Miramont's Ghost (29 page)

The voices grew quieter as the buggy moved away from them. Julien let out a long sigh.

Angus didn’t say another word the rest of the drive. The buggy pitched and rocked and swayed with the dips in the road, the turns they made. The five miles lengthened, and to Julien, crouched in the back, it felt like fifty. Despite the pile of blankets, he found his body shaking, whether from fear or cold, he could not tell. He didn’t feel safe, had no idea where Angus might be taking him. Maybe Angus was driving him into the mountains, in the darkness, ready to dispatch the priest by himself. Maybe that group of men had already gone to the castle, already thrown open the door, searched the premises. Perhaps, at this very moment, they were racing after the buggy.

The buggy stopped moving. Angus stayed still on his seat. “You can get up now, Father,” he whispered.

Julien pushed the heavy robes aside and sat up. He was cramped and stiff. The cold had seeped in under the blankets and locked in his joints. He looked at the tall, dark brick building beside them. They were at St. Mary’s Church, on Bijou Street in Colorado Springs.

Angus climbed down from his seat. He sighed, stretched his back and shoulders. He did not look at Julien. He moved to the door of the rectory and pounded.

They waited several moments. Angus pounded again. The housekeeper for Father Byrne pulled the door open and stared into the dark. It was long past time for visitors, and she was in her housecoat and slippers. Her hair hung in a long gray braid down the side of her neck. She looked at Father Morier, dusty and wrinkled, brushing at his clothes, and she stepped aside to let the two men pass.

Father Byrne appeared at the top of the stairs, also in housecoat and slippers. He had obviously been sleeping. His face was creased from the pillowcase. His silky white hair, thin and sparse, stood at odd angles. He put his glasses on his nose, peered down the stairs at the two men below. “Why, Father Morier! Mr. Gillis! This is unexpected!”

He started down the stairs. “Come in, come in.” He waved his hand, indicated the parlor to their left. The fire from earlier in the evening glowed with red coals.

Angus twisted his hat in his hands. “I’m afraid I’ve brought you nothing but trouble,” he began, his eyes flicking over to Morier beside him.

“Oh?” Father Byrne’s eyes were large and gray, almost pop-eyed behind his glasses.

“I’ve brought Morier to you for hiding. There’s a lynch mob after him. We barely made it out of Manitou.” Angus’s voice was gruff and deep.

Father Byrne examined the two men. Julien kept his eyes pinned on the rug beneath them, leaves of ivy trailing and twisting on the deep-green background.

“And just why would they want to lynch the good father?”

Julien shrugged but did not meet the eyes of the older priest. “I have no idea,” he began. His eyes skipped and flittered from the floor to the chairs to the window.

Angus interrupted. “They say he’s molesting kids.”

Father Byrne stared at Morier.

Angus turned to Julien, his eyes running up and down the small-statured man. “I don’t know if it’s true or not. But I heard some things myself, even before tonight.” Angus pushed a heavy breath into the room. “I don’t know if I done the right thing, really. Bringing him here. Maybe I should have just let them—”

He stopped, and Julien shuddered.

“But no matter what a man has done, I guess I never believed that turning him over to vigilantes is the right way to handle a problem.” He looked off into the darkened corner of the room. “Myself . . . I’d like to see him go to trial. Face his accusers.”

He looked back at Julien again. Julien could not meet his gaze.

Father Byrne clapped a hand on Angus’s shoulder. “You’ve done the right thing, Mr. Gillis. We can’t allow anyone to take the law into his own hands.”

Angus nodded.

“I’ll take care of things. I believe there is a train, for the east, first thing tomorrow morning. Perhaps Father Morier should be on it.”

Angus caught Julien’s eye.

Without a word, he turned and walked to the door, pulling it closed behind him.

EPILOGUE

O
ver a hundred years have passed since Julien first built the castle, over a hundred years since Adrienne arrived from France in the guise of a servant. It’s been over a hundred years since the night she picked up the knife and did what she felt she had to do. But the two who perpetrated the events, who instigated the torture, are no longer stuck. They are completely removed from the horror that took place inside these walls, completely oblivious to how their actions have continued to affect Adrienne, to hold her prisoner.

For over a hundred years, she has paced these halls, climbed these stairs, stared out these same windows. She watched as the world changed around her. She watched as the town of Manitou Springs grew, as houses crowded around the castle, as the very fabric of life has been rewoven by technology and industry. She watched while the Manitou Springs Historical Society took over the castle and worked to restore it to its original form. She watches the visitors come and go; sometimes she eavesdrops on their conversations, smiling at the all-too-frequent question “Is there a ghost in the castle?”

Yes, there is, and she’s made her presence known in dozens of harmless ways. The preservation architect from Denver, who came down to begin the process of restoration, was convinced there was a ghost present. He spent hours in the castle, tearing at false walls and boarded-over fireplaces, trying to get down to what the castle had been like originally. He pored over plans, read everything he could find that had been written about the building when Julien was there.

Adrienne did what she could to get his attention. He’d unlock a door, gather up his papers, and before he could get inside, she would close and lock it again. Sometimes he would close a door, turn the key in the lock, and start toward his car. Adrienne would push it open and watch the expression on his face as he turned to see it swing inward. She moved his papers. He was so certain of a presence that he mentioned the “ghost” in his preservation report.

And she’s made her presence known to the ladies who work there, with a variety of benign parlor tricks. She moved the crocheted antimacassars, right after the cleaning lady had finished placing them on the sofa. The woman turned her back for a moment, and suddenly they were on the chair. Adrienne sat in the rocking chair and rocked, making the chair creak and moan, watching as the woman’s face filled with fright. She moved dolls and dishes in the gift shop, sometimes to the opposite side of the room. She removed the coffee from the coffeemaker one morning when someone had started a pot for a meeting. The woman returned a few minutes later to find nothing but pale gray water coming out of the spout. Once, she even whispered “Happy birthday” to a woman working alone on the fourth floor. She loved to watch their reactions. She loved watching as they shook off their shivers.

But after one hundred years, none of that is even remotely satisfying. They might acknowledge the presence of a ghost. They have even named her Henrietta, a name that makes her shudder with its reminders of the life she led inside these walls. Once in a while a child, or some particularly sensitive person, walks through the door, sensing her presence. When that happens, Adrienne follows him or her from room to room, whispering to them, sometimes lightly touching a shoulder or a strand of hair. She loves it when someone can actually feel her presence—when someone almost stops and waits for her to say something.

It is not enough. It is not enough to spend eternity playing parlor tricks, all the while drowning in loneliness, just as she had in her physical life. Even after all this time has passed, she is still capsizing in the negative emotions that come charging up over her at the oddest times, like a storm at sea. She walks through the parlor, past the big fireplace, and stops suddenly, remembering those evenings by the fire, Marie pouring the wine and watching Adrienne’s every move. She walks into the kitchen and is suddenly hit with the feeling of looking at the breakfast tray that the nuns sent down and feeling, once again, like she’s going to retch. Some man with dark hair and a dark beard will visit the castle with his wife and family, and Adrienne finds herself gritting her teeth, the feeling of hatred so strong she’s surprised that the living don’t sense it. Once, she passed a woman on the stairs, a woman with graying curls and a grim expression, and for a moment Adrienne thought about shoving her, watching her tumble and roll down the staircase, as if she were the cause of Adrienne’s distress. As if she were the one who had kept Adrienne a prisoner here, all these years after the real culprits had left.

That is one thing she has discovered in the past hundred years: the emotion, the energy of anger and revulsion and shame and horror has not gone away. Adrienne’s actions on that long-ago evening allowed her to escape their physical presence, the physical torture that she endured at their hands. But the mental agony, the emotional suffering, has continued, as if it has an energy all its own, unrelated to whether or not there is a physical presence to claim it.

She stands at the window on the stairs, staring out at the night, as she has for hours now. There is a sliver of moon in the dark sky; Venus tags along like a puppy, twinkling with a joy promised to those who can get
out
, who can manage to leave it all behind. She knows now that it is not Julien or Marie who is keeping her a prisoner of this never-ending torment. There is no punishment that has been meted out by some great power, forcing her to stay locked inside these walls, reliving the same drama over and over again. The only thing keeping her here is
herself
, the energy of her own thoughts and emotions, her own inability to let go.

For years, she stood at this window and asked why. She wondered what she had done to deserve this treatment, what was wrong with her, what was it that had set off the whole chain of events. For a while, she believed that if she only understood why, then she would be able to escape.

She has quit asking why; she has quit seeking the answer. Even if she knew the answer, it would not free her from this prison. For years, she had believed that if they were caught, if they were punished for what they had done, that would be enough. That would make her feel better, would bring her a sense of justice and closure and allow her to let it all go.

She spent ages waiting for that to happen, for some Old Testament god to seek them out and make them pay. But that was long, long ago; too many years have passed for such a possibility. Julien and Marie are long dead; there will be no punishment; there will be no justice.

Adrienne swallowed. Below her, the blue house was dark. She could picture that little girl with the bike snug in her bed, completely unaware of the torture that went on in this castle all those years ago. Completely unaware of the steps Adrienne took to solve her problem. Completely unaware of all the awful events that took place behind these walls, just a few steps away.

Adrienne did not believe that she could ever
forgive
Julien and Marie for what they had done to her. She could never condone their actions, could never erase the pain they had caused. Forgiveness, the way she understood it, was not possible. But the way she had hung on, all these years, to her anger, to her need to blame them, her need for revenge, had not done anything to hurt Julien or Marie. It was
she
who continued to suffer, over a hundred years later. It was
she
who was still trapped here, still unable to find peace.

The thought occurred to her:
What if I just let go?
Not forgiveness, exactly, but just release. What if she unchained herself from all the pain, the anger, the shame, the sadness, all of it. Just put it down, like a heavy suitcase that she had been carting around for far too long. For the first time in over a century, Adrienne thought that perhaps she was ready, willing even, to detach. Forget about being able to forgive. Forget everything. Just let it go. For the first time, she
wanted
to let it go. She was willing to let it go.

She raised her hand to the lace curtain, her vision clear now as she studied the way the moonlight poured across the roof of the blue house. She watched the shadows of the trees spilling across the walls, watched as leaf shadows danced and flickered. Moonlight, pale and weak, came through the lace curtain in front of her, and her gaze was drawn to the soft shadows playing on her own hand. She watched, fascinated, as the shadows continued to sway and dance, only now on the curtain itself. She watched as her hand began to fade and disappear, like morning fog when the sun comes out.

AFTERWORD

This story is a work of fiction but was inspired by the real people, and some of the real events, connected with Miramont Castle, in Manitou Springs, Colorado.

Sometime in the early months of 1900, Father Jean Baptiste Francolon and his mother, Marie Plagne Francolon, left Miramont Castle under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind furniture, works of art, and family heirlooms, including the four-poster bed that had belonged to the empress Josephine Bonaparte. They also left many unpaid debts. The Gillis brothers did file a lawsuit against Father Francolon for nonpayment on the castle; they contacted his bishop first, reticent to sue the man they had worked so closely with.

Marie Francolon died in France a few months later.

Jean Baptiste Francolon died in New York in 1922. He was never given another parish after being relieved of his duties in Manitou Springs.

Francolon was born in France in 1854, the grandson of the Comte de Challembelles. His father, who worked in the diplomatic corps of the French government, died when Jean was just thirteen years old. Francolon studied at the university in Paris and prepared to go into diplomacy as well.

Just before he was to finish, he showed a sudden change of heart and entered the theological seminary in Clermont, France. Archbishop Lamy had also attended the seminary at Clermont and returned often to recruit priests for his large diocese in the New Mexico Territory. Jean Baptiste Francolon was one of those recruits. He was ordained in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1878, and served as secretary and then chancellor to the archbishop. He was given his own parish in 1881, at Santa Cruz de la Cañada, twenty-five miles north of Santa Fe. The parish covered over seventy square miles and included three Indian pueblos.

The journals of Adolph Bandelier, a Swiss anthropologist who spent many years in the New Mexico Territory, record that Father Francolon was poisoned at the chalice in 1885. He never fully recovered his health. Francolon was transferred to Manitou Springs, Colorado, to the Chapel of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, in 1892.

Francolon never revealed to anyone in Manitou that he had been poisoned. The story he told was that he had been sent to South America on a secret mission for the French government in 1885–86 and it was there that his health was compromised.

The stories of the George Washington ball were well documented in Colorado newspapers of the time, and were well attended by the elite of Denver and Colorado Springs society.

Francolon was proud of having helped bring the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad into Española, New Mexico, close to his parish. A spur of the D&RG, called the Chili Line, did exist between Antonito, Colorado, and Española. Francolon also boasted of his friendship with General William Palmer, who was instrumental in the building of the Denver and Rio Grande. There is some question as to the business practices of the railroad company in dealing with the acquisition of lands for the railroad from native peoples.

Francolon donated his original residence on the hill behind the castle, a wooden structure called Montcalme, to the Sisters of Mercy. They operated a sanitarium for tuberculosis patients in that structure. He also arranged with the sisters to have them provide meals for himself and his mother.

The Sisters of Mercy, in a history written by Kathleen O’Brien, RSM, entitled
Journeys: A Pre-Amalgamation History of the Sisters of Mercy, Omaha Province
, document the rumors of pedophilia about Francolon. The Sisters also share the story, through oral tradition, of Francolon having cursed the mother superior when she confronted him about the allegations of pedophilia. Whether he cursed her or not cannot be verified. On August 29, 1901, Mother Mary John Baptist Meyers was killed in a train accident as she traveled from Denver to Durango, slightly more than a year after the alleged curse.

The Sisters also share, in this same document, the story of Francolon’s being whisked away to St. Mary’s Church, under cover of darkness, with a vigilante committee on his heels.

Stories of the ghost were documented in the preservation report of the preservation consultant, Philip Lawrence Hannum, who helped restore the castle to its original form. Other members of the Manitou Historical Society, and some who have worked at the castle, have also reported mysterious occurrences, which they attribute to the ghost. They call her Henrietta.

The rest of the story is fiction.