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amberdreamsBack to Part 1
“You swear very prettily in French for a British soldier,” a deep voice said, sounding both amused and curious. Jared spun round, his heart jumping in his chest. It was Pygmalion’s statue, the crazy Adonis, who now looked even more beautiful, lit by sunlight and newly dressed in… what on earth was that? Jared blinked in disbelief as he absorbed the sight before him.
Adonis was dressed in a form fitting, single piece white suit embroidered with sequins that shot off tiny sparkles of light in all directions as his chest rose and fell with the rhythm of each breath. His eyes were outlined with black, making them appear even larger, and Jared could have sworn the green of Adonis’ irises was flecked with gold dust. The living statue looked as though he’d just stepped out of a fairy tale circus into real life.
“I’m Jensen,” Adonis was saying, holding out his hand. For an absurd moment, good manners took over and Jared thrust out his own hand to shake Adonis’ – no – Jensen’s offered hand.
“Private Jared Padalecki. Pleased to meet you.”
“You speak very good French, Private Jared Padalecki” Jensen observed. Jared blushed.
“I speak German too,” he said, then babbled on a little in case Jensen thought he was boasting, “It’s nothing special, just one of the consequences of having parents who were in the diplomatic services…”
He trailed off into sadness at the memory of his strict, long-deceased father and his recently-deceased mother. Jensen was looking at him with sympathy, as if he could read Jared’s mind, and Jared realised with a fresh jolt of embarrassment that they were still holding hands. This absurdly beautiful man was addling Jared’s brain. It was as if, here in Belleville, madness was contagious.
A small crowd was gathering around them, murmuring excitedly about the King returning. It was that same nonsense that had scared off the Germans in the asylum and made Jared wish he’d been a little more careful with his choice of an alias.
Jared’s shoulders slumped. He had totally failed to find this blessed bunker, or deduce what the cryptic statement about the knight meant. He was starting to wonder if the late Monsieur Bresson had been drunk, or maybe the wireless operator had totally misheard the spy’s message, because it just seemed a meaningless phrase pulled at random from one of Jared’s Grandmother’s games of ad-libs. He looked at the cheerful faces of the escaped asylum inmates and realised he could at least do one useful deed. He could rescue these innocent souls from the certain destruction of their town, since it seemed he had failed so miserably at preventing it.
If it meant playing to present company’s shared delusion then so be it. Jared wasn’t very good at staying down in the dumps anyway, having far too optimistic a nature for his own good. He brightened at the thought of taking positive action and straightened his spine. He would do his best to assume a regal aspect, though he feared he just looked ridiculous.
“My dear citizens!” Jared said, then repeated it louder to make himself heard over the general hubbub. “Citizens of Belleville! I, the King of Hearts…”
He didn’t have an opportunity to say any more, even though he’d had half a bonnie speech ready in his head, because his citizens had, it seems, been waiting for the moment he’d announce himself to erupt into a celebration. One of the men had procured a horse from somewhere, and there was much cheering and shouting while many hands helped Jared onto its unsaddled broad back. Fortunately the horse was a sturdy animal, it must have had some carthorse blood, Jared thought. It was not only broad backed but tall enough for Jared’s long legs not to brush the ground as it ambled off.
Jared’s initial perturbation faded as the joyous crowd flowed around him in a river of colour and happiness. Jensen jogged alongside, resting one warm hand on Jared’s knee, and after a few minutes, Jared couldn’t help relaxing into the moment, laughter bubbling up inside him. Someone started singing ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag’ or at least a French version of it, and after a bar or two, everyone joined in, Jared singing the English words as he didn’t know this French version. He steered the parade down the narrow streets towards the shelled out gap where the medieval gate had been, and was bellowing out the lyrics so loudly he missed the moment when his entourage began to peel away. One by one they drifted off, like dandelion seeds caught in a breeze.
By the time they passed through the gap in the town walls, only Jensen remained at Jared’s side. The sound of the big guns became clear in the distance, an assault on the mind as much as on the ear. Jared’s singing faltered then stopped all together as he realised the comforting weight of Jensen’s hand had disappeared from his leg, and he and the white horse were moving forward alone.
He twisted around and there was Jensen, a lone figure stopped a mere twenty steps outside of Belleville’s gate. It was twenty steps none of the other folk had been able to take. The white of his costume appeared grey in the dust-laden daylight; the sequins’ sparkle tarnished and dull. Jared could see that Jensen’s face had acquired a pallor that reminded him of the corpses that littered the trenches after a foray. Behind Jensen, the other inmates lined the high walls or stood within the shadow of the broken archway of the gate as if the wooden doors that had protected the town from invaders for centuries were still in place and were closed.
Then even the horse came to a halt, head hanging down as if Jared was now a weight too heavy to bear. Jared slid off the horse’s back, and the white gelding immediately trotted happily back into the town, with a swish of its tail, as if it too had never wanted to leave.
“But. But if you stay here, you will all die,” Jared said, despairingly. Jensen didn’t move, forcing Jared to close the gap between them, each footstep feeling heavy as lead. Jensen gave Jared a look that was both sorrowful and pleading as he gestured towards the never-ceasing sounds of the bombardment.
“There is nothing but sound and fury out there, Jared. That world is full of anger and wicked people. We’d rather stay here.”
Jared looked out over the devastated remains of once fertile farmland towards the pall of smoke that hung heavy on the horizon in every direction. He thought about Jeff, drowning in a mud-filled shell hole in the pouring rain, cold and alone. He thought about his mother’s terrible, all-consuming grief for her eldest son and how it had destroyed her; about his commanding officer who didn’t even know that Jared wasn’t his brother; about his lovely pigeons and how their lives had been put on the line for a cause their tiny brains could never understand. He thought about all his friends and comrades whose lives had also been sacrificed as if they were worth even less than a common bird. At least killing a carrier pigeon merited a fine; a simple soldier was just cannon fodder.
Jared looked over his shoulder, tried to imagine going back to his trench, leaving these crazy people to die here, clinging onto their silly fantasies. They were dooming themselves by staying, but it was their own choice, wasn’t it? Why should Jared care? He half turned, trying to convince himself he should return to his regiment, but something was tugging at him like one of his pigeons being called home, pulling him inexorably back towards the little French town.
Whether it was a sense of honour, or not wanting to leave a task unfinished, or simply fatalism that said that it was a route to certain death whichever option he chose, Jared didn’t know. But whatever it was, it made him turn his back on the outside world and take another step towards Jensen.
Jensen didn’t even realise how badly he had wanted Jared to stay until the tall British soldier turned around and moved towards him.
It made no sense at all, and yet all the sense in the world for Jensen to stretch up onto his toes to bridge that last tiny gap between them, and kiss any negative words away from Jared’s parted lips.
When Jensen pulled away, a round of applause rang out around them.
“Bravo, bravo! Encore!”
To Jensen’s satisfaction, Jared was looking adorably flushed and infinitely distracted. It would take a stronger man than Jensen to resist that look, so Jensen didn’t even try. He stepped back in close, grabbed Jared’s head and kissed him again to a chorus of encouragement from the residents of des Autres.
“A wedding! A royal wedding!”
Jensen wasn’t sure who started the cry, but the idea was greeted with enthusiasm by the growing crowd. Someone grasped one of his hands, then he and Jared were being pulled reluctantly apart. Everyone was running down the narrow streets towards the town square, and it seemed that before Jensen could blink the Gothic arches of St Finbar’s nave were soaring up above their heads like the ribs of Jonah’s whale.
At the first soft touch of Jensen’s lips all Jared’s anxiety stilled, as if he was inhaling nitrous oxide gas instead of air. He could feel the shape of Jensen’s smile against his lips, warm and full of promise. All his muscles turned to toffee as every scrap of tension, uncertainty and resistance fled, chased away by Jensen’s tongue as he pushed Jared’s lips open and tentatively explored his mouth.
He was vaguely aware of being surrounded by cheering people, then he was being half-dragged, half-shoved along the street. Their jubilation was so infectious, his only concern was that he’d been separated from the first, best, only kiss of his nearly nineteen years.
Sadly, once inside the dimly lit, cool interior of the church, Jared’s senses (or his sensibility) began to seep back into his bones with a pervasive and depressing dampness.
The Duchess and Monsieur Marguerite had raided the florist’s; there was a rainbow of petals scattered on the worn stone flags of the floor, more fluttered in the air like tropical butterflies, thrown by the impromptu congregation. The Bishop was resplendent in gold and purple, looking every inch the part since his raid on the Vestry.
“The bells!” The Bishop cried, waving his arms wildly. “We must have bells for a wedding!’
“The bells have gone,” Jensen said sorrowfully from beside Jared. “We shall have to do without. The only bell left in town won’t sound until the Knight strikes it a midnight.”
Jared started. “What? What did you say?” He spun around and grabbed Jensen by both arms.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know the English,” Jensen began, but Jared interrupted, too impatient to be polite any more.
“Just repeat what you said about the bells, quick!”
“I said there are no bells, the soldiers stole them three years ago for the war effort…”
“No, no, no, about the Knight striking at midnight, you said he struck at midnight, what is that? What does it mean?”
Jensen was staring at Jared as if he was mad, and Jared was too caught up in the excitement to find that ironic.
“It’s just the Town Hall clock, Jared. There is a mechanical knight who comes out once a day at midnight to strike the bell in the clock tower…wait! Where are you going?”
“To defuse the bomb!” Jared yelled over his shoulder as he ran out of the church as fast as he could.
“What bomb?” Jensen asked nobody in particular, and was met with a chorus of Gallic shrugs.
Jensen looked around, momentarily at a loss, then turned and ran after Jared. If there really was a bomb, perhaps Jared would need some help.
Very early in this war one invader or the other, Belleville neither knew nor cared, had stolen her cathedral’s ancient brass bells. Metal was precious, but Belleville wasn’t interested in these men’s shortage of ore, or their petty conflict, she just missed the sound of her bells ringing. So she watched with concern as well as interest when the kilted stranger started climbing La Mairie’s clock tower towards the last remaining bell in town. A minute or so after the kilted one began his ascent she saw one of her own children stepping out from a high window in Madame Bovary’s elegant town house across the square onto one of the new-fangled telegraph wires. If she’d had eyebrows, she’d have raised them.
Belleville was made of brick and cobbles and limestone, but even she could suffer hurt, and she was all too aware of the fragility of the humans who she sheltered. It was hard to watch as one of them deliberately put his already short life at risk. It was reckless, feckless and incomprehensible. Her attention was divided between wondering what the kilted one was doing and worrying that the pretty sparkly boy (Jensen, she recalled, his name was Jensen) would plunge to his death at any moment as he inched along the high wire. She noted with bemusement the huge smile on Jensen’s face, which was, to be frank, inexplicable. But then all her centuries of existence hadn’t really helped her understand half the human behaviour she witnessed within her walls, so there was nothing new there.
The two men reached the belfry at almost the same time via their different routes. A few moments of conversation was followed by the pair wielding a pair of wire cutters and for some reason, wresting the mace out of the mechanical knight’s hand. It appeared that their mysterious business was concluded because they sealed the activity with a couple of rounds of passionate kisses that Belleville highly approved of. Both men gave the impression that they were highly satisfied with both the kissing and the success of their mission, as there was some joyful whooping and more embracing, all of which looked highly precarious in that elevated position.
Belleville was briefly puzzled over a moment of stillness between the two men, but she was distracted by some new activity in the square below. The small crowd of spectators was parting to allow the passage of six men holding a large tarpaulin. After some more shouting and much gesticulation, Jensen and the Kilted man held hands and leaped off the Clock Tower, landing with a bounce on the stretched tarpaulin. Belleville had never seen such a thing in all her long life, and was very impressed. The ladies in the crowd seemed equally impressed, though their interest was more engaged by the view when the wide kilt flared like a silk parachute on the way down, providing everyone below with quite a spectacle.
One moment Jared was kissing like he would never have enough of it, which was certainly true for Jensen, but the next moment Jared was pulling away, albeit with a show of great reluctance.
“I have to get a message to my unit,” Jared explained. Jensen nodded his understanding, though he really didn’t want to think about what lay beyond the confines of Belleville’s walls. He’d been out there one time too many and had come back broken, with the lingering smell of Death in his nostrils. Now there was no kissing to distract him, and from their vantage point at the top of the clock tower, Jensen could already see and hear too much. From up there, Jensen could see how smoke lay leaden over the land, obscuring the deep scarring of the trenches but concealing nothing of the devastation the war was causing. The heat of the summer sun had parched the bare earth where there should be fertile fields. The sunlight was highlighting the deep fissures and casting the cratered shell holes into darkest shadow. In the killing fields there was no colour but drab, a monotony broken only by the occasional glint of steel and rust like dried blood.
Imperceptibly, Jensen’s body began to shake. He gripped onto the stone tracery as the trembling spread as insidiously as the memories that were flashing into his head. He was running, terror ahead and behind him, then he was flying through the air, deafened and blind, pitched headlong into darkness and black cloying mud. He was waking soaked through and frozen with the taste of blood and soil and excrement in his mouth, unable to move anything but his eyes, the mud sucking at his limbs, swallowing him whole…
“Jensen! Jen, please,” a voice was calling his name… not Misha, not one of his regiment…no. Warm hands were wrapped around his biceps, warm breath touched his cheek, alongside the comforting brush of sunlight. Gradually Jensen began see summer instead of gore in the veil of red covering his eyes. Slowly he allowed them to open.
Down below he could hear the sound of cheering. It was almost loud enough to drown out the distant booming of the big mortars, and in front of him was Jared’s concerned face, thrust so close that their noses were almost touching. Jensen’s trembling finally started to subside. Jared was large enough to blot out the rest of the world. When Jared kissed him this time, Jensen kept his eyes wide open, fixed on the clean, pure blue of the sky.
Flinging themselves off the tower into a tarpaulin that looked the size of a handkerchief from that height was madness and exhilarating and the perfect way to wipe out the memory of his fear. He landed breathless from laughing at Jared who had screamed like a little girl all the way down.
Jensen followed Jared at a run back to La Maison to retrieve the birds, then followed him again, back to the town square. He found Jared a pencil and paper to scribble two duplicated messages, one for Ruby to carry and one for Meg, while watching every expression that chased across Jared’s face, memorising every nuance. He watched the affectionate way Jared tended his birds, cupping each one gently in those big hands, before flinging them into the air to soar high above the grey slate rooftops. He catalogued the way Jared’s eyes changed from blue to grey to green to tawny gold, the colour depending how the light hit them; he memorised the sweep of that upturned nose, the angle of those high cheekbones, the chestnut glints in his hair, the placement of every mole. He stored every image, their colours bright and fresh as a new oil painting.
Jensen absorbed it all in silence and his heart never stopped singing, even though he knew every flap of those departing wings brought his time with Jared closer to an end.
He’d give into the sadness when Jared was gone, but for now, he’d enjoy every moment they had left.
Belleville wouldn’t normally have taken note of the flight of a bird over her walls, but she couldn’t help but notice when a gunshot shattered the stone head of the statue of the Virgin Mary that had watched over the north road into the town since 1645. The bullet had committed this act of sacrilege against both Virgin and town after it passed through the now sadly deceased-pigeon. Belleville watched as the bird plummeted to the ground in a bloody mess of feathers near the feet of the German sniper that had fired the shot. The sniper bent down and unravelled a thin strip of paper that had been tied to the pigeon’s leg. He stood for a moment silently reading, before turning to run back towards the German lines.
Belleville thought this probably didn’t bode well.
She was right.
“Come with me,” Jensen said, taking hold of Jared’s hand in a way that was at once shocking and yet utterly familiar. Jared didn’t think to question, he just went. His girls were gone and soon enough his unit would be marching through Belleville’s southern gates to reclaim him along with the town . Until then, Jared didn’t want to think about being Private Padalecki. He’d done his duty; the town was safe for now, or as safe as it could be in the midst of the war to end all wars.
Now, Jared had the attention of the most beautiful man in the world, and no intention of wasting a single moment. He was so focused on Jensen that he barely registered his surroundings as Jensen led him through a doorway and began ascending a dark wooden staircase. In the room below, someone had uncovered a piano and the strains of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in E Major accompanied them up the stairs. It added to Jared’s feeling of having stepped into another world where dreams could come true, and the light urgency of the tripping notes wove their way through Jared’s fingers as he fumbled with the fastenings on Jensen’s circus costume. The touch of Jensen’s fingers was burning Jared’s skin wherever it landed, and he was breathing as heavily as if he’d just run the gauntlet of machine gun fire across No Man’s Land.
“I’ve never…” he said, but was silenced by the gentle press of Jensen’s lips warm against his own. With nothing to distract him now, Jared gave himself up to the wonderful sensation, willingly opening his mouth to Jensen’s probing tongue. His legs turned to water and he mindlessly allowed Jensen to steer him backwards through another doorway until the backs of his knees hit something yielding. Without ever breaking their kiss, Jensen pressed Jared down into an enveloping softness of lace and duck-down. Somehow, Jensen had found them a bed, and Jared was already half-naked, his thick khaki jacket and white uniform shirt gone, boots kicked off. He was on his back, sinking into the mattress with only his rucked up kilt and long woollen socks left on, neither of which concealed anything of note. He had a brief moment of embarrassment as his penis gaily saluted the world, then Jensen was lowering himself down on top of Jared. The touch of the bare skin of Jensen’s chest on his own electrified him, and Jared was lost.
Afterwards, Jared lay with his head cushioned on Jensen’s broad chest, while Jensen’s long skilful fingers stroked his hair. He didn’t care that their skin was stuck together with sweat and other bodily fluids. He didn’t care that when he’d finally regained enough of his senses to look around he saw that the room Jensen had chosen had half of its outer wall missing, leaving them exposed in more way than one. Evidently this house had been blown away by artillery some time ago, as the bed they lay on smelt damp and musty as a result of being exposed to the elements for so long. Still, none of that mattered as Jared fell asleep to the even rhythm of Jensen’s heartbeat, accompanied by the soothing melodies from the piano still being played in the room below. He’d never felt so cherished.
Of course, such contentment couldn’t last.
Jared was startled into wakefulness some unknown amount of time later by the unwelcome sound of marching feet, hobnails loud on the street outside. He sat up hurriedly, scrabbling around for his discarded clothing. Jensen was sitting in a rain-stained armchair, already wearing his circus costume and an air of feigned detachment.
“Oh bollocks!” Jared said, then apologised as if his grandmother was listening “’Scuse my French.” Which elicited a reluctant sounding, wry chuckle from Jensen.
Jared hopped about on one leg then the other while he forced his feet into half-unlaced boots, hoping that the missing wall wasn’t exposing his efforts (and more) to the troop below. By the time Jensen took pity on him and had helped him find his undershirt, uniform shirt and top it all off with his jacket, the last row of British soldiers was disappearing around the corner of the street, on their way into the town square.
Jared clattered down the stairs and out into the street, with Jensen close behind him. As his boots hit the cobbles he stopped dead, so suddenly that Jensen bumped into him. Jared spun around and grabbed Jensen, holding onto the other man’s arms with a death-like grip. Jensen never even winced, though Jared knew he was probably leaving bruises.
“I don’t want to go.” Jared said, trying not to sound like a four-year-old child being sent to school for the first time.
Jensen looked up at Jared, eyes wide with sympathy.
“I know.”
Jared sighed and leant his head down until his forehead rested on Jensen’s. Jensen’s arms wound round Jared, pulling him in close.
“But you have to go back, and so do we. The townsfolk will return to their houses as soon as your regiment gives the all clear, and my family is going back home to La Maison as we speak. I will join them when you and I are done saying goodbye, and then everything will be back to normal.”
Jared gave a bitter little laugh and held Jensen tighter, his words muffled by Jensen’s shoulder and full of unshed tears.
“Normal? Killing and dying in a muddy field full of wire and shell holes?”
“Oh Jay, that isn’t an everyday thing, you know that. One day the war will be over, but when it is, I’ll still be other, just a crazy person shut away here in La Maison des Autres. You will go home to Scotland, to be with your family, to live a happy life.”
There was so much wrong with that statement: Jared didn’t know where to start. It was only the memory of his brother that gave him the strength to step out of the safety of Jensen’s embrace, ready to do the right thing and re-join his regiment.
He walked slowly towards the square, only to realise as he reached the corner that Jensen wasn’t by his side. When he turned around and looked back, the street was empty.
The citizens of Belleville had begun gathering at her edges, clutching their belongings, eager to see their homes again. The others, the faithful ones who had stayed with the town when the rest had deserted her, were shedding their borrowed robes like moulting tropical birds, leaving sad splashes of colour as they wended their way through Belleville’s streets back towards the asylum. In the town square, a small troop of kilted soldiers was marching down one side of the bunkhouse, blissfully unaware that at that very moment, a similar-sized troop of grey-clad German soldiers marched in the opposite direction on the other side of the concrete structure. The noise of their own metal-studded boots drowned out the sounds of the enemy, while the bulk of the bunker shielded them from each other.
The air in Belleville’s streets stilled as if she was holding her breath, as it seemed for a moment that the two armies would pass from her square without ever realising their proximity. But at the last second, one man looked around and caught sight of the enemy soldiers. The commanders on both sides started yelling. The troops formed up into orderly lines, facing each other across the empty space. Belleville had seen humans do many strange and unaccountable things over her long life, but even she could not believe that these men were going to do battle with each other in so exposed a position.
Yet that was exactly what happened. The commands were given, both sides opened fire and all Belleville could smell was cordite and blood, the gunshots echoing obscenely loud as the sound bounced around the enclosed space. It wasn’t long before silence fell and the smoke from the rifles began to dissipate. Not one man was left standing. Not one man was left alive.
Belleville didn’t know these individuals, and wouldn’t have been able to bring herself to mourn stupidity so monumental, even if they had been her own people and she’d had a heart.
The stench of death was everywhere. It hung in the air long after the rifle smoke cleared to reveal the bodies scattered like so many abandoned Guy Fawkes effigies. Bonfire night was over and everyone gone home without even bothering to burn them. Blood was dark and shining where it gathered in pools around each smooth rounded cobblestone, catching the light of the lowering sun.
Jared pulled off his black Glangarry hat, twisting the rough felt in both hands, his breathing heavy with the beginnings of panic. How could this have happened?
He started when someone moaned, dropping his hat onto the soiled and pitiful ground. The low murmur of pain was followed by a sigh, and that awful rattle deep in the throat that was instantly recognisable as the sound of another death. There were no other noises, no movement. Nothing human.
Jared stepped over an outstretched leg, then an out-flung arm. The bodies were so heaped and tangled, it was hard to make out individual forms, but after a while Jared’s eyes adjusted to the chaos. There he recognised Captain Hamilton, and here was Digger, and Wee Willie Whitie, and Macca Mc Gregor, and over there was that Irish chap who’s name Jared couldn’t recall – and that suddenly seemed to be the worst thing about it – that he’d forgotten a comrade’s name and now the man was dead and Jared wasn’t.
Jared wasn’t dead.
Then he saw it; on its side, the ring at the top still loosely gripped in a hand stained red. It was a bird cage. Heart beating too loud in his ears, he freed the cage from the death grip, too nervous about what he would find to think about how macabre it was. He peered anxiously inside. One bird, feathers matted and sticking out every which way, but he could see her rapid breaths and recognised her markings instantly. It was Meg, and she was alive, and Jared shouldn’t feel so happy about that one tiny little life but he couldn’t help it.
He stood up slowly and started walking. Past the pale shattered faces and red splattered uniforms of the German troop, past the shocked and silent returning citizens of Belleville. His bloody boots came off first: he’d never got round to tying the laces properly so they came off easy. His jacket followed, buttons flying as his numb fingers failed at the simple task of unfastening one handed. He wasn’t going to loosen his grip on Meg’s cage for anything. He ripped off his shirt before the jacket had touched the ground behind him. The kilt unfastened and unravelled gracefully and all that remained of his uniform were his socks. He was leaving a trail of clothing like autumn leaves, like a snake shedding its skin: Jared was making himself into something shiny and new.
The ornate cast-iron asylum gates were closed and locked. The nuns of L’eclair Lune had repossessed La Maison des Autres, restored its defences so its inhabitants were once more safe from the outside world.
Naked as a newborn, Jared rang the bell.
When the lunatic asylum of La Maison Des Autres closed in 1963, all its records were transferred to Les Cinglés’s regional archive. Amongst the paperwork was a list of ailments for admissions to the hospital from 1889 to 1918.
That list included some afflictions of the mind that one might have expected, along with some that today seem bizarre:
Brain Fever; Feebleness of Intellect; Overtaxing Mental Powers; business nerves; Novel Reading; Seduction and Disappointment; Snuff Eating for over 2 Years, and Over-study of Religion being but a few examples.
Against the name of Jensen Ackles, admitted to the asylum for a second time in 1916 aged 20, was recorded the following: Gunshot wound, The War, and Periodic Fits.
Against the name of Jay Paon, admitted to the asylum in 1918, age unknown, was recorded the following: Sexual Derangement, Excessive Nudity and Mental Excitement.
Both men were discharged into society in 1921. There is no record of what became of them.
Author’s note:
The mental illnesses described are taken from a list of admissions from Trans-Alleheny Lunatic Asylum 1864 to 1889.
Les Cinglés roughly translates as crackpots.
Maison des Autres roughly translates as the House of the Others.
Paon means rooster (also peacock) in French.
A sgian dubh a knife commonly worn down the sock of a Scotsman.
For the non Brits – Guy Fawkes is the chap who plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament back in the 17th century. He failed, and since then we have a night of fireworks on 5th November every year during which effigies of Guy Fawkes are burnt. Which, when you write it down, is kind of a weird thing to do.
Pigeons were used extensively during the First World War. Though the armies did have radio communication, it wasn’t reliable, so pigeons and dogs were used to send messages, even while offensives were in full force. You can read more here.
A lot more happens in the film King of Hearts (Roi de Coeur) than I’ve described here, and it is a truly charming film, cleverly done so it is moving, funny and sweet in equal parts. I saw it once when I was still at school and it made a big impression on me – I spent many years hoping they would show it on TV again, but eventually managed to track down a Korean import DVD. I’d recommend watching if you can get hold of it!
0x0x0x0
“You swear very prettily in French for a British soldier,” a deep voice said, sounding both amused and curious. Jared spun round, his heart jumping in his chest. It was Pygmalion’s statue, the crazy Adonis, who now looked even more beautiful, lit by sunlight and newly dressed in… what on earth was that? Jared blinked in disbelief as he absorbed the sight before him.
Adonis was dressed in a form fitting, single piece white suit embroidered with sequins that shot off tiny sparkles of light in all directions as his chest rose and fell with the rhythm of each breath. His eyes were outlined with black, making them appear even larger, and Jared could have sworn the green of Adonis’ irises was flecked with gold dust. The living statue looked as though he’d just stepped out of a fairy tale circus into real life.
“I’m Jensen,” Adonis was saying, holding out his hand. For an absurd moment, good manners took over and Jared thrust out his own hand to shake Adonis’ – no – Jensen’s offered hand.
“Private Jared Padalecki. Pleased to meet you.”
“You speak very good French, Private Jared Padalecki” Jensen observed. Jared blushed.
“I speak German too,” he said, then babbled on a little in case Jensen thought he was boasting, “It’s nothing special, just one of the consequences of having parents who were in the diplomatic services…”
He trailed off into sadness at the memory of his strict, long-deceased father and his recently-deceased mother. Jensen was looking at him with sympathy, as if he could read Jared’s mind, and Jared realised with a fresh jolt of embarrassment that they were still holding hands. This absurdly beautiful man was addling Jared’s brain. It was as if, here in Belleville, madness was contagious.
A small crowd was gathering around them, murmuring excitedly about the King returning. It was that same nonsense that had scared off the Germans in the asylum and made Jared wish he’d been a little more careful with his choice of an alias.
Jared’s shoulders slumped. He had totally failed to find this blessed bunker, or deduce what the cryptic statement about the knight meant. He was starting to wonder if the late Monsieur Bresson had been drunk, or maybe the wireless operator had totally misheard the spy’s message, because it just seemed a meaningless phrase pulled at random from one of Jared’s Grandmother’s games of ad-libs. He looked at the cheerful faces of the escaped asylum inmates and realised he could at least do one useful deed. He could rescue these innocent souls from the certain destruction of their town, since it seemed he had failed so miserably at preventing it.
If it meant playing to present company’s shared delusion then so be it. Jared wasn’t very good at staying down in the dumps anyway, having far too optimistic a nature for his own good. He brightened at the thought of taking positive action and straightened his spine. He would do his best to assume a regal aspect, though he feared he just looked ridiculous.
“My dear citizens!” Jared said, then repeated it louder to make himself heard over the general hubbub. “Citizens of Belleville! I, the King of Hearts…”
He didn’t have an opportunity to say any more, even though he’d had half a bonnie speech ready in his head, because his citizens had, it seems, been waiting for the moment he’d announce himself to erupt into a celebration. One of the men had procured a horse from somewhere, and there was much cheering and shouting while many hands helped Jared onto its unsaddled broad back. Fortunately the horse was a sturdy animal, it must have had some carthorse blood, Jared thought. It was not only broad backed but tall enough for Jared’s long legs not to brush the ground as it ambled off.
Jared’s initial perturbation faded as the joyous crowd flowed around him in a river of colour and happiness. Jensen jogged alongside, resting one warm hand on Jared’s knee, and after a few minutes, Jared couldn’t help relaxing into the moment, laughter bubbling up inside him. Someone started singing ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag’ or at least a French version of it, and after a bar or two, everyone joined in, Jared singing the English words as he didn’t know this French version. He steered the parade down the narrow streets towards the shelled out gap where the medieval gate had been, and was bellowing out the lyrics so loudly he missed the moment when his entourage began to peel away. One by one they drifted off, like dandelion seeds caught in a breeze.
By the time they passed through the gap in the town walls, only Jensen remained at Jared’s side. The sound of the big guns became clear in the distance, an assault on the mind as much as on the ear. Jared’s singing faltered then stopped all together as he realised the comforting weight of Jensen’s hand had disappeared from his leg, and he and the white horse were moving forward alone.
He twisted around and there was Jensen, a lone figure stopped a mere twenty steps outside of Belleville’s gate. It was twenty steps none of the other folk had been able to take. The white of his costume appeared grey in the dust-laden daylight; the sequins’ sparkle tarnished and dull. Jared could see that Jensen’s face had acquired a pallor that reminded him of the corpses that littered the trenches after a foray. Behind Jensen, the other inmates lined the high walls or stood within the shadow of the broken archway of the gate as if the wooden doors that had protected the town from invaders for centuries were still in place and were closed.
Then even the horse came to a halt, head hanging down as if Jared was now a weight too heavy to bear. Jared slid off the horse’s back, and the white gelding immediately trotted happily back into the town, with a swish of its tail, as if it too had never wanted to leave.
“But. But if you stay here, you will all die,” Jared said, despairingly. Jensen didn’t move, forcing Jared to close the gap between them, each footstep feeling heavy as lead. Jensen gave Jared a look that was both sorrowful and pleading as he gestured towards the never-ceasing sounds of the bombardment.
“There is nothing but sound and fury out there, Jared. That world is full of anger and wicked people. We’d rather stay here.”
Jared looked out over the devastated remains of once fertile farmland towards the pall of smoke that hung heavy on the horizon in every direction. He thought about Jeff, drowning in a mud-filled shell hole in the pouring rain, cold and alone. He thought about his mother’s terrible, all-consuming grief for her eldest son and how it had destroyed her; about his commanding officer who didn’t even know that Jared wasn’t his brother; about his lovely pigeons and how their lives had been put on the line for a cause their tiny brains could never understand. He thought about all his friends and comrades whose lives had also been sacrificed as if they were worth even less than a common bird. At least killing a carrier pigeon merited a fine; a simple soldier was just cannon fodder.
Jared looked over his shoulder, tried to imagine going back to his trench, leaving these crazy people to die here, clinging onto their silly fantasies. They were dooming themselves by staying, but it was their own choice, wasn’t it? Why should Jared care? He half turned, trying to convince himself he should return to his regiment, but something was tugging at him like one of his pigeons being called home, pulling him inexorably back towards the little French town.
Whether it was a sense of honour, or not wanting to leave a task unfinished, or simply fatalism that said that it was a route to certain death whichever option he chose, Jared didn’t know. But whatever it was, it made him turn his back on the outside world and take another step towards Jensen.
0x0x0x0
Jensen didn’t even realise how badly he had wanted Jared to stay until the tall British soldier turned around and moved towards him.
It made no sense at all, and yet all the sense in the world for Jensen to stretch up onto his toes to bridge that last tiny gap between them, and kiss any negative words away from Jared’s parted lips.
When Jensen pulled away, a round of applause rang out around them.
“Bravo, bravo! Encore!”
To Jensen’s satisfaction, Jared was looking adorably flushed and infinitely distracted. It would take a stronger man than Jensen to resist that look, so Jensen didn’t even try. He stepped back in close, grabbed Jared’s head and kissed him again to a chorus of encouragement from the residents of des Autres.
“A wedding! A royal wedding!”
Jensen wasn’t sure who started the cry, but the idea was greeted with enthusiasm by the growing crowd. Someone grasped one of his hands, then he and Jared were being pulled reluctantly apart. Everyone was running down the narrow streets towards the town square, and it seemed that before Jensen could blink the Gothic arches of St Finbar’s nave were soaring up above their heads like the ribs of Jonah’s whale.
0x0x0x0
At the first soft touch of Jensen’s lips all Jared’s anxiety stilled, as if he was inhaling nitrous oxide gas instead of air. He could feel the shape of Jensen’s smile against his lips, warm and full of promise. All his muscles turned to toffee as every scrap of tension, uncertainty and resistance fled, chased away by Jensen’s tongue as he pushed Jared’s lips open and tentatively explored his mouth.
He was vaguely aware of being surrounded by cheering people, then he was being half-dragged, half-shoved along the street. Their jubilation was so infectious, his only concern was that he’d been separated from the first, best, only kiss of his nearly nineteen years.
Sadly, once inside the dimly lit, cool interior of the church, Jared’s senses (or his sensibility) began to seep back into his bones with a pervasive and depressing dampness.
The Duchess and Monsieur Marguerite had raided the florist’s; there was a rainbow of petals scattered on the worn stone flags of the floor, more fluttered in the air like tropical butterflies, thrown by the impromptu congregation. The Bishop was resplendent in gold and purple, looking every inch the part since his raid on the Vestry.
“The bells!” The Bishop cried, waving his arms wildly. “We must have bells for a wedding!’
“The bells have gone,” Jensen said sorrowfully from beside Jared. “We shall have to do without. The only bell left in town won’t sound until the Knight strikes it a midnight.”
Jared started. “What? What did you say?” He spun around and grabbed Jensen by both arms.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know the English,” Jensen began, but Jared interrupted, too impatient to be polite any more.
“Just repeat what you said about the bells, quick!”
“I said there are no bells, the soldiers stole them three years ago for the war effort…”
“No, no, no, about the Knight striking at midnight, you said he struck at midnight, what is that? What does it mean?”
Jensen was staring at Jared as if he was mad, and Jared was too caught up in the excitement to find that ironic.
“It’s just the Town Hall clock, Jared. There is a mechanical knight who comes out once a day at midnight to strike the bell in the clock tower…wait! Where are you going?”
“To defuse the bomb!” Jared yelled over his shoulder as he ran out of the church as fast as he could.
“What bomb?” Jensen asked nobody in particular, and was met with a chorus of Gallic shrugs.
Jensen looked around, momentarily at a loss, then turned and ran after Jared. If there really was a bomb, perhaps Jared would need some help.
0x0x0x0
Very early in this war one invader or the other, Belleville neither knew nor cared, had stolen her cathedral’s ancient brass bells. Metal was precious, but Belleville wasn’t interested in these men’s shortage of ore, or their petty conflict, she just missed the sound of her bells ringing. So she watched with concern as well as interest when the kilted stranger started climbing La Mairie’s clock tower towards the last remaining bell in town. A minute or so after the kilted one began his ascent she saw one of her own children stepping out from a high window in Madame Bovary’s elegant town house across the square onto one of the new-fangled telegraph wires. If she’d had eyebrows, she’d have raised them.
Belleville was made of brick and cobbles and limestone, but even she could suffer hurt, and she was all too aware of the fragility of the humans who she sheltered. It was hard to watch as one of them deliberately put his already short life at risk. It was reckless, feckless and incomprehensible. Her attention was divided between wondering what the kilted one was doing and worrying that the pretty sparkly boy (Jensen, she recalled, his name was Jensen) would plunge to his death at any moment as he inched along the high wire. She noted with bemusement the huge smile on Jensen’s face, which was, to be frank, inexplicable. But then all her centuries of existence hadn’t really helped her understand half the human behaviour she witnessed within her walls, so there was nothing new there.
The two men reached the belfry at almost the same time via their different routes. A few moments of conversation was followed by the pair wielding a pair of wire cutters and for some reason, wresting the mace out of the mechanical knight’s hand. It appeared that their mysterious business was concluded because they sealed the activity with a couple of rounds of passionate kisses that Belleville highly approved of. Both men gave the impression that they were highly satisfied with both the kissing and the success of their mission, as there was some joyful whooping and more embracing, all of which looked highly precarious in that elevated position.
Belleville was briefly puzzled over a moment of stillness between the two men, but she was distracted by some new activity in the square below. The small crowd of spectators was parting to allow the passage of six men holding a large tarpaulin. After some more shouting and much gesticulation, Jensen and the Kilted man held hands and leaped off the Clock Tower, landing with a bounce on the stretched tarpaulin. Belleville had never seen such a thing in all her long life, and was very impressed. The ladies in the crowd seemed equally impressed, though their interest was more engaged by the view when the wide kilt flared like a silk parachute on the way down, providing everyone below with quite a spectacle.
0x0x0x0
One moment Jared was kissing like he would never have enough of it, which was certainly true for Jensen, but the next moment Jared was pulling away, albeit with a show of great reluctance.
“I have to get a message to my unit,” Jared explained. Jensen nodded his understanding, though he really didn’t want to think about what lay beyond the confines of Belleville’s walls. He’d been out there one time too many and had come back broken, with the lingering smell of Death in his nostrils. Now there was no kissing to distract him, and from their vantage point at the top of the clock tower, Jensen could already see and hear too much. From up there, Jensen could see how smoke lay leaden over the land, obscuring the deep scarring of the trenches but concealing nothing of the devastation the war was causing. The heat of the summer sun had parched the bare earth where there should be fertile fields. The sunlight was highlighting the deep fissures and casting the cratered shell holes into darkest shadow. In the killing fields there was no colour but drab, a monotony broken only by the occasional glint of steel and rust like dried blood.
Imperceptibly, Jensen’s body began to shake. He gripped onto the stone tracery as the trembling spread as insidiously as the memories that were flashing into his head. He was running, terror ahead and behind him, then he was flying through the air, deafened and blind, pitched headlong into darkness and black cloying mud. He was waking soaked through and frozen with the taste of blood and soil and excrement in his mouth, unable to move anything but his eyes, the mud sucking at his limbs, swallowing him whole…
“Jensen! Jen, please,” a voice was calling his name… not Misha, not one of his regiment…no. Warm hands were wrapped around his biceps, warm breath touched his cheek, alongside the comforting brush of sunlight. Gradually Jensen began see summer instead of gore in the veil of red covering his eyes. Slowly he allowed them to open.
Down below he could hear the sound of cheering. It was almost loud enough to drown out the distant booming of the big mortars, and in front of him was Jared’s concerned face, thrust so close that their noses were almost touching. Jensen’s trembling finally started to subside. Jared was large enough to blot out the rest of the world. When Jared kissed him this time, Jensen kept his eyes wide open, fixed on the clean, pure blue of the sky.
Flinging themselves off the tower into a tarpaulin that looked the size of a handkerchief from that height was madness and exhilarating and the perfect way to wipe out the memory of his fear. He landed breathless from laughing at Jared who had screamed like a little girl all the way down.
Jensen followed Jared at a run back to La Maison to retrieve the birds, then followed him again, back to the town square. He found Jared a pencil and paper to scribble two duplicated messages, one for Ruby to carry and one for Meg, while watching every expression that chased across Jared’s face, memorising every nuance. He watched the affectionate way Jared tended his birds, cupping each one gently in those big hands, before flinging them into the air to soar high above the grey slate rooftops. He catalogued the way Jared’s eyes changed from blue to grey to green to tawny gold, the colour depending how the light hit them; he memorised the sweep of that upturned nose, the angle of those high cheekbones, the chestnut glints in his hair, the placement of every mole. He stored every image, their colours bright and fresh as a new oil painting.
Jensen absorbed it all in silence and his heart never stopped singing, even though he knew every flap of those departing wings brought his time with Jared closer to an end.
He’d give into the sadness when Jared was gone, but for now, he’d enjoy every moment they had left.
0x0x0x0
Belleville wouldn’t normally have taken note of the flight of a bird over her walls, but she couldn’t help but notice when a gunshot shattered the stone head of the statue of the Virgin Mary that had watched over the north road into the town since 1645. The bullet had committed this act of sacrilege against both Virgin and town after it passed through the now sadly deceased-pigeon. Belleville watched as the bird plummeted to the ground in a bloody mess of feathers near the feet of the German sniper that had fired the shot. The sniper bent down and unravelled a thin strip of paper that had been tied to the pigeon’s leg. He stood for a moment silently reading, before turning to run back towards the German lines.
Belleville thought this probably didn’t bode well.
She was right.
0x0x0x0
“Come with me,” Jensen said, taking hold of Jared’s hand in a way that was at once shocking and yet utterly familiar. Jared didn’t think to question, he just went. His girls were gone and soon enough his unit would be marching through Belleville’s southern gates to reclaim him along with the town . Until then, Jared didn’t want to think about being Private Padalecki. He’d done his duty; the town was safe for now, or as safe as it could be in the midst of the war to end all wars.
Now, Jared had the attention of the most beautiful man in the world, and no intention of wasting a single moment. He was so focused on Jensen that he barely registered his surroundings as Jensen led him through a doorway and began ascending a dark wooden staircase. In the room below, someone had uncovered a piano and the strains of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in E Major accompanied them up the stairs. It added to Jared’s feeling of having stepped into another world where dreams could come true, and the light urgency of the tripping notes wove their way through Jared’s fingers as he fumbled with the fastenings on Jensen’s circus costume. The touch of Jensen’s fingers was burning Jared’s skin wherever it landed, and he was breathing as heavily as if he’d just run the gauntlet of machine gun fire across No Man’s Land.
“I’ve never…” he said, but was silenced by the gentle press of Jensen’s lips warm against his own. With nothing to distract him now, Jared gave himself up to the wonderful sensation, willingly opening his mouth to Jensen’s probing tongue. His legs turned to water and he mindlessly allowed Jensen to steer him backwards through another doorway until the backs of his knees hit something yielding. Without ever breaking their kiss, Jensen pressed Jared down into an enveloping softness of lace and duck-down. Somehow, Jensen had found them a bed, and Jared was already half-naked, his thick khaki jacket and white uniform shirt gone, boots kicked off. He was on his back, sinking into the mattress with only his rucked up kilt and long woollen socks left on, neither of which concealed anything of note. He had a brief moment of embarrassment as his penis gaily saluted the world, then Jensen was lowering himself down on top of Jared. The touch of the bare skin of Jensen’s chest on his own electrified him, and Jared was lost.
Afterwards, Jared lay with his head cushioned on Jensen’s broad chest, while Jensen’s long skilful fingers stroked his hair. He didn’t care that their skin was stuck together with sweat and other bodily fluids. He didn’t care that when he’d finally regained enough of his senses to look around he saw that the room Jensen had chosen had half of its outer wall missing, leaving them exposed in more way than one. Evidently this house had been blown away by artillery some time ago, as the bed they lay on smelt damp and musty as a result of being exposed to the elements for so long. Still, none of that mattered as Jared fell asleep to the even rhythm of Jensen’s heartbeat, accompanied by the soothing melodies from the piano still being played in the room below. He’d never felt so cherished.
Of course, such contentment couldn’t last.
Jared was startled into wakefulness some unknown amount of time later by the unwelcome sound of marching feet, hobnails loud on the street outside. He sat up hurriedly, scrabbling around for his discarded clothing. Jensen was sitting in a rain-stained armchair, already wearing his circus costume and an air of feigned detachment.
“Oh bollocks!” Jared said, then apologised as if his grandmother was listening “’Scuse my French.” Which elicited a reluctant sounding, wry chuckle from Jensen.
Jared hopped about on one leg then the other while he forced his feet into half-unlaced boots, hoping that the missing wall wasn’t exposing his efforts (and more) to the troop below. By the time Jensen took pity on him and had helped him find his undershirt, uniform shirt and top it all off with his jacket, the last row of British soldiers was disappearing around the corner of the street, on their way into the town square.
Jared clattered down the stairs and out into the street, with Jensen close behind him. As his boots hit the cobbles he stopped dead, so suddenly that Jensen bumped into him. Jared spun around and grabbed Jensen, holding onto the other man’s arms with a death-like grip. Jensen never even winced, though Jared knew he was probably leaving bruises.
“I don’t want to go.” Jared said, trying not to sound like a four-year-old child being sent to school for the first time.
Jensen looked up at Jared, eyes wide with sympathy.
“I know.”
Jared sighed and leant his head down until his forehead rested on Jensen’s. Jensen’s arms wound round Jared, pulling him in close.
“But you have to go back, and so do we. The townsfolk will return to their houses as soon as your regiment gives the all clear, and my family is going back home to La Maison as we speak. I will join them when you and I are done saying goodbye, and then everything will be back to normal.”
Jared gave a bitter little laugh and held Jensen tighter, his words muffled by Jensen’s shoulder and full of unshed tears.
“Normal? Killing and dying in a muddy field full of wire and shell holes?”
“Oh Jay, that isn’t an everyday thing, you know that. One day the war will be over, but when it is, I’ll still be other, just a crazy person shut away here in La Maison des Autres. You will go home to Scotland, to be with your family, to live a happy life.”
There was so much wrong with that statement: Jared didn’t know where to start. It was only the memory of his brother that gave him the strength to step out of the safety of Jensen’s embrace, ready to do the right thing and re-join his regiment.
He walked slowly towards the square, only to realise as he reached the corner that Jensen wasn’t by his side. When he turned around and looked back, the street was empty.
0x0x0x0
The citizens of Belleville had begun gathering at her edges, clutching their belongings, eager to see their homes again. The others, the faithful ones who had stayed with the town when the rest had deserted her, were shedding their borrowed robes like moulting tropical birds, leaving sad splashes of colour as they wended their way through Belleville’s streets back towards the asylum. In the town square, a small troop of kilted soldiers was marching down one side of the bunkhouse, blissfully unaware that at that very moment, a similar-sized troop of grey-clad German soldiers marched in the opposite direction on the other side of the concrete structure. The noise of their own metal-studded boots drowned out the sounds of the enemy, while the bulk of the bunker shielded them from each other.
The air in Belleville’s streets stilled as if she was holding her breath, as it seemed for a moment that the two armies would pass from her square without ever realising their proximity. But at the last second, one man looked around and caught sight of the enemy soldiers. The commanders on both sides started yelling. The troops formed up into orderly lines, facing each other across the empty space. Belleville had seen humans do many strange and unaccountable things over her long life, but even she could not believe that these men were going to do battle with each other in so exposed a position.
Yet that was exactly what happened. The commands were given, both sides opened fire and all Belleville could smell was cordite and blood, the gunshots echoing obscenely loud as the sound bounced around the enclosed space. It wasn’t long before silence fell and the smoke from the rifles began to dissipate. Not one man was left standing. Not one man was left alive.
Belleville didn’t know these individuals, and wouldn’t have been able to bring herself to mourn stupidity so monumental, even if they had been her own people and she’d had a heart.
0x0x0x0
The stench of death was everywhere. It hung in the air long after the rifle smoke cleared to reveal the bodies scattered like so many abandoned Guy Fawkes effigies. Bonfire night was over and everyone gone home without even bothering to burn them. Blood was dark and shining where it gathered in pools around each smooth rounded cobblestone, catching the light of the lowering sun.
Jared pulled off his black Glangarry hat, twisting the rough felt in both hands, his breathing heavy with the beginnings of panic. How could this have happened?
He started when someone moaned, dropping his hat onto the soiled and pitiful ground. The low murmur of pain was followed by a sigh, and that awful rattle deep in the throat that was instantly recognisable as the sound of another death. There were no other noises, no movement. Nothing human.
Jared stepped over an outstretched leg, then an out-flung arm. The bodies were so heaped and tangled, it was hard to make out individual forms, but after a while Jared’s eyes adjusted to the chaos. There he recognised Captain Hamilton, and here was Digger, and Wee Willie Whitie, and Macca Mc Gregor, and over there was that Irish chap who’s name Jared couldn’t recall – and that suddenly seemed to be the worst thing about it – that he’d forgotten a comrade’s name and now the man was dead and Jared wasn’t.
Jared wasn’t dead.
Then he saw it; on its side, the ring at the top still loosely gripped in a hand stained red. It was a bird cage. Heart beating too loud in his ears, he freed the cage from the death grip, too nervous about what he would find to think about how macabre it was. He peered anxiously inside. One bird, feathers matted and sticking out every which way, but he could see her rapid breaths and recognised her markings instantly. It was Meg, and she was alive, and Jared shouldn’t feel so happy about that one tiny little life but he couldn’t help it.
He stood up slowly and started walking. Past the pale shattered faces and red splattered uniforms of the German troop, past the shocked and silent returning citizens of Belleville. His bloody boots came off first: he’d never got round to tying the laces properly so they came off easy. His jacket followed, buttons flying as his numb fingers failed at the simple task of unfastening one handed. He wasn’t going to loosen his grip on Meg’s cage for anything. He ripped off his shirt before the jacket had touched the ground behind him. The kilt unfastened and unravelled gracefully and all that remained of his uniform were his socks. He was leaving a trail of clothing like autumn leaves, like a snake shedding its skin: Jared was making himself into something shiny and new.
The ornate cast-iron asylum gates were closed and locked. The nuns of L’eclair Lune had repossessed La Maison des Autres, restored its defences so its inhabitants were once more safe from the outside world.
Naked as a newborn, Jared rang the bell.
Epilogue
When the lunatic asylum of La Maison Des Autres closed in 1963, all its records were transferred to Les Cinglés’s regional archive. Amongst the paperwork was a list of ailments for admissions to the hospital from 1889 to 1918.
That list included some afflictions of the mind that one might have expected, along with some that today seem bizarre:
Brain Fever; Feebleness of Intellect; Overtaxing Mental Powers; business nerves; Novel Reading; Seduction and Disappointment; Snuff Eating for over 2 Years, and Over-study of Religion being but a few examples.
Against the name of Jensen Ackles, admitted to the asylum for a second time in 1916 aged 20, was recorded the following: Gunshot wound, The War, and Periodic Fits.
Against the name of Jay Paon, admitted to the asylum in 1918, age unknown, was recorded the following: Sexual Derangement, Excessive Nudity and Mental Excitement.
Both men were discharged into society in 1921. There is no record of what became of them.
0x0x0x0
FIN
FIN
Author’s note:
The mental illnesses described are taken from a list of admissions from Trans-Alleheny Lunatic Asylum 1864 to 1889.
Les Cinglés roughly translates as crackpots.
Maison des Autres roughly translates as the House of the Others.
Paon means rooster (also peacock) in French.
A sgian dubh a knife commonly worn down the sock of a Scotsman.
For the non Brits – Guy Fawkes is the chap who plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament back in the 17th century. He failed, and since then we have a night of fireworks on 5th November every year during which effigies of Guy Fawkes are burnt. Which, when you write it down, is kind of a weird thing to do.
Pigeons were used extensively during the First World War. Though the armies did have radio communication, it wasn’t reliable, so pigeons and dogs were used to send messages, even while offensives were in full force. You can read more here.
A lot more happens in the film King of Hearts (Roi de Coeur) than I’ve described here, and it is a truly charming film, cleverly done so it is moving, funny and sweet in equal parts. I saw it once when I was still at school and it made a big impression on me – I spent many years hoping they would show it on TV again, but eventually managed to track down a Korean import DVD. I’d recommend watching if you can get hold of it!
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Date: 2014-05-29 07:32 am (UTC)Thanks for reading and commenting!