‘Who is he working for?’
‘I don’t know, but Inspecteur Beliere saw a card from Serinus when it fell out of my wallet and he said something that I should have known . . . serinus is the Latin genus name for the canary.’
‘The bird?’
‘Yes, but I think it’s a codename. There is a man called Canaris, he is the head of Military Intelligence at Gestapo headquarters. Everyone is afraid of him, including Himmler. He has files on everyone. He may be the one who contacted me.’
‘So he’s working for Hitler?’
‘Somehow I don’t think so.’
‘But . . . why would he be working against his own government?’
‘I don’t know.’ Rahn felt nauseated and opened the window to let the cold air wash over his face. He should have left Arques yesterday, now it was too late and things were well out of hand. If this was a script then he wanted to register his complaint: not only was he the most unlikely protagonist but also the plot was also too complex to be believable! He rubbed his face, feeling anxious and overwhelmed.
‘You don’t look so good, why don’t you try to get some sleep?’
He sighed, realising that she was right. He put his head back and his hat over his face and tried to clear his mind of his worries, allowing the motion of the car to lull him to sleep.
ISLAND OF THE DEAD
22
The Living Dead
‘Strange destiny, That deals with life and death as with a play!’
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
Venice, 2012
The light was descending now behind the cypresses.
‘So, this is true about Le Serpent Rouge?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ the Writer of Letters answered. ‘We should move inside, it is getting rather cold.’
At this point I saw a figure. It was the old monk I had met earlier, the one who warned me to leave, walking towards the cemetery in the twilight. He looked askance in our direction and continued on his way hurriedly.
‘He seems frightened,’ I said.
The Writer of Letters observed this with a nod and said, ‘He’s always afraid.’
‘What does he fear?’
‘I think he has been among the dead so long he fears the living. Have you heard of the living dead?’
‘No.’
‘They are souls caught between two worlds . . . vulnerable souls.’
‘In what way are they vulnerable?’
‘There is a mystery about those who in life either died violently or too early, or those who were connected to particular groups and had sworn oaths while alive. The living can use these souls because they retain certain abilities after death, one could say the future is open to them. This means they can inspire the living in scientific and artistic endeavours that are ahead of their time, but unfortunately these souls are also susceptible to being used by evil-minded men during séances or black magic rituals. Himmler was one of those who sought to use the dead – he understood the enormous power that could be harnessed through them. That is why he wanted Le Serpent Rouge.’
‘The old monk told me no one stays in the monastery anymore. He said it is prohibited. Is this true?’ I ventured.
‘Of course. To his mind only the dead should have intercourse with the dead. He sees this intercourse between the living and the dead and he flees from it.’
‘Why doesn’t he leave here and go somewhere more . . . alive?’
‘It is too late for him, I’m afraid,’ the man replied. ‘He has nowhere else to go. In a way, he has condemned himself to this place, it is his choice, his particular destiny.’ He stood then. ‘Tomorrow is All Saints’ Day and the day after that is All Souls’ Day, the Day of the Dead. Two particularly difficult days for him,’ he explained. ‘On the Day of the Dead, the dead are said to return to visit their families. All day the priests in Venice wear black, inside the churches the altars are similarly draped and the faithful pray for the souls of their departed, in the hope of shortening their time in Purgatory. Our monk usually goes into his cell until it is over. But we should be going inside, as I said, it is getting cold.’
He led the way back to the library and our seats before the fire.
‘This brings us to the next gallery,’ he said, when we were comfortable.
‘The middle ages again?’
‘Yes, we’ve seen the galleries of Matteu and Isobel, and now it is time to see the gallery of Bertrand Marty. This is now six years later, 1244, and Matteu is at Montsegur during the siege. He must safeguard the Cathar treasure and also a child – the child of Isobel. Shall we begin?’
23
The Treasure
‘The treasure is lost,’ said Miss Morstan, calmly. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Treasure of Agra’
Montsegur, 1244
The siege of Montsegur lasted eleven difficult months and during it, Matteu had come and gone by the secret route, either bringing them news of the outside world or escorting soldiery to help them fend off the Catholics. When their last defence, the eastern Barbican, was taken, it was decided by the lords of Montsegur to surrender; the Catholics gave them fifteen days to make their preparations to leave the mountain. Some would choose life in prison and some would choose death on the pyre. Matteu’s destiny was a different one. He had the task of taking the Cathar treasure and Isobel’s child by way of the secret passage out of the fortress to a safe haven. It would be an onerous and dangerous task in a country full of spies and Crusaders. The fate of the Cathar religion was in his hands and still it did not sit well with him to leave his friends. Many of them had decided not to recant their faith and would rather walk with courage into that great pyre which the Crusaders were constructing for them.
The afternoon before his leave-taking he came across Bertrand Marty. Over the years he had come to know the shy bishop a little. He was younger than Matteu by one or two years, and yet he had always seemed older and wiser. He had often wondered what it must be like to be such a man, full of the wisdom and the power of grace. When he saw him now he fell to his knees before him, waiting for his blessing, but Bishop Marty asked him to rise and told him he was not worthy of his adoration.
‘But you are a Cathar Bishop, a perfect!’ Matteu said to him.
‘Who in the world can call himself perfect?’ The bishop answered and asked that Matteu follow him to the gate, which these days stood open to the expanse of the mountains. He gestured for him to sit down on a rock, and there they remained side-by-side, quiet, staring out for a long time, until the bishop spoke. He told Matteu he would say something to him about his songs and Matteu, knowing that the bishop had never liked songs of the Grail, braced himself for one of his invectives.
‘No . . . no,’ Marty said with a laugh, noticing Matteu’s face. ‘I am not going to rebuke you! I wanted to say that I have grown some sense of these songs of the Grail that you troubadours sing.’
Matteu couldn’t believe it; his face opened up in a smile. ‘You do?’
‘Yes, I think I know what it is, this thing called the Grail.’
‘Well then: is it a stone or a cup?’
‘I think it may mean many things,’ he said. ‘One might say it was Jesus, who came to Earth to be the vessel for the Lord; or the soul of every man, the soul full of faith in Christ; or the Earth and all its creatures, for the Earth has taken up the body and the blood of Christ.’
Matteu fell silent and thoughtful, looking at it for a long time with his face to the dying sun. These were good answers.
‘Do you know, I dream that it is a woman,’ Matteu said. ‘A woman holding her dead son. Sometimes I think I see it when the moon is only a sickle. Sometimes, it looks like that to me as well, like a vessel.’
Bishop Marty nodded as if he were privy to some knowledge he was not going to share with him. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that is a good likeness.’
Matteu grew full of enthusiasm. ‘You know, I think after this I shall sing a new song – I shall sing of how once u
pon a time a castle of the Grail was threatened by the Devil’s armies. I will tell how at the time of the greatest danger a dove flew down from the Heavens to split open the summit of Bidorta with its beak so that Esclarmonde de Foix, the angel keeper of the Grail, could throw the Grail into the heart of that mountain to keep it safe! Do you think they will look for it a long time, thinking that it is in the mountains?’
He smiled. ‘Yes, I think they will.’
‘They may burn all the pure ones,’ Matteu said, ‘but no one will forget them because of my songs. I will sing how Esclarmonde turned into a dove and flew from the very top of the keep, towards the mountains of the land of Prester John. And that is why her grave will never be found, because she never died.’
The bishop looked at Matteu. ‘But Esclarmonde has been dead many years . . .’
‘Yes, of course,’ he said, ‘but just between you and me, I feel her presence every now and again, in the night. Sometimes I think she whispers songs into my ears – she is so beautiful!’ He remembered something then. ‘Do you recall how you once told me that when you were a child you escaped from the Crusaders? How a beautiful woman woke you in the night and told you to hide in the forest?’
The bishop paused. ‘Yes, I remember it.’
‘Perhaps that was the Goddess herself?’
He smiled. ‘Yes, perhaps it was.’
They sat for a time like that. They could hear the sounds of the army making revelry below. Matteu realised he must soon go.
‘Matteu, I wondered if I could ask you to take something else away with you?’
‘What is it?’
‘This.’ He handed Matteu a roll of parchments. ‘It is a wisdom I have learnt while I have been on this mountain. It belongs with the child.’
Matteu took the roll and put it inside his pouch.
‘Go with God, Matteu,’ Bishop Marty said.
Matteu nodded full of sadness. ‘And you, Bishop!’
Afterwards, Matteu took the quiet child and the treasure and together with four perfects made his way through the Porteil Chimney to the secret track. They travelled all night over that path with nothing to guide them but the waning moon, and came to the summit of Bidorta before sunrise.
While the child rested, Matteu and the others made a great fire, big enough to be seen from the field below. When the sun rose over the world, casting its rays over the spines of the dragon mountains, he went to look to the valley below. He could see one great pyre on which many of his friends would soon meet their death. He remembered Bertrand Marty and a deep sadness overwhelmed him. He knew that the bishop would be looking up to the summit seeking the sign that the child and the treasure were safe and that when he saw it he would be thankful. Matteu was weary. He had seen too much death. He would not wait for the Catholics to light the pyre; he did not want to hear the screams of his friends.
He said, ‘We go!’
24
Magic Squares
‘Not far from here,’ said the cousin, ‘is a hermitage where a hermit has his residence.’
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
En route to Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet, 1938
Rahn was woken by a sudden jolt and opened his eyes. He was in the Tourster with Eva driving along a narrow road, perilously close to a low stone wall, the only thing between them and the gorges below.
‘Something is happening to the car!’ Eva said.
Rahn turned around and tried to focus his eyes. There was nothing behind them, nothing beside them. Ahead, the narrow road seemed to wind its way around one bend after the other. He felt another great thump then, which sent the Tourster rumbling towards the precipice. Eva pushed down on the brakes with all her might but the car had a mind of its own.
‘I’ve got no brakes. Do something!’ she shouted at Rahn. As she finished her words, however, a sharp corner sent the car skating over the gravel. Rahn braced himself, certain the car was going to mount that low stone wall, or break through it. Either way, they would be finished. But the wall held them and there was a crunching and scraping and tearing at the body and tyres of the car before the curve reversed and the Tourster left the wall and careered towards the mountainside.
‘Change to a lower gear, for God’s sake,’ he told Eva.
‘Can’t you see I’ve been trying to. It’s stuck!’
The collision with the wall had caused the Tourster to wobble for a time on its wheels like a drunk running out of steam. Eva seemed to have regained some control until another jolt sent them hurtling towards an approaching bend. She put her foot down on the brakes again as hard as she could but they remained useless.
Rahn had an idea.
‘Steer along the rock wall – stay away from the edge.’ He grabbed hold of the hand brake and pulled on it with all his might. The back wheels locked up and the car began to slide, scraping along the hillside with a terrible screech until the engine stalled, bringing the Tourster to a noisy and unhealthy-sounding stop.
Eva got out of the car with an air of calm annoyance. She had a bruise on her forehead and scratches here and there but she was essentially unhurt. She helped Rahn climb out. His many aches and pains seemed to have cancelled each other out and he stood beside Eva, who seemed to be looking at the mangled Tourster in disbelief.
‘Something took hold of that auto-car!’ Eva said. ‘I had no control! Someone or something was driving us straight into those walls. Black magic perhaps?’ she said sarcastically, but Rahn thought there might be an element of truth in it.
‘Well?’ She was staring at him from under that straight-cut fringe with a look of expectation.
Rahn liked her for not being hysterical; at this point he couldn’t have coped with a panic-stricken woman since he was feeling rather frenetic himself. But there was something singularly annoying about her unruffled attitude and her calculated audacity.
‘If Sancho Panza were here,’ Rahn gave back, ‘he would say: “whether the pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the pitcher, it’s bad luck for the pitcher . . . ” and it was bad luck for the Tourster, I’m afraid.’
‘And are you going to take a look at it?’
He straightened his aching shoulders and, feeling put on the spot, walked to the car. It looked as if some great beast had clawed it. He resolved that it was irreparably damaged, at least for the time being. He opened the hood and peered inside. Everything seemed to be in order, as far as he could see, but in truth he knew almost nothing about cars and the gesture was in the spirit of creating the illusion that he was in control of things, as any man should be. He closed the hood again and wiped the grease from his hands with an air of authority. He was about to deliver his diagnosis when she cut through the entire charade with her sharp, sarcastic tone; hands on waist, eyebrows raised.
‘You don’t know anything about auto-cars, do you?’
‘As a matter of fact . . .’ he began, and was saved from a complete loss of face by the sound of a horse and cart coming around the hairpin bend. He brightened and said, ‘As a matter of fact I can hear our taxi now!’
He waved the man down and asked if he could take them to Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet.
‘Are you just going to leave the car here?’ the girl interjected.
‘What else shall we do with it, Mademoiselle Cros? Perhaps you feel like getting behind the wheel again?’
She huffed, defeated, and Rahn repressed a smile, feeling he’d redressed the imbalance.
The man asked them what business they had in Saint-Paulde-Fenouillet and Rahn told him they were on their way to see the priest.
‘No, you’re not,’ the man said. ‘At this time of the year, Abbé Grassaud is not at his presbytery but at the hermitage. I am more than glad to take you there—’ he paused, ‘—for a fee.’
It was with a whistle then that he set off with Rahn and Eva in the back, bouncing among baskets full of produce. But it was only a short ride before the road widened and they saw a small sign and a level area. The man let them
down and told Rahn to ring the bell. He said someone from the hermitage would hear it and come to greet them.
The bell’s clang resonated over the gorges and it seemed a long moment before they saw a monk in a coarse grey cassock making his way along the overgrown path to them. When he arrived, puffing for his efforts, he revealed himself to be young and friendly and when Rahn told him whom they had come to see, he smiled.
‘Ah yes, the abbé is here. But it will soon be time for the service, and if you want to talk to him we had better hurry.’ He looked at the girl fleetingly, fearfully, and bent his eyes to his sandals. ‘I’m afraid it isn’t possible for a woman to enter. I’m sorry, but women are welcome during Easter and the time of pilgrimage only.’
Rahn looked at the young man gravely. ‘It is a delicate matter – the mademoiselle is Abbé Cros’s niece. Unfortunately, he died yesterday and she has come to tell Abbé Grassaud the news. You see, they were good friends.’
The monk looked a little embarrassed. ‘How sad. I’m sorry for your loss, but it does not change things – we must abide by our rules.’
‘Go on, I’ll be all right,’ Eva said, emphatically. ‘I’ll just wait here.’
Rahn hesitated. ‘You’d better stay out of sight then, mademoiselle. I won’t be long.’ He didn’t like leaving her; so many strange things had happened these last hours and no matter how annoying she was, she was still only a woman and therefore vulnerable. Seeing no other way around it he relented, following the monk over the narrow rocky path while looking over his shoulder now and again until they reached a series of buildings that seemed to be built into the mountain, penetrating deep into the natural caves behind them. Rahn needed a brandy, his head hurt and the bee was resting, but he thought that now and again he could hear the occasional buzzing through the novice’s commentary on the history of the hermitage.
The Sixth Key Page 17
