The Purple Pterodactyls

The Menhir

Coming down the stairs after breakfast, I passed the beautiful Countess. She said: "Bonjour, Monsieur Newbury. Did you sleep well?"

"Parfaitement, merci," I said.

"Did you hear any sounds in the night?

"No, Madame. Should I have?"

She shrugged. "I just asked myself. This old chateau is full of strange knocks and creaks. Some of our guests are disturbed, although I am sure that the causes are natural."

"I shall watch for such phenomena, Madame. They will not intimidate me, I assure you, for I am not without experience in such matters."

"Good. Where did you and the little Denise go yesterday? You returned late."

"We walked around the city wall at Vannes and then took the boat ride around the Golfe du Morbihan."

"That is much for one day."

"It is the truth, Madame, but our time is limited. That is without doubt why we slept ourselves so profoundly."

"Where are you going today?" she asked. The Comtesse de la Carriere was a strikingly handsome woman in her early thirties. She forwent makeup, not needing it.

"We thought we should go to Hennebont. One says that there is a fine medieval gate and rampart."

The Comtesse made a slight grimace. "Certainly! But we, our memories of it are not of the most agreeable."

"Ainsi donc?"

"We were there, my sister and I, at the time of the massacre."

"Oh? I read of that in the guide."

"It is not exaggerated. Before the Germans left, on the seventh of August, 1944, they went to the houses, knocked on the doors, and shot the people as they came out. There were also many townspeople in the shelters, to avoid the American bombardment; but the Germans went there, too, and shot them. Angèle—she was a little girl then, you know—would have been killed, but the young German lieutenant, who commanded the platoon that was shooting the others, whispered to her to run. Thus she survived. Have you made the tour of the megaliths?"

"We saw the alignements of Carnac the day before yesterday. We thought that this afternoon, if we get back in good time, we might continue on to Locmariaquer to see the big menhir and the dolmen."

"Well, if you do not have the time to go so far, you can see our private menhir, on a piece of our land one kilometer away on the Quiberon road. This Menhir of Locmelon is broken like that at Locmariaquer. It was complete until the war, when an explosion knocked it over. We say the Germans blew it up to show their Aryan superiority; they say it was a bomb from an American airplane, hunting for Lorient or St. Nazaire. The year past, the members of an English cult came here to march around the remains in long robes, carrying candles. They said they were Druids."

"If I understand my archaeology, these huge stones were erected long before the Celts and their Druid priests arrived."

"You have reason, Monsieur; but you know how people love to believe fairytales. Anyway, bonne chance."

I have traveled enough not to be impressed by titles— especially French titles, since in that country any citizen may call himself by any title he pleases. If Jacques Leblanc wants to call himself the Grand Khan of Tatary, he may do so.

Still, it was nice to get on the good side of our titled landlord and landlady at the Chateau Kerzeriolet. Denise and I had seen only glimpses of them during the first few days of our stay. I suspect that a gaffe we pulled on our first day there had something to do with this.

We had arrived from Normandy with a suitcase full of dirty clothes. The first full day we spent washing up, and we had hung the garments on an elastic laundry cord across an open window. We did not realize that this festoon was plainly visible from the courtyard, until Jean-Pierre Tanguy, the professional hotelier who handled the paying guests, telephoned in great embarrassment to ask us to take them down. We were even more embarrassed than the manager.

On the fourth day, however, we ran into the Comte and Comtesse de la Carriere long enough to exchange amenities, when they found that Denise was French and that I spoke the language, they thawed.

Denise had saved me from a couple of other blunders. On the first morning, for instance, I was all set to go down to breakfast, but she insisted that we stay in our room and wait for our coffee and rolls to be brought up. That was how it was done here, and we should merely gum up the works by trying to change the routine. To me, an eggless French breakfast has never seemed quite the real thing; but with all this talk of cholesterol, perhaps the French had the right idea all along.

The castellated wall at Hennebont can be seen in minutes. We could view only the outside of the great medieval gate, the Porte Broerec'h, because workmen were still repairing war damage. So we got back early and went on to Locmariaquer.

There we examined the Fairy Stone, the biggest menhir of all. When new, it must have stood sixty feet tall and have weighed over 350 tons. Archaeologists think it fell in ancient times, perhaps while being erected. The technology of those people was not quite up to handling so huge a piece.

Even so, I have always been impressed by the feats of those Neolithic peasants, in trimming, moving, and upending huge monumental stones, as at Stonehenge and Carnac. I was not, however, so awed as to think they had called in little green men from Venus to help them.

Anyway, the stone has been lying down as far back as recorded history goes. It had broken into five pieces, of which four still lie where they fell. We also examined the big dolmen called the Merchant's Table nearby. It was once a grave mound, with slabs of stone on the sides and top; but treasure-hunters and erosion had removed the dirt, leaving the slabs standing. A tunnel runs from beneath the dolmen under the Fairy Stone.

We had meant to take pictures of each other sitting on the remains of the Fairy Stone, but the fickle weather was overcast and hazy, with an occasional drizzle. I took a few snaps without hope of getting first-class photographs. Then, on the way back to Kerzeriolet, the sky cleared just as we approached the field where, the Comtesse said, their private Menhir of Locmelon had stood.

Following her directions, we parked and hiked across the rolling, grassy countryside until we found the stone. It was not in the same class with the Fairy Stone, having been a mere ten or twelve feet tall. It, too, had been broken, into three large and several small pieces.

"It wouldn't be much of a job to glue it back together," I said.

"Mon petit constructeur!" said Denise. "Willy, you should have stayed with your engineering instead of becoming a banker. But you know, darling, in all these old countries, they have so many relics that it is all the governments can do to patch them up as fast as they fall apart. Besides, there would be a lot of rules by some Department of Archaeology to comply with. You would have to fill out forms in quadruplicate and file applications."

"God deliver me from European red tape!" I said. "Our own kind is bad enough. Anyway, I wasn't thinking of doing the job myself." I focused my camera on one of the fragments. "Looks as if this part had been carved into a face. Sinister-looking old coot, isn't he?"

"Have a care, my old. The spirit of the old coot might be offended."

"After some of the things I've seen, he doesn't scare me at all."

"Be careful anyway. Remember our poor children back home!"

Back at the chateau, we ran into the Comtesse in the lower hall. I told her of seeing the Menhir of Locmelon.

"He wants to put it back together, Madame," said Denise. "He is one of those who, on seeing anything broken, at once wishes to repair it."

"Such a man must be useful around the house," said the Comtesse. "That my Henri had more of that knack! He cannot drive a nail—ah, there you are, Henri. You know the Monsieur and Madame Newbury, is it not?"

The Comte was a slender, balding man of about my age—that is, a little past forty. If Hollywood had been looking for an actor and an actress to play a refined, ultra-gracious couple from the old European aristocracy, they could hardly have chosen better than these two.

The Comte bowed lightly and shook my hand. "Enchanté de toute maniere, mes amis. Will you do me the honor to take an apéritif with us before dinner?"

We went into the Carrieres' private parlor and sipped vermouth. The Comtesse's younger sister, Angèle de Kervadec, and another man joined us. Angèle looked like her sister but was even more beautiful. When she got older and put on a little weight, she would be a virtual double of Thérése, Comtesse de la Carriere.

Her companion was a burly fellow of my generation, with a close-cut black beard showing its first few threads of gray. He was introduced as Max Burgdorf, of Zurich. Although a German Swiss, his French had only the slightest trace of German accent. He said little, but when he did speak, it was in a stiff, abrupt manner. As he sat on the arm of Angèle's chair, she leaned against him. There was evidently some understanding between them.

The Comtesse brought up the matter of reassembling the Menhir of Locmelon. The Comte said: "Ah, Monsieur, that would cost money. Money is a problem here, with the franc in its present deplorable condition. One struggles to hold this place by every means. With taxes and inflation what they are, one must make every economy. Perhaps when De Gaulle comes to power ... But meanwhile, one must be realistic. Perhaps you, as a man of finance, can advise us."

"I am desolated that I do not know enough about French laws and financial institutions," I said. "Otherwise I should be happy to do so."

The Comte's face fell just a trifle, although he was too well-bred to say anything. Having been through this sort of thing before, I knew that we were being cultivated not for our charm but for some sure-fire financial tips. I continued:

"But I do not think the reerection of the menhir would be very costly. Monsieur Lebraz's garage in Vannes has a fine new wrecking truck with a crane in the back."

"The way those idiots drive," said the Comte, "Lebraz has plenty of business." To his wife he said: "Perhaps we should be in the garage business, hein? in lieu of trying to maintain this relic."

When the dinner bell chimed, Denise and I rose. The Comtesse said: "Some night soon, we shall have one of Angèle's séances. You must attend."

After we had gone to bed, I was jerked awake by the sound of footsteps in the hall. Not that there was anything unusual in that; there were a dozen other paying guests in the chateau. These footsteps, however, continued back and forth, back and forth. The sound brought Denise up, too.

"Now what?" I said. "Monsieur Burgdorf working up courage to visit the fair Angèle?"

"Tais toi!" she said, punching me in the ribs. "Nothing so vulgar here. These people are too careful of their blue blood, and you are just a dirty middle-aged man."

The footsteps stopped, and three raps sounded against our door. I sat up on the side of the bed. As a native of the crime-ridden United States, I did not rush to open the door. Instead, I called: "Who is there?"

For answer, the three raps sounded again.

"I think you can open," said Denise. "This French countryside is very law-abiding."

"Just a minute," I said. I got the family blackjack out of our luggage, stepped to the door, shot back the bolt, and jerked the door open. No one was there.

It took us over an hour to get to sleep after that. In any case, we heard no more odd noises.

Next day we left early, drove the Peugeot to Vannes, and continued on around the shores of the Golfe du Morbihan. This brought us out on the Rhuys Peninsula. Here, near Sarzeau and overlooking the Golfe, the guidebook said there was a ruined medieval castle.

We found the Chateau Morzon, a scruffy-looking pile rising amid the vinyards, and aroused the keeper. This was a Monsieur Le Goff, a stocky, weather-beaten old gent with a huge gray mustache. When we had paid our twenty francs, he showed us around, explaining:

"... in that tower, Monsieur and Madame, one says that the wife of the Due Jean was imprisoned. And on the wall east of the tower, where we are now going to mount, one says that, on moonlit nights, a ghost in armor walks. Me, I am not superstitious, but those legends are good for the tourism, eh? Some say it is the ghost of the Due Alain Barbe-Torte; others, the ghost of our great Breton hero, Bertrand du Guesclin—prenez garde!"

We were climbing the stair that led up to the surviving curtain wall. I was on the outer side, abreast of the keeper, while Denise followed. At one step, the outermost stone of the tread gave way as I put my weight upon it. It skittered off the stair, leaving me with one foot on the staircase and the other over empty air.

Monsieur Le Goff caught the sleeve of my coat. Denise shrieked "Willy!" and seized the part of my garments nearest to her, which happened to be the seat of my pants. Between their pull and a desperate windmilling of my own arms, I barely avoided a thirty-foot fall to the grass-grown courtyard below. The errant stone hit with a crash.

"Ah, quel malheur!" cried the keeper. "But by the grace of the good God, Monsieur, you are still with us. I must have that stone cemented back into place. You know how it is. With an old ruin like this, it crumbles faster than one can repair it. Are you all right now?"

We continued our tour. At the end, I pressed upon Monsieur Le Goff a whole fistful that crummy paper the French then used for money. I figured it was the least I could do. On the way home, Denise said:

"I warned you about making fun of the sinister old coot. I am not altogether joking."

Back at the chateau, Denise took a nap while I prowled the grounds with my camera, taking advantage of one of our few periods of bright sunshine. I came upon the Comte, in old pants and rolled-up shirt sleeves, working on the flower gardens with trowel, watering pot, and insecticide spray. We passed the time of day, and I told of my visit to the Chateau Morzon.

"Have you a family ghost?" I asked, "as the keeper at Morzon said they have there, if one believes the stories?"

"No; not family, anyway. Why do you ask?"

I told about the knocks during the previous night. The Comte gave the ghost of a smile.

"There is no old tradition of a specter here," he said. "But then, this house is not really old. It is not medieval or even Renaissance. It is Napoleonic, as you have doubtless inferred. It was built around 1805, to replace the original castle, destroyed in the Revolution of 1789.

"On the other hand, I will confess that, since the last war, there have been certain—ah—psychic manifestations. My wife tells me that you know something of these matters."

"I have had some strange experiences, yes."

"Then, are you and the charming Madame Newbury free tonight?"

"Yes, Monsieur le Comte."

"Bien, would you do us the honor of attending our little séance? Perhaps you can explain certain things. We begin at twenty-one hours."

"Thank you; we shall be enchanted. But how do you proceed? With a planchette, or tipping a table, or trance mediumship?"

"Angèle is our psychic. She does automatic writing."

"Oh? That will be very interesting. Tell me, does she have an understanding with that man—Monsieur—ah—Burgdorf?"

"Yes, one might say so. Their formal engagement will be announced when Max has his French citizenship."

"He intends to become French?"

"If he wishes to attach himself to my family, he must. You see, Monsieur—how shall I explain? Madame Newbury and you, have you children?"

"Three. They are in America, with my parents."

"Ah, how fortunate you are! Thérése and I, although we have been married for twelve years, have none. It is not for lack of desire, but the physicians tell us we never shall. I have no close relatives—or rather, those I had were killed in the war. So, when I die, the title will become extinct, unless I make provision for passing it on."

"Can you do that legally?"

"Yes, if one is willing to go through enough administrative routine. Of course," he smiled, "I realize that you Americans are all staunch republicans, to whom any titles are medieval nonsense. But still, a title is a nice thing to have. Aside from its sentimental appeal, it lends a certain solidarity to the family. It is even good for business.

"So, I have determined to bequeath this title to Angèle's husband, when she has one, to be passed on to their heirs. But naturally, the husband must be French. Then Max, wishing to marry Angèle, must become French."

The séance assembled at nine. We—the Comte and Comtesse, Angèle, Max Burgdorf, Denise and I, and a younger man whom we had not met before—sat in a circle around a big table. The lights were turned down. Angèle held a pencil and a pad on a clip board.

The young man was introduced as Frédéric Dion, a family friend from Vannes. He was a blond youth of about Angèle's age, who watched Angèle with an intentness that did not seem to me called for.

After a while, Angèle leaned forward and began to write. She stared straight ahead without looking at the paper. When she stopped, the Comte got up and peered over her shoulder.

"The Old French again?" murmured the Comtesse.

"No; this time it is Breton. Do you read it, Frédéric?"

Dion shook his head. "They had not yet introduced classes in Breton when I attended school."

The Comtesse said: "Jean-Pierre would know. I will go for him."

While she was out, the Comte said to me: "Monsieur Tanguy is a fanatical Breton nationalist. He does not altogether approve of us, because our family in this area goes back only to the fifteenth century. Therefore we are, in his view, foreigners."

The Comtesse returned with the manager. Tanguy looked at Angèle's scribble, shook his head, and frowned. "This is a more archaic dialect than I am accustomed to. But let me see—I think it says: 'Restore my house, if you know what is good for you. Restore my house. Restore my house.' Then it trails off into an illegible scrawl."

"My faith!" said the Comte. "Does he expect me to tear down this baraque and rebuild the original castle?"

"Even if we could afford it," added the Comtesse, "we do not have any accurate plan. There is nothing in existence to tell how it looked, save that engraving by Fragonard."

"Has this—ah—personality a name?" I asked.

"Sometimes he calls himself Ogmas; sometimes, Blaise," said the Comte.

"Could they be two separate entities?"

He shrugged. "Who knows? But he insists that both names belong to the same being."

"Perhaps one is a given name and the other a surname," said Dion.

"But," I said, "what species does this entity belong to? Is it the ghost of a mortal man, or is it some pagan godlet, left over from the Age of Bronze?"

"We have asked him," said the Comtesse, "but he gives only ambiguities or nonsense in response. Such inquiries seem to enrage him."

The Comte added: "The curé insists that it is a demon from Hell, and that we are in danger of damnation for having to do with it." He smiled indulgently. "The good Father Pare" is, I fear, a little behind the times. He has never reconciled himself to the changes that are taking place in the Church."

We waited a while, but Angèle produced no more spirit writing.

That night, however, there were more ghostly footsteps in the halls and knockings on doors. In the morning, four of the Comte's paying guests left ahead of schedule. They had been kept awake all night, they said, and at their age they needed their sleep. Although they did not admit to being frightened, I have no doubt that they were.

The Carrieres looked worried. The Comte said to me: "We are, as you would say, skating on the thin ice, financially speaking. A bad season could ruin us."

We spent most of that day in Auray, taking pictures of old houses and streets. We saw the monument to the Comte de Chambord, the royalist pretender of the 1870s, and the house where Benjamin Franklin stayed in 1778. In the evening, we had another séance. The same group sat around the table.

When Angèle began to write, she first produced a medieval Breton scrawl that not even Jean-Pierre Tanguy could read. Then the writing broke into clear French. "Vengeance!" it said. "Vengeance! Vengeance!"

"Vengeance on whom?" asked the Comte to the empty air.

"On him who destroyed my house," said Angèle's writing.

"My dear spirit," said the Comte, "the castle was destroyed in 1795, at the time of the disaster of Quiberon. All those who took part in that vandalism are long dead. So how could one take vengeance on them?"

"Not this house. My house: My house of stone. My great stone."

"Stone?" said the Comtesse. "Do you by chance mean the Menhir of Locmelon?"

"Yes. Yes. Restore my house. Take vengeance on those who overthrew it. Vengeance! Vengeance!"

The Comte ran puzzled eyes around the circle, lingering for a fraction of a second on me and on Max Burgdorf. "Who, then, destroyed your stone?"

"Barbarians. Barbarians did it."

"Barbarians? My good phantom, the last barbarians we had here were the Vikings, chased out by Alain Barbe-Torte in the year 939."

"Not true. Barbarians here, now."

"Hm," said the Comte. "He must mean the destruction of the menhir in the late war. We French say the Germans did it, while the Germans say the Americans did it. We have no Germans here. Monsieur Newbury, were you by chance in the American Air Force?"

"No, Monsieur, I was not. I was in the army, but I had a desk job and never got near Brittany."

"You see, Monsieur revenant," said the Comte to the air, "nobody here could have had anything to do with the unfortunate overthrow of your megalith."

"Not so. Two barbarians here. One in army that did it. Vengeance on him. Vengeance coming. You shall see ..."

Angèle broke into a frenzy of scribbling. The tension in the darkened room rose to a silent scream. The Comte said:

"But, my dear ghost, I have explained—"

"No," wrote Angèle. "One barbarian army missed my house; one hit it. I know which is which."

"Excuse me one moment," said Max Burgdorf. He got up and quietly left the room.

"Well, then," said the Comte, "which is which?"

The spirit writing went off into a sputter of illegible Dark Age Breton. Then the top sheet of Angèle's pad was used up. The Comte reached over her shoulder and tore off the sheet. Angèle began writing again.

"You have wrong," wrote Angèle. "Man with beard was in barbarian army. He shall die. Other barbarian warned. Warned yesterday. At Morzon. He shall help with [illegible]."

"But this—" began the Comte. He broke off, turned his head, and listened. There were footsteps outside in the hall. Saying "Pardon me one moment, please," the Comte rose, went to the door, and opened it. The rest of us, except Angèle, got up and followed him.

Max Burgdorf, suitcase in hand, was opening the huge, carved front door of the chateau. The Comte said sharply:

"Max! What are you doing? Where are you going so suddenly?"

"That is my affair," said Burgdorf.

"Oh, no, it is not! Are you leaving us, then?" I am.

"But why? Where are you going? What of Angèle?"

The Comte caught Burgdorf s arm just as the man was going out the door and turned him around. Burgdorf shook off the detaining hand.

"I warn you, do not try to stop me!" he said.

The Comte persisted: "Max! As a man of honor, I demand an explanation—"

"You will learn in due course," snapped Burgdorf over his shoulder, striding out towards his car.

Just then another car drove into the courtyard, and four men piled out. Three wore the khaki of the local police and carried guns of various kinds. The fourth, in civilian clothes, shouted: "Halte-la, Monsieur von Zeitz!"

Burgdorf wheeled, drawing a revolver. Before he could shoot, a rifle cracked. The revolver spun away, and Burgdorf, dropping his suitcase, grasped his arm with a yelp of pain.

"Helmuth von Zeitz, alias Max Burgdorf," said the man in civilian clothes, "I arrest you in the name of the Republic!"

Burgdorf—or von Zeitz—offered no more resistance. The Comte said: "Monsieur the Commissionnaire, I pray you, have the goodness to explain!"

"Monsieur le Comte," said the official, "this man is wanted for war crimes. He was the officer commanding the S.S. detachment, assigned to the massacre of Hennebont. I cannot imagine why the fool returned to the scene of his crime, but that is the fact. His application for citizenship betrayed him, when the naturalization bureau investigated it."

Angèle, who had quietly appeared in the doorway, gave a shriek. "It is him! I know him now, in spite of the beard! He is the one who saved my life!"

"While depriving hundreds of our compatriots of theirs," said the Comte. In the light of the lamps flanking the entrance, the Comte looked suddenly older and grim.

Burgdorf von Zeitz cried out: "I meant to make it up to you, Angèle! I did not mean to do it! I was only a junior officer, following orders! When you ran away, a little twelve-year-old girl, I told myself, I must come back some day and—" Tears on his cheeks shone in the lamplight.

"Come along, Monsieur," said the Commissionaire. "We must get you to the hospital, to repair that broken arm. It would not do to have you sneeze into the basket with your arm in a sling."

They hustled the suspect into the car and roared off. Angèle burst into tears. Frédéric Dion put his arms around her.

When the police car had gone, we straggled back into the chateau. Angèle disappeared with her sister. I asked the Comte:

"What will they do to him?"

The Comte looked at me with a slight smile and brought the edge of his palm sharply against his neck. The French are not a sentimental folk.

For the next half-hour, the Comte and Tanguy were busy reassuring the other guests, who had popped out of their rooms at the shot. At last we gathered again in the parlor— the Comte, Tanguy, Dion, Denise, and I. The Comte poured brandy all around. He said:

"Let us thank le bon Dieu that it was not worse and that it is now over."

"Oh," said Denise, "are you sure that it is, Monsieur le Comte? Your Blaise de Ogmas, or whatever he calls himself, still demands the restoration of his menhir. Otherwise ..."

"I understand," said the Comte. "This calls for thought."

"Henri," said Frédéric Dion, "you are aware that Angèle and I are old friends, and that before this self-styled Swiss appeared, she was inclined to me. Have I your permission to pay my addresses to her again?"

"Certainement—but wait an instant. The specter wishes his menhir restored, or he will ruin us by driving away our guests with knocks and rattles. So, if you share equally with me the cost of reerecting the megalith, you may pay court to Angèle with my blessing. As for Monsieur Newbury, I am sure that you, Monsieur, will, for the sake of the ancient friendship between our countries, donate to the project your engineering skill. Are we in accord? Bien."

The Comte might be a charming fellow, but that did not stop him from keeping a sharp French eye on his own interest.

I don't know how Frédéric Dion made out with his suit. He seemed a nice young man, so I hope he married Angèle and lived with her happily ever after.

But that is how, a week later, we were all standing in our rough clothes in the field of the Menhir of Locmelon, watching the crane on the back of Monsieur Lebraz's wrecking truck slowly hoist the last piece of the stone into the air. I had placed the cable around the fragment, hoping that nobody noticed my inexperience as a rigger.

When this piece was poised over the monument, I climbed the ladder. Denise handed me up a trowel and a bucket, and I slathered mortar on the broken surface of the stone. Then Lebraz lowered the topmost fragment, a centimeter at a time, until I could guide it into place. We pulled the cable out from between the stones. Surplus mortar was squeezed out of the join in gobs, which I scraped off with my trowel. At last, the sinister visage carved in the top of the monolith glowered down upon us, as it had for forty centuries before its overthrow.

The next day, we packed our car to head for Cahors. Being behind schedule because of the work on the menhir, we got an early start. As we were saying good-bye to the Carrieres in the courtyard, a car drove up and a little fat man got out.

"Monsieur le Comte de la Carriere?" he said.

"C'est moi," said the Comte.

"I am Gaston Lobideau, from the Office of Historical Monuments. I am reliably informed that you, Monsieur, without permission and without specialized archaeological knowledge, have restored the broken Menhir of Locmelon. I must warn you, sir, that this is a breach of the most serious of the laws of the Republic concerning the conservation of ancient monuments. You should have applied for permission through the appropriate channels. Then, in a few months, an expert would have come to check your qualifications for such an enterprise and to supervise the operation ..."

Denise and I got into our Peugeot, waved, and drove off. When last seen, the Comte and Monsieur Lobideau were shouting and waving their arms. I never heard how it came out, but perhaps that is just as well. They might have hauled us into court, too.