Mercedes with two outriders. BMWs I would say, nice bikes if a little muddy. Stopped by the side of the track. One of the officers got out and came across to me and, you know what, I think I recognised him as well.”
They had started to walk back out of the maize, across the field towards the track.
“What do you mean…recognise him?”
“I think it was Deke… Achon…whatever name he’s going by”
Slinger stopped walking.
“I thought you said he was an SS officer”
“I did. But he looked like Achon”
“Did he recognise you?”
“I don’t think so but he said something in German to me and, as you know, it’s one of those human languages that I’ve never quite got to grips with”.
They had reached the track and were walking along it in the direction they had been travelling before the arrival of the motorcade.
“Tell me what he said”
Slinger’s voice held an urgency that made the Horse stop.
“Hey just a moment, my cool Gunslinger, our intention is to reach Chartres and get into the cathedral. Anything else is pure distraction. OK? So why don’t you just chill a bit?”
She looked at the dusty figure by her side, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“If it was him I’d just like to know what he said and if he recognised you”
“Hardly. Last time we met I was a teenage boy on a train journey from York to Derby”
“Can you remember his exact words. The woman with him, you said you thought you recognised her. Who do you think she was.....?”
They were standing facing each other in the middle of the track, the maize fields sloping away down the valley framed by vineyards heavy with red grapes, the blue sky broken by dark clouds building up behind them.
“Too many questions at once and I think it’s going to rain. I can smell it coming from the North, heavy downpour with thunder and possibly hail stones. I suggest we head across the fields towards that wood, it may offer some shelter and to answer one of your questions he whispered in my ear
‘Du bist sehr weit weg von zuhause mein freund. Du bist sehr weit weg von zuhause’”
“I thought you didn’t speak German?”
“I don’t understand it but I have a perfect memory for words and sounds or had you forgotten? Come on I’ll answer the rest of your interrogation on the way down to those trees. You better get on my back or the rain will catch us before we reach shelter”
So the Horse with Slinger on her back set off at a fast canter around the edge of the maize field across an uncut meadow deep in sweet grass, cornflowers and bright red poppies. As they went she told him that No she hadn’t completely recognised the woman in the back seat of the staff car. Just a feeling that he knew her. She had been wearing sunglasses with a dark blue scarf over white blonde hair that fell to her shoulders. She and the other officer had been in the front seat next to the driver, the two of them had been talking, laughing and the Horse thought they had been drinking champagne. The officer, or Achon if it really had been him, had got out of the car and walked the few metres to the edge of the field where the Horse had been eating the clover that grew beside the maize and he spoke to her and so what did those words mean and by then they were almost in the woods when the thunderstorm caught up with them and the sky at mid morning had turned black and the valley had resounded with the sound of the thunder and the sheets of lightning had illuminated their faces and the vineyards and the maize and the trees whipped by the wind with crazy white light and Slinger had shouted at the top of his voice above the roar of the sudden wind and the peals of thunder…….
“‘You’re a long way from home my friend. ......You’re a long way from home’ But what’s he doing here in an SS uniform.....is he looking for us”
“Grupenfuhrer 1st Class with an Iron Cross”
The Horse had informed him though she had no need to raise her voice as the thunder and wind had now stopped completely as suddenly as they had started.
Then the first great drops of rain hit them as they were reaching the shelter of the wood getting them both soaked in the downpour. They were out of it by the time the chunks of hail arrived that continued for a mere 2 minutes then the storm was gone down the valley, the blue sky was back with the sun bright on the meadow steaming in the heat.
They sat in the wood for a while and ate some of the rough bread with goat’s cheese and sweet apples, Slinger drunk mouthfuls of the red wine that Francine had given them that morning before leaving the farm while the horse had drunk some fresh rainwater caught in the hollow of the large beech tree they were sitting under.
“Quelque chose de bon a manger pour le voyage mes petits.”
They had eaten and drunk without talking until Slinger had said.
“I think we should stick to the fields just in case. Are you sure you can get us to Chartres?”
The Horse had nodded and Slinger had begun to apologise for his behaviour earlier but she had cut him short and told him not to indulge himself. Save his energy for when they’d need it. So they had set off again through the woods of beech, oak trees and sweet chestnuts heavy with beech mast, acorns and chestnuts while the sun dried them as they walked on in silence towards the cathedral.
That was how they had continued, in silence, seeing noone else on the way. Slinger eating fruit and nuts off apple, walnut, plum and pear trees added to with some of the remaining bread, cheese, sausage and bacon that Madame Roget had given them. The Horse browsing fields of meadow grass, oats and maize. Both of them drinking fresh clear water from streams. Sleeping close to each other for warmth, Slinger wrapped in a heavy warm red blanket he’d found under the saddle bag that Francine must have put there
They slept well. The first night under the branches of a large oak not yet losing its leaves, the next night in a hay rick that formed part of a long line of harvested dry grass stretching across a field to the hedges beyond.
2 days later in the early evening they had stopped in a beech wood high on a hillside looking down the valley towards Chartres with the spires of its cathedral glistening in the late afternoon sun.
Medium high shot of backs of the Horse and Slinger with a fire in front and trees in near distance with daylight fading into the sunset.
Pull back slowly to reveal stand of beech trees and hillside sloping down towards Chartres.
Continue pull back and widen to include whole landscape.
Shot slowly zooms in towards cathedral fade through image of stained glass windows to black.