The stones remembered Rome. They lay scattered across the Burgundian hills of Gaul as though they were fragments of the fallen Roman Empire waiting to be reborn.

 

It was the young knight Guillaume de Saint-Clair who saw an opportunity in this desolate patch of land. He saw his own legacy to be built atop of the battleground that long held a bloody history: the beginning of a generational Saint-Clair estate, birthed in the new era of the early Middle Ages.

 

Just weeks before, Guillaume had knelt before the Duke of Burgundy at the great hall of Dijon. With his sword drawn, he swore a feudal contract to the Duke of Burgundy. In offering his loyalty, Guillaume was granted this sacred land to protect, and thus the people tied to it too.

 

Over the wavering seasons, from the autumn breeze that whipped and lashed with duress to the wind-whipped snow that billowed around, like little knives that could slice through even the thickest layers of woolen garments, the manor rose steadily. While its bleak surroundings allowed little sustenance for any living being, peasants still fulfilled their pledge of labor to the very end, hauling up blocks day after day as though they were yoked to the soil and the edifice itself. 

 

Guillaume looked on ahead at the construction. The manor’s great halls were to hold the fullest feasts, its chapels to be echoed with prayers, and its walls to shelter the peasants for when danger came. A smile subtly cracked at the mere realization that harvest season was coming, and he was to soon reap the boon of his own work.

 

“My lord,” his mason bowed next to him, “It’s a miracle that the ruins of a villa, of what the Romans have built and abandoned themselves, could be reclaimed to such splendor.”

 

Just as Guillaume was to respond, his eldest son, Édouard de Saint-Clair, came cowering behind his legs. The youngest boy, Edgar de Saint-Clair, followed after with a sword gripped in his hand and a big grin plastered on his face. Yet, before Edgar could charge forward and catch his brother, his arm was swiftly pulled back by the tense grip of his mother.

 

In just a beat, everything had turned south. Edgar’s head whipped up at his mother, curious of the fearful expression that bore on her face.

 

“Mother? What is the matter? I was just about to reach victory.”

 

“Victory? You are a spare, Edgar.” Guillaume spat sternly, his arm extended in front of Édouard in defense of him, “No one is to truly win but your brother, who will inherit the land and estate of the family name. You, on the other hand, must seek your life elsewhere.”

 

If it hadn’t dawned on little Edgar then, it most certainly did during his ride to the monks at the Catholic Abbey of Cluny, when he wept all throughout while his hands clutched the wooden cross his mother had carved for him.

 

By the time Guillaume’s great-grandchildren cultivated the fields, Christendom had already expanded across all of Byzantium, but rumors of the Turkish and their threats to Christian pilgrims have only started to seep in.

 

In 1095, Pope Urban II called for all Christian knights to stand by and prepare to claim the holy land. Among those who heard his thunderous sermons was Sir Arthur de Saint-Clair. Contrary to his brother who was taught management early on, for that he was next in line of the manor, and his sister who was to marry into another noble family, Arthur inherited nothing but ambition. His restlessness and zealous spirit drove him to a different destiny, one that led him to sew a red cross onto his tunic. Before he took off on his horse to his journey to Jerusalem, his mother kissed him goodbye whereas his father did not.

 

In Jerusalem, where white limestone buildings glowed under the scorching hot sun, society was robust. Merchants facilitated trades of cinnamon, sugar, saffron, and many flavors unknown to Europe. Knowledge flourished among Arab scholars who studied medicine, mathematics, and much of anything of everything that surpassed Christendom. Inevitably, all came to an end when the Crusaders broke through the walls of Jerusalem in 1099.

 

When Arthur returned to Burgundy, his footprints left trails of bloodshed, glory, and, unknowingly, the end to the wealth of the Saint-Clair bloodline. Only a single letter on his desk gave explanation, to that his father had mortgaged half of the manor in order to fund for his expedition all while taxes increased exponentially.

 

The Saint-Clairs were now reduced to living among the masses of peasants who cried of hardship, intensive labor, and starvation while the Church grew wealthier. 

 

“Lord, grant us mercy…” A desperate whisper came from Lady Isabeau de Saint-Clair, the rosary clutched in her hands rising to under the tip of her nose. Throughout the Little Ice Age, winter arrived earlier each year. No matter how many relics and heirlooms Isabeau bartered away, from Guillaume’s Roman tiles to Arthur’s Damascene silk, the fields yielded too little crops to keep every of her peasant and herself fed.

 

As the halls of the torn manor grew colder, its element of desolation was exacerbated by the Black Death that made home extra lonely for Isabeau, who had her husband, Lord Thierry, taken away. The Great Schism had also torn the entire family apart. At the dinner table, fights between her two children broke out religiously. Her eldest son, Hugues, swore loyalty to Rome whereas her younger son, Mathieu, secretly condemned the corruption of the Church.

 

A century later, Burgundy had blossomed under the new light shone by the Renaissance. Louis de Saint-Clair, the great grandson of Lady Isabeau, was well educated, and thus had characters of brilliancy and inquisitiveness to him. His father, who was a local magistrate, took a step even further and sent him to study theology in Wittenberg, where Louis witnessed levels of inequality and hypocrisy he could not have fathomed.

 

He found priests who sold indulgences to beggars, Church officials who reveled in luxury and feasted greedily while peasants starved, and whispers of a monk named Martin Luther who willingly challenged the corruption of the Catholic Church.

 

It was in 1517 that Louis passed Luther’s 95 Theses, nailed to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. Surrounded by the air of hot wax and ink at his lodgings back at the manor, Louis translated the Monk’s works in French under the guttering light of a single tallow candle. At night, he ventured out into the streets and distributed them in secret. It was not long until he was caught on and denounced by the local bishop.

 

On one thunderous evening upon discovering the news, the elder brother, Henri, a Catholic knight who swore his loyalty to King Francis I, came head on into a confrontation with Louis.

 

“How dare you defy our faith? How dare you commit blasphemy in such…unfathomable and vile ways?” Henri roared passively, drawing his sword, “Who had struck down a curse upon you, dearest brother?”

 

“It is only rightful to be faithful to the truth, and not subservient to the lies and hypocrisy.” Louis asserts, standing his ground despite the tip of his brother’s blade of which poked threateningly at his throat, “The authorities of our religion have buried the true Gospel. Dare you strike me down for stating the obvious, brother, it is them that you serve, not Christ.”

 

“You…you dare to threaten Christendom as such?”

 

“Christendom is already shattered. It has devoured itself completely.”