You had to cimb it before you could experience what he’d achieved by mimicking the structure of DNA. A double helix of stone meant that people going up the stairs couldn’t see the people going down. Phoebe explained the design to J.J. and he was entranced. They could hear some young people chattering in German, but never saw them, so they realized the Germans were nearby, but on the other staircase.
* * *
Phoebe consulted the little brochure she’d been given. Unfortunately the room they were looking for wasn’t marked. Of course it wasn’t. Christian Rosenkreutz wasn’t even thought to be real by many people. The man’s identity was buried in mystery and confusion—some unavoidable, some intentional disinformation, the rest of it just bad scholarship, or hopeless stupidity.
“Shall we continue all the way up to the roof and work our way down, or stop here to look at the second floor?”
“What’s your gut telling you?”
“He was here,” said Phoebe, “no doubt about it. He was all over this place. But I’m cold and chilling. The shivering is interfering with my ability to feel the contrail.”
“Can you dowse the brochure?”
“You mean the piece of paper?”
“Yes, I know some people have that ability. Can you?”
“I can try,” Phoebe said. She shook herself like a swimmer preparing to mount the diving block. Then she focused on the black and white architectural rendering of the building, le plan, as the French called it. Nothing happened.
She held the schematic in her left hand and ran the tips of her index and middle fingers slowly across the map in a grid. There was nothing in the central block of four towers, what she thought of as the house itself. She scanned it several times and there was nothing. She chalked it up to a lack of ability, but then she got a blip from one of the outlying towers, the one to the north.
She held her hand over the drawing and decided she was getting a yes. She examined the plan more closely, straining to make out any details. This particular tower had a unique feature. It had its own exterior staircase. This seemed odd because there was a staircase fairly close by in the nearest corner of the main block and also the great central staircase just beyond that.
Phoebe wondered why there would be three different staircases so close together, one of which led to the outside of the main protective wall. That would be a major security breach. “I may have found it,” she said. “There’s a place where something feels funny and looks strange. It’s the outer tower on the north corner. I don’t know which floor is giving off the buzz, but we can start on this level and see.”
Chapter 14.
“Salamanders are everywhere!” Phoebe said. She stopped and typed in a search on her phone. “According to the Chambord website there are 400 freakin salamanders carved into the coffered ceilings on this level alone.”
“Does it actually say freakin?”
“No.”
“You know there’s a rumor that pressing one of the Fs will open the door to a treasure.”
“No, I hadn’t heard that,” she said as she paged through the info on the building. She looked at the ceiling above where they stood. “Apparently there are more than 800 salamanders in the whole complex. And judging by the size of this room, most of them are way too high off the ground to fool with unless you have some serious scaffolding. So I guess that means there are five hundred years of grubby fingerprints and pry marks on the ones that are reachable with a ladder.”
She read to him from her smart phone. “Francis’ motto was Nutrisco et extinguo which means, ‘I nourish and I extinguish.’ Several sources soften the translation to, ‘I nourish, or strengthen, the good—and extinguish, or destroy, the evil.’ But maybe that was wishful thinking, or his PR guys.
“He became king at the age of twenty. Apparently he was a real long shot to end up as king. It took the untimely deaths of several intervening heirs. …blah blah. He was over six feet tall, which was nearly a giant at the time. …more blah.
“He was the first French king to insist on being called your majesty. Prior to this, the Holy Roman Emperor was the only person with that title. He reigned for thirty-two years, from 1515 to 1547. Okay, that’s enough knowledge for one day,” she said, terminating her surfing and slipping the phone into her jacket.
They made their way through a rabbit warren of rooms toward the north corner of the second story, stopping a couple of times to look around and try to understand the layout of the place. Obviously it had been substantially remodeled several times and the alterations had made the layout asymmetrical.
Phoebe was feeling a lot of vibe, but nothing she could home in on. Then suddenly she got something. “I’m getting a signal,” she murmured. “Something’s near here.”
There was a small sign on a stanchion with an arrow directing them to the François I apartment. Phoebe decided to try that. They went into a reconstructed formal bedroom. Phoebe felt nothing, but there was a vibe coming through an open door opposite the one they’d entered by. There was light coming in from that direction too, so there must be windows. They’d made it to the outside wall of the north tower.
Phoebe went toward the light and stepped into the most beautiful room in the world. She’d seen several fabulous places in a couple of days, but this one took the cake. It wasn’t just its physical beauty—it had a glorious vibe. Like many of the other places they’d been, there was literally nothing in it. Unlike the other places, it didn’t feel diminished by time.
It wasn’t a large room. It was maybe fifteen feet wide by twenty-five feet long. That was tiny considering where they were. In addition to the connecting door to the King’s bedroom, there was a carved wooden door on the far end of the room. Carvings of salamanders and the letter F were deeply etched in the exquisite barrel vaulted stone ceiling. Clear leaded glass windows lined two walls from the waist up.
Phoebe was awestruck. This was definitely the place—the place for what she had no idea, but holy things had been done here and the residue of it still lay heavy in the air. This might have been CR’s laboratory.
“You’ve found something,” J.J. said. “What is it?”
“Well, there’s nothing in the room, just stone walls and ceiling, terra cotta tile floors, leaded glass along two walls, and a heavy oak door on each end of the space. That’s it.”
She could see the salamanders at closer range in here and she realized some of them were eating the fire and others were spitting water on the flames to put it out. She was explaining this to J.J. when they heard someone coming.
It was a group of some kind. A docent came in leading a huddled knot of shivering tourists. She spoke in French and J.J. whispered a translation in Phoebe’s ear. “This is the studiolo. An office or place of study designed for François I.
“He was twenty-five years old when the construction of Chambord began. The palace took twenty-eight years to build.” The guide pointed out the windows that faced onto the moat. “François intended to divert the Loire River to run by here, but he never got around to doing it. At the same time Chambord was being built he was remodeling the Louvre in Paris.
“This room was later converted to an oratorio, a private chapel, by Louis XV’s mother-in-law.” The docent opened the door at the far end of the room and shepherded her small flock down what looked like a medieval wheelchair ramp. The entire hall was built on a moderate slant, apparently to connect areas of different heights. Her voice rang from the hall and J.J. continued translating until he could no longer hear her.
“Leonardo da Vinci may have worked in here. He’d lived nearby in a house on the grounds of Amboise, and he died there in 1519. Leonardo is known to have brought three of his paintings to France when he came—the Mona Lisa, The Virgin and Child with Saint Ann, and Saint John the Baptist, which he finished here.”
When the group was out of sight or hearing range, J.J. started a slow, careful scan of the room. Stragglers wandered through at intervals, and each time Phoebe and J.J. sto
pped what they were doing and stood back out of the way, acting like they were reading the brochure, as they waited for the people to move on.
Phoebe used her phone to read more about the salamanders, apparently they were swallowing good fire and dampening evil fire. Then suddenly J.J. murmured, “Got it.”
He raised an arm above his head, stood on tiptoe, and ran a hand along the wall. “Up here, there’s a square cache about a foot high by two feet wide by eighteen inches deep. It’s hollow, and there’s something in it.”
“Where?” Phoebe asked. She was looking and couldn’t see anything obvious.
“I can’t reach it, but it’s built into the wall directly above my hand.”
“How far above your hand?”
“Not more than four feet.”
“The wall goes up for another couple of feet of above your hand, then there’s a thick run of stone crown molding, maybe a foot high, and it’s deep. It makes a ledge along the seam where the barrel vault of the ceiling meets the wall. It’s deep enough to be a shelf.”
“Okay,” J.J. said.
“Okay, what?” Phoebe asked. “How do we get up there? And how to we get into it? It’s solid rock.”
“It’s rock, but it’s not solid. There must be a door of some kind or some other way to open the wall.”
“I can’t see all of the place you’re talking about from here, because it’s hidden behind by the crown molding, but it looks like nothing more than the same old salamanders and Fs.”
J.J. remained silent. He had to rely on Phoebe for this part of the job.
“I could try to step up on the window ledge on the opposite side of the room and tell you what I see. But if they caught us, we’d probably go to jail.”
“I can get you a lot closer than that.”
“How?”
“You can stand on my shoulders.”
“Ah, okay…. How will I get up there?”
“We can do it however you want. I’m strong, I work out with free weights. A lot.”
He faced her, standing with his back against the wall. There were no handholds anywhere.
Phoebe sighed and thought, Oh pu-leeze. A spinster acrobat pushing sixty? But she swallowed, and said, “If you can crouch down a little so I can step up onto a thigh, and make a stirrup about chest high with your hands, I can try to climb up onto your shoulders and then I might be able to see over the crown molding into the crevice.”
“How much do you weigh?” he asked.
“What difference does it make? You got anybody else willing to play circus with you? Plus, that information is strictly need to know,” she said, mocking his earlier rebuffs to her curiosity, “I want to tell you, I really do, but it would be dangerous for you to have that information.”
He snorted, crouched down slightly, then slapped the top of one of his thighs to indicate where she should step first. Then he interlaced his fingers for her to step up into next.
“You better not drop me. Everything in this room is made of rock. If I fall, I’ll die.”
She took a deep breath and moved close to him. She reached up and took hold of his shoulders. He hadn’t lied, his shoulders were muscular. She put her left foot atop his thigh and her right foot into his cupped hands. He lifted her so she could step up with her left foot onto his shoulder.
He was rock steady, but she was no gymnast. She started to wobble and since there was nothing else to take hold of, she grabbed a handful of his hair to steady herself. She heard him suppress a scream.
This was one of those awkward moments in life when he would’ve preferred to howl and curse but considering where they were and what they were doing, he didn’t dare. Phoebe wanted to let go of his hair, too, but she couldn’t or she’d fall backwards and land on her head.
She managed to regain her balance and whispered, “Sorry.” Then she got both feet up onto his shoulders and stood.
“I can’t quite reach it,” she whispered. “I need another few inches.”
J.J. stood up straighter and raised up on his toes but she still wasn’t able to reach above the crown molding. “Hold perfectly still,” he warned in a whisper, then he took hold of her heels and hoisted her another six inches. Phoebe gasped.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I used to be a college cheerleader. I can hold women up over my head for hours on end.”
“Really?”
“No, they wouldn’t even let me try out, because of my eyes. It was crushing. I was a natural—I’d have been the only guy on the squad who couldn’t see up the girl’s dresses.”
Phoebe struggled not to laugh. But he was right, that last little bit of height was enough. Now she could see the area he’d indicated. She reached into the crease between the crown molding and the wall and thought she could detect loose joints around one of the salamander coffers. It had a slightly different color mortar.
“The stones are mortared in and I can see one place where the mortar looks suspicious. What do I do now? I need some kind of tool to gouge it out.”
J.J. didn’t have time to answer. More people were coming. He carefully lowered her feet back to his shoulders and gave her ankles a gentle squeeze she took to mean hurry up.
Getting down was going to be extremely awkward and scary and possibly involve more hair pulling. She wondered if she should jump like a cheerleader, or what. She wished they’d discussed this earlier, because now there was no time to work out the details. She froze, standing atop his shoulders, not sure what to do.
He tilted his head back and whispered, “Slide down the front of me. I’ll catch you.”
It was terrifying to hop away from him into mid-air, but he broke her fall by grabbing her in a bear hug before her feet could hit the ground. If she hadn’t been so nervous, it would’ve been romantic. Actually it was still romantic. He was extremely strong. She felt feminine. There hadn’t been enough times in her life that she’d felt that way.
Phoebe wasn’t small. She was tall and strong. But he was still able to hold her in his arms and keep her off the ground. It was exhilarating and strange at the same time. They were face to face, but he couldn’t see her. He held her like that for a couple of seconds, then let her slide the last few inches until she was standing on her own.
When the tourists burst into the room it looked like they were interrupting a romantic interlude, but that was fine with Phoebe. Whatever worked. The visitors eventually moved on.
“We need a ladder,” Phoebe said, “and obviously we can’t do this with people coming in and out all the time.”
“We can come back tonight and do it.”
“But it’ll be dark then!”
He turned his face toward her and smiled.
She could see herself reflected in his sunglasses.
“Oh, sorry.”
Chapter 15.
They left the building by the spiral staircase in the northwest interior corner of the complex, between the main block and the courtyard. The stairs were protected from above and on one side by the castle, but the southeast side was exposed to the weather. Phoebe tried to take careful note of the route so she could find her way back later.
She suggested they try to book rooms at the nearby Hôtel du Grand Saint-Michel and eat there while they waited. There were plenty of rooms this time of year. She got two of them, both with unobstructed views of the château, for all the good that would do J.J.
They ate a leisurely lunch, responded to email, sent an update to Le Seigneur, and did some more research by phone and laptop. Phoebe summarized what was on her computer screen, “That room we were in, the studiolo, when it was built it was still a relatively new concept. It was an Italian innovation created for meditation, contemplation, and study.
“A room like that, a room of one’s own, was said to indicate the emergence of the concept of an educated, thoughtful human individual. The rooms were highly decorated. Apparently the ceiling of Francois’ study is famous—as it should be.”
She surfed some more and
said, “The château was abandoned several times. Louis XIV did some repairs, but lost interest. Then Louis XV gave the place to his father-in-law.”
J.J. suggested they use the remaining time for a more thorough reconnoiter of the grounds and the park and a trip to a hardware store. He wanted to be sure they’d combed the whole place and familiarized themselves with it before their nighttime foray and that they had the right equipment for the job.
Phoebe agreed.
When they were out of earshot of anyone, Phoebe said, “From the magnitude of the signal in that room, CR had direct access to it. He worked in there and he personally placed whatever it is that’s hidden in that cavity in the wall. I’d bet money on it.”
There didn’t appear to be security cameras anywhere, what could anyone do with such a gigantic mass of stone?
When J.J. was satisfied that they knew the layout inside the walled park and that Phoebe would be able to return to the studiolo in the dark, they drove to the nearby town of Blois for supplies. They needed some tools to remove the mortar around the hiding place and, because stealth would be important during the burglary, Phoebe wanted to get different clothes for them both that would make them harder to be seen at night.
J.J. didn’t own any black clothes. They would’ve been uncomfortable in Hawaii. “You’ll have to tell me which ones are the black ones,” he joked. Phoebe picked out his and her sized black jeans, gloves, caps, rubber soled walking shoes, socks, and oversize windbreakers with hoods to go over the tops of their new colorful down jackets. The lightweight sporting gear would make their acrobatics easier.
She looked for rubber suction cups like Tom Cruise used to climb the outside of a skyscraper in Mission Impossible, but she didn’t see any.
Phoebe wanted to visit other châteaux in the area if they had time. She’d made a little list of places, including Villesavin, which was near Chambord, but there wasn’t time before dark. It was late December, near the winter solstice. That meant it got dark early and stayed dark a long time. That was bad for touring, but great for burglary. They’d have all the time they needed.
Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 03 - The School for Psychics Page 9
