by Marie Laval
She stopped and glanced at him tentatively. She had never before spoken so frankly with him and was unsure how he would respond. He smiled in the dim light.
‘Very well spoken, Madame,’ he said with a trace of irony. ‘You are right. I am my worst enemy. My ambition was always to reach the top. With the Bourbons back at the head of the country it will never happen. Maybe I should do as you suggest and fulfil my father’s wishes, but I can’t help thinking that there is something else out there for me, somewhere…’
She would have liked to be brave enough to tell him she was there for him, but she remained silent. She wrapped herself more closely in her jacket. It was very cold in the old lodge.
He broke the silence. ‘Tell me about the Cross of Life. You said it was in the dovecote at Beauregard. Our biggest challenge tomorrow will be to avoid Uxeloup and his men.’
‘I’m so scared of going down into the crypt at Arginy,’ she said weakly, burying her face into her hands.
He was next to her in a couple of seconds. He put his arm around her shoulders, and she snuggled against him.
‘I don’t understand why you have to take the Cross there. What has it got to do with you? Why can’t your father do it? And why does anyone have to do anything about it at all?’
Marie-Ange told him what her great-aunt had said about family duty and the Beaujeus and Beauregards bloodline. ‘My mother was meant to take the Cross back,’ she added. ‘She passed her duty to me. I am so afraid of what is down there.’
‘Probably rats, a cold draughty room, and the tombs of former lords and ladies of the manor.’
‘There are shadows and ghosts, too,’ she whispered.
‘Ghosts don’t exist.’ He stared into her eyes with such certainty that she almost believed him. ‘You said you knew how to find the Cross at Beauregard?’
‘I will follow the clues in the song my mother taught me. I know I need my locket to work the mechanism but I don’t understand how to use it.’
Tell me the words again. I remember you said something about a rose and a heart.’
Marie-Ange recited the words slowly:
My sweet rose of May
My rose with five petals,
You cry in the dovecote
For your lover, cold in his tomb…
Listen to me, don’t despair,
Your lover you’ll see again,
Place the rose on the heart, give five turns,
Raise your eyes, the wing you will find.
But you must choose wisely,
For if the wing of the dove
Is as white as the angel’s
It will not open your lover’s tomb.
Hugo listened intently and shook his head. ‘Let’s hope it makes sense tomorrow when we are in the dovecote.’
He looked through the grimy window partly hidden behind thick cobwebs. It was pitch black. ‘With luck Uxeloup and his men are spending the night smoking opium and drinking. They will be hung over in the morning.’ He took his overcoat off and wrapped it around her shoulders.
‘What is going to happen to you and your family?’ she asked, placing her hands on his. ‘Uxeloup seems determined to send you to the debtors’ jail.’
‘I will worry about that later.’ He gestured dismissively. ‘Now, get some sleep. I’ll keep watch and wake you up at first light.’
Marie-Ange lay down and curled up on the bed, wrapped in Hugo’s coat, while he sat at the table. He blew the candle out and remained immobile in the darkness.
It was barely light when they set off a few hours later. As promised, a stable lad had brought Hugo’s horse to the vineyard lodge.
‘Ready?’ Hugo asked, taking Marie-Ange’s waist in his hands and lifting her onto his horse. He then mounted behind her and spurred the horse into a trot on the road to St Rigaud Hill where he said her father and his men were hiding.
‘Let’s hope they are still there,’ he said, steering the horse onto a lane leading through the forest and up the hill which was about three miles from Beauregard.
Half-way up the incline, he dismounted to guide the horse through the rocky path. Marie-Ange soon caught sight of the abandoned outbuilding where her father and his men were hopefully waiting for them. A sharp bird call, like a warning echoed in the eerie silence of the forest. A Turcopilar appeared in front of them stepping silently from behind a tree and the horse baulked in surprise, almost throwing Marie-Ange onto the ground. Hugo held firmly to the reins and managed to calm the animal.
‘Steady on, man,’ he growled. ‘It’s only us.’
‘Pardon, Capitaine. Madame,’ the Turcopilar mumbled when he recognised them.
‘Don’t worry.’ She smiled. From a distance, anyone would believe her to be a man. ‘Is my father here?’ she asked. The man nodded and whistled again. Soon two familiar figures emerged from the sheepfold.
‘Daughter! Here you are at last.’
Hugo helped Marie-Ange get down and she ran to Baldassare. He held her against him and kissed her forehead. ‘We have been waiting so long for you. Saintclair’s batman brought word that you were safe, but that was well over a week ago.’
Hugo advised they should leave for Beauregard without delay and Baldassare agreed. He gave instructions to his companions to get the horses ready.
‘We must be vigilant,’ he warned. ‘I went on a reconnaissance tour yesterday and saw a dozen men patrolling the grounds.’
Saintclair decided to go into the dovecote with Marie-Ange. Hafiz, one of the Turcopilars, would guard the entrance to the walled rose garden while Baldassare and his other companion would keep watch at the edge of the forest and deal with Uxeloup’s patrols. They were outnumbered but there was no other choice.
‘Do you have your locket?’ Baldassare asked. Marie-Ange touched the pocket of her jacket and nodded.
Saintclair tightened his girth, impatient to be on the move. ‘We should go.’
Nobody talked as they made their way through the woods to Beauregard. When they reached the estate, they tied their horses to tree branches. Baldassare went ahead as scout. He came back soon after and gestured that the grounds were clear.
Saintclair, Marie-Ange, and Hafiz ran across the lawn towards the walled garden. The old gate creaked open. Hafiz took his position, Marie-Ange and Hugo made their way across the empty rose garden towards the round tower in the far right corner.
The moment of truth had come. As she put her hand on the door handle, Marie-Ange had an awful doubt. What if the whole story was a myth? What if there was no Cross and no relic hidden in there? She pushed the handle down and walked in with Hugo right behind her.
The dovecote looked very different from her mother’s paintings. It was dark and filthy. The floor was covered with a thick layer of bird droppings and feathers. The wooden beams that had looked so beautiful on paper were so black and grimy no pattern or engraving could be seen on their surface at all. Marie-Ange walked around central beam. They had to remove the muck covering it for her to find the heart pattern. It was somewhere on the top half of the beam. She pulled her knife from her boot and scraped the dirt to reveal the wood below, careful however not to erase the original carvings she knew were there. Saintclair pulled his own knife and they worked in silence for a while.
‘It’s pointless.’ Marie-Ange shook her head after a while, disappointed. They had hardly cleared a twenty centimetres section of the beam. ‘It’s going to take forever!’
A dove flew in through one of the circular openings in the top half of the tower, graceful as it perched on one of the beams that criss-crossed the eaves. It settled and started cooing. A pale sun ray filtered inside the dovecote onto the central beam, highlighting the carvings in a play of shadows and light. Marie-Ange held her breath. There was what she had been looking for. The pattern of a rose within a heart.
‘It’s up there!’ She pointed to the dove, still perching on the beam, oblivious to their presence.
‘I’ll go,’ Hugo suggested but she shook h
er head.
‘No. My father said that it had to be me.’
‘I really don’t see why,’ he mumbled, pulling a ladder across the floor. He held it while she climbed up towards the dove. The bird didn’t move but observed her movements with great curiosity. She took her knife, and holding onto the ladder with one hand, scratched carefully at the layer of dirt to reveal the heart carving she had spotted from below. Inside the heart was indeed the outline of a rose. She traced the pattern, the five petals, with her finger.
The song said she had to fit the locket into the rose pattern and turn it five times to reveal the relic’s hiding place. Would it work?
With a silent prayer, she took off her locket and inserted it into the carving on the beam. It fitted perfectly. She tried turning it to the right, but the locket refused to move.
‘I can’t do it.’ She tried again, with more strength this time.
‘Do you want me to try?’ Hugo asked, still holding the ladder. ‘It may be stuck.’
She was about to get down and let him have a go when she had a thought. What if she turned the locket the other way? She pressed it into the carving again and pushed it to the left, towards the heart, on the left-hand side of the body. This time, she heard a clicking sound. The locket penetrated deep into the wood. Holding her breath, she gave five turns and looked up towards the doves’ nests.
‘Right at the top!’ Hugo pointed to the nests closest to the roof line. ‘Three boxes have opened.’
The ladder wasn’t high enough for Marie-Ange to reach them, she would have to climb onto the beams that criss-crossed the top of the tower.
‘It’s far too high for you. Get down. I’ll do it,’ Hugo said once again, but she refused.
‘This is something I have to finish, no one else can.’
Hugo sighed with impatience.
‘Take my bag then to put the…thing in—whatever it is.’ He stepped onto the ladder and handed her the satchel which she slung across her body looping the long strap over her shoulder.
As she climbed to the top of the ladder and balanced on the top beam, she was glad to be wearing breeches and not a dress. Without looking down she stepped onto another joist and made her way towards the nests. The beam was wide enough for her to walk on it without too much difficulty. Nevertheless she was relieved to reach the wall. She slid her hand into one of the openings. Carefully, she explored the inside of the nest with her fingers until she touched something hard. She pulled a cylinder out and held it in front of her. She wiped its surface quickly. It was made of thick glass and inside was a beautiful, delicate, white, almost translucent object she couldn’t immediately identify. She held it in the sun light. It looked like it was made of feathers, white feathers. Was this the angel wing?
She put it in Hugo’s bag and walked to the next nest. This time, she pulled out a heavy, ornate box. There was a long line of symbols across the cover—the Templars’ code—and the engraving of a rose and a heart in the left-hand corner. As she brushed the dirt off the cover with her hand, she realized it was made of solid gold and was decorated with dozens of rubies, emeralds, and sapphires. She placed the box in the satchel too. There was one last niche in the beam to explore. Inside was a small cloth bag. She carefully pulled it out and opened it up. It was another phial, this time with a piece of fine, dull, grey fabric inside. The second relic…Only one was the angel wing, but which one was it? There was no time to think about it now.
She was about to step onto the ladder when she heard pistol shots outside.
‘Hurry!’ Hugo urged. He pulled his pistol out and walked to the door.
Her chest tight with fear, she returned to the ladder and made her way down as quickly as she could. Uxeloup’s men must have discovered their presence.
‘Stay here.’ Hugo opened the door cautiously and stepped outside. Marie-Ange heard Hafiz’s breathless voice.
‘I shot two men but more are coming from the chateau.’
‘Behind you,’ Hugo yelled.
There were more gun shots, and a lot of shouting. Standing behind the door, she held her hand to her heart in agony and desperate to find out what was happening outside.
‘Let me go, you bastards,’ Hugo roared at last. ‘Malleval, tell them to let go of me.’
Uxeloup’s oily voice sent shivers down Marie-Ange’s spine. ‘It’s too late, Saintclair. You really disappointed me, my friend. I presume the lovely Madame Norton is inside?’ He broke into a raucous cough and took a long time to catch his breath. ‘I warned you to leave her alone. Look at the mess you’re in now. By the way, it was clever of you to escape the bailiffs last night but it’s only a matter of time before they catch up with you. I hope you warned your parents to pack up.’
‘Leave me a few more weeks. I’ll get the money to pay you back. You know I will,’ Hugo said, a hint of despair in his voice.
Uxeloup laughed. ‘You should have thought about it before helping Marie-Ange escape me. You cost me precious time, which I haven’t got unfortunately. Take him away.’
What was happening out there? Marie-Ange couldn’t stay in the dovecote any longer. She pushed the door open and stepped out into the pale morning light. Uxeloup, Karloff, and a dozen long haired men dressed in sheepskins, their faces covered with bushy beards and holding daggers and pistols, stood in the rose garden.
Uxeloup’s face was so emaciated it looked like a skull with deep, purple bruises underneath his feverish brown eyes. A dry, raspy cough shook his thin frame. Marie-Ange was surprised he could even stand in the cold breeze.
Hugo was slumped on the ground next to Hafiz’s lifeless body, his face and jacket smeared with blood. One bandit pointed a pistol to his head. Instinctively, she rushed to his side, but a man grabbed her arm and held her back.
Uxeloup chuckled weakly. ‘How touching. But don’t worry, dear Marie-Ange. He’ll live…for now.’
He raised his white, bony hand. ‘Hand over the bag.’
She tightened her grip on the satchel and desperately looked around. Where was her father? Had he been caught too? One of the men snatched the bag from her and gave it to Uxeloup. He opened it and thrust his hand inside, gasped, and withdrew it as if he had been burned.
‘Bring them both to the chateau!’
Chapter Nineteen
Hugo lunged forward and tackled the man standing closest to him. He knocked him out with a punch to the face, but before he could pick up his gun two of Uxeloup’s thugs jumped on him and kicked him back onto the frozen ground.
Uxeloup turned round and narrowed his eyes in anger.
‘That was a mistake, Saintclair—your last mistake, I daresay. Make sure he won’t interfere with my business again,’ he told his men. ‘I have had enough of my troublesome friend. He is of no use to me anymore.’
He departed, hurrying towards the chateau, clutching the satchel against his frail body. One of the men clubbed Hugo in the face with the grip of his pistol until he stopped struggling.
‘Hugo,’ Marie-Ange cried out in anguish as his body was dragged away. Uxeloup had just signed his death warrant.
‘Take her to the library,’ Karloff ordered.
Marie-Ange was frog-marched through the garden, into Beauregard’s hall and along the corridor. A man kicked the library door open and pushed her inside.
There was no fire in the hearth today. The pale morning sun had already disappeared behind snow clouds and a grey light now filtered through the partly drawn green velvet curtains. Marie-Ange breathed in the sickly scent of cold opium smoke which lingered in the room. She rubbed her arms with the palm of her hands to warm herself up. Her teeth chattered, and she shivered with cold as she stood in front of Saint Germain’s portrait.
‘What do I do now?’ she asked aloud.
She looked at Saint Germain’s gentle smile, his warm, intelligent brown eyes. Even if she didn’t believe he was immortal or had lived for over two hundred years, that he was a Rosicrucian who held the key to the mysteries of the life an
d death, he was still an enigma. He had been in touch with the Knights Hospitaller and the Turcopilars. He believed in the relic, had kept hold of the Cross of Life for years before deciding it was time to hide it. He had given her mother his locket and patiently instructed her with the secret song to enable her to find the Cross when the time came.
She stared at the painting. If only he could answer…
What she dreaded most had happened. Uxeloup was in possession of the Cross and the relic. Rather, she corrected, he had two relics and according to her mother’s song, only one of them had any power.
Hugo was in mortal danger, prisoner somewhere in the chateau. Hafiz had been killed. She felt a lump in her throat at the thought of the man lying dead in the rose garden. At least it seemed her father and the other Turcopilar had managed to avoid detection. She hoped they wouldn’t be caught. They were her last chance. As for her, she was at the mercy of her sick, demented relative and his obsession.
She looked at the portrait of Saint Germain again and at the roll of parchment written in the secret Templars’ code he was holding. There were similar symbols on the golden box she’d retrieved from the dovecote. Another coded message, no doubt.
A noise by the door made her jump. Karloff entered, the physician was pale. His grey hair fell in long, unkempt strands around his face. His hands shook as he unbuttoned his coat.
‘I have just decrypted the message on the box. It’s another warning that only a pure heart can handle the relic without risking eternal damnation.’
He turned towards Marie-Ange in earnest. ‘There are two phials but only one is the angel’s wing. Which one is it? You must tell me. Uxeloup is very agitated. I had to wrestle the phials from him. He is so desperate he was about to break them open regardless of the danger.’
He looked deep into Marie-Ange’s eyes but this time his intense gaze had no effect on her. ‘According to Polycarpe’s parchment, only the pure heart can release the relics’ powers. Only the pure heart knows which phial is the angel’s wing. You know, you must tell me!’
