The Young Lion

Excavations at the Château de Vincennes

Prophecies of Nostradamus

A certain manuscript, purportedly from the sixteenth century, has been discovered during excavations in the grounds of the Château de Vincennes in Paris.
French authorities claim it provides a rational explanation for a mystery that has been a thorn in the side of science for hundreds of years, namely one of the so-called prophecies of Nostradamus.
He wrote about a thousand predictions, mostly couched in cryptic language open to an infinite number of interpretations. But one of them is such a precise, detailed and accurate account of an event which took place four years after it was written that even sceptics have had to acknowledge that at the very least it was an amazing coincidence.
The undisputed facts are as follows. In 1555 Nostradamus published several hundred quatrains and the one that caught everybody’s imagination right from the start was the thirty-fifth:

“The young lion will defeat the old one
In a field of battle by single combat.
In a cage of gold he will put his eye out,
Two wounds in one, then he will die a cruel death.”

This was understood to be a premonition of how the King, Henri II, would die. (His emblem was a lion.) The Queen, Catherine de Médicis, tried to dissuade her husband from jousting. But on the tenth of July 1559 he insisted on competing in a tournament and riding against Gabriel de Montgomery, Captain of the Scottish Guard, a man seven years his junior. As they clashed, a splinter from Montgomery’s lance went through the King’s golden helmet and entered his head somewhere in the region of his eyes. He lingered in horrendous pain for ten days before dying of his injury.
Nothing in that paragraph is open to question. There were too many witnesses. It happened.
And ever since then the prophecy has been an embarrassment for reasonable people. There’s something profoundly disturbing about such a lucky guess coming true. Defying odds of more than a billion to one, a clairvoyant actually got it right! Common sense has never been able to recover from this humiliating blow.
Until now, that is. Archaeology to the rescue à la Indiana Jones.
Although the Vincennes document has no trace of any signature or date, historians at the Sorbonne have been quick to identify it as the last testament of Gabriel de Montgomery.
According to the crème de la crème of French scholarship (and I’ve never seen such an impressive array of letters after names in my life), we can heave a huge collective sigh of relief and bask in the knowledge that the future can’t be foretold after all. “Even economists may relax, since ironically it’s only in a world where fortune-telling can’t influence the stock exchange that their projections have any validity.”

You can judge for yourself in a minute when I reproduce the manuscript in full. But first I’d like to state that I personally believe it’s a forgery. The paper may be hundreds of years old, as the tests show. But whoever wrote on it seems to have been familiar with Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which was written at least a good twenty-five years after Montgomery’s death in 1574.
(He came to a nasty end, by the way. The King on his deathbed had decreed that his opponent should not be punished for what was clearly an accident. But fifteen years later Montgomery was arrested for leading a Protestant revolt and Queen Catherine at last had the satisfaction of watching his head being chopped off.)
Professor Julien Michaud, a bastion of academic fair play, concedes the manuscript includes a sentence that appears in Macbeth. However, he reminds us that Montgomery had recently returned from England, where he could have borrowed from the same oral tradition as Shakespeare.
“For all we know,” the Professor writes, “the Double, double quotation may have been a stock witchcraft phrase. Or dare I mention another possibility? What if Shakespeare stole the line from Montgomery? As a precocious lad in the early 1570s young William may have crept into an alehouse and overheard the French captain venting his scorn for the supernatural. Who knows what other choice expressions coined by Montgomery were recycled decades later in one of Shakespeare’s plays? To be or not to be? perhaps. Though I very much doubt if my English colleagues will accept such an aspersion.”
Michaud’s desperate clutching at straws makes me even more suspicious about the manuscript’s authenticity. Many people obviously want it to be genuine.
To avoid any litigation, let me make it clear that I am not suggesting the archaeologists or the historians planted the evidence. I merely wonder if they have been taken in by an elaborate hoax.
But you be the judge. The translation is by the Sorbonne crew. Meticulously accurate of course, but rather tending towards overdramatisation, particularly in the use of archaic vocabulary when modern equivalents are available. Why turn “cheval” into “steed” instead of “horse”? I can only assume it’s an attempt to enhance the flavour of the yarn.

The narrative begins abruptly without any preamble.

Honour is all. If death come to me this night, I stand before God, His servant ever. Let not Error—in all its infamy—sit upon my grave and make a mockery of a life so devoted to Truth. Into whomsoever’s hands this may fall—take it and hide it away until such time as may favour its revelations. Albeit the Queen Mother herself stands as guarantor of my safety, I place no faith in her assurances. I would strap on my cuirass in readiness, were this night not so confounded hot. Some will say I tempt fate. Verily, I know well what the astrologer has said will befall me—

“He who in a fight with weapons
Will have conquered one greater than he,
At night in bed six will attack him.
Naked without armour he will suddenly be surprised.”

But should your prediction come to pass—unholy Maistre Nostredame—it will not be due to any skill at sorcery on your part. The Queen Mother too has read your lines. Does she not hang on your every word? She will make sure your prophecy is fulfilled. How many men will she send to do me mischief? Five? Seven? I wager there will be six. I would stake my life on it—as indeed I do. So what credit to you, Astrologer? Moreover, your last word is wrong. When they come for me, I shall not be surprised. I listen for their footsteps. Twelve feet cannot be altogether silent. And yet—for all my patience—there remains one thing that I shall ever regret. To my shame, I am once more adding to your reputation as a canny Soothsayer. How proud you must be of your power over weak minds. Thousands pay homage to you as you chant your incantations—Double, double, toil and trouble! All too well do I know how your spells can enchant. I remember that day in the lists fifteen years ago. Twice His Majesty and I had crossed lances without either unseating the other. I begged him to call a halt. But he was determined for another bout. My heart pounded beneath my breastplate. Your accursed words rang in my ears—“The young lion shall vanquish the old.” I shuddered with horror at the thought of spilling such Royal blood. The clarion called me to the charge—the crowd urged me on—my steed champed at the bit—its hooves hammered the same patch of ground, smothering the air with dust. But still I held back. Then His Majesty raised his shield, commanding me to advance. I had no choice but to obey. As I lowered my lance I repeated to myself over and over again—“Aim anywhere but at his eyes, aim anywhere but at his eyes.” I jabbed my spurs into my steed’s flanks and we hurtled into the fray. “Anywhere but at his eyes, anywhere but at his eyes.” I surrendered myself to my skill—to my years of training. “But at his eyes, but at his eyes.” Mine were wide open. “At his eyes, his eyes.” Then it was done—the fatal blow. No demon guided my lance. No prophecy. Only the perversity of my own expertise hitting exactly what I was striving to miss! Tell me, Astrologer. Have you never in some narrow passageway approached someone coming in the opposite direction and spite of every effort to avoid him—or mayhap indeed because of that—collided with him all the same? Such a fate was mine. I almost wonder if there be not some flaw in the design of the human brain. A heretical thought, I fear—one that I dare not breathe aloud to a soul whilst I live. But that may not be very long. I hear the floorboards creaking outside my door. Pardon me while I welcome my