The Map

by T. S. Learner

  Now long past midnight, it was colder out on the street, and August shivered in his thin jacket. He pulled his collar up and began to walk briskly down the narrow lane. The lights in most of the windows of the apartments were now out, and it felt as if the city had finally fallen asleep. Yet August’s mind was whirling – memories folded over experience and then splintered into dreamed fragments of information. The intensity of the past few days had pushed him into that jittering realm that exists beyond exhaustion and yet he was fiercely alert. A cat bolted out of a doorway across his path in a spitting ball of fur. He reeled back, his hand tightening on the satchel containing the chronicle, then laughed. Jimmy had given him a gift, he realised – he had given him back meaning.

  At the end of the street a black Fiat pulled slowly away from the kerb and August had the distinctive impression someone had been watching him leave Jimmy’s apartment building. He hurried out onto place Pigalle. As he turned into the boulevard, one of the side doors of a strip club opened and a burly security guard held it as a young pale blonde stepped out wearing a short white fur cape over a satin evening dress. The man shut the door behind her and she stood for a moment shivering in the early morning chill. August suddenly became acutely aware that they were the only two people left on the street. Hurrying along, he tried to ignore her.

  ‘Monsieur!’ To his annoyance she ran after him. He slowed, gearing himself to be solicited – not a prospect he savoured.

  ‘Monsieur, can I worry you for a light?’ She held out a cigarette.

  Reluctantly, he got out his Zippo. ‘Sure,’ he answered, gruffly. ‘But I warn you, Mademoiselle, I’m not interested in company.’ He lit the cigarette then kept walking, but she followed, running slightly to keep up.

  ‘Monsieur, you misunderstand me. I just need someone to walk me to my street. It’s been a quiet night and I can’t afford a cab, and Paris is dangerous this time of morning.’ She widened her eyes appealingly.

  ‘Where is your street?’

  ‘Rue de Canard, it’s not far from here.’

  It was the next street along from his hotel. There would be no detour. Nearby there was the squeak of brakes and he glanced behind them. The street still appeared empty, but the sense of someone following lingered like scent.

  ‘Expecting someone?’ the young girl asked, coquettishly.

  ‘No one nice,’ he replied, grimly. Then they walked.

  The hotel key jammed for a moment in the lock and August glanced down the corridor, a wooden floor with a cheap worn patterned runner down the centre. He could hear the sound of two people having sex in the room next door, the woman professionally vocal – doubtless a streetwalker with a client, he thought, as the key finally turned and the door swung open. He turned on the light. The room lay as he’d left it six hours earlier – a change of clothes flung hurriedly on the single chair sitting in front of the washbasin, a towel and a bar of cheap soap laid on the end of the small bed.

  August placed his satchel on the bed and walked over to the window. After lifting the thin lace curtains, he glanced out at the street below. Under the yellow street lamps, it appeared empty, but he still had the feeling he had been watched from the moment he’d left Jimmy’s apartment. Even now, as he peered out, he sensed someone’s gaze. Pressing himself against the wall, he slipped his hand into his jacket pocket and felt the Mauser he had hidden there. It was a reassuring sensation. He dropped the curtain and turned back to the room. It was then that he noticed, with a jolt, a single white rose lying on the small wooden table in the corner. It hadn’t been there before. He walked over and picked it up. Turning it, he studied the old-fashioned double-layered petals, an old world rose, almost Tudor – it looked strangely familiar. As he put it back down, he noticed that his fingers were sticky. Now he could see that the stem was covered in blood and a tiny thread of flesh hung off a thorn. It was like a grim symbol or warning, but who had put it there and why? He went over to the basin to wash his hands, the image of the rose before him, taunting him. Then he realised where he had seen the flower before. He dried his hands and pulled the chronicle out of his satchel; sitting down at the table, he opened the book to the page that held the hidden clues of the first maze. At the top was a detailed illustration of the very same rose; petal for petal, it was an exact copy. A chill ran through him. The sensation struck him that someone was shadowing his journey – not just across Europe but his progress as he worked his way through the young physic’s account.

  14

  The outline of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés loomed against the sky. It was late morning. August had overslept, the dead sleep of the exhausted, and the streets were already filling with workers making their way to the numerous cafés that lined the boulevard Saint-Germain. He stared up at the impressive bell tower. Then, after a quick glance around, he entered the abbey.

  The long nave stretched out before him, the early morning sunlight glittering in through the stained glass above the altar onto the stone floor in a chequer of red and blue. Kneeling before the altar, his blond hair ablaze in the coloured light, a young monk was praying. August approached him then coughed. The monk glanced over, finished his prayer, got to his feet and walked over.

  ‘Bonjour, Monsieur.’

  ‘Bonjour. I wish to see the abbot if that’s possible.’

  The monk peered at him suspiciously. ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  ‘No, but I’m a scholar who has come far. I wanted to ask him about a pupil of the seventeenth-century scholar monk Bernard de Montfaucon, who was an abbot of this abbey – a novice called Dominic Baptise.’

  The monk looked startled at the name. He appeared to be on the verge of saying something when they were interrupted by a voice booming out from one of the side chapels.

  ‘Francis, I will assist the gentleman.’ A tall white-haired man strode towards them, robes flying. He looked more like a country squire than a priest, August noted, as he drew closer. His cheeks were threaded with the broken capillaries of the wine connoisseur and the figure beneath the cloth was stout.

  ‘Monsieur.’ He bowed his head formally at August then turned to dismiss the monk. ‘Francis, there are the accounts to be finished in the priory.’

  ‘Of course, Abbot.’ The monk turned and disappeared into the shadows of a side chapel, and the abbot turned to August.

  ‘So you are interested in the father of archaeology?’

  ‘Well, naturally, as a classicist I know of him, but actually I was after the writings of a specific pupil of his – a Dominic Baptise?’

  The abbot smiled politely and, with a hand on August’s shoulder, gently began guiding him down the aisle towards the door of the abbey. ‘A Dominic Baptise? I’m afraid I know of no such monk.’

  ‘Are you sure? He would have studied under de Montfaucon around 1709 or 1710?’

  They paused at the entrance of one of the side chapels, and August recognised the stone plaque declaring Descartes’ tomb. For a moment he was tempted to pay homage.

  ‘Absolutely. I am a scholar of Montfaucon myself. You have to appreciate that sometimes the learned monk hid his more contentious explanations of ancient antiquities under pseudonyms. It is possible Baptise was one,’ the Abbot replied, somewhat patronisingly.

  August glanced back at Descartes’ tomb and took heart. ‘No, Abbot, I am positive Dominic Baptise existed.’

  ‘And I am positive he did not.’ The abbot reached an arm out, indicating the door of the abbey. August’s audience was over.

  As he stepped out into the early afternoon sunlight, he looked to his left. The abbot’s assistant stepped out from behind one of the stone pillars and indicated that August should follow him around to the side of the building. After a quick glance back towards the abbey door, August slipped quietly after him.

  They stood at the top of a narrow stone stairwell built into the side of the abbey.

  ‘Dominic Baptise did exist. The abbot was lying,’ the assistant told him, nervously, in a l
owered voice.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because the case of Baptise is still an embarrassment to the church. Let me show you, but please, the abbot will be in the far wing of the building, we must keep our voices down or risk discovery.’ He began descending the stairs. Slippery with moss, they looked as if they hadn’t been used in years. ‘This is an ancient crypt – forgotten by the church, not many know of its existence. It is only me who maintains it now.’

  Inside, it was dim and the air was chilly, the damp already creeping into August’s bones. Stone arches that supported the foundation of the building stretched across the space, forcing him to bend down to avoid banging his hand. The assistant pulled a thick white candle from an ornate brass stand and, after pulling a box of matches from his robe, lit it. The candle flared, throwing long shadows across the low vaulted ceiling.

  ‘This way,’ the monk whispered, and began leading August through the chambers of the crypt. Under the crisscrossed arches August felt as if he were in some strange beehive, but one for the dead, the tombs suspended in a curious limbo between life and death, like egg chambers awaiting some kind of apocalyptic awakening.

  ‘Here it is.’ The young monk stopped at one of the alcoves. Unlike the others, it was empty. They stepped in and the monk held up the candle, illuminating the back wall. Now August could see that it had been inscribed both with a name and the crude outline of a man, his arms held out to his sides, his legs splayed. A word written in Hebrew ran across the figure’s chest.

  August stepped up, running his fingers across the engraved letters.

  ‘“Da’ath” – “knowledge”,’ he translated. ‘But why Hebrew?’ he asked himself, as much as the monk behind him.

  ‘This is not Hebrew, this is Aramaic – ancient Hebrew, the language of Jesus,’ the monk replied. ‘But you should see this.’ He moved the candle across to the inscribed name, in French it read: Father Dominic Baptise, born in the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and ninety, vanished from this Earth in the year of seventeen hundred and ten.

  ‘Baptise did exist,’ said the monk. ‘He was a brilliant student of Montfaucon, who entrusted him with translating a mystical text written by —’

  ‘Elazar ibn Yehuda.’

  The monk looked up sharply. ‘So you do know.’

  ‘I know of Yehuda,’ August replied, cautiously.

  ‘Baptise found something in the translation that sent him on a long pilgrimage across Europe, a pilgrimage that involved hidden sacred sites, the locations of which he refused to share with anyone. He was gone for two years and Montfaucon despaired of ever seeing his gifted student again, when he got a letter from the Archbishop of Hamburg telling him he’d recently received a petition from several parishioners claiming they had witnessed a miracle – the ascension of a young monk, one of Montfaucon’s own order, a Dominican called Baptise. Montfaucon was what we would now call a rationalist; he believed only in the miracles of humanism, and knowing Baptise to be of a nervous and imaginative disposition, he wrote back to say he would be supportive of the petition only if substantial evidence was produced and more than five witnesses to the so-called miracle. Nevertheless, the Archbishop of Hamburg was encouraged, and an investigation followed. It was found that a single witness had seen this supernatural event, a woman with flaming red hair. The records tell us she claimed to have watched the monk disappear in a flash of lightning. But when they tried to find her to substantiate the claim, they failed. She had disappeared. Baptise’s beatification was suspended indefinitely.’

  ‘Was there anything more about the place where the monk disappeared?’

  ‘Montfaucon’s letters in the Bibliothèque Sainte Genevieve mention ornate gardens, described as a labyrinth of hedgerow.’

  August looked back at the outlined figure. He could now see that it looked more like a symbol, a totemic depiction of a man, and that the placement of the word on the figure was as symbolic as its meaning. He turned back to the monk.

  ‘Why have you told me this?’

  The young monk smiled. ‘Despite being a Dominican, I am a charismatic Christian. I believe in the literal truth of the New Testament. I am a believer in miracles, the manifestation of the almighty spirit in Man, both magical and humble.’ He looked back at the name carved into the wall. ‘Besides, he was only twenty years old, like myself.’

  It was already night by the time August got back to the hotel. Once inside his room he pulled the curtains and switched off the light. After the abbey he’d visited the Bibliothèque Sainte Genevieve, hoping to track down the rest of Montfaucon’s letters pertaining to Baptise’s disappearance. After an hour’s fruitless shifting through boxes and files the mortified librarian concluded that the letters August wanted were missing – quite possibly stolen – and that there were no copies. Again, August had the impression he was following in someone else’s trail.

  He threw himself on the bed and lay there staring up into the darkened room, digesting all the new information bombarding him. The fate of the monk Dominic Baptise disturbed him. It wasn’t that he believed in miracles or any kind of transcendence except the very human struggle to better oneself, but he remembered a tutorial given by Professor Copps on the kabbala and medieval Christian symbolism, the academic rapt in fascination as he described how each of the sephiroth in the Tree of Life were associated with archangels, even considered to be portals to heaven in some Christian mystic circles. Had the monk been following Elazar ibn Yehuda’s map? Perhaps an earlier transcription that no longer existed. Had he stumbled on one of Shimon Ruiz de Luna’s mazes? And if so, what was the real reason behind his disappearance? Abduction was the obvious explanation. If Copps had been right about the chronicle attracting a following, it was quite likely the highly imaginative and possibly neurotic young man had stumbled upon a rival, another seeker – maybe he had simply been murdered.

  Just then August heard a faint rattle in the corridor outside the room. He tensed then swung around. As he stared at the door a piece of paper was slipped underneath, then the key itself moved, poked at from the other side, until it fell with a tiny clatter onto the paper. He watched the paper with the key on it slide back under the door. August’s heart rate ratcheted up. Go on, go on, I dare you. He lifted the Mauser out of his pocket and silently slipped off the bed. He moved towards the door, ready to spring. On the other side he could hear the sound of the key being turned. He aimed the gun ready to fire. The door creaked slowly open. To his surprise there was no one there. He waited. Nothing happened. He stepped quietly, carefully, to the doorway to look right down the corridor.

  Then he felt a gun at his temple.

  ‘Hola, August.’ Izarra’s voice was chilling, low and controlled. But then she dropped the gun and smiled.

  Furious, August pulled her back into the room and slammed the door.

  ‘What are you doing, Izarra? You could have killed me!’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought you had gone out.’ She sank down into the chair. ‘Besides, you’re the one still pointing the gun.’ August looked down, the Mauser still poised in his hand – habit of the soldier. Sheepishly, he placed it on a side table.

  Smiling, she placed hers next to it.

  ‘You thought I was out!’ August studied the Basque woman, astounded. Close-up, dressed in trousers and an old jumper, she looked exhausted. ‘How on earth did you get here and how did you know I’d be in this hotel?’

  Izarra shrugged wearily. ‘Please, do you have any water?’

  He poured her a glass from a small bottle by the bed. He glanced back at her gun.

  ‘A Walther PPK, a nice piece. I guess you’re not quite the farmer I had you figured for.’

  ‘I guess not.’

  As she drank the water down greedily, August noticed that her fingernails were chipped and the walking shoes she was wearing were caked with mud. She put down the glass and collapsed back in the chair.

  ‘The morning you left a woman came to the house asking for you – an Engl
ishwoman, not young. She wanted to know where you were, why you had come to the village. I lied, I told her I knew nothing about an American man, a professor. But I am not sorgina for nothing. The moment I saw her I knew she was evil. When I turned my back I caught her taking hair from a beret you had left by the front door, looking for anything of your skin and flesh to make trouble for you. I sent her away. But that’s when I decided I would help you. There will be others after you.’ She smiled grimly. ‘Besides, you took the chronicle and I’m not sure I trust you would bring it back.’

  ‘What about Gabirel?’

  ‘Looking after the farmhouse. He will be safe, a cousin is with him.’

  ‘But how did you get into France?’

  ‘A contact in Donostia gave me a false passport and I came directly by train. The passport is good to travel anywhere in Europe. I am here to help you,’ she finished calmly, in a matter of fact tone, as if offering to launder his shirts. August stared at her, beginning to believe that she too might have been a soldier like her sister.

  ‘It’s too dangerous for a woman.’

  Izarra laughed. ‘I could have shot you a moment ago. It’s you who needs the protection.’

  He studied her. There was a new resolve to the cast of her face, a steeliness to her posture – would she make a worthy opponent? Certainly, she knows more about the mystery of the chronicle than she has told me, but does that mean I should trust her? ‘So how did you find the hotel?’

  ‘I went to Jimmy’s club. A young girl, Agnes, told me where you were staying.’

  August looked over at the white rose, still on the table. ‘Izarra, tell me the truth – were you following me yesterday?’

  ‘No, I swear this is the first time I’ve seen you. Why?’

  He indicated the rose. ‘Someone broke in last night before I got back from Jimmy’s and left that here.’ Surprised, Izarra looked at him to see whether he was serious. He continued, grimly, ‘It was here when I got back tonight. There’s blood, maybe even flesh on the stem. It’s a warning, perhaps even some ridiculous hex.’