The Last Scion

by Richard Reed

  “I agree; normally they would all have haloes. But that doesn’t really tell us much that we haven’t already guessed – that Saunière placed Mary above all the other disciples.” She frowned, tilting her head as she studied the window intently. “Hang on a minute. Don’t you think she’s sitting in a slightly awkward position? I mean, if she were washing his feet…” she glared at David as he sniggered… “she would be sitting with her back to us, the viewer, surely – not sideways on?”

  “Artistic licence – he wanted to show her face.”

  “Possibly. But from here it looks as if she’s almost under the table!”

  David peered at the screen.

  “Oh my God!” said Rachel, clutching her mouth in disbelief. “It’s the altar – the table is a representation of the altar! Saunière is trying to tell us that Mary’s body is actually here in the church, under the altar!”

  Chapter 9

  Rachel and David stared at each other in disbelief. “Maybe that’s why Cholet didn’t find the entrance when he dug up the floor in front of the altar,” said David. “Saunière moved the altar forwards to cover the entrance and stop anyone else from going down there! It’s obvious, with hindsight – we know he demolished the old altar; that’s when one of the parchments was allegedly found. When he had the new one built it gave him the perfect opportunity to cover his tracks.”

  “And he created a new entrance in his Secret Room so that he could still go down into the crypt himself. That’s got to be the way in, David. We’ve got to find it!”

  David looked at her quizzically. “You know we haven’t got permission to dig in here…”

  “I wasn’t planning to ask permission.”

  “You can’t be serious, Rachel! We could get into all kinds of trouble. And how do you propose to carry out a dig, without anyone noticing, in just 24 hours?”

  “At night.”

  “And how to you propose to get into the church at night?”

  “Hide in the Secret Room late in the afternoon, while it’s quiet.”

  “We’ve got to get into the sacristy first, and that’s usually kept locked.”

  “Perhaps we could just ask to have another look round?” said Rachel brightly. “They gave us an official tour when we first arrived, but that was a few months ago. We’ll just say we need to check something. We know the museum staff pretty well now; I’m sure they won’t mind.”

  “Yes, but they are going to want to lock up afterwards!”

  “We’ll just ask to borrow the key, and say we’ll bring it back when we’ve finished. They won’t have any reason to be suspicious. Trust me, I can be very disarming when I want to be.”

  “Yes, I’ve noticed that particular quality. Usually when you want something…” He jumped aside to dodge the punch.

  “OK, I know there’s a risk of failure. But what have we got to lose? You can bet your bottom dollar than when the Monsignor turns up on Wednesday to witness the break-through, he’s going to insist on going in there first – alone. And if Mary’s tomb is down there, or some other significant artefact, we’re not going to get a look in. The Vatican will stall us for months, and in the meantime remove anything incriminating – anything that might suggest she was pregnant. It would bring the whole Catholic Church crashing down; not just on theological grounds, either. The whole male-only hierarchy would be completely undermined. There would be a huge vested interest in keeping it all under wraps.”

  “I don’t disagree with you on that one. Well, I guess it’s worth a go – you’re the one calling the shots on this project. It’s going to be like something out of Tomb Raider!” he said, with a boyish grin that set her pulse racing. “So now we know what we have to do. Let’s go and get something to eat.”

  The next day seemed to drag. They didn’t want to ask Hélène, the museum curator, about seeing the sacristy until late afternoon, as they didn’t want to risk her going back into the church to check the door had been locked.

  By 4pm Rachel could wait no longer. “I’m going to go and ask her,” she announced, as they sat in the Finds Room staring at their empty coffee mugs. “Stay here – you might give the game away. Subtlety isn’t your strong point.”

  She strolled into the museum and found Hélène sorting through some newly arrived boxes of books for the gift shop. “Bonjour!” she announced.

  “Bonjour,” replied Hélène, looking up with an armful of books. “Ça va?”

  “Très bien, merci – et toi?”

  “A little busy, as you see. I have to put all these out – we have two coaches of tourists from Japan who arrive tomorrow.”

  “I guess you’ve got your hands full, then,” said Rachel, struggling to disguise her good fortune. “I wonder, would it be possible to borrow the key to the sacristy? We wanted to check some measurements…”

  “Mais bien sûr,” replied Hélène without hesitation, picking up a box of brochures. “It is the second to last key on the right, over there” – she gestured with her head at a key rack behind the counter.

  “Ah – merci beaucoup!” said Rachel, plucking it off the rack.

  “You will return it before I go, yes? Or I will get into trouble.”

  “Of course!” said Rachel over her shoulder, as she disappeared out of the door. “I promise!”

  David, who had been listening in to the conversation through the open door, followed her into the courtyard that lay between the villa and the church. Rachel gave him a triumphant smile and waved the key in his face. “See?”

  “I never doubted you for a moment,” said David. “You usually get your own way.” He darted out of reach of her punch. “You really should consider taking up boxing.”

  Rachel gave him the sort of glare a teacher reserves for a misbehaving child, then marched on ahead of him into the church. She went down the aisle until she reached the door to the sacristy, just in front of the choir on the right-hand side. “Here we go,” said, putting the key in the lock. It failed to turn. “Damn,” she exclaimed in exasperation, still struggling to turn it.

  “Here, let me,” said David. “You’ll break the key if you’re not careful, and then we really will be in trouble.” He stepped over to the door, and after jiggling the key backwards and forwards to no avail, stopped with a frown on his face. Rachel was about to make a sarcastic remark, but David returned to the door, this time lifting it bodily by the handle before trying to turn the key. The lock moved with a satisfying clunk and the door opened smoothly onto the dark, dusty chamber beyond. “The door had dropped on its hinges,” said David casually, by way of explanation. “It takes a man’s touch.”

  Unusually, Rachel did not respond to his jibe – she was far too interested in the room that lay beyond.

  They had seen it briefly when they first arrived at Rennes to carry out the dig. Areas of the church that were normally out of bounds had been shown to them as a special courtesy – with the exception of the Secret Room beyond the sacristy. When they had asked about it, the curator had given a typical Gallic shrug and said it was “not possible”. New on the site, they had not wanted to argue with her.

  The sacristy itself offered little of interest. Bare, apart from a plain wooden stand on which stood an ornate, multi-coloured Victorian pitcher and bowl for the curé to wash his hands, it gave up no clues. Taking up the entire width of the far wall stood a large wardrobe where Saunière would have kept his vestments for changing into before taking a service.

  They walked into the room, slightly in awe. “According to some of the books I’ve read, the entrance to the Secret Room is through a hidden doorway in that wardrobe,” whispered Rachel.

  “Why are we whispering?” asked David, in a low voice.

  “I don’t know,” said Rachel, trying to force herself to talk normally. “This place has that kind of effect on you.”

  “Let’s shut the door. We might as well have a look for the entrance while we’re here – it will save time later.”

  They opened up t
he two pairs of doors and stared at the back of the empty wardrobe. There were no obvious signs of a hidden doorway. “This is going to be tricky,” said David.

  “No-one said it was going to be easy,” said Rachel. She climbed in and started tapping on the panels at the back.

  “Someone will hear you,” said David.

  Rachel ignored him and continued with her tapping. After a few minutes, she crossed to the far side of the cupboard. As she worked her way down, the sound changed from a dull, flat tap to a deeper, hollow echo. “Got it!” she exclaimed.

  “We’re not in there yet,” said David drily.

  “Give me a chance,” she hissed, glaring round at him. She started pressing on the back panel, upwards, sideways, downwards, and all the way round the edges, but to no avail.

  David waited to be asked this time, which, eventually, Rachel did by way of stepping down, putting her hands on her hips and raising her eyebrows questioningly at him. Her look dared him to make a riposte, and he thought better of it.

  Stepping into the wardrobe, he scanned around the edges of the hollow panel. A piece of raised beading ran around the edge of the cupboard-back – part of the joinery, he surmised. But on closer inspection of the mitred corners, he noticed a small infill about an inch long. It was hard to spot, as everything had been covered with several layers of varnish, but on close inspection, the grain was noticeably different. He pushed on the small section of beading and it slid smoothly up out of sight with a satisfying click. As it did so, the back-panel swung open to reveal a small doorway to the Secret Room beyond.

  Chapter 10

  Languedoc, south-west France, November 1232

  Corba de Péreille shuddered. The cold mountain breeze bit into her olive skin and chilled her to the bone. She stared down at the deeply wooded valley below, the jagged limestone outcrops jutting through the forest canopy. At another time she would have been captivated by the rugged beauty of her surroundings. But now the bleak landscape represented her only hope for safety, and with winter fast approaching, it was not a prospect she relished.

  It had been hard since the crusade started; hard on them all. Still she could not comprehend that a ‘Christian’ Pope would declare war on his own people – yet he had, and the powerful barons from the north had not been slow to heed his call. There were rich pickings in the Languedoc, that was for sure. Or there had been.

  For ten years the invading armies, under papal authority, had pillaged their land, laying waste to whole towns and villages in their frenzied zeal to eradicated the Cathar ‘heresy’.

  Ten years of brutal, savage attacks by armed soldiers on defenceless men, women and children, masterminded by that evil zealot Simon de Montfort. Ten years of torture and mutilation; ten years of misery.

  The outrages were indelibly seared upon her mind. Béziers had been the first, one of the foremost towns of the Languedoc, famed for its tolerance, independence and learning. Their Catholic brothers and sisters had refused to give them up and fought alongside them against the armies of the Pope.

  She closed her eyes and shuddered. The scenes were still vivid in her mind; those and many others. And it was her fault. They were fighting to protect her; her and her mother. Had they not been there – if she had not been sent there to finish her schooling; had her mother not chosen to accompany her to bring enlightenment to the people… They should have left as soon as Pope Innocent – hah! there was an irony if ever there was one – had declared his vile war.

  She could not believe that such atrocities could be committed in Christ’s name… She choked back her tears. Was it possible that such a noble message from such a man could be so twisted and distorted that people would murder in his name? Pope ‘Innocent’, the supposed vicar of Christ, had the blood of tens of thousands on his hands.

  The townspeople had rallied to protect them; the outcome had been inevitable. And so, on St Mary Magdalene’s feast day, of all days, while she had been smuggled out, Cathars and Catholics alike had mounted that fateful sortie to distract De Montfort’s men. Driven back inside the walls by the heavily armed crusaders, they were put to the sword without mercy – even those who took refuge in the churches. Thousands had sought sanctuary in the cathedral, and the church de la Madeleine – among them her mother, who had refused to leave the people to face their persecutors alone. But the cathedral was set ablaze, and all those sheltering in the church were brutally butchered.

  According to the pitiful handful of those who managed to flee the doomed town, when Arnaud-Amaury, the papal legate commanding the crusade, was asked how soldiers could distinguish Catholic from Cathar, he replied: “Kill them all, God will know his own”. Twenty thousand people had died that day.

  Outrage had been followed by outrage; scarcely had there been rumours of one act of unspeakable cruelty than another, even more heinous, had occurred. Like the sacking of Bram. De Montfort – who had been appointed captain-general of the crusade after the fall of Carcassonne – rounded up the survivors, gouged out their eyes, cut off their ears, their noses and their lips, and sent them on to the next village as a vile warning.

  It was hard to comprehend such savagery. And for what? This ‘heresy’ they railed against… Did it deny the Christ? Did it deny his teachings? No! But the Pope did not have a monopoly on the truth. Peter had been a coward. He had denied Christ. He had loathed Mary, hated her sex. He was a simple fisherman; he did not begin to comprehend the true meaning of the Lord’s message. And here was Peter’s supposed ecclesiastical descendant insisting that his was the only truth. If he but knew…

  Corba shivered again as the increasingly bitter wind found its way through the folds of her cloak. She could not shake the memories of that vicious campaign, however hard she tried. The evil De Montfort might be dead – how her heart had leapt at the news – and his son, Amaury, finally defeated by the southern lords, but the armistice that followed had proven but a lull in the storm. The few, brief years of peace and happiness she had spent with her husband and children had offered false hope. King Louis of France would not be deterred from seizing control of the Languedoc, and hell had been visited upon them once more.

  As if that were not enough, the papal Inquisition had started its evil work, systematically trying to root out and destroy the Cathar faith through fear and persecution, its interrogators spreading terror throughout the land.

  Now the Cathar faithful were fleeing their towns and villages, seeking safety in the hilltop strongholds still held by Cathar nobles. It was a double-edged sword, however – the dramatic fortresses perched high on their craggy hill-top sites might seem unassailable, but the Church knew exactly where the refugees were sequestered.

  “Corba”. She sprang to her feet, startled. “It’s time we were moving on, my lady.”

  “Must we keep up this punishing pace, Benoît? I am tired and cold, and Philippa is so young. Cannot the Lord’s work wait a little?”

  “You can answer that question, better than I, my lady. But this world must be endured, and you must be protected at all cost.”

  “I have seen that cost, Benoît. Sometimes I wonder…”

  “This world is but a sham, my lady. It matters not what we suffer here. The truth – the real truth – must survive; and the word must be spread by any means, even if it is left to troubadours to tell the tale. But for now, our need is more urgent. We must flee further into the hills; once we reach the château at Puylaurent we shall be safe, for the winter at least. In the spring we can journey on to Montségur and rejoin your husband.”

  “We were safe at Peyrepertuse,” countered Corba.

  “Perhaps for a time, but Guillaume de Peyrepertuse cannot defy King Louis forever. And now that even Count Raymond of Toulouse has proclaimed an edict against the Cathar faith, we must seek safety in numbers.”

  Corba wandered over to where her seven-year-old daughter Philippa lay sleeping under a pile of rugs. Her face was a study of innocence, framed in a cascade of dark curls. Corba’s heart n
early broke; it seemed so cruel to force her to endure yet more hardship. Yet she must if they were to survive the year.

  “Wake, ma petite,” whispered Corba. “Come, we must be on our way.”

  Philippa opened her deep brown eyes and smiled back at her mother as she stirred. “Don’t worry, Maman. Everything will be all right. You’ll see.” She scrambled to her feet, rubbing her eyes sleepily. “May I ride with you, Father Benoît?”

  Benoît de Termes’ worried, craggy face broke into a smile. What a blessing this child was! Sexual union was decried by his faith – the only Christian church to believe in reincarnation – as an evil act that chained a soul to another tortured existence on Earth. It was expressly forbidden among the parfaits, the lay preachers who lived and worked alongside their parishioners. Then Corba had arrived with her infant daughter at Quéribus, fleeing the Inquisition, en route to the safety of the formidable fortress at Peyrepertuse. Drawn to his gentle wisdom and understanding, the two had become close: Corba had found a man in whom she could confide her deepest secret, while for Benoît, she was the daughter he had never been able to have. And here was Corba’s beautiful daughter, standing before him. Despite his faith, it was hard to see how anything about her could be remotely evil.

  “Father Benoît?” Her voice broke into his thoughts.

  “Of course you may, Pippa. Of course you may.”

  The journey to Puylaurent took another two days. They avoided the main route through the Maury valley, and instead cut across country through increasingly rugged and inhospitable terrain, riding their horses through steep ravines alongside rivers swollen with heavy autumn rainfall.

  Winter was fast approaching, and at times during the day the temperature in the foothills of the Pyrénées barely rose above freezing. They made camp where they could, halting for just an hour to eat at noon, and spending the night wherever they could find shelter; once at a remote farm belonging to a bon homme, a respected member of the Cathar faithful; and once in a shepherd’s deserted shelter. As the wife of Raymond de Péreille, commander of Montségur – now declared the official seat of the Cathar church – Corba was very much on King Louis’s wanted list. Benoît, the Cathar Bishop of Razes, was sought by the Inquisition, so to avoid detection, they travelled as husband and wife.