CHAPTER 48
RENNES-LE-CHÂTEAU
Hal was the first to break away. His blue eyes were bright with anticipation, perhaps surprise too. His face was a little flushed.
Meredith also stepped back. The strength of their raw attraction to one another, now the emotion of the moment had passed, left them both a little awkward.
‘Anyway,’ he said, pushing his hands into his pockets.
Meredith grinned. ‘Anyway …’
Hal turned to wooden gates at right angles to the path and pushed. He frowned, tried again. Meredith could hear the bolts rattling.
‘It’s closed,’ he said. ‘It’s unbelievable, but the museum’s closed. I’m sorry. I should have called ahead.’
They looked at one another. Then they both burst out laughing.
‘The spa in Rennes-les-Bains was closed too,’ she said. ‘Until April thirtieth.’
The same lock of unruly hair had fallen forward. Meredith’s fingers ached to push it back from his face, but she kept her hands at her sides.
‘At least the church is open,’ he said.
Meredith joined him, very aware of his physical presence now. He seemed to fill the entire path.
He pointed up at the triangular porch above the door.
‘That inscription – TERRIBILIS EST LOCUS ISTE – is another reason all the conspiracy theories surrounding Rennes-le-Château took hold,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘The phrase actually translates as “this place is awe-inspiring”, terribilis in an Old Testament sense rather than “terrible” in a modern sense, but you can imagine how it’s been interpreted.’
Meredith did look, but it was the other, partially legible, inscription on the apex that she was concentrating on. IN HOC SIGNO VINCES. Constantine again, the Christian emperor of Byzantium. The same inscription as on Henri Boudet’s memorial in Rennes-les-Bains. She pictured Laura’s spread of cards on the table. The Emperor was one of the major arcana, near the Magician and La Prêtresse, at the beginning of the deck. And the password she’d typed to access the internet to pick up her mail . . .
‘Who came up with the password for the hotel network?’ she asked.
Hal looked surprised at the non sequitur, but answered all the same.
‘My uncle,’ he said without hesitation. ‘Dad wasn’t into computers.’ He reached out and took her hand. ‘Shall we?’
The first thing that struck Meredith as they walked into the church was how very small it was, like it had been built on a three-quarter scale. The perspectives seemed all wrong.
On the wall to the right were handwritten notices, some French, some awkward English. Piped choral music, some kind of mediocre plainsong, filtered in over thin silver speakers suspended in the corners.
‘They’ve sanitised the place,’ Hal said in a low voice. ‘To counteract all the rumours of mysterious treasure and secret societies, they’ve tried to inject a Catholic message into everything. Like this, for example.’ He tapped one of the signs. ‘Look. “Dans cette église, le trésor c’est vous.” In this church, the treasure is you.’
But Meredith was staring at the stoup for holy water on the immediate left of the door. The bénitier was balanced on the shoulders of a three-foot-high statue of a devil. The malevolent red face, the twisted body, the unnerving, piercing blue eyes. She’d seen the demon before. At least, an image of him. Lying on the table in Paris as Laura spread out the major arcana at the beginning of the reading.
Le Diable. Card XV of the Bousquet Tarot.
‘That’s Asmodeus,’ said Hal. ‘The traditional guardian of treasure, keeper of secrets, and builder of the Temple of Solomon.’
Meredith touched the grimacing demon, which felt cold and chalky beneath her fingers. She looked at his hands, clawed and twisted, and couldn’t help glancing back through the open door to where the statue of Notre Dame of Lourdes stood immobile upon the pillar.
She gave a small shake of her head and raised her eyes to the frieze above. A tableau of four angels, each making one part of the sign of the cross, and Constantine’s words yet again, although this time in French. The colours were faded and chipped, as if the angels were fighting a losing battle.
On the base, two basilisks framed a red inset containing the letters BS.
‘The initials could stand for Bérenger Saunière,’ said Hal. ‘Or for Boudet and Saunière, or for La Blanque and Le Salz, two local rivers that meet at a pool nearby known as le bénitier.’
‘The two priests knew each other well?’ she asked.
‘By all accounts, yes. Boudet was a mentor to the younger Saunière. In the early days of Boudet’s ministry, when he spent some months in the parish of Durban nearby, he also became friendly with a third priest, Antoine Gélis, who subsequently took over the parish at Coustaussa.’
‘I drove by there yesterday,’ Meredith said. ‘It looked ruined.’
‘The castle is. The village is inhabited, though it’s tiny. No more than a handful of houses. Gélis died in somewhat strange circumstances. Murdered on Hallowe’en 1897.’
‘They never found out who was responsible?’
‘Don’t think so, no.’ Hal stopped in front of another plaster statue. ‘St Anthony, the Hermit,’ he said. ‘Famous Egyptian saint of the third, fourth century.’
This information drove any thoughts of Gélis out of Meredith’s mind.
The Hermit. Another card from the major arcana.
The evidence to prove that the Bousquet Tarot had been painted in the area was overwhelming. This tiny church dedicated to Mary Magdalene was testament to that. The only thing Meredith wasn’t clear about was how the Domaine de la Cade fitted in.
And how, if at all, this connects with my family?
Meredith forced herself to concentrate on the matter in hand. No sense muddling everything up together. What if Hal’s father was right in his suggestion that everything in Rennes-le-Château had been constructed precisely to draw attention away from its sister village down in the valley? There was a logic to it, but Meredith needed to know more before jumping to any conclusions.
‘Have you seen enough?’ Hal asked. ‘Or do you want to stick around longer?’
Still thinking, Meredith shook her head. ‘I’m done.’
They didn’t talk much as they walked back up to the car. The gravel on the path crunched loudly under their feet, like tightly packed snow. It had gotten cooler since they’d been inside and the air was heavy with the smell of bonfires.
Hal unlocked the car, then looked back over his shoulder.
‘Three corpses were found buried in the grounds of the Villa Béthania in the 1950s,’ he said. ‘All were male, aged between thirty and forty, and they had all been shot, although one of the bodies at least had been very badly mauled by wild animals. The official verdict was that they’d been killed during the war – the Nazis occupied some of this part of France, and the Resistance was pretty active down here. But local belief is that the bodies were older, end of the nineteenth century, that they were connected with the fire at the Domaine de la Cade and, possibly, also the murder of the priest in Coustaussa.’
Meredith looked at Hal over the roof of the car. ‘Was the fire started deliberately? I read it was.’
Hal shrugged. ‘Local history is sketchy on the point, but the general consensus is that it was.’
‘But if these three men were involved – in either the fire or the murder – who do people think killed them?’
At that moment Hal’s cell phone rang. He flipped the lid and glanced at the number. His eyes sharpened.
‘I need to take this,’ he said, covering the speaker. ‘Sorry.’
Inwardly Meredith groaned with frustration, but there was nothing she could do. ‘Of course, go ahead,’ she said.
She climbed into the car and watched as Hal wandered over to a fir tree near the Tour Magdala to talk.
No such thing as coincidence. Everything happens for a reason.
She leant back against the headrest and ran through everything that had happened, the sequence of events from the moment she’d stepped off the train at the Gare du Nord. No, after that. From the moment she set foot on the colourful painted steps that led up to Laura’s rooms.
Meredith pulled her notebook out of her purse and glanced over her notes, looking for answers. The real question was, which was the story she was chasing down here, which the echo? She was in Rennes-les-Bains searching for her own family history. Did the cards fit in with that in any way? Or was it a completely different, unrelated story? Of academic interest, but nothing to do with her? Did she even have a connection with the Domaine de la Cade? The Verniers?
What had Laura said? Meredith flipped back through her notes until she found it.
‘The timeline is confused. The sequence seems to be jumping backwards and forwards, as if there is some blurring of events. Things slipping between past and present.’
She glanced through the window at Hal, who was now walking back towards the car, holding his cell clenched in his hand. The other was dug deep into his pocket.
Where does he fit into all this?
‘Hi,’ she said, as he opened the door. ‘Is everything OK?’
He got in. ‘Sorry, Meredith. I was going to suggest we went for lunch, but something’s come up that I need to sort out first.’
‘Something good, by the look of it?’ she said.
‘The police commissariat handling the case in Couiza have finally agreed to let me have sight of the file into my father’s accident. I’ve been asking for this for weeks, so it’s a step forward.’
‘That’s great, Hal,’ hoping it would be and that he wasn’t getting his hopes up for no reason.
‘So I can either drop you back at the hotel,’ he continued, ‘or you could come with me and we’ll find somewhere to eat later. Only problem with that is I’m not sure how long I’ll be. They don’t always move fast down here.’
For a moment Meredith was tempted to tag along. Give Hal moral support. But she figured it was something he needed to do on his own. Besides, she needed to focus on her own stuff for a while, not let herself get sucked into Hal’s problems.
‘Sounds like you might be a while,’ she said. ‘If you don’t mind dropping me back at the hotel on your way, that would be fine.’
She was gratified to see Hal’s expression falter, just for a moment.
‘It’s probably better I go alone in any case, since they are doing me a favour.’
‘That’s what I guessed,’ she said, briefly touching his hand.
Hal fired the ignition and reversed the car.
‘Then what about later?’ he said, as he negotiated the narrow street out of Rennes-le-Château. ‘We could meet for a drink. Dinner, even? If you’ve not got plans.’
‘Sure,’ she smiled, keeping it cool. ‘Dinner would be good.’
