The Witch Hunter Chronicles: Hunted

After changing into dry clothes and an emergency stop for caffeine and chocolate, it was a quick thirty-minute drive north to the city of Blaye. Once a busy trading hub, Blaye is now famous for the remains of a Citadel that was built in the 1600’s to defend the ports along the river Garonne against English pirates. In 2008 the Citadel became a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a sort of low-key tourist attraction.

“It’s strange seeing a castle in the middle of a residential neighborhood,” Jordan added.

The walls of the Citadel were giant blocks of tan stone, piled up to the height of a three-story building. Marc drove for three blocks before we’d traveled the entire length of the wall and made it to the front gate. He followed the sign onto a gravel road and found a free spot in the almost-full parking area.

“It looks a little busy to be digging up corpses,” I said.

“We’re not digging up anything,” Marc replied. “There’s a hidden passage.”

“It looks a little busy to be traversing secret passages and molesting corpses,” Jordan added.

Marc turned around in his seat. “You two are exhausting.”

“Not the first time hearing this,” Jordan agreed.

He sighed and continued, “We’ll come back and search after dark. This is a scouting mission.”

“You hear that Kenz,” Jordan said, nudging me with his elbow. “We’re on our first mission.”

We piled out of the car and then popped open the trunk and began searching for warmer clothes. The sun was still up, but a breeze was picking up and fog was beginning to roll in off the river.

“And what are the mission parameters, hermano?” Lucía asked. She slipped on an old grey sweatshirt of her mom’s that said Hawaii 1984 on the front.

“Well, Roland was buried in the St Roman’s Basilica, but that was destroyed by Viking’s almost a thousand years ago,” Marc said. “Then in the 1600’s, this citadel was built over some of the old ruins. We need to find what’s left because that’s where the secret tunnel is. The other-”

He stopped as some legitimate tourists, a middle-aged couple and a teenaged boy staring at an iPhone screen, walked past on their way back to their car.

Does that kid have a churro?

I elbowed Jordan.

“I see it,” he said. He handed me a black hoodie and tucked a windbreaker under his arm. “Didn’t you just eat about a pound of chocolate.”

“Your point?” I answered.

He smirked and said, “When we’re elderly and you have diabetes, I’m not taking you to your dialysis appointments.”

I shrugged. “Fair enough.”

Marc continued, “The other thing we need to find is a Echauguette, which is a fancy name for a statue I think.”

“Does this place have one Echauguette or a number of them,” Lucía asked.

“That is an excellent question,” Marc replied. “Perhaps you could be in charge of Echauguette knowledge acquisition going forward.”

She sighed and pulled out her phone.

Marc seemed to be trying to decide between hoodies, so I helped him by saying, “Not the red.”

“Blue it is then,” Marc replied. He closed the rear hatch, offered me his arm, and said, “Shall we?”

“Oh, so fancy,” I said as I wrapped my arm in his and added a kiss on the cheek. He didn’t object.

“It’s not a statue,” Lucía said, frowning at our little display. “An Echauguette is a little tower that an archer could safely stand in and shoot at invaders.”

“See, I made the right choice putting you in charge of this,” Marc replied. “Did you find out if there’s more than one?”

She grumbled and went back to her internet research as we walked towards the entrance.

As we were leaving the gravel lot, Jordan pointed towards a sign and asked, “Is that the name of the place we’re looking for?”

It was in French, but the words St Roman’s Basilica were obvious, and the arrow was pointing away from the entrance.

“Anyone read French?” I asked.

Head shakes all around.

“It’s probably just saying the Basilica is in the back,” Jordan said.

We all agreed out of laziness and continued to the Citadel entrance. We crested a small green hill and came to what could only be described as a moat. A skinny stone bridge spanned the moat and ended at a section of wall with an opening big enough for a small car to pass through. Above the passage was a tall, square tower with a clock mounted in the center.

“Did a king used to live here?” Jordan asked. He looked at me. “Were you the king?” I shrugged.

“Not that I know of,” Marc answered. “This was built to protect the town from sea raiders. Some of the original village is still supposed to be inside.”

A large red door stood open at the entrance.

“We can just walk in?” Jordan asked. Lucía nodded. “I can’t believe there’s no admission fee,” he said. “It’s so un-American.”

“That’s precisely why there’s no fee,” Lucía answered.

Touché.

We stepped through the doorway and traveled back hundreds of years into the past. Mostly. In addition to the quaint stone buildings, an old convent and walls that seemed to go on for miles, there were tourists with camera phones and a gift shop with electric lighting selling postcards, t-shirts, and glow sticks. There were more kids eating churros, so somewhere on the premises there was a snack bar. In its heyday it must have been a bustling little town, but there were more ruins than buildings now.

“Where do we even start?” Jordan asked. Before I could answer, he turned to me and added, “And don’t even say at the churro stand.”

“I wasn’t going to,” I lied.

He didn’t look convinced.

“There’s way too much area in here for us blunder around randomly,” Marc added. “We need a plan.”

“Why don’t we just take the official tour,” she said.

***

“Does this look like an Echauguette?” Marc asked.

We’d traveled through the convent, past ruined courtyards, up and down various sections of wall. There may have been some discrete kissing at times, but no sign of an Abby. Towards the end of the tour, we came across a pod-shaped decorative feature about my height and about three times as thick where two of the walls intersected. Topping the unconfirmed Echauguette was a trophy-sized version of that weird symbol the Boy Scouts use.

“It’s too small to fit an archer,” Lucía answered. “Maybe it’s a decorative Echauguette?”

“Whatever it’s called, it seems to be a hit with the tourists,” Jordan said. People were jostling for space to take pics. He pulled out his phone and added, “I’m gonna grab a selfie.”

“Hey Fredo,” Marc asked, “Is that thing an Echauguette?”

Our gangly, twenty-something tour guide in the MGMT T-shirt answered, “Um, maybe? It’s called a bastion in the training handbook. Usually, people just ask me where we sell the churros.”

“My friend over there was just asking where the churros lived,” I turned and pointed at Jordan. His face was sandwiched between two really cute boys as they snapped pics from various angles.

How does he make friends everywhere he goes? I’ve never even met any of my neighbors, and I’ve lived in the same house my whole life.

“Oh, is that right?” Lucía said.

“Yes, in fact, it is, Lucía,” I said. Somehow, I kept a straight face. Mostly.

“It’s on the street behind the convent,” Fredo replied. “They’re the best.”

“Any chance that training manual of yours mentioned St Roman’s Basilica?” Lucía asked.

“Wow, you guys ask a lot of tuff questions,” Fredo said. “Honestly, I mostly skimmed through it. You know who might know?”

After a pause than went on a little too long, Lucía said, “No, but I’m hoping you’ll tell us, Fredo.”

“Sure man, no problem,” Fredo replied. “My boss Vincent has been here forever. I think he’s an archeologist or a geologist or something like that. His office is right across from the churro stand. He’s kind of crusty though. You may want to bring him a churro if you’re going to ask him a bunch of annoying questions.”

Fifteen minutes and five churro purchases later, we arrived outside of Vincent’s office. It was located behind the gift shop, in one of the stone buildings that was part of the original village. The sign on the door said, “Employees Only.”

“I’m not sure we can go in,” I said.

“We’re here to raid a tomb and steal priceless relics,” Marc said. “This is mild in comparison.”

“She just wants to eat his churro,” Jordan said.

I glared out of principal, but he wasn’t wrong. I’d eaten mine way too fast.

Lucía did at least knock, and I did my part by looking sheepish when I peeked my head through the door. The man I assumed was Vincent was sitting at a green metal desk scowling at his computer. He was a big man in every way – arms, shoulders, belly – aged somewhere in is sixties, with a thick shock of curly grey hair and a ruddy complexion.

The room was furnished in a cheap modern style, with mismatched filing cabinets and a couple of unoccupied desks. Every surface was covered with magazines, newspapers, or file folders of some kind. Either the man didn’t hear us come in or he chose to ignore us, because he didn’t look up from his computer.

“Wow, this place definitely isn’t part of the tour,” Marc said as he entered.

“I would have thought the sign would have given that fact away,” the man replied gruffly, though, still, without looking up. His voice was deep and husky, and his English had a think French accent to it.

Jordan cleared his throat and said, “Excuse me sir, we’re sorry to bother you.” The man had glasses perched on the tip of his nose, and he finally looked up and focused on me over the tops of his frames. “We were told you knew where everything was around here-”

“The churros are on the far side of the square,” he said in a resigned sort of way, then he pushed his glasses back up and went back to using the keyboard hunt-and-peck style with his index fingers.

“No, we’re not looking for churros sir. It’s the Abbey of St Roman that we’re trying to find,” Lucìa said.

That got his attention. He pushed his keyboard aside with mild contempt, sat back in his creaky wooden chair, and actually smiled at us.

“Well now, why didn’t you just say so? I’m always happy to talk with another history buff.”

I took that moment to take a bite of Vincent’s churro. A bribe wasn’t going to be necessary.

He squinted over his readers and continued, “And ones so young. Most of the kids that come here just want to take self-portraits from the south tower.” We must have looked confused because he added, “You know, with their little mobile phones.”

“Like this, you mean?” Jordan asked, as he made duck lips and snapped a pick of himself. “It’s called a selfie.”

He waved the explanation away with his hand. “So, what is your interest in the old Abbey?”

Marc took that moment to stand next to me and test out his arm around my shoulder. I thought it worked just fine.

I know that love is just hormones confusing our primitive lizard brains, but I never knew how convincing those hormones could be.

“We learned about Sir Roland in our Western Civ class last semester, and since we were here on holiday anyway, we were hoping to see his tomb,” Lucía lied with flawless grace. “The sign in the parking lot says it’s in here, but none of the employees seem to know where it is.”

“Well, that sign is a bit of a misnomer,” the man said. “It’s actually pointing to the grassy area outside. The east wall was built over the back end of the Abbey in the 1700’s. The rest lies outside the wall.”

“And the tombs,” I asked.

“They were emptied by Francois the First in 1562,” he explained. “The old catacomb tunnels started to cave in in the 1900’s, and since this was well before the area was declared a World Heritage Site, and there was no money to make the tunnels safe, they were filled in with sand.”

“One other question, sir,” Jordan said. “What’s that feature in the corner of the south wall? The one with the fleur-de-lis on its crown.”

“That’s the Echauguette – which is just a fancy French word for a turret. They were originally enclosed structures in the corners of a castle where an archer could defend a large area while being completely protected. By the time the Citadel was built, they were added as decorative features. I’m not sure why we only have the one. Anyway, now it’s just the place where the kids take their...” he paused a moment, searching for the word, “selfers.”

“Almost,” Jordan said. He opened the door and said, “Well sir, we should let you get back to your work.”

The man scowled at his keyboard. “Yes, I suppose. Oh, do make sure to get one of those churros.” He patted his stomach. “You can trust the word of a fat man when it comes to food. They’re excellent.”

I couldn’t argue with that.