Steven Hunley
03-20-2025, 08:29 PM
Cardinal Richelieu’s Bed
We’re planning a birthday celebration and Barb suggests staying near Hearst Castle, seeing the place, and onto Carmel from there. But the Bed, I must surprise her about the bed. I’ve decided we must sleep in Cardinal Richelieu’s bed. I’d seen it once as a kid when my parents took me to see Hearst Castle in San Simion. Later, I read The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask, and the rest of Dumas.
So, I demonstrate my love of Dumas, and decide to have a séance, brush up on my French, and contact Richelieu’s ghost about the bed. Turns out he’s been haunting the place for years, but it’s been kept secret, he told me. “They don’t want to scare the tourists.”
I share his political views of the period to get on his side and he makes a deal for the Google Translator app on my I-pad that I’ve been using to translate.
Says he’s been arguing with Machiavelli about politics and thinks that they aren’t so far away in philosophies as he imagined that it must be bad translating that’s the problem.
Says he wishes he had a Google translator back in the day. You couldn’t trust advisors.
The night before we arrive.
Cardinal Richelieu haunts the night guard severely and chases him into the wine cellar and locks him up for the night. The guard eventually gets drunk, and when he appears drunk and disheveled the next morning, they pass off the incident as another example of his inability to consume alcohol moderately and make him give up his keys to the wine cellar.
We motor up to San Simeon for the tour and consult an original building plan of the house I found at city hall. It reveals a secret panel in a downstairs wall, behind a 13th century tapestry. Once we lag so far behind the other tourists, we find ourselves alone. In a secret passage we run into Hearst and Marion Davies, Errol Flynn and Lilli Damita and party with them because it’s Rosebud’s birthday and they’ve “always did it this way”. Death wasn’t about to stop them. “A birthday is a birthday and should never be missed,” says Hearst.
Lilli Damita and Marion Davies and Barbara talk. Bill and Errol and I talk. We all agree over drinks and cigars and tasty bud, (Errol slips it in, ala Diego Rivera, my Wicked Wicked Ways, and Bill Hearst ( he let us call him Bill after the second Margarita) is led to believe it’s some kind of Cuban cigar) that everything they’ve accomplished is due to their women, their insight and cunning, their loyalty, good hearts and romantic spirit. We toast to the ladies and retire for the evening.
Later, after making love, we crash upstairs in Cardinal Richelieu’s bed. The view in the morning is terrific, and the California coast always smells like sunshine, freedom, and oranges. Then we heard the morning tour bus coming up the road.
We escaped by the skin of our teeth and get dressed before the next tour group arrives downstairs. When they do, we blend in and go back down the hill to the parking lot and then home.
©StevenHunley2025
https://youtu.be/8Q6y1waxlTY?si=2gw1ojW7MWIiZrB8
We’re planning a birthday celebration and Barb suggests staying near Hearst Castle, seeing the place, and onto Carmel from there. But the Bed, I must surprise her about the bed. I’ve decided we must sleep in Cardinal Richelieu’s bed. I’d seen it once as a kid when my parents took me to see Hearst Castle in San Simion. Later, I read The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask, and the rest of Dumas.
So, I demonstrate my love of Dumas, and decide to have a séance, brush up on my French, and contact Richelieu’s ghost about the bed. Turns out he’s been haunting the place for years, but it’s been kept secret, he told me. “They don’t want to scare the tourists.”
I share his political views of the period to get on his side and he makes a deal for the Google Translator app on my I-pad that I’ve been using to translate.
Says he’s been arguing with Machiavelli about politics and thinks that they aren’t so far away in philosophies as he imagined that it must be bad translating that’s the problem.
Says he wishes he had a Google translator back in the day. You couldn’t trust advisors.
The night before we arrive.
Cardinal Richelieu haunts the night guard severely and chases him into the wine cellar and locks him up for the night. The guard eventually gets drunk, and when he appears drunk and disheveled the next morning, they pass off the incident as another example of his inability to consume alcohol moderately and make him give up his keys to the wine cellar.
We motor up to San Simeon for the tour and consult an original building plan of the house I found at city hall. It reveals a secret panel in a downstairs wall, behind a 13th century tapestry. Once we lag so far behind the other tourists, we find ourselves alone. In a secret passage we run into Hearst and Marion Davies, Errol Flynn and Lilli Damita and party with them because it’s Rosebud’s birthday and they’ve “always did it this way”. Death wasn’t about to stop them. “A birthday is a birthday and should never be missed,” says Hearst.
Lilli Damita and Marion Davies and Barbara talk. Bill and Errol and I talk. We all agree over drinks and cigars and tasty bud, (Errol slips it in, ala Diego Rivera, my Wicked Wicked Ways, and Bill Hearst ( he let us call him Bill after the second Margarita) is led to believe it’s some kind of Cuban cigar) that everything they’ve accomplished is due to their women, their insight and cunning, their loyalty, good hearts and romantic spirit. We toast to the ladies and retire for the evening.
Later, after making love, we crash upstairs in Cardinal Richelieu’s bed. The view in the morning is terrific, and the California coast always smells like sunshine, freedom, and oranges. Then we heard the morning tour bus coming up the road.
We escaped by the skin of our teeth and get dressed before the next tour group arrives downstairs. When they do, we blend in and go back down the hill to the parking lot and then home.
©StevenHunley2025
https://youtu.be/8Q6y1waxlTY?si=2gw1ojW7MWIiZrB8