Monday morning began without a problem. Bryce and Curtis put in their time at the fitness center, returning to their apartments feeling refreshed and fit. Damon was awakened, and took over fixing breakfast, without even making another comment about the fire alarm last week. When it was time for Bryce to leave for campus, Damon busied himself once more with his political theory textbook. He was leaning towards doing something on Plato, and was also reading The Republic. He thought he would wait and see what the instructor had to say about the first great theorist, and if he was not completely discouraged, he would get started right away. He was still anxious about this class and this requirement.
As Bryce exited the side door of the Caldwell mansion, he thought he saw movement back at the carriage house, where Miller and Rollins lived. Although he waited a few minutes to see whether his neighbors would appear, nothing happened. Still considering their behavior odd, Bryce proceeded on to campus, and his first class of the day, French Classicism.
Bryce had left early that morning because he wanted to speak with Dr. Anjot about his proposed term paper topic for the class. As a result of his researches on Friday, he knew that Jean Racine, perhaps the greatest playwright France ever produced, abandoned the stage after the production of his masterpiece, Phèdre, in 1667 and renewed his association with the strict monastery of Port Royal. He wanted to explore the connections between these two events. He found the Professor in his office preparing for class, and most willing to give Bryce a few minutes. After listening to Bryce’s proposal, he agreed that this was a most appropriate topic, and so Bryce could mark one off his list of topics to be approved.
In the classroom, Bryce again encountered Marc Rimbault. Just before time for class to begin, Marc stood up and addressed the other students.
“Last spring some of us found it useful to have a study group to go over the material covered in class, especially before exams. I’ll be willing to do the leg work, finding a place and time, if others are interested in something like that this term. I’m passing around a sheet of paper. If you’re interested, please list your name, contact information, and any times in the afternoons and evenings you cannot meet.”
With that, Marc handed the sheet to Bryce, who became the first to sign up. There was some mumbling, and it became obvious that some of the French majors resented Marc taking the initiative in this. Like last spring, there apparently were those who considered that only French majors should be in the class. In a supercilious manner, they made fun of Marc’s Cajun accent. Still, when Marc got his paper back at the end of class, there were six names on it, a sufficient number to make it worth doing. Unfortunately there was also a scurrilous remark by one of the French majors about un étudiant bâtard avec une langue bâtarde, again making fun of Marc’s Cajun accent.
Dr. Anjot gave his lecture on the French literature of the early seventeenth century, which some critics called baroque and others mannerism. Essentially, what both described was an exaggerated form of writing, exhibiting a lot of fantastic scenarios, bombastic language, and interminable stories. He then gave a brief outline of the lives and literary careers of the two authors chosen to illustrate that style. The first was Madeleine de Scudéry, who lived from 1607 to 1701. Chronologically, she was not really earlier than some of the Classical writers, but she wrote in the earlier style. She was an extremely well educated lady, who established a literary salon in Paris around 1640, and lived and worked with her brother, Georges. She sometimes used her brother’s name on her works, and, especially later in life, used the pseudonym Sappho. This and the fact that she never married caused Bryce to wonder about her sexual orientation. Madeleine de Scudéry published four interminable novels. After an opening effort with Ibrahim, ou l’illustre Bassa in four volumes in 1641, she followed up with her best known work, Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus, published over the years 1648 to 1653 in ten volumes. Then came Clélie, histoire romaine also in ten volumes, from 1654 to 1661, and Almahide, ou l’esclave reine in a mere eight volumes from 1661 to 1663. Artamène, which contains over two million words, is one of the longest novels ever written. In his own mind, Bryce compared Madeleine de Scudéry to some of the modern writers of romances, or what is sometimes called ‘chick lit,’ who have a new pot-boiler every year with stock characters and predictable scenes.
Following his discussion of Madeleine de Scudéry, Professor Anjot launched into his synopsis of the life and work of Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655). After studying at the University of Paris, Cyrano entered the army, serving in the campaigns of 1639 and 1640. Then he returned to Paris and to the life of a dramatist. He evidently was gay, having a long-running affaire d’amour or at least de sexe with the musician, Charles Coypeau d’Assoucy, which lasted thirteen years, but ended in bitterness and mutual recrimination. Some of the barbs they tossed back and forth were amusing, but hardly edifying. Evidently, Cyrano threatened the life of Charles, and as a result had to leave Paris in 1653. Like the exaggerated version of him in later literature, Cyrano had a rather large nose. There is considerable disagreement about the manner of death of Cyrano, with some scholars holding that it was a result of syphilis, others opting for a story that he was injured in a clash with robbers, and still others claiming he was assassinated. He authored some forgettable plays, such as La Morte d’Agrippine (1654). His best known works are the science fiction stories, L’Autre Monde, ou les États et Empires de la Lune and Les États et Empires du Soleil, both containing fantastic scenes and published posthumously. Perhaps merely because of their subject matter, with voyages to the moon and the sun, the works of Cyrano were also considered unrealistic and overdone.
After this class, Bryce did not stop to clown around with Marc. He could not afford to be late again for his English literature class with Dr. Drake. He knew he wanted to do something on John Dryden for his term paper in this class, but he had not yet done the background work necessary to come up with a defined topic. Therefore, he merely listened as the Professor discoursed on the conditions behind the style and spirit known in English literature as Restoration. The term refers, as Bryce knew, to the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 after the puritanical dictatorship of the dour Oliver Cromwell. Dr. Drake discussed the sense of relief experienced by the nation when Charles II, the “Merry Monarch,” returned, leading once again to laughter and good times. In literature, this was an age of satire, some of it quite risqué.
After English, and while Damon was in his dreaded political theory class, Bryce checked out their campus mail box. Although they could receive mail at their apartment, both were assigned campus boxes for official University announcements, most of which were also distributed by e-mail. This year, they shared a box in the Union. He was glad that Damon was not with him when, in addition to the usual circulars and ads, Bryce found an official looking envelope from the Military Personnel Records division of the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, a subsidiary of the National Archives and Records Administration.
The document included in the impressive envelope was a Certificate of Military Service. It gave the record of Benny E. Watson, along with his Social Security number, his dates of service from 13 January 1942 to 6 June 1944, with service terminated by death in combat at the rank of Corporal. His full name was Benjamin Ernest Watson, which was encouraging as far as establishing a link to Damon’s father, Ernest Watson. Cpl. Watson’s date of birth was given as 29 November 1923, so he was just twenty years old when he died. His assignment was listed as the 320th Anti-Aircraft Balloon Battalion (VLA), which made Bryce anxious to research that interesting designation.
Bryce retreated to the library, where he used his laptop to access information on this remarkable US Army unit. He found that it was the first black unit to see combat in Europe during World War II, at a time when the Army was segregated. The so-called barrage balloon units sent gas filled balloons up to as much as 2,000 feet over the Omaha beaches on D-Day. The VLA in the unit’s designation stood for “very low altitude.” Their purpose was to force enemy planes to fly high enough that their bombing could not be accurate and strafing impossible. It involved units of four men landing on the beach, using a hand wench to inflate the balloons, and sending them aloft. This provided considerable cover for the thousands of infantrymen who followed. Obviously, Cpl. Watson was one of the heroes of D-Day, helping to free Europe from the scourge of Naziism. The aptness of a black unit helping to defeat the greatest racist power the earth has ever seen was not lost on Bryce. Now, if only Bryce could connect Cpl. Watson to Damon Watson, that would be something to be proud of, indeed.
Bryce left the library in time to meet Damon for lunch at the Union. He did not dare mention his discoveries, as he wanted a firm connection to Damon before saying anything. It would be cruel to raise hopes which could not be realized. Consequently, they talked of their classes, mutual friends, and dinner that evening. Shortly before one o’clock, Damon departed for his Spanish class, while Bryce had another hour free before his Medieval England class with Dr. Dickinson. He utilized the time to check some of the genealogical sources his mother had given him. He found that they all contained obituaries as well as military records, many of them much older than the on-line newspapers he had been researching. On Ancestry.com, he found an obituary of Cpl. Benjamin E. Watson of Chicago, who died in the D-Day invasion on 6 June 1944, obviously the same person as he for whom the military record was obtained. The obituary listed the grieving parents as Carson and Delilah Watson of Chicago, with siblings Thomas, Alexander, Livingston, and Lena, all younger than Benny. As Cpl. Watson was to be interred in Europe, no funeral home was listed, but a service was scheduled for an A.M.E. church in Chicago. Bryce immediately got on line, and discovered that the Allen Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Church was still in existence, so he fired off a request for any information on the family of Benjamin (Benny) E. Watson, with a generous check and a pledge to cover any further costs involved. He also wrote to the Illinois Bureau of Vital Statistics, enclosing the required fees, asking for information on all the individuals named in the obituary. Things were looking up as far as this secret project was concerned. Bryce kicked himself for spending so much time going through newspapers obituary by obituary, when this was so much more efficient.
Arriving at the classroom where his medieval England class was meeting, Bryce emulated Marc by making an announcement about a study group, and passing around a sheet for those who were interested to sign up. As this was a 300 level class rather than 400, it contained more students taking their first upper level history course, and so Bryce garnered fifteen signatures. He would have to find a time when most of those who were interested would be free, and then make the appropriate arrangements for a meeting place.
Dr. Dickinson lectured that day on the end of Roman rule in Britain. Although Julius Caesar landed in Britain during his conquests in Gaul during the mid first century B.C., it was not until a century later that Britain was incorporated into the Roman Empire. Just how thoroughly the native population was Romanized remains questionable, but the Professor pointed out that, while the inhabitants of Roman Gaul spoke a version of Latin which eventually became French, those in Britain spoke a Celtic language which became modern Welsh. By the end of the fourth century, the Roman Empire was in dire straits, with population decline, economic decline, barbarian pressures on the frontiers, and internal political instability represented by competing contenders for the throne. Under circumstances which remain unclear, the contender Constantius III withdrew the last remaining troops in order to pursue his ambitions on the continent sometime between 406 and 410 A.D. There is a rescript from Emperor Honorius, then holding up in Ravenna while the Goths sacked Rome later in 410, telling the cities of Britain to defend themselves, as he could provide no assistance.
The native population, under the leadership of Romanized and Christian Britons, did the best they could to maintain civilization in the face of invasions and raids from the people of modern Scotland north of Hadrian’s wall, from the Irish across the Irish Sea, and from the Saxons across the North Sea. Dr. Dickinson mentioned that the best known missionary to the Irish, St. Patrick, was a Romanized Briton named Patricius, born about 389 A.D. He was captured by Irish pirates at age 16 and taken to Ireland, where he remained for six years. He escaped, and went to Gaul, where he studied for the priesthood. About the year 432 he was consecrated bishop and sent to Ireland, where he continued the process of converting the inhabitants to Christianity, being by far the most successful missionary in this field. He established his headquarters at Armagh, in the district known as Ulster. Patrick died about the year 461. While the year is uncertain, the day and month are not, his feast being celebrated on March 17. Despite the conversion of the Irish, however, raids on Britain continued.
At this same time, according to traditional accounts, the Saxon raids were accompanied by Saxon mercenaries settling in Britain during the rule of the Celtic chieftain Vortigern. A leader of those mercenaries called Hengest rebelled, and established the first Saxon or Germanic kingdom in Kent in 449. A half-century later a temporary Romano-Celtic victory under the Christian leader Arturus Aurelianus at Mount Badon gave rise to the legends of King Arthur, who, to the extent he was an historical person, was not English but Celtic, like the modern Welsh.
The extent of Saxon displacement of the native population is much disputed. Earlier writers from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, wanting a Germanic origin of the English people and institutions and rejecting anything Roman as tainted with Catholicism, claimed the Saxons almost entirely wiped out the natives. However, studies such as that of Bryan Sykes at Oxford in mitochondrial genetics indicate greater continuity. In Saxons, Vikings, and Celts (2006) Sykes gives compelling evidence from DNA studies that the essential population of the British Isles was little changed by the waves of invasions, showing great continuity from prehistoric times to the present. Most likely, Saxon warriors arrived and mated with native women, rather than mass migrations of whole tribes from the continent.
In any case, the Saxons did provide the basis for the modern English language, including the interesting word sheriff, derived from the words for the shire reeve, or manager of the county for the king. They also held meetings called witenagemots, which contributed to the rise of the institution now called parliament.
The arrival of St. Augustine of Canterbury in 597, sent to England by Pope Gregory I, marks an important step in the reintegration of Britain into civilized Europe, reconnecting with the Celtic Christians, who had been cut off from contact with the continent for several generations. Much of this was recorded in such sources as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. All these – Celts, Romans, Saxons – laid the foundations for the development of medieval England.
In a light mood after class, Bryce mentioned to Roland Lyle that, if one accepted the validity of those early British manuscripts, and especially the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and also of the Book of Genesis, he could trace his ancestry back to Adam. Nothing impressed, Roland retorted, “So can everyone else, including me, who can get back to an English king.” Put in his place, Bryce decided not to mention this exchange to Damon.
Leaving Filson Hall shortly after three o’clock, rather than head directly back to the apartment, Bryce walked over to the Newman Center. There he encountered Patricia Murphy, the same receptionist who had been there a year previously.
Patricia greeted him. “Well, look what the cat dragged in. Where have you been for the past – oh, about eight or nine months?”
“I’ve been remiss in never coming by to say hello to you, Patricia. How are you?” Bryce replied.
“I’m doing very well, thank you. And what are you doing turning up here again? Have you fallen into unmentionable sin, and require shriving?” she teased.
“Absolutely unmentionable. So I won’t mention it,” Bryce countered. “But I would like to see Father Miller sometime when he’s available. What do you have for me in that little appointment book?”
“Hmmm,” Patricia hummed as she glanced over the chaplain’s schedule. “There are a lot of things going on here at the start of a new semester, but I think I can squeeze you in next Monday, a week from today, at four o’clock. How about that?”
“Suits me. Put me down. Or maybe put down an anonymous student, and I’ll surprise him,” Bryce joked.
“This is to alert him, not give him a coronary when you show up,” Patricia admonished, as she firmly wrote Bryce Winslow in the space for 4:00 on Monday, August 23.
“I see you remember my name,” Bryce noted.
“You are hard to forget. Believe me, I’ve tried,” she bantered back.
“Oh, Patty, colleen, you do me wrong,” Bryce clowned with a fake Irish accent.
“Don’t try that on me. I don’t believe you have a drop of Irish blood in you,” she objected.
“Now isn’t that a wonder,” Bryce said, still in his stage Irishman guise, “in a class I just came from, Dr. Dickinson told us the English are mostly Celtic with only a thin overlay of Saxon. Faith and begorra, I’ll have to go tell him he’s wrong, as the source of all wisdom on things Celtic, Miss Patricia Murphy, said so.”
“Get out of here before I assign you an appointment at two in the morning,” Patricia threatened.
“Och, a banshee she is,” Bryce clowned as he fled the building.
When he got back to the apartment, naturally Damon wanted to know why he had been delayed in returning.
“I went by the Newman Center to see about an appointment with Father Miller,” Bryce explained.
“Why is that? Are you having more doubts about being gay?” Damon enquired in a concerned voice.
“Oh no. No, I think that was pretty much settled last year as far as I’m concerned. But I feel the need of a control,” Bryce said.
“A control? What do you mean?” Damon asked.
“Well, it is so easy for us humans to fool ourselves, and get ourselves to believe anything we really want. We have a habit of sitting around and working on some problem until we get the answer we want, and then convincing ourselves that it’s perfectly obvious. It’s kind of like some fundamentalists who study the Bible until they find a passage that tells them what they had already decided before they started, and latch onto that, ignoring everything else. Or, on the other extreme, the atheist who begins an investigation with the assumption that any evidence for the existence of God or the miraculous is automatically fallacious. I’m afraid of falling into that error. I need something outside myself as a check, a touchstone, a control, to make sure I am in touch with reality, and not some fantasy world I’ve invented to suit myself. Father Miller did a pretty good job of keeping me on the straight and narrow last year, so I’ve decided to ask him to be my spiritual advisor.”
“I don’t like that at all,” Damon proclaimed.
“Huh? Why not?” Bryce asked in surprise.
With a total poker face, Damon replied, “I don’t want anyone advising you to be straight, or narrow either.”
That led to some roughhousing, which in turn led to some even more enjoyable contact spent in bed. By the time they returned to the world around them, it was too late to fix dinner, so they went out to their favorite little restaurant run by the Cooper family.
After dinner on Monday evening, Bryce studied the information obtained from the students who expressed an interest in a study group for the medieval England class. He was pleased that Roland Lyle was among those interested. Not surprisingly, there did not seem to be any day or time which suited everyone. After agonizing over the matter, he adopted a time on Wednesday afternoons from four to six. He did not like having an ending time, as sometimes discussions got lengthy and involved, but nothing else seemed to work. All except one of the students expressing an interest indicated that they could meet then. He would have to contact all of them, and also the guy who indicated a conflict. Now, he had to find a place for them to meet, and so he decided to ask Dr. Dickinson if the same seminar room they used last spring might be available. That settled, he and Damon enjoyed watching a film on their new large screen television until time for bed.