The Quimboiseur

By Douglas Alder

Three year old brain damaged Anna is held hostage in an ancient Breton Manoir by the Quimboiseur, a self styled sorcerer from Martinique, and his mad daughter. He believes Anna's family cheated him of his share of a fortune and wants them to pay. But an evil spirit haunts Le Manoir de Guillac. Unless her deeply troubled mother can rescue her in time, Anna is doomed to die on her fourth birthday.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Martin
• Release date: Feb 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301757558

Douglas Alder

Douglas Alder resides with his wife and seven children in a treehouse in Belize and lives sumptuously on insects, sunlight, freeflowing cenote water and shrimps. As well as his wife he is assisted by a wise tree spirit and the usual requisite three fools.

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The Quimboiseur

Douglas Alder

Copyright © Douglas Alder 2002

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover copyright © Robin Matto

www.robinmatto.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

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Table of contents

Chapter 1 Seven days to go

Chapter 2 LeManoir de Guillac

Chapter 3 Three days to go

Chapter 4 George’s journal - extract

Chapter 5 Two days to go

Chapter 6 George’s journal - extract

Chapter 7 One day to go

Chapter 8 Six o’clock in the morning

Chapter 9 My fourth birthday

PS Alexia Templeman 9th January 2001

Chapter 1

SEVEN DAYS TO GO

My name is Anna and I am three but soon I shall be four. I was born with something wrong with me. I live here in Le Manoir de Guillac where all the rooms are huge and cold except for my room: it is small and cold. In the winter evenings we huddle around a tree trunk burning in the great hall fireplace or we sit near the stove in the kitchen and I read books. I sleep in a cold little windowless room off the kitchen next to Francine’s room. Sometimes I stay awake long into the night reading. One thing I can do well is read.

I can see and hear; I can read fast and I can write. Now I can walk upright too, slowly and carefully, I am still not quite sure of my balance and I tire easily, but I am getting better. I will get much better. Jean-Baptiste tells me so and I believe him. One day I may even be able to talk. There are compensations: I learn very quickly and I know things, I sense them.

The front door is always kept locked when I’m inside the house. They let me go outside for fresh air every day if it is not raining too hard, but old Jean-Baptiste and young Francine never let me out of their sight for long. They never let me go near the lake alone. I cannot swim. They say I am not their prisoner, but if not, what am I? I am not their child. Sometimes when I am outside I head for the trees and I scramble up the great granite boulders; I could hide from Jean-Baptiste and Francine forever if I wanted, but I don’t want to: not yet.

The wild woods are all around us but I don’t know what lies beyond. I have not found any local maps here. I never leave these woods and they never take me anywhere else.

Up until today each day seemed much like every other day, but today is different. Today, for the first time, I did something naughty and I found something that I’m sure I should not have found.

I needed a book from Jean-Baptiste’s bedroom and he was outside. His bedroom door is not locked but he likes me to ask before I go in there, usually if I want a book he will fetch it for me, but today they were both outside and I was feeling strong, so I went up into his room but I was naughty. I didn’t go straight to the bookcases for the encyclopaedia; I looked around his room. A drawer in his chest was half open and it caught my eye, I looked in it: socks, just socks. Then I thought to open the next drawer. I am not really naughty, I knew it was naughty, but I did it. I opened the drawer and I looked inside and found the beautifully coloured dried wing of a Jay, a small and perfect murex shell, a string of pearls and some folded papers. I looked at the folded papers and I knew I had to read them and I knew that I should not read them, but I did:

October 8th 1998,

Alexia Templeman: For Anna:

Dear Anna,

You should know how I lost your father, George, how I found him again dead and horribly mutilated in the woods and how I lost you. I constantly hope to find you again, very soon, but if anything should happen to me I am leaving these pages in the safe keeping of your father’s Notaire, Maitre Ambroise Brouissard, for you to read one day. I have told him to find a man called Jean-Baptiste who knew your father, and ask him to see that you have these papers to read when you are old enough to understand them.

If you do ever read this, Anna, then many years will have gone by and you will only have heard her version of what happened. She will say she took you away because she wanted the best for you. I wanted the best for you too but she stole you from me. Before that she turned me against George, your father: I didn’t realise she was tricking us both. I fell for the tricks, I left your father for good and rushed back to England from le Manoir de Guillac in late June ‘96. Later, when I found I was expecting you, I tried many times to call George but I never could get through, and he never answered my letters. It was sixteen months after we separated, the morning of Thursday November the 3rd 1997, before we talked again.

You were almost seven and a half months old and we were penniless, camped out in one half of my church conversion, the other half was ruined by fire by then, and nobody cared about us. But that morning I drew back the blanket I’d hung for a bedroom curtain and saw a thin transforming coat of brilliant white snow over everything outside and it briefly banished all thoughts of charred oak and smoke damage. The air was still yet the snow seemed to hiss. The familiar, depressing view of the graveyard outside was reborn in pure white and I felt there was hope that things were about to change.

The telephone call came at nine o’clock, it was George, after sixteen months of silence he wanted me to drop everything and visit him at his Manoir. I didn’t think to ask him how he’d found my new phone number, I’d told no-one except my mother. I didn’t think to ask him anything or to tell him anything, not about selling our house or my massive debts. I was too surprised to hear from George, and pleased, excited even. I didn’t tell him that one half of the church had been burnt out completely after an arson attack and that the half I lived wasn’t much better after all the smoke penetration. I didn’t tell him that, unbelievably, the Insurance Company suspected me of arson. And I didn’t tell him about you, Anna. But George didn’t ask me anything, he just urged me to visit him as soon as I could. I told him I needed money. I certainly couldn’t afford the ferry fare to France. He told me to borrow, that he’d pay me back as soon as I came, that we’d sort out our money then. He wanted me to promise I’d visit as soon as I could. I had a sudden rush in my mind then of all the things I should tell him, in particular how unutterably bad my life had become since we separated, except for the one marvellous occurrence: our daughter. My mouth was open to tell him all about you but then a rush of bad memories swept over me like a black wave, I remembered what had happened between us and I said nothing. I put down the phone.

I looked outside at the cold whiteness and remembered all the warm places George and I went to when the English winter was cold and miserable: scuba diving in the warm Caribbean waters over a Costa Rican coral reef; whirling along dusty roads through coffee plantations. I thought of the projects we’d tackled together: conversions of Listed buildings, stable blocks, the strange old Grange with the bizarre castellated tower at one end. Those few years when I really did things, when everything we did worked out well, when we worked hard, played hard, then worked hard again and made money. Those few years when I felt young and successful, when I thought my luck had changed. I stared out at the whiteness and it all seemed black to me again. Where had George been as the money ran out and disaster after disaster struck me down?

I murmured soothing words to you, Anna, until you fell asleep. By that time I’d soothed myself too and quite forgotten about George: I always felt tired then, most days I could scarcely keep a single thought in my head.

Just before bedtime that night I had the second unexpected telephone call of the day: I recognised the voice and the French accent immediately. ‘I know George has asked you to come,’ she said, ‘but stay away, George is all mine.’ Then she slammed the phone down. I found George’s number and dialled it back, I wasn’t going to let her get away with that. I let it ring for ten minutes while I seethed with anger, how dare she tell me what to do? But she would not answer.

I was very tired that night but I couldn’t get to sleep for hours. Before I did eventually drift off to sleep I made up my mind that I would go to Brittany, to the Manoir, not to oblige George, or necessarily to confront that woman, but because it was time to say goodbye to him once and for all and end our marriage in a civilized, sane way. The calls had jerked me out of my torpor. I couldn’t go on living in such an untidy way, hoping something would turn up, I had to confront reality, arrange a divorce and sort out our money in a calm rational manner. I had to save myself, pay off all the debts, finish the Church conversion and start a new life on a sound footing. That woman could have George if she wanted him, just as long as I had my fair share of our money.

I borrowed the money for the ferry from my mother and I took you with me to France, Anna. From then on our lives changed forever.

I don’t know if I’ll ever find you again, but maybe you will find me in these writings. I thought that one day surely you would want to know what happened to your mother and father: the circumstances of your birth? I have written down here as much as I know, and you will learn something of your father, George, in these fragments of his journals. These are all for you:

With all of my love,

From your mother,

Alexia Templeman

As I read the letter my heart raced, when I finished I looked in the other drawers for more of her papers: no sign of them. I put the sheets of the letter back in the drawer just the way I’d found them, shut the drawer, and went back downstairs to my school work. My face felt red hot, I hoped they wouldn’t come in until I’d calmed down.

Each day now, if the weather is not too bad, Francine lets me go outside to play, she knows I can’t go far yet without tiring. Jean-Baptiste has told her I must be allowed to let off steam alone sometimes; I need some space. I’m never out of sight for long.

Amongst the trees in the woods are great granite boulders. The trees and moss sprout between them and on top of them in the tiniest little pockets of soil. It often rains and often it is misty, the trees and the moss take hold wherever they can, and somehow they even take hold on the rough stones.

I have found a secret place: the overhang of one great boulder abuts the sheer wall of another, making a sort of cave. On top of the great boulder there is an ancient man made scoop out of the rock which would fill with rainwater if ancient stone workers had not also carved a drainage groove. Jean-Baptiste said it was once a sacrificial stone and blood would have flowed from the groove. I crouch below in my secret cave and sometimes I hum to myself: I can make a sort of melodic noise through my nose.

I told myself not to think at all about the letter until I could go into my cave. I knew I had to put it out of my mind or they would know something had affected me and want to know what. I found it very hard to wait for my break outside, I was restless, I couldn’t concentrate, but Francine didn’t notice. She was lost in her own thoughts, as usual.

Francine is twenty and a half. She can still be beautiful if she smiles, but the more time goes by the more effort it takes. She always looks so sad. I don’t think she wants to be here. Jean-Baptiste is her father and he is fifty three and always looks so sombre, so controlled. He came from the West Indies; he must feel the cold even more than we do.

I ate a little lunch with Jean-Baptiste but I wasn’t hungry, Francine never eats with us, and then I went outside with Francine and I rushed off away from her to think in my cave. I had no sooner sat down, comfortably leaning against the rock, when I was aware of a shape blocking out the light from the cave opening: a person. I thought it must be Francine. I was angry that she’d discovered my secret place just when I really needed it, but then I realized that this person was smaller than Francine. When she reached me and turned so the light was on her face I could see she was a girl, much older than me, and very pretty: strangely pretty. This person’s face was animated - mischievous - not at all sad like Francine’s. It was not necessarily a nice face, but she looked as if she could laugh easily. We do not laugh very much here in the winter woods, nor in the spring, summer and autumn woods. Jean-Baptiste laughs if Francine makes a mistake or if I try to make him laugh, but I think he only laughs to oblige me. Francine never laughs when I want her to, she only laughs if either of us should hurt ourselves or do something stupid and embarrassing.

This person stooped and came straight towards me as if she knew all along I was hiding in the dark at the back of my cave. She smiled at me but I saw it was not a pleasant smile and I knew then that she was bad, that she meant me no good. But who is really good? How can you tell? Jean-Baptiste says he and Francine are good and mean me no harm, but they keep me here always hidden in the woods. Is that a good thing to do? They had a letter from my mother all along and never showed it to me, but before I could think of it the girl appeared. She sniffed the air and said:

‘I smell death very near, is it you? No? Are you sure? Then it must be some other lucky person. Anyone died near here that you know of?’ I shook my head. ‘Where’s your daddy then?’ She asked then she leaned down and put her face right in front of mine. My back was against the rock, I couldn’t get away from her. She said very quietly and soothingly, though I was sure she could speak very loudly if she wanted to:

‘I know you Anna.’ Then she laughed, but it was not a pleasant laugh, and she said: ‘Oh little Anna Templeman, clever little Anna, what a precocious little thing you are to be sure, a genius in fact, little do they know it. I know all about you all. She talks to you in English and he talks to you in French and you understand them both perfectly but can’t talk back - mute, such a shame - so although they know you are clever they do not realise you are an exceptionally brilliant three year old.’

She saw my consternation:

‘Oh I’m so sorry, but you’re almost four. Very important: just seven more days, one more week. Fantastically swift of mind but hardly fleet of foot are you? Plod, plod, totter, plod: rest and get your breath back. Not fair is it, to be handicapped? In the beginning there was unfairness: poor little you. Who is to blame: Mummy or Daddy, or both? Someone is to blame, but where are Mummy and Daddy? Francine is not your mother and Jean-Baptiste is not your father or grandfather, but of course you know that.’

Francine has never pretended to be my mother, she hardly says anything to me in conversation at all; she just teaches me what Jean-Baptiste tells her to teach. But I think she puts on an act; she acts as if she is independent and needs nobody, but I think she really needs us, I think she needs me in particular. I think I am the closest thing she can find to a purpose in life.

‘They must be carers then. What would your carers do if you hobbled off into the Breton woods, as usual, on your birthday, and were never seen again? They couldn’t call the Gendarmes because they have no right to keep you here; they couldn’t explain who you were without risking arrest. They’d just have to accept that the forest had taken you away and leave it at that. After all, don’t they invite the forest to have its way: prancing out there in the forest, practising their rituals in the woods, sorceliers in their overgrown Manoir? And sometimes you watch them but not very often; the times you watch are tame compared to the other times. What do they expect to happen after performing rituals and incantations all through the night? They can’t expect God to respond to their paganism. What do they pray to anyway? Do they pray most of all to keep something at bay: something terrible? Have I scared you, Anna?’

I tried to look brave.

‘I know you’re scared and thinking: Help, Help. But you can’t say help can you? Not to save your life. Can’t even scream: very useful sometimes to be able to scream. I couldn’t scream either when it mattered. It wouldn’t have done me any good if I had. Why do you think they keep you here? A pathetic little shrug: no idea? Of course you have ideas. You’re a very bright little thing or I wouldn’t be wasting my time on you, bright enough, at last, to succumb to my influence and for the first time in your little life be naughty, naughty enough to find your mother’s letter. I’ve been working on you for months: such a will to be good, but you broke in the end, even you couldn’t resist me. So we are in business. You’ve left it a bit late, cut it a bit fine - we have only until your birthday - just a week. You’re lucky to have that long: borrowed time, borrowed from me but now I want it back.’

I pointed to myself and scratched my name in the sandy soil of the cave floor then pointed to her.

‘You want to know my name? Well guess what: my dear mother never gave me a name. Look at me: I would have been thirteen by now and perfect. Look at you: what will you ever grow up to be? Yet your mother named you and my mother never bothered. No name at all: why name something that you’ll never want to recall when it’s gone? But do things vanish from your life just because they have no name? Can things exist with no word for them? Do you remember your mother?’

I shook my head.

‘Oh I think you do: vague memories of someone long ago, beyond you, surrounding you. You’re not sure what she actually looks like, but you’d know her if ever you saw her again. Can you picture her now: there’s still a tenuous thread with her. Try, try.’

I shut my eyes and I did try, I wanted to picture my mother, I could make out a vague outline of a person but no details.

‘Well it doesn’t matter. You’ve read her old letter. She’s desperate to find you again. Want to see Mamma again? A nod. Of course you do, but it can’t happen for nothing. What will it cost? Why so silent? I know you can make sounds, I’ve heard them: animal grunts, bird songs, wind songs too if I may euphemistically call them that. No moment of privacy from me. It’s no coincidence that I’ve come just when you found your mother’s letter. She plans to look for you again: your birthday triggers the usual response, the same as last year and the year before. She’s always praying to find you again but this year her prayer will be answered: at the exact time of the fourth anniversary of your birth. What will happen then, little Anna? Oh something must happen.

‘She’s hopelessly neurotic, your mother, she never could cope before, she certainly can’t cope now: her life is full of fear. I think she’d find death a relief: shall we put your mother to death? Or shall we put you to death? It must be one or the other.

‘Well, enough for now. Francine is anxious: you’ve never been away so long, have you? She wonders if you slipped past her out of the woods: have you fallen in the lake and drowned? Not yet Francine. Have you fallen off a rock and broken your neck or are you twitching on the ground having another fit? Not today Francine. Off you go, hurry as best you can. There are stories hidden in your house, you know, written down. You like reading don’t you? Love words: without the written word they’d judge you by your dribbling grunts and trembling body. As it is they still underestimate you. We’ll make them take you seriously. Ask them about the bones under the trees near the spring. Say you found a few scattered bones beneath leaves and twigs: ask whose they are, remember: whose? Watch their eyes when you ask them. Off now then: do it. I shall find you again, tomorrow. Do as I say. Good little girl: go, go.’

She stayed in the cave as I slid out past her and rushed back to the Manoir, Francine was standing by the arch to the yard with arms folded looking very angry but she saw my face and said nothing as I passed her. I went straight into the house and stood by the warm stove. I was shaking like a leaf: even more than I usually do. Jean-Baptiste rushed in and picked me up.

‘Anna, you’re so cold, you mustn’t go off without a coat in this weather.’ He hugged me to him. He smelt of sawdust and bark and I drew in his mysterious warmth, his invigorating energy.

I’ve been thinking, here alone in my room, about so many things: my mother’s letter, how she said she found my father horribly dead in the woods, the person I’ve just met who wants me to ask about bones. I must have dreamed about her. I must have tired myself out thinking about the letter and dozed off in the cave, something I’ve never done out in the woods before: but I must have had a vivid dream, maybe one of the mushrooms Francine cooked with our food was a toadstool? She’s done it before and claimed it was an accident. That is the only logical solution. Jean-Baptiste tells me that any problem that defies logic has simply not been adequately addressed.

I have many vague, illogical thoughts that could be memories. They fade a little with every day, though I try to cling on to them. I think it is part of growing up: the more you take in of the world, you more you forget of the time before. I’m sure there was a time before. Logic defines more and more of my life now, but I know there was no such logic in the time before. Anything was possible then. If I manage to hold on to the merest thread of the time before and never let it go, even as I grow older and older, even if it becomes harder and harder to cling on to, will that tenuous thread still give me access to a place where logic is defied? Or does that defy logic? Perhaps when Francine and Jean-Baptiste go through their special rituals it gives them access to some other place, some other plane where they are at peace, perhaps that place is rooted in the time before?

Jean-Baptiste tells me stories about his childhood in the Caribbean. His mother was a beautiful French woman and his father claimed to be a Quimboiseur: a magician. He likes me to believe he is a Quimboiseur too, but he doesn’t want to scare me: though the rituals and incantations he performs are most impressive. He tells me he is making me better. Perhaps he is, perhaps the baptisms in the cold lake do jolt some life force into me.

I knew, before the person in the woods told me, that Jean-Baptiste and Francine do other, special, rituals at night in the woods when I am locked away. I have heard sounds out there late at night, strange sounds.

Francine takes it all very seriously, more seriously than Jean-Baptiste, I can see a hint of amusement in his face sometimes when he watches her, as if he wants to tell her it is all a sham (does sham come from shaman?) but hasn’t the heart to disillusion her. Francine gives nothing away. She is very self-contained, intense, but cold. There is nothing maternal about her at all. She carries pain, I don’t know why, but I can see it is intense and layered: one pain has thrown itself upon another. Jean-Baptiste is kind but what can a father do to cure the deep inner pain of his daughter?

This house is full of Jean Baptiste’s books in English and in French. I read novels; I devour them. I know that human beings can find everything from subtle beauty to terrible ugliness in the love between a man and a woman. I know that feelings of unimaginable intensity are involved with it: feelings that can make the sane mad, or even offer salvation to the evil but mostly I just know there is a vast amount to be known. Yet, I feel some deep tingling, as of a far off memory concerning love, some echo from the time before: feelings beyond words. Perhaps I have lived a full life before? Do I dimly recall a previous adulthood, or have I tricked myself with pseudo memories from my reading? The more I try to concentrate on those dim recollections the faster they slip away.

Ever since the first moment I can remember, I have been fully me: I am not three, not almost four, I am me and I am ancient. Yet I feel much more vulnerable now than I used to feel, my wisdom seems to be slipping away. By the time I am four I will undoubtedly be stupider than I am now: imagine how stupid I will be when I am forty?

Whether or not I really met this new person or just dreamed about her, she has made me focus on priorities, I must find out more about my parents. Day after day I speed read everything Jean-Baptiste brings to me: every day I learn and understand more, yet until I read the letter I didn’t know a thing about my parents, I don’t know much more now, except that my father is dead, there are consequently vast gaps in my knowledge about myself. I know my conscious self pretty well now but I’ve read that it is from the less accessible areas of the psyche that things emerge in later life to surprise, disappoint or even shock or disgust oneself, and some of these awkward aspects may come from one’s forebears: to know is to be prepared.

So this person said my mother was a neurotic - it could be true - and my mother wrote that ‘she’ would distort the truth, play games. Who is ‘she’? Francine or this person I’ve just met in the woods? Or was my mother simply being neurotic? I should know more about her if that is true: I should be told, but Jean-Baptiste and Francine won’t tell me anything about her or my past and I can’t tell them I found the letter.

SIX DAYS TO GO

Yesterday afternoon I begged to go out to the woods again. Francine said it was too cold. I pleaded with Jean-Baptiste and he said I could go out provided I wore an extra jumper and my thickest coat, woolly hat and gloves.

I went to my cave and I waited there until I was so very cold but I was determined to see if this person was a dream or real. After a while I could hear Francine calling for me, there was concern mixed with annoyance in her voice. She wasn’t really alarmed, I was just being a nuisance and she was getting very cold too. I know how she really hates the cold so I got up shakily to go back to her. I was certain by then that this person with no name had just been a dream, I was almost at the cave entrance when the person appeared and blocked my way.

‘So you want to see me again then? Good. I watched you shivering there, waiting: I’m glad you’re prepared to sacrifice your comfort for me. But you didn’t do as I said and ask about the bones under the trees did you?’

I shook my head.

‘But I told you to do that. Can’t I trust you? Well off you go, do it now. Do it. ‘Whose’ bones are they? Ask. Now go.’

I slipped past her and turned back.

‘Don’t look at me. Go