The Priest's Madonna

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  GLOSSARY: HEBREW/GREEK/ARAMAIC

  GLOSSARY: FRENCH/OCCITAN

  PRAISE FOR

  The Priest’s Madonna

  “Delicious! An absorbing journey of romance and redemption. If you liked The Da Vinci Code, you’ll love The Priest’s Madonna. It will challenge your beliefs and deepen your spirituality.”

  —Lisa Earle McLeod, syndicated columnist,

  commentator for Lifetime Entertainment,

  and author of Forget Perfect

  “Marvelously written and researched … weaves together a story of France at the turn of the twentieth century … to create a rich fabric of love, mystery, anguish, and faith.”—Library Journal (starred review)

  “An ambitious, absorbing novel, both impressively researched and deftly written. In Marie, Amy Hassinger has created an endearingly contradictory protagonist—naïve and intelligent, submissive and rebellious—who tells a suspenseful story of love and religion.”

  —Curtis Sittenfeld,

  bestselling author of Prep

  “What I love about Amy Hassinger’s gorgeous and graceful novel The Priest’s Madonna is how she so convincingly resurrects the past, how she so deeply imagines her character’s longing. Rendered with uncommon insight and compassion … timeless … I envy those readers hearing Marie’s divine voice for the first time, those blessed souls receiving her captivating story like a prayer.”—Bret Anthony Johnston,

  author of Corpus Christi: Stories

  “Adroit … a very sympathetic and engaging presentation of holy historical biographies.”

  —Phyllis Tickle, author of Prayer Is a Place and the Stories from the Farm in Lucy trilogy

  “A historical romance that mixes literary heft and pop-fiction … ambitious.”—Publishers Weekly

  PRAISE FOR

  AMY HASSINGER’S DEBUT NOVEL, Nina: Adolescence

  “Hassinger’s lovely first novel is elegant, sad, often funny, often unsettling. She writes with such precision and understanding, with mercy but unsparingly about adolescence, its wonders, horrors, passions—sexuality, family ties, and friendship—that, like all excellent portraits, it is not only about the subject of the portraits themselves, but also about the viewers.”—Elizabeth McCracken

  “Hassinger makes Nina’s loss of innocence and plunge into self-destruction chillingly believable. Her graceful, observant prose beautifully captures Nina’s inner world—her guilt, yearning, anger, desire, and joy—while ruthlessly skewering the narcissism of ambitious adults.”

  —Booklist

  “Very few writers are able to give the period of adolescence the wider resonance of serious adult literature. In Nina: Adolesence, Amy Hassinger does so brilliantly. This is an exciting debut by a splendid young writer.”

  —Robert Olen Butler

  “[One of] the best books of summer … In terms of summoning reader sympathy, few could outdo the young protagonist of Amy Hassinger’s first novel … who finds coming of age even more complicated when a showing of nude portraits of herself, painted by her artist mother, garners all the wrong kinds of attention.”—Vogue

  “In clear and lucid prose, Hassinger reveals the complex emotions that surround the border of childhood. Tender and brutal … and very honest.”—Chris Offutt

  “Surges forward like a quiet thriller … there’s a sly sensuality to Hassinger’s prose. A truly penetrating book.” —Salon

  “Achingly straightforward … Hassinger builds her touching drama with a refreshingly undramatic simplicity.” —Kirkus Reviews “Complex and beautiful.”—Lisa Carey

  “Disturbing … eerily seductive … expressive.” —Publishers Weekly

  ALSO BY AMY HASSINGER

  Nina: Adolescence

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2006 by Amy Hassinger.

  Photograph © Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley trade edition / April 2007

  eISBN : 978-1-101-15695-7

  Hassinger, Amy, 1972-.

  The priest’s madonna / Amy Hassinger.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-15695-7

  1. Saunière, Bérenger, 1852-1917—Fiction. 2. Mary Magdalene, Saint—Cult—Fiction.

  3. Rennes-le-Château (France)—Fiction. 4. Housekeepers—Fiction. 5. Occultists—Fiction.

  6. Catholics—Fiction. 7. Clergy—Fiction. 8. Grail—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3608.A86P

  813’.6—dc22

  [http://us.penguingroup.com] http://us.penguingroup.com

  FOR ADAM

  But Christ loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on the mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, “Why do you love her more than all of us?” The Savior answered and said to them, “Why do I not love you like [I love her]?”

  —“THE GOSPEL OF PHILIP,” IN THE NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY

  The body is the garden of the spirit.

  —TONY KUSHNER

  Prologue

  BÉRENGER AND I first met at Sainte Baume on the eve of Sainte Marie Madeleine’s feast day, July 21, 1877. He was twenty-five, I was nine. We were only two of the many pilgrims who had come from all corners of the country: Bourgogne, Limousin, Bretagne, even some from Paris. My mother was pregnant with poor Christophe, though it was early enough that I
did not yet know.

  We rode by train to the coast, where we caught a ferry to Marseilles. The boat was full—it was difficult to find seats, as we arrived late—and I saw faces of all sorts: the ruddy, wind-scoured cheeks of old farmers; gentlemen of my father’s age, sharply dressed in vests and bow ties; young children, brows smudged with dirt; older girls in fresh pinafores, hair prettily braided; and some young men who gathered in groups to play cards and smoke. But mainly I saw women of my mother’s age, and though they all wore their differences plainly on their faces and in their clothing—some wore fancy hats, shawls, and lace-up boots, others wore sabots and covered their hair with plain silk scarves—they bore themselves with a similar anticipatory air.

  Though the train ride was thrilling, it had been unbearably hot. We had been sitting across from an unpleasant woman and her two equally unpleasant sons who entertained themselves by insulting my five-year-old brother Claude, and so I was glad to finally board the ferry and feel the wind off the Mediterranean. My mother allowed us to roam the decks. We explored all three levels, then stationed ourselves on the top deck to watch the sea boil in our wake. Gulls flew overhead, crying in their mournful way, and we fed them a crust of bread.

  It was then that I noticed Bérenger. Young and dapper in a trim black suit and collar, with striking dark brows, he stood chatting with my mother, who had joined us on the top deck. I assumed he was a stranger passing the time.

  We arrived at Marseilles as evening was coming on. Mother took us to a café for a bit of bread and cheese before our hike up the mountain. We sat and chatted with a young family while we ate. By the time we set out, the day had cooled, which we were thankful for, because it was a steep climb and we were tired.

  The small cave was already full when we arrived. We found a place toward the back. It was damp and cool, despite the press of bodies. I sat on a stone and Claude rested his head in my lap. Stroking his hair, I watched the sky darken and the stars appear as we waited for the Mass to begin.

  “What do you see, maman?” I asked my mother, who stood beside me.

  “Nothing yet. It’s dark.”

  I must have dozed. The next thing I remember is my mother rousing me excitedly. I opened my eyes to see candlelight trembling against the walls of the cave. Claude was now sleeping at Mother’s feet, his head resting on her coat, which she had bundled into a pillow. I stood, straining to see over the heads of the crowd. In a whisper, I asked my mother what was happening, but she shushed me.

  Then the young man in front of me turned around and I saw that it was the same man who had been speaking with my mother on the ferry. “Do you want to see?” he asked.

  I nodded, embarrassed.

  To my amazement, he squatted in the dirt in front of me and bowed his head. “Climb on my back,” he said.

  I looked to my mother for approval, but she was immersed in the service. The young man was smiling broadly at me, amused by my shock at being invited to clamber onto the back of a strange man. “You’ve come all this way,” he said. “You shouldn’t miss it.”

  Glancing at my mother once more, I decided to do as he bid. I lifted my skirt slightly, then grabbed hold of his shoulders and wrapped my legs around his back. As he stood, grasping the undersides of my knees to steady me, my mother turned, startled by the sudden movement. I had never seen her look more horrified. “Marie!” she said loudly, waking Claude and turning heads. My face burned, and I pushed against the young man’s back, wanting him to drop me. But he addressed her by name and told her it was all right. “I urged her to do it, Madame,” he said. “It would be a shame to have come all this way and not to see the Madeleine herself.”

  To my surprise, my mother’s face softened, and she assented.

  From my new position, I saw that the lit grotto was more spectacular than I had imagined. It extended before us a few dozen yards. Votive candles had been placed in niches in the rock as well as given to the people at the front of the congregation, so that the cave brightened as it deepened. The priest was surrounded by light as bright as day, and when he held up his hands to consecrate the bread and the wine, his palms shone like polished marble. Candlelight illuminated the gathered congregation, some of whom I recognized from the ferry. In the daylight, their faces had been mundane, but here they glowed.

  As the priest bent to sip the wine, I noticed the reliquary behind him: a golden head, borne on a miniature palanquin. Inside that reliquary was the skull of Marie Madeleine herself, the woman whom Christ had loved so dearly as to appear to her first after his resurrection and exhort her to spread the word among his disciples. I knew her then as the repentant sinner, the converted prostitute, fallible, faithful, devoted. I had read in my Lives of the Saints that she had come to France from Palestine in an oarless boat, put to sea by heathens who intended for her to drown, that she helped spread Christianity in Gaul, and that she spent her last thirty years in this very cave, praying to the Lord she so loved in life. Here I was, in her hermitage, enclosed by the walls she had gazed upon for so long. Feeling light-headed, I tightened my grasp around my young man’s neck.

  When it came time for communion, he set me down so that he could join the line. As he did not return to his original spot, I saw no more of him, nor did I see more of the service that night. But I was not disappointed; I had seen enough to ignite my imagination, and when the Mass was finished, I filed along behind my mother and the other pilgrims as we descended the hill, feeling as though I had taken part in something distinctly separate from the time and space in which I was accustomed to living.

  How simple faith was then! How sincere my religious feeling, my reverence! I am past mourning that loss now—though I did, for years, the loss of that childhood gift of untarnished wonder. I wonder still. I stand in awe now and then. But those moments, though brilliant, are ephemeral, quickly eclipsed by the shade of the mundane. Can we ever return to that primary faith, that easy worship? What does it take? We become so burdened by our innumerable failed loves, our injuries, inflicted and endured. We forget. We grow old.

  I am in search of absolution, even if it must be from a God I love too shallowly, too selfishly, a God I battle like a willful child. What do I know of God? My understanding is a bramble, an un pruned olive tree strangled with vine, not helped by the years I’ve spent praying, reading, pondering, asking for some small clarification, some minute glimpse of the infinite. Despite my blindness, despite my stubborn heart, I petition him daily, I ask him to forgive me my trespasses, to grant me peace. I repent. I gave away Bérenger’s presents years ago: the dresses of Parisian design, the string of pink pearls, the gold bracelet encrusted with diamonds, the lace gloves that buttoned primly at the elbow. I burned all the papers he left that would have given me access to his bank accounts in Limoux, Paris, Carcassonne, Angers, and Budapest. I have never once slept in the Villa Bethania, the villa he built for me. I have not been to Mass in years, nor will I return, not after the way they treated him, hounding him to his death. But I follow the forms, and not only out of habit, for they do give me comfort. I say my novenas daily and pray often to my little santon. Every morning, after I change the holy water, I kneel before the altar and make my humble devotions. I ask for God’s forgiveness.

  God, this famous God, Bérenger’s God, and always mine, too, though I resist and abuse him, God asks too much of us. We must reject our very natures, become only a whisper, a breath of ourselves. We must dwindle and squeeze into the one crevice of our hearts that is humble and kind, chaste and patient, diligent and liberal with love. It is too much! We must, as the prophet says, do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly—but one slip, one mis step along the path, and we initiate an avalanche, and though we grasp at saplings and boulders, we cannot stop our somersaulting descent.

  Chapter One

  IN THOSE YEARS we lived in Espéraza, a small city straddling the banks of the bending Aude. We had a cozy apartment above my father’s hat shop, a place redolent of steamed felt, shellac, rabbit f
ur, and wool, and peopled with hat forms standing on workbenches like sculpted busts. Though we were not wealthy, Father made a good living and enjoyed his work. He employed five men and treated them like family—they ate their midday dinners with us, and slept on the workroom floor when they were fighting with their wives or sleeping off a binge. Father entertained them with political diatribes and songs as they worked. He often said that if he had his life to live over again, he would be a cabaret singer. “Enough of this decent living, this per snickety business of fulling wool and counting money,” he’d roar. “Give me the stage, give me Paris!” Mother would roll her eyes while he belted out the first phrases of “Coupo Santo” in his rich baritone, his handlebar mustache vibrating.

  Our apartment was modest but comfortable: one bedroom, a kitchen, and a dining room. When the weather was poor or the river was threatening to flood, Claude and I—and our foster sister, Michelle, after she came—would sometimes wander down to the warm shop to watch the men work and listen to their stories. This was where I learned of the wild woman who lived with the bears in the mountains, and of Autanette, the daughter of the wind, whose father saved her from unwanted suitors by turning her into stone. This was also where I learned about my father’s passionate distaste for the Catholic Church and his strong socialist views. He was outspoken and loved an argument, and he would often provoke the workers who were royalists, baiting them and then trouncing them soundly with his own republican manifesto. More than one worker stormed out of the shop in a fury on these occasions. Usually they returned the next day, when their tempers had cooled.