The First Day
“Val sans Retour! We’re here, boss, the Valley of No Return.”
Inspector Riwal’s eyes lit up. His entire face beamed.
Commissaire Georges Dupin and his little team at the Commissariat de Police Concarneau had made good time; it hadn’t taken them much more than an hour. Dupin had driven, as usual completely ignoring the speed limit. His angular Citroën might be aged but it was still remarkably nimble; traffic cameras had flashed twice. Riwal and Kadeg, his two inspectors, sat in the back while Nolwenn, his indispensable assistant, sat next to him on the armchair-style front passenger seat.
Dupin had initially been somewhat reserved in his attitude toward Nolwenn’s “grand idea” of merging an unfortunately unavoidable trip the commissaire had to make into the Forêt de Brocéliande with an “office outing.” But Nolwenn was determined. Even Kadeg, who usually had to be coaxed into something, found the idea to be excellent. It was already two years since their last office outing, Nolwenn had made a point of reminding them, when they had gone to the northwesternmost point on the coast, and if Dupin was honest, it had been very enjoyable. His reservations had more to do with his official business, which had to do with his last case, in the early summer of that year, when he had made a deal with his old Paris police friend Jean Odinot. The deal was in the police “gray zone” in which Odinot had provided Dupin with important information, and Dupin in return had made clear he was ready to look into an unsolved case for the Paris police. Dupin didn’t want to shirk: it was a matter of honor for him to fulfill his part of the deal, and, in any case he would have done so for Jean Odinot even if there wasn’t a deal involved. No, Odinot wasn’t the problem, the problem was the Paris police. Back then, after his “resignation”—a “suspension” for seriously and unfortunately very publicly insulting the city mayor—he had sworn that never again in his whole life would he have anything to do with the Paris police. Odinot’s comment when they spoke on the phone yesterday that it was “a completely absurd matter” they were chasing up had added to his motivation.
“Brocéliande.” Nolwenn had pulled a thin volume out of a provisions bag that would have sustained all of them for several days in the wilderness. “‘Brocéliande! What stunningly precious memories were summed up in a single word! The whole of Europe in the Middle Ages pronounced it only with the deepest reverence. The sole remaining kingdom of the fairies. It was here that some of the most wonderful creations of fantasy were played out, creations that had moved the hearts of men.’”
It really was Dupin’s first excursion into the Forêt de Brocéliande—or Forêt de Paimpont, as it was known more prosaically—the biggest forest in Brittany. The biggest, and above all, the most famous. Not just in Brittany, but obviously all of France and all of Europe. It was undisputedly the heart of fantasy in Brittany, the most magical of all its fairy-tale sites. The legend of all legends. Which meant something amid Brittany’s wealth of legends. Dupin had taken it for granted that Riwal and Nolwenn would be even more eager travel guides than usual on this trip and would come out with a knowledgeable commentary, and was determined to be totally calm.
“We’d do best to park by the Church of the Holy Grail. That’s the ideal starting point,” Nolwenn said, and nodded to her left.
Everything here hinted at the spectacular. The signs at the edge of the road pointed to the Church of the Holy Grail, Lake Lancelot, Merlin’s Steps, the Tomb of the Giants.
“Seventy-seven hundred hectares of forest!” Riwal had undone his seat belt, and was leaning toward them. “Woodland and heath, full of lakes and ponds. The proud reminder of the vast forests that back in Celtic times covered all of Brittany. It’s shaped like a sleeping dragon. You can make it out from the air! The seemingly irrelevant name comes from broce, for forêt, and liande, for lande, the strips of heathland. But the real meaning of the words derives from the Celtic: the Fortress of the Other World.” Riwal sat back briefly, only to lean forward again and continue more emphatically: “Endless Celtic-Breton legends are set here, the craziest stories from down the millennia. But the forest reached its greatest fame through King Arthur and his Round Table. And as you know”—a purely rhetorical finesse to increase their attention—“Arthur is of huge importance for us Bretons! He stands for one thing in particular: resistance! One of our proudest virtues!” Riwal’s pathos reached a new height. “The very core of our being. Resistance as in standing up for the highest of ideals, the very principles of Arthur’s rule: equality, brotherhood, and kindness. It was we Bretons who believed unwaveringly in Arthur’s return, who have put our unbreakable trust in him!”
“Nobody even knows really if Arthur even existed,” Kadeg muttered, looking indifferently out the window.
Riwal was not about to let himself be embarrassed.
“The legend itself and its powerful influence are unquestionably true!” he said. It was a typical Riwal statement. “The strength and force of his aura! Nonetheless there’s an increasing number of scientific indications that there is a real figure behind all the fantastical stories.”
Nolwenn joined in: “And a whole host of stories about King Arthur and his world are set in this wood.”
The tiny village in the so-called Val sans Retour, the Valley of No Return, at the far western edge of the wood, was called Tréhorenteuc. It consisted of a few solitary houses to the left and a plowed field on the right. Dupin could already see the church, and the cemetery diagonally behind it. There was no doubt that it was an enchanting little place with a lot of atmosphere. The last quarter of an hour’s drive since leaving the Route Nationale had led them through the sort of landscape Dupin liked. Gently hilly in all shades of green, matching fields, surrounded by ancient stone walls, meadows, wild woods, winding roads, and pretty villages. A unique blend of culture and nature. Brittany’s inland, the “Argoat.”
Riwal stuck his head between the front seats again. “In the first French version of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, from the middle of the twelfth century, the forest where the adventures of Arthur’s world took place was clearly located in Brittany. The author of the story of Arthur’s world was Chrétien de Troyes, who lived from 1135 to 1188. He came from Champagne.”
“Not bad! A good basis for top-class fantasy stories!” Kadeg seemed pleased with his joke.
But Riwal continued all the more determinedly:
“Chrétien took the reports from the Historia”—Riwal particularly emphasized the word “reports”—“but also ancient Celtic stories, initially just the orally transmitted accounts about Arthur and his Round Table. There are five books by Chrétien, and for the past two weeks they’ve been lying on your desk, boss.”
The commissaire made a point of staring straight ahead. He had seen the fat volumes but never lifted one of them up.
“As usual,” Riwal continued, “there are adaptations as well as rewriting and endless popular reworkings of the material at the highest literary level. You need to think of the whole of Arthurian literature like a rogue patch of ground gone wild, with things sprouting up all over the place. It is”—and here Riwal got completely carried away—“a story that goes on forever, the material inexhaustible, reworked over and over, unending.”
“Just stop here, on the right, by the side of the road,” Nolwenn interjected. “That’s perfect.”
“The other thing I left on your desk is an edition of the famed Lancelot and the Holy Grail cycle, which is one of the most important elements of the Arthurian legend. Tales of young Arthur, of Merlin, the greatest magician of all time, of the fairy Viviane, Arthur’s half sister Morgana, of Lancelot, and Yvain, the lion rider. You have—”
“We’re there.”
Dupin had brought the Citroën to a stop behind another car. It was less than twenty meters to the church. He turned off the engine, opened the door, and got out. The others followed him.
He stopped and took a deep breath.
Even here, in the heart of Brittany, the weather was fabulous.
The forest was situated almost exactly in the middle of the north and south coasts, the Bay of Biscay and the Channel, Vannes and Saint-Malo. It was often cloudy. Today, however, was a phenomenal day. It was mid-August, a peculiar time of the year: summer with melancholy undertones. Residents were surprised when the weather turned, sending bleak, violent, monstrous clouds racing along the heavens; it got stormy and wet and, unlike how it had been two weeks earlier, the wind suddenly ripped the leaves from the trees. All of a sudden the mood was different. The light was milder, softer, velvety, especially around noon.
You could put a date to the day when the weather changed. Not that there weren’t any more summer days; of course there were some between now and the end of October, days of summery warmth and occasionally even heat, but even those were not the same as earlier. Nonetheless, there wasn’t even a hint of fall in the air today. The thermometer in Concarneau had climbed to a remarkable twenty-seven degrees by the time they set off just after one in the afternoon. Even now the sun was still burning hot. The sky was still bright, a satisfied glorious blue.
“Let’s go over our plan for today,” Nolwenn said. She was bursting with energy. They had gathered behind the car, with their bags and day packs from the trunk. “The inspectors and I will meet with Marie Line at the Maison des Sources. You have your rendezvous now, Monsieur le Commissaire, and can meet up with us afterward,” she said, and wrinkled her brow. “But it shouldn’t be later than four.”
Dupin had agreed to meet Fabien Cadiou—the man he was to interview on Odinot’s behalf—at two thirty. He hoped it wouldn’t last longer than an hour and a half.
“We can find maps, books, and everything else we need at Marie Line’s, and also get a bite to eat, savory and sweet delicacies.” Nolwenn had already told them about the Maison des Sources over the past few days; it was a little coffee shop with a bookstore and art gallery attached.
“I imagine you’ll want to drink a café after your interview. Then we can start with today’s excursion, the first stop being the Church of the Holy Grail.” She nodded with her head toward the church and continued: “Then the Valley of No Return, also known as the Dangerous Valley and the Valley of the False Lovers.”
“The most important thing about the valley,” Riwal said, dropping his voice deliberately as the expression on his face changed, “is not what you see, but what you feel.”
“Scandalous! Stealing our beach just like that!” Kadeg threw the newspaper he had been reading during the journey into the trunk with a sour face. His indignant outburst stripped Riwal’s emotional discourse of its effect. “I think we should sue,” he added.
But no one responded. For the past week the Breton newspapers had been full of it: the Corsicans—normally well received in Brittany—had been using photos of a Breton beach in a brochure intended to depict the unique beauty of the Corsican Mediterranean coast. The Bretons had cursed up a storm—but deep down they were filled with pride: the Mediterranean beaches were advertising with pictures of Brittany, because Breton beaches looked more Mediterranean.
“Between seven and half past, we’ll head for the hotel. We have a table reserved for dinner at eight thirty,” Nolwenn said, dismissively ignoring Kadeg’s outburst.
Nolwenn had spent ages discussing the choice of hotel with Riwal, and in the end they had chosen La Grée des Landes in La Gacilly, primarily of course, because they wanted to try the restaurant, which was highly praised. For good Frenchmen, which of course, the Bretons also were—at least as far as this went—the choice of restaurant was the most important factor. From there they could start their plans in earnest.
“Fabien Cadiou’s house isn’t far from the Maison des Sources, boss. Three minutes from here, no more. We can walk a part of the way together before you turn off. Allons-y!” Riwal said. He had already set off, well prepared, with his outdoor clothing and shoes that would have been good enough to scale Mont Blanc. Even the blue backpack matched. Kadeg was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a thin jacket in military green, with a large S on the shoulder for Salomon, Kadeg’s favorite brand. Nolwenn was as dazzling as ever.
Riwal turned around to face Dupin and said, “Like I told you before, boss: Fabien Cadiou is a real luminary! He’s one of the world’s leading Arthurian experts.”
Dupin didn’t go into that; he had tried to ignore the fact that Cadiou was involved with the Arthurian legend.
“Did you remember to order me a vegan meal, Nolwenn?” Kadeg said just at that moment. The inspector and his wife, a martial artist from Lorien, had recently converted to veganism. Dupin didn’t mind per se, but what did get on his nerves and those of everyone else and regularly drove them mad was Kadeg’s excessive zeal. Kadeg always turned everything into a mission.
“What I’m up for today is a large fricassée of snails with parsley butter.” Riwal walked on, speaking without the slightest touch of irony or provocation. “Followed by a carré d’agneau in an herb and forest nut crust.” Obviously he had gone over today’s menu scrupulously. You could almost hear him licking his lips.
They were quiet for a while.
“And tomorrow,” Nolwenn broke the silence, “the program looks like this: in the morning we visit the Fontaine de Barenton, the famous spring with its miraculous water from Paimpont, more or less at the heart of the forest, then—”
Riwal had come to a sudden stop. “You need to go that way, boss,” he said, and indicated a wide gravel path that turned right from the road. “It’s about three hundred meters. The old manor lies right at the edge of the forest. The Maison des Sources is—” The inspector turned, and with a brief nod at the houses, continued. “—just on the right there in front of us. You can’t miss it.”
Dupin saw a stone wall at waist height with a thick clump of hollyhocks behind it and an old reddish stone house.
“Pink granite,” the commissaire stated. He had paid particular attention to this stone ever since his vacation on the Côte de Granit Rose.
Riwal was quick to reply:
“Slate, if I might correct you, boss! Red slates, not granite. The stone in the forest is slate, both gray and red. Even the Val sans Retour, where one or another individual has gotten lost, has been carved out of red slate. The unusual amount of iron in the stone confuses the compass, and human senses too. Do you know why the slate is red?”
Dupin shook his head with a sigh.
“Seven faeries,” Riwal was already explaining, “lived with their treasure hidden at the bottom of the lake. They had sworn to one another never to let humans see them. The youngest of them broke the oath and showed herself to a young man riding along the edge of the lake. Her sisters decided to kill him, to prevent people discovering them. The youngest of them got into such a rage that she cut her sisters’ throats in their sleep, made a magic potion out of their blood, and brought the young man back to life. People say that the murdered sisters’ blood was soaked up by the slates for seven days, which gave it the red color.”
Dupin left the asphalt road. He wasn’t in a mood to comment on the story.
“See you later, then.”
“Like I said, four o’clock at the latest, Monsieur le Commissaire,” Nolwenn called out.
“At the very latest,” Dupin mumbled, and increased his speed. The gravel under his feet crunched.
The path led around an old laurel bush, and all of a sudden the view opened up. There lay the famed forest: gentle, curving hills; imposing, thick, hard, and impassable. A breeze surrounded him, not exactly cool, but not friendly either. It seemed to swallow up all the light. In contrast, the fields and meadows that rose slightly toward the forest were in bright sunshine. The grass was a glaring, almost blinding green. They clearly belonged to the ordinary world, they were real, clearly on this side, whereas that could not be said about the forest.
Dupin shook his head. “Nonsense,” he said out loud. He had probably already heard too many stories about the great magic forest. It was a wood, just a wood. Nothing more than that.
* * *
A few minutes later Dupin was standing in front of the old manor. Red slate; large, elegant blocks; tall, imposing; three floors and a steep dark gray roof. An old compact structure that made it look almost like a tower.
It was just as Riwal had said. The house was right on the borderline, one half in the meadow, the other into the forest.
Dupin walked past the house on the left, then belatedly saw a grand square courtyard behind it, enclosed by a tall, neglected stone wall. It smelled murky, earthy, woody, damp. And it also felt notably cooler.
The wall gave the air of something enduring. It seemed to communicate that nothing could force its way in from the forest wilderness that began just a meter away. No doubt there were all sorts of wild animals—boars, stone martens, badgers, barn owls, otters, beavers—who in this magic forest could grow to unimaginable dimensions. There would certainly be strange tall poisonous plants you could get trapped in.
Dupin saw a wooden shed in one of the rear corners, next to it a Citroën SUV, impressively dirty on both sides. The trees were climbing in an unruly fashion over the wall and into the courtyard. The sun would have had to be at its zenith for its rays to reach into the yard. Only then would it get really bright here.
Dupin turned his eyes toward the wide stone steps that led up to the manor’s wooden entrance door. A simple bronze plaque below the doorbell declared: Blanche Cadiou—Dr. Fabien Cadiou. And below, a second sign read: Brocéliande: Le Parc de l’Imagination Illimitée.
The forest didn’t just swallow up the light, but, it would seem, the noise of the world as well. It was as quiet as a mouse.
Dupin pressed the bell, looking around. To the right of the entrance stood a blue table with five chairs on the gravel around it, each the same blue as the table. They looked new. There was a curious object on the table, a vessel of some sort, in an unusual shape.
Copyright © 2020 by Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Copyright © 2022 by Peter Millar
