The Last Scion

by Richard Reed

  “It’s in better condition than the scroll we found in Mary’s tomb. It looks like an early medieval copy of a much older document. It’s written in vulgate Latin, so translation shouldn’t be difficult, and it’s on very early paper – but we still need to stabilise it. However, because it’s in book form, rather than a scroll, it’s less fragile. I would say two to three weeks.”

  “It’s disappointing it is only medieval,” said Marianne.

  “I agree, but given the turbulent times when it disappeared, it’s hardly surprising if copies were made. I’ve seen the first couple of pages, and the wording is quite archaic – the source document was almost certainly from a much earlier period. Still, we’ll let the manuscript experts decide on that one.”

  He paused, drumming his fingers on the table. “Well, we’re not accomplishing much sitting here. I agree with the Count, let’s wait until we hear something – we’ve no idea where to start looking for her anyway. If they want to make an exchange, they will be in touch soon enough. Then we can decide on a course of action. Though I do agree, Marianne shouldn’t come with us.”

  She glared at him, and he looked away, shame-faced. It was bad enough that he had left Rachel to her fate; he couldn’t countenance endangering Marianne’s life, too, whatever he may have told Dubois.

  * * * *

  It was another 48 hours before they heard about Rachel; 48 hours of nervous strain that left everyone tense and irritable. The mood wasn’t helped by the onset of torrential rain that fell in seemingly limitless quantities, with no sign of a let-up.

  Finally Hélène’s network of contacts in Rennes-le-Château relayed a message to the effect that Rachel was still alive, having suffered only a flesh wound, though nothing more was known. The news lifted a huge burden from David’s mind, but her ultimate fate, and that of Marianne, still weighed heavily on him.

  Then came instructions from the sect, delivered to the château by post and addressed to the Count. It was a shock to them all that the approach was so brazen.

  “They know about you, then, Gilles,” remarked Marianne, as they convened once more in his study to discuss the news. “Perhaps you have a traitor in the organisation, after all.”

  “It’s possible,” he admitted, “though given the clandestine nature of our organisation, I still think it more probable the Church is behind this. After all, the sect has only just become involved, yet we know both David and Rachel have been targeted before. Those cranks are just being used as a convenient tool.”

  “The fact remains this ‘safe house’ has been compromised,” said David. “We can’t stay here now – but first we have to extract Rachel. What are their demands?”

  “We are to meet them tomorrow night in the undercroft. They will let Rachel go unharmed, in return for Marianne. Who, of course, they won’t get.”

  Marianne glared at him, but said nothing.

  “That goddamn place again!” snorted David. “How many men can you put together?”

  “Half a dozen, maybe,” replied the Count.

  “Is that all?”

  “We are not an army. The Rosicrucians aim to help people on the path to spiritual development. Our involvement with the Madeleine is a part of the process, to preserve a vital truth that will bring new meaning to mankind. Over the years that has evolved into a protective role, but our resources are finite.”

  “OK. So we go in there with maybe a couple of guys, with the rest holding back for some kind of surprise attack. But what then? What’s to stop them putting a bullet in Rachel’s brain as soon as they see we don’t have the Madeleine with us?” David stared gloomily out of the window at the grey, wind-swept skies as the rain lashed the windows. It seemed even the weather was conspiring against them.

  “There’s no way around this,” said Marianne, after a pause. “I’m going, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me, Gilles. You can put me in a bullet-proof vest, or take any other precautions you like, but if I’m not there, Rachel will die, and I’m not prepared to have that on my conscience. It’s one thing being prepared to risk your life to save something precious, as we have all done. But deliberately sacrificing someone else to save my life… I can’t allow that. It’s not what Christ stood for.”

  “And I simply can’t allow you, my dear, to put yourself in harm’s way…”

  Marianne pulled herself up to her full height and defiantly tossed back her mane of raven black hair. “I am the Madeleine, descended from the Christ!” she said, her eyes blazing. “You will not order me what to do! The hour has come. Events are moving quickly, and I must play my part, whatever that may be. We have the gospel. I must take my chances for my own safety. We are nothing if we are not prepared to risk our lives to help our fellow men and women. To abandon Rachel would be to betray the very cause my ancestors fought so hard to protect.”

  The Count looked at her steadily for a moment, then nodded his head. “So be it, my lady. I have always known this moment would come. I will make the necessary arrangements.” He turned to walk out of the room, before pausing. “But you are right; you will wear a flak jacket,” he said, with a wry expression.

  She smiled and nodded her head. “Thank you, Gilles. I’m sorry I lost my temper; you know you have always been like a father to me. But it is time.”

  Chapter 47

  Rachel woke with a sick ache in her head and vicious throbbing in her thigh. She tried to sit up, but the room swam before her eyes and she slumped back on the bed, willing the vertiginous spinning to stop.

  Where the hell was she? She cudgelled her brains, trying desperately to remember what had happened. She had been in the Visigoth chamber with David; they had found the gospel, and then… Then the terrible images of the previous night flooded back in a kaleidoscope of shock and pain: the gunshot; the slumped and bloodied body of Pierre; Dubois’ cat-and-mouse game; David’s sudden, desperate act – hurling a rock and felling Dubois; her feet turning to lead as she tried to follow him out of the cavern, a slow-motion sequence that felt like wading through treacle. And then another gunshot, followed by a searing pain, followed by… nothing. From that point on, her mind was blank.

  She tried to sit up, more slowly this time, the rickety iron bedstead squeaking in protest. Dim light filtered through a grating in the ancient oak door next to the bed. In the gloom, she could just make out that she was in a small room, perhaps no more than 10ft square, that appeared to have been hewn out of solid rock. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and tried to stand up, only to crash to the floor as her left leg gave way in an explosion of pain.

  She heard movement outside the door, and a few minutes later it swung open. Dubois stood framed in the doorway, this time dressed in his more familiar jacket and cravat, looking for all the world like some ageing history professor.

  “Please, let me help you,” he said with apparent concern, kneeling down beside her.

  “Get away from me, you sick bastard,” said Rachel vehemently. “I don’t want your filthy hands anywhere near me. And to think I tried to persuade David to trust you!”

  “As you wish,” said Dubois, standing up.

  Rachel manoeuvred herself back onto the bed and sat clutching herself tightly.

  “I’m not a monster, you know,” said Dubois, attempting to lighten the atmosphere.

  “Oh really?” muttered Rachel sarcastically.

  “I am merely trying to stand up for my religion; to correct centuries of bloody persecution by the Catholic Church.”

  “I’ll judge you by your actions, not your words. You killed Pierre in cold blood. You’re nothing more than a terrorist.”

  “Ah, but one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, non? As for Pierre, it was a shame, but he would not have hesitated to do the same thing – I knew the man. He had a gun. If he had shot me, then who would be the monster?”

  Rachel fell silent. There was no point engaging with the man’s twisted logic.

  Dubois tried to change tack. “I
am sorry about your leg. If it is any comfort to you, it was not I who pulled the trigger – your boyfriend saw to that.” He put his hand to a livid bruise on his forehead.

  “Yes, that was a pretty good shot, wasn’t it?” said Rachel smugly. “He used to play cricket for Oxford University.”

  “Really,” said Dubois, anger flashing across his face. He struggled to regain his composure. “Still, we have patched your leg as best we can. Luckily, one of our brethren is a doctor. It seems the bullet passed straight through without hitting anything vital. You lost some blood, nothing more – apart from that nasty bump on your head, of course, where you hit the ground. I have some antibiotics for you here, though of course it’s up to you if you take them.”

  He tossed a plastic container of pills onto the bed next to Rachel, who looked at them with extreme suspicion.

  “No doubt you think they are something nasty, but I assure you they are not. It’s up to you – I don’t want to force you to take them, but I do want you to recover.”

  “What’s the point if you’re planning to kill me? You don’t seriously think the Count will agree to hand Marianne over, do you?”

  “Who knows? I believe the Madeleine to be an honourable woman. You are only here because of her.”

  “Her line has survived for 2,000 years, endured centuries of persecution – just as you say your own followers have done. Yet you just want to destroy her?”

  “It is a necessary price, I am afraid. With her gone, there will be nothing to prevent the return of the ancient ways; a religion that honours the gods and goddesses of the Earth, and celebrates the cycles of nature – birth, death and rebirth.”

  “That’s just crazy! I know some Pagans, and I respect their beliefs – they would be appalled at your actions. Do you really think killing her is going to bring your fringe cult, whatever it is, into the mainstream?”

  “Pah – Pagans. Just a bunch of ageing hippies,” retorted Dubois. “I am talking of the old religion; the religion of the Visigoths and the Celts. A religion that requires sacrifice. Nature is a fierce mistress, but she maintains balance and order. Christianity has put Man on a pedestal; let him believe he can master the planet. Now, by offering the Madeleine’s blood to the gods, they will not just be appeased, it will strengthen our power to create change. We are not a fringe cult, as you put it, but part of a network of believers in the old ways – deities whose roots go back to ancient Greece and Rome, and beyond. We have different names for our gods, but we all want the same thing: a new world order built on time-honoured traditions. There are many of us, and we have members in all quarters of government.”

  “A religion, it would seem, that indulges in blood sacrifice – judging from the state of the altar. Marianne would not be your first victim, I suspect.”

  “The Jewish faith, among many others, practised ritual sacrifice. God even commanded Abraham to kill his own son, Isaac, to test his faith.”

  “Yes, but Christ came to change all that, didn’t he? To bring the message that people should be ruled by love, not fear; by compassion, not hatred.”

  “And where has that got the world? Centuries of warfare and bloodshed. I don’t doubt his good intentions, but it hasn’t worked very well, has it?”

  “Which is precisely why the Madeleine needs to live, to open people’s eyes to the false dogma of the Church and reawaken Christ’s true message,” said Rachel furiously. “A message that tells us that our journey in life is to find the Christ within ourselves.”

  “A noble sentiment, but one, I fear, that will be lost on most people.”

  “No, it won’t. The world is witnessing a growing spiritual awareness – it just needs a focus; a focus that isn’t bound up in dogma about ‘being saved’ or going to hell, but rather built on an understanding that each and every one of us has a spiritual identity that we must discover and reconcile in our daily lives.” Rachel fell silent, surprised by the vehemence of her outburst. Her long conversations with Marianne at the château had clearly found their mark.

  Dubois gave her an odd look.

  “Anyway,” said Rachel, hurriedly, “where the hell are we?” Further discussion was futile, but she needed information.

  “We are still in the cave system under Rennes. There are a number of small chambers that have been created down here over the centuries. Don’t think to try to escape – it’s a complex maze and there are many chasms. You could easily fall to your death.”

  With that, he rapped on the door to summon the jailer, and abruptly left the cell.

  Endless days seemed to pass, though deprived of nearly all sensory input, it may only have been two or three. Other than a visit from the doctor, and the occasional meal brought by her guard, she saw no-one. She became deeply depressed, racked with guilt at allowing herself to become so ensnared in the Rennes mystery when she should have been making visits back home to see her daughter Emma. She had abandoned her to embark on a wild goose chase that might, quite literally, be the death of her.

  Sleep became the norm. Sleep punctuated by deep, disturbing dreams: of darkness and demons; of a terrifying vision of the plane crash that killed her father; but most of all of Emma, locked in a darkened room, calling out her name, again and again and again…

  * * * *

  She was brutally awoken, dragged from her sleep, blindfolded, bound and gagged, then frogmarched by hooded figures through dimly lit passages. Limping painfully and desperately scared, she tried to take in her surroundings – at first the ground underfoot was ankle-deep in mud, and water dripped steadily onto her head. At one point she could hear the sound of running water falling into what sounded like a vast tank. Then the ground under her bare feet turned to hard, unyielding stone. Finally the blindfold was ripped away and she screwed up her eyes as the light from an array of flaming torches flooded her retinas. She was back in the Visigoth chamber.

  Terrified, struggling to get free, she was half-carried to the altar where the goat’s head loomed horribly large, and laid roughly on top. Her blouse was ripped off, and she was tied spreadeagled to the iron spikes at each corner of the stone.

  Dubois walked over and leered at her, toying with a richly jewelled dagger. “Quite the pretty thing, aren’t you?” he said, lasciviously. “A fitting gift for the gods.”

  Chapter 48

  The cave system that led from the hillside below Rennes to the Visigoth burial chamber was wet and slippery after the torrential rain of the previous few days, and the small group took great care as they scrambled up the steep passageway. Water oozed and trickled through the myriad cracks and fissures in the sculpted walls of the former underground river, the hollowed, white, lichen-covered stone glistening in the harsh light of their LED head-torches.

  The party was under instruction to maintain silence, save in an emergency, but there was little mood for idle chatter; rather, a deep sense of foreboding. No-one knew precisely how events would be resolved, but everyone feared for Marianne’s safety. She was a fiercely independent, headstrong young woman with powerful convictions: it would be difficult to prevent her following through her intended course of action. David and the Count had privately agreed they had no intention of allowing her to give herself up, but there was no disguising that they were embarked on a highly risky undertaking. The best they could hope for was a stand-off that would somehow allow them to rescue Rachel, but the odds were very high that someone would be killed or seriously injured.

  They had managed to muster eight men in the end, all of whom were armed. Two were left at the entrance to the tunnel to guard their backs and make sure no-one tried to interfere with their vehicles. The remaining six accompanied David, the Count and Marianne; three in the lead, with the remainder bringing up the rear.

  After a quarter of an hour of difficult progress through the treacherous tunnel, slipping frequently, they finally halted at the chimney where one of the cult members had met his death. The leading bodyguard put on a safety line and threw a grappling hook across
the gaping chasm, snagging it on the rock-fall on the far side at the second attempt, before using it to steady himself as he edged across the void.

  The rope was quickly tied off at both ends to create a new hand-line, and each member of the party put on a safety harness before crossing in turn. David shuddered to think how cavalier he and Rachel had been on their first couple of visits – with the rock-face now wet, they could ill afford to take chances.

  After another 15 minutes or so, a dim luminescence emerged from the blackness beyond the reach of their torches, a light that grew steadily brighter. Then the chamber was upon them, its grim tableau plain to see. Twelve hooded figures, garbed in jet black robes, encircled the chamber ahead of them, each carrying a flaming pitch torch, casting dark and tortured shadows across the cave. A thirteenth hooded cultist stood in front of the altar, arms crossed and head bowed.

  But it was the shocking scene at the altar itself that transfixed the rescuers in horror. For on it lay Rachel, bound and gagged, her semi-naked body shuddering with fear, a blood-soaked bandage around one leg, her bruised face streaked with tears. Dubois stood looking at them, his ornately jewelled dagger idly tracing patterns on Rachel’s bare midriff.

  David’s eyes misted red as a surge of bloodlust pumped through his veins. There was only one thought in his mind, now: vengeance.

  “I am glad to see you kept your bargain, Monsieur le Comte,” said Dubois, ignoring David’s presence.

  “You gave us little choice,” replied the Count icily. “And it is only because we value human life more highly than do you that we are here at all. Against my better judgement, I might add – I don’t trust any of you heathen.”

  “You do us a disservice, Monsieur le Comte. I bear you no ill will; your organisation and ours are not dissimilar. We both seek enlightenment.”