CHAPTER 82
Pic de Soularac
FRIDAY 8 JULY 2005
The thin robe provided little protection from the damp chill of the chamber. Alice shivered as she slowly turned her head.
To her right was the altar. The only light came from an old-fashioned oil lamp, standing in its centre, sending shadows running up the sloping walls. It was enough to see the symbol of the labyrinth on the rock behind, large and imposing in the confined space.
She sensed there were other people nearby. Alice looked down to her right and nearly cried out loud as she caught her first sight of Shelagh. She was lying curled up on the stone floor like an animal, thin, lifeless, defeated, the evidence of her mistreatment on her skin. Alice couldn’t see whether or not she was breathing.
Please God let her still be alive.
Alice slowly became accustomed to the flickering light. She turned her head slightly and saw Audric in the same place as before. He was still tethered by the rope to a ring set in the floor. His white hair formed a kind of halo around his head. He was as still as a statue carved on a tomb.
As if he could sense her eyes on him, he caught her eye, and smiled.
Forgetting for a moment that he must be angry with her for charging in when she’d promised to stay outside, she gave a weak smile.
Just like Shelagh said.
Then she realised something was different about him. She lowered her eyes to Audric’s hands, fanned out against the white of the robe.
The ring is missing.
‘Shelagh’s here,’ she whispered under her breath. ‘You were right.’
He nodded.
We have to do something,’ she hissed.
He gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head and glanced to the far side of the chamber. She followed his gaze.
‘Will!’ she whispered in disbelief. Relief rushed through her, and something else, followed by pity for the state of him. His hair was matted with dried blood, one of his eyes was swollen and she could see cuts on his face, his hands.
But he’s here. With me.
At the sound of her voice, Will opened his eyes. He peered into the darkness. Then, as he saw her, recognised her, a half-smile came to his battered lips.
For a moment, they stared at each other, holding one another’s gaze.
Mon cor. My love. The realisation gave her courage.
The mournful howl of the wind in the tunnel intensified, mixed now with the murmur of a voice. A monotonous chant, not quite singing. Alice couldn’t work out where it was coming from. Fragments of oddly familiar words and phrases echoed through the cave until the air was saturated with the sound: montanhas, mountains; Noblesa, nobility; libres, books; graal, grail. Alice started to feel dizzy, intoxicated by the words that clamoured like the bells of a cathedral in her head.
Just as she thought she could take no more, the chanting stopped. Quickly, quietly, the melody faded away, leaving nothing but a memory.
A single voice floated into the watchful silence. A woman’s voice, clear and precise.
In the beginning of time,
In the land of Egypt,
The master of secrets,
Gave words and scripts.
Alice tore her eyes from Will’s face and turned towards the sound. Marie-Cécile appeared from the shadows behind the altar like an apparition. As she stood before the labyrinth, her green eyes, painted with black and gold, sparkled like emeralds in the flickering lamp. Her hair, held back from her face by a golden band with a diamond motif on the forehead, shone like jet. Her elegant arms were bare, except for matching amulets of twisted metal.
She was carrying the three books, one on top of the other, in her hands. She placed them in a row on the altar, beside a plain, earthenware bowl. As she reached out to adjust the position of the oil lamp on the altar, Alice registered, almost without realising it, that Marie-Cécile was wearing Audric’s ring on her left thumb.
It looks wrong on her hand.
Alice found herself immersed deep in a past she did not remember. The vellum should be dry and brittle to the touch, like dying leaves on the tree in autumn. But she could almost feel the leather ties between her own fingers, soft and flexible, even though they ought to be stiff through the long years of disuse, as if the memory was written in her bones and blood. She remembered how the covers shimmered, shifted colour under the light.
She could see the image of a tiny gold chalice, no bigger than a ten-pence piece, shining like a jewel on the heavy cream parchment. On the following pages, lines of ornate script. She heard Marie-Cécile speaking into the gloom and, at the same time, behind her eyes she saw the red and blue and yellow and gold letters. The Book of Potions.
Images of two-dimensional figures, animals and birds flooded into her head. She could picture a sheet of parchment, thicker than the other pages but different – translucent, yellow. It was papyrus, the weave of the leaves apparent. It was covered with identical symbols as at the beginning of the book, except this time tiny drawings of plants, numbers and measurements were interspersed between them.
She was thinking of the second book now, the Book of Numbers. On the first page was a picture of the labyrinth itself, rather than a chalice. Without realising she was doing so, Alice looked around the chamber once more, this time seeing the space through different eyes, unconsciously verifying its shape and proportions.
She looked back to the altar. Her memory of the third book was the strongest. Shimmering in gold on the first page was the ankh, the ancient Egyptian symbol of life, familiar now the world over. Between the leather-covered wooden boards of the Book of Words were blank pages, like a white guard surrounding the papyrus buried in the centre of the book. The hieroglyphs were dense and unyielding. Row after row of tightly drawn symbols covered the entire sheet. There were no splashes of colour, no indication of where one word ended and the next began.
Concealed within this was the incantation.
Alice opened her eyes and sensed Audric looking at her.
A look of understanding flashed between them. The words were coming back to her, slipping quietly from the dusty corners of her mind. She was momentarily transported out of herself, for a fraction of a second, looking down on the scene from above.
Eight hundred years ago Alaïs had said these words. And Audric had heard them.
The truth will make us free.
Nothing had changed, yet she was suddenly no longer afraid.
A sound from the altar drew her attention. The stillness passed and the world of the present came rushing back. And, with it, fear.
Marie-Cécile took up the earthenware bowl, small enough to cup between her hands. From beside it she took a small knife with a dull worn blade. She raised her long, white arms above her head.
‘Dintrar,’ she called. Enter.
François-Baptiste stepped from the darkness of the tunnel. His eyes swept around his surroundings like a searchlight, skimming over Audric, then Alice, then coming to rest on Will. Alice saw the triumph on the boy’s face and knew that Francois-Baptiste had inflicted the injuries on Will.
I’ll not let you hurt him this time.
Then his gaze moved on. He paused a moment at the sight of the three books laid out in a row on the altar, surprised or relieved, Alice couldn’t tell, then his eyes came to rest on the face of his mother.
Despite the distance, Alice could feel the tension between them.
A flicker of a smile played across Marie-Cécile’s face as she stepped down from the altar, the knife and the bowl in her hands. Her robe shimmered like spun moonshine in the flickering light of the candles as she moved through the chamber. Alice could smell the subtle trace of her perfume in the air, light beneath the heavy aroma of burning oil in the lamp.
François-Baptiste too started to move. He came down the steps until he was standing behind Will.
Marie-Cécile stopped in front of him and whispered something to Will, too quiet for Alice to hear. Although François-Baptiste’s smile stayed in place, she saw the anger in his face as he leaned forward, lifted Will’s bound hands and offered his arm to Marie-Cécile.
Alice flinched as Marie-Cécile made a single incision between Will’s wrist and elbow. He winced and she could see the shock in his eyes, but he made no sound.
Marie-Cécile held the bowl to catch five drops of blood.
She repeated the process with Audric, then came to a halt in front of Alice. She could see the excitement in Marie-Cécile’s face as she traced the point of the blade along the white underside of Alice’s arm, along the line of the old wound. Then with the precision of a surgeon with a scalpel, she inserted the knife into the skin and pressed the tip down, slowly, until her scar split open again.
The pain took her by surprise, an ache, not a sharp sensation. Alice felt warm at first, then quickly cold and numb. She stared mesmerised by the drops of blood falling, one by one, into the oddly pale mixture in the bowl.
Then it was over. François-Baptiste released her and followed his mother towards the altar. Marie-Cécile repeated the procedure with her son, then positioned herself between the altar and the labyrinth.
She placed the bowl in the centre and drew the knife across her own skin, watching as her own blood trickled down her arm.
The mingling of bloods.
A flash of understanding went through Alice. The Grail belonged to all faiths and none. Christian, Jew, Moslem. Five guardians, chosen for their character, their deeds, not their bloodline. All were equal.
Alice watched Marie-Cécile reach forward and slip something out from between the pages of each of the books in turn. She held up the third one. A sheet of paper. No, not paper, papyrus. As Marie-Cécile held it up to the light, the weave of the reeds was clear. The symbol was clear.
The ankh, the symbol of life.
Marie-Cécile lifted the bowl to her lips and drank. When it was empty, she replaced the bowl with both hands and looked out over the chamber until she had fixed Audric with her gaze. It seemed to Alice she was challenging him to make her stop.
Now she pulled the ring from her thumb and turned to the stone labyrinth, disturbing the hushed air. As the lamplight flickered behind her, sending shadows leaping up the walls, Alice saw, in the shadows in the carved rock, two shapes that she had never before noticed.
Hidden within the outline of the labyrinth, the shadow of the shape of the ankh and the outline of a cup were clearly identifiable.
Alice heard a sharp click, as if a key was being inserted into a lock. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then, from deep in the wall, there was the noise of something shifting, stone against stone.
Marie-Cécile stepped back. Alice saw that a small opening a little bigger than the books had been revealed at the centre of the labyrinth. A compartment.
Words and phrases sprang into her mind, Audric’s explanation and her own investigations all mixed up together.
At the centre of the labyrinth is enlightenment, at the centre lies understanding. Alice thought about the Christian pilgrims walking the Chemin de Jérusalem in the nave of Chartres Cathedral, walking the ever-decreasing spirals of the labyrinth in search of illumination.
Here, in the Grail labyrinth, the light — literally — was at the heart of things.
Alice watched as Marie-Cécile took the lantern from the altar and hung it in the alcove. It was a perfect fit. Straight away it brightened and the chamber was flooded with light.
Marie-Cécile lifted a papyrus from one of the books on the altar and slid it into a slot at the front of the alcove. A little of the lamplight was lost and the cave darkened.
She spun round and stared at Audric, her words breaking the spell.
‘You said I would see something,’ she shouted.
He raised his amber eyes to hers. Alice willed him to remain silent, but she knew he would not. For reasons she did not understand, Audric was determined to let the ceremony run its course.
‘The true incantation is revealed only when the three papyri are laid one on top of the other. Only then, in the play of light and shadow, will the words that must be spoken, rather than the words that must be silent, be revealed.’
Alice was shivering. She understood the cold was inside her, as if her body warmth was bleeding out of her, but she couldn’t control herself. Marie-Cécile turned the three parchments around in her fingers.
Which way round?’
‘Release me,’ Audric said in his calm, quiet voice. ‘Release me, then take up your position in the centre of the chamber. I will show you.’
She hesitated, then nodded to François-Baptiste.
‘Maman, je ne pense — ’
‘Do what you’re told,’ she snapped.
In silence, François-Baptiste sliced through the rope holding Audric to the floor, then stepped back.
Marie-Cécile reached behind her and picked up the knife.
‘If you do anything,’ Marie-Cécile said, pointing it at Alice, as Audric walked slowly up the chamber, ‘I’ll kill her. Understand?’ She gestured to where François-Baptiste was standing by Will. ‘Or he will.’
‘I understand.’
He darted a glance at Shelagh lying motionless on the floor, then whispered to Alice. ‘I am right?’ he whispered, suddenly doubtful. ‘The Grail will not come to her?’
Although Audric was looking at her, Alice felt he was asking his question of somebody else. Someone with whom he had already shared this experience.
Despite herself, Alice found she knew the answer. She was certain. She smiled, giving him the reassurance he needed.
‘It will not come,’ she said under her breath.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Marie-Cécile shouted.
Audric stepped forward.
‘You must take each of the three papyri,’ he said, ‘then place them in front of the flame.’
‘You do it.’