The Sixth Key

by Adriana Koulias

  THE SIXTH KEY

  ADRIANA KOULIAS

  __________________

  First Edition and Second Edition (ebook) published by Bantam in 2011

  Third Edition Published by Zuriel Press in 2012

  Copyright © Adriana Koulias 2011

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Zuriel Press.

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Koulias, Adriana.

  The Sixth Key/Adriana Koulias.

  ISBN 978-0-9874620-2-2

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Contents

  Author's Foreword

  Dedication

  Epigram

  1. The Writer of Letters

  2. In the Belly of the Dragon

  3. Calm Before the Storm

  4. Dog and Wolf

  5. The Crypt

  6. Serinus

  7. Sancho

  8. A Bird in the Hand

  9. Pierre Plantard

  10. One man's Grave is Another Man's bed

  11. Beziers

  12. Deodat

  13. Of Fish and Men

  14. Murder Most Foul

  15. Enigmas and Conundrums

  16. To Hit the Nail on the Head

  17. Prospero

  18. Isobel

  19. A Key, a List, and a Sign

  20. Much Ado About Nothing?

  21. Gone

  22. The Living Dead

  23. The Treasure

  24. Magic Squares

  25. Rennes-le Chateau

  26. Madame Denarnaud

  27. A Friend in Need

  28. Another to Add to the List

  29. More Watson than Holmes

  30. Nothing is What it Seems

  31. The Abbot

  32. Underworld

  33. Blood on the Altar

  34. She Reads to the Dead

  35. Chavigny

  36. One Mystery Reveals Another

  37. Data, Data, Data

  38. Dead or Alive?

  39. More than Meets the Eye

  40. A Box, a Tomb and a Word

  41. Three's Company and Five's a Crowd

  42. What did King Dagobert Say to His Hourds?

  43. And the First Shall be the Last

  44. Unbrotherly Quarrels

  45. In the Heat of the Moment

  46. An End without an End

  47. Penitence, Penitence!

  48. Lady in Waiting

  49. Le Papesse

  50. Two Places at Once?

  51. Who is Who?

  52. The First Return

  Author's Note

  Acknowledgements

  *

  All secret societies and groups depicted in The Sixth Key exist. All church artwork, architecture, puzzles and grimoires of black magic are factual.

  *

  To Serapis, who taught me the secrets of the Apocalypse. And to Loouie, who wore Venetian masks though she never saw Venice – you taught me that death is truly brighter than life.

  *

  ‘I was looking for divinity, yet I find myself at the gates of Hell. Still I may continue to walk, to fall, even in flames. If there exists a way towards Heaven then it crosses Hell. At least it does for me. Well then . . . I dare!’

  SS Obersturmführer Otto Wilhelm Rahn

  ISLAND OF THE DEAD

  1

  The Writer of Letters

  ‘What then shall I ask?’

  ‘You must begin at the beginning.’

  ‘The beginning! But where is the beginning?’

  Edgar Allan Poe, ‘Mesmeric Revelation’

  Venice, November 2012

  I had fallen asleep on the bench waiting for the vaporetto and woke with a dry mouth and a crick in the neck as the boat pulled up at the Fondamente Nuove. Once we were chugging lazily over the dusk-coloured lagoon, I dared to ask the boatman where he was taking me. Luckily he spoke some English and pointed to an island in the distance, saying, ‘San Michele. The Island of the Dead . . . the cemetery of Venice.’

  Well, I thought to myself. Why not a cemetery in the middle of a lagoon? It all made a crazy sort of sense – it was something the Writer of Letters, as I liked to call him, would do.

  It was in character.

  My publisher had forwarded his last letter, as always, typed on the same watermarked paper as the others. It contained these words:

  Perhaps it is time we meet? Together, I am certain that we can find the solution to the riddle that is perplexing you:

  HOC EST SEPULCHRUM INTUS CADAVER NON HABENS HOC EST CADAVER SEPULCHRUM EXTRA NON HABENS SED CADAVER IDEM EST ET SEPULCHRUM SIBI

  This time, along with the letter there was also an air ticket to Venice and instructions on what to do when I arrived.

  Counting this one, I had received six letters in all. At first I had thought them mildly amusing; after all, what author of mysteries doesn’t receive letters from shopkeepers, housewives, or even convicted criminals, offering interesting information? But I only realised how different these letters were when the fourth arrived. That’s when I began to wonder who this person was.

  At the time I had just finished a novel and my editor discovered that a Latin word, a word integral to the plot, was grammatically incorrect. This unfortunate realisation occurred just as the book was headed for the printing press and I quickly got on the phone to several Latin professors. I needed a Latin word composed of seven letters – no more and no less – that meant ‘becoming’. I was on the phone to the printers trying to delay them when the fourth letter arrived. A coincidence, you might ask? No, I’ve come to know there are no coincidences. Inside the letter I found the Latin word I had been looking for – Fiesque.

  Similarly, the fifth letter arrived when I was unable to source important details about an underground passage in an obscure castle on the border of Austria and Hungary. Once again, in that fifth letter I found a miracle – an essay written in the early nineteenth century by a Knight of Malta, containing the very information I needed. This was a mystery that could well have been written by Edgar Allan Poe!

  So, you see, I wasn’t surprised when I received the sixth letter containing a Latin riddle that had been confounding me for months. The riddle was found on a sixteenth-century tombstone in Bologna. It was entitled ‘To the Gods of the Dead’ and translated it read:

  This is a tomb that has no body in it.

  This is a body that has no tomb round it.

  But body and tomb are the same.

  I had long been certain that it held the solution to one of the most important mysteries of our time – the mystery of life and death – and I had resolved to make the solution to this riddle the pivotal theme of my next novel. When it proved more than difficult to solve, I took comfort in knowing that it had obsessed and exercised the wits of better minds than mine: men like Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Jung and the French writer Gerard Nerval had also wrestled with it. But as time dragged on, and the deadline for delivery of the manuscript loomed, I began to wonder what had made me imagine myself capable of solving it. The timely arrival of that sixth letter was compelling evidence that its writer was either intuiting my thoughts, or indeed, perhaps even inspiring them. Of course I had to accept his invitation. How could I refuse? By coming to Venice I would be solving two mysteries �
� the identity of the Writer of Letters and the solution to the inscription.

  Now, as I looked out from the vaporetto towards that cold island overhung with Cyprus spears, I marvelled at the ingenuity of the creator of those letters. He had orchestrated a scene straight out of the Egyptian Book of the Dead: I was travelling on the boat of Isis, sailing over the river of souls to the Underworld. It was brilliant!

  When the boat came to the landing stage on the northwest corner of the island I climbed out, paid the man what I owed him and watched him pull his vessel away into the foggy evening. Above on the upper landing I saw a light moving in the darkness – it was a monk carrying a lamp. The monk turned out to be a rather pleasant Irishman. He made animated conversation as he led me through dark arches and cloisters, beyond which lay a world suspended in a mercurial solution of fog and Carrara marble.

  ‘Will you be staying the night?’ he asked.

  ‘Actually, I’m not certain,’ I said, feeling ridiculous.

  ‘Well, it’s good you’ve come before the Day of the Dead.’

  ‘That’s in three days’ time?’ I hadn’t thought about the Day of the Dead, an important holiday for Venetians, and so appropriate – I couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘Yes, the vaporetto is free all day for those who want to visit the graves of their relatives. The cemetery ends up full of flowers and aswarm with people.’ He leant in. ‘The definition of bedlam if you ask me! For now, it’s serene, thank God!’

  I looked around, taking in the size of the island. ‘The cemetery doesn’t seem big enough to service all of Venice.’

  ‘You’re right: the buried only stay here twelve years. After that, the bones are exhumed and the remains are moved to the Island of Bones, Sant’ Ariano. Venice is built on water, you see, and there can be no catacombs, so, over the centuries a lot of thought has gone into what to do with the dead. One could even say that Venetians are obsessed with death. Did you know they once used the bones of the dead to refine their sugar! I won’t be getting diabetes living here, that’s for certain.’ He gave an easy laugh. It sounded strange, given the present setting.

  Beyond the monastery’s cloister now, we entered a dark, labyrinthine corridor that led to what looked like a library. I followed the monk over oriental rugs to two winged chairs set by a great fire and here my breathing paused. After six years the moment had come, and I could hardly believe it.

  I had tried many times to imagine the Writer of Letters. Sometimes I conjured an image of a middle-aged hermit with a crooked back, a hooked nose and a lined face. At other times he was the handsome head librarian of some illustrious library, a man of letters who liked to read mystery novels on the sly. I even imagined a beautiful, erudite woman – a modern version of that Alexandrian philosopher Hypatia. Now, when the man stood and offered his hand, I couldn’t have been more surprised.

  The Writer of Letters was about my age but his entire manner bespoke another era. He looked at me with deep-set eyes and hair swept back from a face slightly lined but still youthful.

  He gave a charming white smile. ‘Thank you for coming! I had hoped you wouldn’t refuse my invitation.’ His English was perfect with only the slightest accent, perhaps Swiss or German.

  I told him that it was good to put a face to his letters and thanked him for his invaluable help over the years.

  ‘Please.’ He gestured to one of the winged chairs. ‘I hope your journey was bearable.’

  ‘First class is as good as it gets, thank you. Perhaps we should exchange names?’ I ventured to say.

  He hesitated and I felt that I’d made a faux pas.

  ‘Names get in the way,’ was all he said.

  There didn’t seem to be room for argument and I decided to let it go for now. ‘Do you live here at the monastery?’

  ‘I am not sure if you could call it my home,’ was his ambiguous answer.

  Before I could say anything in response the Irish monk entered the library again, carrying a tray of coffee and pastries, which he set down before us.

  When he was gone, the Writer of Letters poured me a cup and offered the sugar. I declined, smiling to myself.

  He settled back in his chair. ‘So, what do you think of my library?’

  I glanced about, taking in the many bookshelves. ‘It’s remarkable.’

  ‘This monastery once housed a famous scriptorium as well as a school for theology and philosophy, but that was before Napoleon. In those days it held as many as forty thousand volumes. After the invasion of course, there was little left, everything was looted . . . War is not a friend of books, you see. At any rate, they say Napoleon was looking for something and when he didn’t find it he punished the monks by converting the whole place into a prison.’

  ‘And now it’s a cemetery.’

  He looked at me with those hooded eyes. ‘It guards corpses. A book is a corpse in a way, wouldn’t you say?’

  I sipped at the coffee. ‘That’s an interesting way to look at it.’

  He raised one brow. The gesture made me uncomfortable.

  ‘When the Franciscans became the caretakers of the cemetery,’ he continued, ‘they opened the library again and began making careful acquisitions here and there, slowly filling the shelves again. I’m happy to say that now there are over twenty thousand volumes here, many of them first editions or very rare copies. From reading your books I can tell that you are not only fascinated with libraries and labyrinths but also with puzzles.’

  ‘Puzzles are my living,’ I told him.

  He leant in to poke at the fire a moment. ‘Have you read Jorge Luis Borges?’

  ‘Yes . . . but that was years ago.’

  He sat back again and crossed his legs, elegant and cool, as far from my image of a Franciscan monk as you could get.

  ‘Borges’ “Library of Babel” is one of my favourite short stories,’ he said. ‘I love his idea of a universe that consists of endless interlocking galleries, in which are kept all the books ever written, and even those likely to be written. Books whose content and order is random and meaningless.’

  I thought about it a moment. ‘Do you think Borges was trying to convey the opposing ideas of chaos and order, or the futility of accumulating knowledge?’

  He smiled. ‘Perhaps both, perhaps neither? It might just be the learned Arab coming out in him.’

  ‘But I thought he was Argentinian?’

  There was an awkward silence.

  ‘I am speaking of one of his previous lives.’

  My disquiet must have been palpable. I realised he was playing a game and that everything he was saying had been calculated to make me feel slightly uncomfortable. I decided that I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

  ‘I see.’

  He wasn’t put off. ‘Take “The Book of Sand”, for instance,’ he said. ‘An infinite book that changes every time you look into it. Then again, there is “The Garden of Forking Paths”, where one confronts several alternatives and these create several possible futures, which are again full of alternatives, and these proliferate and fork to make more futures, endlessly.’ He sat forwards. ‘Do you think Borges understood the idea of karma and destiny?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, he certainly managed to illustrate, quite perfectly, the experience of crossing the threshold.’

  ‘What threshold do you mean?’

  ‘The threshold that separates life from death, time from space; where the past and the future converge in the present; where the dead exist.’

  My smile must have looked increasingly foolish. ‘I suppose you are going to tell me how one crosses the threshold? Is that the solution to the riddle – initiation?’

  He looked at me without humour, clearly annoyed. ‘To taste a good brandy one must sip slowly, savouring the complex flavours on the tongue! A man who drinks it down in one gulp tastes nothing and burns his throat. Isn’t that so?’

  I nodded pensively. He was right – I was being precipitous. Still, his
tone had been harsh

  He looked a little repentant. ‘I do apologise. I’ve been away from society for too long, I’m afraid. I don’t mean to be ill-mannered.’ He paused, thinking a moment, or perhaps he was just giving me time to forgive his shortness. ‘Yes, all initiations are a form of death. One’s consciousness of the world dies and one enters the realm of the spirit, the realm of the dead, as you have intimated. But do you know this: that every time one goes to sleep one also enters the realm of the dead, leaving behind one’s personality to enter a labyrinth, a hall of mirrors, a universe of galleries, wherein lies a record of all the personalities that one has been through the aeons?’ He watched me, measuring the effect of his words. ‘Tell me, what do you think has brought you here?’

  ‘You invited me.’

  ‘No,’ he said with a curt tone that once again caught me by surprise. ‘You invited yourself!’

  ‘If this were so, then it would mean that I am you.’

  He considered it. ‘Do you find me familiar?’

  I looked at him. ‘Are you asking me if I feel a sense of déjà vu?’

  ‘Not as it’s understood in the usual sense. Do you think that my sitting here and your sitting there, the fire, the lagoon, this evening, this old monastery, this library, this moment, could have been created by you?’

  I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Think of how meticulous you are in creating the milieu of your books, down to the smallest detail. Now imagine you could do the same thing in the realm of death; that you could create what would surround you in your next life; this would make you the writer of your own story.’

  ‘You’re referring to reincarnation?’

  ‘Yes. You are here at this point because centuries ago you did something which made this moment possible, and this moment will lead to another moment, and so on. Like the “Garden of Forking Paths” – every decision creates a fork in the path of your futures.’

  He paused, giving me time to digest his philosophy. ‘Think of it in ordinary terms: suppose someone calls you and this makes you late and you miss a train that catches fire, in which many people are killed. What do you do?’