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Beehive Tomb

Tournai, May 27th, 1653

Remains of Charity
The poor-house has been a ruin for several centuries. Its roof swallowed rain and snow,
and its walls no longer invited the poor. Instead the remains hosted frail rodents, snakes and
insects. Its door had long fallen off, disintegrated, leaving only its barest outline sprawled prone
toward the black nothingness of the entrance. Inside, the simple wooden beds had become the
festering cities of woodlice; much earlier, several generations of rats had swallowed, bit by bit,
the blankets. Its floors carried nothing now but the fallen fragments of the roof. I could not have
even mentioned, nor imagined, an individual that once benefited from the place, and neither
could you.

Underneath the forgettable floors was concealed the corpse of a king. The thin corpse of
the king hugged the skeleton of a massive horse. Around their respective skulls, embedded in the
earth, lay treasure.

When the churchwardens gathered one haggard priest voiced his annoyance at the
uselessness of the ruin: he requested it be destroyed and rebuilt for the good of the needy. The
body of the last, pagan king shuddered in his snug, secret grave, for it was only a matter of
months before a mason would strike his skull with a shovel, and then, a number of hours before
the wardens would pull his complete remains out of the earth..

Forget, for a moment, the slender skeleton of Childeric, who, in his flesh-and-blood days
reared the first King of the Franks. Think instead of the mason, mute Mr.Quinquin, as he heads
off silently, slightly guilty, to the banks of the Scheldt, with a single, dirt-encrusted golden bee on
the evening of his find.

He is still shocked. He had struck a leather purse that belched gold and silver coins:
unreadable discs that turned to dust when he grabbed at them. When he struck again the skull of
the king emerged from the earth and smiled at him. For all one knows the skull had screamed, or
laughed in grim resignation, or begged to be left alone: but Quinquin deaf. He ran off from the
hole, warning the neighborhood, anybody he could find. He did not know rightly why he felt so
sick. He, who grunted and mimed, and he brought the shocked people of the hood- a
shopkeeper, a priest, an old, pious housewive- to the body of the king.

From the hole came more treasure: the mud-caked head of a golden bull; rusted buckles
(barely glimmering); a pale sword whose blade crumbled into several hundred shards when
lifted, the slack-jawed skull of the beloved war-horse, stuck in its hoary bridle; chain links and
golden hooks, dull and brokened; a swarm of over three hundred golden bees, with garnet
wings, caked in black dirt. The entire skeleton of the father of the first Merovingian king lay in
the sunlight, shuddering. The parish gawks.

But you must stop thinking of that skeleton, or history, just for a little while! Forget also
about how all but three of the golden bees were destined to be stolen and melted by idiot-thieves,
or even how the Church wardens praised God and cried in joy for the good comfort this treasure
would eventually buy. Forget about the skeleton, the misery of Childeric, stuck inside his cold
skull, understanding that his grave-treasures were being sold to keep worthless beggars bellies
fed in the name of Jesus Christ. Forget about the dead horse. Forget about Napoleon, who wished
those bees, what with their Roman regality, to supplant the passive white lily flowers of the flag.

Recall, instead, Mr.Quinquin, who was not the innocent mason one remembers him as.

Quinquin stole a single golden bee for himself. No gift for a long-suffering wife, no prize
for a cheap but favored prostitute. No inheritance for a son or daughter who could not understand
why his father could not speak. No secret household god, as if the very soul of the pagan king
had nestled into a cavity of Quinquins chest, pushing out the white dove eggs of the Holy Spirit
like some plump, metallic bird-hungry wasp. No pawning gold and garnet for barrels of dark
alcohol.

Instead, Adrien Quinquin took the golden bee down to the banks of the river near his
house. Now this is selfish. He carefully washed the dirt off the golden bee, and he enjoyed the
feel of the cold river water on his sweaty hands. Lifting the insect into the air he looked at it
glimmer in the moonlight, he looked at its garnet wings and its sleek gold body, he looked at it

for several seconds, and threw it several hundred years into the future for your very pleasure. It
was in your hands. Did it not sink far too quickly?