by Steve Berry
From a tour book he’d learned that the mass of architecture rising before him, at once a palace, fortress, and shrine, was in reality two buildings—the old palace built by Pope Benedict XII, begun in 1334, and the new palace erected under Clement VI, finished in 1352. Both reflected the personality of their creators. The old palace was a measure of Romanesque conservatism with little flair, while the new palace exuded a Gothic embellishment. Unfortunately, both buildings had been ravaged by fire and, during the French Revolution, looted, their sculpture destroyed, all of the frescoes whitewashed. In 1810 the palace was turned into a barracks. The city of Avignon assumed control in 1906, but restoration was delayed until the 1960s. Two wings were now a convention center and the rest a grand tourist attraction that offered only fleeting glances of its former glory.
“Time we enter,” Claridon said. “The last tour starts in ten minutes. We must be a part.”
Malone stood. “What are we going to do?”
Thunder eased past overhead.
“The abbé Bigou, to whom Marie d’Hautpoul de Blanchefort told her great family secret, would, from time to time, visit the palace and admire the paintings. That was before the Revolution, so many were still on display. Lars discovered there was one in particular he loved. When Lars rediscovered the cryptogram, he also found a reference to a painting.”
“What kind of reference?” Malone asked.
“In the parish register for the church at Rennes-le-Chateâu, on the day he left France for Spain in 1793, Abbé Bigou made a final entry that read, Lisez les Règles du Caridad.”
Malone silently translated. Read the Rules of the Caridad.
“Saunière found that particular entry and secreted it away. Luckily, the register was never destroyed, and Lars ultimately found it. Apparently, Saunière learned that Bigou had visited Avignon often. By Saunière’s time, the late nineteenth century, the palace was nothing but a gutted shell. But Saunière could have easily discovered that there’d been a painting here in Bigou’s time, Reading the Rules of the Caridad, by Juan de Valdés Leal.”
“I assume the painting is still inside?” Malone asked, staring across the expansive courtyard toward the Chapeaux Galo, the palace’s central gate.
Claridon shook his head. “Long gone. Destroyed by fire fifty years ago.”
More thunder rumbled.
“Then why are we here?” Stephanie asked.
Malone tossed a few euros on the table and let his glance dart to another outdoor café two doors away. While others were heading off in anticipation of the coming storm, one woman sat under an awning and sipped from a cup. His gaze lingered only for an instant, enough for him to note well-cut features and prominent eyes. Her skin was the color of creamed coffee, her manner gracious when a waiter delivered her meal. He’d noticed her ten minutes ago, after they first sat, and he’d wondered.
Now for the test.
He grabbed a paper napkin from the table and balled it into his closed fist.
“In that unpublished manuscript,” Claridon was saying, “the one I told you Nöel Corbu wrote about Saunière and Rennes, which Lars found, Corbu talked about the painting and knew Bigou referred to it in the parish register. Corbu also noted that a lithograph of the painting was still in the palace archives. He’d seen it. In the week before he died, Lars finally learned where in the archives. We were to go inside for a look, but Lars never returned to Avignon.”
“And he didn’t tell you where?” Malone asked.
“No, monsieur.”
“There’s no mention in the notebook about a painting,” Malone said. “I read the whole thing. Not a word on Avignon.”
“If Lars didn’t tell you where the lithograph is, why are we going inside?” Stephanie asked. “You don’t know where to look.”
“But your son did, the day before he died. He and I were to go inside the palace for a look when he returned from the mountains. But, madame, as you know—”
“He never came back, either.”
Malone watched as Stephanie suppressed her emotions. She was good, but not that good. “Why didn’t you go?”
“I thought staying alive more important. So I retreated to the asylum.”
“The man died in an avalanche,” Malone made clear. “He wasn’t murdered.”
“You don’t know that. In fact,” Claridon said, “you don’t know anything.” He glanced around the plaza. “We need to hurry. They are particular about the last tour. Most of the employees are older residents from the city. Many are volunteers. They lock the doors promptly at seven. There’s no security system or alarms within the palace. Nothing of any real value is displayed there any longer, and besides, the walls themselves are its greatest security. We will drift off from the tour and wait till all is quiet.”
They started walking.
Droplets of rain pricked Malone’s scalp. With his back to the woman, who should still be seated a hundred feet away eating, he opened his hand and allowed the mistral to sweep the balled napkin away. He whirled and pretended to go after the stray paper as it danced across the cobblestones. As he retrieved the supposed errant piece of trash, he stole a glance toward the café.
The woman was no longer at her table.
She was strolling their way, toward the palace.
DE ROQUEFORT LOWERED THE BINOCULARS. HE STOOD AT THE Rocher des Doms, the rock of the doms, the most picturesque spot in Avignon. Men had occupied the summit since the neolithic age. In the days of the papal occupation the great rocky outcrop served as a natural buffer for the ever-present mistral. Today the hilltop, which sat directly adjacent to the papal palace, supported a splendid park with lakes, fountains, statuary, and grottoes. The view was breathtaking. He’d come here many times when he worked at the nearby seminary, in his time before the Order.
Hills and valleys stretched to the west and south. The swift Rhône cleaved a path below, sweeping beneath the famous Pont St. Bénézet that once bisected the river and led from the pope’s city to the king’s on the other side. When, in 1226, Avignon sided with the count of Toulouse against Louis VIII during the Albigensian Crusade, the French king razed the bridge. Rebuilding eventually occurred, and de Roquefort imagined the fourteenth century when cardinals rode their mules across to their country palaces in Villeneuve-les-Avignon. By the sixteenth century rains and floods had cut the restored bridge back to four spans, which were never extended to the far side, so the structure still stood uncompleted. Another failure of will for Avignon, he’d always thought. A place that seemed destined to only half succeed.
“They’re headed into the palace,” he said to the brother standing next to him. He checked his watch. Nearly six PM. “Which closes for the day at seven.”
He brought the binoculars back to his eyes and stared down five hundred yards at the plaza. He’d traveled north from the abbey and arrived forty minutes ago. The electronic surveillance on Malone’s car was still functioning and had revealed a trip out to Villeneuve-les-Avignon, then back to Avignon. Apparently, they’d gone to retrieve Claridon.
De Roquefort had climbed the tree-lined walkway from the papal palace and decided to wait here, on the summit, which offered a perfect vantage of the old city. Fortune had smiled upon him when Stephanie Nelle and her two companions emerged from the underground parking garage directly below, then took a seat in a clearly visible outdoor café.
He lowered the binoculars.
The mistral whipped past him. The north wind was howling today, sweeping the quays, swelling the river, pushing storm clouds that scudded the sky ever closer.
“They apparently intend to stay in the palace after closing. Lars Nelle and Claridon once did that, too. Do we still have a key to the door?”
“Our brother here in town keeps it for us.”
“Retrieve it.”
He’d long ago secured a way to enter the palace through the cathedral after hours. The archives inside had held Lars Nelle’s interest, so they’d likewise drawn de Roquefort’s. Twice he�
��d sent brothers to scurry around during the night, trying to ascertain what had attracted Lars Nelle. But the volume of material was intimidating and nothing was ever learned. Perhaps tonight he’d discover more.
He returned his eyes to the lens. Paper slipped from Malone’s grip, and he watched the lawyer chase after it.
Then his three targets vanished beyond view.
9:00 PM
AN EERIE FEELING SWEPT OVER MALONE AS HE STROLLED THROUGH the unadorned rooms. Halfway into the palace tour, they’d slipped away and Claridon had led them to an upper floor. There they’d waited in a tower, behind a closed door, until eight thirty, when most of the interior lights had been doused and no movement could be heard. Claridon seemed to know the procedure, and had been pleased that the staff’s routine remained the same after five years.
The labyrinth of sparse halls, long passages, and barren chambers was now illuminated only by isolated pools of weak light. Malone could only imagine how they were once furnished, the walls sumptuous with colorful frescoes and tapestries, each full of personages gathered to either serve or petition the supreme pontiff. Envoys from the Khan, the emperor of Constantinople, even Petrarch himself and St. Catherine of Siena, the woman who eventually convinced the last Avignon pope to return to Rome, had all come. History was deeply rooted here, yet only remnants remained.
Outside, the storm had finally arrived and rain soaked the roof with violence, while thunder rattled window glass.
“This palace was once as grand as the Vatican,” Claridon whispered. “All gone. Destroyed by ignorance and greed.”
Malone did not agree. “Some would say ignorance and greed were what caused it to be built in the first place.”
“Ah, Mr. Malone, you’re a student of history?”
“I’ve read.”
“Then let me show you something.”
Claridon led them through open portals into more trodden rooms, each identified by placards. They stopped in one cavernous rectangle labeled the Grand Tinel, the chamber topped by a wood-paneled, barrel-vaulted ceiling.
“This was the pope’s banquet hall and could hold hundreds,” Claridon said, his voice echoing. “Clement VI hung blue fabric, studded with gold stars, over the ceiling to create a celestial arch. Frescoes once adorned the walls. All of it was destroyed by fire in 1413.”
“And never replaced?” Stephanie asked.
“The Avignon popes were gone by then, so this palace carried no further significance.” Claridon motioned to the far side. “The pope would eat alone, over there, on a dais seated on a throne, under a canopy decked with crimson velvet and ermine. Guests sat on wooden benches that lined the walls—cardinals to the east, others to the west. Trestle tables formed a U and food was served from the center. All quite stiff and formal.”
“A lot like this palace,” Malone said. “It’s like walking through a destroyed city, the building’s soul bombed away. A world unto itself.”
“Which was the whole idea. The French kings wanted their popes away from everyone. They alone controlled what the pope thought and did, so it wasn’t necessary that their residence be an airy place. Not one of those popes ever visited Rome, since the Italians would have killed them on sight. So the seven men who served here as pope built their own fortress and did not question the French throne. They owed their existence to the king, and delighted in this repose—their Avignon Captivity, as the papacy’s time here came to be called.”
Into the next room the space became more confined. The Parement Chamber was identified as where the pope and cardinals would meet in secret consistories.
“This is also where the Golden Rose was presented,” Claridon said. “A particularly arrogant gesture for the Avignon popes. On the fourth Sunday of Lent, the pope would honor one special person, usually a sovereign, with the presentation of a golden rose.”
“You don’t approve?” Stephanie asked.
“Christ had no need for golden roses. Why should popes? Just more of the sacrilege this entire place reflected. Clement VI bought the whole town from Queen Joanna of Naples. Part of a deal she made to obtain absolution for her complicity in her husband’s murder. For a hundred years criminals, adventurers, counterfeiters, and smugglers all escaped justice here, provided they paid proper homage to the pope.”
Through another chamber they entered what was labeled the Stag Room. Claridon switched on a series of soft incandescent lights. Malone lingered at the doorway long enough to glance back through the previous chamber into the Grand Tinel. A shadow flickered across the wall, enough for him to know they were not alone. He knew who was there. A tall, attractive, athletic woman—of color, as Claridon had said earlier in the car. The woman who’d followed them into the palace.
“—this is where the old and new palaces join,” Claridon was saying. “Old behind us, new through that other portal. This was Clement VI’s study.”
Malone had read in the souvenir book about Clement, a man who enjoyed paintings and poems, pleasing sounds, rare animals, and courtly love. He was quoted as saying, My predecessors didn’t know how to be popes, so he transformed Benedict’s old fortress into a lavish palace. A perfect example of Clement’s material wants now surrounded him as painted images on the windowless walls. Fields, thickets, and streams, all under a blue sky. Men with nets by a green fishpond littered with swimming pike. Brittany spaniels. A young noble and his falcon. A child in a tree. Grasses, birds, bathers. Greens and brown predominated, but an orange dress, a blue fish, and fruit in the trees added dashes of sharp color.
“Clement had these frescoes painted in 1344. They were found beneath the whitewash the soldiers applied when the palace became a barracks in the nineteenth century. This room explains the Avignon popes, especially Clement VI. Some actually called him Clement the Magnificent. He possessed no calling for religious life. Satisfaction of penances, reversal of excommunications, remission of sins, even curtailment of years in purgatory for both the dead and living—all was for sale. You notice anything missing?”
Malone stared again at the frescoes. The hunting scenes were clearly escapism—people doing fun things—with a view that soared and dipped, but nothing particular called out to him.
Then it hit him.
“Where’s God?”
“Good eye, monsieur.” Claridon’s arms swept out. “Not anywhere in this home of Clement VI is there a religious symbol. The omission speaks loudly. This was the bedroom of a king, not a pope, and that was how the Avignon prelates thought of themselves. These were the men who destroyed the Templars. Starting in 1307 with Clement V, who was Philip the Fair’s co-conspirator, and ending with Gregory XI in 1378, these corrupt individuals crushed that Order. Lars always believed, and I agree, that this room proves what those men really valued.”
“Do you think the Templars survived?” Stephanie asked.
“Oui. They’re out there. I’ve seen them. What exactly they are, I do not know. But they’re out there.”
Malone could not decide if the declaration was fact or just the supposition of a man who saw conspiracies where none existed. All he knew was that a woman was stalking them who was expert enough to plant a slug above his head into a tree trunk, from fifty yards, at night, in a forty-mile-per-hour wind. She might even have been the one who saved his hide in Copenhagen. And she was real.
“Let’s get on with it,” Malone said.
Claridon switched off the light. “Follow me.”
They walked across the old palace to the north wing and the convention center. A placard noted that the facility was recently created by the city as a way to raise revenue for further restoration. The former Conclave Hall, Treasurer’s Chamber, and Great Cellar had been equipped with bleacher seats, a stage, and audiovisual equipment. Down more passageways they passed stone effigies of more Avignon popes.
Claridon eventually stopped at a stout wooden door and tested the latch, which opened. “Good. They still do not lock it at night.”
“Why not?” Malone as
ked.
“There’s nothing of any value here besides information, and few thieves are interested in that.”
They stepped into a pitch-dark space.
“This was once the chapel of Benedict XII, the pope who conceived and built most of the old palace. In the late nineteenth century, this and the room above were converted into the district’s archives. The palace keeps its records here, too.”
The light spilling in from the hall revealed a towering room filled with shelving, row after row. More lined the outer walls, one section stacked on top of the other, a railed walkway encircling. Behind the shelves rose arched windows, the black panes peppered by a steady rain.
“Four kilometers of shelving,” Claridon said. “A gracious plenty of information.”
“But you know where to look?” Malone asked.
“I hope so.”
Claridon plunged ahead down the center aisle. Malone and Stephanie waited until a lamp came on fifty feet inside.
“Over here,” Claridon called out.
Malone closed the hall door and wondered how the woman was going to gain her entrance unnoticed. He led the way toward the light and they found Claridon standing next to a reading table.
“Lucky for history,” Claridon said, “all the palace’s artifacts were inventoried early in the eighteenth century. Then, in the late nineteenth century, photographs and drawings were made of what survived the Revolution. Lars and I both became familiar with how the information was organized.”
“And you didn’t come look after Mark died because you thought the Knights Templar would kill you?” Malone asked.
“I realize, monsieur, you don’t believe much of this. But I assure you I did the right thing. These records have rested here for centuries, so I thought they could rest quietly awhile longer. Staying alive seemed more important.”
