Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate - Second Edition: An Ex Secret Agent Paranormal Investigator Thriller (Ordo Lupus and the Blood Moon Prophecy Book 2)

by Lazlo Ferran

  “Where?” I said, confused.

  “Over there.” She pointed to an area at the far side of the transept, opposite the door we had come in through. There were some tables and what looked like a small canteen. I laughed with delight. I had never thought to find a café in a Cathedral.

  “How civilized!”

  She smiled.

  With two coffees, and an almond biscuit-like cake, which was native to the South of France and something I am fond of, we set about solving the riddle.

  “Well. If it’s down there, we are not going to get access without help.”

  “Yes. I don’t know who to ask, but maybe we could try a bribe?”

  “Bribing the Church? Are you crazy?” I said.

  “Oh well. Everybody has their price.”

  “Ayshea! I am shocked. That doesn’t sound like you. Are you sure that is not blind optimism talking?”

  She laughed at the metaphor. “I am sure we could try one of those vergers. They must be poorly paid, and perhaps I could even try a little charm on him.” She had a naughty twinkle in her eye.

  “Oh now you really are being optimistic.” I laughed. She kicked me hard under the table.

  “Listen!” she said. “Have you heard what people are talking about?”

  I listened but it was hard to make out individual conversations. “What are they saying?”

  “They are talking about the storm. They say it is supernatural, perhaps a visitation by the Devil, or some great religious event. They say it is right over Beauvais. Typical superstitious French Catholics!” She let out one of her familiar shrill laughs.

  After another coffee each, and many caffeine-fueled blind-alleys explored, we were out of ideas. We both stared at our empty coffee cups. I glared at the nave where I could see the Bishop approaching, behind the last of his flock of worshippers, preceded by the Dean of the Chapter who was himself preceded by the Head Verger and some other vergers. The organ was just a murmur now, playing the church equivalent of muzak.

  “Wait! Perhaps the Crypt is not below!”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin. Ayshea’s voice was like a shout. “What do you mean?”

  “Did you notice? The four wolf-angels each had a hand pointing to the sky.”

  “Yeah? Is that significant?”

  “It could be. The meaning of the word crypt is from Greek, meaning ‘hidden’ or ‘secret’.” She paused.

  “Yes?”

  “So it doesn’t mean it’s ‘down below’ or ‘below ground’.”

  “I suppose so. Where could it be then?”

  “Up there? Above the vault.”

  I craned my neck. “Above the vault? What is up there?”

  “Well, normally not a lot. A lot of wood that is. Not much else. It could be up there.”

  I thought about it for a moment. At first it seemed like a crazy idea, but then again, if there was an enormous space up there that nobody would normally see, it would be a really good place to hide a secret crypt. And hadn’t the verger said the Bishop had built onto the vault?

  “Okay. So how do I get up there?”

  “I don’t know but perhaps we really should ask one of the vergers. Think about it. If there is a whole secret crypt up there, then somebody who works here would have to know about it.”

  “Oh no.” Just then, I noticed another familiar face across the transept. Parcaud, in full uniform, was talking to the Dean of the Chapter. “That Officer. I know him. He’s from Nevers and he’s pursued me for some time.” I stared studiously at my coffee for what seemed like an age, but when I looked up, he was not even looking my way.

  “Don’t worry. He has looked at us several times and he is not interested.”

  “Let’s speak to the Head Verger. You’re right. He would be the one to ask.”

  “There he is.”

  We were two of many, swirling around the clergy of the Cathedral, and it was a while before I could speak to him. I asked him politely if he had heard of the ‘Ordo Volatilis Lupus’. I used the formal Latin version for discretion, since we were in public. Both Ayshea and I saw the result. He looked from one of my eyes, to the other, and I could see recognition in his eyes. His face turned white, and beads of sweat formed on his forehead. It seemed as if he would stay silent, and I was about to walk away, when he uttered something.

  “What was that?” I said in French. “Can you repeat it please?”

  He said again in old French, “He who is Good, is pinned to the cross when he looks into the Serpents eyes, he who is damned, feels himself immersed in the cauldrons of Hell”. His words delivered, he apologised, turned and walked away in a hurry. For a moment I was too surprised to speak.

  “Come on.” I took Ayshea by the elbow, and we walked away from the crowd, down one of the aisles to the side of the nave. I whispered to her, but my voice sounded too loud, carrying in the vast chamber. “What do you make of that?”

  “The poor man looked terrified. What are we getting ourselves into?”

  “Not ‘we’ – me. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. What did you think he meant?”

  “Well it is a quote from somewhere, but I don’t know where.”

  “He must know something. At least he knows about the Brotherhood. Somebody has put the fear of God into him and I think I know who.”

  “Who?”

  “Pastor Michel. He’s here. I’ve seen him. He really is evil. Garrotting is his speciality.”

  “Where? What does he look like? Is he one of the priests?”

  “No. He was in plain clothes; a suit I think. I saw him in the crypt.”

  “Oh God. They are all here for you! They are all out to get you! This isn’t going to work! Something terrible is going to happen.”

  “Probably yes. I won’t lie to you but I have to do this, for Annie and for myself.” She looked away from me. It wasn’t just fear. There was something else, but I didn’t have time now to find out. “We must find the way up to the space above the vault. Where do you think it would be?”

  It was a few moments before she spoke, sounding irritated. “Did you notice those turrets at the ends of the transept wings? They go right to the top and have little windows in them. I guess there are spiral stairs in them. Perhaps you can reach them from the gallery or the, what do you call the upper gallery?”

  “Clerestory?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well. Let’s look.” We walked back towards the transept, and I noticed the great wooden buttresses, behind the last pillars of the aisle, that had been built in this century to keep the Cathedral from falling down. There were also huge wooden cross-braces high up in the transept between its two walls. We turned to the left, towards the door we had come in through, and then left again, into the aisle where there were many alcoves, some with doors.

  “There!” I pointed to a door which the Dean of the Chapter had just opened. Beside the door was a plain-clothes Gendarme. “I need to get up there! I need to talk to the Dean and see if he knows anything! Can you distract the Gendarme for a moment?”

  “Well I don’t know. I have never tried anything like that. I am just a normal girl you know.” She looked slightly indignant, and slid her glasses back on her nose with her forefinger.

  “Please try.”

  “Okay. Wait just over there.”

  I stood near a pillar, pretending to look up at its great height but I was watching Ayshea out of the corner of my eye. Whatever she was saying to the Gendarme was working. She had taken her glasses off and was shaking out her hair. He appeared to be giving her his full attention. Then, she appeared to slip on her high-heels, and went to sit down on a ledge, rubbing her ankle. He was very attentive, and with my heart in my mouth, I approached the door, opened it, and was through. I quickly shut it, and started up the narrow stairs, which turned through ninety degrees after the door and then went straight up. Its surface was bare stone. Badly worn, they were the width of my shoulders, and lit by a bare bulb about every ten feet
. The stairs went straight up in the main wall of the Cathedral, until they reached a curtained-off area of the Gallery. Any moment, while I had climbed the stairs, I had expected to hear “Arrêté!” from below. The stairs turn through ninety degree again, at the top, and I looked left and right along the empty Gallery which it opened out into. I couldn’t see where the Dean had gone but there were several heavy wooden doors on the inner side of the Gallery, set into edifices that looked like large pillars, set apart from those that stretched to the roof of the Nave. I turned left and tried the handle of the first door. It was locked. Then the next, locked. The third opened with an ancient creak and I found myself facing the Dean, who was startled, half disrobed.

  “How did you get in here!” he said in French. He was tall, had a rich, deep baritone voice, and wispy white hair, which had become matted with sweat under the mitre he had been wearing. His penetrating blue eyes had assessed me instantly as no immediate threat, but a problem.

  “I’m sorry for the intrusion. I’m in great need of information and help. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. As you probably guessed, I had to negotiate the Gendarmes to get up here.” I spoke in French.

  “Indeed.” His eyebrows showed his disapproval. “You seem to be a man who is not easily put off when you want to speak to someone.”

  This impressed me. He was cautious, but curious. “Have you heard of Ordo Lupus?”

  He laughed. “Well. You are very direct. In fact I have, but they are an ancient cult, and I don’t think they are active any more. Why do you ask? Are you an academic?” He removed his Bishop’s scarf and turned around a chair, before sitting facing me, arms crossed. He set his long legs out elegantly in front of him. “Please. Sit down.” He indicated the other chair at the small table. The room was polygonal, I couldn’t tell how many sides, but probably eight or ten, and only about eight feet across, with its furnishings specially shaped to fit the unusual room. The table was shaped to fit two sides, and opposite, to my left, a blue drape covered one of the other sides. A few religious paintings hung on the walls, and a small wash-basin was against the wall to my right.

  I wasn’t sure how much to tell this man. A man of the cloth, nevertheless, I didn’t know how much to trust him. After all, Pastor Michel was also a man of the cloth. “My daughter was killed by a demon, and as I understand it, the Brotherhood have a reputation for killing these demons.”

  “Do they? I only know them in a clerical sense. They kept good records of their times, and as a historian, I have taken an interest in them.”

  “So I came to the right place then?”

  “I can tell you a little, but others can tell you more.” His eyes glanced to something near the blue drape, for just a moment. I wondered what he was hiding. I was tiring of this cat-and-mouse game. I stood up, as if to go, but glanced over to a small bookshelf near the drape. On the lower of its two shelves were a neat row of bound volumes, like ledgers, and instantly, on one, green, I recognised a wolf’s head, embossed in gold-leaf.

  “Do you know the password?” he asked me.

  “What?” This seemed a change of direction and I guessed that he had guessed what I had seen.

  “No I don’t.”

  “Well then I can’t help you.”

  “But just now you said…”

  He interrupted me, standing up and pushed me with his hands outstretched. “You must leave now. I am sorry. I cannot help you.”

  I wasn’t going to leave that easily, and I reached for the green volume, but he was quick. He reached for a gold-threaded chord that hung from a slot in the wall. It was clearly some kind of bell-pull that rang in some other office, a form a communication common in medieval buildings. Before he could pull it, I lunged at him and jabbed with my fingers up under his rib-cage, an attack taught us in M.I.6. Although it hurt my fingers because he was still wearing a tightly bound sash, the jab penetrated far enough, and he crumpled to the floor with a moan and lay still. He would be badly winded or unconscious for a few minutes but no other harm would be done. I didn’t like to do it but my need was great.

  I picked up the green book and opened it. It did indeed appear to be a ledger, with pages and pages of accounts and a few unrecognised names throughout. It mainly appeared to be costs for stone-work and transportation, and appeared dated from the early 1700s onwards. The sheets were in fact photocopies of the much older sheets, whose ragged edges were faithfully reproduced in the facsimile. In leafing through the book, I became vaguely aware of a door behind the blue drape but at first the book held my full attention. Once I realised it was of little value to me, the door became more interesting. I couldn’t wait around long so I tried the handle and the door opened onto an incredibly narrow, darkened stone stairway. I fumbled for a light-switch but found none. Pushing aside the drape I finally found one and flicked it on. A bulb lit in the stairway and I could see that it led up in a curving direction. I wasn’t sure of my position within the Cathedral now but I didn’t need to be. It went up and that was what I wanted. I went up the stairs, which were so narrow that they forced me to move with one shoulder ahead of the other. These were hardly worn at all. After about twenty feet, they doubled back on themselves, and this repeated several times until I was faced by another door, guarded by a stone basilisk peering at me from its lintel. I tried this door too and it opened, this time into an enormous space, which could really only be discerned as enormous by the odd chink of bright sunlight jabbing into the gloom though tiny slits in the sloping walls. This had to be the roof space above the vault. “At last,” I said under my breath. I was standing on a small wooden platform above the rafters, and a panel on the wall to my right had a few notice-boards, warning of various dangers, and that hard hats needed to be worn. There were various switches and I pressed the first one. Instantly the space was lit up by a long row of bare bulbs hanging on both walls. I would guess the distance to the end of the space was about two-hundred feet or more, fifty wide and about the same high. It was truly a dizzying sight. What looked like acres of oak as far as I could see, like an odd, but beautifully shaped forest. My awe was quickly displaced by disappointment however. I could see no crypt up here. From my little platform, there were wooden boards, laid across the joists, which led to a small raised platform, perhaps a third of a way along the space, where workmen were clearly working on one of the beams that braced the roof internally. Their greasy mugs and piles of sawn wood could just be made out in the gloom. I took one last, disappointed look around, and then went back down the stairs. I entered the Bishop’s room, pushing aside the drape.

  “Ah. At last.” It was Parcaud, standing in the small polygonal room pointing a gun at me as I emerged from the stairs. I could see no sign of the Dean. “The wig and glasses are slightly absurd, but I recognise you now. Please remove the glasses.”

  “It’s been a long time Officer. You have been chasing me, I hear.”

  “Yes. And I nearly caught you in Paris.”

  “Paris? Ah. The hotel.”

  “Yes. It was me that shot at you on the roof.”

  “You missed.”

  “Sometimeser we choose not to kill Monsieur.”

  “You mean you missed deliberately?”

  “Let us just say I am not satisfied of your guilt just yet. I am not prepared to be your executioner.”

  This gave me hope. “Listen. You have seen those great swirling clouds outside?”

  “Of course. The whole town is worried about it. Hysteria iz building.”

  “Haven’t you wondered why I am here in the Cathedral?”

  “Before the Dean was taken away for medical attention ee said something about a cult. Ee said you were askinger about it, Ordo Lupus.”

  “I believe that cult has a Secret Crypt in this Cathedral and that the clouds are caused by something, some creature which is here, to find the Crypt and perhaps take something. I believe the same creature is the one who killed my daughter in Nevers all those years ago.” My voice rose gradually almost to a
pained shout as I added, “I saw it! I saw it!”

  “Alright Monsieur. Calm down. There are many Gendarmes who believe you are a killerer and they want you dead. If we to get you a fair trial, and I do want a fair trial, you have to trust meer. Pleeze… sit down.” He indicated the Dean’s chair with an outstretched hand, but at that moment, through the doorway to the main corridor came another familiar person, Pastor Michel. He was wearing a plain, dark grey suit, with a waistcoat. I just caught a glimpse of a wet patch under the waistcoat pocket before he pulled the jacket over, to cover it.

  “Monsieur,” said Parcaud, acknowledging the other with a polite nod.

  “Ah. You have him. At last,” said Pastor Michel. It was strange to hear this mysterious man speak. So familiar had I been with his face, and rumour of his character, that I had scarcely imagined his voice. Even so, I shuddered slightly when he spoke. His voice was quiet, melodic and cultivated, but cold. There was something coarse, hidden there, almost completely concealed by practice. I thought from his accent, that he was not French originally, and perhaps as a boy, he lived in the country. His eyes darted this way and that, only touching for the briefest of instants on my own. I could not read what was in his mind.

  I could see he was breathing heavily though. He stepped away from me, and closer to Parcaud.

  “Did you find anything?” he asked quietly, pointing to the open door behind the drape, which was still half pulled aside.

  “No.”

  “I thought not.” He seemed on the verge of a snigger and his lips curled in a smile. “It has been a wasted journey for you my friend. We nearly caught you in Paris, but unfortunately you escaped from us just long enough to kill that lovely young woman, what was her name? Georgina wasn’t it?”

  “You bastard. It was your Council who had her killed. It may well have been you that pushed her!”

  “You are a liar Monsieur. Also a very dangerous killer. Monsieur Parcaud knows that you killed the Head Verger.”

  “What? He was alive when I last spoke to him. Petrified, but alive.”

  “He was killed a few minutes ago. It appears he was strangled or perhaps something similar. Perhaps his neck was crushed, like the other victims you are responsible for?” Parcaud seemed to be goading me but there was a strange look in his eye.