“I reach out my hand to God that He may carry me along
as a feather is borne weightlessly by the wind ... “
Hildegard of Bingen (Scivias, 1152)
On Wednesday 1st March 2017 I wrote in my journal:
“I really like the idea of taking a feather or some token to Dumas. Of course, it may not be allowed. Just a tiny one, to waft, perhaps. Anyway, I’ll go and ask permission. What if he says no? Can’t. I think he will enjoy the publicity, hundreds of years later.”
Sadly, there were problems around this. There was no way to throw a feather at his tomb. And I didn’t take a feather with me. And one cannot write a cracking yarn about feisty characters while thinking of selling a product. Well, I couldn’t.
Dumas, of course, could. But then he had buyers. He also had a story team PLUS other writers giving him their work to sign - he would buy them out or get a percentage - because if it had his name on it it would be worth more than any little unknown. That went for his tame history professor as well.
At some point I decided that a feather in my way meant I was on the right track. I think it was on WorkAway in Normandy, in Mike and Roseann’s garden, working in their sixteenth century farmhouse. I’d been reading about signs and portents and I saw a black feather.
There was also one at Caen, but as it turned out I had a bit of trouble getting Milady to the Abbaye-aux-Dames. Honourable mention in passing.
Wandering around the magic Mont St Michel, giving up on finding any feather at all, I walked into what once was the monastery dining room to find not one little feather but a giant installation, a flock of feathers hanging from the ceiling, which was quite funny as they could not be ignored. Milady must have been there. She would get there if I had to kill her.
In Lille I noticed random feathers all happened to point the same direction – I knew she’d been branded there. At Bethune there seemed to be enough to prove the point, which I just accepted, oh, there’s a feather, without question. Of course. She will have been there, Dumas told us so.
And of course there was one in Breuil, where she might have been born. But, as we will discover, there are many Breuils in France. It means forest or wooded area. Here or there, there is no doubt, she was fictionally born somewhere.
But then, the feathers went NUTS in Armentieres, where Milady died.
Due to the panic of train timetables I’d forgotten all about my signs and portents until I noticed a feather on the road from the station to the river, and then I thought, okay, there’s the feather, I’m on the right way, which is completely bonkers because, let’s face it, there’s feathers all over the world. Birds are everywhere. Rats of the sky, one farmer called them.
Their discarded quills floating about gutters and sticking into trees are hardly strategically painted Camino yellow arrows.
Anyway, in Armentieres, there were the reassuring feathers lying on the footpath, the odd white ones and a few metres down the road, white/brown, all pointing the way to the river Lys and then …
A few steps on, POW! Some cat had the brilliant idea to explode a bird right in my way, scattering black feathers all over the place, just before I saw the river where Milady died. Genius feline.
When all is equal, nothing holds true, and it’s all fiction anywhichway, follow the signs and portents.
And so I did.
Seaching for Milady.
The feathers aligned.
Can you rely on signs and portents? Where do you find your direction in a fictional sense?
Margaret Atwood; every life is a failure
Strikes me, at any hour let alone the last