Take a journey to the ancient forests of the Ardennes in this haunting mystery still alive and breathing after nine hundred years.
Charles Fontaine returns to Europe to sell his familyâs ancestral domain and finds that a twelfth-century legend still haunts the property. Clues lead him to a parchment relating the curious tale of a village seeress, whose music enchanted a nobleman with shadowy ties to the present-day Fontaine family. With the help of a famous medievalist and enigmatic woman from his youth, Charles draws ever closer to the truth of this tale and its stunning historical revelation. "The Heron Legacy" is a novel of modern suspense in which history roams freely, its breath still warm.
An enthralling historical what-if from the author of "The Universe in 3/4 Time: A Novel of Old Europe", shortlisted for the 2023 Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize.
Take a journey to the ancient forests of the Ardennes in this haunting mystery still alive and breathing after nine hundred years.
Charles Fontaine returns to Europe to sell his familyâs ancestral domain and finds that a twelfth-century legend still haunts the property. Clues lead him to a parchment relating the curious tale of a village seeress, whose music enchanted a nobleman with shadowy ties to the present-day Fontaine family. With the help of a famous medievalist and enigmatic woman from his youth, Charles draws ever closer to the truth of this tale and its stunning historical revelation. "The Heron Legacy" is a novel of modern suspense in which history roams freely, its breath still warm.
An enthralling historical what-if from the author of "The Universe in 3/4 Time: A Novel of Old Europe", shortlisted for the 2023 Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize.
Â
Â
Â
PART ONE
Â
The Pond
Â
I
Â
ForestâŠ
At night it whispered to him from the frontiers of sleep where even dreams feared to go, and he would follow it there, to the places heâd known. On waking, a spicy note of pine sometimes lingered on his cheek, and as he strode to work on the hard pavement of New York City as he used to stride through the trees, it seemed he could feel soft, damp earth underfoot.
When everyone had left the office for the day and the great city glittered into splendor outside his window, he would take the few mementos of his boyhood from their drawer: a Roman coin and three pottery shards; a small rolled-up banner with the family coat of arms; a quartz crystal. Heâd study these treasures as if for the first time, close his eyes and sigh, for at that moment the forest wrapped its silence around him like river mist. In those weightless arms he could drift far from the alien world that had eaten at his soul for so long, and he could whisper truthfully, for indeed it seemed so real: I am home!
Â
Â
Charles Fontaine possessed a host of memory-ways for slipping into his past. His uncleâs domain in the Belgian Ardennes was full of them: the steep forests where oak and yew had witnessed centuries of passages and knew Charlesâs especially well; the alley of beeches leading to the pond where the herons fished (he could walk that path in a blindfold).
And Villa Antioch, of course.
His grandfather had constructed the fading, turreted retreat in the early 1900s in a particularly remote part of the forest and it still had no neighbors. From the terrace you could look out across an unkempt meadow to the river, and beyond, to the ruins of Blancheron Castle, perched on their lonely ridge.
And then there was the river itself: that moody, unreliable Semois. The tight serpentine wound through sudden fogs and dizzying escarpments and folded epochs between its coils. History grew deep roots here. Its breath was still warm.
A stone bridge spanned the river near Villa Antioch, built by the Romans during their occupation of Gaul. According to the villaâs current tenant, Charlesâs uncle, Theodore, a horseman occasionally rode across the bridge at dusk. âItâs your ancestor, lad, Stephen de la Fontaine!â he liked to tell his wide-eyed nephew of an evening, when vapors blurred the ancient arches. âDepending on the weather, of course,â he twinkled. âAnd how much Merlot youâve had at supper.â
Strangely, memory always seemed to guide Charles to a single boyhood afternoon. How was it, he wondered, that seventeen years had not diminished its brightness?
Â
II
Nothing is as ancient as the forest, Charles. Except stones, of course. Not even time is as old as stones.
It was the last summer he would spend in the Ardennes before moving with his father to America. Heâd been Charles de la Fontaine back then, a diffident, searching sixteen-year-old from Brussels, and the words had been those of his beloved uncle, Theodore de la Fontaine, professor of history at the lycĂ©e in Bouillon and local eccentric. Theodore had been wandering the Ardennes and clambering about its medieval vestiges since his own boyhood and knew a thing or two about ancientness.
âUncle, wait!â
Theyâd crossed the stone bridge and started up the ridge via a near-vertical path. Autumn had already tainted the summer with morning brume and cold rains. The footing was slick.
âDo you feel it, lad?â Theodore called over his shoulder. âThe twelfth century, breathing on your neck?â His voice was uncharacteristically somber. They both knew this would be their last scramble up to the Blancheron ruins for a long time.
âOf course I feel it,â Charles muttered, lagging behind. He always felt the past on his neck in his uncleâs company.
âYouâd better remember it, then,â Theodore said. âYou wonât find anything like it in America.â The battered leather satchel he carried on forest expeditions swung out from his shoulder and narrowly missed his nephew.
Charles peered up the steep, wooded ridge: a perfect natural defense of rock and trunk. No wonder his ancestor had chosen the spot for his castle. Trees took root in fissures and grew with ghastly deformities, and the rocks themselves, raw sculptures of schist and shale, seemed to have been tossed about by a sullen spirit. Maugis, perhaps: the enchanter of Ardennes lore. The idea filled Charles with foreboding. Maugis was a shape-shifter; a neâer-do-well. He could wrap himself in waterâŠmelt himself into mist. You never knew in what cave or pool he might be lurking.
Charles grasped a birch trunk and leaned out to watch the river glisten far below. Stephen de la Fontaine had probably scrabbled up the very same shale nine centuries ago, he thought. Then, with a frisson: Someone else might have, too.
âMaybe Duke Godfrey passed by here,â Charles shouted ahead to his uncle, letting go of the birch to climb on. His boot let loose a volley of scree. Humidity clung to his chestnut curls and pressed them against his temples.
Theodore halted, breathing heavily. It always amazed Charles that his uncle could haul his heavy bulk up the ridge at all, let alone wander for hours through the forest.
âWell, I donât know about that,â Theodore said. âBouillon Castle is over twenty kilometers away, after all. And Godfrey died in Jerusalem in 1100, rememberâbefore Blancheron was even built. Stephen de la Fontaine didnât come back from the Holy Land until 1103, as you know.â
âYes, I know,â Charles sighed. Heâd already spent eight summers with Theodore and knew more about the medieval goings-on in this corner of Belgium than most post-graduate students. Heâd taken to the subject with all the zeal his uncle possessed, even if, at times, Theodore tended to repeat himself unduly.
Uncle never said much about Godfrey, though. Of all the figments that roamed these woodsâfairies, gnomes, will-oâ-the-wisps, witchesâthe presence of Godfrey of Bouillon was the most confounding.
There were many intriguing holes in his story, for one thing. For another, historians could never quite reconcile the fact that a leader of the First Crusade, whoâd performed unspeakable acts with a sword that most scholars of medieval history could hardly have lifted, had also been remembered as a man who was modest, virtuous and kind. Heâd been tall, fair and handsome, too, as it happened, so it was no wonder that heâd become an icon of chivalry. Heâd powered popular imagination for centuriesâand Charlesâs for all of his boyhoodâuntil modern critics finally weighed in and declared the fair duke from the Ardennes a murdering thug.
GodfreyâŠGodefroidâŠGodefroyâŠGottvart⊠Charles knew all the variations of the name. The Duke of Lower Lorraine. The nobleman haunted these woodlands even when no mention of him was made.
âSuch an outsized historical figure for such a modest little realm!â Theodore liked to say. He never missed a chance to remind his nephew that technically, Godfrey was Belgian, not French. âOh, all right, lad. He might have been born in Boulogne, which is in France, itâs true. But he also might have been born in Baisy, which is now in Belgium. You decide.â
Guiltily, with forbidden hero-worship, Charles would read late into the night about the medieval neighbor whose afterlife had turned out to be so troublesome. And what light work it was to cross nine centuries!
August 15, 1096. A Saturday. (Theodore was a mine of interesting tidbits.) Partly cloudy, with a slight breeze lifting the banners. The air reeked of dung and sweat. The scene played out clearly before Charlesâs eyes:
Godfrey, a descendant of Charlemagne himself, appeared at the gates of Bouillon Castle not on a sleek charger but on his sturdy ardennais, a horse described by Julius Caesar as rustic, hard and tireless. The duke seemed pale; distracted. He glanced back over his shoulder, memorizing, perhaps, the gray stone contours of his home. Or was he looking for someone in the crowd?
âWhat was he feeling that day, do you think?â Charles pressed his uncle, as it was he whoâd taught him that history lived in such details. âGodfrey was leaving everything behind, wasnât he? His duchyâŠhis beloved mother.â
âYes, youâre right,â said Theodore. âHe probably wasnât feeling the exaltation of a pious Christian heading to Jerusalem, I can tell you that. Just think of all the noise and smell of departure! The terror of the unknown⊠Legend is rarely as glorious as it seems, lad. No, indeed. How would you feel before riding a horse through hostile territory for over four thousand kilometers? In truth, Godfrey probably slept badly the night before and woke up with indigestion.â
Why did he never marry? Charles wondered. Did he go to Jerusalem not planning to return? Godfrey haunted history books with the same elusiveness that he haunted the woods around Villa Antioch, and thus the duke, whose castle brooded above the same river as Blancheron, kept Charles awake late into the evening. The boy would glance up from his books and hold his breath, wondering if he might have company in the shadows of the turret room where he lodged during the summer. Sometimes he would get out of bed and look down at the Roman bridge far below, considering that perhaps the horseman who clattered across the stones at twilight was not the ghost of his own ancestor at all, but of someone else.
The Heron Legacy by Leona Francombe
A sublime tale written by Leona Francombe sees the main protagonist Charles de la Fontaine, and his Uncle Theodore fully immersed in the forest and history that lie within. Like his Uncle, Charles has the same passion for finding, touching, and immersing in archaeological items they come across while investigating the woodlands around the family Villa. Stephen de la Fontaine, a family descendant, had fought in a holy war and returned in 1103, with surprises in tow. An old legend has sprouted about a White Heron in connection to a spring located on a patch of land by the forest. A woman named Arda, a central figure in the story, is said to be connected to the Heron. Charle's father has a disdain for his interest in history and moves them both to the United States, where he determines Charles will go to school to become a lawyer. Upon becoming a partner in his father's law firm, Charles receives news that Theodore has passed away. Charles returns to Ardennes to sell the family villa but suddenly finds himself involved in a mystery that spans centuries.
I adored the atmosphere of the novel. Inside its pages oozed a sense of beauty and wonder. The book compelled me to indulge all of my senses while reading it. I could see the beauty of the landscape, smell the flowers, touch the trees, and hear the horse hooves trot down the beaten path. Within the framework, Leona Francombe has penned a mystery that intrigues the soul wanderer that lives within us. At its core, the novel reminds the reader to stay true to oneself. A read that will inspire us to live life through our passions and disregard the need to satiate our ego with money and prestige.
As I sat the book down for the final time, decadence is the word that comes to mind. It felt like something akin to eating the finest red velvet cake. The writing style was smooth, yet rich in its ideas. The relationships forged between characters had a sense of meaning but always with a twist to challenge the reader's presumptions. I am giving this 4 out of 5 stars and look forward to reading more from the author in the future. I highly recommend it!