Heart to Heart: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (9 page)

I doubt that I have ever
had such a pleasant evening as that one at Pointe House. The
conversations were both stimulating and enthralling and the range
of interests was literally unbounded. We talked history and
physics and art and politics, metaphysics and magic and human
psychology, architecture and plumbing and ecology and geophysics,
and on and on with one subject blending into another without pause
or jumps—the theory of music drifting naturally into a discussion
of
I Ching
, and
that into Confucianism en route to cosmology and Indeterminancy,
then back to Renaissance art and monarchy and classical philosophy
and on and on.

The scope of wisdom displayed was always
superior and often astonishing. These people were dropping names
like Hollywood agents and inside info like congressional aides;
like, "No no, Beethoven understood perfectly well that..."

“
Of course the conflict
with Robespierre was simply due to...”

"He couldn't have possibly understood plate
tectonics. Good lord, even Newton thought..."

"Now Brahe,
see...
that
one,
see, would have made a fine court astrologer, but..."

“
Of course they were not
mad! Was Dali mad when he...?”

Not sophomoric either—no pedantic posturing
or empty displays of learning—these people were dissecting the meat
and potatoes of life, and each was a chef with a surgeon's
scalpel.

Later we gathered around the piano and sang
while Val accompanied unobtrusively, after which he treated us to a
solo concerto played as I had never heard it played before. Still
later I watched breathlessly as Catherine danced and Rosary joined
Val at the piano with a violin, followed by Karl with a comic
Cossack interpretation of the Fire Dance, then Hilary and Francesca
teamed up to show us what a waltz is really all about.

Never had I been so entertained, never so
impressed by spontaneous performances, never before drawn so
subjectively into an appreciation of artful talent.

And never so diverted from my own
imperatives.

I suddenly realized that it was midnight and
still I had not advanced my own understanding of the situation by
one iota. We were saying our good-nights and I was trying to get to
Valentinius.

But I did not find Valentinius and we did
not say goodnight or anything else in private. Everyone just
drifted away and I found myself suddenly alone with Francesca.

She showed me a sympathetic smile, took my
hand, and said to me, "Come along, my love, and I will show you
what you need to know."

Not
tell
me;
show
me.

I'd been shown quite enough already, thanks.
But I allowed the beautiful lady to lead me to her studio. And
there I discovered that I had not seen anything yet—nor had I
learned anything yet about names and naming, life and death, echoes
and omens.

What's in a name?

I was about to find out.

Chapter Eleven: Chronology

I warned you up front that
this is a wild story and that I would not have known how to relate
it to you until very recently, to merely lay out the events in
chronological order, as I experienced them, would result not in a
story but in a mere vignette of apparent fantasy—incomprehensible,
unbelievable, unworthy of your serious attention. The chief
problem, you see, is context. Any event occurring totally out of
context with the circumstances that produce the event is likely to
be incomprehensible—and something that is incomprehensible is also
generally unbelievable and therefore fantastic.

Consider for example the
birth of a child. It is an incomprehensible and seemingly magical
event if totally disconnected from its context. Try to imagine a
group of people isolated upon a small island who have been there
since early childhood, the result of a shipwreck or air disaster or
whatever. Somehow they have survived although they arrived there
as babes and with no adult care or guidance. They are male and
female and have matured sexually, so have mated instinctively
without understanding the full significance of the act. Then one
day a small human otherwise much like themselves emerges from one
of the females. Magic? You bet it's magic, until the group begins
relating effect to cause and comes up with a more rational
understanding of the event. Moreover, if a small party had been
exploring the other side of the island when that birth
occurred—and a runner was dispatched to announce the miracle—that
announcement would likely be met with disbelief and ridicule. A
small stranger crawled from the tickle-place of Walks-in-Beauty?
That's crazy! Who are you trying to kid!

I've got the same problem here, pal.

It's a context problem.

So I really need to talk a bit more about
the context before you decide that I'm crazy or else I'm trying to
kid you.

I need to go back to the
St. Germain story because that is one of the contextual boundaries.
Remember that I quoted the Countess d'Adhemar from her
Souvenirs de Marie Antoinette
, where she related a dangerous rendezvous with St. Germain
during the intrigues of the French Revolution and his promise that
she would see him "five times more."

You should be aware that
this was during a period of great political upheaval and ambitious
maneuvers, the early days of the First Republic. The young Napoleon
was a junior army officer not yet into his stride toward empire,
the French nation was at war within and also moving toward
conflict with virtually all of Europe, and France was in chaos. The
moment was prelude to the Reign of Terror, during which 300,000
Frenchmen were arrested, 17,000 executed, and many died in prison
without trial. Robespierre was blamed for much of the "excess"—but
all was excess in those days, and one man alone could not have done
all that.

The New France rose from this tumult with
Napoleon Bonaparte at the helm, but only after successive coups and
bloody intrigues.

At the moment of St. Germain's rendezvous
with the countess at a Parisian church, the French monarchy had
been compromised and the nation was being governed by the National
Convention, which was dominated by Robespierre. But four years
earlier, Marie Antoinette had received prophetic warning from her
"mysterious adviser," a man who had never revealed himself to her
in person but who nonetheless had watched over the young queen
since her entry into France, giving her counsel in the form of
anonymous letters. Thus in 1788 she received a missive which she
felt compelled to share with Countess d'Adhemar, and about which
she was moved to confide: "... these are strange experiences. Who
is this personage who has taken an interest in me for so many years
without making himself known, without seeking any reward, and who
yet has always told me the truth? He now warns me of the overthrow
of everything that exists and, if he gives a gleam of hope, it is
so distant that I may not reach it."

Handing the letter to the countess, the
queen added,

"This time the oracle has
used the language which becomes him; the epistle is in
verse."

Countess d'Adhemar faithfully copied the
verse into her diary:

The time is fast approaching when imprudent
France,

Surrounded by misfortune she might have
spared herself,

Will call to mind such hell as Dante
painted.

This day, O Queen! is near, no more can doubt
remain,

A hydra vile and cowardly,
with his enormous horns

Will carry off the altar, throne, and
Themis;

In place of common sense,
madness incredible

Will reign, and all be
lawful to the wicked.

Yea! Falling shall we see sceptre, censer,
scales, Towers and escutcheons, even the white flag; Henceforth
will all be fraud, murders and violence,

Which we shall find instead of sweet
repose.

Great streams of blood are flowing in each
town; Sobs only do I hear, and exiles see!

On all sides civil discord loudly roars,

And uttering cries on all sides virtue
flees,

As from the assembly votes of death
arise.

Great God! who can reply to murderous
judges?

And on what brows august I see the sword
descend! What monsters treated as the peers of heroes! Oppressors,
oppressed, victors, vanquished...

The storm reaches you all
in turn, in this common wreck,

What crimes, what evils, what appalling
guilt, Menace the subjects, as the potentates!

And more than one usurper
triumphs in command, More than one heart misled is humbled and
repents. At last, closing the abyss and born from a black
tomb

There rises a young lily, more happy, and
more fair.

This prophecy, appalling
as it was, was not heeded. Four years later, on the eve of her
rendezvous with St. Germain, Countess d'Adhemar received the
following note, in the same hand, and signed
Comte de St. Germain.

All is lost, Countess! This
sun is the last which will set on the monarchy; tomorrow it will
exist no more, chaos will prevail, anarchy unequalled. You know all
I have tried to do to give affairs a different turn; I have been
scorned; now it is too late... I will watch over you; be prudent,
and you will survive the tempest that will have beaten down all. I
resist the desire that I have to see you; what should we say to
each other? You would ask of me the impossible; I can do nothing
for the King, nothing for the Queen, nothing for the Royal Family,
nothing even for the Duc d'Orleans, who will be triumphant tomorrow
and who, all in due course, will cross the Capitol to be thrown
from the top of the Tarpeian rock. Nevertheless, if you would care
very much to meet with an old friend, go to the eight o'clock Mass
at the
Recollets,
and enter the second chapel on the right hand.

How good a prophet was St.
Germain? He was dead center. His prophetic verse could be a capsule
history of time, foretold, and deadly accurate even in the most
literal sense. The revolution was actually a series of revolts and
power struggles between various contending factions, raging back
and forth for years and seeing a steady succession of leaders
rising and toppling—and it was a revolt not simply of the peasant
against the crown but of class against class, farmer versus
urbanite, artisan versus businessman, all versus the church in one
form or another, the church against all at various times, nobility
undercutting nobility and plotting against king or nation, king
resisting all and betraying the nation to its enemies without,
military versus militia and both ready to strike at any hand—more
than ten years toward the struggle for "liberty, equality, and
fraternity" but culminating with the 18th Brumaire in military
dictatorship by the thirty-year-old general, Napoleon, who became
first emperor of France.

It was not until Napoleon's defeat by the
European allies in 1814 that the last line of St. Germain's
prophecy began to have meaning, because Napoleon was mere epilogue
to the French Revolution—or perhaps he was the vector, whatever,
the flowering of St. Germain's lily into the modern French
Republic was still some time away.

But the year is now 1792;
Louis XVI and his queen are in the shadow of the guillotine and a
mighty nation is beginning its descent into the abyss. A
mysterious foreigner known by many names has traveled to Paris in
the name of friendship to counsel the queen's endangered friend,
who writes in her diary: "A cry of surprise escaped me; he still
living, he who was said to have died in 1784, and whom I had not
heard spoken of for long years past—he had suddenly reappeared,
and at what a moment, what an epoch! Why had he come to France? Was
he then never to have done with life? For I knew some old people
who had seen him bearing the stamp of forty or fifty years of age,
and that at the beginning of the 18th century!"

The Countess d'Adhemar had her meeting with
St. Germain shortly before the king was seized and bound over for
trial. And this is her record of that final conversation, quoted
earlier in part:

"I have written it to
you,
I can do nothing, my hands are tied
by a sense stronger than myself.
There are
periods of time when to retreat is impossible, others when
He
has pronounced and
the decree will be executed.
Into this we
are entering."

"Will you see the Queen?"

"No, she is doomed."

"Doomed! To
what?"

"To death."

Oh, this time I could not
keep back a cry. I rose on my seat, my hands repulsed the Comte,
and in a trembling voice I said:

"And you too! you! what, you too!" [Saying
this.]

"Yes, I—I, like Cazotte."

"You know...."

"What you do not even suspect. Return to the
Palace, go and tell the Queen to take heed to herself, that this
day will be fatal to her; there is a plot, murder is
premeditated."

"You fill me with horror, but the Comte
d'Estaing has promised..."

"He will take fright, and will hide
himself."

"But M. de Lafayette..."

"A balloon puffed out with wind! Even now
they are setting what to do with him, whether he shall be
instrument or victim; by noon all will be decided. The hour of
repose is past, and the decrees of Providence must be
fulfilled."