CHAPTER 22
RENNES-LES-BAINS
By a quarter past four, having taken in the modest sights of Couiza, Léonie and Anatole were standing on the concourse in front of the station, waiting while the cabman loaded the luggage into the courrier publique.
Unlike the conveyances Léonie had noticed in Carcassonne, with black leather seats and open tops much like the landaus that drove up and down the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, the courrier was an altogether more rustic form of transport. Indeed, it resembled a farmhouse cart, with two wooden bench seats running up each side facing inwards, painted red. There were no cushions and it was open to the sides, with a piece of dark canvas, stretched over a thin metal frame, for shade.
The horses, both greys, wore white embroidered fringes over their ears and eyes to keep the insects away.
The other passengers included an elderly husband and his much younger wife, from Toulouse. Two elderly birdlike sisters twittered to one another in low voices beneath their hats.
Léonie was pleased to see that their lunch companion from the Grand Café Guilhem, Dr Gabignaud, was to take the same carriage. Frustratingly, Maître Fromilhague kept Gabignaud close to him. Every few minutes he drew out his watch from his waistcoat pocket by the chain, and tapped the glass face as if suspicious it had stopped working, before putting it away again.
‘Clearly a man with pressing matters to attend to,’ Anatole whispered. ‘He’ll be driving the carriage himself soon if we don’t look out!’
As soon as everyone was settled, the driver climbed up to his cab. He perched himself on top of the sundry collection of suitcases and valises, his legs spread wide, and looked up at the clock on the front of the railway station building. When it struck the half-hour, he flicked his whip and the carriage jerked away.
Within moments, they were on the open road, heading west out of Couiza. The route ran along the river valley between high hills on either side. The bitter winter and wet spring that punished most of France for so much of the year had, here, created an Eden. Lush pastures, green and fertile, rather than sun-scorched earth, thickly wooded hillsides of fir and holm oak, hazel and Mediterranean chestnut and beech. High on a hill to their left, Léonie glimpsed the outline of a ruined castle. An old wooden sign at the side of the road announced it to be the village of Coustaussa.
Gabignaud was seated next to Anatole and was pointing out landmarks. Léonie caught only fragments of their conversation over the crescendo of the wheels on the road and the rattling harness of the horses.
‘And that?’ Anatole said.
Léonie followed her brother’s pointing finger. High on a rocky outcrop to the right, well above the road, she could just discern a tiny hillside village, shimmering in the fierce afternoon heat, no more than a collection of dwellings clinging to the precipitous side of the mountain.
‘Rennes-le-Château,’ replied Gabignaud. ‘You would not believe it to look at it now, but it once was the ancient Visigoth capital of the region, Rhedae.’
‘What caused its decline?’
‘Charlemagne, the Crusade against the Albigensians, bandits from Spain, plague, the relentless and unforgiving march of history. Now it’s just another forgotten mountain village. Rather in the shadow of Rennes-les-Bains.’ He paused. ‘Having said that, the Curé works hard for his parishioners. An interesting man.’
Anatole leaned closer to hear. ‘Why so?’
‘He is erudite, clearly ambitious and forceful. It is a matter of much local speculation as to why he should choose to stay so close to home and bury himself away in such a poor parish.’
‘Perhaps he believes this is where he can be most effective? ’
‘Certainly the village loves him. He’s done a lot of good.’
‘In practical matters or of merely a spiritual nature?’
‘Both. As an example, the church of Sainte Marie-Madeleine was no more than a ruin when he arrived. Rain coming through, abandoned to mice and birds and mountain cats. But in the summer of 1886, the Mairie voted him two thousand five hundred francs to begin restoration work, principally to replace the old altar.’
Anatole raised his eyebrows. ‘A sizeable sum!’
He nodded. ‘I only know what I hear indirectly. The Curé is a most cultured man. It is said that many items of archaeological interest have come to light, which of course greatly interested your uncle.’
‘Such as?’
‘An historical altarpiece, I gather. Also a pair of Visigoth pillars and an ancient tombstone – the Dalle des Chevaliers – that is rumoured to be either Merovingian in its provenance or possibly also from the Visigoth era. Being so interested in that period, Lascombe was much engaged in the early stages of the renovations in Rennes-le-Château, which of course resulted in the matter being of interest in Rennes-les-Bains.’
‘You too seem to be something of an historian,’ ventured Léonie.
Gabignaud flushed with pleasure. ‘A hobby, Mademoiselle Vernier, nothing more.’
Anatole took out his cigarette case. The doctor accepted. Shielding the flame with his arched hand, Anatole struck a match for both of them. ‘And what is the name of this exemplary priest?’ he asked, blowing out the question with the smoke.
‘Saunière. Bérenger Saunière.’
They had reached a straight section of road and the horses picked up speed. The noise grew in volume until further discussion was all but impossible. Léonie did not altogether mind the barrier to conversation. Her thoughts were racing, for somewhere in the morass of Gabignaud’s conversation, she had the sense that she had learned something of some significance.
But what?
After a short while, the driver slowed the horses and, with a clanking of harness and the clatter of the unlit lamps against the side of the carriage, left the main road to follow the river valley of the Salz.
Léonie leaned out as far as she dared, delighted by the beauty of the landscape, the extraordinary vista of sky and rock and woods. Two ruined outposts that turned out to be natural rock formations rather than the shadows of castles loomed over the valley like giant sentinels. Here the ancient forest came almost down to the road’s edge. Léonie felt they were entering a secret place, like an explorer in one of Monsieur Rider Haggard’s entertainments venturing into lost African kingdoms.
Now the road began to curve elegantly, winding back and over itself like a snake, following the cut of the river. It was beautiful, an arcadia. Everything was fertile, lush and green – olive green, sea green, scrub the colour of absinthe. The silver underside of leaves, lifted by the breeze, shimmered in the sun between the darker tones of fir and oak. Above the tree line, the startling outline of crests and peaks, the ancient silhouettes of menhirs, dolmens and natural sculptures. The antique history of the region was laid out plain to see, like pages in a book.
Léonie could hear the river Salz running alongside them, a constant companion, sometimes in view, a glint of sunlight on water, sometimes hidden. Like a game of cache-cache, the water sang its presence, rushing over stones, chasing through the entangled branches of the willows that hung low over the river, a guide drawing them ever closer to their destination.
