The “Dames Blanches” or White Ladies are ephemeral figures draped in white that roam at night like ghostly spirits as part of the lore of the religious wars of the 16th century updated with the romantic tales reconstructed in the 19th century in France’s Périgord region. Seven minutes from Sarlat, en route back to Limoges, we stopped at the Chateau de Puymartin, site of one of these fabulist stories- adultery, murder, detention and a tragic end.
Here, Thérèse de Saint Clar, the “White Lady of Puymartin,” continues to appear from time to time, during the night. There are many different legends supporting this story. Most popular is the story of adultery during the Wars of Religions, when men stayed away a long time from home. It is said that Thérèse was surprised by her husband in the arms of her lover. Returning from battlefield during the Wars of Religion, her husband killed the lover and imprisoned his unhappy wife in a tower room for 15 years. The tiny room had bars on the sliver of a window, and she was given food through a trap door in the ceiling and warmed by the chimney. When she died, her body was placed in the wall behind the ochre stone. Apparently, as one of the “white ladies” of regional legend, she walks around the castle at midnight from time to time.
“It is said that a loved one will come to visit you in the form of a ‘White Lady’ after their death to establish contact and ease the pain of separation,” explains one of the plaques in the chateau.
I wonder how this plays out nightly for the current owners, descendants of the Count Henri de Montbron, who believed the story and preserved her prison room untouched. They live in a five-bedroom wing of the 600-year-old chateau not far from the haunts of the supernatural! Today the castle, an historical monument that is open to the public for tours, is a magnificent example of period furniture, paintings and Flemish tapestries from the 17th to the 19th centuries.
