Each of the thirteen children had been told, since earliest childhood, that they had been marked out in this way by God as a sign of His especial grace. As a result they each bore their affliction not as an affliction, but more as a mark of special selection. The Countess had also explained to them that, thanks to the prevalence of a certain sort of guilty sentimentality in much of the twenty-first century’s increasingly decadent populace, they might even be able to use their afflictions to divert suspicion from themselves – and out towards innocent parties – in the event of a crisis.
Glancing about the room, the Countess could barely disguise her satisfaction. It was at her direct instigation that her husband had resuscitated the almost moribund Corpus Maleficus. The first time he had described the cabal to her – and his family’s inextricable link to its aims over a history spanning nearly eight hundred years – had been just a few days before their marriage. The Count had sounded almost apologetic, as if he had been forced to summon up a hoary old skeleton from the family vaults in order to forestall his future wife learning about it from other, less well-intentioned, sources.
The Countess – the accustomed recipient, since early childhood, of the complete attention of her extended family thanks to her position as sole inheritrix of both her father’s and his distaff relatives’ extensive fortunes – had realized its glorious potential at once. She could feel herself moving, inchmeal, from one non-carnal embrace to another, infinitely more preferable one. Before this moment she had merely sensed, thanks to her father’s subtle hints, that she would be investing in something more than simply a name with her fortune, but she hadn’t realized exactly what she was buying into. Now she knew for certain. ‘You can’t let something like this just die.’
Her elderly fiancé had smiled. ‘How can one resuscitate a skeleton? The outer body and epidermis began to expire alongside the final vestiges of the age-old aristocratic order after the disasters of the Great War. The inner body, along with its vital organs, finally perished alongside my manhood, on Monday the third of June 1940, during the German bombardment of Paris. Do you remember Jean Renoir’s film, La Grande Illusion? The characters played by Pierre Fresnay and Erich von Stroheim? The Old Guard aristocrats recognizing each other, and realizing that they had both reached the end of their usefulness? Well Renoir was right. We are tired and irrelevant.’
The Countess had turned on him, revealing for the very first time the inner fire that drove her. ‘Von Stroheim was not an aristocrat, but the son of a Jewish hat-maker. Fresnay’s father was a Huguenot, and therefore a hater of Catholics. And Renoir’s father was a hack painter who depicted his women as if they were made out of marzipan. Who are such people to tell you that your class is doomed?’ She turned on him. ‘I won’t have it. A man doesn’t need a functioning member to be a man. An institution doesn’t need the sanction of the State to give it weight. The flower of France’s chivalric tradition should not need the permission of its inferiors to celebrate its past achievements and prepare its future triumphs.’
The Count had continued smiling. ‘Future triumphs? For reasons that are entirely beyond my control, it seems that I am to be the last in my line. More than a thousand years of history will die with me, my dear. Where are these future triumphs you speak of going to come from?’
And so she had told him – told him of her plans to adopt a new generation of soldiers for the de Bale cause. Told him of the true extent of her fortune, and what they could both achieve with it. And gradually his face had started to light up. His expression to change. ‘You really think this is possible? I am an old man.’
‘But I am not. I shall represent you. Represent our family. Fight for our status as hereditary peers of France.’
‘Why? Why should you do this?’
She had hesitated for some little time, almost as if she had no answer to his question. Then she had turned to him, taken his hand, and placed it above her heart. ‘Because it is my destiny.’
It was only later, and well into their marriage, that the Countess had realized just how elegantly the Count had steered her towards exactly the conclusion he himself had so fervently desired.
10
So. It was time. The Countess laid aside the document whose ancient codification had caused so much trouble to the inquisitive police Captain – what had been his name? Clique? Claque? – the one who had so dogged her footsteps in the run-up to the death of her eldest son earlier that summer. She knew its entire contents by heart.
‘Who are we?’
‘We are the Corpus.’ Her children responded as one.
‘Which Corpus?’
‘The Corpus Maleficus.’
‘And what do we do?’
‘We protect the realm.’
‘And who is our enemy?’
‘The Devil.’
‘And how shall we defeat him?’
‘We shall never defeat him.’
‘And how shall we unseat him?’
‘We shall never unseat him.’
‘So what is our purpose?’
‘Delay.’
‘And how do we procure it?’
‘By serving Christ’s dark shadow.’
‘And who is that?’
‘The antimimon pneuma. The counterfeit spirit.’
‘And what is his name?’
‘The Antichrist.’
‘And how do we serve him?’
‘By destroying the Parousia.’
‘And what is the Parousia?’
‘He is the Second Coming of Christ. He is the brother of Satan.’
‘And how shall we know Him?’
‘A sign will be given.’
‘And how shall we kill Him?’
‘He will be sacrificed.’
‘And what shall be our reward?’
‘Death.’
‘And what is our law?’
‘Death.’
‘And how shall we achieve it?’
‘Anarchy.’
‘And who are our brothers and sisters?’
‘We shall know them.’
‘And who are our enemies?’
‘We shall know them.’
‘And who is the Third Antichrist?’
‘We shall know him and guard him.’
‘And who is the Second Coming?’
‘We shall know Him and kill Him.’
The Countess made the reverse sign of the cross, followed by the reverse sign of the pentacle, just as her son, Achor Bale, had done just a few short hours before his death.
‘And Holy is the Number of the Beast.’
The children intoned the answers to the Countess’s questions with their eyes turned up into their eyelids – as they spoke, their hands also made reverse crosses, reaching from their crotch back over to the nape of their necks. This was followed by the sign of the six-sided pentacle, also from the direction of the lower to the upper body.
When the invocations were over, the Countess walked the length of the room to stand behind Achor Bale’s empty chair. She kissed her fingers and laid them tenderly on the hilt of his sword. ‘You all realize, of course, that Rocha’s death occurred as a direct result of investigations he was undertaking on behalf of the Society?’
There was a generalized intake of breath.
‘It was at my instigation that he followed the man Sabir. It was at my instigation that he intervened following Sabir’s discovery of the lost verses of Nostradamus. He died fulfilling his duties to the Corpus.’
Abiger glanced across at his brother. He was scarcely able to keep the grin off his face. He knew what was coming.
‘A spy in the apostate Nostradamus’s household – a spy in the pay of one of the noblest of your ancestors, Forcas de Bale – alerted his master to the verses’ potential contents. The Count was already on his way down to Agen when news reached him of Michel de Nostredame’s death. When he arrived, the verses had already been dispersed and the seer buried. It took nearly 450 years for the verses to reappear. We i
n the Corpus have long memories. An oath is an oath for us. Once bound, always bound.’
‘Once bound, always bound.’ The children whispered in echo of her words.
‘Abiger …’ The Countess turned towards her eldest son. ‘The time has come for you and your brother to travel to America. You will identify the man Sabir. First, you will extract the secrets of the prophecies from him in whatever manner you may deem appropriate. Then you will take revenge for the murder of your brother. Is that clear?’
‘Perfectly, Madame.’
The Countess turned towards her eldest daughter. ‘Lamia, you did not make the reverse cross. Kindly make it now.’
Lamia’s hand crept towards her throat. The rufous complexion marring one side of her face turned, if anything, a deeper red.
‘I am waiting.’
‘I cannot do it, Madame.’ Lamia shook her head.
Her brothers and sisters stared at her like dingoes alerted to a kill.
‘Abiger. Escort your elder sister to her room. She will remain there until she is able to offer a suitable explanation for her behaviour. Apprise Milouins of the situation. The rest of you may take the blood oath. You will be told when you are needed.’
Oni de Bale glanced down at his mother from his great height. ‘Do we others continue with our work, Madame?’
The Countess turned away, motioning to Madame Mastigou, who was cleaning a small ivory receptacle. Then she turned towards her dwarfish daughter, Athame, a sufferer from Ellis–van Creveld Syndrome. A polydactyl, Athame was unconscionably dexterous with all of her twelve fingers. ‘Athame. Live up to your name. You may do the necessary cuts for the blood oath.’
‘Yes, Madame.’
‘Mother?’
‘I heard you, Oni.’ The Countess turned and laid a light hand on her youngest son’s forearm. She glanced up into his eyes, her neck forced back against the collar of her elegantly tailored 1950s Dior suit the better to take in his span. ‘Always continue with your work. That is the way to please me. Stir, stir, stir. Keep the broth moving. Never let the commoners rest at ease. The Devil is a hungry angel – he will come calling if we don’t forestall him. That is your primary job.’
‘Yes, Madame.’
‘And, Oni.’
‘Yes, Madame?’
‘Soon, I may have a more specific use for you. You must hold yourself in readiness for that.’
Oni hunched down and kissed his mother’s hand.
The Countess noticed Lamia hesitate on her way to the door. ‘Have you anything to say to me, my child?’
It looked for a moment as if Lamia would speak. Then she shook her head and followed her brother quietly out into the library.
11
At precisely 9.30 the next morning, Joris Calque watched from his camouflaged hiding place as the battery of chauffeur-driven cars returned to collect their clients. He counted them off, one by one.
‘That leaves three of them still inside the house. Two males and a female, if I am not mistaken.’
In the lonely weeks that Calque had spent ensconced inside his eyrie, he had occasionally drifted into the habit of talking out loud to himself. He was well aware of this new tendency, but didn’t, as yet, feel that he was in imminent danger of turning into one of those ubiquitous males – and they were always males, weren’t they? – who stride up and down the pavements of their home town mouthing off to imagined companions.
If he ever did slide into such a public form of idiocy, Calque hoped that he would have enough wit left to wedge a cell phone speaker in his ear, thereby protecting himself against the very forces of public order to which he had for so long subscribed.
His main problem now wasn’t incipient dementia, however, but rather to retrieve the – hopefully – brimming voice-activated tape recorder from the Countess’s inner sanctum.
He stood up and glanced around his eyrie. So. His time here was over.
He wouldn’t miss the chemical toilet, the smell of stale tobacco, or the curious quality of light that filtered through the gaps in the camouflage netting. But he would miss the birdlife, and the sightings of badgers, rodents, rabbits, deer and foxes with which he had wiled away the more tiresome hours of his vigil. He decided, on the spur of the moment, to bequeath the entirety of his hidey-hole to the poacher who had set it up. That would save him the trouble of carting everything back to his car. It would serve to cover his back-trail rather nicely, too.
Calque’s experience told him that he didn’t stand a cat-in-hell’s chance of getting into the Domaine to retrieve the recorder himself. He was neither young, suicidal, nor particularly eager to see the inside of any of the prisons to which he had consigned so many felons, child-molesters, and murderers in the course of his detecting career.
But there was one possible alternative to professional suicide. And Calque made up his mind to explore it without further delay.
12
Calque watched as Paul Macron’s cousin put the finishing touches to a louvred shutter. The man was aware of him, that much was obvious. But it would have been unrealistic of Calque to expect an ex-Foreign Legionnaire to come running just because a captain – strike that, an ex-captain – of police showed up at his workshop. At least it would give him time to have a cigarette.
Just as Calque was preparing to inhale, he saw Macron gesticulating at him with his sander from across the atelier.
‘Put that fucking thing out. This isn’t a country club. There’s enough dry wood stacked up in here to smoke a whale.’
Calque gave a sickly smile and crushed the as yet unsavoured cigarette and its accompanying match out beneath his foot. He should have expected that, too. Macron’s cousin had no reason to view him with anything other than disdain. Paul Macron had been killed on his watch, and it was only luck, and Adam Sabir’s suicidal bloody-mindedness, that had allowed the police to put a line under Achor Bale’s killing spree.
Aimé Macron went over to a sink in the corner of the workshop and started on the laborious rigmarole of washing his hands, his face, and the back of his neck. Calque could see Macron weighing him up in the pin-up plastered mirror above the basin.
Calque didn’t move. He was weighing Macron up, too. Deciding whether to trust him with information that, in the wrong hands, could send him to prison.
‘You’re not a flic any more, are you?’ Macron was moving towards Calque now, scrubbing at his neck with a towel, his eyes hooded.
Calque was fleetingly tempted to brazen the thing out – pretend he was still on the force – flash his purposefully mislaid badge – but he thought better of it. ‘No. I’m not. How did you guess?’
Macron shrugged. ‘I was in the Legion for twenty years. I can tell when a man has power by the way he carries himself. You don’t have power any more. If you were still a flic, you would have breezed in here and interrupted my work, knowing it was your fucking right. But you waited for me to finish instead. Cops aren’t usually that fastidious.’
‘Touché.’ Calque was impressed despite himself. He instantly changed tack, and approached Macron from a different direction to the one that he had initially intended. ‘You remember me, don’t you?’
‘How could I forget? You brought us the news of Paul’s death.’
Calque squirmed inside, each word like a touchpaper to his policeman’s soul. ‘You helped me that time. You gave me valuable information about Achor Bale. About his time in the Legion.’
Macron squinted, as if something he had not understood had just been made blindingly clear to him. He lit a cigarette.
Calque made a face.
Macron grinned. ‘Yeah. I was just bullshitting you back there about the fire hazard and the cigs. Have one of mine.’
Calque cocked his head questioningly. ‘Why the change of attitude all of a sudden?’
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘I really do. Yes.’
Macron snorted smoke through both nostrils. ‘Because you’re not a flic any more. I like you
better this way. They kick you out because of Paul’s death?’
‘Indirectly.’
‘Fuckers. It wasn’t your fault. If it had been, you wouldn’t have made it past the front gate.’
‘I suspected that.’ Calque lit the proffered cigarette.
The two men stood staring at each other, smoking.
‘So what do you want, Monsieur l’ex-Capitaine?’
‘Want?’
Macron scrubbed his fingernails across his razor-stropped head. ‘Don’t fuck with me, Inspector. You haven’t come around here to see how I’m getting on. Or to chew the fat about all those happy times you shared with Paul. Neither of you could stand each other.’
Calque could sense himself about to go on the defensive – he wrestled the instinct down. ‘You’re right, Macron. I need more than information this time. I need your help.’
Macron allowed himself the ghost of a smile. ‘Paul’s killer is dead. What do you need me for?’ His face changed expression. ‘You need someone nobbled, don’t you? That’s it, isn’t it? And you remembered that good old Aimé Macron was on the prison register for GBH, and maybe he hadn’t forgotten some of his old tricks in the years since they let him out?’
‘It’s not that.’
‘Then what is it?’
Calque felt like a fool. What was he doing here, talking to a compete stranger about breaking the law, after spending his entire working life as its bondservant? He swallowed. Might as well get it out. What did he have to lose? His pension? It was hardly enough to keep him in toilet paper. His good name? What was that worth in this brave new world they called France? His integrity? He’d lost that when he’d trousered his badge back at the station. ‘Do you have any ex-Legionnaire friends who are firemen? Down St Tropez way, maybe?’
‘Firemen? Are you serious?’
Calque flicked his cigarette into the puddle of water left over after Macron’s frenetic ablutions. ‘Perfectly.’
The Mayan Codex Page 5
