The Life of Matthias de Véreaux - Author's Notes

The Life of Matthias de Véreaux

Seigneur of Montclair

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Author’s Notes

An Interview About The Life of Matthias de Véreaux 

 

After finishing the story of The Life of Matthias de Véreaux, I thought it might be interesting to explain where the story came from. The origin of this story is unusual, and the experience behind it has stayed with me for many years.

To make this easier to explain, I’ve presented these notes in the form of a short interview.

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What first inspired the character of Matthias de Véreaux?

The actual name was created later, but the story itself came from a very long and vivid dream I had several years ago.

In that dream, I experienced all of this as if I were actually living it. I experienced Matthias’s life, the moment of his death, and even what happened afterward.

This story is actually a prequel to another story I wrote years ago called “A Haunted Soul.” That story takes place after Matthias’s death, when he awakens outside the château as a lonely spirit who walks the grounds for hundreds of years.

In the dream, I experienced all of that.

I experienced the full passage of time.

When I eventually came out of the dream and became myself again, it was a tremendous shock.

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Was Matthias’s personality something you created later when writing the story?

No.

That was exactly who Matthias was in the dream.

In the dream, I was Matthias. I experienced everything he experienced. His thoughts, his habits, and his life all felt as detailed and real as my own life feels now.

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Did the town of Montclair and Matthias’s daily life come from the dream as well?

The basic scenes did.

I remembered many parts of the town, the forest, and the château, but I didn’t remember every detail perfectly. As I wrote the story, I had to recreate certain smaller details to fill in the gaps where memories had faded.

When I first woke up from the dream years ago, I had already forgotten a great deal of it.

Recently, however, something happened in my life that unexpectedly brought those memories back very clearly. That is why I decided to write the story now, after all this time.

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In the story, Matthias feels deeply connected to the people of Montclair even though he still feels somewhat distant from them. Did you feel that in the dream as well?

Yes.

In the dream, I did not feel close to my own family at all. But I still felt a very strong instinctive need for family.

The town filled that role as much as it possibly could.

Even then, I still felt like something of a visitor among them. I cared deeply about the people of the town, but there was always a sense that I stood slightly apart from them.

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The scene of Matthias’s death is very vivid in the story. Did you experience that moment in the dream as well?

Yes.

I experienced Matthias’s death in that exact and very detailed way. It still haunts me to this day.

I would challenge anyone reading this to try to imagine what the moment of their own murder would feel like and how it would affect them.

It is not something easily forgotten.

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Did the part about Matthias existing as a spirit for hundreds of years also occur in the same dream?

Yes.

It was all one enormous dream, and I experienced the full passage of those centuries.

When I began waking up from the dream, it felt like I was floating upward from the bottom of a lake toward the surface of the waking world.

The higher I rose, the more the memories began to slip away.

I remember desperately telling myself to remember what I had experienced, because I could feel it disappearing.

I was losing myself as Matthias and returning to my waking self.

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While you were dreaming, did it feel like you were watching Matthias’s life or actually living it?

I was him.

I experienced the dream as Matthias.

Occasionally I would remember my waking self, but those moments never lasted long. When they happened, I sometimes thought my waking life might actually be the dream.

Then the experience would pull me back into Matthias’s life again.

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When you wrote the earlier story, “A Haunted Soul,” did you already know Matthias’s full life story?

Not completely.

At that time, I only clearly remembered the moment of his death and his existence as a spirit afterward. I remembered pieces of his life, but not enough to tell the full story.

Only recently did the rest of those memories return to me.

There are things from that dream that still affect me deeply even now.

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Did anything about Matthias become clearer to you while writing this story?

Yes.

The way he lived his life inside the château.

As I was writing the story, I realized that my own life today resembles that lifestyle in some surprising ways. I now live in a very similar quiet, thoughtful way without realizing that I had experienced something like it years earlier in that dream.

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What do you hope readers take away from this story?

More than anything, I simply wanted to share the experience.

It was something very heavy in my life, and writing the story feels almost like a form of therapy.

Sometimes telling a story is the only way to make sense of something that stayed with you for a long time.

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After writing the full story, do you understand the dream any better?

Not really.

It is still mysterious to me why it happened or how I was able to experience the passage of time the way I did.

But writing the story has given me a new insight into Matthias himself.

It made me realize that he was not so different from me after all.

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And if you ever find yourself wondering what became of Matthias after that night in the château hallway, his story does not end there. In another tale I once wrote, titled A Haunted Soul, his long and lonely journey continues.

After all, some lives do not truly end when the body falls - sometimes they simply continue in quieter ways.

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(If you liked this story, leave me a comment to encourage me to write more.)

 

The Life of Matthias de Véreaux - Part 10

The Life of Matthias de Véreaux

Seigneur of Montclair

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Part X

The Man Who Loved Montclair 

 

The body of Matthias de Véreaux, Seigneur of Montclair, was discovered late that night.

One of the guards who had been dismissed earlier returned along the corridor to report a matter concerning the stables. When he reached the bend in the hallway, he saw the figure lying motionless on the stone floor.

The candles along the wall had burned low, and the corridor was nearly dark.

At first the guard did not fully understand what he was seeing.

Then he rushed forward.

The alarm spread quickly through the château.

Servants appeared from the lower halls. Guards hurried through the corridors carrying lanterns. Within minutes the quiet western wing of the château filled with frightened voices and hurried footsteps.

But nothing could be done.

The Seigneur of Montclair was already dead.

Word reached the town shortly after dawn.

Montclair was not a large place, and news traveled quickly along the narrow roads and through the market square. By the time the church bells began to ring, most of the townspeople had already heard.

Many refused to believe it at first.

The Seigneur had been seen only the day before. He had ridden into the town with Bernard after their hunting trip. Several people had spoken with him in the square.

He had seemed well.

Peaceful, even.

But by midmorning the truth had become impossible to deny.

Father Lucien led a small group from the town up the road toward the château. Others followed quietly behind.

The gates of the estate stood open when they arrived.

The guards posted there did not stop them.

Inside the courtyard the atmosphere was heavy with tension. Servants moved silently between the buildings, and several soldiers stood watch near the entrance to the western wing.

The townspeople gathered there in uneasy silence.

Most of them had never walked so far into the grounds of the château before.

For many years the Seigneur had visited them in their town.

Now they had come to visit him.

Father Lucien entered the western wing and was led to the chamber where Matthias had been laid.

The priest remained there for some time.

When he returned to the courtyard, his expression told the people everything they needed to know.

A quiet sadness settled over Montclair in the days that followed.

The market continued, of course.

The farms still needed tending.

The river still flowed past the town as it always had.

Yet something had changed.

Many of the townspeople spoke of the Seigneur in ways they had not spoken of him before.

They remembered the way he walked through the square inspecting the market stalls. They remembered the way he solved disputes calmly, whether the matter involved wandering goats or fishermen arguing over trout.

Some remembered the hunting trips.

Men who had once traveled with him told stories about the hidden river in the forest and the quiet evenings beside the fire.

And more than one man quietly admitted that the prize of the hunt had always been given to the townsman rather than kept by the Seigneur himself.

In time these stories became something more.

A kind of memory shared among the people of Montclair.

They spoke of Matthias de Véreaux as a strange sort of lord.

A quiet man.

A thoughtful man.

A man who had never quite seemed comfortable in his own château.

Yet they also remembered something else.

He had cared deeply for the town.

Perhaps more deeply than anyone had realized while he was alive.

Years later, travelers passing through the valley would sometimes hear the story.

They would hear about the Seigneur who often walked through the market square alone, speaking kindly to the vendors and watching the children play.

They would hear about the hunting trips into the forest and the hidden river beneath the trees.

And they would hear about the night he died in the corridor of his own château.

Some said the tragedy had come from within his own family.

Others claimed hired men from distant lands had carried out the deed.

No one ever proved the truth beyond doubt.

But the people of Montclair rarely argued about that part.

Instead they remembered the man himself.

The Seigneur who had lived among them quietly.

The man who had loved their town.

And who, in his own solitary way, had considered them the closest thing to family he ever possessed.

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(This is The End of The Life of Matthias de Véreaux. Next: An Interview with the Author)

The Life of Matthias de Véreaux - Part 9

The Life of Matthias de Véreaux

Seigneur of Montclair

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Part IX

The Hallway 

 

The corridors of the château are darker at night than most people realize.

During the day the tall windows allow the sunlight to fall across the stone floors, giving the halls a certain quiet dignity. But once evening settles over the valley, the light becomes uneven. Long stretches of corridor fall into shadow between the candles placed along the walls.

I had walked these halls thousands of times.

So many times, in fact, that I rarely thought about them at all.

That night was no different.

The main doors of the château closed behind me with their usual heavy sound, and my boots echoed faintly against the stone floor as I began the familiar walk toward the western wing.

I still carried the pleasant fatigue of the hunting trip.

The smell of the forest seemed to linger in my clothes, and my muscles felt heavy in the comfortable way that follows a long day of walking and riding.

It had been a good trip.

One of the better ones.

Perhaps that was why my thoughts were unusually calm as I moved through the corridor.

Perhaps that was why I dismissed the guards.

“You may go,” I had told them.

They hesitated only a moment before turning back toward the entrance hall.

I continued alone.

The corridor leading to my quarters was quiet, lit only by a few candles along the wall. Their small flames flickered gently, casting long shadows that moved across the stone.

Ahead of me the hallway bent slightly to the left.

Just beyond that corner were the rooms I had occupied for many years.

I remember thinking, as I walked, that I might return to the library for a short while before sleeping.

There were several maps I had been studying recently, and the quiet of the evening seemed well suited for such things.

My footsteps echoed softly as I approached the corner.

Then I saw them.

Three figures stepped into the corridor.

They appeared from around the bend so suddenly that for a brief moment we all stood still, facing one another in the dim light.

They were not servants.

Nor were they guards.

Their clothing was rough, their faces unfamiliar.

And each of them held a knife.

The understanding came to me immediately.

There was no confusion.

No need for explanation.

In that instant I knew exactly what had happened.

I had dismissed the guards.

And now I was alone.

A strange calm settled over me as the realization took hold.

So this is how it ends, I thought.

The three men began moving toward me.

I did not run.

Running would have been useless in the narrow hallway.

Instead I stepped forward to meet them.

The first man lunged quickly, aiming the knife toward my side. I caught his arm and forced it aside, driving my shoulder into him with enough force to send him stumbling backward into the wall.

The second man came immediately after him.

His blade caught my arm as I tried to block the strike, tearing through the fabric of my sleeve and cutting into the skin beneath.

Pain flared sharply, but I managed to drive him back with a hard blow to the chest.

For a moment the three of them hesitated.

Perhaps they had not expected resistance.

But there were three of them.

And only one of me.

The third man rushed forward from the side.

I saw the knife only a moment before it struck.

The blade drove deep into my side, stealing the breath from my lungs.

I staggered but remained on my feet.

The first attacker recovered and came at me again.

Another blade struck.

Then another.

The strength drained from my body with frightening speed.

The corridor seemed to tilt slightly as my knees weakened beneath me.

I fell against the cold stone floor.

The candles along the wall flickered wildly as the men stepped back, their work finished.

For a moment the world grew very quiet.

My vision blurred, and the ceiling of the corridor seemed strangely distant above me.

I thought of the forest.

Of the hidden river beneath the trees.

Of the quiet evenings in the library.

And of the town of Montclair.

The people there had always seemed like the closest thing to family that I possessed.

I wondered briefly how they might hear of this.

Whether the news would surprise them.

Or whether, perhaps, they had always known that such an ending was possible.

My breathing grew shallow.

The corridor grew darker.

And at last, the quiet of the château closed around me completely.

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(To be continued in Part 10: The Man Who Loved Montclair)