Free Heart to Heart: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective by Don Pendleton Page A

piano and sang
while Val accompanied unobtrusively, after which he treated us to a
solo concerto played as I had never heard it played before. Still
later I watched breathlessly as Catherine danced and Rosary joined
Val at the piano with a violin, followed by Karl with a comic
Cossack interpretation of the Fire Dance, then Hilary and Francesca
teamed up to show us what a waltz is really all about.
    Never had I been so entertained, never so
impressed by spontaneous performances, never before drawn so
subjectively into an appreciation of artful talent.
    And never so diverted from my own
imperatives.
    I suddenly realized that it was midnight and
still I had not advanced my own understanding of the situation by
one iota. We were saying our good-nights and I was trying to get to
Valentinius.
    But I did not find Valentinius and we did
not say goodnight or anything else in private. Everyone just
drifted away and I found myself suddenly alone with Francesca.
    She showed me a sympathetic smile, took my
hand, and said to me, "Come along, my love, and I will show you
what you need to know."
    Not tell me; show me.
    I'd been shown quite enough already, thanks.
But I allowed the beautiful lady to lead me to her studio. And
there I discovered that I had not seen anything yet—nor had I
learned anything yet about names and naming, life and death, echoes
and omens.
    What's in a name?
    I was about to find out.
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Eleven: Chronology
     
    I warned you up front that
this is a wild story and that I would not have known how to relate
it to you until very recently, to merely lay out the events in
chronological order, as I experienced them, would result not in a
story but in a mere vignette of apparent fantasy—incomprehensible,
unbelievable, unworthy of your serious attention. The chief
problem, you see, is context. Any event occurring totally out of
context with the circumstances that produce the event is likely to
be incomprehensible—and something that is incomprehensible is also
generally unbelievable and therefore fantastic.
    Consider for example the
birth of a child. It is an incomprehensible and seemingly magical
event if totally disconnected from its context. Try to imagine a
group of people isolated upon a small island who have been there
since early childhood, the result of a shipwreck or air disaster or
whatever. Somehow they have survived although they arrived there
as babes and with no adult care or guidance. They are male and
female and have matured sexually, so have mated instinctively
without understanding the full significance of the act. Then one
day a small human otherwise much like themselves emerges from one
of the females. Magic? You bet it's magic, until the group begins
relating effect to cause and comes up with a more rational
understanding of the event. Moreover, if a small party had been
exploring the other side of the island when that birth
occurred—and a runner was dispatched to announce the miracle—that
announcement would likely be met with disbelief and ridicule. A
small stranger crawled from the tickle-place of Walks-in-Beauty?
That's crazy! Who are you trying to kid!
    I've got the same problem here, pal.
    It's a context problem.
    So I really need to talk a bit more about
the context before you decide that I'm crazy or else I'm trying to
kid you.
    I need to go back to the
St. Germain story because that is one of the contextual boundaries.
Remember that I quoted the Countess d'Adhemar from her Souvenirs de Marie Antoinette , where she related a dangerous rendezvous with St. Germain
during the intrigues of the French Revolution and his promise that
she would see him "five times more."
    You should be aware that
this was during a period of great political upheaval and ambitious
maneuvers, the early days of the First Republic. The young Napoleon
was a junior army officer not yet into his stride toward empire,
the French nation was at war within and also moving toward
conflict with virtually