This chateau is a universe. We have long remarked on this, wandering through the halls that seem to go one forever, tower to tower, in the grounds, along the edge of the exterior walls. And to think it was once bigger, spanning across the bridge to the section my father erected, a section left for many years vacant and then dissembled when Chinon was defaced.
     When I walk through the chateau, each floor, each tower, late at night, as if I still had a castle full of guards, commanders, women old and young and their children to look after, as if I needed to clear my head after a day's long business, politics before sunrise and accounting by dusk, I can see it as it is, as I made it, and I can remember what it was like to walk through the ruins.
     My friends all thought I was crazy, to sink a fortune into this stone. You were the only one who understood why it had to be done and why I was the one who had to do it.
     I clasp my hands behind my back as I walk in silence, the Caravaggio in the vault, resting for the night. But all around me, amours, is the evidence of restoration.
     Old things... even I... made new again...
     It is impossible to walk these halls...
     To not think of my father and of my mother, of my brothers and my sisters, and of the one I truly miss of them all. What would you think, Aquitaine, if you were here.
     And I realize that I miss you, Richard. Isn't that strange...
     He has moved within the halls, throughout the Logis Royeaux, to Boissy, along the bridges crossing the inner moats, even along the orchard wall, passing the ever decaying dunjon, the only tower to lack his gift of restoration. And it is warm, summer peaking now in warm breezes, balmy air and short nights. So much of it has been spent underground this year.
     Henri has arrived at Chinon, with two new horses, both thoroughbreds of your own taste, two anniversary gifts. But then again, perhaps Henri was as well. It is no accident that the young man of Rouen, your husband's former capitol and royal seat, has been called to a position of favor -- returning to Chinon -- as Marco and Amadeo work with Augustin to get Chenonceau settled for the autumn.

     "You're wandering again," comes Ian's voice suddenly. If he has been there the entire time, it wasn't obvious. Around a corner, sitting on a wall, Ian's perhaps not too conspicuous. The lowering moon, the towers, the breezing trees. And he? A startling figure, with hands on the stone wall where he sits. Anchors at either side of him.
     "And missing them all too," Ian grins, having felt the energy. He doesn't need telepathy. Your emotions tell him all he needs to know. Dressed in green slacks and beige shirt, the night sky turns Ian's wardrobe into darkness. Little light, little color.
     But his face. No sunlight is needed. It has a radiance of its own. White-blonde hair drapes at his shoulders, turning upwards at his collar. Grey eyes are luminscent, and his teeth shine when he smiles. A little longer than most nights, but what would one expect of the undead?
     "I'm sure they miss you too," Ian affirms, inhaling as he lets his hands relax at his lap. "Birthdays do this, yes? Anniversaries..." he smiles, knowing of the recent arrivals.

     I started with the foundations first. I rebulit entire towers, stone by stone the masons restored it according to my sketches and to my plans. And to my memory. I am fortunate to have an engineer's memory. I sold copies of Rembrandt to pay for this. And, later, Monet. I sold a couple of originals, only to have them stolen back later when I needed to recoup my losses...
     He was so in his thoughts that your proximity went unnoticed, and appearing now, startling as you are, your voice sudden, William actually flinches with surprise for a second, dark eyes lifting from the view, from his thoughts, flashing to you. And then there is the slight upturn of his lips. "I need to put a bell around your neck," he murmurs.
     William halts his nightly wandering, stopping to sit upon the adjacent stone. He looks across his river and vallley, across the sweep of his chateau, surveying his thoughts as much as the vistas, and then he looks to you. "Not all of them," he replies honestly. His thoughts didn't tarry long on John, nor on Henry The Young King, whom he barely knew, really.
     His own clothes, a nice black suit tonight with a white shirt, very classic, dissolves in the darkness, the white of his shirt showing only but barely showing in the moonlight. "It is strange, sometimes. When I think of years, perhaps. Maybe anniversaries and birthdays," his recently passed again, impossible not to mark because it is the longest day of the year, "... should not be spent in old castles." He laughs at this genuinely and easily, beautified. But then he exhales, shrugs and grins. Where else, amours, would we be?
     "I think of him from time to time," he continues quietly, looking from you to the valley. "I was five, I think... yes... and Richard was sixteen. We were here and Thomas Beckett had been murdered...that is my first recollection of this... enormity I call my home. How strange a thing it is to be able to remember a place when you were five, to then walk through the ruins of it centuries later, only to have it rebuilt with your own hands..."
     And William shakes his head, looking to you. He smiles. "You are amazed, yes, that I can be so stunned and simultaneously be so old?"

     "No," Ian grins, looking ahead. "Just that you still miss them all so much -- even John," he nudges gently. For his part, he cannot even say his mother's name. "I like old castles," Ian confesses. "They are the only remnants of a world I was born in and that has now left me. The few castles that exist, that are home, I have to be in them. So, for me, I cannot think of a better place to be for those important nights, than in a castle. Where else would mean anything to me?"
     "But you are different," Ian murmurs. The Vienne wanders below in quiet at this distance.
     "Becket. Richard." Ian glances over at you. "That was your time, yes?" he acknowledges. His age is not so nearly romanticized. It is a lost age. Called dark. Unknown. There were 'hordes' and 'Vikings'. Terms not so nearly defined as 'chivalric'. "I'd be worried about you, laird, if you did not recall such a glamorous life. And miss those of your family."

     "Even John," William admits quietly, with a sidelong look to you. "You are right. The anchors in one's life first are family." A pause. "No matter who they are. You find other things over time. A lover. Politics. I am fine without the politics. I have been thinking of that, too. I have... plenty of time to think while working to repair the painting. My mind wanders. Tonight, I thought I'd join it." He smiles at himself.
     He is quiet for a time, listening to the wind move by, taking a moment to merely sense you beside him. A hand reaches out and lands against your leg. "I would like to return to Strathfayr for Christmas. I know... we have months before we need to think of it really, but I would like to ...go home..." To his other home. "Here, it would only be raining and muddy," he chuckles, "It would not be much to see. We go to Scotland, spend the winter and the spring, and then... I will be returning here in the late spring to resume my work."
     The work he speaks of in only the most general of terms...
     I remember it was a great place to be a child. I think now of how fortunate I was, not the wounded memories of an upset son, but the full memories of a long-lived man, who was once a boy lucky to hide among the folds of Eleanor's golden gowns, chase her peacocks, and for a few years have the fullest of her attention. A large family, and if we had not all been so lusty perhaps we would have loved one another just a little more. The lessons, amours, that I have learned in eight-hundred and forty-seven years.

     "Home is good," Ian nods, hand landing on top of yours. "Winter and spring at home...I have not seen home in spring in a year or two, is it?" Fingers curl gently.
     "You shouldn't be so melancholy," he adds, grin toothy. "It's summer, and we can go riding now." With the arrived horses. "Or...we could...take a drive and go for a swim." In someone's lake. "Maybe your cos would not drive up to frighten us this time?"

     "I need to do something other than restore old paintings," he grins up at the sky and then to you. Indigo sparkles, suddenly, in a wink, violet visible in the darkness. "I need to run around, ride around, go hunting for God's sake. Activity. Activity would be good."
     Am I melancholy? He wonders for a moment in silence. He looks to you, peering And then he smiles, hands placed on his thighs. A moment later finds him rising. "I only know one cure for melancholy," he mentions with a slowly spreading smile. "A fast ride..."
     Restoration. Restoration makes me think. Thinking makes me remember. Remembering makes me quiet. Quiet. You know how I am with quiet...
     William holds out a hand to you.

Posted by rowan at September 18, 2003 10:56 PM