by Richard Reed
“It’s more relaxing back at the hotel. I can get some peace and quiet, and I’ll be out of your hair.”
David shrugged and stood up. “OK. I’ll get back to work.” He turned to Dubois. “Is there a way we can reach you? You’ve told us about this woman Anne-Marie, but unless you can give some information on how to find her, it’s not going to get us very far.”
The Frenchman looked uncomfortable. “I have more papers at home – as I say, I have been researching Rennes-le-Château for many years. I will show you tomorrow. Perhaps we will find something to help us in our quest.”
“Quest is about the right word,” said David tautly. “It’s just like some bloody pointless medieval knight’s quest to find the Holy Grail.”
“Except in this case, David, maybe we really will find the Holy Grail,” said Rachel sharply. He said nothing, but his expression spoke volumes. “Right, I’m off. I’ll see you tomorrow morning then?” she said to Dubois. “And David, try to lighten up. It would be nice to have your input when you’ve finished here, but I’ve no desire to spend the evening with you if you’re going to be so uptight.” Turning on her heel, she marched back to the office to collect her things.
Rachel was driving out of Rennes when she passed the village bookshop, and screeched to a halt. She had driven past the shop – a rival to the museum bookshop – every day she had been on site, but after a brief visit when she first arrived, she had never felt inclined to return. Today, for some reason, she felt compelled to stop and have another look.
Browsing the shelves of books devoted to the mysteries of Rennes and its enigmatic priest – of which there were several hundred in various languages – she eventually came to the English section. There was everything from the Da Vinci Code to in-depth academic treatises on the Rennes phenomenon. The problem, as with anything to do with the village, whether it be books or the myriad of websites devoted to the topic, was sorting the wheat from the chaff. There was so much wild, uninformed, speculation – not to mention downright fabrication by people trying to cash in on the Saunière legend – that it was hard to know where to start. She picked up a few books at random and flicked through the pages, discarding them one by one, until eventually she came to one by a French author, Jean-Luc Robin, entitled Rennes-le-Château: Saunière’s secret. Robin, it seemed, had owned the Villa Bethania at one time, and, looking through the chapters, seemed to take a more rational stance than most writers on the subject. Impulsively, she decided to buy it.
Back at the hotel, Rachel made herself a cup of strong tea from the stash of teabags she had brought over from England and settled down to read. It was a fascinating account not just of Robin’s own dealings with Rennes, but the whole history of the Saunière affair. As a journalist, she found it intensely satisfying to at last find a writer who didn’t simply repeat rumour as fact, like so many other authors on the topic, but looked carefully at all theories before presenting reasoned conclusions. He made it clear when he was dealing with hearsay, and made a distinction between fact and rumour.
Half-way through the book, she came on a chapter describing Saunière’s frequent country walks with Marie Dénarnaud. Robin described how the trips started shortly after the episode in which Saunière dug up half the churchyard looking for something – much to the anger of villagers. Forced to halt his excavations, Saunière would instead set off into the countryside each morning, returning at dusk laden with a basket of rocks, which he used to create the grotto at the front of the churchyard.
Rachel had always assumed the grotto was meant to commemorate Jesus’s birth, but it appeared that officially it was a re-creation of the grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, not far away in the Hautes Pyrénées. The alleged miraculous sighting of the Virgin Mary by 14-year-old peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous had occurred in 1858, just 30 years before Saunière’s induction as village priest, and such replicas were not uncommon in the Languedoc.
However, it seemed the stones brought back by Saunière and Marie came from a local cave known as La Grotte du Fournet a mile or so distant. It begged the question as to why they should carry heavy rocks over such a distance simply to create a replica of the Lourdes grotto. Moreover, why did Saunière originally place a bronze statue of Mary Magdalene in the grotto, when Bernadette claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary? To add to the confusion, the statue was later stolen, to be replaced in 2003 with a politically correct statue of the Madonna.
What she read next, however, literally made her jaw drop in astonishment.
Chapter 24
It was some hours later that David returned to the hotel tired and weary after a day spent cataloguing the team’s many finds from the trench. Though not materially important to their overarching mission, the finds had to be recorded as part of their archaeological licence. He was also recording – in a secret file on his laptop – everything he could remember of his trip into the crypt, and thence the undercroft, as well as analysing the scores of photographs he had taken in the process.
“How’s it going?” asked Rachel, barely able to contain her excitement.
“Tediously, for the most part,” said David.
“You’ve just made the find of a lifetime and you find it tedious?”
“Oh come on, Rachel, give me a break, I’m tired. Why don’t you just tell me what you’ve been up to this afternoon?”
“Because you’ll probably just dismiss it as some wild fantasy,” she said.
“That pretty much seems to sum up everything about this place.”
“Yes, but despite that, you know there is something going on here – even you admit that’s probably Mary’s tomb. Doesn’t archaeology teach you that you have to sift through a lot of crap to find the hidden treasure?”
“Don’t patronise me.”
“Sorry. Look, just give me a break and accept the possibility that somewhere hidden among all these seemingly bizarre and random clues, the truth is waiting to be found. Anyway, I think I’ve hit on something. I stopped in that bookshop in the village and found a useful guide to what’s actually been going on up there.”
“Really.”
Rachel ignored his sarcasm. “I think you would like the guy’s style – he focuses only on the facts, and dismisses many of the ideas that have been floating around as pure conjecture – fantasy, even.”
“Sounds like a breath of fresh air.”
“Exactly. Anyway, he explains those walks in the countryside that Dubois referred to. Apparently, Saunière would regularly disappear in the morning with Marie and come back in the evening carrying a basket full of heavy rocks. He used them to build that artificial grotto at the front of the churchyard, which, incidentally, he told villagers was a replica of the grotto at Lourdes where a peasant girl allegedly had a vision of the Virgin Mary.”
“And?”
“Rumour has it these rocks came from a real grotto a mile or so away…”
“I thought you said this guy didn’t deal in rumours.”
“He mentions them, but makes it clear they are just rumours. Anyway, hear me out. Why would the two of them be disappearing all day, day after day, and bringing back a pile of rocks?”
“I can think of one obvious reason – they were supposed to have a suspiciously close relationship. It would have been a good opportunity to get up to something without anyone finding out.”
“David! Every day? For weeks on end?”
“He was a vigorous man, from all accounts,” said David drily. “The villagers even referred to her as the ‘priest’s skirt’.”
“Sorry, I don’t buy it. OK, maybe they did have an intimate relationship – I don’t deny that’s a possibility; a strong possibility, even. But these daily trips into the countryside? And why bring back rocks from such a long distance? You’ve seen the grotto, some of them are pretty big.”
“If it’s true.”
“The author of this book, Jean-Luc Robin, says that Saunière himself referred to the place. Perhaps this will convince you: it’s
known locally as La Grotte du Fournet – dit de la Madeleine.”
David raised his eyebrows. “OK, you’ve got my attention. If what you say is true, and Saunière was bringing back rocks from this place, clearly he must have had a motive. Having said that, I’m not sure it throws any more light on what we found in the crypt. Maybe it genuinely was a replica of the grotto of Lourdes.”
“David, sometimes you’re so keen to debunk things that your explanations are more tortuous and far-fetched than the truth that’s staring you in the face. You know Saunière was somewhat economical with the truth. He told those workmen that the gold pieces he found in the church were medallions from Lourdes. Simple folk would believe anything a priest told them in those days.
“Think about that scroll we found. ‘When the time is come, you must seek out she who waits, at the grotto where Our Lady was laid to rest.’ It could be referring to this place!”
David sighed. Rachel could be so frustrating. “It’s a bit of a long shot. And if there ever were any artefacts hidden there, they would have long since disappeared – you can bet your bottom dollar the cave has been turned over by treasure hunters, like everything else in this God-forsaken place.”
“But there is a connection – so let’s go and have a look. What have we got to lose?”
“Where exactly is this place?”
“Ah – now you’ve got me. Nothing I’ve found seems to explain exactly how to find it. I’ve trawled the internet, and all I can find is a reference to it being above the Couleurs stream.”
“Let’s get the map and have a look.” David grabbed his car keys and returned a few minutes later holding a large-scale map of the area. “Pity these aren’t as detailed as the Ordnance Survey maps back home, but it’s the best we’ve got,” he said, opening it out on the table. “OK, here’s Rennes-le-Château…” he said, poring over the map, “and here… Damn, where is it? Ah, typical – the other side of the fold! Here is the Couleurs, directly south of the village. Looks like the stream runs through some kind of gorge – there’s a cliff shown here. Being limestone, however, there are probably scores of caves along there – trying to find the right one could be a nightmare.”
Rachel studied the map intently over his shoulder. “David,” she said thoughtfully, at length.
“Yes?”
“Where is La Tour Magdala on here?”
David peered closely at the map. “Well, there is Rennes-le-Château… And that, if I’m not mistaken, is La Tour – at the western end of the village; that tiny circle. Look, you can see the ramparts of the Belvedere stretching around to the right of it.”
“So it overlooks the gorge, then?”
David looked at her, stunned. “My God, you’re absolutely right. Maybe Saunière did build the tower there, to overlook the La Grotte du Fournet. Maybe the cave’s Magdalene connection isn’t just folklore; maybe he found something significant – something so significant he built the tower so he could watch over it.”
“I noticed when we were up there earlier today that there was a gorge in the distance. I obviously didn’t realise the significance then. As Dubois said, maybe the tower does hold a clue – and not just the number 22. Perhaps it will help us pinpoint the location of the cave. We need to go and have another look tomorrow morning.”
“Preferably before Dubois gets there,” said David. “I don’t altogether trust that guy.”
“I think you’re being a bit harsh, though I do think he’s holding out on us about something. I guess he’s not going to lay all his cards out on the table at once, any more than we are. But let’s go and have a look before he arrives.”
The next morning they got up early, and after a swift coffee and croissant, headed back to Rennes-le-Château. They were waiting impatiently when Hélène, the museum curator, arrived, and Rachel asked her to unlock La Tour for them straight away, before the tourists started flooding through.
“Why such hurry?” asked Hélène in her halting English, as she fetched the keys.
“We’re working on a theory – there’s something we need to check,” said Rachel casually.
“Mon dieu – another theory!” said Hélène, laughing. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”
“Just a hunch. I’ll let you know if it pays off.”
“D’accord! Let’s open up, then.”
They followed Hélène over to La Tour. “Happy hunting,” she said, and returned to the museum ticket office, where her first customers were already queuing up.
“Let’s crack on before the tourists get here,” said David. “Now, let’s do this scientifically. First of all, the floor. We know there’s a pattern here. Let’s have a close look and see if there’s anything we’ve missed – anything the slightest bit out of the ordinary.”
They walked slowly up and down the floor, examining every tile closely, but the same pattern appeared to be repeated over and over again, without variation.
“This is hopeless,” said Rachel at length. “I’m going to go up to that window in the staircase and see if we can get any more of a clue. We know it overlooks the gorge – perhaps there’s a mark in the stonework or something.”
“OK, I’ll keep looking down here.”
“We’ve exhausted the study…”
“I haven’t.”
Rachel ignored him and started up the staircase. She had barely gone up half a dozen steps when David gave a yell of excitement. “Hey, Rachel, I think I’ve got something.”
She hurried back down the stairs. “Stop!” yelled David. “Look, right at your feet!”
“What?” said Rachel in exasperation.
“That last complete square of tiles – look at the tile in the top right-hand corner, in front of the stairs. Do you notice anything odd about it?”
“No…”
“OK, look at the centre of the square of tiles. Do you see that red quadrant? All the others are black!”
Rachel looked around the floor. At the centre of each gold cross created by the square of four tiles was a black circle – except in the tile nearest the spiral staircase, where one quarter of the circle, the quadrant nearest the stairs, was blood red.
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed. “You’re right, goddamn it!”
“You see? The victory of science over speculation,” said David smirking.
“All right, smart arse. I’ll give you that one. It’s obviously pointing up the stairs, so let’s get on with it.” She skipped up the staircase with David in hot pursuit, then stopped in front of the window at the half-way point and looked out across the valley below. “There’s the gorge!” she said excitedly.
“I can see what looks like several caves even from this distance,” said David. “And it looks pretty steep, too. We could spend days wandering around there looking for the right one. Are there any markings in the stonework – the sill, perhaps – that might give us a clue?”
They examined the stone surrounds in the minutest detail. “Nothing that I can see,” said Rachel reluctantly, after a few minutes. “But if that red marker means anything, the answer must be up here somewhere. Let’s carry on up to the roof and have a look from there.”
They continued up the staircase until the reached the roof platform where they had admired the view with Dubois the day before. They walked slowly around the platform, examining every nook and cranny, but nothing obvious came to light.
“Same stunning view, same gorge, but nothing to pinpoint the location,” said David frustratedly. “That red quadrant must mean something; I just don’t get it.”
“Let’s go and have a cup of coffee and mull it over. Dubois will be here soon – perhaps he will know.”
David snorted. “I’ve told you – I don’t trust that guy. I don’t think we’ll get anything out of him that he doesn’t want to tell us.”
“Why shouldn’t he want us to know the location of La Grotte du Fournet?”
“I don’t know. But if he’s been studying this place for years, why didn’t he know about
that red marker? More likely he does know about it but decided not to tell us. He’s not being open about everything. I’m going to have it out with him when he gets here.”
“David, for God’s sake don’t blow this. He’s our only lead – we need him more than he needs us at the moment.” She turned to go back down the staircase, then stopped, frozen in her tracks. “David!” she said in a strangled voice. “I’ve found it!”
In her clear line of sight was the railing at the top of the spiral staircase. It ended with a theatrical flourish; an architectural detail that looked like an apple, though that in itself was not unusual for art nouveau design. But this particular ‘apple’ lined up perfectly with an arrow-slit window and allowed the eye to fall on the gorge – a specific point in the gorge.
“Look,” she said, pointing. “The top of the newel-post on the end of the railings. Follow the line through the window, across to the gorge.”
“My God,” he said. “You’re a genius.” Even from here, he could see the dark shape of what appeared to be a cave.
Chapter 25
Rachel and David quickly took some photos to try to get the orientation of the cave, before hurrying back to the museum. “I’m going to ask for directions,” said David over his shoulder.
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” said Rachel. “Word will get round the village…”
David ignored her and went straight to the admission desk. “Hélène!” greeted David. “Tell me, do you know where the Grotte du Fournet is?”
Rachel glared at him.
“La Grotte? Oui, I know it.”
“Is it possible to arrange for us to go there? Perhaps someone could accompany us – I would be happy to pay for his time.”
Hélène hesitated. “Perhaps, m’sieur. I will have to ask someone.”
“The mayor?”
“Non – someone else.”
“When will you see him?”
“Is it urgent?”
“Fairly.”
