by C. M. Palov
‘Ah! Of course! The abbey at St Germain-des-Prés!’ Irenaeus exclaimed as though he’d just single-handedly deciphered the Tau stone. ‘It’s French for St Germain-of-the-Meadow. But how can you be so certain that the Templar actually took the third plate to Paris?’
‘Fortes de Pinós knew that in order to secure the Templars’ release, it would be insufficient to claim that he had the Evangelium Gaspar. He had to prove that the claim was true. The third plate was the Templar’s carte de visite. His carrot. His bargaining chip. Call it what you will.’ Belatedly realizing that he’d allowed a noticeable ire to creep into his voice, Caedmon reigned himself in. He was dealing with a man possessed of immense ego. A prince of the Church. He needed to stroke not pound. ‘Because the Knights Templar had always maintained a collegial relationship with the Benedictines who ran the abbey, Fortes knew that he could safely stow the plate at St Germain-des-Prés until he had need of it.’
Several moments passed before Irenaeus finally said, ‘Well done. You’ve proved your case. Aveles will accompany you to Paris.’
‘While I will do all in my power to meet the Sunday deadline,’ Caedmon said, ‘if you would be so kind as to extend the deadline by a few extra days, it would –’
‘No! I must have the third plate no later than Sunday at twelve noon!’ Irenaeus heatedly interjected. ‘There will be no extensions, no exceptions and no extenuating circumstances! Am I making myself clear?’
‘Crystal,’ Caedmon muttered, wondering at the reason for the cardinal’s vehemence.
The Catholic Church has waited seven hundred years to get their hands on the Evangelium Gaspar. What difference could a few extra days possibly make?
‘Then I won’t keep you any longer, Mr. Aisquith. You have a flight to catch. Godspeed.’
52
St Germain-des-Prés, Paris, France
Edie removed her sunglasses and peered at the oldest church tower in Paris.
According to Caedmon, the Abbey of St Germain-des-Prés had been founded in the sixth century by Childebert, a Merovingian king. Plainly constructed, the stone bell tower had a brawny, utilitarian appearance, sturdy enough to withstand periodic flooding from the Seine. Once encompassing a huge swath of land, the abbey had originally included church, cloister, chapter house, library and dormitories. A long-forgotten memory, all but the church had yielded to the ravages of time.
She next cast a furtive glance at Javier Aveles who’d been discreetly trailing them since they left Compostela, having accompanied them on the nonstop flight to Paris. While he wasn’t as menacing as Hector Calzada, Javier cut a mean figure none the less. With his narrowed eyes and curled sneer, he put her in mind of a rabid junkyard dog. Ready to maul anyone who crossed its path. On the plus side, however – and it was a huge plus at that – he was no longer armed, forced to dispose of his weapon before they entered the airport at Compostela. His sidekick Calzada was still missing in action but given the slew of phone calls that Aveles had recently received, Edie deduced that the Bête Noire was en route.
As they entered the vestibule, Caedmon scanned the glut of pamphlets, brochures, prayer books and loose-leaf sheets of paper scattered about, the day’s tourists having pillaged the place.
‘I don’t know about you, but I am all churched out,’ Edie muttered in a lowered voice. ‘So, now that we’re here, how do we go about finding “the virgin in the bishop’s meadow”?’
Caedmon plucked a guide sheet out of a plastic holder. Squinting studiously, he examined the floor plan. ‘The Chapel of the Virgin is located behind the altar,’ he said, jabbing a finger against the dog-eared sheet of paper. Spinning on his heel, he strode towards the aisle that ran down the left side of the church, a general leading his war-weary troops.
Following in his wake, Edie had only taken a few steps when Javier Aveles cinched a hand around her upper arm.
‘You try to escape me, and it’ll be the devil’s kiss . . . for the both of you,’ he snarled.
‘No need to worry. We’re just going to the Virgin’s Chapel,’ she informed him, yanking her arm out of his grasp. ‘Feel free to tag along.’
Savage beast soothed, Edie rushed down the aisle. Scurrying to catch up to Caedmon, her rubber-soled espadrilles squeaked rudely on the stone floor. Not that the obtrusive sound much mattered; that late in the day, there were only a handful of visitors to be annoyed. As she hurried down the aisle, she glimpsed a blur of ecclesiastical artwork in the ancillary chapels and sundry niches . . . Saint Frances Xavier . . . Saint Rita . . . Saint Joseph . . . Saints Peter and Paul.
‘Is it just me? Or do they burn way too much incense in these places?’ she grumbled as they entered a semi-circular candlelit chapel. ‘There must be some rule that –’ She stopped in mid-stream, belatedly realizing that they’d just entered the Chapel of the Virgin. Slack-jawed, she stared at the marble statue of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus.
Crappola.
Edie didn’t need a tour guide to inform her that she was gazing at a nineteenth-century statue ensconced in a neoclassical-style chapel replete with Greek-style pediments, Corinthian columns and a very realistically painted frieze. As near she could tell, there wasn’t a medieval fixture in sight.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Caedmon rasped, irreverently dropping an F-bomb, plainly stunned at seeing the nineteenth-century statue in a medieval church. Lean-cheeked and haggard with bloodshot eyes and unshaven face, he looked like a homeless bum who’d wandered into the sanctuary in search of a quiet corner to take an afternoon nap.
‘Since this statue is obviously a much later addition to the church,’ Edie said, ‘it’s unlikely that this is where Fortes de Pinós hid the third plate.’
‘Yes, thank you, Edie. I’m well aware of that fact.’
Ignoring Caedmon’s sour-milk tone of voice, she peered around the candlelit chapel. ‘Maybe there’s another sanctuary dedicated to the Virgin. We passed a whole slew of chapels as we came down the aisle.’
‘According to the guide sheet, this is the only one dedicated to the Virgin.’
She could see that Caedmon was marooned between relief at locating the right church and despair that they wouldn’t be able to find the third plate now that they were here.
Or was it the right church?
‘Maybe we misread the clue,’ she said, wondering if they needed to cast a wider net.
Caedmon scotched the notion with a terse shake of the head. ‘I’m certain that Fortes de Pinós brought the third plate to the abbey at St Germain.’
Having run out of ideas, Edie fell into a dejected silence, fatigue causing her thoughts to jumble together. While they’d both managed to nap on the two-hour flight, it wasn’t enough. Depleted of body and mind, she figured her spirit would next fly the coop.
Clenching his fists, Caedmon glared at the nineteenth-century marble statue of the Virgin and Child, the candlelight turning his eyes a piercing shade of Delft blue. ‘Where in God’s name is the third plate?’ he muttered, peering heavenward.
Edie knew the root cause of his foul mood; it was a gut-wrenching fear of what would happen to Anala if he didn’t locate Fortes de Pinós’s cache. To combat that fear, he was going at the problem with a feral tenacity.
Craning her neck, Edie glanced at Javier Aveles who was lounging against a wooden statue of St Germain. Impudently returning her stare, he scratched negligently at his testicles, oblivious to the fact that they’d just hit a major snag.
‘Why don’t we head back to the vestibule and rifle through the printed material?’ she suggested. ‘There was a lot of information scattered about pertaining to the history of the abbey.’
Caedmon wearily nodded his assent. ‘We’ll need to compile a list of every single painting, statue and holy relic that relates to the Virgin Mary.’
As they trudged back down the aisle, Edie swiveled her head from side-to-side, hoping that something would miraculously resonate, every nook, every cranny, every shadowed niche rife with possibi
lity.
Spotting an older priest headed in their direction, Caedmon waved his hand to waylay the black-robed cleric. He showed the priest the guide sheet and explained that they were searching for statuary or sacred artwork related to the Virgin Mary that had been commissioned or crafted prior to the year 1308.
If the priest was surprised by the unusual request, he hid it well. ‘I think that you are looking for the medieval Chapelle de la Vierge,’ he replied in English. ‘It was built during the reign of Saint Louis in the thirteenth century.’
‘Yes! The medieval Chapel of the Virgin.’ Caedmon’s relief was plain to see, his lips actually curving in a smile. ‘If you would be kind enough to take us there, we’d be grateful.’
The priest gestured towards a nearby doorway. ‘Avec plaisir.’
Caedmon’s euphoria was contagious, Edie almost giddy with excitement as they followed the cassocked priest. They’d travelled a long, winding road and were now at journey’s end. The virgin in the bishop’s meadow. It could only refer to the thirteenth-century Chapel of the Virgin.
The priest swung a wooden door wide open and motioned them through. On the other side of the threshold was a small outdoors garden with park benches and chunks of stone artistically arranged on a circular patch of lawn. Attached to an exterior wall of the church, there was a delicate set of quadruple arches, each capped with a Gothic trefoil. Beside that was a sturdy column that appeared to have been blasted in two, the top half missing.
Caedmon frowned, no doubt thinking, as Edie was, that there’d been a miscommunication.
‘There’s nothing here,’ he said, pointing out the obvious.
Clearly befuddled, the priest shook his head. ‘I thought that you wanted to see the site of the original Chapel of the Virgin.’
‘Yes, that’s precisely what we’d like to see. So where the bloody hell is it?’ Caedmon growled, making no attempt to hide his annoyance, exhaustion getting the better of him.
‘But you are looking at it, monsieur. In the year 1794, during the Revolution, the church was used as a warehouse for gunpowder. A calamitous accident occurred, one which caused more than fifteen tons of gunpowder to ignite. The original Chapelle de la Vierge was destroyed in the explosion.’ The priest pointed towards the Gothic arches. ‘Alas, this is all that remains.’
53
The chapel was demolished two centuries ago!
As the realization hit, the ballast in Caedmon’s hold turned over. Gasping for air, he swayed unsteadily, on the verge of fainting.
Rage . . . Pain . . . Desperation.
It all swirled and eddied. A hideous flotsam flung on to the beach. How does one even begin to recover the wreckage? Let alone swim to shore.
Over the crashing waves, he heard Edie thank the priest in a solemn tone of voice. Then she took hold of his arm. She may have spoken to him as well. He couldn’t be sure, certain of only one thing: the third plate of the Evangelium Gaspar no longer existed. It had been obliterated. Blown to smithereens.
Edie led him to a nearby park bench; a kindly nurse leading a confused sanatorium patient. Dizzy, he tumbled on to the bench, grateful for her assistance.
‘Put your head between your knees.’ The order was accompanied with a firm hand to the back of his skull.
Caedmon complied, bending at the waist as his head and arms gracelessly flopped downwards. Gripping his head in his hands, he was seized with a disorientating panic. How am I going to rescue Anala?
Long moments passed before he was able to sit up.
‘Are you okay?’ Edie asked anxiously, once he’d righted himself.
‘Yes, I’m –’ He caught himself about tell a patent lie. He wasn’t fine, or all right, or even okay. He’d damned near swooned, devastated by the horrifying news.
The chapel was gone.
His heart in his throat, he stared at the four delicate arches with their elongated columns and elegant trefoils; all that remained of the Chapelle de la Vierge. A hauntingly lovely bit of debris.
‘How could this have happened?’ he rasped, fighting to keep his composure.
‘It looks as though they used the rubble from the explosion to fill in the holes,’ Edie remarked, shading her eyes with her hand as she peered at the facade of the church.
From where they sat in the small garden square, the ravages that the abbey had suffered from the gunpowder blast were discernible, the exterior wall a patchwork of mismatched stone and mortar; pieces, indeed, entire chunks of stone were still missing two hundred years after the fact. In those places where ‘restoration’ work had been done, it appeared as though odd scraps had been used to patch the gaps. A bruised and battered lady if ever there was.
Just then the church door swung open. Javier Aveles, a sneer plastered on his face, strode over to the bench where they were sitting.
‘What are you doing lazing about?’ he snarled. ‘You said that the plate was hidden inside the church.’
‘And it is,’ Edie was quick to assure the brute. ‘But it’s not as if the location is posted on the church floor plan with a big X. We need time to search the interior. Several hours at least. However, this late in the day, the light inside the church is too dim to conduct a thorough investigation,’ she said, having crafted an ingenious excuse on the fly.
‘I’m only going to say this one time, you ass-licking gringos –’ eyes glittering with suspicion, Aveles jabbed a finger in the air – ‘don’t pull a disappearing act.’
The unspoken addendum being ‘on pain of death’.
‘That guy needs to be slapped in the face with a moral absolute,’ Edie muttered as Aveles, taking up a position on the far side of the square, leaned against the garden fence.
A heavy silence descended, Caedmon unable to summon the strength, let along the will, to rise to his feet.
Wordlessly, he and Edie watched as a woman with two small children in tow, twin girls in matching yellow sundresses, entered the garden square. Squealing with childish delight, the rosy-cheeked pair chased after a ball.
Edie sighed heavily. ‘It’s hard to believe that five days ago we were strolling arm-in-arm along Boulevard St Germain, just a stone’s throw from where we’re now sitting.’
‘On our way to have an aperitif at Café de Flore.’ And then Gita showed up, waylaying him with a revelation he was still grappling to come to terms with. ‘It would seem that we have arrived full circle,’ he ruminated, also struck by the bitter irony.
‘So, now what?’
‘We’ll have to manufacture a forgery,’ he informed Edie, that being the only viable solution. ‘Luckily we have digital photographs of the first two copper plates. The damned thing merely has to pass muster long enough for the exchange to take place.’
Edie’s head bobbed. ‘A fake plate could actually work. I mean, look at how many people were fooled by that stone ossuary in Israel.’
‘That’s because the eye often sees what it wants to see.’
‘There is one other option . . .’ Edie paused and gnawed a moment on her lower lip before saying, ‘We could always come clean and tell Irenaeus that the Chapel of the Virgin was destroyed during the French Revolution. How can he expect you to deliver a ransom that no longer exists?’
‘We’re dealing with monsters,’ Caedmon countered, having already discounted that particular option. ‘Such creatures are, by their very nature, difficult to reason with.’
‘Even a monster has to understand that . . . Never mind.’ Edie’s voice drifted into silence, the proposal failing to reach locomotive force. Opening her canvas tote, she retrieved a plastic shopping bag. From that, she removed a packet of chocolate cookies. ‘Food of the damned. Care for one?’
Caedmon shook his head. He needed something a bit stronger than sugar to assuage the pain. ‘Once we get back to my flat, I’ll contact Gita. She may be able to assist in fashioning a fake –’
‘Hold that thought,’ Edie interrupted as a breeze suddenly blew the plastic shopping bag off her lap. Lu
rching to her feet, she chased after the airborne bag, which pirouetted on an updraft. As she tried to retrieve it, the bag fluttered out of reach.
Caedmon shifted his gaze away from Edie and the dancing plastic bag, his thoughts turning inward. For several days now, they’d been swinging the figurative machete, hacking away at a hidden trail; never once considering that what they sought might have been lost to history several centuries ago. But Irenaeus was also unaware of that fact. Which is why they might possibly be able to fob him off with a counterfeit plate.
‘Caedmon, there’s something that you need to see.’
‘Hmm?’ Shaking his head, he glanced at Edie who, slightly breathless, retook her seat, plastic bag in hand.
Leaning close to him, she said in a lowered voice, ‘Don’t get excited.’
‘Not a prayer,’ he grunted.
‘No, I mean don’t let Aveles see you get excited . . . It might sound off the wall, but I think the third plate is on the wall.’
He cocked his head to one side, wondering at her game. ‘Either I’m dreaming or this is a very cruel joke.’
‘One that I would never play. Not with Anala’s life at stake,’ she added. ‘Now, without being obvious about it, I want you to stroll over to the wall behind the Gothic arches. To the left of the last arch, about three feet above the ground, you’ll see a rectangular outline of a patch that’s been adhered to the exterior wall and plastered over. Some of the plaster has flaked off one corner, revealing a pistachio green piece of metal.’
His eyes opened wide, his head quite literally spinning. Oxidized copper!
Immediately rallying, Caedmon stood up and, placing his hands in the small of his back, slowly stretched. He then paced a bit, head bent, giving every appearance of being a man lost in contemplation.
Serendipity intervened, one of the twins kicking the rubber ball towards the Gothic arches.
Smiling indulgently, Caedmon stepped over to retrieve it for the child. As he crouched to pick up the ball, he examined the plastered-over piece of metal.
